Article: The Twins Are Regressing. Where Is The Mean?

[Tom Schreier]

The Minnesota Twins are regressing, make no doubt about it. After splitting a series with the Boston Red Sox, Minnesota lost two out of three to the Milwaukee Brewers and were swept by the Kansas City Royals at Target Field, allowing Kansas City to pass them in the standings for first place in the division.The team downplayed the importance of the Royals series, saying that it was June and nobody is securing anything right now. “I’ve had that approach where I need a World Series ring on April 1,” said Torii Hunter on June 7, “and that never happens.”

 

“You gotta be a little careful. You’re in June, and you’ve put yourself in a position to play meaningful games in June,” echoed manager Paul Molitor, “but that’s not nearly what it means to play meaningful games in August and September, so you’ve gotta keep your perspective.”

It’s not necessarily a bad thing that people are focusing on the Twins in June — after all, in the past few seasons the team was collapsing by this point and fans were losing interest. Instead, the Twins played in front of a sellout crowd in the second game the Brewers were in town and 100,000 people showed up for the entire three-game series. Granted, that number is bolstered by the number of Wisconsinites who crossed the border, but that was the first sellout since the team’s miserable performance on Opening Day, and it's first 100,000-fan series since August 2013. People are taking notice, even if they think the team’s hot start will fade over time.

 

And fade it has. Kyle Gibson, owner of a sub-3.00 ERA to begin the season, came back to earth in his latest start against Kansas City. Joe Mauer wasn’t going to hit .400 with runners in scoring position all season long. Trevor Plouffe started the year with a massive slump, caught fire and then slumped again. Kurt Suzuki played well in a contract year last season, but has returned to the .230 hitter he was with the Washington Nationals and Oakland Athletics the past few years.

 

Sometimes it’s not individual performance that evens out, but rather the sum of the parts that cancel each other out. Mike Pelfrey has maintained his status as an ace, bucking the recent trend of regression, but as the No. 9 overall selection in 2005, he was supposed to be a top of the rotation guy. Phil Hughes was a top prospect in the Yankees organization, but was pilloried once he got to New York because he didn’t live up to expectations. A higher right field fence and more forgiving fan base provided a better environment for him last year, but he’s off to a slow start and isn’t pitching nearly as well as he was last season.

 

Similarly, Aaron Thompson and Blaine Boyer have been revelations in the bullpen and have carried much of the load when it comes to relief pitching because Brian Duensing and Tim Stauffer were struggling. Stauffer was ultimately designated for assignment, meaning, of the two offseason bullpen acquisitions, one has panned out so far and the other hasn’t.

 

Nobody is shocked that the Twins are taking a step back. The team’s 20-win May was historically good, but nobody who showed up for Opening Day and saw the team dismantled 12-3 has forgotten about that, nor have they forgotten that Minnesota started 1-6 and hasn’t had success against the Detroit Tigers yet.

 

All good teams go through rough patches, and the Twins have plenty of holes that indicated they could not maintain an AL Central-leading pace all year long. Plouffe and Suzuki are No. 6 and 7 hitters being forced into the middle of the lineup because the middle of the order talent — Miguel Sano, Oswaldo Arcia and Kennys Vargas — have spent most or all of the year in the minors. Sano is at Double-A and won’t be rushed up; Arcia just came off the disabled list and was immediately placed in Triple-A; Vargas just got a call from Rochester and isn’t ready to hit in the middle of the lineup.

 

That’s the nature of player development and progression. Because the team’s prospects aren’t major league ready yet, Molitor is forced to go with a makeshift lineup for the time being. This team goes as the youth does, plain and simple. An ideal lineup of players currently on the team or in the system would be Brian Dozier — a revelation himself — hitting leadoff, Hunter in the 2-hole, Mauer hitting third, a combination of Sano, Vargas and Arcia in the middle, Plouffe and Suzuki hitting sixth and seventh, and then defensively-savvy Eddie Rosario and Aaron Hicks constituting the bottom of the order. That doesn’t even include Byron Buxton, who probably will take the aging, yet productive, Hunter’s spot at the appropriate time.

 

It’s not hard to envision the Twins putting it together. Hunter is having a great season, but he may just want to end on a high note when it’s over or finish his career as a fourth outfielder, riding what is hopefully a wave of success in Minnesota. He has not only been a great locker room presence this year, but his seemingly ageless production hasn’t forced the Twins’ hand with Buxton — he’ll get the call when he’s ready rather than out of necessity to fill a glaring need.

 

Sano is a player the Twins may have to rush to the major leagues. Plouffe’s defense has taken the pressure off of the Dominican prospect in that aspect — there’s no guarantee Sano will be a major league third baseman, although he should get ample tries to make it work given that he has more value there than at first base or DH — but he’s still inconsistent at the plate and more of a No. 6 hitter than a cleanup guy anyway. Sano also is further away from the big leagues than Buxton, and is likely to surface later in the season.

 

Arcia possesses 30 home run power but is undisciplined at the plate, and prone to temper tantrums away from it. Last season he went Bo Jackson on his bat after striking out, splitting it in half over his leg — a testament to his strength as a human being, but also justifying his label as a head case. If the Twins can get him straightened out, they have a bona fide power hitter on their hands. If they cannot, he may join Chris Parmelee as a man who could hit the ball out of the park, but was never able to make contact with it on a regular basis.

 

Of course if Arcia doesn’t pan out and Sano and Vargas do, Minnesota still has it’s beef in the middle of the order. And for the time being, as long as the rotation holds its own, the Twins can steal a couple wins here and there knowing the starter won’t be out by the fourth inning. Trevor May and Kyle Gibson have proven that they can go deep into games even when they don’t have their best stuff. Hughes has had slow starts in the past and overcome them. Ricky Nolasco showed some promise early in the season and should be better after returning from injury. And, even if he cools off a bit, Pelfrey is supposed to be a top of the rotation pitcher, so he just shouldn't go stone cold and he’ll likely be fine.

 

The point of all this is that there are a lot of moving parts for the Twins. Not only are personnel changes sure to come as prospects develop, but on any given team players get hurt, others slump and some catch fire. At the beginning of the season, both local and national media saw another losing season on the horizon. Molitor emphasized immediate success at his introductory press conference, but didn’t appear to have the personnel to back his ambition. Sports Illustrated had the team at 67 wins, ESPN had 68, and Grantland and Yahoo and everyone under the sun had them in last place.

 

After the team’s success in May, the tune changed to “well, the team has wins banked now, so they’re gonna be around .500.” What does that mean, “banked”? What is preventing this team from a 10-game losing streak at some point? The team has lost five of the last six games they’ve played. On the other hand, if their prospects develop and the rotation stays healthy and the bullpen is supplemented by players like Michael Tonkin, Lester Oliveros, Zach Jones and Nick Burdi, why can’t they be more than a .500 team this year?

 

What is the mean? Is it the 60-70 wins projected at the beginning of the season? Is it 80-82? Twins GM Terry Ryan asserts that the Twins are just winning more close games simply because the defense is better and the bullpen is closing out games, especially closer Glen Perkins, who has been perfect so far. He also says that defensive metrics are rudimentary at this point, and to some extent he’s right.

 

In baseball, a game where everything seems so certain, especially in the Moneyball era, there’s a lot about this team we don’t know. One certainty, however, is that before the season began, management felt they had a winner on their hands. “Things can change in this game very dramatically at this level, very quickly,” Molitor said back in November. “I’ll want it to be something that’s supportive amongst itself, leadership from players, accountability, certainly but creating a vision that they believe that they can win now because things can change very, very rapidly, and I hope that we can set that tone in motion.”

 

In many ways it already has.

 

This story was originally published on the Cold Omaha section of 105TheTicket.com.

 

Tom Schreier writes for 105 The Ticket’s Cold Omaha. Tune into the Wake Up Call every Sunday at 8:00 am to hear the crew break down this week in Minnesota sports.

 

Follow Tom Schreier @tschreier3

 

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[diehardtwinsfan]

I'd say that their record at the end of June will answer a lot of these.  Wouldn't be surprised if come July they start trading off pieces in favor of some more kids.  Then again, a hot streak in the next week or two and I wouldn't be surprised if they are trading some kids in favor of some useful pieces.

[twinstalker]

Ugh.  Regression to the mean refers to the selection of a group on the extreme of a scale and finding the expected value.  The sample average of values the subjects take on is offset from it's expected value, which is closer to the overall mean.

 

If you take a random sample of 10 players' batting averages, the sample average is centered around the expected value of those ten players.  Compare the sample average of the 10 BAs with the average of those players' 10 lifetime averages.  Take the difference.  Repeat this process n times.  The average difference will be 0 as n goes to infinity.

 

Now take the ten highest batting average players one year, do the same thing.  Unfortunately, there are only 100 years of this, but there are ways to make it work and avoid some biases that creep in.  Compare the average of the 10 season long BAs with the average of the lifetime BAs of those ten players.  Calculate the "sample" mean minus the lifetime mean.  I would guess that almost all those differences would be positive, indicating a bias.

 

It is, of course, a selection bias.  The true expected value of batting average for those 10 players is not the center of the sample averages.  It is offset toward the mean of the whole population.  This is called regression to the mean.

 

Regression to the Mean has little to do with eventually ending up at the mean.

 

So how does this fit with the Twins?  Well, we didn't select them because they were the best team, but we're sort of talking about them because they're doing so well.  There are so many issues that affect record at any one time, but one of the biggest issues in baseball is autocorrelation.  Hot streaks, cold streaks.  Probability of success changing due to prior success the day before or over the last week.

 

If the games thus far represented a random sample, and if autocorrelation didn't exist, and if the team didn't change in any way over the course of the summer, then maybe the winning pct now can produce a confidence interval for the season winning pct that shows a tight interval excluding anything resembling the last four years.  But with the issues of autocorrelation, changeover, injuries, and such, it's totally unclear how the Twins will do with a new manager and prospects coming up, though having played 35% of the season lowers variation and keeps the interval tighter.

 

My feeling is that the Twins are better with Molitor, Allen, Polanco, and Buxton, and it wouldn't shock me if they finished above .500.

[Minniman]

The Twins are in a 4 and 10 stretch since the postponed Red Sox game. They are fading fast.