The Twins can’t draft and develop starting pitching? Nobody else can either

[bird]

 

  On 7/17/2016 at 6:00 PM, spycake said:

From the article that inspired this post:
 

 

 

Huh? From Radcliffe's single quote, how does anyone derive anything even remotely connected to an absurd allegation that the Twins, for two decades now, are guilty of espousing rhetoric that sounds like, "well, we've been bad, but other teams have been bad too" ?!?

 

There's just something very distasteful to me about taking one quote, in this case from Radcliffe, and (disingenuously perhaps?) trying to convert it into evidence that the Twins have been throwing out a bunch of rhetoric for two decades like what was suggested. On top of that, if anyone with even a sinew of fairness reads the Radcliffe quote in full context, they'd hardly portray him as making excuses.

 

[Teflon]

I had some time to kill while the Pokemon Go server is down so thought I'd investigate this. I looked at all pitchers drafted between 2002 and 2015 that debuted with the teams that drafted them. To narrow this down to starters I only looked at seasons where a pitcher started a game or more and at least 60% of his games pitched in a season were starts.(Glen Perkins figures in the tallies in 2008 and 2009, for example, but not after)  The data I could pull en masse from Baseball Reference is only the June draft data so has some glaring omissions such as free agent amateur signings (Felix Hernandez) so it's agreeably far from perfect. Draw your own conclusions.

 

The starting pitchers who have been drafted by the Twins and debuted with the Twins since the 2002 draft are :

 

Scott Baker - drafted in 2003 in second round - first start in 2005 at age 23

Glen Perkins - drafted in 2004 in first round - first start in 2008 at age 25

Anthony Swarzak - drafted in 2004 in second round (HS) - first start in 2009 at age 23

Matt Garza - drafted in 2005 in first round  - first start in 2006 at age 22

Kevin Slowey - drafted in 2005 in second round  - first start in 2007 at age 23

Brian Deunsing- drafted in 2005 in third round  - first start in 2011 at age 28

Kyle Gibson - drafted in 2009 in first round  - first start in 2013 at age 25

Pat Dean - drafted in 2010 in third round  - first start in 2016 at age 27

Jose Berios - drafted in 2012 in first round (HS)  - first start in 2016 at age 22

Tyler Duffy - drafted in 2012 in fifth round  - first start in 2015 at age 24

 

Some Twins 1st round pitchers that missed in that span -

Jay Rainvillle, first round (39th overall) in 2004

Shooter Hunt, first round (31st overall) in 2008

Matt Bashore, first round (46th overall) in 2009

Hudson Boyd, first round (55th overall) in 2011

 

Some we're still waiting on -

Alex Wimmers, first round (21st overall) in 2010

Luke Bard, first round (42nd overall) in 2012

 

Team Pitchers   GS     WAR     Wins
SFG           9     956       85.6      359
LAD          10     500       69.5     217
DET          11     571       55.9     253
WSN         13     660       51.1     220
LAA            6     506        49        233
MIA           14     586       47.7     205
TBR            9     613       44.9     248
BOS            9     444       41.7     186
NYM          10    665        40.6     229
OAK           11   496         37.5     189
TOR          15     596        31.9    225
CHW         10     242        31.6      96
STL           12     478        31.6    193
KCR           5      382        30.2    118
MIN           10     466        29.2    180
PIT            11     381        24.2    132
MIL             8     348         23.6    137
ATL           10     392        17.9     144
TEX            9     440         17.3    154
COL          10     336        16.4     106
CIN             8     412        14.8     138
HOU           7     329         14.7    103
ARI            12    343         14.5    112
CLE            7     313           9       114
CHC           7     212          8.2       60
BAL           13    413          6.8     123
NYY           9     206            6        70
SEA           6     168           3.2      49
SDP           9     264           2.9      79
 

edit: if somebody wants to provide a tutorial on how to get tables to appear as tables, I would be indebted.

[markos]

Well, this thread has been overcome by other events right now. But I really want to thank tlkriens and Teflon for sharing the research. Threads like this are one the main reasons I keep coming back to TD.

[tlkriens]

I'm going to start looking at how each team acquired their starting pitchers, minimum for 10 starts, from 2000-2016. I'll go with the categories of ...

 

1. Drafted

2. Traded for (minors vs. majors)

3. International signing

4. Free Agent

[tlkriens]

There have been 43 pitchers that have started at least 10 games for the Twins since 2000.

 

13 were signed as free agents  (30.2%)

12 were drafted  (27.9%)

9 were traded as minor leaguers to the Twins  (20.9%)

6 were traded as major leaguers to the Twins  (13.9%)

1 International signing  (2.3%)

1 Rule 5 pick  (2.3%)

1 off waivers  (2.3%)

 

Now to see how that compares to the rest of the league.

[Badsmerf]

I did a quick comparison, I'm not sure where you got your numbers from, but mine aren't even close to yours. In fact, my dirty numbers by hand show the twins Are not as bad As I thought. I only did a handful of teams, just to compare a few teams. That doesn't mean they are great, but they're not dead last.

 

I think this analysis might be misguided though. I want to see the distribution of war for each method of acquiring talent. I would bet the draft is the lowest of all categories when looking across the mlb. WAR can be skewed so much by a single player (someone like kershaw doesn't mean you're good at finding talent, you just struck gold). His war is about equal to the entire war of all twins draftees.

[tlkriens]

 

  On 7/18/2016 at 9:23 PM, Badsmerf said:

I did a quick comparison, I'm not sure where you got your numbers from, but mine aren't even close to yours. In fact, my dirty numbers by hand show the twins Are not as bad As I thought. I only did a handful of teams, just to compare a few teams. That doesn't mean they are great, but they're not dead last.

I think this analysis might be misguided though. I want to see the distribution of war for each method of acquiring talent. I would bet the draft is the lowest of all categories when looking across the mlb. WAR can be skewed so much by a single player (someone like kershaw doesn't mean you're good at finding talent, you just struck gold). His war is about equal to the entire war of all twins draftees.

 

Baseball Reference and their Play Index along with their draft history search.

[Eris]

This is how I think this comparison should be done:  Take the top 50-100 pitchers by WAR over the time period of interest.  Break down the WAR by the teams he played on and method of acquisition.  You would then be able to determine what is the most effective way to acquire pitching WAR and which teams are good at each method.  The challenge here is that I can not figure out how to do this other than copying data into an excel spreadsheet and manipulating from there. Of the top 50 pitchers from 1994-2016, only 5 played there entire career for the team that drafted them.  It is interesting to note that the top three pitchers on this list, Randy Johnson (drafted by the Expos) and Pedro Martinez (signed out of DR by the Dodgers) and Greg Maddux (drafted by the Cubs) earned most of their WAR for teams other than the original signing team.

 

 

 

[ALessKosherScott]

I'd say it better this way. I've been doing a Twins shadow draft since 2008. In that time, the Twins have drafted two pitchers with a career WAR over 1 (Gibson and Duffey). I have five, and I'm just an idiot with a BA subscription.

 

Calling the Twins middle of the pack is misleading. They've been downright awful the last nine years (aka, guys who should be coming into their prime). The whole game of thinking that college relievers weren't relievers for a reason is what really held this team back.

 

 

 

 

[Mike Sixel]

 

  On 7/19/2016 at 1:52 AM, Eris said:

This is how I think this comparison should be done:  Take the top 50-100 pitchers by WAR over the time period of interest.  Break down the WAR by the teams he played on and method of acquisition.  You would then be able to determine what is the most effective way to acquire pitching WAR and which teams are good at each method.  The challenge here is that I can not figure out how to do this other than copying data into an excel spreadsheet and manipulating from there. Of the top 50 pitchers from 1994-2016, only 5 played there entire career for the team that drafted them.  It is interesting to note that the top three pitchers on this list, Randy Johnson (drafted by the Expos) and Pedro Martinez (signed out of DR by the Dodgers) and Greg Maddux (drafted by the Cubs) earned most of their WAR for teams other than the original signing team.

 

Why? Why not look at the whole staff, over a long time period, and compare it to the other staffs? Why only look at the best pitchers?

[jorgenswest]

  On 7/18/2016 at 8:55 PM, tlkriens said:

There have been 43 pitchers that have started at least 10 games for the Twins since 2000.

 

13 were signed as free agents (30.2%)

12 were drafted (27.9%)

9 were traded as minor leaguers to the Twins (20.9%)

6 were traded as major leaguers to the Twins (13.9%)

1 International signing (2.3%)

1 Rule 5 pick (2.3%)

1 off waivers (2.3%)

 

Now to see how that compares to the rest of the league.

I really appreciate the effort of your research. Refreshing. Thanks for sharing your efforts.

[Mike Sixel]

Agreed, there has been a lot of research in this thread, using data to make points. Love that.

[big dog]

 

  On 7/17/2016 at 2:48 PM, ashburyjohn said:

"These days" == "since the site was launched".

 

Walt doesn't post frequently but he's been with us a while. I didn't take his post the wrong way, but it's well to remember that satire doesn't always play well unless you are of Swiftian stature

How tall was Jonathan Swift anyway?  And why is there now a HEIGHT REQUIREMENT?  Man, the mods can be so demanding.

[Eris]

 

  On 7/19/2016 at 2:25 PM, Mike Sixel said:

Why? Why not look at the whole staff, over a long time period, and compare it to the other staffs? Why only look at the best pitchers?

 

There are multiple ways in which such a comparison could be done.  Part of this would depend on what is being looked for.  Most teams that make it into and advance in the playoffs have one or two dominant pitcher.  If we try to answer the question of how to obtain or how most teams obtain 1 or 2 dominant starting pitchers you could start by looking at what is the best way to obtain dominant pitchers.  It is of course not the only question that can be answered.  Another similar question is how to obtain a dominant bullpen.  You could take the teams with the best pitching WAR and run comparisons for there as well.  I think what we would find is that if a theory is valid, it should be true no matter how you started with the data set, assuming you sample size was large enough.  It may also be the case that what worked in 1980 does not work today.

If you run the 1994-2016 timeline on starting pitching WAR

26 Johan Santana--42.7 WAR

32 Brad Radke-- 38.7 WAR

82 Carl Pavano--23.4 WAR

83 Ervin Santana--23.4 WAR

88 Ricky Nalasco--22.6 WAR

 

Maybe the timeline of 1994-2016 is too broad to be useful (and it favors pitchers near the end of their careers), but you don't have to get very far down the list before the pitchers are quite average.  This WAR should also be broken down by team as the Twins have benefited little from the career WAR of the last players on this list.

 

If you look at team starting pitching WAR over this time period, The Braves, Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, and White Sox top the list.  And the Twins are 23rd--about 100 WAR behind the teams leading that stat.  The premise would be because the Twins have had few (only two) very good to great starting pitchers over this time period.

[Otto von Ballpark]

Haven't had a chance to loom at this in detail, but it should also be noted that WAR is a counting stat. Four 1 WAR pitchers/seasons is not equal value to one 4 WAR pitcher/season.