Injuries Don’t Excuse How Bad This Twins Team Has Been

Its one thing to have production drop off from starter to replacement, but the sloppiness is quite another.  Sure, they have lost games because they simply don't have talent that the other team does.  But more often then not, they're losing because the beat themselves by errors or otherwise sloppy play.  Little things in close games get amplified and result in losses, sometimes in blowout style.  That's not due to injury.  The injuries only explain a small portion of what this season has become.

I don't mind losing, sometimes the opponent is just better.  But it drives me nuts when a team beats itself.  Even more so when its done as often as this team does it.

Fangraphs analyzed this a few days ago:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-twins-are-running-out-of-time/

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The injuries have affected the team, but they only explain part of the win shortfall. To get a rough idea of this, I went back to what the ZiPS-projected record for each team at this point would be after the games of June 3, then re-did the projection with the preseason projections for players while reflecting the actual distribution of playing time.

 

AL Central Roster Shortfalls vs. Projected Roster

Team	Projected Wins At This Time	Projected Wins with Actual Rosters	Difference
Chicago White Sox	30.7	29.6	-1.1
Minnesota Twins	31.5	28.1	-3.4
Cleveland	26.3	27.3	1.0
Kansas City Royals	26.7	26.2	-0.5
Detroit Tigers	24.2	25.1	0.9

With perfect knowledge of who played so far this season, ZiPS would have expected the White Sox to be in first place rather than the Twins. But even with this very specific advanced knowledge of the future given to us by the Ghost of Memorial Days Yet to Come, we’d still expect the Twins to be in second place. Now, this methodology can’t be perfect — roster decisions aren’t only based on injuries, and injuries can also affect performance — but three missing wins isn’t nine-and-a-half wins, so a lot in there has to be simple underperformance.

2 minutes ago, Grasslander said:

Roco Baldelli knows more about baseball in the first five minutes of each day than I have accumulated in all of my fading life, but I cannot understand why he brings in a young man to make his MLB debut in the 8th inning versus the Yanks with the game still up in the air.

Welcome to Twins Daily!

Jax came in for the 9th, not the 8th, and with a 2 run lead and only 3 more outs left, the generic Yankees win probability at that point was 93%. And that doesn't factor in that the Twins 6-7-8 hitters were due up in the 9th, or that Chapman would have come in (rather than Wandy Peralta) if the deficit had still been 2 runs. Opposing batters are only hitting .097/.214/.194 against Chapman this year, for an OPS of .409.

Would have been nice to keep it close and make the Yankees use Chapman, of course, but Jax getting his feet wet against the weaker part of the Yankees order could outweigh that. At least it gave us some information about Jax's readiness.

13 minutes ago, Whitey333 said:

I find it amusing how people dig up, invent, or otherwise use sometimes obscure analytics and stats to explain away poor play and try to convince us they aren't playing that poorly.  They have a lot of injuries yes but they weren't playing well with a "full" team.  The Twins problems to me seem simple:. No offense, no defense, no pitching.  The fact that the FO keeps signing reclamation pitching with the hopes they may rebound compounds the problem.

This article is actually arguing the opposite of what you're saying.  They're not losing because of the injuries.  And it's not trying to convince you that they're a good team.

When was the last time this team played with a "full team"?  They were 5-2 the first week of the season, and that was probably as close to healthy as they've been since.  

That's not to say that they've played well, however.  Even the healthy players have underperformed.  So, as the article is stating, injuries are not the prime reason for the poor play.

17 minutes ago, Grasslander said:

Sorry - there is a big difference between the 8th and 9th innings. Nevertheless, the point I would make is that while the metrix might reveal that the Twins' chances of winning at the point Jax entered the game were slim, what is your strategy? Do you stay competitive and do what you can do to try and win the game or do you throw out a genuine first timer and see what he can do?  I prefer the former, especially in a two-run game.  What do you think Twins' players thought when they watched Jax enter the game? ...That the team was going to fight it out to the bitter end?  Every game is critical, and every "next" inning is the most important inning of this season. I'm growing weary of the metrix myopia. So what about Chapman. Competitive athletes wanna take their best shot at anyone.  Also -- This injury situation is confounding, as everyone on here knows.  I watched Willie Mays play baseball and witnessed his career as a young fan. Did he play with great intensity? During his career he played in nearly every single game. The year the schedule expanded to 162 games -1962, I think- he played in all 162 games.  Mays was a special athlete, to be sure, but nowhere as fit and strong as nearly all major leaguers today.  Mays was not alone in his generation in playing nearly every game of a season. Some argue that NOT playing nearly every day makes you vulnerable to injury.  As a newbie to this board, I apologize for rattling on so long. 

The only bullpen arms that didn't pitch last night were Robles and Duffey, who both had pitched the last two games.  Granted, with a day off sandwiched between them.  I imagine that Rocco was trying to keep some arms available for the remainder of the series with the backend of the rotation starting the next two.  Given the low level situation, it only made sense to use Jax in the 9th.

He, as well as all of us, know that this week is going to be pretty hard on the pitchers.  It makes sense to save two of your better arms in that scenario.

1 hour ago, FritzDahmus said:

Absolutely agree. This article is yet another case of "using stats as a crutch" because you don't know what you are looking at.

We had our big free agent acquisition [Donaldson] go down last year and then at the start of the year.
The second place vote getter for the Cy Young pitched thru an injury and then went down [Maeda].
A player having a MVP month and the 2nd player picked in his draft....goes down ..... again!!! [Buxton]
One of the best hitters from the last decade...gets hurt 5 weeks ago and has never been the same and is now rested a lot [Cruz].
Kepler [is he still on the team??] isn't exactly chopped liver.....has been out forever [even when he plays...he isn't right]
A catcher who was the Silver Slugger winner.....has been right for....3 weeks....maybe?? [Garver]
The "next .400 hitter"......is out [Arraez]. Need I say more??

Then the real problem....Simmons, Polanco, and Sano...playing like they are in mourning over all the injuries....and the FO thinking we don't need Eddie Rosario, Trevor May, and Clippard....but needed JA Happ, and Shoemaker????
 

 

But this team was losing when all of the guys you mentioned were healthy.  Buxton was playing at an MVP level, and the team was still losing.  Cruz was hitting and the team was still losing.  We don't know how long Maeda was pitching hurt, but last season was an outlier in his career.  Donaldson has been playing his best ball in a long while and the team is still losing.  Kepler hasn't replicated his 2019 season, healthy or not.  Garver hasn't replicated his 2019 until the last month or so, the team was still losing when he was hitting.  Arraez has been excellent...and the team was still losing.  Polanco has played his best ball in two years (despite being hurt) and the team is still losing.  Sano has been abysmal all season, yet has been healthy most of it.  All of those guys have played extended stretches where most, if not all, were in the lineup and they were still losing.

Rosario isn't playing much better than the crop of guys they've run through LF.  May has been awful and Clippard hasn't thrown a pitch this season.  Have Happ and Shoemaker been effective?  No, and they're perfectly healthy as far as we know.  Also not mentioned is the bullpen, which has largely been healthy yet completely incapable of holding down a game.  So, saying that we're using "stats as a crutch because we don't know what we're looking at" glosses over the fact that healthy players are underperforming.  The team is bad.  Injuries are a part of it, but its certainly not the primary reason.  

1 hour ago, Grasslander said:

Sorry - there is a big difference between the 8th and 9th innings. Nevertheless, the point I would make is that while the metrix might reveal that the Twins' chances of winning at the point Jax entered the game were slim, what is your strategy? Do you stay competitive and do what you can do to try and win the game or do you throw out a genuine first timer and see what he can do?  I prefer the former, especially in a two-run game.  What do you think Twins' players thought when they watched Jax enter the game? ...That the team was going to fight it out to the bitter end?  Every game is critical, and every "next" inning is the most important inning of this season. I'm growing weary of the metrix myopia. So what about Chapman. Competitive athletes wanna take their best shot at anyone.  Also -- This injury situation is confounding, as everyone on here knows.  I watched Willie Mays play baseball and witnessed his career as a young fan. Did he play with great intensity? During his career he played in nearly every single game. The year the schedule expanded to 162 games -1962, I think- he played in all 162 games.  Mays was a special athlete, to be sure, but nowhere as fit and strong as nearly all major leaguers today.  Mays was not alone in his generation in playing nearly every game of a season. Some argue that NOT playing nearly every day makes you vulnerable to injury.  As a newbie to this board, I apologize for rattling on so long. 

When do you use Jax then? If the team is made up of guys who think any rookie coming in to a game means they're quitting and shouldn't be fighting to the bitter end you need to replace the whole team. When Kirilloff made his debut did they think they were quitting? Larnach? Gordon? Ober? What about when Refsnyder had to start playing? Not a rookie, but not known as an elite level guy. Did the team throw in the towel for those guys too? Or just Jax because his debut didn't go well? Jax has a 3.20 ERA in over 280 minor league innings. They weren't exactly bringing me into the game.