vavo

I'm happy to hear about this option. I've honestly read TwinsDaily less since the last re-design because I found all the ads and pop-up videos and whatnot to be too annoying. It's also seemed especially slow lately? I'm assuming there's been something of an uptick in traffic... ? I love what you folks do though, so keep up the good work. I guess I'll have to add this to the pile of baseball related subscriptions I have!

Interesting analysis. I tend to be kinda skeptical of the approach of dumping a bunch of data in a bucket and flipping the "machine learning" switch. Sometimes it gives extremely valuable results, sometimes it produces garbage. As you said, it's also difficult to determine what it actually learned. That being said, the high-usage concept is interesting, but I thought about it a little differently. Buxton and Simmons play the two positions that see a lot of action. Is there evidence that SS and CF see more injuries than say, 3B/LF?

Will you be writing something similar on other tools?

Matt, this is excellent. I always learn so much from your articles. Thank you!

I appreciate the sentiment of this Nick, and I support you. It seems many are quick to criticize you for things you did not in fact say, or otherwise put words in your mouth. Your general premise that everyone is responsible to speak up when something is obviously wrong is reasonable, though saying "George Floyd should not have been killed" is not a particularly interesting thing to say, as this is the part we all agree on. The "what should we do about it?" or "what are the issues that led to this?" questions are far more complicated and I certainly wouldn't expect Kepler to have well formed opinions on these. It can be a risky road to walk down as a public figure if you don't have deeper knowledge of an issue to loudly proclaim an opinion on it. All that being said, systemic racism within our nation is a problem that needs to be addressed. Yes, it was progress when Chief Arradondo was appointed (as it was when Harteau was before him), and requiring body cameras was a useful step in accountability, and some minor policies and training changes are good, but a lot of work remains. As long as Bob Kroll leads the police union change will be very hard. Solving the problem is hard, and to those that say we have a black police chief, how can they be racist?, that's as absurd as saying Chauvin was bad, so all cops are bad. I hope people here can read each others comments with an open mind before categorizing them politically and dismissing them as idiots if they don't align with your politics. After all, we're all idiots -- we cheer for Minnesota sports...

Amazing how many people who don't want to be bothered by politics on their Twins blog were apparently forced to click on this article, skip to the end, and share a comment.

You're talking about survivorship bias. Nolan Ryan and others didn't get wrecked by injuries, but there are others like him we forget about because their careers did get wrecked. And pre-Tommy John, these guys just flamed out and disappeared. The study cited in the article doesn't suggest that any percent fastball usage you become guaranteed to need surgery. It's just increasing risk. Lots of pitchers will succeed forever even with lots of high risk factors. You can go a long time without rolling 1 on a dice roll, for example.

I had assumed this was the case with these projections, but it's good to understand it a little more clearly. I also wonder how much it makes sense to say a teams 90th percentile outcome is when every player performs at their 90th percentile outcome. Somehow the latter seems far more unlikely to me? A team full of 90th percentile players seems more like a 99th percentile team. Maybe I'm not thinking of it correctly. Or maybe that indirectly accounts for a bit of the injury/playing time issue that Matthew is getting at.

Perhaps he makes more contact than expected outside of the zone because he's rarely swinging at pitches WAY out of the zone. It's not that his hand-eye coordination is great, it's that his eye is great. I suppose your point more that he's missing too often within the zone, as that's the more extreme number. Lay off the high ones I guess...

Interesting how the 5 teams show 5 different points in the contention cycle. The Twins currently in their prime window. Cleveland teetering on the edge of a rebuild. Chicago with tons of talent up and coming. Kansas City bottoming out and with a mediocre farm system. Detroit is terrible but has a pretty good farm system. Good to be the Twins these days!

Projection systems typically do a poor job highlighting the likely range of outcomes. You can understand why, since a projection that says, "We think there's a 90% chance Miguel Sano hits between 10 and 55 HRs." is kind of a boring thing to say. It's more satisfying to make specific claims, like 35 HRs. But similar to the political projections Richard mentioned, they're actually calculating a range of outcomes. 538 gave Clinton a 2/3 chance of winning and Trump a 1/3 chance of winning. They weren't "right," but they weren't really wrong either. If a projection system said Berrios has a 1/3 chance of having an ERA under 3, or Arraez has a 1/3 chance of hitting above .350, or the Twins have a 1/3 chance of making the World Series, I'd be pretty excited! It's too difficult to effectively show the range of outcomes on everything, but I'd like to know those sorts of things. Even if the middle of their projection has Berrios as being worth 3.1 WAR, what sort of chances does ZIPS give him of a huge breakout, say being worth 6 WAR or more?

Probably mostly bitterness, but during our latest Yankees humiliation I thought many times the Yankees knew what was coming. Watching them spit on good 2 strike pitches an inch off the zone over and over is enough to drive a guy nuts. I assume the Twins were being reasonably cautious and switching up signs all the time, but has anyone gone back and checked?

Thanks for writing this. I believe increased diversity (gender and otherwise) in front offices is a market inefficiency waiting to be tapped. Getting a wider range of perspectives and backgrounds helps to find new ways for a team to succeed.

After last offseason it's hard to imagine this front office going out and spending big ($ or prospects) on relievers, but this is certainly an interesting plan.

This was a great series and I'm highly intrigued by the concept. I just wonder how strict a manager could be with it. If they're up one in the ninth with the bases loaded and they've already used their relief ace for the day, and the only available guys are your #6, 7, 8 relievers, it's going to be very tempting to turn to tomorrow's relief ace. And of course extra-inning games could throw a wrench in it too. Maybe that's all okay though. Maybe you bring in tomorrow's relief ace on only a day of rest, and if you need one the next day you move the next guy up a day, but eventually you get an opportunity to not use any of them and get back on schedule. If you're 100% rigid you might lose some winnable games. If you're a little flexible your relief aces need to maintain some of their adaptability and maybe it isn't as beneficial. It's a spectrum of rigidity, and I hope the Twins at least start moving this way.

Great quote here. Thanks Matthew.

My only jersey was purchased in the off-season with the threat of contraction (or maybe it was moving to NC?). Either way it seemed silly to commit to a specific player, so I went with a blank road jersey (grey pinstripes). I still wear it to every game I go to. It actually fits much better now that it did when I got it oversized as a 14-year-old.

I'm not sure about making Adrianza the everyday RF based on 15 innings of defensive metrics.

Is it possible he's tipping his curveball(/slider)? In August his curveball whiff rate is down to 8%, normally at ~25%, and his chase rate is at 5%, normally at >30%. It also is worth noting that he's used his curve more against lefties than righties this month. I think he's faced more lefties than usual this month, but it's still a notable difference. It just seems like batters aren't fooled by it. Velocity of the curve is unchanged, but the spin rate is down a little.

Exactly the same experience. Also pre-coffee. I was, however, sort of intrigued by the possibility of a half-buy/half-sell. Trade Schoop, Perez, Pineda, Cave (if they have any value?) for some prospects, then trade some prospects for some good relievers. *sips coffee* That's better.

FWIW, I often look at the win expectancy chart, particularly if I didn't see much of the game. It quickly gives a sense of the story arc of the game. I really have grown to appreciate these recaps. Thanks for all the hard work Tom, et. al.

Been a reader here since the beginning, but not much for commenting. I was very disappointed to see the increase in ads last week. They're incredibly obnoxious and often make the site unpleasant to read. Every 30 seconds when the ads reload I get a status bar in the middle of the screen, and have also had text jumping around in articles as new ads insert themselves. I really want to support everyone here, but this is kinda brutal. Have you thought about a paid, ad-free version? I'd gladly pay $5/month for a cleaner, fast-loading, non-distracting version of this.

All the people suggesting this is a screw up by Sano or a Dominican doctor apparently are unfamiliar with the variability of human bodies and inexactness of modern medicine. It seems every step of the way the doctors/trainers and Sano have done what was expected. Unfortunately it hasn't worked out the way they all hoped. That doesn't mean mistakes were made. Who hasn't had a doctors appointment end with the doctor saying, "Come back in 4-6 weeks and we'll see how it's progressing." No need to assign blame for all bad news.

When Buxton first came up and struggled he suddenly had several coaches and former players giving him tips on how he should tweak his swing. He respected these opinions and wanted to succeed so he tried to implement them. But he got to be the top prospect in baseball without all those voices in his ear. He needs to trust himself, and trust the swing that feels right to him. His incredible talent and his own know-how will get him back to being a ~.260 hitter. From there the professional coaches can help him be a .280 hitter, but it's my opinion that the over-coaching he received early on in his MLB career did him no favors.

Is it possible to add a season long stat to the top prospect summary so we can quickly see how they've been doing? OPS for hitters and ERA for pitchers?