Parker Hageman

Derek Falvey has inherited an organization that allowed the most runs in the American League. Hopefully he is a person who enjoys a good challenge. The Twins hired Falvey, in part, because he was analytically inclined and also carried a reputation as a pitching hawk while with Cleveland, two significant deficiencies of the previous regime. Although Jack Goin has done a good job establishing the analytics department it seemed obvious that the growth of that department was handcuffed by budgets and the prior leadership’s skeptical view toward the data. With Falvey in charge, he might be able to give Goin’s team the necessary support to take full advantage of the science of baseball. Falvey’s vision for his team may already include something similar to what these two clubs have been doing. However, in terms of improving run prevention, both short-term and long-term, the Twins may want to consider creating at least two new positions. ***This is an excerpt of one of several features from the Twins Daily Offseason Handbook. To read this and more, be sure to download your FREE Twins Daily Offseason Handbook now.*** Boston's Pitching Guru At the end of the 2015 season, the Boston Red Sox added a new position for former major league pitcher Brian Bannister in the front office. Already a member of the team’s scouting department, his acute insight into pitching analytics prompted Boston to give Bannister the title of Director of Pitching Analysis and Development. Bannister’s new job, as described by Red Sox team president Dave Dombrowski, was to develop pitching through an "analytical approach" using the power of PitchF/X and Trackman to improve arm angles, pitch types, spin rates and more. Essentially, Bannister would process the science and deliver it to the organization’s pitching coaches who could distribute it to players in easier to swallow bites. The overall goal would be to fully exploit a pitcher’s talent. One of Bannister’s early successes includes turning around left-handed hurler Rich Hill. Hill was pitching for the independent Long Island Ducks in 2015 when Bannister made a scouting visit. Bannister knew Hill’s curveball had one of the highest spin rates in all of baseball, making it a very tough pitch to barrel, and yet Hill often opted to throw other pitches in situations where his best offering would suffice. So Bannister dropped some pitching knowledge on Hill. He told him to throw his curveball more. He told him to increase the spin on his fastball. Since the conversation with Bannister, Hill has made 24 starts with Boston, Oakland and Los Angeles, striking out 165 over 139.1 innings of work. You'll note that he's the top starting pitcher in this Handbook's free agency section. “It was so refreshing, talking about shaping pitches, shaping the breaking ball. We talked about other pitchers — Zack Greinke, Clayton Kershaw — specifically about how they can shape their different breaking balls that they throw,” Hill told the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier in February. “All of those things took me from four pitches to maybe 12. It was like I had 12 pitches because of changing speeds, changing shapes, changing locations.” It is not hard to envision a pitcher like Tyler Duffey benefiting from that kind of insight. Duffey’s curveball can be a monster pitch at times but he struggles to locate his two types of fastballs consistently thanks to a lowered arm slot. Having a person in the front office focused on identifying issues and isolating strengths could help Duffey reach his ceiling more quickly. Bannister’s methods and pitching knowledge were so well received by the pitchers that the team requested that he join the coaching staff for the remainder of the 2016 season in order to better communicate with the major league roster. While right-hander Rick Porcello doesn’t credit Bannister with his career-best season, the tall sinkerballer said that in addition to Red Sox pitching coach Carl Willis, Bannister's presence has helped provide concrete insight beyond the mental aspects of the mound. When he feels like he is in a funk and doesn’t get the right movement on his sinker, Porcello told the Boston Herald that Bannister’s ability to recall data on arm angles and spin rates to quickly diagnose what is going wrong assisted in keeping him from falling into a prolonged slump. That’s something Bannister said he emphasizes -- not only getting pitchers to their ceiling but sustaining as well. Someone like Kyle Gibson, who has had flashes of brilliance but has had consistency evade him, could follow in similar footsteps. Though the Twins do not have a Brian Bannister in the front office, they do have the foundation in place to capture the necessary data that can lead to swift player development improvements. Across their minor league affiliates -- with the exception of Elizabethton and the Gulf Coast League Twins -- the organization has installed Trackman systems, the very same 3D Doppler hardware that feeds MLB’s StatCast with speed, spin and launch angles. Ensuring that a person or a team of people in similar roles to how the Red Sox employed Bannister, constantly dissecting and disseminating that information throughout the organization, could rapidly improve the pitching program. Chicago's Defensive Coordinator Often found perched high above the field in the press box, looming over the game like a football defensive coordinator, is the Chicago Cubs’ Director of Run Prevention, Tommy Hottovy. ***To read the rest of this feature and more, be sure to download your FREE Twins Daily Offseason Handbook now.*** Click here to view the article

The Minnesota Twins new front office did not waste much time addressing issues this offseason, first cutting ties with veteran third baseman Trevor Plouffe, now Fox Sport's Ken Rosenthal says the team has a deal in place with free agent catcher Jason Castro.Yahoo Sport's Jeff Passan reports that the two sides have agreed upon a three-year, $24.5 million contract. As Nick Nelson detailed in the Offseason Handbook, Castro hasn't shown much with his bat over the last three seasons, posting a combined .215/.291/.369 line over that time. It would seem in the Twins' best interested to use him in a platoon role with the right-handed swinging John Ryan Murphy. Over the last two seasons Castro hit a passable .225/.315/.417 against right-handed pitching. In that sense, the $8.2 million per year is a hefty fee for a platoon candidate but as the left-handed hitting one, Castro would play the lion's share of the games. Castro's biggest upside has been his defense. Specifically his ability to steal strikes from outside of the zone, particularly against right-handed hitters. Download attachment: output_7BIM7U.gif This could be an immediate impact for pitchers. Consider Kyle Gibson. Gibson does not possess swing-and-miss stuff but has plenty of movement and stays around the zone. With his sinker and slider combo, Gibson could be one big benefactor to Castro's outer-half framing skills. Castro's receiving skill set goes beyond gaining a strike call from off the plate. It is ensuring that pitches that cut through the zone are also acknowledged as such. Consider this: over the last three season with Kurt Suzuki as the primary catcher, the Twins have had 81.3% of pitches that were in the strike zone and the batter watched it go by, called a strike -- the lowest in baseball. The Twins pitching staff, who did not need to be further behind the eight ball, was victimized to some degree by their catchers' performance. We cannot rule out some influence on inconsistent location or umpire biases, to be sure. However by comparison the Astros pitching staff, backstopped by Castro, had baseball's second best rate at 85.3%. While it may seem like a small percentage, that can make a significant difference in any given at bat. "Framing" might be the word that makes people cringe, as if the act is dishonest and swindling a human who is paid to make accurate calls. The reality is framing is receiving the ball in the right way. It is positioning your body to give the umpire a good look at a pitch. It is making a pitch that is one ball length off the plate look more like it clipped a part of the zone. What exactly does Castro's framing skills look like? Here he is stealing a called third strike, coaxing a pitch that passed by the zone back into it. http://i.imgur.com/Elr7puf.gif The previous front office regime did not put much, if any, emphasis on the value of catcher framing. The recent signings of Kurt Suzuki and Ryan Doumit did little to assist the pitching staff. Castro, on the other hand, has gone from a mediocre receiver to one of the game's highest valued, saving 32.2 framing runs above average (7th out of 103 qualified catchers) for the Astros over the last three seasons compared to Suzuki's -32.0 framing runs (100 out of 103 catchers). In theory, that is a six-game swing or could have been a two-game improvement in each season had the Twins employed Castro over Suzuki. When you break the numbers down further, we find that Castro is extremely adept at getting strikes called in hitter's counts. According to ESPN/Tru Media's framing stats, Castro was second in baseball among all catchers with a 15.3 framing runs above average mark when the hitter's were ahead. That means Castro was able to help get his pitcher from dangerous territory into more manageable areas. The move is not sexy from an offseason standpoint, however, this signing could give the Twins' pitching staff a much needed shot in the arm. Click here to view the article

For a visual, here's Castro's last 3 season versus Suzuki's in terms of pitch framing against right-handed hitters: https://twitter.com/ParkerHageman/status/796194876614385664

As part of Twins Daily’s on-going efforts to make sure the Offseason Handbook remains a dynamic and functional component of your long, dark, baseball-less winter, we have created a feature that should greatly improve your overall shopping experience. Introducing: The 2016 Free Agent Tracker.Why the Free Agent Tracker? ***DOWNLOAD THE 2016 OFFSEASON HANDBOOK*** One of the areas in which we feel the Offseason Handbook can be improved is in its static nature, particularly in the sections where the landscape can change rapidly as the hot stove heats up. Each year countless hours are spent curating a list of the available free agents, finding their stats, creating a profile, and providing an estimated contract. We truly feel like you receive a valuable service to pull this information into one document. However, once free agency period kicks in and names begin to fly off the board, the functionality is gone. Download attachment: FA.JPG For a more dynamic experience, we’ve created the 2016 Free Agent Tracker, a database complete with all the information you would normally find with the Offseason Handbook’s Free Agent section only now you can manipulate the things that you want to see, when you want to see them. For example, as KSTP’s Darren Wolfson reported earlier this week, the Twins and free agent Kurt Suzuki appear to be headed in opposite directions and the Twins will likely need to find themselves a new backstop. Who is available on the free agent market? Simply toggle the catcher position and you will have a list of all the free agent catchers. Download attachment: FA2.JPG Now let’s say you want to know more details on a specific free agent, such as that Wilson Ramos fella (because you paid little attention to him while he was here the first time around), just click on his name and voila: you are whisked away to a magical land of detailed player profile and a section for any rumors and updates that is pertinent to the player’s free agent status. Download attachment: FA3.JPG As the offseason develops and players are signed, the Free Agent Tracker will update, providing the team which inked that player and the eventual contract (usually a rate so high your grandfather can’t believe people who play a kid’s game get paid so much). Unlike some other free agent lists out there, you will be able to sort through the signed and unsigned players. ***DOWNLOAD THE 2016 OFFSEASON HANDBOOK*** So there you have it. We feel that the Free Agent Tracker is a simple yet vital upgrade to the free agency experience, that complements the Offseason Handbook (which, mahgawd, download it now if you haven’t done so already) like pine tar and maple bats. Take some time to roam around the new database and explore the player profiles. Feel free to leave comments or submit your own contract estimates within any of the player profiles. Enjoy. Click here to view the article

As I said, the Terry Ryan scouting aspect -- looking at an individual player -- needs to be separated from the Terry Ryan GM decisions. Even when he was a GM, Ryan never stopped scouting. Never stopped evaluating. He was probably one of the biggest road dogs among all the GMs, always making stops throughout the minor league system as well as the AZ Fall League. Frankly, I don't think the way talent is observed and evaluate through scouting has changed that much. The way the information and reports are processed and the way the decisions are made inside the front office has definitely changed, which was Ryan's issue. You could possibly argue that StatCast data, PitchF/X and other data collectors adds a new level to scouting -- if you want to call that a part of scouting/evaluation. However, I'm not sure that is what Lavine was referring to. That seems to be separate from his definition of baseball evaluator.

More of an industry-wide accepted belief than an opinion. What you think of Terry Ryan as a GM and what you think of Terry Ryan as a scout should be completely different. But you raise a good question that I would like to know from Levine -- who does he think is a top evaluator? What are his standards for an evaluator? Does he think they can be made or is it some oracle-like gift that cannot be passed down?

Here's something interesting to consider. When the reports of Lavine being hired were floated, I did some due diligence on him and found an interesting piece on him from the WaPo in 2011 in which he said that the evaluators are the biggest advantage a team could have: Lavine reiterated this a bit today. It makes me wonder what his thoughts are on the current state of the Twins evaluation team. I think Terry Ryan would easily be considered one of the 30-to-50 top evaluators in the game -- and there was some indication that the club was in talks to have him stay around -- but is there anyone else? Radcliff? Does that mean Lavine will be hiring more evaluators?

For me it isn't the velo for Chargois -- although that's great too -- it's that movement he gets. That is going to be tough to square up. https://twitter.com/ParkerHageman/status/779167113130881024

After weeks of uncertainty, the Minnesota Twins’ front office is starting to materialize. The Twins announced the hiring of Derek Falvey as the Vice President and Chief Baseball Officer at the beginning of October but the role of General Manager remained vacant. Now, according to multiple reports, the Twins appear on the verge of hiring Thad Levine as just the sixth General Manager since relocating to Minnesota.As Falvey’s Cleveland Indians trounced the Chicago Cubs in the first game of the 2016 World Series, the Star Tribune’s Lavelle Neal broke the news that Levine has “emerged as a candidate” to fill the GM position. Shortly thereafter, Dallas Morning News’ Rangers beat writer Evan Grant tweeted, confirming the Star Tribune report that Levine is expected to join the Twins. Levine is an interesting balance to Falvey’s background from Cleveland’s analytical-oriented front office. Since coming into baseball with the Colorado Rockies, the 44-year-old Levine has spent 11 seasons with the Texas Rangers in the Assistant General Manager’s position, overseeing the statistical analysis among other things for the team. The Rangers, however, are far from front-runners in baseball’s analytics game: According to an informal 2015 ESPN report, the Rangers fell towards the bottom of the league as an organization that eschews statistical analysis (although ahead of the Twins) and opted for more of the standard scouting practice. Meanwhile, in a 2014 Reddit chat, Levine addressed some of those concerns. “As a "younger" front office, we used to be younger than we are now, we were considered an analytical group, when in practice, we were much more scouting focused in our decision making,” Levine said. “In the past five years, we have made significant investments in analytics both in people and systems.” It’s hard to completely judge an organization’s analytical strengths or how much they have grown but, as it stands today, the Rangers have three people listed on their front office who appear dedicated to analytics, including Todd Slavinsky, a University of Minnesota-Morris graduate, as the Director of Baseball Analytics. The Twins, too, have three staffers from their analytics department listed on their front office page, an area they were hoping to grow with the addition of Falvey. In a 2011 Washington Post profile on Levine, Levine said that he believed the biggest advantage a team could have is hiring the best talent evaluators. He noted that there were approximately 30-to-50 of these baseball oracles floating around the game and that he was focused on hiring several of them to give his team the upper hand. “The Rangers complement the recommendations from their scouts with statistical analysis, not the other way around,” wrote the Post’s Adam Kilgore. In that same Reddit chat, Levine submitted an interesting nugget regarding the methods of the Rangers front office. He said that the team monitors Twitter and occasionally finds inspirations for potential trades. “[A]t the trade deadline, we are all on Twitter, because you may be surprised how many trade discussions are inspired or refined by tweets.” Levine also said that the front office staff would use all of the publicly available sites such as Fangraphs.com, Baseball-Reference and others to obtain information. This is by no means a bad thing, however you have to believe that while teams like the Rangers are finding that type of info, organizations like the Cubs, Astros and Dodgers are creating their own research firms in-house. That said, the Rangers methods have been successful and Levine has been instrumental in some of the talent acquisition that has created the strong American League West dynasty. After all, Texas has made it to the postseason in four of the last six years as well as the World Series twice. In his tenure, the Rangers were able to acquire Mike Napoli, Cliff Lee, Josh Hamilton Carlos Lee, Elvis Andrus, Neftali Feliz, Matt Harrison and Jarrod Saltalamacchia for various pieces of talent. “Trades tend to be unique one trade to the next,” Levine commented. “Baseball is all about talent evaluation. Everyone understands the concept of scouting two shortstops. But our jobs also require us to scout each GM. So depending on which GM you are negotiating with, the discussion will go differently.” Overall, Levine’s background seems balanced in both the new school and old school mentalities. One of Levine’s purported strengths while with the Rangers was being able to quickly diagnose the team’s in-season weaknesses and respond swiftly. For years the Twins seemed to fail at identifying roster weaknesses, reacting too late or in the wrong way to these issues. If Levine is able to transport that skill from one organization to another, that should be a huge benefit. It is no small task rebuilding the Twins, but Thad Levine has been in that position before with the Texas Rangers and has two World Series visits to show for it. Click here to view the article

"Luck is the residue of design." Branch Rickey

That's sort of the point. Cleveland was able to mix and match their bullpen exceptional well because of investing and deploying arms in situations that maximize their strengths. The Twins could have at least built the bullpen with that in mind.

The Wall Street Journal had a great article on how Cleveland assembled their team. The biggest thing the front office emphasized -- beyond developing two-way players internally which Nick highlighted above -- was in-filling with platoon players. Brandon Guyer. Tyler Naquin. Rajai Davis. All these guys had significant platoon splits and had positional flexibility. That mindset goes far beyond what the Twins front office was thinking just a couple years ago. When sitting down with TR, I asked point-blank what he thought about building the team with some platoons in mind. "Not too much," he told me. "I'm too much on platoons. I'm not on that too much. I think we need to have players that can get 600 plate appearances, 500-something plate appearances. Third baseman, shortstop, second baseman, first baseman, catcher, and left, center and right. That's kind of what good teams do." Well, yeah, but if you can't find that guy, you can do the next best thing and give yourself a platoon advantage. And yes, it requires buy-in from the manager too.

I would love to see pics from any of those games/celebrations. People definitely need to share some of those.

The thing that struck me about Game 7 is how bad the officiating was. There was the botched rundown as well as the missed Don Baylor play at the plate.

Was this pre-game talk? Because watching not long ago, it seems that Al Michaels and Tim McCarver were enamored by his performance in Game 7. He did get smacked around in Game 4 in St. Louis pretty good so maybe there was some residual effect from that. https://twitter.com/ParkerHageman/status/774816309536182272

From what I gathered, DSP acted like an owner's rep within the front office, managing high-level and big picture stuff for the organization. I believe he would manage budgeting, including payroll budgets (with Pohlad's approval). If any moves were made (such as signing Kendrys Morales) which deviated from the initial payroll, he would have some input. I'm not sure if it will still work that way now with Falvey but I'm guessing it will for a bit.

For me it boiled down to this with Brian Dozier: 2nd Half, 2015: 311 PA .210/.280/.359 9 HR 1st Half, 2016: 359 PA .246/.335/.450 14 HR 2nd Half, 2016: 332 PA .291/.344/.646 28 HR Nunez's power numbers -- the 12 home runs -- was the reason I thought he was second but in reality, he hit very similar to his 2015 season this year with the Twins as well (758 OPS vs 764 OPS).

The thing for me is that Falvey leaves the Indians as a pitching guru. What exactly is he bringing to the Twins that he hasn't divulged to the Indians org? He may have kept a few tricks up his sleeve but the fact that he's lauded as a pitching-centric guy makes me think that at least one other organization knows all his secrets.

You forgot your tags. The thing is, I have read about his college pitching background in a lot of media reports. I just wanted to see what sort of career he had and was rather surprised how little he actually played (not that that is a bad thing).

The ex-pitcher angle might be played up a bit. According to Trinity College's stats, Falvey threw a total of 7.2 innings over two seasons, allowing 13 hits, 14 runs and posting a 5/5 K/BB at the Division III program. More to the point, however, I do not think his college performance dictates in anyway how well he will do or not do as an administrator and vision-setting for the organization. I'm more interested in his learning experience with a well-respected front office.

Speaking of Carter Hawkins, someone shared a link on Twitter of a Reddit Q&A he did last month. Hopefully he decides to join the community over here too. https://www.reddit.com/r/WahoosTipi/comments/4ydqqs/im_tribe_farm_director_carter_hawkins_ama/#bottom-comments