Parker Hageman

When Baseball Savant published their end of the year fielding stats, the Minnesota Twins infield unit finished 25th out of the 30 teams according to their Outs Above Average metric. For a team that aims to be complete in all areas of the game, it was an opportunity for improvement. They may have finished near the bottom of the league but they expect to be closer to the top going forward. Here’s how they are going to do it.In terms of runs prevented, last year’s World Series-winning Washington Nationals’ infield core stopped 17 additional runs from scoring. The World Series participation trophy winners, the Houston Astros, finished second with 8 runs prevented. The Twins? Their infield defense cost them 5 runs according to Baseball Savant’s system. For a team that won 101 games, it’s hard to say this aspect of their game was actually costing them yet the fielding metric is a significant decline from just two seasons earlier when the Twins’ infield finished with 25 runs prevented, the best in baseball. Tony Diaz is the Twins’ third base coach but he also manages the infield instruction. He’s seen the numbers. He’s seen the publicly available ones. He’s seen the team’s proprietary ones. He believes the team is much better than what the numbers say. “Obviously BaseballSavant, Fangraphs, and all of that, you have to definitely honor what they do, it’s objective data, but I thought we played better than the numbers show,” Diaz said this spring. “I think you can ask any member of our team and they feel the same way but that being said, we definitely have to get better and we are working towards it.” In Diaz’s first season with the team, he oversaw projects around the diamond. There was trying to improve Miguel Sano’s defense at third base. There was working with shortstop Jorge Polanco’s arm action as he went back to firing balls from a sidearm slot rather than over-the-top. He managed a shift strategy that saw the team shift right-handed hitters in 35% of their plate appearances (second highest only to the data-driven Dodgers). Now the focus is to get to more batted balls. “One of our main themes is ‘half-a-step better’ and we are working on that consciously and hopefully our range numbers increase, I think they are already increasing based on the spring training sample,” said Diaz. “It’s a conscious effort by everybody and adding Donaldson to the mix is going to help tremendously as well.” If 2019 was any indication, Donaldson should be a tremendous help. He prevented 7 runs last year, third best among qualified third basemen. One of his strengths was ranging to his left (3 runs prevented) which may help Polanco’s numbers at short. Plus, Donaldson allows for the Twins to transition Sano to first base where he can develop as a cornerstone. The veteran has already ingrained himself within the clubhouse’s culture and has embraced being a role model. “He likes to share his knowledge and experience,” Diaz said of Donaldson. “It’s been a blessed addition, for sure.” In order to improve overall, the Twins changed their routines. For starters, during infield work, Diaz uses a standard baseball bat rather than a traditional fungo. He also takes soft-toss feeds from another coach instead of tossing them up in the air himself. “It’s about replicating the ball coming off a real bat, which I’m using - a real bat - so try to replicate that as much as we can so hopefully that translated to better prepared infielders,” said Diaz. Fungo reps don’t provide the fielders with the game-like reads. While Tom Kelly’s infamous Good Morning rapid-fire fungo ground ball session that would last for two hours provided the players with excellent cardio, the reps were not mirroring what happens in game action. The ball spins differently off of the thinner fungo bat than it would during a live swing. It tends to have more top spin as a coach cuts down on the ball -- vastly different than an in-game swing. The soft-toss feed also helps close the gap in creating more game-like swing speed for fielders to get their timing down (more on that in a moment) and batted ball spin. If even a minor change like that can help players improve by one percent, the Twins are all in. On the player development side of the system, infield instructor Billy Boyer has been scheming ways to improve the overall play. Like Tanner Swanson’s approach to catching that disrupted the industry last year, Boyer and his staff have been rethinking how to do the same for the players on the dirt. They have introduced dailies that warm-up the hands long before they put spikes on the field. They bring out a junior hack attack pitching machine, having players take ground ball reps on their knees, using different sized gloves and different weighted balls, giving the players alternating feels in order to be more connected with their hands. “It's something we do every morning, we call it our tee work,” Boyer said, referencing how hitters will take multiple swings on a tee before seeing live pitching. “A lot of fielders will go right out to the dirt and start taking full length ground balls, we start in and just do a lot of routines that are fun, challenging and different. We're just trying to get the hands working. And then we add the feet, then we go full distance.” The Twins also train all of their infielders at each position to increase flexibility but also because of the reliance on shifts. Infielders like prospect Travis Blankenhorn will receive reps at multiple positions to make him more fungible if needed at the major league level. They have instituted some vision training, hoping to get players to fixate on the contact zone earlier and gain that half-step as the ball leaves the bat. Improvements in these areas should help increase the infield coverage. There is an emphasis on moving at the right time. The Twins found that being in the air at contact can help a player react better. If you watch closely, a third baseman might not even be touching the Earth when the barrel meets the ball. This can help players gain that vital half step. “I think technique can enhance [range],” says Boyer about using various prep steps. “I don't think it can astronomically advance it. One's ability to move laterally is one's ability. But there are techniques that we are trying to tap into to open up, again, the brain processing power and the ability to ready direction and adapt and move directionally.” Diaz said he enjoyed working with Boyer and discussing techniques. “We got a very good flow for communication, up and down and down and up,” said Diaz in regards to how the team values input from all levels. “Billy was here in the big league camp for the first couple of weeks. We’ve had numerous conversations and he’s got really good ideas.” There’s a lot that goes into infield play but getting the as many balls as possible is the organization’s number one priority. “Everyone is different so we make sure that we tailor our approach to the differences too,” Diaz said. “And whatever maximizes that first-step quickness, prep step, traditional or maybe walking into it, whatever they are comfortable with, we just have to maximize that on an infield basis.” Half a step better. Everyday. Click here to view the article

I don't believe modern research necessarily supports this claim. It was once thought of as a pitch that caused injury to the UCL but more studies now conclude that high-velocity fastballs can be more capable of producing injuries. Driveline looked at multiple studies and used Motus to measure stress levels in the elbow and found that sliders did not induce any more stress. One study showed that youth pitchers had higher rates of elbow pain when throwing sliders but the thought was they had improper mechanics and throwing motion of the pitch. In regards to the two specific cases, I will say this about Erickson: He went from throwing 91 innings in college to being drafted and throwing another 78.2 in the Twins' system as a 21-year-old -- 169.2 innings combined -- in the same season. The next year the Twins had him through 214 innings between AA and the majors. No organization would do that to a pitcher anymore. I would bet that his injury had more to do with a workload issue than any one type of pitch. I do believe the method in which Smeltzer describes his slider flowing off of the finger rather than torquing the pitch is also likely less of a stress factor.

If you look up Devin Smeltzer’s slider use in 2019, you’ll find that Statcast says he threw 30 sliders last year. He recorded no swinging strikes. This was a problem.Smeltzer has a unique set of skills that combats his lack of velocity. His fastball rarely cracks 90 which puts him in the 6th percentile for velo among MLB pitchers. The lefty, however, can seriously spin it. His fastball comes in at a 2,400 rpm. The curveball twirls up to the plate at 2,700 rpm. He can also kill the spin on his changeup to get an above average amount of vertical drop. The slider? It was a nothing pitch. The ugly duckling to his three other quality offerings. It backed up a lot, hanging for a moment in the zone, or it would dive well beyond the strike zone, leaving hitters to just watch it skip in the dirt. While Smeltzer’s three-pitch mix worked for him in 2019, having a legitimate slider could be a massive leap forward. The Twins’ pitching analysts like Josh Kalk have long known the benefits of having a slider. Thrown properly, it looks like a fastball longer before darting. In 2008 Kalk wrote about what makes sliders so effective. “ecause curves tend to produce a larger hump, a fast-reacting hitter has slightly more time in which to put on the brakes (or alter his swing) when he realizes that the pitch is not a fastball,” Kalk wrote. “Because sliders tend to stay hidden much further down the line, a batter who is fooled in the information-gathering stage has much less time to recover.” Over 10 years ago, long before “tunneling” had even entered the standard baseball lexicon, Kalk had discovered that curveballs can pop out of the pitcher’s tunnel to give hitters a hint that something is up. This is one reason why the team has encouraged some pitchers to develop a slider. Trevor May to transition to a new slider in 2019 after he played around with a new grip that resulted in better tunneling and more movement. Tyler Duffey also added velocity to his curveball and created a pitch that had more slider-like qualities. Taylor Rogers’ emergence as a late innings force is likewise due to embracing the slider mentality. Curveballs are out, sliders are in. In order to improve his slider, Smeltzer says he targeted three metrics on his Rapsodo: Spin rate, spin axis, and velocity. “I knew what my spin, axis and velo on it needed to be,” Smeltzer says regarding his pitch design targets. “So if I had two of the three that wasn’t it. I had to keep tweaking it.” He tinkered with different grips until he found the one that helped him attain those numbers consistently. “It finally started to click and I really stuck with the grip, it’s pretty unconventional grip but through a lot of talks it just made sense from a physical standpoint of the ball’s got one direction of where to go with how I’m throwing it and it’s out. Again, I just throw it like a fastball and let the grip work.” The unconventional part is that Smeltzer throws his slider off of a one finger grip. Standard sliders are typically thrown using both the index and middle finger applying pressure to the ball but Smeltzer discovered that the middle-finger dominant release was not working. “In the past, I’ve gotten very middle finger dominant and it makes the pitch not as aggressive and it becomes loopy and very inconsistent because that finger, pressure-wise, isn’t a strength for that pitch for me,” Smeltzer explains. Smeltzer continues his pitch design tutorial to the Zoom viewers. “So with this grip here,” he says as he creates a “C” out of his index and thumb, “I’m pressing between these two and when I’m throwing it like a fastball and, because of physics, the ball can only come out this way when I’m coming through so it’s cutting through and kicking that gyro spin.” What Smeltzer is saying is that he’s reducing that loopiness his former slider had. He said that he would often drop down to release that slider and get around the ball, tipping hitters off in the process. Now he can just rip it like he would his fastball and the grip does the work. Why is this particular pitch important for his development? Inconsistent and loopy results in hitters leaving the bat on the shoulder. The 24-year-old left-hander needed something with more action, a viable weapon -- particularly against lefties. Smeltzer has pronounced reverse splits, demonstrating the ability to get right-handed hitters out at a much higher clip than left-handed ones. While his fastball and changeup combination performed well against righties, adding an aggressive slider to his mix would likely help him against those same-sided opponents, as well as keeping righties off-balance. The Twins have created a cottage industry of getting pitchers to improve their slider offerings and see big gains. Devin Smeltzer might be the next on that list. Click here to view the article

Jose Berrios rattled off an exhaustive list of mechanical issues to reporters after a particularly disappointing outing late last year. He told them he wasn’t staying in his heel long enough. He wasn’t rotating his chest quick enough. His front shoulder was flying open. It was a lot of cues to think about each night on the rubber.The Minnesota Twins are loaded with the latest gadgets and technology. They have the capability of measuring foot pressure into the mound, hip speed, chest speed, arm speed, arm path, release height, release speed, breakdown which fingertip touched the ball last, spin rate, spin direction, velocity and on and on. They have a team dedicated to biomechanical science to sniff out inefficiencies. They have what amounts to a world class pitching lab to isolate the root cause of any abnormalities. There are times, however, when a player requires more than metrics. There are times when a player needs not to be told what is wrong. They need to hear what they did right. This past November Wes Johnson was a presenter at an ABCA pitching clinic. There, the Twins pitching coach shared a story about Berrios’ late season issues and how they addressed them. “He was struggling a little bit,” Johnson said of Berrios. “Struggling mentally, struggling physically. I said ‘Jose that’s it, you are meeting me in the video room today at 2 and we’re gonna go over some stuff.’” As Berrios hit a rough patch, the pitching coach took his star pitcher and showed him a supercut of all his strikeouts. No mechanical talk. No pitch selection talk. It was simply a session for Berrios to be reminded of how dominating he can be. “It spurs the conversation,” Johnson tells the crowd about the video session. “What happened was his own perception of his own potential had fallen because he was struggling. All I did was show him was no, no, you are still pretty good. I didn’t do anything.” Berrios returned to the mound. The loud contact subsided, the walks decreased, and the strikeouts returned. Velocity was ticking northward and he began to execute his pitches with more precision. He had improved. And yet Wes Johnson claimed he did not do anything. He told the coaches at the conference that in the aftermath, reporters would bombard him with questions. They wanted to know what he did with Jose Berrios to get him back on track. What was the secret? “He just got back to who he was,” said Johnson. “Knew that he was pretty good. He watched himself execute pitches. I didn’t do anything with his delivery, I didn’t do anything with his throwing.” Of course Johnson did something. What he is saying is that he didn’t do anything conventional. There were no changes to his weighted ball routine. No messing with his pitch arsenal. No additional pregame hours working through movements on the mound. Nothing that a pitching coach traditionally does. It was all about the headspace. In Trevor Moawad’s book, It Takes What It Takes, the mental skills coach detailed some accomplishments he had with some professional athletes and how they achieved those victories. One of Moawad’s main clients is Seattle Seahawks’ quarterback Russell Wilson. When the Seahawks went to Arizona for Super Bowl XLIX, Moawad compiled a video of Wilson’s extraordinary plays to help him prepare. “We started by giving Russell examples of the times when he has been at his most commanding,” Moawad wrote. “As he watched, he allowed himself to relive incredible moments when he was at his best.” The film included some of Wilson’s memorable moments in his college and professional career. It zeroed in on his posture before and after big plays. It captured the language he used on the sidelines to describe how he felt about the execution. Moawad goes further, adding that he included a song from the band The Head & The Heart that would remind Wilson that he is home in these moments. Johnson’s film session likely didn’t include a soundtrack set to an indie folk rock band but the overall intent mirrors what the mental performance coach was trying to accomplish with Russell Wilson: remind Jose Berrios that he is an elite performer. As we know, Wilson went out and threw the game-losing interception that Super Bowl. Berrios had more shaky outings later in the season. It’s not a magic elixir. Studies suggest that reviewing positive imagery before competition has helped athletes elevate their game. Researchers found that using imagery can stimulate various parts of an athletes’ brain, activating recall of a feel. By watching some performance clips the same athletes can experience those moments in great vividness. What’s more, if those images are overwhelmingly positive, such as Berrios throwing a dirty ass hook against one of the league’s better hitters, he may increase his self-confidence which can affect his future performance. He may also trigger the portion of his brain that remembers exactly how that pitch felt. So when Wes Johnson says he did nothing for Berrios, he’s simply being modest. It doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. After all, the Twins have given him a new offseason workout routine, a new shape to his curveball, and have tried to get him to sit in his heel more again this spring. They hope they can continue to build him into the pitcher who can last throughout an entire season -- be it 162 or 60 games. But while there are things to work on physically, sometimes it’s best to have someone in the clubhouse reminding him what he can do right. Click here to view the article

A friend of mine passed away over the holiday weekend. We had attended high school together, were distant friends through college, and spent two years as roommates back in the cities after that. When we lived together, he was attending culinary school and the roommates would have the benefit of eating food that is normally not accessible to broke post-college kids trying to repay student loans. He would concoct four course meals and we were more than happy to be test subjects. We’d declare it the best thing we’ve ever eaten and he, being his own worst critic, would inform us that it was garbage and would vow to make it better next time. He modeled himself a bit after Anthony Bourdain. He had a beat up copy of Kitchen Confidential that he constantly implored me to read. I never did. Eventually the house split up. We went separate ways and saw each other less. Everyone my age or older likely has friendships like that. I had a growing family and he was launching a culinary career that took him to Central America and Alaska for work. The relationship became just a bi-yearly message to each other on Facebook, randomly sharing a couple inside jokes and stupid obscure pop culture references. We exchanged one just the previous week. He sent a one-liner: What are we going to do about this hand twin thing? It came from a Friends episode we watched years ago. He had an ability to bring groups of people together and our house used to host viewing parties during the final seasons. The line, delivered by Joey Tribbiani in the bathroom of a casino, always cracked us up. Sharing innocuous lines like that over the years just let each other know you were thinking about them. I spent most of Sunday night reflecting on our time. I spoke with another roommate of ours who had moved out of state as well. We shared memories of the years we all lived together. I realized how much baseball fandom can imprint on our lives. He once hosted a weekend-long party at his college house in Duluth. It was epic, as the kids would say. Thinking back to the revelry, I also remember slipping away to see Matt Lawton hit two home runs in Cleveland. Another time he went to visit a girl in New York City. He returned with a small panoramic of the old Yankee Stadium that he got at a secondhand shop because he knew how much I despised the Yankees. I still have that picture and I still hate the Yankees. His family would host gatherings at their cabin in northern Minnesota. They were amazingly hospitable people. His mom legitimately made the best sloppy joes. When my daughter wasn’t even a year old, he invited us for a low-key weekend of boating and bonfires. On the drive home, as my little girl slept in the back, I listened to Johan Santana’s 17-strikeout performance on the radio. When the Twins had a weekend series at Wrigley Field, we ran into each other at the Cubby Bear, the bar across the street from the stadium. We took time to share a Cubby Blue Bomb together, update each other on our current lives, and then went back to the separate group of friends we came with into Chicago. The last time we saw each other in person I was handing off tickets to him before a Twins game. We met at The Depot Tavern and played catch up. His seats were on one side of the ballpark and ours were on the other. We vowed to meet on the concourse or somewhere after the game but neither of us followed through. You are not supposed to live with regrets yet we do. I regret not reaching out more, not making an effort to stay connected. I regret not checking in more frequently to hear about his family, fiancee, and other adventures. Thirty-nine is way too young. You feel like you always have more time: There will be some other opportunity to catch up, there will be some other chance to reconnect, or some other time to say those were amazing memories. Looking back, I admired how he followed his passion. We were just becoming functioning adults and he already knew that he wanted to run kitchens and make people happy through food. Someone shared a video of him teaching a culinary class in a Facebook remembrance, making the room laugh in doing so. In a way he did become a version of Bourdain, traveling the world and experiencing cuisine in parts unknown. Maybe now I’ll listen to him and read that book.

The question I’ve received the most the past few months is why was my original Twitter account suspended. On March 13 I was covering the Twins in Fort Myers on what would be the last normal day before everything in this world went goofy. I awoke at the Twins Daily-rented AirBnB, and immediately checked Twitter on my phone as I am wont to do in case I missed something earth shattering in the six hours since I last peeked in. Account suspended, it read. I couldn’t pull down the stream to get that satisfying no-clip-scissor-ride-through-wrapping-paper when refreshing a completely new set of tweets on my feed. I couldn’t get that dopamine rush of seeing that someone liked or retweeted some content I had created. I simply got nothing. I flipped over to my Gmail and found this. It was a DMCA takedown notice -- removal of video content in which the music was copyrighted, in this case, the song “Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now” by Starship and owned by Sony Entertainment Group. Jfc. I had just moved up my flight to make sure I wasn’t stranded on America’s sweaty jockstrap of an isthmus and now my main portal of information to the outside world was cut. How did this happen? I had started by making Vines --a defunct application that featured seven second video clips that loops-- with game highlights set to Starship’s 1987 hit song. It was a nod to the World Series winning team. The bit became somewhat of a localized hit. Soon, people would tweet at me after big victories, asking for their nightly montage. When the Twins fell flat on their face in 2016, I created a longer lowlight version and it took off. It was a blooper reel set to perfect music for the occasion. A surprising amount of people would thank me for posting them. People affiliated with the team would even reach out. It became an annual tradition. I didn’t get anything out of it other than smug, self-satisfaction that I had contributed just a little bit of joy to this awful, awful world. Now I was being accused of pirating Starship’s music (ok), using it inappropriately (whatever), and had violated Twitter’s rules (yap). While covering the Twins in Florida this spring, I read Stephen Witt’s illuminating book on the music industry, How Music Got Free. It documents the rise of mp3s, Napster, iTunes, and VEVO from the 1980s through today. It reads like the Moneyball of music. Highly recommended. It also helped me understand how we got to the point of suspending accounts like mine. Long ago, in the 1990s, a music executive named Doug Morris was printing money by selling CDs based on one or two hit songs surrounded by unlistenable garbage. Because we could not wait to listen to “Mmmbop” on the radio, we’d slap down $17 to listen to an entire album of dreck. But then Napster showed up and saved us. While illegal, it gave the world a better business model than what Morris was providing. When iTunes and the iPod finally killed CDs, Morris discovered the rising popularity of YouTube and how his grandkids were watching music videos on that site. He then created VEVO, bought a giant catalogue of the music, and in 2007 he sent his lawyers to takedown any videos created using VEVO-owned music. If you posted a video of yourself baking a cake set to 50 Cent's "In Da Club", it was ripped down. No more sampling the goods. If you wanted to hear a song, you either had to pay or listen on a revenue-generating platform. Morris is now the chairman of Sony Entertainment Group. The same outfit that owns the rights to Starship’s song. So you can see how that company would aggressively protect its property. Twitter does not want to run afoul of music’s law dogs like the RIAA or the IFPI -- the enforcement arms of the record companies -- and has a policy that prevents users from posting videos with non-licensed music in it. They even assist in the flagging of potential violators. But it is not always consistent. After The Last Dance aired, an account on Twitter was spawned that showed Michael Jordan rocking out to more contemporary tunes. That account has over 52,000 followers and no takedowns or suspensions. You’ve probably seen numerous videos showing crushing sports moments set to one of the worst songs of all time, Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”. One account, @TitanicTD, who affixed the song on top of NFL and college football touchdown highlights, was suspended in early 2020. Perhaps not surprisingly, Celine’s ballad is also property of Sony Entertainment Group. While I understood the general rules and risks, I had considered my use of the song protected under the Fair Use guidelines on Twitter. I used a portion of the song, not reposted the entirety. There was no monetary gain for the video, it was non-commercial. I wasn’t attempting to claim ownership. In my mind I was giving life to a lifeless song that was over thirty years old. If I had the ability to access Spotify’s data, I would bet since I began posting the tribute videos, that song’s streaming numbers on the music app probably jumped by the tens. (THE TENS!) The Fair Use act is definitely something that is difficult to argue as it is almost completely subjective and open for interpretation. For some reason I figured Twitter would understand my position. At the very least, I figured they would ask me to delete the video, not suspend my account for months. And there is some legal context for it. In 2008 Universal Music Group, then headed by the aforementioned Morris, issued a DMCA takedown to YouTube for the video of a . The 13-month-old’s mother and video’s creator, Stephanie Lenz, responded to YouTube citing Fair Use and YouTube reinstated the video. Lenz then sued Universal for misrepresentation under the DMCA, hoping to set a precedent against companies going after videos like hers. Ultimately the courts ruled in Lenz’s favor but as the case ascended to higher courts, the two parties eventually settled when the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Lenz’s video remains posted on YouTube. But even now Twitter users regularly receive DMCA takedowns for videos where music is inadvertently captured in the background at events or weddings. Two months after my suspension, the Star Tribune’s Michael Rand had one of his tweets flagged. https://twitter.com/RandBall/status/1260942572572246016 Twitter, however, is cowing to the International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and has been aggressively botting users’ feeds to find anything that can be construed as stolen music. According to one article, Twitter’s system has failed to decipher between which music videos are Fair Use and which are actual copyright violations. And numerous users, like Randball above, in early 2020 received temporary suspensions over perceived violations. Over the next few weeks I sent multiple emails to the Twitter copyright department, Twitter itself, and even to Greame Grant, IFPI’s Director of Anti-Piracy. I explained myself, my motivations and said I would never do something so egregious as providing their client with free advertisement again. The only thing I didn’t do was drive to the nearest rural casino to catch Starship on tour and beg the band for forgiveness. I did not receive one response beside the form email Twitter sends out encouraging violators to reach out to the copyright submitter -- in this case IFPI -- in hopes of getting them to retract the takedown request. So that’s what happened to my Twitter account. I was frustrated at the platform. The lack of response. The lack of consistency in punishment. I didn’t want to come back, not until my original account was freed. I did not want to give Twitter the satisfaction of having to rebrand and regrow. Since joining that hot steaming mess in June 2009 I have built a good following, a good brand and even better contacts (one of the worst parts about being suspended is that you cannot access your DMs or followers lists). That’s why I didn’t start tweeting from a new account right away. Plus, you know…[gestures everywhere]...this. Truthfully, given the state of the country and the on-going battle with the coronavirus, I don’t have the utmost confidence that baseball will actually be played come the end of the month. That being said, since the game is moving forward for now and there is some honest-to-goodness baseball happening at Target Field, I’ve come out of the shadows from my other account. I’m ready to talk about baseball again.

Oh, hi guys.

Pags was on his Zack Morris special. This entire report is a lie.

One thing that makes Stashak effective with that two pitch mix is how well they play off each other. Here's how his fastball/slider move in tandem. You'll notice they tunnel well together as the fastball rides up in the zone and the slider breaks off. Here's game action: Stashak's four-seam fastball, while only averaging 91.7 mph, holds its plane well and is effective up in the zone. His slider doesn't have crazy spin rate numbers or break but the combination of the high ride fastball and the later breaking slider keeps hitters off balance (hence the above average swing and miss rates). This spring I had a very brief conversation with him and wanted to discuss his pitch grips. I noticed last year that he holds all his pitches with his thumb to the side of the ball (as you can see in the article's picture of him) versus on the bottom like so many pitchers do. I wanted to know how he developed this and if he thought it gave him different movement. He thought for a moment and then just replied "I dunno, I just have small hands."

I'll start this by saying that, obviously, to each their own. I can only speak from my experience. I definitely think there is much to be said about detailing what that learning experience is like, being trained or going through that process. And you can absolutely do so without needing to put yourself in the story. I will say that the MVP chapter with Lindbergh and Latta was better. In this case, it felt needlessly divergent for the book (especially after Lindbergh had just published that a year prior). I hope you get the chance to read this one and let me know what you thought.

I included the United States' testing timeline to that post because it was in direct response to someone who had asked "How is it South Korea, Germany, China are all able to get enough tests to monitor their people and get on top of this thing, and we are so far behind?"

Absolutely not. You are injected your own interpretation into what I was saying, and it may be easy to reach that conclusion on your own based on how both countries approached testing, but that's not what I said. How I started that was this, and I'm going to highlight two very important words: "Germany has been seemingly able to handle this pandemic better it probably begins with their testing." I don't claim that Germany is "winning" or doing anything better at this junction, not definitively. There are many factors (medical systems, culture, travel restrictions, etc) that play a role. Things change minute to minute with this. South Korea is now observing that people who tested positive and recovered (potentially the false positive tests) are now getting the virus again. Who knows, Germany might have another wave of the virus. Years from now historians can assign winners and losers to this but that's not for us to decide now. For now, when asked why SK (one of the countries preparing to have baseball again soon) or Germany has done "better" up to this point, one factor is the roll out of testing.

I'm not going to respond to this screed because, frankly, it doesn't merit one. What I presented was a factual timeline between two countries on how testing has been handled, not levying judgments. But to bring this conversation back to baseball, it is almost definite that you need effective testing in order to make this season work. From Jeff Passan's article about why the KBO will be able to re-start soon: It goes on to describe Dan Straily's experience with his team and some of the policies to manage the team during the outbreak. For instance, players go through thermal body scans when they hit the park and if someone feels ill, the team goes home while they wait the results of the teammate's test. Along the same lines, Daniel Kim, a DKTV baseball analyst in Souel, was recently interviewed by Newsday and said this: To make it work, you have to have effective testing. The United States was behind in this regard. It's possible that it can catch up -- American ingenuity and all -- but at this point the country feels well behind South Korea.

This is not really to forum to have this conversation but if we’re going to analyze why Germany has been seemingly able to handle this pandemic better it probably begins with their testing. In mid-January, the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) had a functioning COVID-19 test in place. When researchers at Charite in Berlin developed this test, hospitals and clinics began to stock up on them. Likewise, they also worked with the nation’s private labs to ensure they could perform the tests. So even before cases started to arrive in that country at the end of February, they already had a system in place to test citizens fairly effectively. Comparatively, the United States was still trying to develop a nationwide test through the CDC (which had trouble locking into an effective and accurate test procedure). In early February, the CDC sent out 200 kits around the country but later acknowledge that they had flaws in their tests and needed weeks to come up with a solution. By March, when the virus started to grow, the CDC had a test but hadn’t prepared private labs to handle it, often lacking the equipment to run them. While private labs in the US are just now starting to do a lot of the heavy lifting, as of early March many of them were unable to contribute. The Germans do have an FDA equivalent – The Federal Institute for Drug and Medical Devices (BfArM) – which needs to approval these kinds of tests similar to how the FDA functions. However, Germany has a Medical Devices Act they use in times of crisis that allows for rapid approval/distribution of medical respirators or tests. Like the BfArM, the FDA also has an Emergency Use Authorization plan in which they can fast track medical tests, which they did for Roche and their SARS-CoV-2 test in March. I do hope we see Major League Baseball again, in any form -- provided that it's safe -- sometime this year. If not, I'm looking forward to ESPN potentially broadcasting the KBO. The Chinese Professional Baseball League also started this week and you can watch broadcasts here. I for one, have been a life-long Unilions fan.

There are not too many books that inspire me to purchase them months in advance but when word of Jared Diamond’s forthcoming Swing Kings set a late March release date, I swung by Amazon and reserved my copy. Player development, to say the least, is my jam. Any written word on the industry is an open invitation to take my money. The previous year it was Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik’s very worthy MVP Machine, a dive into the changes in the player development side of the game that made me get off my wallet and wait patiently for the pile of dead trees to arrive.While the Lindbergh-Sawchik number dropped in June 2019, I’ve found that the months leading up to and into the season are a perfect time to consume baseball content, particularly in Minnesota, where the ground is still rock hard and covered in ice. In 2018, I took in Russell Carleton’s The Shift (released in April 2018) and Tom Verducci’s The Yankee Years (a nice pick-up at Half Price Books for cheap). Through his use of “gory math”, Carleton’s book (a 4 out of 5 on my #SickReadingBrag scale) challenged me to think differently about the structure of the game while Verducci’s 10-year-old book (a 3 on my scale) was a solid visit through Joe Torre’s Yankees teams. It was a nice balance between deep thinking and a stroll down memory lane. So Diamond’s story -- which as the subtitle suggests, promised to provide the inside story of baseball’s home run revolution -- should be an excellent kickstarter to the 2020 season. Alas. The book opens with a recap of the J.D. Martinez career reclamation project -- a story that was previously told in Lindbergh and Sawchik’s MVP Machine (as well as Ben Leiter’s Astroball and Alex Speier’s Homegrown, for that matter). Diamond details Martinez’s struggles once he reached the Astros and his subsequent eureka moment watching Jason Castro’s swing, one that prompted him to seek out Castro’s no-name independent hitting coach that worked out of a small facility in Santa Clarita. The chapter weaves in the plight of Justin Turner and Marlon Byrd, and how those two hitters reached a point of desperation in their respective careers as well. This springboards Diamond into the burgeoning industry outside of the game. If you have been paying attention to the game’s subculture over the last six or seven years, all of the characters should be familiar. If not, you will meet coaches like Craig Wallenbrock, the Oracle of Santa Clarita, who, from the fringes of Los Angeles among the dusty industrial warehouses, quietly impacted the game. There’s Doug Latta, Wallenbrock’s protege, who worked with Byrd and later, Turner. There’s a historical look at why the game was so resistant to change and how Ted Williams’ preaching of hitting the ball in the air took over 30 years to be embraced. You will be introduced to the abrasive (online) personality of Richard Schneck -- who goes by the moniker Teacherman on Twitter and combats any and all who question his methods -- who was propelled into the mainstream based on his work with Aaron Judge. Twins fans might find the chapter on Chris Colabello, Josh Donaldson, and their swing coach, Bobby Tewksbary, to be interesting, to say the least (according to Diamond, Tewksbary scoffs at the Twins’ prior practices). It’s a wonderful introduction to the collection of baseball misfits who, never truly experiencing any success within the game only to gain notoriety by helping others. If there was one element of the book I didn’t enjoy, it was the George Plimpton-Paper Lion-esque style of writers injecting themselves into the game or practice to show how difficult or challenging it is. In MVP Machine, Lindbergh documents his experience working with Latta and how he could make swing changes. Similarly, Diamond writes about being on a video call with Latta and going over dry swing drills in preparation for the New York-Boston annual media game. On one hand it gives the story some personality, or relatability to the author, but to me, it was a weird disruption of flow. It often comes across as a strange brag* (Diamond talked about making a play at first base in the media game) or forced self-deprecation (he got blisters on his hands because this isn’t his craft). Books don’t always need to be written from the perspective of the omnipresent observer but in this case, it came across more like a disruption than an addition. Within the game itself, we still hear former players on broadcasts saying things like the “launch angle swing” which leads to the assumption that all players are just dropping their back shoulders and trying to hit the ball into the sun. First, as Tewksbary points out on his personal website, there is no such thing as a launch angle swing. All swings, when contact happens, have a launch angle. It’s like saying a velocity pitch. When pressed, these pundits describe a one-dimensional, uppercut swing that is designed to do nothing but lift the ball in the air. What the story of Swing Kings drives at is that baseball has been insular when it comes to hitting development, while outside of the game as people like Wallenbrock, Latta and Tewksbary and others eschewed convention and created ways to optimize players’ swings -- all of whom reached the same conclusion that hitting the ball in the air provides the best value. In fact, Diamond quotes former Twins catcher Jason Castro who summarized the movement thusly: “Saying guys are trying to hit the ball in the air is wrong. That’s looking at the outcome instead of the beginning. It’s looking at it backwards.” There’s a larger theme in play than just putting the spotlight on the guys who worked for years in the dark. If you participate in Twitter or spend any time in forums that discuss the state of baseball, then you’ll undoubtedly encounter debates about new school versus old school approaches, each one of them often digging in to protect their side. As detailed by Diamond, the old school followers -- at least those embedded in the game -- dismissed the outsider ideas that grew in the private cages and backwater colleges on the sport’s periphery. They kept those people and ideas at a distance. Now those forward-thinkers have penetrated the game in coaching and front office roles bringing with them their new methods. What it all boils down to is that the real antagonist is the closed-minded. And, to be clear, the closed-minded can lurk in either of the new school or old school camps. Overall, it’s a good read. A quick read and one that satiated my baseball thirst, especially in a time when the whole world is on pause. If you are unfamiliar with the trend, I recommend this book as a primer. On my personal #SickReadingBrag scale, I gave it three out of five stars. Diamond, Wall Street Journal’s national baseball reporter, does a good job of presenting these different story lines into one narrative, however, most of the stories are well-worn and have been circulating for a while. The story behind the home run revolution just wasn’t that revolutionary for me. *Not to be confused with my “I read books” brag. Download attachment: Swing Kings Review.png Click here to view the article

One of the things that the Twins set to work on with Kepler was pulling the ball the right way -- which dates back to his prospect days. Even back in 2016, Tom Brunansky observed that a lot of Kepler's power was to left-center alley and tried to get him to pull the ball in the air more. In 2018, you can see how a high percentage of those optimally hit balls (over 95 mph, between the 10-30 degree launch) wound up in left-center field which explains a bit why he hitting the ball hard but failing to get hits. That year when he pulled the ball, he put it on the ground 57% of the time. The Twins and Max made some changes, and one of the things was switching his stride (not landing closed where he would struggle to pull the ball effectively). He hit the ball in the air more to the pull side and hit it harder. One of the interesting things he said about 2018 was that he was actively trying to get the ball in the air more but failed at it and made the problem worse for him. Why it slowed down in the second half of 2019, I tend to agree with Matthew that pitchers made some adjustments and Kepler did not. His zone in which he hits the ball 95+ was kind of a smallish area (whereas someone like Christian Yelich covered more of the zone). Teams are going to make adjustments to that.

Add the Twins' minor league hitting instructor, Donegal Furgus, to the list of coaches hosting chat sessions.

While baseball across the country has been placed on an indefinite hiatus, some professional coaches are trying to offer their educational services while fundraising to support COVID-19 research. It’s called COACHES vs COVID and the concept was created by former Minnesota Twins’ minor league catching coordinator and current New York Yankees catching director and quality control coach Tanner Swanson.A month ago, Swanson was acclimating himself to pinstripes in Tampa. Then, days later he was back at home in Seattle, battling the global pandemic from the indoors during the extended rainy Northwest spring. Now with the season on hold, he began fielding questions from fellow coaches who were interested in his guidance. He would set up a Zoom session and talk shop, educating others on how he had pushed player development from a catching standpoint. “I found myself over the course of a week doing a lot of one-on-one interactions and I figured there would be a more efficient way to do this,” says Swanson. “I also saw there was an opportunity to contribute to the greater cause.” Swanson rallied some personal friends, contacting Kainoa Correa with the San Francisco Giants and former colleague and current Twins’ minor league infield and baserunning coordinator, Billy Boyer. “We’re both on the Twitter world so we get asked questions quite often,” says Boyer, “and Swanny had the idea that if we are going to share some information, use this time to fundraise for a good cause and use our platform to do that.” The concept is to amass a collection of coaches willing to share their insights to their audience in exchange for donations to aid in COVID-19 research. Coaches like Swanson and Boyer will be hosting weekly Zoom webinars that will focus on professional development for coaches looking to expand their knowledge. Swanson says the list of participating coaches is growing by the day. The experience will be fairly organic, giving attendees access to the minds of coaches at the forefront of their specialties. “We’re pitching it as a unique opportunity to speak specifically about our position expertise,” Swanson envisions. “Billy and Kai are going to do something on infield play. I’m going to offer a weekly, 30-minute session on catching development. Really just a Q&A, open-format, just to facilitate some dialogue and answer some questions and be available to help amatuer coaches as needed.” Swanson will be focusing on his strength -- catching. He’s received his share of national notoriety for helping Mitch Garver improve his defense in 2019 and now hopes in doing the same with the Yankees’ Gary Sanchez. “Whether you are a coach or just an avid fan, there’s a lot of curiosities about these recent trends in catcher development,” Swanson admits. He welcomes non-coaches to participate, either through donations or the webinar. The new catching philosophies have made people ask a lot of questions, such as how can they block or throw out runners from that position. “All questions will be fair,” he says. Similarly, Boyer doesn’t foresee his interaction time to be limited to just those who are career coaches. He wants to reach all kinds of coaches -- from those working with prospects to little leaguers. “It doesn’t have to be baseball,” Boyer says. “It could be fast pitch. It could be other coaches. We’re just trying to get some information and maybe the art of coaching and be able to share as much as we can at a time where everybody is hungry but now that we’re fighting COVID and everybody is at home, it’s a good opportunity to share and learn for personal growth reasons.” Boyer has been at the forefront of the infield development for the Minnesota Twins, an area of the game that has potentially lagged behind other areas when it comes to improvement through analytics or altering techniques. This past January, Boyer spent time in Minnesota and presented at the MN BAT Summit, educating local high school and college coaches on the on-going evolution of the infield landscape. Boyer points to Swanson’s time with the team and his data-driven approach to catching that changed the entire philosophy of that position and he sees a future where infield play undergoes a similar revolutionary transition. “We’re trying to use analytics to enhance our ability to defend but we’re also trying to advance our techniques to take advantage of analytics,” Boyer said this spring. The online seminars will be free, with links being tweeting out by Swanson and Boyer, respectively, but donations to the Seattle-based research hospital, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, are encouraged. Both coaches, who call Seattle home in the offseason, have a personal connection to that cause (Boyer’s wife lost her father to melanoma skin cancer at a young age and Swanson’s sister passed in 2018 after a battle with breast cancer) while the center’s research on COVID-19 has been groundbreaking. “It’s a large organization out here in the Northwest and doing some really important work,” Swanson says. “It’s something that is really close to both of us,” adds Boyer. “We’re trying to give back, especially in a time of need. We just felt that anything we could do to make some money for them and help the fight was a worthy cause.” Anyone can donate to the COACHES VS COVID cause while those interested in attending the webinars should follow Swanson and Boyer on Twitter for updates and join them this Saturday to learn more about the game. One hundred percent of the donations will go to the Fred Hutchinson Research Center. Click here to view the article

My copy of Swing Kings arrived today so I'm really looking forward to tearing into it. A few years ago I was working on a Colabello story (which everyone can read here) and had some good conversations with him and Bobby about their experience. Tewks spent time in the Twins camp in 2013 and made some interesting observations about some of their prospect hitters, including Joe Benson, that were illuminating about how the organization was developing hitters. Matthew's story here inspired me to go back and review my conversation in March 2016 with then-hitting coach Tom Brunansky about hitters using leg kicks Colabello: "We have other guys who have come up who are unorthodox as well. Colabello. I’m not going to start making changes to his swing until the league proves that you need to. That was the thing, everyone kind of came up and said change him, change him. I said, how do we know he can’t hit? That’s the approach I take with everybody." It's funny to me now that Colabello's swing was once regarded as unorthodox. I think the biggest change I've noticed in the system since Falvey/Levine overhauled the coaching staff/instructors is how much more of an emphasis is placed on individuality. How to identify how unique each individual moves and to create the best movements for them rather than reduce everything to one swing. Good article.

On Thursday, after pacing around the rental house trying to figure out what was going on, I went to the ballpark several hours before the start of the game. While many of the Grapefruit League’s day games took place Thursday afternoon, the Orioles would never arrive in Fort Myers. Baltimore had reportedly boarded the bus from their home in Sarasota, only to turn around mid-trip and disembark back at their facility. The Twins were not on the field conducting pregame work.Even with this knowledge, Hammond Stadium was still preparing for a baseball game. The stadium’s event staff was currently setting up their stations and stands as if in just a couple of hours 7,000 people were going to enter, have a beer and a dog, and watch baseball. Outside, fans were in the parking lot tailgating, drinking beer and roasting brats. Little did they know that MLB’s leadership, however, had collectively determined that the season would be delayed at least two weeks and spring training games would be suspended. The announcement was made at 3 pm eastern time. Almost immediately after posting notice the stadium workers deconstructed the venue, putting everything away and locking down concession stands and gates. Download attachment: USATSI_14175308_168390264_lowres.jpg Douglas DeFelice - USA Today Sports Derek Falvey and Dustin Morse entered the press box to discuss the details. “I think we’re all in that boat, right,” Falvey said of the suspension of play. “This is more about the human side of the game, which we talk a lot about and the impact it has off the field. Certainly I think the recognition over really the last 24 hours around a lot of professional sports entities and college sports entities and the change that existed there, I think we’re all trying to do our part to limit the public gatherings and the mass gatherings that have been recommended by so many states and the CDC to limit so that’s been the focus over the last 24 hours, but I think obviously we’re all on a human level taking this very seriously. I am personally for me, my family and I’m sure just as every one of you are. That’s what our players are doing as well. They’re thinking about it on that level.” Afterward, we were told that Taylor Rogers would be made available to get a player’s reaction. Again, I sat back down at my station in the press box and stared at the laptop and the cursor blinking on an empty Google Doc page. I texted my wife and let her know that baseball, of all things now, was done for the foreseeable future. For what would be the final time that spring, the group descended the stairs at Hammond, down to the hallway outside the clubhouse, adjacent to the batting cages, and stood at the makeshift press area and awaited Rogers. Rogers emerged from the clubhouse and sort of shrugged through the series of questions. “I think everyone is really taking it in at the moment,” he said. "So I think that's why it's best of us to take tomorrow and sleep on it and let it settle in and get your emotions together and then come back and go from there.” Rogers acknowledged that he didn’t know what he would be doing during the downtime, but that he was a homebody anyway. The whole situation was fluid with timelines and rules changing every 24 hours. Following the on-record portion of his presser, the group just talked for a moment about the world. Rogers, who comes from a family of firefighters, said that he had heard that emergency responders were taking this extremely seriously, maintaining a strict distance protocol when responding to a call, until they can determine that the person is not infected. Once Rogers was done, the media group along with Morse leaned on the batting cage fence and unpacked the entire news cycle. They discussed potential timelines (could baseball be played in the north through November), shortened seasons, and fallout (what does this mean for suspensions?). Reporters who follow the team throughout the season asked questions regarding ongoing access while players were still in camp. Everything was still up in the air. What was known was that the Twins were closing camp for Friday, and holding no baseball activities on-site, meaning that there was no reason for a reporter to be at the complex. With that news, I moved up my flight and left Fort Myers. By all accounts, this pandemic will get worse before it gets better. There will be long-term economic and medical impacts that are larger than simply no baseball. Somewhere in the Twittersphere, there exists a satirical tweet in which a reporter asks a player how it felt about hitting that home run in the game. The player responds something like “it was definitely a welcome distraction from the inevitability of death.” Undoubtedly, baseball has been a welcome distraction that carries us through from year to year, from spring’s bloom to autumn’s chill. It might not be there this year to comfort us, not like it has in the past and probably not in the same way going forward. While baseball is just a game, maybe we can learn something from it. Something we can use to persevere during this time of uncertainty. At Target Field, the Twins’ clubhouse has a saying from Tom Kelly etched on the wall that feels very apropos in these times: “We’re all in this boat together. Everybody grab an oar.” Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Click here to view the article