Parker Hageman

On Tuesday night it was announced that Minnesota Twins’ second baseman, Brian Dozier, would be participating in the Home Run Derby. Without question, it will be an honor for him to smack dingers at his home stadium, with his home crowd, and even his own brother pitching to him, no less. The event, where the game's most prolific home run hitters get to sit on the grass, some with their families, and admire the powerful swings while listening to ESPN’s Chris Berman say "back" five hundred and sixty-five million times is a unique experience. (Quick aside: A little word of advice that I'm fairly certain his brother Clay is aware of, the Twins’ second baseman likes to hit his home runs up in the zone: So throw the ball there Clay, and try not to think about the fact that you will be GIF'd into eternity so everyone can laugh if you accidentally throw a pitch like 50 Cent.) No doubt, being added to the Home Run Derby is a wonderful thing to brag about on his Linkedin page but as a fixture on at the top of the order, Dozier is expected to be a table-setter, not a home run hitter. Unfortunately for the sputtering Twins offense, he has been more of the former and less of the latter recently. Dozier’s 65 runs scored still tops the American League but he has been plated 14 times over his last 29 games -- admittedly a product of those hitting behind him and not by his own inability to get on-base (.311 on-base percentage in that time). While he has been a solid on-base catalyst, he has not been able to carry the team like he did in the beginning of the year when he was jacking the jobs that landed him in the Home Run Derby. The power surge that helped him to 11 home runs by the end of May -- the 11th most in the AL at that time -- has slowed. What is going on? The biggest change is his results against fastballs. Dozier, who once feasted on fastballs, is now struggling to make contact and turn them into hits, let alone home runs. From April to June 5 he hit .331/.424/.622 and 9 HRs in 152 plate appearances versus fastballs. Since then he has batted just .115/.227/.250 with two home runs in 65 plate appearances. According to ESPN/trumedia's In-Play Heat Maps, Dozier has not performed as well against fastballs up in the zone (where he once thrived) since June 6: Reviewing the batted ball performance, Dozier, who had once elevated fastballs thrown his direction (58% fly ball rate from April 1 to June 5), is now driving those same pitches into the ground (48% ground ball rate since June 5). There are no real significant changes in approach by the pitchers, either. He still sees a hefty amount of fastballs, plenty still left up in the zone. His mechanics are essentially the same -- there is no loss of the Tom Brunansky-inspired timing mechanism -- but there is an uptick in the number of times he has pulled the ball, a plausible explanation for why he is having issues on putting the ball in play on the inner-half while cheating and pulling pitches on the outer-half where pitchers are targeting him. Dozier understands the importance of success against the fastball at the major league level. "You don't succeed at this level by hitting breaking balls," Dozier told Sports On Earth’s Howard Megdal last month. "You succeed by not missing fastballs. And that's what I had to really come to terms with. Instead of trying to hit the hanger, you stick to your plan. Those guys are good on the mound, but they're not superhuman. They make mistakes." For the sake of the Twins’ offense, Dozier needs to start capitalizing on those mistakes again. Since the Twins beat the Mariners last night, you can get half off your L or XL pizza on Wednesday by ordering online at PapaJohns.com with the promo code 'TWINSWIN'.

On the special holiday episode of The No Juice Podcast, Parker Hageman and Dan Anderson bring in guest Aaron Gleeman to discuss how to make it in America as a blogger. ​ In addition to having Aaron Gleeman discuss his Linkedin profile, you will hear tips on why you should avoid Minneapolis strip clubs if you are a Kansas City Royals pitcher, which baseball analytics websites to use for your ball guy analysis, a comparison between Joe Mauer and Ken Griffey Jr and reactions to the recently released All-Star Game hats. Listen below, on iTunes or Stitcher. THE NO JUICE PODCAST - EPISODE #12

As the season progresses and the availability of real live center fielders decreases, Minnesota Twins manager Ron Gardenhire has been lowering standards for center field qualifications -- such as "he smells like a center fielder" and "he reminds me of a young John Fogerty". Chris Parmelee has been the latest infielder to play the most defensively significant outfield role. There is no question that Parmelee is swinging a burning hot bat right now -- having gone 16-for-35 over the last 10 games -- which calls for his inclusion somewhere in the lineup. After his performance in Texas, Gardenhire admitted that there may be more lineup cards submitted with Parmelee’s name next to CF. “He reads balls good and gets good jumps on them,” Gardenhire told reporters afterwards. Now with Joe Mauer suffering the dreaded oblique injury during Tuesday night's game, the Twins’ manager could find a new infielder to use in center, however, Chris Colabello was recalled from Rochester -- a likely substitute for Mauer at first -- leaving Parmelee free to roam the outfield. Is Parmelee’s bat really worth the head- and heart-ache of playing center field? Parmelee has proven to be a streaky hitter in his tenure with the Twins. No sooner did I hit "publish" on a post that highlighted the mechanical changes he implemented that were going to increase his power levels three times over, he went into a slump of epic proportions. After going 8-for-25 with two home runs over his first six games back with Minnesota, he went 7-for-48 over the next 19 games (but, hey, two more home runs!). OK then. In many ways, Parmelee is the inverse of Brian Dozier. Dozier has been creaming pitches left up in the zone. Parmelee, just the opposite. The heat map below provided by ESPN/trumedia shows the location of the hitters' extra base hits: Polar opposites, right? Parmelee’s swing is also very susceptible to being pitched up and out over the plate where he swings and misses the most regularly (and where Brian Dozier would deposit the pitch into the left field bleachers): Parmelee showed a tendency to swing (but not necessarily chase anything above the zone) at pitches left up in the zone during his cold spell. Teams attacked those spots to great success. Last night’s first plate appearance demonstrated well Parmelee’s success on pitches down in the zone. Here he takes a James Shields’ off-speed pitch located down in the zone, keeps his weight back and drives the ball into the left-center field gap for a double: Part of the reason why he does so well on low balls is that his swing path follows a golf-swing pattern which allows him to hit that zone better. While certainly not textbook, his back shoulder drops (as seen in the example below) and his bat head tilts in his swing which makes it more difficult for contact at pitches up in the zone. It is because of this swing that Parmelee has the sixth highest fly ball rate (52%) which is well above his career norm (43%). Teams are not stupid; they see the same data and video on Chris Parmelee. Pitchers will continue to attack at Parmelee’s weaknesses and avoid his strengths. Parmelee, to avoid falling into another valley, needs to focus on his strength -- drive the pitch down in the zone when it is there -- and try to lay off those pitches up in the zone.

Parker Hageman and Dan Anderson got together to talk about the Twins' latest heart-wrenching road trip, the fiasco in the outfield, and who Jorge Polanco's career has started off like. They discussed soccer and World Cup trolling. Then they had the Idea to End All Ideas when they came up with a Kickstarter campaign. Listen -- below, on iTunes or Stitcher -- and enjoy. NO JUICE PODCAST - EPISODE #11

Dan Anderson and Parker Hageman got together to discuss their brand new logo and share feelings. Parker described a hellish family vacation on the North Shore. They discussed Oswaldo Arcia’s slumping tendencies but also pondered whether or not Kyle Gibson was becoming an "ace" (spoiler: who knows) and whether or not the Twins have peaked (spoiler: who knows). Parker let Dan talk about soccer for 10 minutes (spoiler: Parker still doesn't like soccer) and the guys wished a fond farewell to Tony Gwynn (spoiler: damn he was good). Listen below, on iTunes or Stitcher. NO JUICE PODCAST - EPISODE 10 - NEW LOGO Follow us on Twitter: @NoJuicePodcast

I do not believe it is too hyperbolic to say that Phil Hughes is the greatest pitcher alive. That may be a bit extreme but it has been so long since the Minnesota Twins have been able to pencil a strong candidate into the rotation that you forget what a good pitcher smells like. (Answer: Good pitchers smell like Cy Young Awards -- a combination of polished chrome, rich mahogany and saddlewood). OK, so a Cy Young this year is a stretch considering he has to rely on a stagnant Twins offense to score runs in order to continue to accumulate wins that the voters love so dearly, and the Yankees have a pitcher named Masahiro Tanaka who is doing unforgivable things to other teams, but at least for the first-half of the 2014 season Hughes has been pitching and putting his name in the conversation. So far, he is in the top 25 of pitchers in notable categories including WHIP (13th), K/BB ratio (2nd) and walks per nine innings (1st). And, if for some reason MLB decided to throw out the stats from the first month of the season, Hughes’ ERA of 2.17 would be the fifth-best in baseball. When the Twins signed Hughes this offseason, there was the belief he would improve his numbers simply by not having to pitch at Yankee Stadium. In reality, his numbers have been improved not just because of the bigger ballpark but because of an overhaul in his approach. Reports from Florida was that with the help of Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson Hughes was going to rekindle his relationship with his curveball that he roundly ignored in 2013. During spring training, he paid extra attention to improving the pitch, attempting to keep it from being spotted coming out of his hand. In short, this season he was going to ride back into Strikeout Town on a horse named Uncle Charlie with guns a-blazing (bang, bang). That, however, has not played out that way. Hughes is having a marvelous season but it has little to do with his curveball being a knee-breaking offering. He has incorporated the curveball slightly more than last year but it is not used in the same capacity. Last season, as Hughes told me this past March, he mainly used his curve in first-pitch situation as a get-me-over pitch. This season not only does he rarely spin it to start a count but because of the significant difference in velocity, he is using it more as a substitute for his changeup (which, along with his slider, has been shelved). What makes Hughes’ curveball valuable is that it has sped up his already impressive fastball. With a near 17-mph velocity difference between it and his fastball, turning on the heater has proven difficult for hitters this year. According to ESPN/trumedia, after pulling the ball 32% of the time from 2009 to 2013 opponents have turned on it just 23% of the time (the lowest among qualified starters). So if it is not his curveball creating all the strikeouts, what is? That would be his cutter. The cutter, the slider’s cousin, has been used more frequently as of late across baseball. According to a recent Providence Journal, Boston Red Sox pitchers have turned to cutters as a way of confusing hitters. Their theory is that the shorter, quick break generates more swings at pitches out of the zone that the looping curve or the tilting slider. It looks like a fastball and has late break. It is because of this pitch that Hughes has been successful against left-handed hitters. From 2009 to 2013, lefties had posted a 861 OPS while mainly facing his curve and change as secondary pitches. With a transition to the cutter as his secondary pitch, this season he has kept left-handed at bay with a 527 OPS, the fifth best rate among qualified starters. What makes the cutter effective against left-handed batters is the ability to spot it on the outer-half, using it as a backdoor pitch on two-strike counts. Hughes has registered 42 strikeouts of left-handers this season, 21 of which have been looking. Of those 21, 18 were on his cutter. Below is an ESPN/trumedia heat map of the cutter’s location on those 18 caught-looking strikeouts which demonstrates Hughes’ ability to expand the strike zone on the outside. In last night’s start, Hughes froze Red Sox outfielder Daniel Nava on this pitch: http://i.imgur.com/hUtvBWn.gif The cutter comes out of Hughes’ hand at a velocity much like his fastball (89 mph compared to 92 on the fastball), but rather than residing up in the zone like his fastball, he keeps the cutter down in the zone -- helping change a hitter’s eye level as well. With the last second tail and Hughes’ precision placement, lefties appear hopeless against the pitch. Beyond his arsenal, it is his overwhelming ability to attack the strike zone that has positioned him well. As noted above, Hughes’ walk rate is the best in baseball and he also leads starters with getting ahead in the count. On the first pitch, Hughes leads baseball with a 66% zone rate (average is just slightly higher than 50%) and he continues to push to two-strikes quickly. This puts hitters on the defensive and gives him a sizable advantage. Phil Hughes is having an outstanding rebound season but not because of the reasons people initially thought. The inclusion of his cutter combined with his world-conquering strike zone dominance has elevated Hughes’ into a top-of-the-rotation starter that was once predicted for him in New York.

Fresh off his "Destination Wetting", Twins Daily's Parker Hageman dispatches No Juice Podcast co-host Dan Anderson to spend time at the Twins' Dominican Academy at Baseball City in Boca Chica...on his honeymoon. In recent years, the Twins' facility and the Dominican Summer League have been graced with such Latin American talent as Yangervis Solarte (2006), Josmil Pinto (2007), Oswaldo Arica (2008), Danny Santana (2008) and, of course, Miguel Sano (2010). Dan shares his experience and observations on the players, the academy and how he convinced his new bride to allow him to drive across the island nation to watch baseball. Parker and Dan also discuss the hot Twins topics of the week and they dive into the TwinsDaily.com forum to answer some of the highly debated items on the board. Listen here, on iTunes or Stitcher. Be sure to follow the No Juice Podcast on Twitter and leave us a review on iTunes.

Sponsored by Switch My Trip Josh Willingham’s career may not be as finished as previously thought.Sure, not everyone thought he was washed up. Over the winter his agent -- Matt Sosnick of Sosnick Cobbe Sports -- reassured me that Willingham was strong like bull after his knee surgery in 2013. The procedure cleaned everything up and he was healthy. The message? Get ready because 2014 would be a rebirth of Willingham -- avert your eyes because you cannot handle the raw power! But that’s agent talk, right? An agent is supposed to be the best wingman alive, pumping a player’s tires even if the engine won’t start. Then, like those cartoon dynamite sticks with a 100 yards of fuse that fails to ignite while an animated coyote waits with his ears plugged behind a rock, the Twins waited for the big boom from Willingham that never came this spring. Yes, spring training statistics are wholly meaningless but scouts look for signs of life and Willingham’s performance had a very weak pulse. He accumulated just three hits in 50 spring plate appearances and one of those happened to be a wall-scraping home run at Boston’s JetBlue Park in the final practice game of the year. Based on that, the assumption was that Willingham was continuing where he left off in 2013. Last season, bogged down with a knee injury, he finished with his worst season at the major league level. While playing in 111 games, he turned in a .208/.342/.369 line with 128 strikeouts. With his highest whiff rate and lowest power output, there were rumblings that the 34-year-old was simply stranded. The Twins are looking to switch things around this year. Every week, Metro Transit recognizes a Twins player who successfully switched the outcome of a game for the better. Willingham made it just six games into the 2014 season before Cleveland’s Justin Masterson sent him to the infirmary again with a fastball that ran in on Willingham’s wrist. After a rehab stint in Rochester that seemed as disappointing as his spring production, Willingham looked to be poised to flounder again. Only he has not. Since returning to the team on May 26 he has flipped a switch and posted a .316/.467/.632 batting line with five home runs and a 14/14 K/BB ratio in 75 plate appearances. Only Lonnie Chisenhall, Miguel Cabrera, Nelson Cruz, Alex Gordon and Edwin Encarnacion in the American League have put up better slugging percentages in that time while his extra nerdy .464 weighted on-base average is only bested by Chisenhall and Gordon. While some may want to consider this as his dead-cat bounce, there are some positive signs in this small sample size that may indicate that this is truly a health rebound and not a fluke, the most notable sign being how improved his plate coverage is in comparison to last year. Part of Willingham’s game is being able to extend those meaty arms in order to pull pitches to left field. Without a stable base to support those Popeye forearms, there would be little ability to drive the balls that are thrown on the opposite side of the plate. This was evident last year. If you divided the plate into thirds, according to ESPN/tTruMedia, last year Willingham slugged .538 (7 HR) on the inside, .438 (7 HR) in the middle and .224 (0 HR) on the outer portion. That is in stark contrast to his output in his impressive 2012 season where he slugged .526 (8 HR) inside, .642 (16 HR) middle and .422 (11 HR) outside. Visually, you can see how different his season with a knee-injury (2013) is versus a healthy season (2012) and how that injury affected his ability to drive the ball on the outer half for power. It is amazing how abrupt his power ended at the middle portion of the strike zone: Fast forward to this season and Willingham’s tendencies are mirroring his 2012 season in which he has been able to drive the ball on the outer-half with authority. Statistically in 2014, he is slugging .649 because he has tagged three of his five home runs from the outside portion of the zone. Here is how that looks visually with his slugging percentage this year: Willingham is not only able to connect with those pitches that are thrown away but he’s able to drive them a long way from home. This is important because this is the region that opponents have attacked him most frequently rather than risk throwing inside: Beyond just the heat maps that may confuse the color-blind, here are two visual examples with a fastball on the outer-half where one turned into a left-center field home run and the other a foul out to first base: This may be the smallest of small sample sizes when drawing a two-swing comparison but overall this shows the discrepancy accurately: this year he is able to drive the outside pitch whereas in 2013 he was not. At his age and his health history, it is difficult to say how long this production will last. Still, at the very least, Willingham is now doing the things that he was doing in his successful 2012 that he was not in 2013. Depending on how you look at it, this is an inflation for his trade deadline value or an offensive weapon to help the Twins combat the rest of the AL Central. Why fight traffic and parking? Say ‘Switch My Trip’ for the next Twins game. Metro Transit can provide you and your whole family a train ride to the game. Planning your trip is as easy as clicking on this link.

For the Minnesota Twins, Oswaldo Arcia represents the promise of a better tomorrow. With the candles from his 23rd birthday cake still smoldering, Arcia’s exquisite power display in fewer than an entire season’s worth of baseball games has been a refreshing welcome to a fan base that has not had many legitimate offensive prospects to rally around since Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau. Historically, his power numbers at this age rank among some of the best Twins’ sluggers. So far, his career .451 slugging percentage prior to the age of 24 falls behind only Kent Hrbek, Harmon Killebrew, Bob Allison, Justin Morneau, Joe Mauer and Tom Brunansky. With just under a year until his next birthday, the left-handed Arcia is poised to jump over several of those hitters as he grows more comfortable with the league’s pitching. There are some who feel that Arcia still has a few more improvements to make before he is considered a complete hitter. Swing Hard In Case You Hit It If you are reviewing his Fangraphs.com profile, the most obvious area in need of attention is his plate discipline. After managing 23 walks in 378 plate appearances in 2013, Arcia has drawn two walks this season. It is because of this that his on-base percentage is very one-dimensional and reliant on his ability to hit safely. (With a batting average on balls in play at .391 this year, it will be hard to have a sustainable on-base percentage without mixing in a few walks.) Arcia has the tendency to expand the strike zone, trying to cover everything from 952 to 651 at times, which has led to strikeouts in nearly 30 percent of his plate appearances. More than anything, when backed into a corner -- say, with a two-strike count -- Arcia comes out swinging which means hacking at pitches outside the strike zone. Last season Arcia was a first-pitch monster. He batted .379/.400/.724 with three home runs and a double on the first pitch of his plate appearances. Pitchers threw him a hefty number of fastballs (57%) and stayed in the strike zone (49% zone%). As advance scouts and video preppers recognized this trait, opponents altered their approach in 2014. Now he rarely sees a fastball (43%) or pitches in the strike zone (41%) to start an at-bat. Rather than changing his game plan, Arcia has actually swung more in first-pitch counts this year while seeing fewer premium pitches to drive. Pundits like to talk about guys who demonstrate “max effort” swings. Carlos Gomez, who swings out of his shoes on every pitch, personifies this idea. Even as he morphed into an offensive threat, Gomez’s swing rate, chase rate and contact rate all ranked well below average. Arcia falls into this camp as well. When Arcia commits, there is little indecision -- he is swinging for all or nothing. Without sacrificing his powerful and aggressive swing, he needs to learn which pitches he can handle in what circumstances. Mechanical Or Mental Adjustments? It seems there is be a hole in his swing that teams can and will exploit. During a recent Fox Sports North broadcast, former player and FSN analyst Roy Smalley pointed out that Arcia’s mechanics suffer from a hitch that is causing significant issues with his ability to handle pitches up in the zone. What Smalley highlighted was that Arcia’s hands started high... ...but dropped slightly above his waistline when he brings his bat to load (the position right before bringing the bat forward): As the hands drop, his ability to make solid contact on high strikes decreases considerably. According to ESPN/trumedia, this year alone he has swung at 28 pitches up in the zone and missed on 15 of his swings and put the ball in play on just four swings. The example below from Sunday’s broadcast shows Arcia’s swing plane attempting to catch up to a high changeup: From the lower vantage point Arcia needs to bring the bat up allowing for small impact zone. As Smalley championed during the game, Arcia does not necessarily have to change his swing -- he just needs to recognize pitches and understand his limitations. A high fastball is going to give him issues. Cheating for high fastballs is going to leave him susceptible to slow breaking balls. This goes back to improving his plate discipline. As pitchers shift their offerings and attack certain holes, Arcia will need to make adjustments. There is no question Arcia has the makings to be one of the top offensive talents to emerge from the Twins system. As part of the development process, improving his plate discipline and protecting against his weaknesses should entrench him as a middle-of-the-order threat for years to come.

After passing his physical, the Twins and Kendrys Morales agreed on a one-year contract in hopes of increasing the offense which had disappeared in May. After scoring 131 runs in 24 games in April, the fourth-highest in baseball, the Twins managed just 92 runs in 29 games in May, the second-lowest totals. Morales, Ryan said, figures to turn that around. When the deadline that would have required the Twins to lose draft pool money passed, talks began with the free agent designated hitter/first baseman. During Sunday's broadcast, Terry Ryan said the Twins toyed with the idea two weeks ago and then talks grew serious during the MLB draft when they were discussing contracts with Morales' agent, Scott Boras. Because Morales is out of options, he will have to acclimate himself at the major league level. During his extended time-off, Ryan said that Morales did face live college pitching while working out at Boras' training facility in Miami, Florida. On Sunday morning, Twins General Manager Terry Ryan introduced the latest addition to the lineup: Terry Ryan introduces Kendrys Morales, Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e74uOzYa6A&feature=youtu.be Terry Ryan introduces Kendrys Morales, Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nckEwrPM0m4&feature=youtu.be

Sponsored by Ticket King Among many in baseball circles, the Houston Astros organization may be considered the Smartest Team In The Room™. Their front office is loaded with brainiacs. They have field staff who carry out the philosophy from the lowest levels to the majors. They even have broadcast teams who attempt to advance the mission statement on TV and radio, but that is mostly to fans who are left wondering why the team is not winning. The Astros have a five-year plan to improve the team and losing is an acknowledged residual effect of that overhaul. And, though in last place in the AL West, there are some signs of improvement -- after all, they are not the worst team in baseball. The Rays, Cubs and Diamondbacks have worse records than the Astros. Obviously it is hard to throw stones while in last place in the AL Central, mind you, but if you are a Twins fan looking for tickets and a win, you have to feel good about the odds of walking away with a series win. Failure To Launch In 2010, the Astros boasted a payroll of $92 million. Two seasons later, they pared the budget and fielded a team that earned a collective $22 million. It wasn’t a fire sale. It was a plan. The directive from ownership was to go young. The year prior, former Cardinals draft guru Jeff Luhnow was hired away from St. Louis and he revamped the player selection and player development process in Houston. The roster went from being in the late-20s and early-30s to the mid-20s -- since then the youngest (and least expensive) in the game. Along with Luhnow’s five-year plan to make the team more sustainable, the Astros sustained numerous losses. Two-hundred and fifty-three since 2012 to be exact. Of course, mixed into to the squad has been some intriguing talent that has the potential to form the nucleus of the championship team the Astros envision. The five-foot-six second baseman Jose Altuve is leading the American League in hits (80) and stolen bases (20). Outfielder George Springer (10) is only trailing the White Sox’s Jose Abreu (17) in home runs by a rookie. First base prospect Jon Singleton recently signed a five-year contract -- with options that could make it eight years -- despite not having played a single game in the bigs. On the mound, Dallas Keuchel, who the Twins will face on Friday, leads all pitchers in ground ball creation at 66.5%. While not yet a competitive team per se, this team has plenty of players of interest to follow. The Match-Ups Friday: Dallas Kuechel vs. Phil Hughes @ 7:10 PM Are you a fan of pitchers’ duels? Two-to-one ballgames? If so, this is the game for you. The best pitching matchup of the series will be conducted with two wildly different pitching styles but both contestants rely on the fastball. Kuechel is a lefty who doesn’t throw hard (maxes out at 92 miles per hour) but has been difficult for hitters to elevate. Hughes, on the other hand, throws his heat over 95 at times and because he throws it up in the zone, it is rarely put on the ground. Despite these differences, they have both been successful: Since April 30 Hughes is the owner of a 1.74 ERA while Kuechel has an equally impressive 2.14 mark. Saturday: Scott Feldman vs. Kyle Gibson @ 1:10 PM Not a fan of pitchers striking batters out? Good. Here’s the game for you. Both Feldman and Gibson have been very democratic when it comes to sharing the ball with teammates. Feldman is the owner of the league’s worst 4.25 K/9 while Gibson is separated by just Seattle’s Chris Young at 4.35 K/9. In Feldman’s case, his curveball has not inciting the same number of swing-and-misses it once did. Gibson, however, has struggled to advance the count to two-strikes, as the majority of his opponents have put the ball into play before that pitcher’s count. Over his last three starts, Feldman has worked 15.3 innings and allowed 28 hits leading to 14 earned runs. Expect the Twins offense to come out swinging against Houston’s right-hander. Sunday: Collin McHugh vs. Samuel Deduno @ 1:10 PM This one is the matchup of the guys who were not wanted by their previous organizations. Deduno went through multiple organization and even the Twins exposed him to all the other teams, who all passed. Since returning to the rotation in May, Deduno has made six starts and has gone 2-2 with a 4.36 ERA. Whereas the fastball was his weapon last year, his curveball has become equally impressive now that he has been able to keep in down in the zone. For Houston, McHugh started in the Mets organization and then was traded to the Rockies who waived him this past December. Picked up by the Astros, the 27-year-old has thrown 50 innings and struck out 54 while flashing a vicious curveball with Bugs Bunny-like bend. The pitch carries a 17% swinging strike rate. Trevor Plouffe has been very susceptible when it comes to the curve this year -- he is just 1-for-12 with 7 strikeouts versus curves. For Friday’s projected pitchers’ duel, seats in the infield area are recommended to see the detail in their work. Saturday’s game should feature more offense (and a bit of rain) so find a good ticket in the left field bleachers. On Sunday, bring the family and have the kids run the bases after the game. All are an even better deal if you use the promo code DAILYDOUBLE, which will get you 10% off and supports Twins Daily. Whatever your needs, your local ticket supplier,Ticket King, can help.

This Joe Mauer vitriol has gotten out of hand. Fans and media members alike are taking shots at him over his lack of production at the conclusion of just the season's second month of play. Sure, his power outage, run production and shortage of key hits has been the source of much consternation -- particularly in the last stretch when the team has dropped six of their last seven games. Did you hear that the Twin Cities will have a new Joe Mauer-themed Uber cabs running in celebration of the All-Star Game? For $23 million they will take you wherever you want but they can’t drive you home. See? I mean, how sick is that? Even I am not immune from the growing mob madness. As a statistically-based individual, I realize that the run batted in stat is contingent on runners being on base in front of a hitter. I also know that batting second in a lineup often means you will be in fewer situations to drive runners in (even more so when your leadoff hitter insists on hitting a bunch of solo dingers). As a scouting-based individual, I appreciate his sweet swing and timeless patience at the plate. Still, Mauer’s production with runners in scoring position this season has been completely out of whack by his standards -- his lowly .189 batting average with runners in scoring position pales in comparison to his .327 average in those same situations from 2009 to 2013. If his offensive woes were isolated to just situational hitting, it would be easier to dismiss as a product of small sampling but other issues have been plaguing him -- like his two-strike hitting (.208 average), performance against left-handed pitching (.224) or lack of power (.352 slugging percentage) -- and have increased the concern that there are other factors at play: like lingering concussion effects, lower back pain or something else. The Minnesota Twins, meanwhile, think there is less of a physical ailment but rather the masterful placement of the opposition’s defense. As Twins broadcaster Dick Bremer told KFAN’s Paul Allen on Wednesday morning, the belief in the organization is that teams have figured out a way to combat Mauer’s opposite field tendencies which is wreaking havoc on his offensive numbers. “I think he more than any other Twins hitter has been victimized by the shifts,” Bremer told Allen. “When we talk about the shifts in the booth, we automatically show the infield and they are doing a lot of creative things in the infield but Joe’s really been victimized by the outfield shifts. And I think what we’ve seen -- and Ron Gardenhire confirmed it the other day -- Joe is trying now, and succeeding to some degree, pulling the ball more. Because he’s hit a lot of line drives to left field and he’s probably had eight doubles taken away from him with the left fielder basically playing in the left field corner.” Prior to Thursday’s game, Gardenhire shared his thoughts on Mauer’s struggles with the media that echoed Bremer’s take. “He’s hitting a lot of balls hard,” the Twins manager told MLB.com’s Rhett Bollinger. “The way they’re playing him and pitching him If he were in Boston, he’d be hitting .400. I mean, how many rockets he’s hit out to left field, deep. He’d be pounding that wall. But he’s not in Boston, and they’re playing him oppo. He’s ripping balls that way, and you just go through it. I don’t know if you start counting all the balls that this guy hits on the button. I can promise you it’s as many as anybody in the league. He hits it on the barrel of the bat.” Yes -- alert the media -- a higher percentage of Mauer’s power comes from drilling the ball into left field. Last year, 21 of his 35 doubles were deposited to left. This year his doubles are way down and plenty of that has to do with the outfield shift. Mauer’s ability to lift and/or drive the ball in the air the other way has been effectively eliminated by the opposition’s defensive schemes. It is no secret that after numerous years that the face of the Twins has a penchant for going the other way at a high percentage. From 2010 to 2013, if Mauer hit the ball in the sky, 54% of the time it was to left field. It was that direction where he accumulated the lion’s share of his extra base hits. On the other hand, Mauer pulled the ball in the air just 13% of the time, making the right fielder’s job essentially one that fielded the ground ball that slipped through the infield. So it would stand to reason that teams who have even a basic understanding of spray charts would shade their outfielders to the left field line, having the left fielder stand on the chalk, the center field move over to a spot between the second base bag and the shortstop position, and have the right fielder camped out in the right-center gap. This would leave real estate the size of the airport unguarded on the right side -- just like the alignment the Tampa Bay Rays deployed on April 23 that the Star Tribune’s LaVelle Neal captured: All it would take would be a little flare or dink over the first baseman’s head to net Mauer an inside-the-park home run. Of course, since 2010 Mauer has elevated just 55 pitches (7.2% of his liners/flies) that have gone into the far right quadrant of the field, meaning that land is safer than Canada. While the Rays are one of the more forward-thinking teams when it comes to defensive positioning, other teams are following suit more often when facing Mauer. In addition to the shifting, teams have tailored their approach to pitching him away more frequently, almost taunting him to play right into their hands. What is telling is how many line drive hits this has taken away from Mauer this year. According to ESPN Stats & Info, between 2009 and 2013 Mauer had an .803 average on line drives to the outfield (.744 when going to left field). This year that rate has tumbled to .579 (.450 when going the other way). Visually you can see the stark difference in the outs made on his spray chart: Notice how the outs on the left (2014) are closer to the left field line? Those hard hit balls would be difficult to catch if a left fielder was playing in a straight-up formation. In this last series, the Texas Rangers tried the same positioning. Rather than Yu Darvish on the mound however, the Rangers trotted former Twins pitcher Scott Baker to start. Baker’s stuff is not nearly as good as Darvish’s so when the former teammates squared off, Mauer was able to turn around an 88 mile per hour fastball on the inner-half into that right field corner where no one was home. That marked just the 10th hit for Mauer to right field and just the 15th ball he has hit in that direction this season. To Bremer and Gardenhire’s point that Mauer is trying to pull the ball more frequently, there has been a slight uptick in that department but nothing of huge significance. Prior to the beginning of last week’s West Coast road trip, Mauer had pulled 21.7% of the balls he put into play. Since then, he has increased that rate to 34.5%. The issue of pulling the ball more will not likely lead to more hits unless the opposition supplies him with pitches on the inner-half. Since 2009, when Mauer has pulled the ball, 78% of the time it has been on the ground. In this case, opponents are peppering him with pitches down-and-away in an effort to get him to play into their outfield shift. When he has tried to pull something on the outer-half of the plate, he is almost assured a grounder to second (on which he is 1-for-23 this year). So who knows where the season goes for Joe Mauer from here. He’s as mechanically smooth as they come and, if he is not hiding any cracked vertebrae or whatever, he should be healthy as an ox and able to make the necessary adjustments at the plate -- make sure to turn on pitches on the inner-half, drive the ball up the middle more frequently and capitalize on mistakes in general. Several week of doing that should open up left field for him again. Stay tuned. (Data from ESPN Stats & Info)