Parker Hageman

Hey E. Andrew, Just wanted to say this is some mighty fine research and presentation done for this piece. Very entertaining too, which isn't always easy when you are presenting topics such as this. In regards to the picture, I'm not sure you are attempting to draw this conclusion or that you are just hinting that the grip is giving him a knuckleball-effect, however, the above image of Deduno's grip is for his spike curve and not his fastball. I do believe are on to something about his spin rate and why his fastball has been so difficult to hit. Keep up the good work.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5128[/ATTACH]The ball explodes out of the pitcher’s hand. You immediately pick up the spin and conclude it is close enough to a fastball that he must be trying to go upstairs with a low-90s four-seamer. However, in the middle of your stride, you recall the hitting coach’s scouting report that says the pitcher has a tendency to turn to the changeup at any point. Suddenly, the spin doesn’t quite look like that four-seamer and you realize: Oh god, it’s not the fastball. In a fraction of a nanosecond, you try to adjust to the speed differential. The message is sent from your brain to your extremities but it’s too late. With all of your momentum going towards the pitcher, it is like trying to stop a runaway train. Your hips are already driving forward but the pitch, like Delta airlines, is slightly delayed on its arrival. It’s at this point when you confirm that the ball is tailing away and the bottom is falling out. You keep your hands back in efforts to react to the off-speed pitch. You realize that there’s no way you can do anything of use with this pitch. It’s quickly fading down and away. At best, you can flick it over the heads of the left-side infielders or maybe foul it off into the seats and live to fight another pitch but, either way, you are committed. You can feel your hands depart and bring your bat around to swish its way through the swing zone. With your weight all on the front leg, you make a last ditch effort to punch the ball. By this point, the ball is at the southern-most portion of the strike zone and still falling. The bat makes an empty woosh as it clears the plate. *** Over 20 percent of all swings on Jared Burton’s changeup conclude like that – without any contact. “I’ve been throwing it since college, really,” Burton says in his Carolina drawl. “It’s always been just a grip but comes out of my hand much harder than a changeup.” Normal changeups, it is said, require about nine miles an hour of difference from the fastball. Rays closer Fernando Rodney, who is credited with having one of the best in the game today, has 12 miles per hour separating his mid-90s fastball from his low-to-mid-80s change. By comparison, Burton typically has just five. And yes, it does come out much harder than the average changeup. Burton’s 87.6 mile-per-hour velocity on his change registers higher than everyone but St. Louis’s Trevor Rosenthal (88). Burton says his particular grip gives him bit more movement than the standard changeups. “It’s basically a circle-change grip but I hold it out on the tip of my fingers more and choke it. It’s much harder and it’s got late down movement. It’s been a good pitch for me.” Over the past two years, it certainly has been a very good pitch for him. According to Fangraphs.com, his Pitch Value on his changeup has been worth 10.4 runs above average, the third-highest among relievers trailing just Tyler Clippard and the aforementioned Rodney. And, just this year alone, opponents are hitting just .152 off of it, one of the lowest marks in the game. The action earned it different description than just a changeup. After all, calling it a “changeup” would be a disservice to how impressive of a specimen the pitch actually is. “I throw it like changeup but it’s much harder with splitter movement hence the ‘splangeup’ - splitter action.” “I can throw it any time, righty or lefty,” Burton boasts. “It’s more of a swing-and-miss pitch but I can throw it for a strike a good bit. I can kind of throw it more where it fades in the zone or where it has more downward movement.” For the most part, pitchers tend to shy away from throwing their changeups to same-sided opponents. Teammate Brian Duensing acknowledges that he refrained from using his changeup on lefties because he felt the movement went into their swings. Burton does not share that hesitation because of the variation he has on it, that being able to drop it down or make it run. Over the past two seasons, he’s thrown 642 changeups – 315 to lefties and 327 to righties. It is confidence in the pitch that helped earn Burton a two-year deal with the Minnesota Twins. *** Now down 1-2 in the count, you step out of the box to clear your mind and regroup. That last pitch was all types of nasty. Over 30,000 people in the stadium and a million more watching from the comforts of their homes saw you look foolish. It’s late in the game. Your team needs a couple of runs to get back in this thing but the opportunities are wearing thin. What’s next? He’s got a mid-90s fastball that he can waste over the zone and change your eye level but he also has a decent slide piece that can cut down-and-in. Of course, you cannot forget a possible repeat performance of the changeup - he throws it great deal when he has a kill shot. You dig back into the batter’s box while requesting time and go through the possibilities. All in all, it feels like a guess. Look for the hard stuff up or in while trying to fight off the soft stuff down in the zone. Protect. You put your hand down, give the bat a few firm shakes towards the pitcher, raise the bat back up to your shoulder, exhale and settle in. *** Always keep hitters guessing. Play the mind game. “I never get too predictable,” Burton admits, repeating what pitching coaches have expounded upon him for more than a decade. “I like to be confident on all pitches but primarily everything works off my fastball command. I concentrate on that first in the bullpen, get my fastball command down and make sure I am getting out front with my release point and my off-speed work off of that.” Predictability can be a pitcher’s worst enemy. A changeup is called a changeup because it is supposed to be a change from the fastball. What’s more is that too many non-fastballs help hitters read the spin and the break. A solid fastball is needed in order to make the change work properly. Burton throws his changeup a lot but recognizes the need to mix in other offerings like his two fastballs -- a four-seam and two-seam – as well as his slider. Burton’s control of his fastball has not been was it was a year ago. According to PitchF/X data, in 2012 he threw his fastball in the zone 58 percent of the time. This year the fastball has been in the zone just 46 percent of the time, ultimately one of the reasons he has walked a few more batters than he would have liked. That, in addition to a slight groin tweak, may have played a role in his month of June and his demotion in the bullpen’s hierarchy. In June, he entered 10 games, worked 9.2 innings and allowed 14 hits with 6 walks that led to 9 runs. Opponents had gone 14-for-43 (.326) with seven extra base hits, including two home runs. Burton earned three losses in that stretch and fell out of favor for use in the eighth inning work. Burton did not blame the tweaked groin or any mechanical changes or ailments to his arm. He did not rush out for answers either by examining video or seeking assistance from other outside sources for his disappointing month. “It’s just a part of the game, really,” he says. “It’s a little harder to get over the ones where you feel you are executing but not getting results, but you just have to ride it out. You can’t ride the peaks and valleys, you have to stay right in the middle. You have to know that 70-75 games that if you stick with your stuff, it is going to work out.” That, in essence, is the fundamentals in the sabermetric theory of Fielding Independent Pitching or FIP. Over the course of a season, a pitcher who strikeouts hitters at a high rate, does not walk many and allows few home runs should be the benefactor of decent mainstream statistics like ERA over the course of a season. Continuing to do the basics like get strikeouts while limiting walks and home runs, should bring the totals back down following rough patches like Burton experienced in June. Burton has clearly stuck with his stuff. Since June ended, he has made 15 appearances while striking out 13, walking just two while not allowing a home run. As such, his overall numbers have rebounded nicely and his ERA dropped from 3.57 to 3.19. *** It is consistency and trust in his stuff that has gotten Burton where he is today. Sure, he has made some changes to his training regimen that he feels has improved his game. Following his second shoulder surgery while with Cincinnati, Burton took up swimming. He felt his performance benefited from this routine so he continues to incorporate the workout, both during and after the season. Outside of that, it is business as usually for Burton. Establish the fastball, deploy the change and mentally prepare for the peaks and valleys.

For three straight years now, the Minnesota Twins have been forced into tapping one of their position players to take the mound late in a blowout game. In 2011, it was Michael Cuddyer. Last season, the honors went to Drew Butera. This year's position player was veteran infielder Jamey Carroll. Had Aaron Hicks remained on the roster, he might have been the obvious position player to be called into mop-up duty considering he was a talented high school pitcher throwing in the mid-90s and multiple teams viewed him as a pitcher at the time of the draft. Nevertheless, Carroll retired his opponents with guile and not heat. Carroll's nine-pitch eighth inning was not a thing of beauty, but it worked. He retired three consecutive Royals hitters and did not use anything resembling fastball, despite being his best fastball. MLB.com's PitchF/X system chatted all of his offerings are either a changeup or a knuckleball -- both reasonable assumptions for pitches thrown under 80 miles an hour. The St Paul Pioneer Press’s Mike Berardino tweeted after the game that Carroll had not pitched at any level since his Babe Ruth League days as a fifteen-year-old. I’m guessing the velocity has not changed much since then. How does Carroll's outing compare to Cuddyer and Butera's? [ATTACH=CONFIG]5107[/ATTACH] You have to wonder if Carroll’s grotesque fingers gave him an unfair advantage to put addition movement on each pitch that a normal, healthy-handed pitcher would not. Sort of like Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown. [ATTACH=CONFIG]5108[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5043[/ATTACH]Left-handed relievers are a valuable if not under-appreciated members of society. You know, like oxygen. While they may seem ubiquitous and always available, a team could get killed if you don't have any. They have a certain vampiric quality to them as they are seemingly able to last forever while continually finding work. Darren Oliver, 37-years-old, has been employed steadily. Despite mixed results, J.C. Romero has hung around baseball. Even with numerous options out there, when the trade deadline comes around, contending teams rush out to acquire one or two for safe measure. Because of this it is possible that Minnesota Twins’ reliever Brian Duensing may have thrown his last pitch with the team on Wednesday night. Admittedly, Duensing does not quite fall into that category of a specialist. In the recent past, he had been able to dominate same-sided opponents with a big slider. Judging by that alone, it appeared that he would make a strong left-handed reliever. After bouncing from the rotation to the bullpen thorough out his five years with Minnesota, 2013 has been the first year he has been a full-time reliever. And this season he has been asked to retire lefties more than the previous years. “The only thing I feel like is really different, is the fact that I am more focused strictly on the lefties,” says Duensing in regards to his approach. “I’m not coming in worrying about the righties as much, but I’m facing righties a little more than I did earlier in the season. The main thing is that it is kind of hard, at this very moment I don’t have the feeling that I know exactly where it’s going to go all the time. Which is fine: If I don’t know where it’s going, they don’t know where it’s going.” This admission, when synchronized with Mike Moustakas’ eighth inning solo home run on Wednesday night, would highlight Duesning’s shortcoming this season. Catcher Joe Mauer would call for the standard slider down and away to the left-handed hitting Moustakas but the pitch would be up and middle-in and wind up just inside the right field foul pole. To be sure, the home run was a rare display off of Duensing – just his second allowed in 2013 – yet command issues are noticeable. The transition to the bullpen has allowed Duensing to air it out constantly knowing that he will have a short outing, more so this year than before. After averaging 4.0 outs per appearance from 2009 to 2012 while in relief, he’s down to 2.4 outs per appearances this season. As such he’s hitting closer to 93 on the gun. Of course, the trade-off may be the decline in precision. For instance, the lack of command has been prevalent in Duensing’s overall peripheral numbers. After walking just seven percent of all batters faced, the lefty has issued free passes to ten percent of hitters this year. So does he believe the fastball -- when trying to rear back and attempt at triple-digits on the radar -- is the culprit? “It’s basically all of them. It’s kind of scary but, as of lately, the results have been a little better.” For the most part, sure. After all, Duensing had been stringing together a good series of appearances. In seven appearances from July 9 to July 26, he had not allowed a run to score. However he was playing with fire in several of those outings, allowing four walks and a hit batter in 6.2 innings and last night, he struggled to retire four Royals lefties in a row. Duensing seems content with his role in the bullpen but acknowledges the challenges of transitioning from a starter to a reliever takes preparation. “It’s not easy to come to the ballpark everyday and be prepared to throw. As a starter you have four days off in between, so mentally it is kind of taxing on you to try to figure out when you are going to pitch. Every day you might pitch. You might throw three, four days in a row or you might not throw for five.” The move is not always as simple as it would seem. In 2011 while with the Twins current Miami Marlin Kevin Slowey was reassigned to the bullpen but struggled with his new role. Some research has indicated many pitchers have moved from starter to reliever and not only have done well but thrive with added velocity or a specialized role. Look no further than Duensing’s current bullpen mate Glen Perkins who has rebounded as a fallen starter to a reliever with a mid-90s fastball and devastating slider, eventually becoming an All Star closer. On the other hand, others cannot clear the preparation hurdle. That was Slowey’s biggest downfall. Manager Ron Gardenhire noted in May of that season that they would call down to the pen to get Slowey ready he would throw “five or six pitches” then say he was ready. The results would be that Slowey would need a few days of rest afterwards. There is a reason why marathon runners do not always make good sprinters. More often than not, Gardenhire has been consistent with Duensing’s usage in 2013 and Duensing has given him no indication that he is not equipped to handle that sort of treatment. According to Baseball-Reference.com, 31 of Duensing’s appearances have come with no days or one day off between outings. In his 10 appearances with no days of rest in between, he has limited opponents to a .257 average and just two runs. Although not quite the rubber band man that Matt Guerrier was during the late 2000s heydays, Duensing has demonstrated he can be ready when needed, a fact which he attributes to preparing for the marathon of starting and adjusting for the sprint of the bullpen. “In the offseason, I prepare like I’m going to start,” he says. “ Obviously, it is a lot easier if you are prepared to go long, it’s a long easier to go short. During the season, like when they said I was going to be in the bullpen, I changed my mentality and the throwing I do – you are not playing long-toss every day, you are kind of shortening up here and there and you are really paying attention to how your arm and body feels and how it is working, ‘cause you have to be ready to go every day, so you have to make sure you know what it takes to make sure you are ready to go.” Duensing, now in his fifth season in the majors and will have his second year of arbitration this offseason, says the experience has helped breed familiarity with his opponents – something that can be both good and bad. “There are some guys I feel comfortable knowing how I want to go about pitching them. There are some guys who I still may not have a good idea about. I am also noticing that I may have fallen into patterns the last few years – like I noticed a lot of lefties try to take the same kind of approach on me.” The book for left-handed pitchers says to stay away from lefties – bust them on the outer-half of the plate with fastball and breaking pitches. Duensing started to feel that same-sided opponents were cheating a bit and going with that pitch. Instead, he has been trying to go inside to left-handed opponents more. “I’ve had a lot of success going in on lefties. So I don’t know if that means the ball is running a bit more or if they are looking middle-away, I feel like that is a typical way a lefty would pitch a lefty, away with sliders and fastballs. I try to get out of my normal patterns and keep them guessing.” Like on Wednesday night, Duensing sawed off former college teammate and groomsman Alex Gordon’s bat into a toothpick on a fastball inside. However, Gordon won the battle with his friend with a liner the other way when Duensing would go back outside with a fastball that stayed away but up in the zone. When asked if he has ever reviewed pitchf/x data, Duensing said he had brief encounters with the numbers but had not explored anything to any extend, he has felt more comfortable trying to gain an edge by examining video and watching hitters in the box. He admits this may be time to take another look to see if the information can help him breakaway from tendencies that opponents have picked up over the years. “That might help me with tendencies and why certain guys are taking certain swings of certain counts. I feel like it is human nature to get into a tendency to get into a pattern. Especially if something is working, you are going to stick with it. It would be interesting to find out if there was something I could change.”

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4925[/ATTACH]On a gorgeous Minnesota July afternoon, Jack Goin, the Twins’ manager of major league administration and baseball research, sits in the Target Field broadcast booth high above the playing field. Down below, the Twins are take batting practice and a variation of infield warm-ups that happens behind protective screens at every base. There is controlled chaos with batted balls going every which direction. The team is preparing for that evening’s game. Goin, meanwhile, is a part of the Twins’ front office team that has been preparing for the upcoming trade deadline. Since the June draft, the organization’s attention has been shifted towards the game’s big swap meet on the last day of July. The internal process for the trade deadline starts with an abundance of prospect research and checking scouting report. Goin reviews each organization’s top prospects, adding others who may have being intriguing statistically, and connecting with the team’s director of pro scouting, Vern Followell to compare notes. “We start looking at if we have reports on prospects, real prospects, which everyone has ranked. We look at the top 20, top 30, whatever. Specifically of those teams that are in the buying mode,” Goin says. “Now whether that is off of those lists or I’ve gone through and tried to cross-check it myself and say here are guys we should have interest in regardless of what our scouting reports say. Then we talk about it.” This is when Goin’s statistical favorites are vetted through the lens of the scout. Followell and his team’s scouting reports may help illuminate why a prospect is having an abundance of unexpected success. They may be hitters seeing a high percentage of fastballs in bandbox minor league parks or pitchers who are old for that particular level and are thriving by spinning off curveballs in the dirt; essentially, players who are succeeding through methods that may become obsolete as they progress in the minor league system. Occasionally, a potentially useful prospect may fly under the radar and require further scouting. It could be due to Goin’s research or a scout’s recommendation that a player was identified, but the Twins want to be thorough and complete with their information as possible if a team calls up to discuss a deal on a moment’s notice. “We try to make sure we haven’t missed anybody to limit the emergency visits as you get close [to the deadline]. It’s kind of like the draft; you are flying across the country at the last minute.” If a team has an information advantage going into the trade deadline, it means they can swap a David Hollins for a David Ortiz or turn a Brian Buchanan into a Jason Bartlett. Of course, those types of trades seem like ages ago for the ballclub. When was the last time Minnesota could consider itself the indisputable victor? Since then, teams have beefed up their analytics departments as well as their scouting teams. On their website, the Twins have 14 people listed under Baseball Operations. By comparison, the Pittsburgh Pirates, baseball’s newest surging darling, have 37 Baseball Operations roles involving both scouting and analysts on their website. Even small-market teams like the Pirates are going on the offensive when it comes to identifying as well as retaining talent. Goin agrees that the constructs of the trade deadline have changed. “There’s a difference in what the trade deadline is now versus what the trade deadline used to be,” he added. “I think it used to be more of a negotiation where you say we’re not giving up this guy and you get a list of A, B and C and you can take one guy from A and one guy from B and two guys from C, or whatever the combination.” “Because there is so much prep work – between analysis and scouting – teams really funnel down who they want. They say if you want this guy, we need this guy, this guy and this guy. Or they have a formula of we need a guy whose close in Triple-A, maybe a lesser ceiling, we need a certain position and then we want another guy that is low but have a chance to be the guy.” The Cubs’ recent Matt Garza trade demonstrates this mentality. With the Rangers in need of additional pitching and the Cubs looking to rebuild, they landed Mike Olt, a third base prospect with some major league experience, Justin Grimm, a starting pitcher with 22 major league games under his belt and then a lower level pitcher, C.J. Edwards, who has plenty of upside. The Cubs will also be entitled to a player-to- be-named-later as well. One starter with an expiring contract landed Chicago up to four useful chips. How do trade talks start? In the movie Moneyball, Brad Pitt ate three fistfuls of popcorn, made five calls and dealt two players – all in the span of ten minutes. Naturally, that is the Hollywood version of what is often a lengthy process. Some teams will use the divide-and-conquer approach to determine the lay of the land early in the month of July. Calls will be made by various members of the front to former colleagues or friends in another organization, putting out feelers to gauge interest. What do they need? Are they looking to shop anyone? Maybe a follow-up call is made. This is done by buyers and sellers alike but not the Twins says Goin, it is not how they operate. For the Twins, trade talks can start from the stands at a game with an innocuous conversation between scouts. “You’ll get one of our scouts calling in and he’ll say I was talking to so-and-so at the park the other day and they got interest in this guy or need a backup catcher and we need a utility infield. Then Terry [Ryan] would just respond by saying tell them to call us.” Some general managers use the media as a means of letting other teams know that they are buyers or sellers. Ryan recently used the local scribes to let people know that the team would listen to offers on everyone, thereby letting all the other GMs know that the Twins are open for business. Others use the media to gain information, particularly from MLBTradeRumors.com. “Everybody monitors that stuff,” acknowledges Goin. “There are GMs that see something and they call right away and they admit, hey, I saw on MLB Trade Rumors that you guys are shopping Liriano.” The trade market changes on the fly. One day a GM may be checking to see if his office phone is actually plugged in to having it ring incessantly. Houston’s GM Jeff Luhnow said that prior to the Garza trade there was little discussions for the Astros’ right-handed starter Bud Norris. Now, with Garza off the board, Luhnow expects to have different conversations regarding his player. As the trade deadline plays out, teams that are buying may become more desperate. At the same time, selling teams may wait too long and miss out on the buying market. Timing is everything. Part of that timing is deciding whether the team is a buyer or seller. There is no magic date in the schedule in which teams make that decision. The Twins do not run any projections at the All Star break to calculate what the remainder of the season is going to look like. The standings tell them everything they need to know. Double-digit deficits can be a gentle reminder that the season is not going as desired. “Depending on where you are, you try to hang on. Sometimes you may hang on too long,” says Goin. “We’re all competitive and it is hard to get that out of your system. We still want to compete, we want to win. There are a lot of things that go into making a trade. Then there are times that it is obvious that you are out of it.” And this is one of those times. Having seen this season play out now going on three years, the Twins would be fooling themselves into believing they should be anything but sellers. Minnesota’s most valuable trade commodity is Glen Perkins. In additional to being an elite reliever, he has an extremely team-friendly contract. Because of baseball’s enlightenment that says stats like the save are overvalued, would a closer like Perkins still be able to garner a decent return? “There are teams that have gone beyond that, sure” Goin admits. “But I think there are still teams that are going to go out and try to make a trade for a Perkins or [Jonathon] Papelbon or whoever they think they need to get to shore up the back of the bullpen. Some teams are not going to worry about that as much but there still are teams that will say this guy is having a good year, he’s driven in 85 runs through July and we need to get a bat. It may be a function of him being a good hitter and the RBIs are secondary.” With just a week remaining until the trade deadline, the Twins have conducted their due diligence. Goin and company have identified and researched hundreds of potential prospects across the league. The question remains if any teams will be interested enough in any of the current available players. That, Goin says, may be one of the biggest misconception about the trade deadline. “With media the way it is, internet, Twitter, everything, it gets so much more hype than what actually goes on. You might sit there and no one is calling you back. You may say we’d love to trade. We got guys or we’d like to trade for your guy and you do not get a call back. They literally do not call back. It’s strange. There is a lot of work that actually goes in to prepare for nothingness.”

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4824[/ATTACH]The Minnesota Twins have excelled in certain areas of their team-building. While they may be light years behind in developing starting pitchers, their ability to identify inexpensive bullpen talent has been impressive when it comes to the arms race. Casey Fien is one such find. For less than a million in salary the 29-year-old right-hander has provided the team with over $7 million in production value, according to Fangraphs.com’s valuation. That is a significant contribution from a pitcher who was on the verge of being organizational flotsam. Had the Twins not picked him up in 2012, Fien knows it could be possible that he would still be shuffling between different clubs’ Triple-A affiliates. He also acknowledges that if it were not for the Twins, he may not be the pitcher he is today. In his life before professional baseball, Fien already lived a fairly nomadic existence. After high school, the right-hander bounced around from three different colleges: William Penn University in Oskaloosa, Iowa, Golden West College in Huntington Beach, California and finally graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. In 2006, with a small farm community worth of ballplayers selected before him, the Tigers tapped him with pick number five-hundred and ninety-two. Being selected twenty rounds deep in the major league draft does not assure anything. Unless you are a stud high school prospect with college as leverage, draftees rarely make enough to finance a used Honda Accord with their bonus money. The road to the majors is filled with plenty of detours – and Fien’s path shows that. Following a seven-year stint in Detroit’s organization, with ten appearances at the major league level scattered between 2009 and 2010 (a season which began in March with him being waiver claimed by Boston and then Toronto before returning to Detroit less than twenty days later), Fien spent 2011 with the Houston Astros. A minor elbow strain eventually forced the club to cut ties with him in August. After a winter in the Mexican Leagues, the Twins extended him a minor league contract in January 2012. It was not as if Fien lacked the tools to succeed. After all, he had a mid-90s fastball and above average secondary pitches. Something needed to happen. It was then in the Minnesota Twins organization that it all clicked. “That’s a good way to put it,” said Fien. “It just started clicking for me. I started throwing everything for strikes and once you can start someone off-speed and then locate your fastball from then on out it’s your game, not their game.” In a late season call-up, Fien had a 2.06 ERA, the second-lowest among rookies to throw 35 innings or more. Did a change in his approach help him to succeed that year? “I wouldn’t say ‘change it’,” said Fien, “it was more of ‘focusing on what you need to work on’.” And helping him to focus on what he needed to work on was Rochester’s trio of instructors. “The pitching coaches up and down the lineup, they tell you what you need to work on, how to get to the big leagues. Last year, I had two great coaches, I had Bobby [Cuellar], who’s in the bullpen now, and I also had [Rochester manager] Gene Glynn, who was a great person to talk to. And Bruno [Tom Brunansky], Bruno was a guy who I would go to and ask ‘what do I need to do to get these hitters out?’” The 29-year-old California native may have a warm demeanor with a friendly smile in the clubhouse, but out on the mound, he clearly has ice water in his veins. Fien says this was not always the case the previous years in which he was simply trying to throw strikes instead of pitching. The lessons and skills learned from Rochester in 2012 helped turn him into a reliable late innings reliever, and now he has been used more frequently in high leverage situations over the last month as Jared Burton has struggled. What’s more is his services have been requested with numerous runners on base – 30 to be exact in the first half, the seventh highest in the American League. That is a significant undertaking and vote of confidence by the manager considering he allowed 11 of the 25 inherited runners to score last year. To his credit, Fien has allowed just four to score or 13%, a minuscule rate when compared to the league average of 32%. Small sample size notwithstanding, he has clamped down when he needed the final out of an inning, particularly when a runner was in scoring position. According to his splits at Baseball-Reference.com, opponents are 0-for-18 with two outs and have a running on second or beyond. In April, Fien told reporters that in those RISP situations, he uses the hitters’ aggressiveness against them. As hitters begin to smell those RBIs, they tend to expand the zone in efforts to drive that runner in. Using a running cutter/slider, Fien has been able to move this pitch from one side of the strike zone to well off the plate and leaves hitters completely incapacitated. How impressive has his cut piece been? If you search Fangraphs.com’s pitch value leaderboard, Fien’s 8.8 runs above average falls within the top five of qualified relievers and one name ahead of Mariano Rivera, whose cutter has elevated him to legendary status over his career. Matching an approach with the stuff is a surefire method for keeping yourself in the big leagues. “Getting confidence and sticking with your game plan,” Fien says revealing his secret recipe for success. “Because once you try to do something that you are not supposed to…young guys, when they get here, they try to do too much. You just have to find your niche, your comfort zone.”

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4676[/ATTACH]Injuring what was one of his hottest in the month of June to what could have been an avoidable play by Indians’ catcher Yan Gomes is not lost on manager Ron Gardenhire. Ryan Doumit had been hitting .278/.345/.481 with three home runs, five doubles and a triple in June prior to suffering a sprained ankle in Cleveland on June 23. Since the incident, Doumit has sat out three games and has gone 5-for-20 (.250) without any extra base hits in his 21 plate appearances. Doumit, who was coming into score on Oswaldo Arcia’s double, was forced to stutter step around home plate as Gomes swings left leg across the plate area for a brief moment. From his vantage point, Gardenhire’s contends that this move was an intentional attempt to divert Doumit’s current path. "We had a great view from the dugout and the catcher didn't have the ball and at the last second he stuck his foot back on top of home plate," Gardenhire said on his 1500ESPN radio show. "Just kind of reached out behind him and stuck his foot there before the ball got home. That's kind of one of those not good plays in baseball. (Doumit) ends up spraining his ankle and we were pretty upset about that.” Here is a clip of the offending play: http://i.imgur.com/rBHPRO2.gif From the advantage of the replay, we can see that the play was all but over when Doumit arrive to the plate. The ball was both late and offline. Ignoring Gomes for a moment. The interesting thing here is that Doumit does not slide. Certainly this does not change the fact that Gomes was in a place he shouldn’t be, but a slide would have made for a safe and injury-free arrival to home plate. Just three days prior when the Twins were taking on the White Sox, Doumit was thrown out at the plate on a close play (video here). Notice that Doumit does not slide at this play either – despite the fact that Justin Morneau was clearly waving for him to hit the deck. This play had just as much likelihood of Doumit injuring himself as did the Gomes play. Someone teach this man to slide. [ATTACH=CONFIG]4675[/ATTACH] Gomes could have been thinking for a split-second that he may have an opportunity to block a slide (which Doumit should have been doing) and apply a quick tag. That notion likely disappeared quickly as the chances of the ball beating Doumit to the plate vanished. Also, judging from the flight of the ball, he may have had intentions of trying to reposition himself to receive it but thought better of it as Doumit approached. The fact is it is hard to say if what Gomes did had malicious intent. Going by the book, Gomes had no right to be positioned in the place that he was. In fact, simply being there is against the rules. According to the MLB rulebook, Rule 7.06 states that: This rule has rarely, if ever, been enforced by umpires. On the other hand, baseball’s unwritten rules state that Gomes’ behavior was a huge no-no and could, ultimately, warrant retaliation. "In that play, the plate was open, the ball wasn't going to be there and the next thing you know the guy sticks his leg out," Gardenhire said on his show. "(That) is not a good thing in baseball. It's kind of one of those unwritten rules that blocking the plate without the ball or trying to trip somebody ... (you look for) payback." Eye for an eye. Tooth for a tooth. Catcher for a catcher. Mostly due to the injuries to San Francisco’s Buster Posey or St. Louis’s Yadier Molina because of collisions at the plate, MLB’s rule has been debated at length over the past several years. It could prove to be a difficult act to completely abolish mostly because it is an event that takes two to tango: One, the runners barreling in and two, with the catchers walling off home plate. In most cases catchers are portrayed as innocent victims, catchers have their own methods which can force the runner into a full-out offensive – be it a hard slide or a lowered shoulder. While MLB could suspend those runners who turn their bodies into projectiles, there still exists the practice of teaching catchers how to block home plate from the incoming runner which exposes the catchers to a variety of injuries. Ryan Doumit is no stranger to this education process considering in 2008 while he was in camp with the Pittsburgh Pirates, then-manager John Russell, a former catcher himself, gave Doumit additional attention showing him techniques to “blocking home plate”. These lessons obviously were handy when Doumit suffered an ankle sprain in 2011 after the Cubs’ Carlos Pena wiped out his left ankle in a slide at home plate (of which Doumit was blocking like a solar eclipse). Had Doumit remained inside of the baseline and not attempted to block Pena with his leg, he would have had an easy sweep tag and a healthy ankle. The Oakland Athletics -- those damn nerdy book-types -- took note of what happened to the franchise backstop across the Bay in 2011 and made an edict from the top to keep their catchers out of harm’s way. Then-A’s catcher Kurt Suzuki said that Billy Beane told him specifically to give the runner the right-of-way to avoid contact at the plate. Likewise, the New York Mets had this conversation broached in spring training when manager Terry Collins ordered catcher Travis d’Arnaud to avoid blocking the plate with his left leg because of the prior knee injuries. Mets GM Sandy Alderson – and chairman of the rules committee, by the way – responded to Collins’ request to his catcher shortly after, suggesting that the organization needs to look at their policy on the subject of plate-blocking. “Whether that will be permanent with him or permanent with all of our catching prospects of something [Mets catcher] John Buck will adopt, or the spike tag will becomes standard for catchers in the big leagues- I don’t know,” Alderson told a group of Mets bloggers. “But I think it’s an issue we have to address globally, rather than just in the case of Travis d’Arnaud. And to some extent we have an obligation to treat everyone the same way.” Then there are instances that make you question whether certain teams are going the extra mile to instill in their catchers to protect the plate at all costs; that they are the last line of defense between one more run. As mentioned above, Pittsburgh took time to instill plate-blocking techniques. While it could all be coincidental, Cleveland has had a recent string of catchers taking some beatings at home plate. In 2010, rookie catcher Carlos Santana had his knee ligaments rearranged while Boston’s Ryan Kalish bulled into his lower half that was straddling the baseline before the ball’s arrival. That was not even Santana’s first run-in at the dish that year. In his third game of his career, the White Sox’s Adam Dunn tried to separate him from his equipment for standing directly in front of home (and the throw was cut-off by the first baseman). Meanwhile, this April, Indians catcher Lou Marson was blown up at the plate by the Rays’ Desmond Jennings after a bang-bang play when Jennings tried to score from third on an infield grounder to the third baseman. Marson was up the line and consuming the entire route home. Afterwards, Marson provided insight on his technique in that situation, which is to get the runner to hesitate before the collision. "I'm trying to block the plate and make you make a decision,” said the catcher. “Are you going to slide, or are you going to try to blow me up? I feel like that split second they have to decide kind of slows them down, at least a little bit." Gomes, who is new to the Indians organization in 2013, may have been preparing to do something similar to what Marson described on the play. Block the plate and brace for contact. From Gomes’ perspective, there could have been a play at the plate forthcoming. It was not as if the ball was heading for a cut-off man. And it was not as if Ryan Doumit was running like a bat out of hell either. Plus there was the added caveat of the throw being outside the third base line while Gomes was set up inside the line. With a runner on base, Gomes may have been beginning to maneuver to corral the throw which was now heading behind the scampering Doumit. Of course, superseding what was going on inside Gomes’ head is the fact that both MLB’s rules and baseball’s code – the unwritten rules of the game – both explicitly say that the catcher shouldn’t be anywhere near the base without the ball. Had Doumit been a different kind of individual, he may have leveled Gomes like Dunn did to Santana and would have been completely vindicated in the baseball world. Doumit didn’t and suffered a sprained ankle for his troubles. Even Gomes’ own manager, Terry Francona, would have likely condoned Doumit running into Gomes as a “baseball play”. "If you don't want to have a collision, instruct your catcher to move. That's really easy, but you can't make a rule,” Francona said not long after his catcher Lou Marson was removed from his spikes. “The rule is the catcher can't block the plate until he has the ball. For the very most part, that's when you see guys get hit. They're the gritty guys, but they try to block the plate before they have the ball, and there's a bobble, or they get in late, and they can't brace themselves. That's where you see the problems.” Will the Twins retaliate when the Indians come to town in a little over a week? The fireworks will be on display on July 4 but if Ron Gardenhire makes good on his promises, there may be a second show later this month.