Parker Hageman

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Welcome to Twinternationals! This is a space for Twins fans from different countries to read about their team in their native language. This section is run by Venezuelan Mariana Guzmán (@TwinsLatinos) and Brazilian Thiéres Rabelo (@TwinsBrasil).
 
On this blog, we’re going to write articles in Spanish and Portuguese, our native languages. Our goal is to spread the Minnesota Twins popularity to a much greater audience. American sports have grown each day more popular in South America and possibly all over the world, so we want to take advantage of that. We love the Twins this much!
 
If you are a fellow foreigner that roots for the Twins, feel free to comment and interact with us here and also on our Twitter accounts. If you are from a country that doesn’t speak those two languages and you would like to be a contributor to this blog as well, please let us know. Our door is open!
 
We hope you enjoy our work!
¡Bienvenidos!
Bem-vindos!

The state of hockey has met the city of baseball. This spring at CHS Field, home of the St. Paul Saints, heralded the opening of a new museum devoted to the history of the great American game in the capital city. In a 2,000 square foot space tucked down the left field line and free to ticket holders during Saints games, fans can learn about the memorable teams and players on the east side of the Twin Cities stretching back more than a century.
 
The museum uses a variety of artifacts and displays to tell the story of St. Paul’s baseball history, from early contests in the late 1800’s to its crosstown rivalry with the Minneapolis Millers to the “new” Saints franchise that started in 1993. It also includes information on the St. Paul Colored Gophers (an early 1900’s black baseball powerhouse) and Toni Stone, a St. Paul native who became one of the only women to play professionally in the Negro Leagues. In one of the displays titled “Brushes With Greatness,” the museum highlights the famous names that appeared at Lexington Park in the 1920’s. When Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig visited in 1927, the duo “spilled nearly a quart of ink autographing baseballs and scorecards for small boys,” according to the Pioneer Press.
 
 
On Monday, July 1, the Halsey Hall chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research will be staffing a booth at CHS Field for the 7:05 pm game against the Lincoln Saltdogs. This game will also feature a historical giveaway as the first 2,000 fans will receive a 1937 Saints replica jersey. Attendees will be able to view the local chapter’s banner, “Beyond the Twins: Hall of Famers in Minnesota,” which highlights famous athletes who played in the North Star State prior to 1960 such as former Saint Roy Campanella, the legendary Dodgers catcher who became the first black player in the American Association. Chapter members will also be on hand to discuss other opportunities to get involved in local baseball history. To buy tickets, please visit the Saints website.

Introducing Through a Child’s Eyes
A blog about how kids experiencing winning Twins baseball for the first time connect and have fun without concerns of payroll, unwritten rules, or judgement.
 
The Twins’s postseason run and World Series Championship in 1991 was the first time I really got into baseball. I remember the 1987 Championship, but not that well as I was only six at the time. But 1991 put me in the prime age range to catch on to a fun club for a magical season. As my mom tells it, I was up early each morning to flip open the sports page of the Duluth News-Tribune to read the game recap and check the box score. I hated games out west that missed the deadline.
 
I’ve always followed the club, but with a handful of years as the exception they’ve generally been a pretty bad franchise. Like many of us, I’ve thought back to 1991 a lot this year. In part, because the team seems to have “it” this year, but mostly because my kids are, for the first time, experiencing fun, winning baseball. They are 9(girl), 8(boy), almost 7(boy), and 5 (boy).
 
Fox Sports North is on in the evenings at our house most nights, year-round. We follow all sports and the kids have wide-ranging interests. Prior to this season, baseball has been something they play, something they’re aware of, but not something with which they have any connection.
 
Now we’re doing math on batting averages, they think Buxton is the world’s fastest man, and we’re talking about “triple home-runs” and the “real deal.” I hear my left-handed throwing son (8) want to be a catcher (sorry, bud.) My daughter (9) loves Garv-sauce. They ask about the back of baseball cards and we discuss the history of the game. My nearly seven-year-old wants to be an Air Force pilot like Ted Williams.
 
Let me share one story as a quick introduction- My eldest son recently hollered to me while I was in the bathroom, “Dad, Buxton just swung at a slider, now it’s the real deal!”
 
Me: “The real deal?”
Son: “Yes! You know, three balls and two strikes!”
Me: “You mean a full count?”
Son: “Yeah, but with two outs! The real deal!”
 
We laughed about it, and now in our house, a full count at-bat with two outs is now a Real Deal.
 
I intend to write once or twice a week and share stories as my kids learn the game from a different perspective- a winning one- and hopefully fall in love with baseball. I hope you’ll come along with us as it’s been fun to watch baseball again as many of us first learned it -Through a Child’s Eyes.
 
 
The author, Tim Fredrickson lives with his family in Brainerd, MN. He can be found on Twitter @TimFredrickson.

Even though I'm not a Minnesotan, nor do I live in this beautiful state, I've been observing you guys for years. I see a lot of pessimism when it comes to sports. And who can blame you? Few fans in America love their teams as much as you do and, at the same time, have endured such traumatic playoff moments with the Vikings and Wild or such long playoff draughts with the Twins and Timberwolves. You have the right to be – in the words of our Twins Daily own Parker Hageman – dead inside when it comes to sports. Well, maybe it's time to believe again.
I don't live in the US and I haven't set foot there since May 2013. I'm from a country where most people literally have no clue of what baseball is. I met the game of baseball in 2008, at age 16. So, it's nearly impossible for me to have access to any publication (or clothing items, memorabilia, sports gear...) about the sport. But, miraculously, one of my students gave me a very special gift some weeks ago.
Having taken an exchange programme to the USA in 2015, he was hosted by a Kansas City family during his time there. He knows nothing about baseball himself, but his family did and they gave him a Sports Illustrated 2015 World Series Commemorative Issue. He kept that, only to, almost four years later, give that as a present to his all-time favorite teacher. I was thrilled. I almost didn't even care about the fact that the Royals are a Twins division rival. Afterall, it was the first baseball publication I ever laid hands on.
The magazine sat on my desk at home for some days. In the meantime, the Twins flourished as the team with the best record in baseball. I would be lying if I said I saw that coming, but I can't say I'm shocked by that either. But a lot of people are, indeed, shocked. I lost count of how many people on social media are doubting the Twins. “Enjoy 'em while you can, 'cause they won't last”. And that's not even from people outside of Minnesota only. Like I explained on the first paragraph, many Minnesotans don't believe their Twins are for real. That made me a little mad. And then, the magazine spoke to me.
In the midst of so much pessimism and disbelief coming from every which way, I started browsing through that $12.99 SI issue from November of 2015 and I thought to myself: why can't the Twins be this year's version of the 2015 Royals? And believe me or not, I found a lot of similarities between the two teams. I'm not saying here that Minnesota will win the World Series. All I'm saying is that it's OK to believe in it – like I do right now.
Even though we've had our hearts broken by the Brett Favre interception, the Gary Anderson and Blair Walsh missed field goals, the Jimmy Butler fiasco, the Joe Nathan blown save in the '09 ALDS and, well, the whole Wild playoff history, you might not be a fool to let your guard down for this Twins team. If you don't believe me, let us go through some of the things these two great ball clubs have in common.
 
A couple of underdogs
When experts started predicting what would happen that season, almost none of them believed the 2015 Royals would even make the playoffs. Which, in retrospect, is kind of odd, considering they had just been to the World Series less than six months earlier. In his opening piece, Jay Jaffe wrote about how the Royals were picked by specialists to make it to the postseason in only 13 of 149 predictions.
Maybe this year’s Twins are not as much discredited as the Royals were then. Per that year’s PECOTA, Kansas City was expected to have a 72-90 record. Instead, they had a 95-67 one. This year’s PECOTA, at first, predicted an 81-81 record for the Twins, but a number of specialists considered them when predicting which team would win the AL Central.
A month and a half into the season, with over 25% of games played, Minnesota has the second best in baseball, after holding the best one overall for over a week. The Twins are on pace to win almost 105 games. I don’t actually believe they will reach triple digits in wins, but at this point it’s plausible to believe that they will surpass the 90-win mark. Curiously enough, after 43 games, the 2015 Royals and the current Twins owned an identical record of 28-15.
Another aspect that those teams have in common is the small Opening Day payroll. On that same Jaffe opening piece, he wrote that the Royals were the first team since the 2003 Marlins to win a World Series, even though they were at the bottom half of all MLB payrolls (17th, at $112.9 million). Per Spotrac, the Twins had the 18th payroll in the league on Opening Day, at $122.1 million, almost $12 million below league average.
Even their track record leading up to their World Series success is somewhat similar to the Twins. Between 2004 and 2012, Kansas City had nine losing records, never winning more than 75 games and with an average of 66 wins per season on that span. Then, they won 86 and 89 games in the two seasons before their championship year. In the six seasons that follow their last division title, the Twins won an average of 67 games each season, including a 59-103 record in 2016, the worst one in club history. They went on to win 85 and make the playoffs for the first time in seven years in 2017 and came close to an eighty win season again last year, finishing with 78.
I don’t believe in coincidences nor am I saying that all of these will have any effect on the outcome of this season. They won’t. But it’s fun to look at those facts, especially when basically no one believes smaller market teams can actually win a title. Let’s not buy into the notion that a team can only win a ring with a $200 million payroll.
A steamroller offense
Tom Verducci wrote, on that same SI issue, a piece entitled ‘Postmodern Swing’, which broke down the main strengths of that Royal offense. According to him, one of the most important features of that offense was its aggressiveness. The Royals saw the fewest pitches per plate appearance that year, with 3.71. Their philosophy was to chase after hittable pitches early and not give up easy strikes. Still, they were the team that struck out the least in MLB that year, with a 15.9% strikeout rate. They also average an MLB 7th best 4.4 runs per game. Which team has done something similar this year?
Some weeks ago, Aaron Gleeman wrote this great piece explaining how the Twins have added power and, at the same time, have been striking out much less. They have been the team that struck out the third least in MLB, currently with a 19.5% strikeout rate. In comparison with the ‘15 Royals, Minnesota is also scoring more, with a 5.4 runs per game average, and has much more power, as they lead the MLB with .236 ISO, against .144 of those Royals. In terms of pitches per plate appearance, Minnesota also doesn’t see a lot of pitches, with an average of 3.78.
Both these Twins and those Royals have something else in common. They both swing a lot and get good contact. Here is how they rank:
2015 Royals
Contact% - 81.9% (1st in MLB)
O-Contact% - 68.8% (2nd)
Swing% - 47.6% (9th)
O-Swing% - 32.5% (5th)
 
2019 Twins
Contact% - 77.5% (6th in MLB)
O-Contact% - 63.2% (7th)
Swing% - 48.1% (4th)
O-Swing% - 32.3% (6th)
And one last nice coincidence that these two offenses have. In 2015, the Royals had Alcides Escobar as their leadoff man, even though he had a low OBP, contradicting modern tendencies. Escobar finished the season with a .293 OBP. He also saw very few pitches, with an average of 3.49 per plate appearance and swung at 51.3% of pitches and managed to make contact in 83.8% of them. Looking at Minnesota’s current leadoff man, Max Kepler, we also have an aggressive hitter (51.5 % Swing% and 82.2% Contact%), who sees fez pitches (3.56 per PA) and has a not so high base occupation (.308). According to Verducci’s piece, Escobar ‘set the tone’ for the rest of the Royal lineup, making opposing pitchers aware of the fact that they wouldn’t get any easy strikes.
Quality pitching
When we talk about the Royals pitching from that World Series campaign, the first thing that comes to our minds is their extraordinary bullpen. Then, one might think that here would lie the biggest difference between the two teams. Yes, that Wade Davis led group of relievers was no match for this current Minnesota ‘pen, but when comparing the two pitching staffs overall, we can find more identical features.
Believe it or not, but the two pitching staffs have virtually the same numbers, with an inversion. Kansas City had a lights-out bullpen and a below average rotation, resulting in the 10th best ERA in the MLB. The Twins on the other hand, don’t have a stellar rotation nor bullpen, but both those groups are among the ten best in baseball.
2015 Royals
Overall: 3.74 ERA (10th), 4.04 FIP (15th)
Starters: 4.34 ERA (22nd), 4.32 FIP (21st)
Relievers: 2.72 ERA (2nd), 3.56 FIP (10th)
 
2019 Twins
Overall: 3.88 ERA (9th), 4.13 FIP (13th)
Starters: 3.66 ERA (6th), 4.23 FIP (13th)
Relievers: 4.31 ERA (19th), 3.96 FIP (9th)
Davis was out of this world that season. If there has been a reliever more deserving than him of winning the first Cy Young award in the AL since 1992, I really believe he was the best candidate. Not only did he finish the regular season with a 0.94 ERA in 61 ⅓ innings pitched, but he also neared perfection during the postseason, posting a 0.00 ERA in eight games.
I don’t see anyone within this Twins pitching staff (so far) with the ability to be what Davis was for that Royals team - but there’s no need for it. Up until now, Minnesota’s pitchers have done a decent job. The overall bullpen numbers are a bit tainted because of bad outings from young arms tested out of Rochester and because of slumps from, mainly, Trevor Hildenberger and Adalberto Mejía. But, as of this moment, six of the eight bullpen arms in the 25-man roster have an ERA of 2.76 or lower. Newcomer Austin Adams hasn’t pitched this season yet.
Their rotations can’t be compared. At least until this moment, Twins starters have done an outstanding job. Maybe we’ve set the bar too low after years of bad rotations, but things have looked extremely nice. Which, with this whole exercise of comparing these two teams can be very exciting. The Royals were world champions even though the four starters they’ve used in the postseason combined for a 4.96 ERA in 16 starts.
Deadline additions: a blueprint for the Twins
To help end the 30-year World Series drought, the Royals traded for two key-pieces near the trade deadline. They traded Brandon Finnegan, John Lamb and Cody Reed for Reds’ superstar starter Johnny Cueto and sent Aaron Brooks and Sean Manaea to Oakland in exchange for veteran super utility player Ben Zobrist. Those proved to be vital additions to their goals.
Zobrist had a solid last portion of the regular season with the Royals, slashing .284/.364/.453 (.816). During the postseason, he performed even better, hitting .303/.365/.515 (.880) and with five multi-hit games. But he also provided a much needed boost that might have made a big difference.
Before his arrival, Royals second basemen slashed .231/.251/.319 (.570). In 35 games starting at that position in the remainder of the regular season, Zobrist hit .275/.348/.457 (.805). He also played 18 games as a LF, a position in which Kansas City had a good production, with .273/.383/.467 (.850). But Zobrist managed to top even that, hitting .299/.392/.463 (.855).
 
Cueto on the other hand wasn’t as dominant as Zobrist, but he was still essential to the Kansas City success. He had a 4.76 ERA in 13 starts for the Royals during the regular season and a 5.40 ERA in the postseason, but those numbers alone can be very misleading. In four playoff starts, he had a mediocre outing (6.0 innings, 4 ER) in game 2 of the ALDS, a terrible one (2.0 IP, 8 ER) in game 3 of the ALCS, but two amazingly good ones to compensate. He pitched a on run complete game in the World Series, helping the Royals to open a 2-0 lead in the series.
So what’s the lesson the Twins can learn out of the Royals shopping in the 2015 trade deadline? It’s hard to imagine, at least based on this first quarter of the season, that Minnesota is going after big names to help their offense. I mean, all help is welcomed, but if they had to invest top prospects in one area, I don’t believe the offense would be their priority.
But when we look at their pitching staff, you can see a lot of room for improvement. As well as the rotation has pitched so far, the Twins would benefit a lot from a better arm to fill the gap Michael Pineda has been leaving until this moment. He currently has a 5.85 ERA, the worst among starters. The bullpen also could use some help - even more than the rotation. Bottomline is, it doesn’t matter how well the arms might be doing, with their clear exceptions, of course, shopping for one or two dominant arms could make a difference between a World Series victory and a quick visit to the postseason.
And who could be the best candidates? Well, if you’re talking about bringing in a starter and a reliever, one can only consider signing the two biggest unsigned names in the last offseason: former Cy Young winner Dallas Keuchel and superstar closer Craig Kimbrel. But this would also represent a great risk, given the fact we don’t know in what shape they would show up. Also, there’s very little, if any, indications that Minnesota would be willing to pay them. I mean, if there’s any interest, why didn’t they pull the trigger yet?
Since that’s the most unlikely option, we should look at what possible options they could go after via trade. For rotation help, I believe the best choices that they would have would be Madison Bumgarner or Stephen Strasburg, MadBum being my favorite. For the bullpen, my favorite candidate would be old friend Liam Hendriks. But there are many more options around and I’m sure the Twins front office has a keen eye for that job.
In conclusion, smaller market teams will always raise more suspiscions than inspire confidence among non-fans. They will always doubt those teams. But the 2015 Royals are the closest example we have that this dream is doable. And, as shown during this article, they have a long list of common features with this year’s Twins. So, it’s OK to believe.

There’s growing concern within the baseball community about the health of the MLB as an organization, and the game overall. Since the mid-2000s, attendance and television ratings have been dropping consistently. According to Baseball Reference, in the past 20 years attendance per game across the entire MLB peaked in 2007 at 32,696 per game. In the ten years since, there has been a steady decline in attendance per game all the way down to 29,908 per game in 2017. That is a decrease of just about 8.5 percent. I’m not including 2018 numbers in this analysis as we are still in season and the spring typically draws a smaller crowd. The commissioner’s office often talks about game length as being a driving factor in this decline, but I believe that is an oversimplification of the trend, and there are bigger factors in play.
 
Game Length and Attendance Trend Lines
 
In 1998, the MLB expanded to include the all current 30 teams. In this analysis, I’m using data from 1998 onward because it most fully represents the league we see now, and expansion often alters attendance for a wide variety of factors that I won’t be addressing in this discussion. Look at Figure 1 below:
 
 


 
 
Figure one, which compares attendance and game length, raises some questions about the validity of the League’s primary argument that game length is affecting financial success of the league. As you can see, these two lines don’t seem to be correlated at all besides a very faint trend. It’s also interesting to note that the total range in game lengths in this 20-year span is only 19 minutes, with the average length per 9 innings being 2 hours and 53 minutes. 13 of the 20 years fall within 5 minutes of the average game length. In other words, we are not seeing egregious volatility in game length in the MLB. At the very least, it’s a stretch to assume game length is the sole cause of the downward trend in attendance.
 
Reducing Game Length
 
I want to be clear in this post: I am not against making minor changes in baseball to speed up the game. I think in 2017 we were at a point in game length that was not sustainable over the long term (3 hours and 5 minutes/9 innings). The corresponding rule changes made for 2018 seem to have had a slight effect. So far in 2018, the game length per 9 innings is down to 2:59.
Something that does drives game time up considerably is pitches per plate appearance, as you can see below in Figure 2.
 


 
I heard suggestions such as lowering the mound once again to reduce the pitcher’s advantage, thus creating less strikeouts and reducing pitcher per plate appearance. In theory, this could work. When the MLB lowered the mound in 1969, run production increased for two years. However, in 1971 & 1972, it suddenly declined, leading to the implementation of the DH in the American League in 1973. If you went to lowering the mound in 2019, you may have a shorter game due to less strikeouts, but run production could spike so much that you would have to make another adjustment, or worse, the games actually got longer due to more runs. Not to mention changing the record books. So, what actions can the MLB take to help raise attendance levels?
 
The Real Reason Attendance is Down
 
The reason people aren’t attending games is because it’s too damn expensive. Since 2006, the average MLB ticket price has gone from $22.21 to $32.44, per Statista.com. That is an increase of 46% over just 12 years. This is an extreme burden on families, and this increase is seriously outpacing inflation or any significant change in the economic environment. ValuePenguin.com had a great article that was written in 2016 about the true cost of attending a Major League Baseball game. They found that when you consider the median household incomes in MLB cities, and account for all associated costs with attending a game (tickets, food, drinks, transportation), on average a fan must work 4.3 hours to offset the cost of a game. You won’t attend many games if you’re being hit with that every time.
 
Conclusion
 
What bothers me about this conversation is that it’s largely led by the commissioner’s office. The commissioner wants financial success for the owners and teams. I don’t consider myself a baseball purist, but I don’t want to see major changes happen to the game in hopes of shortening game length, when a simple solution of lowering ticket prices could increase attendance just the same. All the changes being suggested will have a marginal effect on the time it takes to play a baseball game. As we saw in Figure 1, in the past 20 years, the average game length has only varied by 19 minutes. If you want something drastic to return to the 2:30 games of the mid-20th century, you would have to reduce the count to 2 strikes and 3 balls, or something even more drastic. So, let’s start a conversation on the affordability of the games, get more people (especially kids and families) into parks around the country, and get baseball back on track. Long term, it’s in the owners’ and the League’s best interest.
 
-Miles

As most of us know, April in Minnesota can be brutal. Snow, sleet, and rain accompanied by cold temperatures are always a possibility early in the season. The old saying April showers bring May flowers is thrown around everywhere, but it especially rings true in Minnesota. With the Twins having a 14 game home stand beginning the first week in April, and having 18 games total for the month, weather becomes a huge factor for the Twins’ attendance early in the year. Even the most die-hard baseball fans find it difficult to sit outside at a game when it is cold and raining. This makes me wonder why so many northern teams get scheduled to have early home games in the first place, when it is known that weather affects attendance, but that isn’t my job so I won’t try to tackle it.
 
April weather is definitely detrimental to the Twins’ attendance numbers, but it’s also going to hurt to lose All-Star and Cy Young vote-getter Ervin Santana, whom is still recovering from a right middle finger injury and will be out until at least May after having surgery. Missing him for a month and the weather could potentially make people wait until summer nights to come enjoy a game, but I say the time to make it to a game is now.
 
There are a ton of reasons to be excited about the Twins and to make it to Target Field in April; I could go on forever. But to save us all time, here are the top 10 reasons why you should get your tickets and go see a game.
 
1. Home Opener, the Giveaway, and the Future
The first home game of the year is always a big deal. It means spring is in full swing and baseball is back. It means there are 78 more home games to attend and good times to be had at the ballpark. The reason there is not 80 games this year is because there are 2 games in Puerto Rico versus the Indians that are home games for the Twins. The giveaway for opening day is always good, but the sweatshirt this year is awesome. Even if there’s a snow storm, we should all be willing to weather it on Opening Day to get these sweet sweatshirts. Another thing that can’t be over looked is Jose Berrios’s first Opening Day start. The guy flat out has some nasty stuff in his pitching arsenal and has showed moments of dominance that should make us all excited. He has been a Twins top prospect and could be the ace for years to come. May 18th of last year he went 7 and 2/3 innings with 11 K’s, a walk, and 2 hits against a talented Rockies lineup that was 3rd in runs scored. This is the kind of player the Twins want to see and that will get fans to show up every time he pitches. He is a must-watch in the month of April and hopefully, for months to come.
 
2. The World Series Champions are coming to Town
Every baseball fan can agree; it is always a big deal to see the reigning World Series Champs play. The Astros led the league in runs scored with 5.5 runs a game last year, and with offense this good and the AL MVP on your team in Jose Altuve, you’re not going to want to miss watching them in action. The Astros’ offense is good enough that perhaps they could slide by with mediocre pitching, but the Astros have great pitching too. Verlander, McCullers, and Kuechel could put on a quite a show for us, and the Twins are slated to get the number one pitcher in game one. Regardless of how early it is, the only chance to see Houston at Target Field barring a playoff series is early on, April 9th-11th, so don’t miss it.
 
3. Seattle and the Potential Hall of Famers
Ichiro, who will turn 45 in October, is the definition of a living legend. Imagine how much more he would have accomplished in the major leagues if he hadn’t spent as long in Japan. He has 3,080 hits in the Big leagues, and he could have had even more if he had come to America earlier. Who knows how often he will be in the lineup or how often he will play, but this could be the last time he comes to Minnesota as a professional baseball player. I’m confident that he will be enshrined into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, and besides this great accomplishment, he’s also a great individual. As great as he is, he isn’t the only player to see on Seattle worth the price of admission. Felix Hernandez, Robinson Cano, and Nelson Cruz make up a list of players who have had impressive careers. Felix and Robinson could be pushing towards the Hall if they continue the dominance they have had in the past.
 
4. Logan Morrison
Many people suspected that the Twins were going to try adding pitching to their lineup this year, and they did just that via trade. Jake Odorizzi is one of the new players to join the Twins’ pitching force, and I will touch on him later. It is known that the free agent market has been historically slow this year as many top free agents, such as Jake Arrieta and Alex Cobb, still remain unsigned. The Twins had money to spend this year as they have a lot of young players in pre-arbitration seasons, and many thought it would be on a pitcher. The Twins got that pitcher in Lance Lynn and it was cheap enough to have money left over. The Twins enjoyed success with Eduardo Escobar as he hit a career high 21 homeruns, and many people thought that would suffice with Sano, Mauer, and Escobar holding down the DH and corner duties. Sano has sexual assault allegations against him, and what the MLB does suspension wise is still up in the air. Enter Logan Morrison, who increased his launch angle 12 degrees from the year prior, and who also had a career year with 38 homeruns. The Twins saw a cheap option to get a hitter who could help DH for $6.5 million guaranteed. This is a steal for someone who had the season he did, though it may be hard to repeat. There is a vesting option depending on at-bats, but seeing him put on a Twinkies jersey and go to bat for us will be exciting.
 
5. A Strong Bullpen
The Twins’ Bullpen has had a fair share of ups and down over the past ten years. Despite this, the Twins’ list of all-star closers is composed of Joe Nathan, Glen Perkins, and Brandon Kintzler, and teams with this many closers of that caliber must have good bullpens. But actually, the twins bullpen has ranked 23rd in ERA over the last 5 years .The bullpen also includes names like Caleb Thielbar and Jared Burton. Good news for the Twins though is that entering this offseason with a weaker bullpen means free agent relievers were abundant. The Twins added three veteran relievers who had solid seasons last year and will be penciled in as contributors this year. Fernando Rodney was successful on 39 of 45 save opportunities, but he did have a 4.23 ERA. This scares a lot of folks, but his FIP of 3.03 shows solid chance for that ERA to fall this year. Addison Reed was another signee and reminds me of a poor man’s Andrew Mille, but that by no means is a slam. He doesn’t get the recognition he deserves, but is a solid reliever in the 7th and 8th innings. His 2.84 ERA, if replicated, will go a long way in the Twins’ pen. Zach Duke is another player to look at. He is a bounce back candidate whose move to the bullpen has had ups and downs, but his FIP of 2.85 in 2016 shows his potential as a reliever. Last year, that number was in the 5’s, but I remain optimistic. All three look to contribute and help hold leads late in games or at least keep them close, so this electric Twins’ offense can have a shot late in the game.
 
6. New Pitchers
When the Twins traded for Jake Odorizzi, they made a move for a pitcher that didn’t cost much on the prospect front and saved money compared to going out and getting a starter. The Twins, who have made brilliant moves all offseason, do so yet again by signing Lance Lynn to a 1 year, twelve million dollar deal. Lynn was arguably the third or fourth best free agent starter on the market and, according to reports, chose to play here over money and financial security. Too bad Yu Darvish didn’t feel this way. Lynn has had 5 seasons with 175 inning plus and an ERA below 4. A drop in his strike out rate and a rising FIP have put into question if he can maintain this consistency, but that’s a bet I’m willing to take. When Ervin returns, a pitching staff of Santana, Berrios, Lynn, Odorizzi, and Gibson is far better than last years, and it’s quite intriguing. It would be totally worth coming out to watch early in the season.
 
7. Nothing Falls but Rain Drops
Nothing falls but raindrops was the motto of the Twins’ outfield last year, and they stuck to their words. The outfield of Buxton, Kepler, and Rosario, according to DRS, saved the Twins 34 defensive runs last year. All of these guys make frequent appearances in the highlight reel, and they seem to get better each year. As they enter their primes, this will be an exciting time to be a Twins fan and a Twins pitcher. It be noted that the trio also had 18 outfield assists last year. They are one of the most exciting outfields to watch, and that will stay the course this year and early in April when the raindrops, do in fact, drop, as we expect they will.
 
8. Games with Canadians
The Toronto Blue Jays have been an awesome team to watch the past few years with stars like Donaldson, Bautista, Stroman, Ozuna, and defensive wizard Kevin Pillar scattered throughout their lineup. On top of being a team with all of these players, they have a fan base that likes to travel. Obviously there are probably some Canadians who are big Twins fans being that they are closest to Minnesota, but Toronto is Canada’s team and they travel well. It is easier for people from Winnipeg to come to Minneapolis and they will, rain or shine. With all the changes that the Twins have made, coming out and supporting them would be huge in this series as the Toronto fans have a history of making their presence felt at Target Field.
 
9. Byron Buxton
Who doesn’t want to watch Byron Buxton play? Search YouTube and you could spend a whole day watching highlight reel catch after catch provided by Mr. Buxton. His defense is stellar and he runs the bases so well and effortlessly. Last year, he was 29 of 30 on stolen bases, and the one time he was caught stealing he slid over the bag after initially beating the ball there. He has the fastest home to home time ever recorded in a game in the Statcast era. His gap hits are often stand-up triples due to his league-leading sprint speed of 30.2 ft/s in 2017. This helps his defensive prowess and makes him one of the league’s must-see. The Twins also have a Giveaway for Brian Dozier and Byron Buxton’s gold glove awards in April so you won’t want to miss that.
 
10. Presentations
Paul Molitor won manager of the year last year and Byron Buxton and Brian Dozier both won Gold Gloves. There was a lot to celebrate last year along with the Wild Card appearance. There are two ceremonies that will happen pre-game on different days in April. April 7th versus the Mariners, there will be a ceremony congratulating Paul on winning AL manager of the year. I attended the World Series pre-game celebration last year and these events are things you don’t want to miss out on. I would try and get tickets to this one because it is a Saturday game, and it will be a great way to start off the season. The other event I mentioned is a Friday night Gold Glove presentation for Buxton and Dozier. A T-shirt giveaway on this day makes it a hot ticket and another must-attend event.
 
There are a lot of exciting things surrounding Twins baseball this year. The reasons listed above, along with a hope for a successful season, are just a few of the reasons you don’t want to miss Twins baseball this April.

Here's a great piece of advice from a professional player for pitchers trying to learn or coaches trying to teach players to throw a better two-seam fastball.
 
Houston Astros' pitcher Lance McCullers Jr, who recently diced the Twins lineup in spring training action, has incorporated a new grip on his two-seam fastball that is giving him (so far anyways) superior movement over his two-seamer a year ago. I mean, just watch this unfair action he dumped on the poor, unsuspecting Ehire Adrianza.
 




 
That's some filth flarn filth.
 
Fortunately for us, McCullers created a video breakdown of what he is doing differently when he grips the ball.
 




 
The essential takeaway is that (1) McCullers is now tucking his thumb under the ball and (2) placing his index finger on the seam move and using that to generate the push, helping create the spin necessary to dive back across the zone. In short, McCullers is trying to achieve laminar flow to create the nasty movement we see above. For further background on this concept, be sure to watch Cleveland's Trevor Bauer
.  
McCullers was asked on Twitter if pitchers are constantly tinkering with their grips throughout the season.
 
"As easy as that would seem, we only get so many throws in season to work on our stuff," McCullers responded. "That time is usually trying to improve on what you already know. Trying a new grip and pitch takes time and reps only the offseason can really provide."
 
For more pitching insight, be sure to follow Pitching Ninja on Twitter.

This Twins have had a bit of a tortured history with analytics. In 2010 Rob Antony did an interview with TwinsDaily’s own Parker Hageman and revealed some interesting facts about the Twins and Sabermetrics. Antony stated this about their analytics department, “we're probably one of the last, if not the last, team to address it with a person dedicated solely to that.”. He went on further to fail to understand some fairly basic concepts about Sabermetrics. He thought FIP was “first strike in inning pitched” and was unable to guess about BABIP. He then revealed they had just hired their analytics guy and stated he would be “Gathering information and creating databases. This will be his first year. The guy that we brought in will start creating systems to build a foundation of our own that we can look at.” This is what I primarily want to get into as I have a background in IT.
 
In corporate America one of the techniques we use to understand what our competition is doing is to analyze their job postings. Have they posted an unusually large amount of Sales positions? Are they looking at specific geographic locations that have a concentration of talent? Are they asking for specific or unusual technical skills? These are all things we can look at to try to get an idea of intent and structure. I applied this technique to the Twins and their development job postings and found some interesting things.
 
2014 Posting
 
2015 Posting
 
One of the common details in both job postings is the fact that the Twins were looking for a developer who had experience doing front-end work (HTML, JavaScript), middle tier (.NET Framework, ASP.MVC), and the data layer (SQL Server). This implies a couple of things. The first is that the Twins are employing a standard three-tier architecture for their analytics.


It also implies that they only have “full stack” developers, which means they are required to know and to be able to develop in all 3 of their architecture tiers. This is problematic because is you are required to be able to code in everything that usually means you are unable to specialize or gain really in-depth knowledge on any single tier. For the Twins to take the next step in analytics I think they need to be hiring specialists in each of these areas.
 
Another thing I noticed is that the only data store they referred to is SQL Server. The reason that this is important is that the industry still values relational datamarts like SQL Server but they are also moving in the direction of unstructured Big Data repositories as well. Applications like Hadoop, HBASE, MongoDB, and many others allow unstructured data to be quickly stored and analyzed which allows for more experimentation by analysts when compared to a structured DB. I think the PITCH f/x and Trackman data has likely been analyzed enough but I think the next frontier is going into some less structured data. Putting medical records into a big data store and analyzing test results and notes to find patterns in identifying healthier players. Putting free text scouting reports into it and running natural language analytics on them using IBM Watson or some other AI service to identify key language or sentiments that indicate a player that is more likely to succeed. The addition of weather data and the analysis of its impact on specific players. I think there is a lot of room to grow here.
 
In short, I think it is likely this lack of specialization and not embracing the newer Big Data technologies led Thad Levine and Derek Falvey to go in a new direction this last fall with the analytics department. I wouldn’t be surprised if the hiring surge described in a recent article by Pat Reusse did not include hires to address these concerns. I am interested in your thoughts and feedback.

I've spent a lot of time over the last few days reading about a relatively new statistic called "quality of pitch" (QOP), which assigns a numerical value to each pitch a pitcher throws. The values can then averaged together to come up with a pitchers average quality of pitch (QOPA) or you can look at a quality of pitch set of values (QOPV) as another tool to measure the performance of a pitcher. The purpose of this post is to provide a simple overview of this data as it may be referenced in future articles.
 
Background
QOP was first publicly introduced in March 2015 by Jason Wilson and Wayne Greiner. Since then it has been written in various publications such as "Baseball America", the "Fangraphs", and by Yahoo Sports! columnist Jeff Passan among others. Meanwhile, Wilson and Greiner have presented their findings at the 2015 SABR Analytics Conference. In short, this statistic was introduced and quickly regarded as a good tool to measures a pitchers performance in a way the baseball community has not previously done before.
 
Computation
QOP is computed by integrating velocity (MPH), pitch location, and pitch movement. Pitch movement is defined as the vertical break, horizontal break, breaking distance, and/or rise. These variables are put together and assigned a number 0 - 10, where 0 is a very poor pitch and 10 is an excellent pitch. The MLB average QOP is 4.5 and median is 5.

 
Here is an example of QOP being used.

Validation
Wilson and Greiner have measured QOP against ERA, FIP, and SIERA which all produced a strong, negative correlation. That is, the better the QOP the lower the ERA/FIP/SIERA.

Furthermore, a search of the top 10 2017 QOPA leaders for pitchers who threw 1,000 or more pitches provides you with a list of some of the more effective pitchers in baseball.

 
Limitations
As with all stats, QOP has its limitations. From a mathematical perspective anytime we are averaging numbers together the data can be skewed by outliers, and QOP is no exception to this rule. To help minimize the effect of outliers Wilson and Greiner have created a guide to determine the margin of error depending on the sample size.
 
From a baseball perspective, QOP doesn't take into account of a pitcher who misses his spots. That is, if the catcher calls for a fastball high and inside but the pitcher throws it low and outside he could still get a high QOP score despite completely missing his spot. If technology exists for the location and break of each ball to be tracked, then I would like to see something developed that also accounts for the movement of the catcher's glove.
 
Author's Conclusion
Again, this post was solely meant to introduce you to this stat without diving into specifics on Twins pitchers. Personally, I look forward to using this stat and wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing it more and more in future posts by me or any other Twins Daily writer. Despite its limitations, I think it provides fans with a different, more insightful perspective than the traditional pitching stats (W/L, ERA, WHIP, etc.), especially when coupled with other SABR pitching stats.
 
I also wonder how well this stat can be used to predict future outcomes. I look at the list above and a couple names surprised me, but specifically Joe Biagini who was also a top 10 QOPA guy in 2016 under the same criteria. A quick look at his fangraphs page shows that he hasn't been great in 162.0 big league innings. Is this the sign of a good pitcher who has just had some bad luck early in his career? Or is he the poster child for how finding the average QOP can, at times, be a misleading statistic?
 
What do you guys think about this stat? Is this something you would look forward to seeing in future articles? What are your thoughts in the curious case of Joe Biagini?

All the Hall of Fame ballots are postmarked. More than 100 have been revealed. Of those, only three voters have checked the name of the greatest pitcher I’ve ever regularly watched. Johan Santana’s time on the writers’ ballot looks to be short and unsuccessful.
Others have written compelling and thorough articles about Santana’s case. I’m mostly sad that he’s only 38 and we’re already having this discussion. I want to think about Santana at the height of his powers. I want to remember a game that still resonates with me more than a dozen years later.
It’s 2004. The Twins have won the Central the past two years and they’re in first place now. It’s Aug.1 and their lead is five games over the White Sox.
I’d graduated from college that spring and I’m lamenting the fact that I’m jobless, hours away from the Metrodome and with no money for a ticket anyway. Johan Santana is facing Pedro Martinez today.
But I do have cable television and it’s connected to my fiancée’s 13-inch TV/VCR combo. It’s the only TV we have in the apartment we rented when I was still optimistic about finding a decent job near Morris, Minnesota. I’d be back at home living with my dad in a matter of weeks.
But Santana was pitching this afternoon, so this afternoon things look bright.
After getting Johnny Damon to ground out and striking Mark Bellhorn, Orlando Cabrera hit a home run in the first.
Cabrera hadn’t been all that good that year. But Cabrera had just become a member of the Red Sox. Maybe the change of scenery would do him good. (It did. Cabrera hit .294/.320/.465 for the Red Sox that year after hitting .246/.298/.336 for the Expos.)
Cabrera started for the Red Sox for the first time that day after he and Doug Mientkiewicz joined the Sox earlier in a four-team trade that saw the Twins pick up 19-year-old minor-league pitcher Justin Jones from the Cubs.
Mientkiewicz’s departure was sad, as he joined A.J Pierzynski and Matt Lawton as players traded away after starting for the 2001 Twins team that sucked me back into baseball fandom.
The Twins had stopped grabbing my attention as the ‘90s often found them mired in last place and found me in a new town with new friends who weren’t all that interested in baseball. But the Twins found new life in 2001, and found me, now away at college, with some friends who gave a damn about a pennant race and with access to cable television.
Cristian Guzman reached on a single in the first but was stranded.
Santana retired three straight in the second, striking out Jason Veritek and Bill Mueller.
Corey Koskie doubled for the Twins in the bottom of the second and then scored on a Matthew LeCroy single. LeCroy was catching that day, with Joe Mauer’s rookie season mostly ruined by injury.
Mauer was the first Twins player I can say I followed from the day he was drafted onward, but Santana was the first player I really saw emerge and become a star.
Torii Hunter, Jacque Jones, Guzman, Koskie and Mientkiewicz burst onto the national scene in 2001, but as someone who was just paying attention for the first time in years, they felt a little more established. I knew they were young. I knew they were surprising, but they never existed for me as anything other than Twins starters.
But Santana was a reliever in 2001, and by this point in 2004 I’d watched him become the best pitcher in baseball.
Manny Ramirez homered in the second; the Twins were down 2-1.
That was the last hit Santana gave up that day, but while Martinez’s 2004 was not a great year by his standards, the man still hadn’t posted an ERA above 2.89 from 1997 to 2003. Maybe this was it for the Twins.
In the bottom of the sixth, Lew Ford doubled and then scored on a single from Hunter. The game was tied and it felt a little easier to breathe.
Santana struck out Ramirez to lead off the seventh, but then hit Veritek.
Veritek stole second and went to third on a throwing error from LeCroy.
Veritek only stole 25 bases in his career, though 10 of those came in 2004. This game was one of only 16 that LeCroy started at catcher that year. Sixteen runners attempted stolen bases against him in 144 innings in 2004. LeCroy threw out only one. Maybe Veritek knew something.
With Veritek on third, he scored on a sacrifice fly from Kevin Millar. Santana hadn’t given up a hit, but he’d given up a run and the Twins were losing once again.
Martinez finished the seventh with the Red Sox still up 3-2. He was done for the day.
Santana came out for eighth and struck out two, giving him 12 strikeouts for the day, one better than Martinez.
With Martinez gone, the Twins came out swinging. Guzman and Ford hit back-to-back singles to start the inning and then pulled off a double steal.
Justine Morneau hit a sacrifice fly that scored both runners when shortstop Cabrera committed an error. The Twins were up 4-3 and Santana was in line for the win.
First-year but all-star closer Joe Nathan faced only three batters to secure that win. Santana, the best pitcher in baseball, had bested the previous best pitcher in a game that was very much a pitchers’ duel despite the 4-3 score.
He may never get a plaque in Cooperstown, but Santana will be remembered by me, and I’m sure many other baseball fans, as one of the best to ever stand on a pitcher’s mound.

This article was originally posted back in January, but with Mauer's 2000th hit Tom wanted various Mauer articles. I haven't changed much, but have added more data to support my opinion. I'd also just like to mention that I did not change my opinion on a potential salary for 2019 and beyond despite his torrid start to the season.
 
It's no secret that Joe Mauer is entering the final year of his 8 year, $184 million contract extension signed in 2010. It's also not a secret that Mauer isn't the player he was in 2009 or in the years leading up to that MVP season. What does seem to be a secret, is what thoughts "Falvine" has on Mauer's future past the 2018 season. There are really only three options, which I will breakdown below.
 
1. Stay with the Twins
Personally, I think this is the most likely scenario. He's from here, his family is here, he's spent his entire career here, his personality and demeanor (although frustrating to fans) fits well with the "Minnesota nice" mantra, and the Twins are starting to become contenders. So what will it take for the Twins to keep him here?
 
Since his move to 1st base (2012) Mauer has played 813 games as a first basemen, which is good for 13th most among 50 qualified players. In that same time he has provided a 14.7 WAR which is good for 10th best:
The "good": he's staying healthier, he's getting on base (6/50 in BA and 5/50 in OBP), and he's become one of the best defensive 1B in the game (#1 in UZR in 2017 among 21 qualified players).
The "bad": he'll be 36 in April of 2019 (only 6 qualified players were 36+ years old in '17), he provides no power as a 1B/DH (42/50 in SLG from 2012-2017), despite being healthier he's still good to miss at least 20 games/year not including the days provides no defensive value as a DH.

I think it's fair to assume that 2017 is the ceiling of what we can expect from Mauer in 2018 and beyond, although he has been lights out so far this season. Looking at salaries for players who are currently 36+ years old, 2017 and 2018 contract agreements, and salaries of other 1B around the league I would be looking for the Twins to give Mauer a 2-3 year deal at $8-$10 million/year not including incentives or player/team options. Again, I believe him signing with the Twins is the most likely scenario.
 
I came up with the $8 - $10 million range from looking at the following data.
 
Yonder Alonso signed with the Indians for $8mil per year. Comparatively to Mauer, he provides a little more power, less OBP, and a lot less defense. He's younger, coming off a career year, and also fits the "launch angle" ideal that so many hitters are trending towards. Ultimately, my opinion is that the pros and cons of both players provide a similar value to a team although the type of value they provide are different. I think that provides a sort of base line going into next offseason.
 
I also looked at players that signed in 2016/2017 offseason who were 36+ years old and although the median salary was 7.75 million a few of those guys are getting paid $13 & $16 million.If I were to include 35+ year olds, which is technically how old Mauer will be at the start of the 2019 season, the median is at $8 million and includes Yadier Molina (a career long Cardinal) getting paid $20 million. Although the median is lower, I think the higher deals give Mauer/Shapiro some room to negotiate an above the median salary. Especially if Mauer performs similarliy to how he did in 2017 and/or is able to hit like he currently is for a majority of 2018.
2. Sign Elsewhere
I don't see this happening, but obviously this is a possibility. Assuming Mauer only has a few more years in the big leagues, he could be looking for a team to win now. Now being 2019 or 2020. Depending on what the Twins FO does in free agency over the next couple years the Twins may or may not be legit world series contenders in 2019 or 2020. I hate to say it but with Greg Bird not being able to stay healthy the Yankees may have an opening at first base that would be a good fit for Mauer. Teams like Houston, Boston, Chicago (NL), Dodgers, Indians and Nationals are also obvious contenders, but currently have a player who is under contract at 1st base.
3. Retire
From what I have read/heard, there hasn't been any rumblings that Mauer is ready to hang them up. Doesn't mean it's not something to consider. Honestly, I almost think Joe would be more apt to retire than he would be to sign somewhere else. Moving somewhere else obviously would mean either moving his family or moving away from his family, which I don't think he would want to do.

Last June, Phil Hughes took a liner off the knee.
 
Because we have this kind of information now, MLB.com mentioned that the liner had left J.T. Realmuto's bat at 106 miles per hour. That's a little more than 155 feet per second, and Hughes' follow-through put him maybe 56 or 57 feet from where Realmuto made contact. In other words, Hughes had approximately one-third of a second to protect himself. The average blink of an eye takes 100 to 400 milliseconds. In this case, the cliche is correct: Hughes literally had the blink of an eye to react.
 
At the moment of contact, Hughes was balanced on his left foot, following through, with his glove tucked behind himself as part of his natural rotation. All he could manage, in that one-third of a second, was try to get his right leg in front of his left, a Sophie's Choice of a defensive mechanism made with an athlete's instinct to get something - anything - with a little more padding in front of the ball. As fast as his reaction was, it wasn't enough; the liner caught him on the inside of his left kneecap, knocking him to the ground in agony.
 
Testing revealed that the line drive had broken Hughes' femur, ruling him out for two months. Less than three weeks later, though, Hughes was discovered to have thoracic outlet syndrome, requiring surgery and ending his season; it's the rare upper-body condition, rather than the Realmuto liner, that will be remembered for cutting short Hughes' 2016 season.
 
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Phillip Hughes - yes, sometimes called Phil - had the same Australian verve that had been the making of so many other cricketers that had scaled the Down Under heights before him. He'd grown up in the country, learning to slash everything to his off side (in baseball terms: the opposite field) because he batted left-handed and, well, the house was on that side of the field. The kids that break the windows in the house don't get to bat very much, and Hughes very much wanted to bat.
 
By the time he'd broken into the New South Wales first team, he could hop away from any bowling to give himself room to fend it off, tennis backhand-style, away to the off side. It never won him prizes for technique, nor style, but it saw him break into Test cricket by the time he was 20 years old. That year, he became the youngest man to score two centuries in the same match, successfully thwarting South Africa's fast bowlers on the way to 115 and 160 in Durban. One Australian magazine put him on the cover under the headline "Little Don," referring to Don Bradman, the greatest batsman of all time.
 
The longer he played on, though, opposition teams began to work him out. The preferred strategy, for the opposition, was to simply bowl directly at him - to make him pull the ball, in other words. In cricket, this is a legitimate technique. Bowl directly at the batsmen's legs, and you cramp his style; you make him either turn the ball behind himself, or risk getting hit on the leg pads and potentially be called out by the umpire. For someone like Hughes, consistently backing up to give himself the room to whack the ball away from himself, this was bad enough.
 
Some bowlers, though, prefer to cut out the constant search for the batsman's legs, and instead bowl a "bouncer" - a euphemistic term for the ball that whizzes directly at the chest, or head. The technique is still the same, as a batsman; there's no place to put the ball but behind yourself. From the bowler's point of view, the bouncer has the side benefit of being completely terrifying. Imagine baseball, if throwing at the batter's head was considered not only acceptable but a legitimate strategy - that, rather than charging the mound throwing haymakers, the accepted response was to dust yourself off, even if you've just taken a ball off your collarbone at 90 mph.
 
Hughes was in and out of Australia's Test team for the next few years. For every big innings, he had another two or three ugly matches, and in November 2014 he was just fighting to get another chance. His last Test had come in July 2013, against England. Now playing for South Australia, he was rounding into form against his former team, New South Wales.
 
He'd scored 63 runs in almost three and a half hours of batting, on his way to another century - potentially the one that'd get him the call-up to the Australia squad again. NSW had peppered him, as teams always did, with bouncers. Sean Abbott was bowling, following the plan. His fourth ball of the over jumped up, a little more than Hughes was expecting, and caught the young batsman in the side of the neck.
 
Hughes wobbled, for one second, then collapsed to the ground.
 
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I think a lot about the 2014 World Cup final, Germany versus Argentina, not for Mario Gotze's extra-time winner, but for a moment in the first half. German midfielder Christoph Kramer was involved in a collision with an Argentina defender that momentarily knocked Kramer senseless. Despite the obvious head injury, Kramer played for 14 more minutes before being substituted; later, referee Nicola Rizzoli said that Kramer had come up to him and asked repeatedly, "Ref, is this the final?"
 
In that moment of the collision, my wife - who is not a sports fan, but was being forced to watch the game by her ridiculous husband - had reacted almost excitedly, along the lines of WHOA LOOK AT THAT. Being Brain Injury Woke like so many "good" sports fans, I chastised her for her apparent celebration. Her response has had me thinking for the last three years.
 
"Don't get mad at me," she said. "You're the one that watches this stuff, not me."
 
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Here is what I am responsible for. I watch football non-stop in the fall, CTE be damned. I've never turned the channel during a hockey fight, even though bare-knuckle brawling is abhorrent on its own. I watch rugby despite the occasional skull fractures; I follow soccer closely despite the mounting evidence that heading the ball is leading to long-term brain injury for the participants. This is to say nothing of the countless non-brain injuries caused by these sports and all the others; in terms of human damage, I am only slightly above the ancient scoreboard-watchers who checked to see whether the Romans or the Lions were ahead.
 
Here is how I make myself feel better:
I do not watch mixed martial arts.
I refer to concussions as "brain injuries."
I make fun of people who say that Joe Mauer needs to "toughen up."

This is all I can say to reassure myself: If I stop watching, it won't make a bit of difference. I am a free rider. This isn't my fault, right? It's all of our fault, right? I'm only a very small part of this, right? People would make their choice to play these games whether or not I wear a jersey and plan my day around the games, right?
 
Please say yes.
 
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If you go down the list of popular sports, baseball is among the most blameless. Compared to football or hockey or rugby or any other contact-mandatory sport, baseball practically promotes old age. Career-ending injuries in baseball usually involve arm ligaments. Broken bones are rare. There is enough finesse and fine motor control involved in the game that the dark side of other sports- horse tranquilizers at halftime to kill the pain, and that sort of thing - are blessedly absent.
 
And yet, Corey Koskie. Look at Joe Mauer's stats pre-concussion and post-concussion, and try to tell me that a concussion won't be the thing that keeps Minnesota's greatest hitter out of the Hall of Fame. Pretending that baseball doesn't have its own dark side - of drugs, and steroids, and all of the things that we don't talk about because the grass is green and the beer is cold and baseball is fun to play - is to ignore reality.
 
To say nothing of Phil Hughes, or Brandon McCarthy, or of every single player at every level of baseball that stands in a batter's box or on a pitcher's mound, as the fastballs get faster and the line drives come back harder.
 
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We remember Ray Chapman, the answer to the macabre trivia question "Who is the only man to die as the result of an injury received during an MLB game?" Batting at twilight, against submariner Carl Mays, Chapman simply didn't see the dirty, scuffed-up ball that hit him; Babe Ruth, playing right field, said the crack of ball against skull was audible even that far away. The popular shortstop collapsed, blood streaming from his ear, and had to be carried off the field; he died later that night. His wife gave birth to their first daughter six months later.
 
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Following Phillip Hughes's death, there were some in cricket that called for the "bouncer" to be banned entirely. There have been rules in place since the 1930s, limiting the number of fielders that can stand behind the batsman - thus reducing the benefit of bowling at the batsman's body. After the West Indies and Australian teams of the 1970s and 1980s used repeated bouncers to scare the daylights out of opposing batsmen, the International Cricket Council limited them to two per over, or two out of every six deliveries.
This limited the potential carnage, but it didn't end it. Some of the best batsmen in history - Brian Lara, Justin Langer, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ricky Ponting, and on and on - have been bloodied, or knocked unconscious and hospitalized, by bouncers that they simply could not avoid. Skill has nothing to do with it; to bat is to accept the risk of the next ball being the one that kills you.
 
The bouncer hasn't been banned, of course. Australia's plan of attack against India, in the Test series that just concluded, included bowling bouncer after bouncer at the Indian batsmen, trying to put them off their games.
 
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It's Opening Day for the Twins, and I'm excited about the season, of course I am. Not about the Twins' chances, necessarily, but about the return of baseball - nightly games, and listening on the radio while I drive somewhere, and reading the game score in the paper, and catching a couple of innings on TV before going to bed.
 
My attention helps sell advertising; that advertising funds baseball; players put themselves at physical risk as a result. This is as true in baseball as it is in any other sport.
 
Phil Hughes is back in the Twins' starting rotation.
 
I would like to ignore all of this.

On Wednesday, November 30, 2016 the Twins announced the signing of free agent catcher Jason Castro to a 3-year, $24.5MM contract. It was a move that was widely attributed to the members of the Twins’ new front office comfort with advanced analytics. Jason Castro is widely regarded as very good defensive catcher due in large part to his ability to frame pitches and steal strikes for his pitchers. In 2016 Castro ranked third in all of baseball in Baseball Prospectus’ Framing Runs statistic, with +16.3. Kurt Suzuki, the Twins primary catcher in 2016, ranked 92nd at -6.8. Suzuki’s main backup, Juan Centeno, ranked 97th with -9.7.
 
Castro is a roughly average offensive catcher. He put together a 88 wRC+ in 2016, which ranked 17th among catchers with at least 250 PAs, via Fangraphs. For reference, the league average wRC+ for catchers in 2016 was 87. But, he got a $24.5MM contract primarily because of his framing and the Twins are expecting him to make an impact on their pitching staff.
 
So where might the Twins pitchers benefit from better framing? Let’s look at the Twins pitchers (that are still with the organization in 2017) that threw at least 50 innings in 2016, sorted by innings pitched:
 


 
Using this list of pitchers, we can utilize Fangraphs' excellent heatmaps tool to explore each pitcher’s distribution of pitches around the strike zone. For example, here is Kyle Gibson’s 2016 pitch% heatmap, which displays the percentage of pitches thrown to each particular segment in and around the strike zone (shown from the pitcher’s perspective). The rulebook defined strike zone is outlined in black.
 


 
There are not many surprises here, as we can see Gibson most often pitches down in the zone, and to his arm side. This is likely driven in large part to the high number of 2-seam sinking fastballs he throws (27.2% of total pitches in 2016, per PITCHf/x data available on Fangraphs).
 
What this data also lets us do, is explore each pitcher’s propensity for pitching to the edges of the strike zone. Let’s assume much of the benefit of pitch framing occurs at the edges of the strike zone, where pitches are less definitively a ball or a strike to the eyes of the umpire. By focusing on the edges of the zone we can identify which Twins pitchers might benefit most from better framing.
 
For this analysis, I focused explicitly on the strike zone segments just inside and just outside the rulebook strike zone, which are the areas between the gold lines in the graphic below:
 


 
Using the pitch data in these sections, I calculated a metric for each Twins pitcher labeled "Total Edge%". These data points are summarized in the table below and show us the percentage of pitches thrown on the edge, or just off the edge of the strike zone, by each Twins pitcher in 2016:
 


 
What we can see is the Twins starting pitchers seemed to pitch toward the edges of the strike zone more than the league average and more than their reliever teammates in 2016, with the exception of Brandon Kintzler. Ervin Santana is approximately at league average, which was 44.7%. Kyle Gibson is significantly above, at almost 49%. Jose Berrios, Phil Hughes, and Hector Santiago are all up around 47%. So, as a starting point, we can assert that Gibson, Berrios, Hughes, and Santiago are the primary candidates to benefit from better framing.
 
But how do they fare in getting called strikes around the edges of the zone?
 
Using the same heatmaps tool, we are also able to visualize each pitcher’s called strike percentage (cStrike%), in each segment of the strike zone. Here is Gibson’s for 2016:
 


 
As we would expect, pitches located in the middle of the zone are nearly always called a strike, evidenced by the bright red boxes and rates at or near 100%. As before, our interest is just on and just off the edge of the strike zone, which I again outline in gold. Here, we see more variation, with the called strike percentage ranging from as high as 88% in the zone to Gibson’s arm side, to as low as 27% inside the zone up and to his glove side. We also see, pitches just off the strike zone are called strikes at a much lower percentage than pitches just in the zone, as you would expect. But, we need a reference point. How do the Twins compare against the rest of baseball?
 
Using this data, I calculated two additional metrics, labelled as "In-Zone Edge cStrike%" and "Out-Zone Edge cStrike%", which delineate the called strike percentage on the edge and in the zone, and on the edge and out of the zone. Focusing on these strike zone segments, I calculated the called strike percentage for each Twins pitcher. Also included are the MLB averages for each metric.
 


 
What we see above, is that 6 of the 10 Twins pitchers to throw 50 innings last season had a lower than league average called strike rate on pitches on the edge and inside the legal strike zone. Ryan Pressly and Jose Berrios appear to be the most impacted, with called strike rates significantly less than the league average of 64.9%, at 52.8% and 57.5% respectively.
 
But what about just off the edge?
 


 
When we focus on the segments just off the strike zone we see this same trend play out, but even more significantly. The visual above shows that 8 of the 10 Twins hurlers had lower than league average called strike rates on pitches just off the strike zone. This indicates that they were not getting many strikes stolen in their favor. In most cases for the Twins, the difference from league average is quite significant. Berrios, Michael Tonkin, Pressly, Taylor Rogers, and Santiago each have rates right around half the league average of 10.4%. The net result, when we add up the In-Zone and Out-Zone Edge cStrike% for Total Edge cStrike%, is that 7 of the 10 Twins pitchers studied had called strikes rates around the edges of the strike zone that were decidedly less than league average.
 
Now, this probably isn’t all that surprising intuitively. We know the Twins as a whole did not pitch well last year (29th in ERA, 27th in FIP, per Fangraphs), and we know the Twins catchers did not rate well as pitch framers. Kurt Suzuki and Juan Centeno combined to catch nearly 86% of the Twins defensive innings last season. But for as bad as the team pitched, it is also clear the pitchers were not getting much help from their catchers.
 
But how many pitches are we talking about here? If we assume a league average called strike rate on the edges of the strike zone (which was 36.1% in 2016) for the Twins, we can estimate an additional number of pitches that would be called strikes. This is what we find:
 


 
By this analysis, it seems that Jose Berrios, Ryan Pressly, and Ervin Santana would benefit the most from better pitch framing, with each gaining roughly 20 additional called strikes over the course of the season.
 
But how much does a pitch being called a ball, instead of a strike, actually matter?
 
Let’s look at the major league batting average by count in a plate appearance. The data in the table below is from a 2014 Grantland article written by Joe Lemire, and calculates the batting average for plate appearances ending on specific counts. For example, the batting average on plate appearances ending on the 0-1 pitch is .321. The data fluctuates slightly year to year, but in any given season, you’ll find a table that generally looks like this:
 


 
By this measure, the value of a strike, depending on the count is quite significant. In a 1-1 count, for example, if the next pitch is called a strike, making the count 1-2, the batter’s expected batting average drops from .319 to .164. Similarly, if the pitch is a ball, making the count 2-1, the batter’s expected average increases to .327. That’s a .163 swing in expected batting average.
 
Others have approached this differently by trying to calculate the expected outcomes by the result of the at bat that reaches each count. So, for example, what is the expected outcome for all plate appearances that reached an 0-1 count, regardless of whether it was the 0-1 pitch that the outcome of the plate appearance was created? Different approaches aside, we find a similar result according to a revisit of the idea by Matt Hartzell published on RO Baseball in 2016:
 


 
 


 
While the differences here are not quite as steep as before, we still see the swings matter. Batting average after a 1-2 count is .178, where after a 2-1 count it is .247. That’s still a .069 swing in batting average. We also have added on-base percentage, and see the trend holds. OBP after a 2-1 count in 2016 was .383, versus just .229 after a 1-2 count.
 
So, all of this helps us show the Twins have a pitch framing problem and pitch framing matters because getting more pitches called strikes leads to less runners on base.
 
But can Jason Castro fix it?
 
To try to find out, let’s look at the Houston Astros, Castro’s former employer. Using the same methodology as with the Twins pitchers, I again calculated the cStrike% on the edges of the strike zone for the all Astros pitchers that threw more than 50 IP in 2016. What we find is pretty telling:
 


 
Of the 12 Astros to throw more than 50 IP, only one, Michael Feliz, had a lower than league average called strike rate around the edge of the strike zone. But even he was roughly league average (36.06% compared to league average of 36.11%). The rest of the pitchers studied were above league average, and in most cases, quite comfortably so. Six of them are clustered close together right around 41.0%.
 
Now, to be fair, not all of this is directly attributable to Castro. These are different, and arguably, better pitchers. And Castro didn’t catch every pitch thrown (he caught 61.9% of the Astros defensive innings in 2016). But the difference is stark and by this rough measure, it seems Jason Castro will make a positive impact for the Twins pitchers.
 
To the Twins credit, they recognized they had a weakness, and they used the free agent market to acquire a player they hope can help address it.

In what may be the only time I’m ever in the men’s restroom at CHS Field, I took in the world premiere of “Safe at Home” last night, Mixed Blood Theatre’s new show about baseball, race and immigration. The story takes place prior to game seven of the World Series and centers on whether a Dominican pitcher scheduled to start the biggest game of his career will instead use the platform to protest the game and take a political stand. The show is divided up into nine “scenes” (or shall we call them “innings”) scattered throughout the ballpark, each with their own story to tell: in one, an Irish and Latino vendor argue about the profitability of selling beer versus churros; in another, the owner of the team (and newspaper publisher) discusses the merits of “responsible journalism” with the reporter ready to break the story prior to the game. As a baseball fan, I thought the scene between the umpire and the MLB executive was particularly well acted and fascinating as they discussed exactly how this would play out if it actually happened in a game.
 
The story is definitely topical and the issues resonate, especially with the choice of using a baseball game as the backdrop to the simmering issues presented as opposed to, say, a football game – after all, baseball is the national pastime with a deep history inextricably linked with our struggles as a nation. The show itself is a technical achievement – groups of 25 are guided to different areas in the ballpark by an usher to watch separate seven minute scenes that run like clockwork throughout the evening. (At the performance I attended, our usher shared that he has learned a lot about baseball in working on this play, saying, “I’ve learned that the ball is round.” I think he was kidding.) It also takes theatre fans outside their comfort zone as you’re standing up in sometimes cramped quarters while the drama takes place right in front of you. Attendees seemed unsure as to whether they were supposed to clap at the end of each scene so we did what Minnesotans do – we just stood there awkwardly until the usher directed us to the next scene.
 
I have enjoyed many Saints games at CHS Field (and if you haven’t been there yet you really should check them out this season) so I knew I would appreciate my surroundings. As the show serves as a veritable tour of the ballpark, I caught myself a couple of times paying more attention to that than watching the show – during the scene in the clubhouse, my eyes drifted to the “Hall of Saints” pictures located above the lockers. “Oh yeah, I remember Rey Ordonez played for the Saints,” I caught myself thinking, and then, “wait a minute, there’s a show going on here. Focus!” I give credit to the writers and director that they kept the drama flowing even as you’re being shepherded periodically throughout the ballpark onto the next scene.
 
The acting is strong throughout and that may be the one regret I had about the show – at the end of the 90 minute performance you’re ushered into the Saints dugout and back through the stands to leave the ballpark without the chance for the actors to take a bow and show your appreciation for their work. But this is a minor quibble, if you’re a baseball fan this is a fantastic opportunity to see an entertaining new show in a beautiful setting. The pre-show gathering spot is in the Securian Club (the enclosed and heated space along right field) and while you’re outside briefly to travel from scene to scene, they all take place indoors. The show only runs through Sunday, so for more information about performance times and tickets, visit Mixed Blood’s website.

According to sources, Twins general manager Terry Ryan is getting more and more tired of having to dress up as former Indians executive Derek Falvey every morning at spring training, and is considering other options. Ryan, 63, hatched the deception last year as the Twins slid to the worst season in franchise history, but reportedly is tired of the extra work that the disguise involves.
 
Friends say that Ryan now grouses throughout his daily two-hour makeup session, which transforms him into a reasonable facsimile of Falvey, who until recently served as the general manager in Cleveland, where his partnership with manager Terry Francona helped return the woebegone franchise to the World Series in 2016. Ryan is also increasingly worried about the potential legal ramifications of kidnapping Falvey, former Rangers executive Thad Levine, and Minnesota director of baseball research Jack Goin, locking the three in a basement, and hiring actors to portray the latter two.
 
"Terry just wonders if he's doing the right thing here, what with the three counts of felony kidnapping he'll no doubt face," said a source. "Plus, the disguise is really starting to irritate his skin, especially the hairpiece."
 
Sources say that Twins president Dave St. Peter okayed the scheme midway through the 2016 season, allowing Ryan and company to keep control of the Twins' dealings for future seasons, while portraying a changing front office to disgruntled fans. St. Peter and others have been concerned about Ryan's offseason dealings, which were so Ryan-like as to raise questions from a fanbase that has long been used to the GM's over-cautious, cheap strategies.
 
Insiders say that Ryan is considering hiring a third actor to portray Falvey, while officially returning to the team as a "special advisor," thus removing the need for the morning disguise routine. Ryan has also toyed with the idea of "outing" himself by awarding a roster spot to a terrible veteran pitcher at the expense of a prospect, but - after signing Hector Santiago, Matt Belisle, and Ryan Vogelsong - is unsure how much more he could do.
 
"He's just getting tired," said the source. "If he signs Jason Bartlett again, then you'll know - he wants people to find him out. Until then, he'll have to keep going with the ruse."

Let me preface what will undoubtedly be a long entry by saying I am a Dozier fan. I have spoken to him at Spring Training a couple of times and like the young man. I believe he has been the Twins MVP for each of the last four seasons (counting this one) and I have no doubt that he is the team's best player at this point. Certainly, he isn't flawless, but the Twins need more players like Brian Dozier, not less.
 
Over the course of this long, horrible season, Brian Dozier has often been a hot topic of conversation in Twins Territory. He isn't shy about stepping up to a microphone, my wife and daughters think he's good-looking and he's been a regular with the club as their second baseman for four years. If someone casually follows the Twins, they know who Dozier is, so it figures that he would be a topic of conversation.
 
Let's see why Dozier has been discussed so much and what I think should be the conclusion for the topic: First of all, as the Twins started the season, Dozier couldn't get it going. After a bad second half in 2015, Dozier came out of the gate slow in 2016. Through all of April and May, Dozier barely reached .200 and the signature power was lacking. Had the league figured him out? Was the 28 year old (turned 29 in mid-May) regressing already? Should he be benched or put at the bottom of the order? My thought, then and now, was that it is a long season. If a guy is a good player, he'll come out of a funk. Robbie Cano had a similar stretch at the end of 2014 and beginning of 2015 and Cano might be a Hall-of-Famer. Along for the ride early in the season was the question whether BD was too pull-happy and if he used the whole field, he would be a more consistent and productive hitter. My thought was that Dozier needed to be able to hit the ball with authority when he was pitched away and as the season has progressed, he has accumulated some oppo hits and several to the middle of the field, the key being that he hit the ball hard, not a lazy popup or routine fly ball.
 
Moving on, Dozier has spent most of the season hitting #1 or #2. Many have thought it wasn't ideal for a guy whose calling card is big power for his position to hit first or second. My thought then was that the Twins simply didn't have a better option. Dozier takes some of the longest at-bats on the team, he's walked a fair amount since arriving in the majors and he's a good base runner who doesn't clog the bases for those behind him. Ideally, he should have hit lower in the order to make a few more of his homers multi-run shots and I think that where Dozier hits in the lineup in 2017 will be a hot controversial topic if he is in a Twins' uniform next year.
 
As the season rolled toward the All-Star break, the call to sell and rebuild the Twins included Dozier's name prominently. He had some value and the club is/was going nowhere in '16, so cashier him for a prospect or two and let Jorge Polanco handle second base. In June and July, Dozier recovered from his slow start. He put up a great line in June, posting an OPS for the month in excess of 1.000, he slowed in July, hitting only .240 but still putting up an OPS of .824. Trade Dozier at the deadline? Didn't happen and IMHO shouldn't have happened. He hasn't slowed down much since his monster June and with a team-friendly contract and relative youth, his value should only be higher in the off-season or at next year's trade deadline.
 
Another topic that has emerged is defense. After a truly stout year in 2013, Dozier's defense has been categorized as below average by most metrics. While I don't believe Dozier is elite defensively, my eyes tell me he is in the average range. He makes a few outstanding plays (probably more than any other Twins player) and doesn't get to some balls he should, perhaps because of shifting, maybe because the position of shortstop has been in flux since he became a second baseman, maybe because in three of the last four years, the team never had a shot at contention. I don't know. In checking BB Ref, Dozier lags in zone rating, but is above average in runs saved. I see it as a wash, making Dozier average in the field. I'm waiting for someone to refute this, but in the final analysis, defense probably is an "eyes of the beholder" topic.
 
Since the All-Star break, Brian Dozier has been en fuego. He's hitting .320, with an OPS of 1.091 and a mlb-leading 21 homers. I guess that puts to rest the "first half player" meme that was circulating among the diehard fans remaining. The question that stems from his performance both the cold April and May and his elite performance since is what to expect going forward. I have turned over in my mind what the most likely trajectory of Dozier's career figures to be. One extreme is Dan Uggla, who like Dozier wasn't highly regarded, got a chance in his mid-twenties and became a star in large part because of his power numbers. Uggla fell off a cliff in his early thirties. An opposing example is Jeff Kent. Kent was an okay player, but not even a full-time regular until he was 29. Starting from age 30, Kent won an MVP, was an All-Star five times with three different teams and posted OPS+ numbers over 119 every year until he was 39. This seems to be the extremes for power-hitting second basemen. Is Dozier going to be productive for most of another decade or is regression going to meet him around his 30th birthday? My answer is that no one knows for sure. It appears to me that Dozier has made adjustments to become a more complete hitter without diminishing his best asset--home run power. IMHO, it makes him a candidate to sustain high-end performance, although the end of 2015 and April-May of this year give a good argument that he could turn into a pumpkin at any time.
 
In the last few weeks as the tumult in my life has moved Twins baseball on the back burner, I've managed to check the box scores, cluck over the disastrous pitching and watch highlights of games. Dozier has been front and center continuing his power surge. He now projects to exceed 40 homers and if he hits just one more long ball, he will have hit more in a single season than any Twin since Harmon in 1970. 40 homers would be a Top Ten season in franchise history dating back to the Senators who started playing at the turn of the 20th century. Only Harmon and Roy Sievers (once) have ever hit 40 homers in a single season in franchise history. Dozier is projected to score and drive in over 100 runs, also a rare feat, especially for guy who has hit first or second most of the season. He may or may not make 40 homers, 100 RBI or 100 runs, but on such a bad team those numbers stand out big and bold. Although I'm not a big fan of WAR, it does represent a quick and dirty assessment of value and Dozier's 5.6 WAR for this season is in the Top Ten in the league. Because the season has been so bad, I don't think Dozier has gotten the attention he deserves for his huge season. He won't win a Silver Slugger or MVP, he won't win the HR championship or set any other records, so there hasn't been any national coverage, but his overall season and particularly his production since June has been off the charts.
 
Now in the season's final month, most Twins fans are thinking about the future (with good reason). Augmenting a terrible rotation is Priority One and trading Brian Dozier to get pitching help makes sense, since his value should be at an all-time high. This argument is buttressed by the play of Polanco, who has hit over .300, showing good on-base skills, but a questionable glove at short or third. I believe Jorge Polanco is best suited to second base and I believe adding him for Dozier wouldn't be all bad since Polanco is a switch hitter and wouldn't be prone to long slumps with his swing and approach. However, unless the payoff is monumental, Brian Dozier should be the Twins second baseman next year. He has had a season for the ages despite the wreckage around him, he's only 29 and if the last 100 days are an indication, he might get even better. Finally, he's been a solid citizen off the field. If the club wants somebody as the face of the franchise, they could do worse than Mr. Dozier.
 
Just a couple more thoughts before I summarize--Dozier has been durable. Since becoming the team's second baseman, he hasn't been disabled and has missed only a handful of games with injuries. Secondly, my observation is that he is a good teammate. He doesn't sulk, cheers for his mates, appears to like their company off the field (loved the State Fair video) and despite having strong religious views, doesn't put that in the face of his teammates or the media.
 
I have mentioned many of these thoughts in previous threads on the forums of Twins Daily. I find this player to be fascinating, especially in light of his minor league career and low status when drafted. I think Brian Dozier is a fine player who hasn't gotten the appreciation he deserves for this, his best season. I will continue to be a Dozier fan, hopefully as he continues to be a Minnesota Twin, but even if he's traded. In the event that he is traded, I will be pulling for the players acquired in return and hope they make the Twins better.

Your dose of history from my vat of Twins facts / folklore.
 
It's the Mickey Mantle Homerun Video, from the game of August 22, 1968.
 
The Bomber Bully deposited Twins lefty Jim Merritt's curve into the lower, leftfield stands at Metropolitan Stadium, in Bloomington.
 
More importantly, it was his swan song, his arrivederci to Minnesota fans. Check it out.
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCJJTFeKXSo
 
Play-by-play guys and color commentators have an important job. For many, they are the trusted source of information when watching a baseball game on TV, or listening on the radio.
 
It's only natural that you'd expect the things they say to be true. But occasionally they get it wrong. And sometimes, they get it really wrong.
 
When Jim Anderson, founder of MAX Bats, heard Dick Bremer and Bert Blyleven opine against the use of maple bats during one of the Twins games he was watching in 2008, he decided he had to let them know they had it wrong.
 
During a Michael Cuddyer at bat, Cuddyer took a big hack at an inside pitch and his barrel went flying over the third base dugout. Commentators Bremer and Blyleven immediately attacked maple bats, saying they needed to ban them immediately.
 
Anderson was shocked. "You've got to be kidding me ... Michael Cuddyer only swings ash and I can't believe you don't know this," said Anderson. "These guys don't all swing maple. Just because a bat breaks that way doesn't mean it's a maple."
 
According to Anderson, the bat breaking issues had nothing to do with the species of wood in the bats, but everything to do with the shape of the bat and the weight. "If a guy's swinging a big barrel ash bat that's a minus 3.5, you're going to have problems," he said.
 
Anderson immediately went up to his home office and wrote a letter explaining the issues, and listing what everybody in the Twins clubhouse swings. "A lot of media was saying a lot of things about maple bats that just weren't true," said Anderson.
 
The MAX Bats founder went on to expand on the letter and eventually he was able to get the letter to the MLBPA and was asked to create a more in-depth report on maple bats. "So I pounded out my manifesto on maple bats," said Anderson. "I got a lot of people to understand why bats break ... it's not a maple bat issue, it's how bats are made."
 
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It was another beautiful weekend for baseball in sunny Southwest Florida. The baseball gods were smiling down as there was a rematch of last weekends pitching prospect phenoms of Stephen Gonsalves of the Twins vs 17 year old wunderkid Anderson Espinoza. Before the matchup, I got a little video of Gonsalves warming up in the bullpen where he appeared a little wild. After his two innings of pitching, where he showed off his plus changeup that upticked his 90-92 mph fast and the feel of a good curveball (~74 mph). When I asked about his bullpen warmups, he said he wasn't feeling the slider so scraped it for the outing. When asked to order his comfortability with his pitches Stephen said usually it's a FB/CH/SL/CV order as his curveball is a fourth pitch offering that he's working on to give the hitters another look. As soon as Instructional League is over with Gonsalves said he'll shut it down pitching wise until January when he'll start long tossing and by February he'll be ready for his bullpen sessions, in the meantime he'll be ramping up his workout schedule.
 

Making an appearance over the weekend was Twins' masher Adam Brett Walker II, he's only gotten bigger since I saw him in Spring Training, truly a man-child. Walker was impressive at the plate working deep counts, making pitchers work while taking his big cuts. Adam left the game on Friday after four at bats with slight soreness in his wrist but was good enough to play on Saturday while maning leftfield at Fenway South.
He got to face some advanced pitching in BoSox prospects Anderson Espinoza, Logan Allen, and Michael Kopech before he heads out to the Arizona Fall League to face even better competition.  
Another prospect in town getting some reps before the AFL was righty power reliever Jake Reed. Reed looked real good at times in his one inning outing showing off a nasty slider with a hard 95mph fastball yet having a little command issues.
 

Yet one Twins prospect got the lion's share of the praise from the 20 or so scouts that were on hand this weekend, and that would be SS Nick Gordon. Gordon sat out on Friday but played SS and batted second on Saturday. The scouts I talked to raved about Nick, one AL East scout echoed the same sentiments I heard from BoSox coach Joe Oliver in that Nick's going to be better than his older brother Dee. The comp that the scout put on him might be unfair but should make Twins' fan overjoyed was that of pinstripe legend Derek Jeter. The scout elaborated for me that Gordon has all the tools across the board (he's going to stay at SS, can get on base, can steal, can hit and has some pop that he'll grow into), has great leadership, and great overall makeup.
 

Other tidbits from Instructs, Mike Cederoth has a very "unique" delivery if you've never seen it, where most pitchers push off the rubber, Mike takes a little hop and actually pushes off an inch or two in front of the rubber. The Red Sox players/coaches were shouting from the bench that "he's cheating" but the umpire said he was within the guidelines of "the book". By doing so, Cederoth is able to increase his extension and release point which in turn makes that 93 mph look like it's 95 mph.
 

Lamonte Wade shows an advanced approach at the plate, working counts and puts good wood on the ball often; keep on eye on him. Tyree Davis is itching to get on the ballfield and from the sounds of it might be ready for the last week of Instructs. If you don't know, Davis injured his elbow and elected for rehab for the torn joint instead of surgery. Tyree has bulked up while he's been off the field, adding 20 lb of muscle; he wants to play winter ball but is unsure if he'll get the okay from management. Yorman Landa saw some game action that had his fastball at 94-95mph and threw for two innings. Pitchers on Friday included Stephen Gonsalves (2IP start), Yorman Landa (2IP), Alex Robinson, Logan Lombana, and Johan Quezada. Pitchers on Saturday included Sam Clay (4IP start), Brandon Poulson, Jake Reed, Mike Theofanopoulos, Mike Cederoth, and Rich Condeelis.
 
I'll be back next weekend as the Twins wrap up their Instructional League play and players either head home for the winter or off to Arizona, Mexico, Austraila, or the Caribbean for more playing time.