Hugh Morris

Any particular reasoning behind this? I'm a big Turner guy, and like Garver as well.... but Garver is the same age as Murphy and just put up a worse line in A Ball. Turner's a year younger and put up a worse line in AA ball. If it's defense, Murphy's CS% in AA was better than Turner (or Garver's at A+) and Prospectus had him as the 5th best AAA catcher for pitchframing in 2014.

Regarding your first point-Neither competitive team traded for a player who was a starter for the 2015 Season. Look, I'm sure if the Twins had Brian McCann, they wouldn't have traded Hicks in order to get Murphy. However, they have Kurt Suzuki. He is... not Brian McCann. Like the Yankees, I'd also rather have McCann than Murphy. Regarding the second point- what mentality that led to the Kyle Loshe trade do you believe should be removed? Should Molitor paint a target on his office door and instruct players to go at it? That was an obvious flashpoint, at least. What was Garza's conflict that led the Twins to trade him-for the #3 prospect in the majors who just finished his rookie year? It's just too bad they traded for Delmon. There was nothing that indicated he might have had personality issues before the Twins acquired him. Just ask minor league umpires. What could Garza have done or demonstrated that would have been worse than throwing your bat at an umpire? Past those qualms, and more generally towards what I've seen posted in the thread- a couple of things I take issue on. 1: The sentiment that the Twins made the trade relying only on Murphy's Triple Slash Line. I want to assume everyone questioning if the Twins knew about his BABIP was kidding. For anyone who wasn't-is there anything that TR's regime could do to convince you that they are aware of the most elementary 'fancy stats'? I'm genuinely curious what it would take. 2: I see Dave Cameron's article has been linked here. It's pretty harsh. I hope this doesn't impact his opinion of the Twins organization. Rumor has it he was consider them as highly as #6org. To avoid this post being only metadiscussion and snark: It appears Hicks may have turned a corner this year as far as his approach and his swing. That's good to see. On the other hand, pitchers might attack him differently since he was an entirely different batter. Via Brooksbaseball: 2014: 19 of the 227 first pitches he saw in play (8%). He hit .210 on the ones he put in play.2015: 51 of his 377 PAs ended on the first pitch (13%). He hit .333Hicks' batting average was 14 hits better in 2015 than it was in 2014. The changes on first pitch (both putting the ball in play, and BABIP on first pitches) account for 11 hits... Hicks' changes might lead to continued success. Or he'll have to adjust again to account for the league making the easiest strategy adjustment possible pitchers ("First pitch is no longer a freebie"). As a rule, I dislike giving up on young toolsy OFs who've shown any promise at the MLB level. I'd also liked to have gotten someone more glamorous than Murphy. On the other hand, Turner and Garver don't appear to be solutions in the near future and I struggle to think of plausibly available backup catchers I'd be excited about. In a market where teams are allegedly offering AJ more than $3m, free agency doesn't appeal much. An unexplored question: This appears to open up the possibility of Arcia on the roster in 2016. Moving forward, would you rather have Murphy+Arcia or Hicks+[Whatever you could trade Arcia for]? Is there a wrong answer to this question?

One of the more enjoyable "The roster isn't Gardy's fault!" posts I've read. As to the Gardy/Ryan/Both? Conversation, I think TR's judged by more than just the record on the field, whereas Gardy can't point towards Cedar Rapids' success during his performance review. It's important to look at what Ryan inherited (readers can read that as "reclaimed" if it means we can skip the "How much power did Bill Smith really have?" conversation) Minor Leagues: A farm system ranked 22nd by BP that was highlighted by a Sano who was considered dubious in position and potentailly makeup, Rosario and Joe Benson. The top pitcher in the system was Alex Wimmers-and even he was a worse prospect than a thoroughly unimpressive Levi Michael. Of all the players in AAA the year prior, only Trevor Plouffe put up a statline that would make someone take notice-and he'd already moved up to the next level. Were it not for Sano, this system may have ranked 30th and that could have been generous. Major Leagues: Injuries and poor performance had sapped Mauer, Morneau, Liriano, Young and Baker, the only well-performing veterans who hadn't left in FA of their Value. Even Span was low enough that Bowden reporting "sources" suggesting Storen and Lomardozzi (the Nats' version of "Duensing and Swarzak!") wasn't laughed out of the room when he posted it for ESPN. The only "rookie" in 2011 who seemed like he could be a part of the future was the September Sample Sizing Parm. Plouffe was old for his age (#Yogi) and looked like he might end up as average with the bat while being a butcher in the field. At the end of 2014? MiLB: BP's top system in baseball (only the Cubs and Houston increased their standing by double digits during that time period. For those who'd like to give credit to picking 2nd, recall that Buxton was far from a lock at the time-especially for an organization flush with toolsy HS OFs and in desperate need of front line pitching). Potential Impact prospects up the middle, in the corners and on the mound-with ceiling and depth at each slot. MLB: Santana, Vargas and Arcia show promise (Pinto as well, if he can learn to call a game), Hughes and Gibson are actual major league pitchers, Dozier has GG caliber defense and an above-average bat at 2B and Plouffe is thoroughly average (in the best possible sense). The TL;DR? Ryan can point to organizational overhaul when he's asked why he should keep his job. The responsibility scope of Manager doesn't allow Gardy to do that.

[Deleted the Prior post as I realized that I somehow forgot something in the midst of all these words] I'd caution you not to confuse (or conflate) a search for accuracy with "defend[ing] the Twins payroll situation". Your initial statement was either confusingly worded (as I and others took a different meaning) or inaccurate, and rather than offering a defense of payroll, gil4 was pointing this out. What follows is less a defense of payroll and more an argument on arbitrary endpoints. You clarified that you meant current spending is lower than it was when the Twins first moved into Target Field. I disagree with the idea that Season 1 was the new stadium's equilibrium point or that it should be considered the "natural level" of things. Revenues decline, even when controlling for team performance, immediately after the first season in a new stadium. Think of it as driving your new car off the lot. I think it's substantially more informative to compare the last 5 years at the Metrodome (which involved a substantially more successful period) to the first 5 at Target Field. Twins Metrodome Average (05-09): $62,650,707.60 Twins Target Field Average: $95,761,233 (53% increase) Twins 2014 Target Field Payroll: $85,465,000 (36% increase) As you can see, even this season (after a "precipitous" drop in payroll) represents a substantial increase over the way things were at the Metrodome. Many will consider this too rosy, team-friendly or apologetic towards ownership. I contend looking at the behavior before the new revenue stream is simply a more useful comparison to determine how revenue is being used. As an aside, the trading away 3 years of one of (if not *the*) baseball's team-friendliest contracts in CF and a player 2 years away from sniffing arbitration is probably not the best argument to use when bemoaning the cheapness of a club-especially when the return was a Top 100 prospect, a former Top 100 prospect and recent Rookie of Year candidate who all contributed to strengthening a part of the system (competent young starters, and in 2 cases, power arms) that had been desolate for years. As for the others, Cuddyer seemed to have little interest in returning. Willingham and Doumit equaled the contract he received from Colorado. Morneau had substantial questions about his ability to recover anything resembling his 2010 form, and Mauer's own concussion issues made it clear that 1B was no longer automatically Morneau's spot. I've been thrilled to watch them rediscover their offense output in the friendly confines of Coors, but "expense" doesn't appear to have been the major factor in either decision. I'd comment the same seems to be true with Liriano who-based on the Twins having to trade in-division for a meager package as well as the one-year "prove it" deal he signed after-was far from "in demand" as '12 drew to a close and '13 began. Shelling out more guaranteed money for one player (and at a higher AAV) than I believe any local club has for an entire offseason (Parise & Suter, for instance, make less money over more years). Being the highest bidder for a major international free agent (which turned out catastrophically). Setting franchise records for FA Hitter and Pitcher contracts. If the Pohlads are focused on making money at the expense of all else-they're doing an absolutely terrible job at it. There have been a plethora of examples in recent years of teams making a concerted effort to pinch pennies at the expense of winning (given your inclusion of Span, Revere and deadline FA trades above, I'll use "winning" the way you seem to-which is regarding immediate success). Houston has torn down their roster at remarkable pace, the Red Sox had what can only be described as an epic shedding of salary 2 summers ago and the Cubs have sold off any veteran piece with something that resembles value during their rebuild. None of these teams, though, can match the Marlins. Can you imagine the response had the Twins gone out and signed Valverde, Bay and Lackey to massive, longterm deals coinciding with the opening of Target Field and then dealt them along with Mauer before the All-Star break? And that's without mentioning the SEC investigation into whether Loria literally defrauded the city during the stadium process (as opposed to the figurative defrauding the Star Tribune Comment Crew is sure the Pohlads engaged in). When it comes down to it-even if I found merit in your premise that the Twins don't care (or only vaguely care, in the way that I might care about character progression during a cinemax afterdark flick)-I think I'd be less troubled by the Profit-at-all-performance-costs strategy and more troubled by how terrible they are executing it.

I've got a friend who had a teacher assign him a book for one of his college courses and finally broke down and read it myself after listening to him for a couple of years. A Former VP at Pepsi went through and determined that the marginal value of each additional win varies from team-to-team (and from win-to-win). He put up a few segments at Hardball Times- http://www.hardballtimes.com/measuring-the-dollar-value-of-a-player-part-2/ and I think it's something to factor in to your thought exercise. Obviously the specific weights he gives each factor no longer apply, but it gives a more holistic view than "Attendance Gain + Average Ticket Price"... graduates from Napkin Math to ScratchPaper Math. For the topic as a whole, I do believe that the Twins have greater fiscal resources than the Royals did (do?)-both in the ability to keep homegrown stars long term (Mauer) and to make Free Agent signings that go beyond the 1 year deals(Hughes, Nolasco). For that reason, I don't think that the Royals serve as a good team to emulate. With their budget constraints and Dayton Moore's increasingly tenuous Job Security, making a splashy-or even midsized- FA move wasn't a possibility for them. The Twins are nearing a window where they'll be graduating 1 to 2 (or even 3) top 100 prospects every year and have legitimate arguments that they'll continue as a top 10 farm system for the remainder of the decade (Gordon and Thorpe still being in the system in 2019 would put them at 23 and 24 respectively-I certainly hope things don't turn out that way, but it's plausible). It's not a situation where they have to choose between relying on prospects and acquiring proven talent. Like the Red Sox and Rangers, they've got the capacity to do both... just a little more slanted towards "Prospect" and less towards "Payroll". Generally, those are the teams who have consistent success.

Parker- That's terribly embarrassing. I apologize, you defintiely deserve credit for the interview and that's anything but a small quibble. First off, thanks for the compliments, to those of you whom it applies. Always nice to know that adding a night to the constantly ticking carpal tunnel clock was appreciated. Starting to address other comments Paul-I get the visceral reaction against Anderson. To an extent I've got it too, which is what inspired me to dig into things more. Spycake-Yes, more context would definitely be helpful. I'll update this (or perhaps post a thread) based on the results of what I've found. Given that grabbing 30 games worth of data for a pitcher based on these criteria isn't necessarily quick, are there any specific pitchers you'd like to see him compared to? Doing any sort of normalized comparison on the topic isn't feasible under my current constraints, so I'd welcome any pitchers you think would make helpful comps. BBref suggests Westbook as a similar pitcher, so he'll be included. Let me know if there's anyone else. beckmt-Fangraphs has his slider rate as being the highest it's been since he blew out his arm (not very far below it either). That's... troubling. I hope he figured out whatever has given him arm issues and he's going to be durable. I just wouldn't bet any cash on that. twinsfan34: NOW THAT is what I call meeting effort with effort. I loved the breakdowns you gave and appreciate your insight from your own past. Assigning cause to injuries is... difficult. Seems like every year a new team has found the way to resolve injury issues on pitching staffs-Texas started ignoring pitch counts and had a pretty healthy year. The following year was a disaster. Other organizations have emphasized non-throwing conditioning to seemingly random results. Dusty Baker's teams seem to favor lifting heavy boxes with a wrenching, jerking motion. Jokes aside-I think people could go for ages on assigning blame- debating between blaming player evaluation, MiLB coaching, MLB Pitching Coaches, Player Misreporting and random luck. The only exception is Dusty Baker. I think everyone can agree he's a coach with a body(arm?) count on his permanent record. It's perhaps an intellectual copout, but I have to say I simply don't think most human beings are built to throw a small, hard object over 90 MPH while adding deception or movement tens of thousands of times in our adult lives. Some people (Verlander) are the exceptions. I don't believe there's an effective way to identify those players before the first injury happens-but maybe the Rays will sustain their success and I'll buy that there's something to it. Regarding the various pitchers: Silva was sought after enough that Seattle decided to make a (at the time) pretty large commitment to bring him in, both dollars and years. Pavano hadn't had a productive season in the four before coming here, and even his time in Cleveland the season we traded for him was just barely on the rosy side of passable. I agree that he was a veteran by the time he arrived, but his last success came back in the NL (before Mauer's first full season, even)... I suppose that's more where things continue into subjective rankings, but something seemed to start "going right" for Pavano when he arrived in Minnesota and continued (though not as strongly) through his time here even as his age and injury history would hint at a decline. Boof is definitely granted-got lost as I was researching everyone else and forgot he'd lost his starters job even before he was sent away. Loshe I definitely struggle with. He is a person who very clearly struggled with maturity/impulse control issues and was worse than his time here for the first few years off the roster. Even after meeting up with Duncan and the Cards, Loshe had a good season, followed by an average one, a terrible one and an excellent one. Of course, he was also four years older by the end of that process and it may just be that time mellowed him. I've got him as a push but could be swayed either way. Garza I initially had as a push, I may have overcorrected when attempting to avoid my own bias. Perhaps Bonser ought to be grouped in with Albers, Diamond, and others that have seen a season of competent results coaxed out of them with skillsets that are charitably described as mediocre. Does Albers have the same "success" in Houston or Chicago or elsewhere as he did here? I don't know. But that is a category I wound up paying little attention to. With regards to in game adjustments, I can't pretend that my lipreading skills are good enough to have any idea of what he says. I also don't know what he prepares as far as a "book" for the battery on batter tendencies or any variety of other duties that are generally assigned to the pitching coach. Admitting that I have little actual knowledge to base this on, it strains credulity for me to believe that Anderson somehow kept his job while not being helpful to his pitchers on the mound and while not competently accomplishing the basic tasks one would usually assign a pitching coach. Even with Gardy's backing, this sort of consistent awfulness from the rotation combined with subpar performance on the tasks he can directly control would lead to a dismissal from any organization, even this one.

[I](I'm going to start this off with some generalized statements about where I'm coming from and why I'm writing this. Feel free to scroll down until you see the big red “TL;DR”. I like to think I've got some insight or can provide a bit of entertainment, but that belief hardly makes me unique amongst people who post on the Internet. The footnotes also get a little loose.)[/I] [FONT=Verdana]As sports fans, we've become used to hearing a viewpoint, statement or assertion repeated ad nauseum. Twitter, Facebook, Skip Bayless, forums such as TD, talk radio and click-trolling columnists all contribute to the cacophony. The noise to signal ratio is frequently atrocious, and yet little by little, “conventional wisdom” forms from the opinions and becomes the bedrock of acceptable conversation. This post is not written to complain about the process, mind you. Frankly, the public's insatiable appetite to discuss, pontificate and absorb information about Sport is what gives it such an appeal to me. I have a feeling many of those posting on this site agree. Sports, and the common opinions about them, become a cultural touchstone, allowing immediate connection across generation gaps, racial boundaries, gender, classes and any other obstacle society may put between people.[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]I find the study ofhow this wisdom forms to be fascinating, personally, and I'm even more interested by how local stimuli and self-selection fuel formation... and occasionally transform it into a fermentation process. Sometimes conventional wisdom can be accurate and widespread (Adrian Peterson is an elite NFL running back, the Twins generally have more pitch to contact guys in their rotation than they do strikeout machines), other times it can be accurate and localized(Brian Dozier plays very good defense at second). [/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]Most intriguing though, is when “conventional wisdom” or “common sense” is either completely wrong or vastly over-generalized. Usually, this is most visible when new information is processed by someone who has already determined his opinion on a topic and is examining the information through that lens. Sometimes,this misinformation is held by a widespread group of people (Adrian Peterson needs a quarterback who can make defenses pull the 8[/FONT][SUP]th [/SUP][FONT=Verdana]man out of the box if he wants to have a successful game/season) and other times it can be held very locally (Michael Baumann of Crashburn and Jonah Keri of ESPN have had very funny reactions to seeing Twins fans respond to tweets/posts containing Mauer praise. I've removed them to condense the post. Happy to post pictures upon request though, for anyone who missed it in August).[/FONT][SUP]1[/SUP] [FONT=Verdana]In (mostly) lurking around TwinsDaily since inception, I've seen all sorts of things work their way into becoming accepted opinion. Some things are absolutely accurate (Gardy's unwillingness to platoon players, Delmon's utter inability to play defense) while others are definitely not (The Twins do not immediately jettison players with“personality” even when it negatively impacts the clubhouse. The Pioneer-Press has hinted at it and I believe that one of the Star-Tribune guys has actually said/tweeted it, but Danny Valencia did not get along with some of the players in the clubhouse we might consider more milquetoast. When circumstances necessitated a choice between the players, Danny was kept). [/FONT] [B] TL;DR[/B] [FONT=Verdana]Most entertaining to me are debatable premises held up by using certain readings (possibly misreadings) of information to support them. Those are what I'd like to cover here.My hope is that this thread generates some discussion. No specific forum poster is being called out by this post, but I'm trying to avoid straw men, so these will be views I've seen expressed on the board. I will warn the reader that since I've put considerable time and effort into writing this, any reductivist/tribalist comments or arguments below (ranging from “stat nerd” to “front office apologist”to “wrong kind of fan” and everywhere in between) [/FONT][U][I]will greatly strain my civility[/I][/U][FONT=Verdana]. Successful forums meet effort with effort. Dying forums are drowned by attempts to shut down discussion.[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana] Without further ado, and avoiding the lowest of hanging fruit(“Mauer's soft!”), I present to you:[/FONT] [U][SIZE=4][B]Contrarian Thinking [/B][/SIZE][/U] [B]Theme 1: The Twins Front Office is averse to/dismissive of/ignorant about Sabermetrics.[/B] [FONT=Verdana]This one is rampant. It usually coincides with posts about the team being stuck in the past. Please don't get me wrong- there is plenty of evidence that the Twins aren't industry leaders on the SABR front, but they also may not be as far behind as many believe. Dissecting two of the more common citations I've seen for this belief, we begin with:[/FONT] [U]Item 1: Terry Ryan on Kevin Correia[/U] [FONT=Verdana]“[/FONT][COLOR=#000000][FONT=Verdana][FONT=Verdana]Well,I always go back to the scouting evaluation, people that have seen him, and we saw him a lot with the Pirates, and certainly before that when he was with the Padres and the Giants. We like his makeup, he has stuff, we had evaluators tell us and me in particular that this guy is better than the numbers.[/FONT][/FONT][/COLOR][FONT=Verdana] “[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]In a certain light, especially with already established opinions about the front office, this quote is excellent evidence to prove that when it comes down to it, TR and the front office will routinely overlook statistical analysis in favor of scouting. Looking back at the box scores of Correia's worst starts of the season, however, I think I see where Terry was coming from. Even as an unabashed fan of advanced stats I think he has a point. A quote from Correia, late in September, started me down this path.[/FONT] [COLOR=#333333][FONT=Verdana][FONT=Georgia]"There are just a few innings I'd like to take back, besides that, I think I had a good year."[/FONT][/FONT][/COLOR] [FONT=Verdana]Looking back at his ten worst starts (judged by WPA, ~ one third of his year) I found something interesting. In those ten starts, [B]h[/B][/FONT][B]e held opponents scoreless in 35 of his 53 innings[/B][B] pitched. There were only four innings among the eighteen scored-upon innings in which he gave up only 1 run to his opponents [/B][I](in three of them, he was pulled. The other was a solo home run by Jose Bautista)[/I][FONT=Verdana]. In only one of those games did opponents score on him in three separate innings.[/FONT] [U]This is to say- Kevin Correia has a crooked numbers problem[/U][FONT=Verdana]. In the 14 innings that opponents hung crooked numbers on Correia ('4' is sort of crooked, right?), 2 of them had Correia giving up 3 runs, 1 giving up 4, 1 giving up 5 and 2 giving up 6. [/FONT][B]If, in those 6 innings, Correia gave up only 2 runs instead of letting the inning spiral out of control, his ERA on the year would have dropped to [U][COLOR=#ff0000]3.45[/COLOR][/U][/B][FONT=Verdana]. There'd be debates about if he was the FA acquisition of the year.[/FONT][SUP]2[/SUP] [FONT=Verdana]Obviously, there is some note to be taken about sample size. The converse is also true-if he had given up an additional 15 runs throughout the year, his ERA would have risen by a point. In baseball, you don't get mulligans for bad innings. I simply found it notable that [/FONT][U]6 innings (3% of his total IP) spread across 10 games[/U][FONT=Verdana] had such an impact on his end of year stats. And that brings me back to the original Terry quote.[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]A scout watching one of those games would report that Correia had a very effective start, were it not for one big inning. When looking at an acquisition (where makeup, personality, etc come into play)- the organization would ask itself if Correia had the ability to stop an inning from spiraling out of control and if he could avoid the mostly mental pitching errors[/FONT][SUP]3[/SUP][FONT=Verdana] that will drown an inning as fast as struggling in quicksand[/FONT][SUP]4[/SUP][FONT=Verdana].[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]Those numbers suggest that if Correia can find a way to get himself out of those innings[/FONT][SUP]5[/SUP][FONT=Verdana] (or if the defense in the corner outfield starts turning in-the-gap doubles into long outs and singles... a distinct possibility if we never see a Willingham-Doumit/Parmalee outfield combo again), his value would increase dramatically[/FONT] [B]Posited Theory[/B][FONT=Verdana]: Given that I'm unaware of a stat that measures scoreless innings vs big innings[/FONT][SUP]6[/SUP][FONT=Verdana], [/FONT][COLOR=#006400][FONT=Verdana][U]I think it's reasonable for one to argue that Correia has pitched better than his numbers- without being anti-SABR or opposed to statistical analysis.[/U][/FONT][/COLOR] [U]Item 2: Rob Antony doesn't know FIP![/U] [FONT=Verdana]This one has been kicking around for a while. SI did an article, Gleeman lit up a blog post about it, so Neyer called up Assistant GM Rob Antony. In basic summary: During a 2010 interview, Rob Antony guessed that FIP meant “First strike in Inning Pitched”. While a hilarious guess, he was quite wrong. It means Fielding Independent Pitching[/FONT][SUP]7[/SUP][FONT=Verdana]. This has been red meat for those who dislike the front office's POV on analysis/SABR ever since. I find it curious. If Jack Goin is still kicking around the board, he may be able to provide more insight on the topic, but I'm interested in how forums members actually think front offices in Major League Baseball work. [/FONT][U]Is it the assumption/working belief here that all members of a Baseball Operations/Player Personnel department have their jobs focused around player personnel?[/U][FONT=Verdana] I lack firsthand experience, but that seems off to me.[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]Essentially every story I see involving Rob Antony doing something has him involved in contract negotiations, the mechanics of trade deals and arbitration. Additionally, nearly every story I see on negotiations involving the Twins that names a member of the Front Office names Rob. I've yet to see his name on any stories regarding skill evaluations for any FA, draft pick or international prospect.If I were to liken it to an auto company- [/FONT][U]would we expect the VP of Marketing at Ford to know the specs and sourcing for the bolts holding the engine in place on the F150? If Rob's job is primarily(or solely) negotiations and contracts, would it be reasonable to consider advanced metrics outside of the scope of his job?[/U][FONT=Verdana] In essence, it was four years ago, the organization has since elevated Jack to a greater role and, based on his answers in his thread, it sounds like the analytics department is growing. [/FONT] [B]Posited Theory:[/B][FONT=Verdana] Don't get me wrong, the flub was certainly embarrassing and quite telling of Rob's knowledge (4 years ago), or lack thereof, of advanced metrics. But[/FONT][COLOR=#006400][FONT=Verdana][U] if Rob's job only tangentially involves player evaluation and we have additional evidence in the form of greater resources going to enhance statistical analysis in the Front Office- does the Neyer interview tell us that much about the front office of the Twins as a whole? If it did at the time, do those findings still hold true now?[/U][/FONT][/COLOR] [B]Theme 2: The Twins are an Old Boys Network and need fresh ideas and staff members[/B] [U]Item 1: Rick Anderson, Joe Vavra, Etc.[/U] [FONT=Verdana]There certainly has been limited turnover in the coaching staff under Gardenhire. While I think that we, as fans, generally have very limited knowledge of what coaches do and the impact they have- the last 3 years has provided plenty of ammunition for those seeking changes. I'll leave Vavra alone for now.[/FONT][SUP]8[/SUP][FONT=Verdana] But, Rick Anderson. Rick Anderson is where Twins Arguments go to find agreement. He got lucky with Johan, many say, but has otherwise been terrible as a pitching coach. Or he has passed his prime.[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]But how does one measure a successful pitching coach? Are they the ones whose teams consistently have the lowest ERA? The most wins? The highest K Rate? The lowest walk rate? Personally, I find it useless to try to divine a pitching coach's impact from stats. I'm more than willing to listen if anyone has a method they like...[/FONT][U] but trying to analyze the impact of any variable without a baseline or a control makes for pretty fuzzy analysis that tends to read like a Rorschach Blot, confirming the belief of the analyst.[/U] [FONT=Verdana]To the extent that it's possible to evaluate a coaching staff from the outside, I'd lean towards looking for pitchers who have had increased success after leaving the team- or who came in successful and promptly cratered. Certainly, David Ortiz, the platooned Danny Valencia, Carlos Gomez, JJ Hardy and a mess of others can be pointed to as evidence of potential hitting coach failures. But what about Rick Anderson, pitching coach since 2002.[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]Since he began, the Twins have had the following meaningful starters leave or join the team (I'm sparing the explanations because they're way too long. Happy to post any of them if people would like to see or disagree with my scoring)[/FONT][SUP]9[/SUP][FONT=Verdana] :[/FONT] [U]Point for Anderson (Outperformed reasonable expectations with the Twins or tanked upon departure):[/U] [FONT=Verdana]Carlos Silva. Boof Bonser, Johan Santana, Carl Pavano[/FONT] [U]Push:[/U] [FONT=Verdana]Kyle Loshe, Joe Mays, Kevin Slowey, Scott Baker, Vance Worley(SSS), RA Dickey (knuckleball)[/FONT] [U]Point against Anderson (Improved noticeably after release/trade):[/U] [FONT=Verdana]Matt Garza, Francisco Liriano[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]The Twins rotation has been absolutely miserable over the last three years.[/FONT][U] I'll happily grant that it appears that Rick Anderson has been ineffective at helping players come back from arm surgeries and injuries- at least in the first year back[/U][FONT=Verdana]. That's hardly a complaint unique to him, and I'm not aware of any organizations known for their surgery rehabbing prowess (though Tampa seems to have hit an extended run without injury at all. The bottom line, however, is that the power arms drafted or traded for over the last six years either haven't made it to the team yet (Berrios, Reliever/Starter Conversion Crew, Meyer, Stewart, May), are too fresh to truly grade out (Gibson) or flamed out in the minors (Shooter Hunt, Guiterrez, Guerra, etc). I have a tough time pinning any of that on Anderson. [/FONT] [U][B]Posited Theory: [/B][/U][COLOR=#006400][FONT=Verdana][U]For the pitchers who have been in the big leagues over his tenure, I find it skewing in his favor. Feel free to disagree,but I'd love to see the compelling argument that Anderson has meaningfully contributed to the dumpster fire of the rotation over the last three years and that he should be shouldering the blame for no player personnel, medical issues and luck.[/U][/FONT][/COLOR] [U] Item 2: Bill Smith[/U] [FONT=Verdana]Walked into a situation rife with potential (and a few pitfalls), was struck by three monumental injuries (Nathan, Morneau, Mauer)[/FONT][SUP]10[/SUP][FONT=Verdana] and in some cases compounded problems with his reactions (Ramos-for-Capps, 2011 and the Drew Butera Show). If a few other posters here weren't doing such a good job of it, I'd have fought against the “Bill Smith had an awful tenure” logic in this post, but I will address his continued presence (I believe this was in the Corrigan thread). Again, I would imagine that Jack would have insight here, but the only places I see Bill's name appear in news stories lately is regarding the new facility in Lee County. [/FONT] [B]Posited Theory: [/B][FONT=Verdana]Bill Smith was pretty well regarded for business and group management acumen. He did not work out as a general manager. [/FONT][COLOR=#006400][FONT=Verdana][U]An employee who committed no misconduct and who was willing to be demoted back to his still-open previous job, at which he had been successful, would only be fired for symbolic reasons (unless there was the belief that he actually would rock the boat). Symbolic terminations when demotion is an option make me queasy.[/U][/FONT][/COLOR] [FONT=Verdana]I hope the read was enjoyable, and more importantly, enlightening. Turns out I had to turn this into a blog post instead of a forums post due to length. I could also probably use a hobby. I know at least a couple of the posited theories may be controversial enough to spark some discussion-and I hope they do! If there's any interest, I may do a followup. Possible ideas floating around include hidden benefits from Pelfrey's time here, the value of strikeouts (thanks Mackey), and analyzing the uptick in SpiritofVodkaDave's posting since the DeRosa retirement announcement. Regardless, enjoy.[/FONT] [I]Note: I apologize for any spacing issues above. The "restore autosaved content" button completely saved me-but had the nasty side effect of merging a few words together in every sentence. I think I got them all.[/I] [HR][/HR][SUP]1 [/SUP][FONT=Verdana]Sometimes it happens with small self-selected groups of people across the country. I pray none of you have the misfortune of getting into a discussion about Football with a casual friend or complete stranger and hearing a sentence begin with "Everybody knows Black Quarterbacks...". Yet I'd wager many of you have. Or I just have a face that appeals to casual racists. Regardless, for them-that's "common knowledge".[/FONT] [SUP]2[/SUP][FONT=Verdana]Fans in Kansas City would have been irate that Dayton Moore was too cheap to put up the money to sign him and get the Royals into the playoffs.[/FONT] [SUP]3[/SUP][FONT=Verdana] He's a veteran pitcher, but most 40 year olds you ask would have a list of things that they wish they knew when they were 30. There's still time to mature and grow as a player. Of course, if you ask a 10 year old, he'll try to figure out how a 30 year old could make it to the mound without his walker. There's also a very easy USAFChief joke in here somewhere.[/FONT] [SUP]4[/SUP][FONT=Verdana][media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K0oy2Na_pg[/media][/FONT] [SUP]5[/SUP][FONT=Verdana]Yes, I'm aware that strikeouts are a perfect way to do that. [/FONT] [SUP]6[/SUP][FONT=Verdana]Though if someone would like to provide me a usable data set, or do the work himself, I'd love to see whether a pitcher throwing six 1 run innings and three shutout innings is a more or less valuable way to get to a 6 ERA than two 3 run innings and 6 shutout innings. And it should have a cool name. Like TOOTBLAN or OOPS.[/FONT] [SUP]7[/SUP][FONT=Verdana]As opposed to xFIP, which is Fielding and Pitching Independent Pitching. But maybe I just need someone to explain the rationale behind normalizing home runs. Please though, PMs only. Don't ruin the thread![/FONT] [SUP]8[/SUP][FONT=Verdana] Though I'll admit that I'm troubled by the across-the-board strikeout rate increase for the 2013 lineup under Brunansky... including a lot of swinging-for-the-fences Ks late in games where the Twins could have tied the game or taken the lead with a single or even sacrifice fly.[/FONT] [SUP]9[/SUP][FONT=Verdana] It's probably for the best. I had a wildly inappropriate joke about Dusty Baker's feelings towards Francisco Liriano's 2013 pitch mix and slider frequency. It would definitely have been redacted for non-adult situations.[/FONT] [SUP]10[/SUP][FONT=Verdana]Is there precedent for losing such a contingent in two years? 2 MVPs in the primes of their careers and an elite closer- all without red flags for concussion, catastrophic leg weakness or arm destruction.[/FONT] View full article

(I'm going to start this off with some generalized statements about where I'm coming from and why I'm writing this. Feel free to scroll down until you see the big red “TL;DR”. I like to think I've got some insight or can provide a bit of entertainment, but that belief hardly makes me unique amongst people who post on the internet. The footnotes also get a little loose.) As sports fans, we've become used to hearing a viewpoint,statement or assertion repeated ad nauseum. Twitter, Facebook, Skip Bayless, forums such as TD, talk radio and click trolling columnists all contribute to the cacophony. The noise to signal ratio is frequently atrocious, and yet little by little, “conventional wisdom” forms from the opinions and becomes the bedrock of acceptable conversation. This post is not written to complain about the process, mind you. Frankly, the public's insatiable appetite to discuss, pontificate and absorb information about Sport that gives it such an appeal to me. I have a feeling many of those posting on this site agree. Sports, and the common opinions about them, become a cultural touchstone-allowing immediate connection across generation gaps, racial boundaries, gender, classes and any other obstacle society may put between people. I find how this wisdom forms to be fascinating, personally, and I'm even more interested by how local stimuli and self-selection fuel formation... and occasionally transform it into a fermentation process. Sometimes conventional wisdom can be accurate and widespread (Adrian Peterson is an elite NFL running back, the Twins generally have more pitch to contact guys in their rotation than they do strikeout machines), other times it can be accurate and localized(Brian Dozier plays very good defense at second). Most intriguing though, is when “conventional wisdom” or “common sense” is either completely wrong or vastly over-generalized. Usually, this is most visible when new information is processed by someone who has already determined their opinion on a topic and are examining the information through that lens. Sometimes,this misinformation is held by a widespread group of people (Adrian Peterson needs a quarterback who can make defenses pull the 8th man out of the box if he wants to have a successful game/season) and other times it can be held very locally (Michael Baumann of Crashburn and Jonah Keri of ESPN have had very funny reactions to seeing Twins fans respond to tweets/posts containing Mauer praise. I've removed them to condense the post. Happy to post pictures upon request though, for anyone who missed it in August).1 In (mostly) lurking TwinsDaily since inception, I've seen all sorts of things work their way into becoming accepted opinion. Somethings are absolutely accurate (Gardy's unwillingness to platoon players, Delmon's utter inability to play defense) while others are definitely not (The Twins do not immediately jettison players with“personality” even when it negatively impacts the clubhouse-Pioneer Press has hinted at it and I believe that one of the Star Tribune guys has actually said/tweeted it, but Danny Valencia did not get along with some of the players in the clubhouse we might consider more milquetoast. When circumstances necessitated a choice between the players, Danny was kept). TL;DR The most entertaining to me are debatable premises held up by using certain readings (possibly misreadings) of information to support them. Those are what I'd like to cover here.My hope is that this thread generates some discussion. No specific forums poster is being called out by this post-but I'm trying to avoid strawmen so these will be views that I've seen expressed on the board. I will warn the reader that since I've put considerable time and effort into writing this, any reductivist/tribalist comments or arguments below (ranging from “stat nerd” to “front office apologist”to “wrong kind of fan” and everywhere in between) will greatly strain my civility. Successful forums meet effort with effort. Dying forums are drowned by attempts to shut down discussion. Without further ado, and avoiding the lowest hanging of fruit(“Mauer's soft!”), I present to you: Contrarian Thinking Theme 1: The Twins Front Office is averse to/dismissive of/ignorant about Sabermetrics. This one is rampant. It usually coincides with posts about the team being stuck in the past. Please don't get me wrong-there is plenty of evidence that the Twins aren't industry leaders on the SABR front, but they also may not be as far behind as many believe. Dissecting two of the more common citations I've seen for this belief, we begin with: Item 1: Terry Ryan on Kevin Correia “Well,I always go back to the scouting evaluation, people that have seen him, and we saw him a lot with the Pirates, and certainly before that when he was with the Padres and the Giants. We like his makeup, he has stuff, we had evaluators tell us and me in particular that this guy is better than the numbers. “ In a certain light, especially with already established opinions about the front office, this quote is excellent evidence to prove that when it comes down to it, TR and the front office will routinely overlook statistical analysis in favor of scouting. Looking back at the box scores of Correia's worst starts of the season, however, I think I see where Terry was coming from. Even as an unabashed fan of advanced stats I think he has a point. A quote from Correia, late in September, started me down this path. "There are just a few innings I'd like to take back, besides that, I think I had a good year." Looking back at his 10 worst starts (judged by WPA, ~1/3 of his year) I found something interesting. He held opponents scoreless in35 of his 53 innings (roughly two of every three) pitched. There were only four innings in which he gave up just 1 run to his opponents (in three of them, he was pulled. The other was a solo homerun by Jose Bautista). In only one of those games did opponents score on him in three separate innings. This is to say- Kevin Correia has a crooked numbers problem. In the 14 innings that opponents hung crooked numbers on Correia ('4' is sort of crooked, right?), 2 of them had Correia giving up 3 runs, 1 giving up 4, 1 giving up 5 and 2 giving up 6. If, in those 6 innings, Correia gave up only 2 runs instead of letting the inning spiral out of control, his ERA on the year would have dropped to 3.45. There'd be debates about if he was the FA acquisition of the year.2 Obviously, there is some note to be made about sample size. The converse is also true-if he had given up an additional 15 runs throughout the year, his ERA would have risen by a point. In baseball, you didn't get mulligans for bad innings. I simply found it notable that 6 innings (3% of his total IP) spread across 10 games had such an impact on his end of year stats. And that brings me back to the original Terry quote. A scout watching one of those games would report that Correia had a very effective start, were it not for one big inning. When looking at acquisition (where makeup, personality, etc come into play)-the organization would ask itself if Correia had the ability to stop an inning from spiraling out of control and if he could avoid the mostly mental pitching errors3 that will drown an inning as fast as struggling in quicksand4. Those numbers suggest that if Correia can find a way to get himself out of those innings5 (or if the defense in the corner outfield starts turning in-the-gap doubles into long outs and singles... a distinct possibility if we never see a Willingham-Doumit/Parmalee outfield combo again), his value would increase dramatically Posited Theory: Given that I'm unaware of a stat that measures scoreless innings vs big innings6, I think it's reasonable for one to argue that Correia has pitched better than his numbers-without being anti-SABR or opposed to statistical analysis. Item 2: Rob Antony doesn't know FIP! This one has been kicking around for a while. SI did an article,Gleeman lit up a blog post about it, so Neyer called up Assistant GM Rob Antony. Evidently Parker wants credit when he has amazing interviews: In basic summary: During a 2010 interview, Rob Antony guessed that FIP meant “First strike in Inning Pitched”. While a hilarious guess, he was quite wrong. It means Fielding Independent Pitching7. This has been red meat for those who dislike the front office's POV on analysis/SABR ever since. I find it curious. If Jack Goin is still kicking around the board, he may be able to provide more insight on the topic, but I'm interested in how forums members actually think front offices in Major League Baseball work. Is it the assumption/working belief here that all members of a Baseball Operations/Player Personnel department have their jobs focused around player personnel? I lack firsthand experience, but that seems off to me. Essentially every story I see involving Rob Antony doing something has him involved in contract negotiations, the mechanics of trade deals and arbitration. Additionally, nearly every story I see on negotiations involving the Twins that names a member of the Front Office names Rob. I've yet to see his name on any stories regarding skill evaluations for any FA, draft pick or international prospect.If I were to liken it to an auto company- would we expect the VP of Marketing at Ford to know the specs and sourcing for the bolts holding the engine in place on the F150? If Rob's job is primarily(or solely) negotiations and contracts, would it be reasonable to consider advanced metrics outside of the scope of his job? In essence, it was four years ago, the organization has since elevated Jack to a greater role and, based on his answers in his thread, it sounds like the analytics department is growing. Posited Theory: Don't get me wrong, the flub was certainly embarrassing and quite telling of Rob's knowledge (4 years ago) or lack thereof of advanced metrics. But if Rob's job only tangentially involves player evaluation and we have additional evidence in the form of greater resources going to enhance statistical analysis in the Front Office-does the Neyer interview tell us that much about the front office of the Twins as a whole? If it did at the time, do those findings still hold true now? Theme 2: The Twins are an Old Boys Network and need fresh ideas and staff members Item 1: Rick Anderson, Joe Vavra, Etc. There certainly has been limited turnover in the coaching staff under Gardenhire. While I think that we, as fans, generally have very limited knowledge of what coaches do and the impact they have-the last 3 years has provided plenty of ammunition for those seeking changes. I'll leave Vavra alone for now.8 But Rick Anderson. Rick Anderson is where Twins Arguments go to find agreement. He got lucky with Johan, many say, but has otherwise been terrible as a pitching coach. Or has passed his prime. But how does one measure a successful pitching coach? Are they the ones whose teams consistently have the lowest ERA? The most wins? The highest K Rate? The lowest walk rate? Personally, I find it useless to try and divine a pitching coach's impact from stats. I'm more than willing to listen if anyone has a method they like... but trying to analyze the impact of any variable without a baseline or a control makes for pretty fuzzy analysis that tends to read like a Rorschach Blot, confirming the belief of the analyst. To the extent that it's possible to evaluate a coaching staff from the outside, I'd lean towards looking for pitchers who had increased success after leaving the team- or who came in successful and promptly cratered. Certainly, David Ortiz, the platooned Danny Valencia, Carlos Gomez, JJ Hardy and a mess of others can be pointed to as evidence of potential Hitting Coach failures. But what about for Rick Anderson, since he started in 2002? Since he began, the Twins have had the following meaningful starters leave or join the team (I'm sparing the explanations because they're way too long. Happy to post any of them if people would like to see or disagree with my scoring)9 : Point for Anderson (Outperformed reasonable expectations with theTwins or tanked upon departure): Carlos Silva. Boof Bonser, Johan Santana, Carl Pavano Push: Kyle Loshe, Joe Mays, Kevin Slowey, Scott Baker, Vance Worley(SSS), RA Dickey (Knuckleball) Point against Anderson (Improved noticeably after release/trade): Matt Garza, Francisco Liriano The Twins rotation has been absolutely miserable over the last three years. I'll happily grant that it appears that Rick Anderson has been ineffective at helping players come back from arm surgeries and injuries-at least in the first year back. That's hardly a complaint unique to him, and I'm not aware of any organizations known for their surgery rehabbing prowess (though Tampa seems to have hit an extended run without injury at all. Some say 2%, others try to assign logic to random chance. I'll not argue with either). The bottom line, however, is that the power arms drafted or traded for over the last six years either haven't made it to the team yet (Berrios, Reliever/Starter Conversion Crew, Meyer, Stewart, May), are too fresh to truly grade out (Gibson) or flamed out in the minors (Shooter Hunt, Guiterrez, Guerra, etc). I have a tough time pinning any of that on Anderson. Posited Theory: For the folks who have been in the big leagues over his tenure, I find it skewing in his favor. Feel free to disagree,but I'd love seeing the compelling reason that Anderson has meaningfully contributed to the dumpster fire of the rotation over the last three years and that he should be shouldering the blame, no player personnel, medical and luck. Item 2: Bill Smith Walked into a situation rife with potential (and a few pitfalls), was struck by three monumental injuries (Nathan, Morneau, Mauer)10 and in some cases compounded problems with his reactions (Ramos-for-Capps, 2011 and the Drew Butera Show). If a few other posters here weren't doing such a good job of it, I'd have fought against the “Bill Smith had an awful tenure” logic in this post, but I will address his continued presence (I believe this was in the Corrigan thread). Again, I would imagine that Jack would have insight here, but the only places I see Bill's name appear in news stories lately is regarding the new facility in Lee County. Posited Theory: Bill Smith was pretty well regarded for business and group management acumen. He did not work out as a general manager. An employee who committed no misconduct and who was willing to be demoted back to his still-open previous job, at which he was successful, would only be fired for symbolic reasons (unless there was the belief that he actually would rock the boat). Symbolic terminations when demotion is an option makes me queasy. I hope the read was enjoyable, and more importantly, enlightening. Turns out I had to turn this into a blog post instead of a forums post due to length. I could also probably use a hobby. I know at least a couple of the posited theories may be controversial enough to spark some discussion-and I hope they do! If there's any interest, I may do a followup. Possible ideas floating around include hidden benefits from Pelfrey's time here, the value of strikeouts (thanks Mackey), and analyzing the uptick in SpiritofVodkaDave's posting since the Derosa retirement announcement. Regardless, enjoy. Note: I apologize for any spacing issues above. The "restore autosaved content" button completely saved me-but had the nasty side effect of merging a few words together in every sentence. I think I got them all. 1 Sometimes it happens with small self-selected groups of people across the country. I pray none of you have the misfortune of getting into a discussion about Football with a casual friend or complete stranger and hearing a sentence begin with "Everybody knows Black Quarterbacks...". Yet I'd wager many of you have. Or I just have a face that appeals to casual racists. Regardless, for them-that's "common knowledge". 2Fans in Kansas City would have been irate that Dayton Moore was too cheap to put up the money to sign him and get the Royals into the playoffs. 3 He's a veteran pitcher, but most 40 year olds you ask would have a list of things that they wish they knew when they were 30. There's still time to mature and grow as a player. Of course, if you ask a 10 year old, he'll try to figure out how a 30 year old could make it to the mound without his walker. There's also a very easy USAFChief joke in here somewhere. 4[video=youtube;3K0oy2Na_pg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K0oy2Na_pg 5Yes, I'm aware that strikeouts are a perfect way to do that. 6Though if someone would like to provide me a usable data set, or do the work themselves, I'd love to see whether a pitcher throwing 6 1 run innings and 3 shutout innings is a more or less valuable way to get to a 6 ERA than 2 3 run innings and 6 shutout innings. And it should have a cool name. Like TOOTBLAN or OOPS. 7As opposed to xFIP, which is Fielding and Pitching Independent Pitching. But maybe I just need someone to explain the rationale behind normalizing Home Runs. Please though, PMs only. Don't ruin the thread! 8 Though I'll admit that I'm troubled by the across-the-board strikeout rate increase for the 2013 lineup under Brunansky... including a lot swinging for the fences Ks late in games where the Twins could have tied the game or taken the lead with a single or even sacrifice fly. 9 It's probably for the best. I had a wildly inappropriate joke about Dusty Baker feelings towards Francisco Liriano's 2013 pitch mix and slider frequency. It would definitely have been redacted for adult situations. 10Is there precedent for losing such a contingent in two years? 2 MVPs in the primes of their careers and an elite closer-all without red flags for concussion, catastrophic leg weakness or arm destruction.