Richie the Rally Goat

Aha! Thanks!

Why assume Gordon won’t be the everyday left fielder? Gallo and Kepler need to earn their spot in the lineup just like Gordon and Larnach

In perusing Fangraphs, NYY was 4th in Pitching War for the ‘19 season, Twins were 14 in FWAR, 19 in FIP, 16 in ERA. The Twins were average pitching, including a all the injuries and what if’s.

Exactly. The article missed the mark… the problem with the Bomba Squad wasn’t the rentals. The problem was they didn’t have enough pitching. getting bounced by the Yankees again in ‘19 was getting beaten by a team that hit the second most home runs in the league AND had much better pitching. frankly I wish the FO would sign more rentals. While I hate the Gallo signing, if I’m proven wrong and he actually can hit a Manfred Ball, that rental could prove to be a huge difference maker on a team that looks poised to prevent runs at a much improved rate, and struggle to score.

I would peg him as third in the Twins rotation, maybe 4th if Mahle is 100%, but he is still a very good starting pitcher. Mahle was a mid-season acquisition and got hurt, Lopez was just added. On the old school starting pitching and defense scale, this team got a lot better with Kirilloff at first, Gallo and Kepler in the corner OF and Taylor 4th OF. They could struggle to score runs, but run prevention is much better. now, just because Gray is down on my pecking order, doesn’t mean I think this is a World Series rotation. They just have a bunch of very good starting pitchers (not an “Ace” in the bunch).

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By ‘22 WPA Lopez 1.79 Mahle 1.26 Ryan 1.23 Gray .81 Ober .61 By ‘22 FWAR Lopez 2.8 Gray 2.4 Mahle 2.1 Ryan 2.1 Ober 1.4 Yup! Lopez I’ll take 1.4 FWAR out of their 5th starter! That’s looking to be a solid foundation

Pablo Lopez threw the most innings last year. 33 innings more than Ryan

Did you trade Joey Gallo for Luis Arraez? Pablo Lopez not making the team?

The whole point of the article is the patterns we as fans can see may not actually be patterns and may not actually align with the decisions and actions being taken by the team. You are correct the team needs to be driving the improvement and they are accountable to the Pohlads on sales that are generated from us the fans. these are separate concepts but there’s causal/reaction that occurs. The PR machine whirs through the Twitterverse and we all react. On and on…

They beat the guaranteed by 25% they offered a lower overall by 15% if Correa plays the whole contract.

Respect is always a must, and rule number 1 here at TD. I agree with you wholeheartedly on that. I didn’t read the article as anything less than respectful. The author shared their experience and used some approachable concepts that I remember from college, but couldn’t apply on my own. agreed, the team plays boring and undisciplined baseball (hard to tell on inspiration) but the modern game is boring with the dominant 3 true outcomes and it takes more than a couple offseasons to change decades of little league, highschool, college minor league coaching based on the the home run prone Selig Ball and transition to the home run oppressed Manfred Ball.

Welcome to TD!

Welcome to TD!

Welcome to TD

“After swinging the bat for most of January, Alex Kirilloff can still feel wrist soreness, but said his pain level has decreased after undergoing surgery for a second straight season. That should be a good sign after a drastic surgery in which doctors intentionally broke Kirilloff’s right wrist in order to shave down the bone to prevent it from rubbing against other bones. The Twins have Kirilloff on a low-volume program for now to help him increase his range of motion and build grip strength. Currently, he’s taking 50-60 swings a day. Earlier this month, Derek Falvey cautioned Kirilloff could have a slower spring training. “(Soreness is) definitely there,” Kirilloff said. “They cut my bone so there’s definitely some aches and stuff to go along with that, but from a pain standpoint it feels good. … I think they’re expected to go away. I think anytime you break your bone it can take a lot longer than expected to heal. From my understanding, it gets to that certain point where it’s healed enough to do whatever you need to do and then it keeps healing for a while after that.”” https://theathletic.com/4139848/2023/01/30/twinsfest-carlos-correa-pablo-lopez/ aches, decreased, better. Lots of contradictions in that quote. I’m not exactly sure what to take away

By wRC+ Gordon was the second best OF on the team last year, by fWAR he was 3rd, and played 138 games. Larnach and Gordon are the two guys I want to see most at the corners of the OF in ST. If they can’t win a spot, so be it, but a 111 wRC+ looks a whole lot more appealing in LF than 85 or 95, even if those we’ll below average numbers come with better fielding.

This! The few reports I’ve seen in little blurb, hard to trust format, is that Kirilloff is swinging well and on-track for a normal spring training. we don’t know, doesn’t always mean “bad” it means we “don’t know”. I share the same assumptions. If Kepler isn’t traded, Larnach gets a heavy rotation through DH.

I would call a hearty belly laugh time well spent. great work Stu

I believe subscription to Stathead from b-ref can get you access to the underlying data.

“The only nits I pick are that I like all numbers on a "relative to all other players" stat. A 3.75 FIP in 2023 meant a roughly average pitcher. In 2003, it meant a borderline all-star. Using FIP+ (or minus if you prefer) helps identify performance relative to the league at the time. OOA is a relative stat already, it just was not mentioned as such in your post. I think that is worth pointing out.” @Minny505 i love this post and wanted to unpack this a bit. you caught me in between understanding what happened historically and predicting future outcomes. Well done. FIP predicts ERA but neglects context. FIP+ provides the relative context but isn’t very predictive. (I always prefer the plus (minus seems counterintuitive to me) how do you pull together both the context and predictive without writing massive paragraphs? I’m a lazy typist.

All 5 WAR seasons, huh?

UI matters more than we talk about, but it’s very subjective. agreed, baseball Savant is terrible on mobile. FG’s glossary is a pain in the butt on mobile too. Adds cover it up and it drives me bonkers!

Why wRC vs b-ref OPS+? The differences aren’t very big on the page

Inspired by Brad My post there: WAR gets calculated slightly differently depending on your source. I like Fangraphs. FWAR is the shorthand for Fangraphs Wins Above Replacement the link goes to the Fangraphs library where they define the stats. For hitting I like wRC+ because it puts hitters relative to all other hitters (100 as average) by components of run creation. For pitchers FIP is a great stat. It predicts ERA better than historic ERA does by calculating out if a pitched were to experience league average BABIP For fielding I like OAA… …afterwards I started thinking about if the shift and Manfredball might change my thoughts about my preference for WAR and if BWAR might overtake FWAR because BWAR weights fielding/pitchers to a greater extent.