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Max Kepler, being a German, seemed like quite an exception in baseball history, so I had to do some research. Bleacher Reports was so fascinated by his story that they published http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2568511-max-kepler-the-german-baseball-player-who-spurned-soccer-for-mlb-dreams. The article included this Max Kepler quote – "Soccer is the No. 1 sport in Germany," Kepler said. "Baseball was barely poking its head out the window at the time. Being one of the best [soccer players] in my school, people frowned about it and they were just surprised that I would take baseball which is kind of a long jump." What I found out follows - https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/History_of_baseball_in_Germany Baseball Reference says that in a 1796 book by a German, Johann Guts Muths, rules for a game called "English base-ball" appeared and as you might imagine it was a little different than what we play today. Then in 1936 Germany hosted an exhibition of baseball in the Olympics. Baseball was played by American prisoners of war in the notorious Nazi prison camps. http://mopupduty.com/baseball-in-germany-091412/ Following WWII the GIs that were occupying Germany introduced the sport again on their bases. The military men followed their American examples and set up a league that included - Frankfurter Black Knights, Mannheimer Tornados, Münchner Broncos, and Stuttgarter Hawks. The Tornados – an all-black team was the best and the most popular. These teams had many Negro League and Major League players, but as service representation diminished Germany set up its own league – “In 1951, the first season of Baseball-Bundesliga was played, the first German championship.” Eventually they became part of a European baseball association that helped spread the sport through the Continent. Now Max Kepler came out of this history, but he was not the first German player in the majors. Baseball Reference has this to say about the history of German’s in the American League and interestingly it is not Max Kepler who is the noted Minnesota Twins German: “The first Major League players from Germany were David Lenz and Marty Swandell who both debuted from May 7, 1872 for Brooklyn Eckfords. Swandell had played for the club since 1863, while Lenz was a 21-year old catcher who played the opening four games of the season with the club before being replaced by William Bestick. Over the next twenty years another eight players played in the majors, but only two played more than forty in their career - the most successful of which was pitcher Charlie Getzein who won 145 games. From 1893 through 1897, there were no Germans in the majors, but then until the American entry into World War I another twelve players played in the majors. Of course, Germans were part of American history since the beginning so many players in the early years were still recognized by their home country and there have been 41 players who were born in Germany, including Max and Gardy - http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/birthplace.php?loc=Germany Check out the list. Only three Germans played in the Majors between the two World Wars, a single player (Heinz Becker) played in the World War II-era, and during the 1950s and 1960s no Germans played in the majors. Thirteen players have debuted from 1972 onward, most of whom were the children of American service members stationed in the country. When Ron Gardenhire became the manager of the Minnesota Twins in 2002, he was the first German skipper since Chris von der Ahe in 1897.” Germany’s domestic league – the fifteen team Bundesliga – reformed in 1982 and continues to play to this day. Baseball in German website says that from this league baseball started to sign players like Mitch Franke in 2000, and then Rodney Gressman, Donald Lutz, Max Kepler, Tim Henkenjohann, Simon Guhring, Kai Gronauer, Ludwig Glaser and Jennel Hudson with Max leading the way into the majors. In the book – Beer, Brats, and Baseball – the author Jim Merkel writes about the 1860’s when many Germans, including some of distant uncles – settled in St Louis where the brewed beer and started a local baseball club – not the Cardinals – while joining the Union and helping preserve Missouri as a free state. This coincides with the official advent of Baseball in the US. Baseball history is also filled with “Dutch” nicknames like Hubert Benjamin "Dutch" Leonard, (April 16, 1892 – July 11, 1952) was an American left-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball who had an 11-year career from 1913 to 1921, and 1924 to 1925. He still holds the record for the lowest ERA ever – 0.96 in 1914. But he was born in Birmingham, Alabama. Lots of nicknames were based on the players ethnic backgrounds. Should you want to see how German born players did in baseball careers – Baseball Reference provides this summary of statistics https://www.baseball-reference.com/bio/Germany_born.shtml You will be happy to know that Gardy is the greatest German born manager in history! Glenn Hubard is the best career hitter, and Edwin Jackson is the greatest German born pitcher. And Max – three years, two full years in the majors – his line is 239 – 310 – 422.

A great article was written this week by Jonathan Judge and published at The Hardball Times, " FIP in Context." This introduces an new metric, called cFIP, or contest-adjusted FIP that attempts to "estimate the pitcher’s true pitching talent during a particular season".I'm always interested in new pitching metrics development, and not only because I have myself taken part in the endeavor. This is an interesting metric, albeit much more complex than PE and xPE. It also correlates well with SIERA, which along with xPE (because it is easy to calculate) are my two favorite predictive metrics regarding pitching performance. I will not steal Jonathan's thunder, please read that excellent article, but I will present his framework and then present his work as applied to the Twins' pitchers. (He calculated cFIPs for every pitcher in the league for the past 4 years, including Jamie Carroll.) The cFIP scale is normalized to 100 for average, just like OPS+ and ERA+, but it is a minus scale, meaning that less is better, like ERA and FIP and SIERA and all similar metrics. (It should have been called cFIP-, but that is a different story.) So 100 is average and less is better. Jonathan Judge has the following buckets of pitchers, according their cFIP: 70 and less = superb 70–85 Great 85–95 Above Avg. 95–105 Average 105–115 Below Avg. 115–130 Bad 130+ Awful Let's put the 2014 Minnesota Twins' pitching staff in those buckets. For reference, players that are not still with the team are in parenthesis. I am also including the 2014 cFIP numbers of the newcomers this off-season. They have an asterisk behind their names. Superb: Phil Hughes 70 Great: Glen Perkins 74 Above Avg.: Casey Fien 89 Tim Stauffer 91* (Yohan Pino 94) Average: Aaron Thompson 98 Logan Darnell 99 Ricky Nolasco 100 Trevor May 101 Ervin Santana 101* Michael Tonkin 102 Caleb Thielbar 103 Blaine Boyer 103* Lester Oliveros 105 Below Avg.: (Jared Burton 106) (Kris Johnson 106) (Sam Deduno 107) Stephen Pryor 108 Kyle Gibson 109 (Anthony Swarzak 111) A. J. Achter 112 Ryan Pressly 112 Brian Duensing 114 Tommy Milone 114 Bad: (Matt Guerrier 116) (Kevin Correia 119) Awful: Mike Pelfrey 132 A few observations: According to this, in 2014, the Twins had one superb pitcher, Phil Hughes, one great pitcher, Glen Perkins, and 13 pitchers (that is a full MLB staff, ladies and gentlemen) who were average, above average, great or superb. Mike Pelfrey (who tied for worst in the majors in this metric) was the only awful pitcher in the Twins' staff.But, the Twins had the second worst bullpen in the majors according to xFIP and SIERA and the third worst rotation in the majors, according to SIERA (fourth according to xFIP).Other than Yohan Pino, who was an unfortunate loss, the Twins' front office seems to behave pretty well according to this metric. The pitchers they let go were all below average or worse. They did keep a few below average pitchers, and they did keep Mike Pelfrey, who is better suited for the pen and was injured. Other than Duensing who had a down season, the other below average pitchers are all young.The big issue in the big picture here: The Twins had a whole staff worth (13) pitchers who were average and above, yet they managed to be almost at the bottom of the league in pitching. Those things seem to be in conflict. Let's dig deeper and check out the 2013 Twins' cFIP buckets that Jonathan Judge calculated. For reference purposes, players who left after 2013 are in parenthesis and I added Ricky Nolasco (with an asterisk) as well. Superb: Glen Perkins 63 Casey Fien 67 Great: Nobody Above Avg.: Jared Burton 91 Caleb Thielbar 91 Ricky Nolasco 93* Michael Tonkin 94 Average: Anthony Swarzak 97 Brian Duensing 97 (Shairon Martis 105) Below Avg.: Mike Pelfrey 109 (Liam Hendriks 110) Ryan Pressly 111 (Cole DeVries 114) (Andrew Albers 115) Bad: Kevin Correia 116 Samuel Deduno 116 (Josh Roenicke 118) (P.J. Walters 122) (Vance Worley 124) Kyle Gibson 125 (Scott Diamond 129) Awful: Nobody This is some really interesting data. Here is what I see: I think that I either underestimated the Twins' front office use of metrics in personnel decisions in building the team or Jack Goin should buy me a beer this week at Hammond Stadium, because this tool really describes what the Twins are doing regarding personnel decisions. Recently, they have tended to get rid of below average and worse pitchers and add average and above pitchers. Hughes was around 100, but I did not add him here. This is a stop the presses type of statement. I'm close to nodding my head in approval of what the front office is doing.For 2013 this tells a tale of two categories: all the average and above pitchers were relievers. All starters were below average or worse but not awful. And Pelfrey was the best of that lot.Enough with 2013. What happened in 2014, relative to 2013? Every single reliever from Perkins down regressed, while the starters (save the injured Pelfrey and replacement-level Correia) improved. This is fundamentally interesting, because it breaks some commonly accepted narratives. One excuse for the decline of the Twins' pen in 2014 was that they were too tired because the rotation was so bad. This data turns this upside down. The Twins 2013 rotation was worse than the Twins 2014 rotation, and the 2014 Twins' pen made the 2014 Twins rotation worse. So a bad pen can make a rotation worse. Like a reliever coming in with two outs and the bases loaded to give a grand slam and four runs to the starter's record. What a concept...I am starting to really like this metric. So, and this is really hard for me to say, the front office did make some improvements for 2014 that actually seem to be supported by real data, but the pitching tanked compared to 2013. Why? I'd love to hear your theories after this, and this is what I am thinking: Look at that 2014 list up there. In your mind, normalize it for playing time. That would shift the buckets heavier to the below average. How many games did Pino or May start compared to Pelfrey, Correia, Deduno? Why was Burton used in high leverage situations over better relievers? Yes. Do the same normalization for playing time for the 2013 data. And you are looking at evidence of what has been written here, loudly and clearly, about mismanagement of the Twins' pitching staff by Gardy and Andy.This has to be part of the reason for the pen decline in 2014. And it had to be fixed. And, yes, metrics can be devised to normalize and approximate defense independent pitching, but I have not yet seen one that could estimate the madness of the Twins' 2014 OF. (What is the range factor of a bucket? )This actually makes me more hopeful, because it seems like the Twins are making an effort to address some things that need addressing. So, what do you say? Click here to view the article