Minnesota Baseball Central

2007-09-14T08:48:00.000-05:00

A Brief History of the Terry Ryan Era

There have been two times in my life when something has caught me so far off guard that I was unable to formulate a proper emotional response. The first time, I walked around in a daze for 48 hours after finding out that people found a way to collapse a skyscraper by flying jumbo jets into the sides of it. The second time occurred today when I was thoroughly shocked by the jarring news that Terry Ryan had stepped down as the Twins General Manager. I do not mean to equate the importance of Ryan’s departure with one of the deadliest American events of my generation, except that each occurrence was deeply stupefying and completely unexpected. Moreover, with so many lingering questions- Was he fired? Was he fed up with tightfisted ownership? Is he trying to avoid a forthcoming implosion? Will he leave for the next attractive job elsewhere? How active will he be as an advisor?- closure can only come in the form of a Bill Smith breakthrough. Now, for the first time in twelve years, the Twins face the task of developing a new identity and making difficult personnel decisions without the greatest sub-.500 executive in the history of the franchise.

The practice of deifying and demonizing general managers is as well established as the hero worship and vitriol thrown at the players themselves. Nonetheless, an even-handed evaluation of Ryan has to recognize that his track record for following his convictions to successful results has outweighed his weaknesses through his tenure in Minnesota. Despite the unevenness of his last two seasons, Ryan has earned the undying admiration of Twins fans who saw him right a sinking ship with an uncertain future. Looking back at his history gives us an idea of what we can expect from the Twins in the future.

When Ryan took the reins of the team for the 1996 season, the Twins were at something of a crossroads. The ’95 team featured several holdovers from the 1991 World Series Champions, including Kirby Puckett, Chuck Knoblauch, Kevin Tapani, and Scott Erickson. Nostalgia aside, this core was not getting the job done for the Twins, as they narrowly missed the playoffs in ’92, and experienced a steady decline into three straight losing campaigns thereafter. Ryan’s job was to rebuild the franchise from the ground up, refashioning the Twins into a legitimate contender instead of letting the sink to the status of long-term laughingstock. Using his scouting chops and a penchant for player development, Ryan set out to build a sustainable contender, not a flash in the pan surprise that overspent for post-peak free agents who would eventually cripple the team’s flexibility. To the credit of the ownership, Ryan was allowed to make some unpopular decisions that would hurt the team in the short run.

From the beginning, Ryan knew that two steps forward would require an immediate step back. As soon as he took over the team, Ryan initiated his practice of signing retread free agents to see if any of them could provide value on the field and, eventually, a healthy return on the trade market. Therefore, Dave Hollins, Greg Myers, and Roberto Kelly found regular playing time for the Twins in 1996. Ryan also started stocking his minor league cabinet from his first days in office. He made the most of the amateur draft, snagging future major leaguers Travis Lee, Jacque Jones, Mike Lamb, and Josh Bard. Unfortunately, the Twins managed to sign only Jones, although his contributions alone made that year’s draft a success. Ryan also made the most of other modes of player acquisition, pumping up the value of Dave Hollins before trading him to the Mariners for a minor league first baseman named David Ortiz. Before the season was finished, Ryan also snagged Venezuelan pitcher Juan Rincon as an amateur free agent. Although all of these players were far from contributing, Ryan had laid the foundation for a strong franchise within his first year.

Over the next five years, Ryan continued to use these same mechanisms to build up the farm system, creating a source of cheap talent for a cash-strapped major league team. He drafted relatively well, snagging Justin Morneau, Mike Cuddyer, Jason Kubel, and J.C. Romero, among others. He signed a handful of scrapheap free agents every year to see if any of them could make good enough to return value in a trade, occasionally digging up a bargain and improving the team’s future at the cost of its present. More often than not, the return on these retreads was someone like Steve Hacker or John Barnes. He did make out better a couple of times, though, acquiring Joe Mays for Roberto Kelly and Lew Ford for Hector Carrasco. Getting this sort of eventual Major League talent on the cheap makes it possible for mid-market teams to stay in races with teams who can spend more money, but give up draft picks and prospects while doing it. Finally, Ryan made two large trades as part of the rebuilding process where he surrendered well regarded players for packages of prospects. In one, he gave up Rick Aguilera for Kyle Lohse and Jason Ryan. The more well-known trade, of course, saw him send Chuck Knoblauch to the Yankees for Christian Guzman, Brian Buchanan, Eric Milton, Danny Mota, and cash. Trading players who still have much to offer is different than trading free agents that nobody wanted a few months before, but each situation requires the general manager to properly evaluate the opposition’s farm system, and Ryan has proven himself extremely adept at that skill.

Slowly but surely, Ryan had been turning over his roster, trading the retread free agents for prospects and letting the home grown talent take over at the Major League Level. By 1999, 37 year old Terry Steinbach was the only import in the everyday lineup, and the only regular over 27 years old. The pitching rotation was even younger, with 26 year old Brad Radke and Latroy Hawkins as its most veteran members. As the core of young talent including Radke, Milton, Guzman, Torii Hunter, Doug Mientkiewicz, and Corey Koskie developed together, the Twins started becoming slightly more hopeful. By 2001, that hope had turned into more solid results, as the team had its first winning season in 10, going 85-77 before fading from the playoff chase down the stretch.

By the time Ryan had positioned the Twins to become contenders, some things had changed and others had stayed the same. Ryan now had surplus talent at some positions, so he started trading some of his own players to build organizational depth rather than trading his beloved scrapheap free agents. In 2000, he traded Todd Walker for Todd Sears, a trade meant to give the Twins another power bat that the big league roster was lacking. In 2001, Matt Lawton and Mark Redman were jettisoned during the Twins’ pennant race for Rick Reed and Todd Jones, respectively. Ryan also continued dealing from depth to acquire prospects, giving up Brian Buchanan to the Padres for minor league shortstop Jason Bartlett. While Ryan’s resources had changed a bit, his tendencies stayed remarkably similar. He continued signing free agents that nobody else wanted, like the re-acquired Hector Carrasco, Quinton McCracken, Mike Jackson, and Mike Fetters. The difference was that he had built up enough organizational depth that he could use these players if they were effective, or throw them away immediately if they were not. For his last big move before the Twins made the playoffs, Ryan drafted Joe Mauer over Mark Prior, a watershed moment because of Mauer’s impact, but also because it was the last time Ryan ever drafted a position player who would become a regular during his tenure as GM.

Once the Twins finally scaled the mountain in 2002, conditions started to change for Ryan. Building a minor league system was becoming increasingly difficult, as the better records meant worse draft position, and the influx of homegrown talent translated into less opportunities to pump up the value of cheap imports before trading them for prospects. Instead, Ryan was forced to trade potentially useful young players like Javier Valentin and Matt Kinney to bolster weaknesses in the farm system. After a second division title, service time also became a pressing concern for Ryan. As his Minnesota-bred roster reached arbitration and free agency, it became much more costly to maintain, and he had to start making difficult choices about who to keep and who to let go. Remarkably, Ryan has almost always let the right players walk at the right time, getting the most out of them before they become expensive, then saying goodbye when their decline phase sets in. Still, giving up so much depth for nothing more than the occasional compensatory draft pick eventually starts to show up for a team, and it is not surprising that the Twins depth of the early 2000s is severely compromised today.

The cash-induced exodus started with Eddie Guardado and Latroy Hawkins at the end of the 2003 season. In reality, though, the attrition started a year before that, when Ryan was concerned enough about his middle infield situation that he made room on the 40-man roster for Rule 5 pick Jose Morban by releasing the injury-prone but established David Ortiz. It seemed as if the Twins were in dire straights after the 2003 season, as letting Guardado and Hawkins walk did not fully alleviate their financial situation. To further cut payroll, Ryan decided to go with young players in the starting rotation and at catcher. In doing so, he traded one year of Eric Milton for Carlos Silva and Nick Punto, and one year of A.J. Pierzynski for Francisco Liriano, Boof Bonser, and Joe Nathan. As well as Ryan has scouted other teams’ farm systems throughout his career, the Pierzynski trade is the high water mark. Along with the nearly free acquisition of Johan Santana, it demonstrates Ryan’s strengths in the same way that releasing Ortiz displays his weaknesses. If those three moves define his tenure as GM, it remains clear that Ryan is a star who did tremendous good for Minnesota.

Due to Ryan’s ability to trade his expensive, established players for Major League-ready replacements, as well as a sudden influx of top-level star talent in the form of Joe Mauer, Johan Santana, Joe Nathan, and Justin Morneau, the Twins saw little decline after the attrition of 2003. All the while, homegrown talent continued leaving, and without the high draft picks to replace them, it was back to the scrapheap for Ryan. Dustan Mohr, Doug Mientkiewicz, Christian Guzman, Corey Koskie, Jacque Jones, and J.C. Romero all left Minnesota between 2003-2005, each requiring a replacement that the Twins could not afford. Instead, Ryan turned to players like Tony Batista, Juan Castro, Jason Tyner, and Eric Munson in the free talent pool, moves which nearly uniformly failed, and have been the focal point for Ryan detractors. Ryan never stopped signing unwanted free agents to build depth, but as his homegrown depth left for more money elsewhere, these players were pressed into regular service. In the past, their failures could be masked by replacing them with the prospects acquired by trading the last round of retreads. Since no playing time existed for those retreads from 2002-2004, the prospects were never acquired, and the best replacement for Tony Batista was Nick Punto.

Despite the difficulties associated with mid-market attrition, the Twins were able to make a stunning run to the division title in 2006 on the backs of their top-end stars. The players that carried them were all in Minnesota because of Ryan’s deft management- it was Ryan who made the close call in taking Mauer over Prior, Ryan was the GM who drafted Morneau in the third round and brought him patiently (maybe too patiently) through the system, Ryan stole Johan Santana, and Ryan made the memorable trade that brought Liriano and Nathan to Minnesota. At the same time, the scrubs part of the Twins new stars-and-scrubs arrangement were quite disappointing. It was clear that Ryan had to find a better DH solution than Rondell White and a better third baseman than Nick Punto if the Twins were going to compete in 2007. But bad luck intervened, as injuries forced Brad Radke into early retirement and Francisco Liriano into Tommy John surgery. Instead of entrusting the rotation to Johan Santana and some combination of young players- Carlos Silva, Boof Bonser, Scott Baker, Matt Garza, Glenn Perkins, Kevin Slowey-, Ryan chose to spend his limited free agent budget on Ramon Ortiz and Sidney Ponson, both of whom flamed out terrifically. Simultaneously, Ryan resisted dealing from this tremendous starting pitching depth to fill either of his two major offensive holes. That under-aggressiveness was a major factor in the team’s inability to restock its farm system, as well as its inability to fill holes at the Major League level. Obviously, it would not have been as simple as wishing an above-average third baseman onto the roster for $3 million, but Ryan definitely made a mistake by standing pat in the face of his two biggest weaknesses.

Immediately before his departure, Ryan was struggling with juggling the extensions of his five biggest stars not under long term contracts- Johan Santana, Torii Hunter, Justin Morneau, Mike Cuddyer, and Joe Nathan. It is unreasonable to think that the Twins could retain more than three of the five, and there is nobody I would trust more with the decision of who to keep than Terry Ryan. With any luck, his advisory role will help him guide the Twins through the period of transition between now and the opening of the new park in 2010. All indications point to the franchise’s reorganization being about free agency and contract negotiation, which means that the successful player development track and scouting department will stay intact. These successes should be Ryan’s legacy rather than a couple of free agent mistakes in the face of a tight budget and a flawed roster. Losing Terry Ryan as the Twins’ GM is indeed a sad day, but it need not be a disastrous day. If the Twins respect his successes and try to replicate them, they can remain a competitive team outside of a major market. If they make the right decisions for the next two years, they may even build on his legacy to something greater.

2007-09-03T10:29:00.000-05:00

TWIT: No smoke, no mirrors

Weekly Roundup

What happens when the luck that brings about consecutive winning weeks despite sub-par performances abruptly runs out? How does an ugly sweep in Cleveland and a series split with Kansas City at home sound? The sadly funny part of the miserable week is that the Twins actually managed to score a few runs- not a lot, but about 4 per game instead of their customary 2- and still dropped five out of seven. If you want to put some perspective on how bad the week really was, consider the optimism that ran rampant coming into the week as the Twins looked to be closing in on the Indians and threatening to make the division competitive, regardless of how poorly the Tigers chose to play. Instead, the Twins have sunk back to 9.5 games out of the divisional lead, and having no real chance of playing another meaningful game this season.

The secret about “the secret”, for those of you who entertain yourselves with clichéd contemporary metaphysical quackery, is that positive thinking can operate as a zero sum game. For instance, if you really believe you’re going to get a parking space close to the front door of your office, then you also believe that everyone else is going to be walking. In this week’s Cleveland series, it didn’t matter how much Twins fans believed the team was starting to come around, because Cleveland has had even better vibes emanating from the city all year. Instead of God or luck, these games were to be decided by skill, an ungrateful fate for the Twins. The Indians proceeded to demonstrate three different ways to win games: chipping away at Carlos Silva steadily on game one, putting a close game out of reach against an inferior reliever (Carmen “the great” Cali) in game two, and building up an early lead against Johan Santana in game three before holding off a late charge by the Twins. It would be nice if the Twins were able to duplicate some of those game types, but they all require timely hitting, sometimes including extra base hits, and that’s just not what this team does.

On the other hand, the week did feature one luminous bright spot, Scott Baker’s very good game. No, he wasn’t perfect, and Baker’s nerves were clearly frayed by the time he issued a five pitch walk to start the ninth. Nonetheless, Baker’s game is the type of event that generates interest and enthusiasm for a team that has faded from the pennant race. In his autobiography, fan pleasing former owner Bill Veeck writes about the importance of giving the fans something to root for, no matter what the team’s position in the standings. Sometimes that means promoting a rivalry, sometimes it means playing the spoiler, and sometimes it means publicizing milestones and personal achievements. With the best pitcher alive on the roster, the Twins could certainly try to get their PR machine behind Johan Santana’s final month push for the Cy Young, although the Twins bats would also have to get behind him, and that’s a far more precarious proposition.

Biggest Success

Some notes on Baker’s 24 up, 24 down start:

-With five ground balls and 13 fly balls, Baker actually set himself up well for a low-hit game. Even though grounders are typically preferable to fly balls because of their non-proclivity to turning into homeruns, there is a much higher likelihood of groundballs turning into hits (almost always singles). By keeping the ball in the air, Baker is walking a tightrope of low-BABIP, but a larger risk of giving up round-trippers. It’s not the worst tightrope to walk, as Johan Santana has walked the same one two a pair of Cy Youngs. With the organizational focus on throwing changeups, don’t be surprised to see more fly ball pitchers coming through the Twins system in the future.

-Remember how Johan Santana’s terrific game score of 93 came up just short of Eric Bedard’s stellar 15 stirkeout start earlier in the year? Scott Baker took a different route to the total score of 93, but arrived at the same destination. By completing the extra inning and finishing the game, he made up for his deficit in strikeouts to Santana, and the two base runners issued by each pitcher equaled out to a game score than can only be considered second-best.

-Even though the Royals have improved their offense over some of the more anemic lineups of recent years, they were still a prime candidate to get snubbed. The 5-0 loss dealt to them by Baker was the 8^th game of the month of August in which the Royals totaled 1 or 0 runs. Binary- useful for programming, but pretty hopeless for run production.

Biggest Disappointment

I’m none too happy about the fact that Boof Bonser and Carlos Silva have melted down over the last several weeks, but I’m even more annoyed that the offense is so hopeless that every bad start is an automatic loss no matter who they are playing.

To my mind, the real underbelly of the Twins lineup is the fact that they have pressed a bunch of guys who are no better than 25^th men into semi regular service, at least in a platoon role. Nick Punto could be useful as a secondary utility guy who seldom sees the plate. Alexi Casilla could be a very good major leaguer in a couple of years but has convinced me that he is not yet ready. Garrett Jones, Rondell White, and Lew Ford are all getting playing time because Terry Ryan seemingly forgot that the team has to play three outfielders and a DH. Why else would he enter the season with Hunter, Cuddyer, an unreliable Jason Kubel and nothing else?

Since the All-Star Break, this quintet has accumulated 394 plate appearances, about 2/3 of a season’s worth, meaning that in a single month of the season, they have amounted to approximately two full-time players. In those at-bats, they have combined for 67 hits, 49 of them for singles, and only 24 walks. That batting line works out to .188/.230/.264. The starting pitcher with the best OPS-against in all of baseball is Chris Young at 535. Since these five guys have been managing only a 494, it’s equivalent to having two league average players in the lineup everyday who have to bat against 1999 Pedro Martinez every time they come to the plate. Terry Ryan has fielded two everyday players who are as bad as Pedro Martinez is good.

The Big Picture

There has been some talk lately that the Twins might be interested in acquiring some position players in the off-season (hello!), and Colorado’s Garrett Atkins has crept onto the list by virtue of top prospect Ian Stewart’s gently nudging him out of the mountains. But what effect would leaving this mountains have on Atkins? That’s the relevant question to ask of any departing former Rockie, considering the collapses of once elite players like Ellis Burks and Vinny Castilla.

The normal home-away caveat about Rockies players does apply to Atkins, as his 2005 road averages were only .238/.301/.347, a 253 point OPS nosedive. In 2006, his career year, his OPS only lost 66 points, and he managed to slug .531 away from Coors Field. This year, he’s back down to .247/.319/.427 and a 146 point OPS deficit. Interestingly, his 2005 and 2007 numbers are submarined by losing at least 50 points of BABIP away from home, indicating that his approach stays the same through thick and thin air, but the results are different on the road. I take this to be a positive sign, that he can find some sort of middle ground, without the highest highs of Coors, but also eliminating that atrocious road performance. His .281/.348/.466 line this year looks sustainable to me, and having Cal Ripken and Tony Perez as two of the top three PECOTA comparables hints at good things to come. He may not be an All-Star caliber player, but he would fill a gaping hole for the Twins at third base and in the right-handed power department. If he could be had for Boof Bonser, I would make that trade in a heartbeat.

On the Horizon

I’m sure many fans and analysts circled this week on the calendar at the start of the season, as Cleveland comes to town followed by a road trip to the Cell to visit the suddenly cellar-dwelling White Sox. Santana will get two starts this week, which means two opportunities to pump up that wins column for a Cy Young surge. We might as well get used to cheering for non-pennant related activities, because this year is starting to look suspiciously like 2005. Still, for the true baseball fans, Sabathia and Santana facing off in an oddly timed Monday day game will be a great game. I suggest that everyone watches and tries to attribute the lack of scoring to Sabathia’s brilliance.

2007-08-27T15:38:00.001-05:00

TWIT: This indecision’s buggin’ me

Weekly Roundup

A week after one of the least inspiring 4-2 sets in recent memory, the Twins managed an equally mixed-bag 5-2 campaign, dropping two of three at home to the Mariners before rolling the pointless Orioles in a four game set. The week got off in an inauspicious start as Matt Garza and Scott Baker got shelled to the tune of 23 hits and 10 earned runs in two starts. The result was a pair of uneven losses, 9-4 and 7-2 against sub-par opposition on the mound. If there was a silver lining to the start of the season, it may have been the reawakening of Justin Morneau’s dormant bat, which offered six total bases in the two losses, including a two double game on Monday. Any remaining hope for the Twins depends, at very least, on Morneau coming back to life offensively after a disastrous month. Things got better on Wednesday afternoon, as Mike Cuddyer’s first inning grand slam hinted at his own resurgence while simultaneously giving Carlos Silva a seven-run lead to lead off the game. Silva cruised to another quality start, keeping the brooms in Seattle’s closet.

Coming off an uneven six games in the last six days, the Twins left for the east coast with a woeful 8.5 game deficit in the division that made the postseason seem less likely than ever. After convincingly taking advantage of Baltimore’s miserable bullpen, though, the Twins are on a five-game winning streak, all of the sudden, with a three game series against the Indians providing some faint vestiges of hope for the postseason diehards who have yet to give up hope. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Twins recent warm streak has been the five consecutive games with at least five runs scored. After hitting like rookie league shortstops for the better part of two months, the lineup’s recent run of support must make the pitching staff feel like rats in the dumpster of Old Country Buffet.

Biggest Success

As I mentioned in the introduction, Justin Morneau flipped the switch back into the “on” position over the last week to the tune of .346/.419/.615, going from miserable by any standards to very good by his own standards overnight. Torii Hunter continued to affirm the classification as the Twins most consistent offensive player of 2007, hitting two more home runs, scoring eight times, and hitting .367.

Neither of these two stalwarts jumps off the page like Jason Bartlett, though, who has asserted himself royally in the last six weeks after a miserable start to the season. Since the All-Star Break, Bartlett has hit .321 with an uncharacteristic .496 slugging average (buoyed by an unbelievable 6 triples in only 34 games after only 3 in his first 259 games). This week, Bartlett bopped nine hits in 18 at-bats, including three triples and a double. His contributions netted four runs scored and five runs batted in across only five games. After the recent up tick in his output, Bartlett’s .277/.340/.380 line is beginning to approach last season’s pleasantly surprising .309/.367/.393. With plus defense, that batting line is perfectly acceptable relative to the league average of .271/.323/.394 for shortstops, making Bartlett an asset rather than a liability moving forward. For a team that can’t find a left-fielder or a DH who can hit at replacement level, I shudder to think of what they could dredge up to throw at shortstop if one was not on hand.

Biggest Disappointment

Through a wider lens, Matt Garza’s two start lull over the course of a very solid season does not seem terribly disturbing, even though he gave up 18 base runners, 4 homers, and 8 earned runs in only 7.1 innings over two starts. Since Garza’s getting the free pass this week, that means another one of my long-term favorites, Alexi Casilla, falls under the harsh light of scrutiny. With Luis Castillo succumbing to his typical lower-appendage fragility in Queens, Casilla was going to be on the hot seat either way. As things have worked out, he has been severely disappointing as a starter for the last month, leaving quite a gap where the Twins were once getting acceptable offensive output. In the last week, Casilla came to the plate 26 times, managing only four hits and a single walk. His numbers before and after his recall have been almost exactly identical, and none of his rate stats even crack .300 over that timeframe. He’s a slap hitter with a little bit of patience, but that profile does not carry much weight when the player is continuing to hit in the .225 neighborhood. Casilla needs to leverage his speed and bat control into a batting average above .275 at very least in order to be a contributor. He has a better bat in his future, but at the moment, he is helping Nick Punto slaughter the offense.

The Big Picture

The Twins are underdogs going forward, to be certain. The BPro playoff odds report pegs them for about a 5% chance at winning the division, and a barely non-zero chance of catching up to the Wild Card. Of course, Twins fans know that a non-zero possibility is eminently reachable if the former half of the stars-and-scrubs equation gets hot at the right time. In terms of run differential, the Twins get a little bit of good news, as both the Tigers and Indians are 2-3 games ahead of their Pythagorean projections, meaning the teams may cool even more down the stretch.

Another big-picture development that certainly interests Twins fans is the annual Johan Santana Cy Young campaign. Typically, this is the time of year when Twins fans have to start moaning about how win totals are not as important as peripheral stats, and how Santana has actually been better than pitcher X by a wider margin than conventional stats indicate. This year, Santana is actually a sliver behind some of his competition, such as Eric Bedard and Dan Haren, who have both been excellent all year. Santana has been consistent, but his lack of run support has given him 9 losses, and double digits in the L column will definitely cost him votes with the traditional set. If Santana can go nuts for a month, the award may be his to take, but he has not been at that level so far this year.

On the Horizon

When I say that the Twins need their stars to turn it on at the right time, I mean that they need to turn it on right now. With three straight weeks of divisional games, the Twins will get 9 cracks at Cleveland and Detroit combined, leaving at least a sliver of their destiny in their own hands. As I told a friend of mine last week, sweeping Baltimore and Cleveland successively would legitimately reenter them in the playoff discussion. Even winning two of three in Cleveland can only put them within 4.5 games of first with a month to play. To be a real competitor, they need to be firing on all cylinders. The Indians line up their experienced crew, throwing Paul Byrd, Jake Westbrook, and C.C. Sabathia against Carlos Silva, Boof (recently off the schneid) Bonser, and Johan Santana, so there will be no surprises here. Byrd has had a great deal of success against the Twins, so Silva will have to extend his respectability for one more start. After the Indians, the Twins get a chance to pile up some wins against the (playin’ for fourth!) Royals, including a double header on Friday. A series split there would doom the Twins even worse than losing the Cleveland series, so the pressure is high all around. Either way, it is better to win the games now, as the Twins dishearteningly must wrap up the season with a seven game roadie in Detroit and Boston. Look forward to that!

2007-08-20T11:38:00.000-05:00

TWIT: Same format, but now with more Johan Santana!

Any week where the Twins win two series by going 4-2 has to be considered a pretty good week, although this week made me consider what it would take to create an exception to that rule. For instance, the Twins took two out of three from Seattle, a solid team and a playoff contender, on the road for what should have been an impressive series win. On the other hand, the one loss was an eminently winnable game in which Johan Santana gave a quality start. The steady Matt Guerrier lost it on a walkoff blast by the once-but-no-longer functional Richie Sexson, a game-winner that came two innings after Joe Mauer made the third out of the inning trying to stretch a double into a triple while the team’s one hot hitter- Torii Hunter- waited in the on-deck circle. To give credit where it is due, the team rebounded very nice over the next two games, getting more production out of Torii Hunter, finally giving Matt Garza (he of the 2.02 ERA) his second win of the season, and managing a win despite Scott Baker’s 6.2 IP, 1 R no decision.

So all must be well and good, right? Three consecutive quality starts by the team’s three best pitchers, combined with an offense that managed 20 runs in a series, a feat that looked completely beyond their means in the recent past- that was the formula for this team to contend. Heading home, Texas looked ripe for a sweep. The team is openly auditioning for 2008 jobs, starting two catchers every day to see which one will be the better offensive weapon on the next contending Rangers squad- if that ever comes to pass. Plus, with a starting rotation as weak as the one in Texas (no pitcher on the staff has been consistently better than replacement level all year, and big ticket items Kevin Millwood and Vicente Padilla have been noticeably worse), even part of the offensive firepower exhibited in cavernous Safeco Field would be enough. Of course, once they played the three game set, the Twins managed exactly three runs, one of the unearned variety. Joe Mauer was oh for the series, Justin Morneau did not manage an extra base hit, and the team’s only salvation was a vintage start by Carlos Silva and one of the best starts in franchise history by Johan Santana. So 4-2 is a good thing, the Twins are still out of shouting range of the playoffs, and the Twins reminded me of just how ugly “winning ugly” can be.

Biggest Success

While preparing some of the topics for TWIT last night, I kept coming back to the fact that Johan Santana probably belongs in every category by himself, save for the biggest disappointment section. I don’t need to report the fact that he set a team and personal best by striking out 17 Rangers on Sunday, nor that he was throwing his best heat and his best changeup all the way through his 113 pitch outing. Everyone already knew that. Here are a few notes on the game as I saw it:

-With the team out of contention, the Twins owed it to their fans to leave Santana in the game for the ninth inning. Pitch counts are useful, especially in protecting young pitchers, but the Twins have always used Santana conservatively, and his mechanics remained perfect all the way through his classic outing. If he was reaching back for something extra, it would be time to take him out. But as long as he was within reach of the single game strikeout record, he deserves a chance to etch his name into the history books. Make no mistake, Santana was the draw at the gate in this game, and there was no good reason to take him out when he said he felt great, his mechanics showed no hints of over-exertion, and his results in the game were so good as to give him a shot at the all time record.

-As good as Santana’s start was, it does not have the highest single game score for a starting pitcher this year. That distinction belongs to Eric Bedard, who threw a complete game two-hitter while striking out fifteen on only 109 pitches on July 7^th. Santana’s game score of 95 falls three points behind Bedard and ties Justin Verlander’s June 12^th no hitter against the Brewers. It is also one point better than Mark Buehrle’s no hitter on April 18^th. Phil Hughes had a memorable start where he left a no hitter on the table in the seventh, leaving a truly dominant start with a sore arm. Santana’s strikeout-fest, Bedard’s dominant start, Buehrle’s no-no, and Hughes’s coming out party all share one common thread: the inept Texas Rangers.

-An interesting stat: Sammy Sosa, who recorded the only two hits off of Santana on Sunday, is 3-4 against Johan this year with a homerun, two walks, and one strikeout, a line of .750/.866/1.050. The rest of the Rangers are 3-47, no homers, no walks, and 29 strikeouts. Let’s hope Terry Ryan does not interpret this disparity to mean that Sosa has something left in the tank for the 2008 Twins.

-Sunday’s start slashed Santana’s WHIP to 1.01, only .03 points away from league-leader Chris Young and only .02 away from Santana’s fourth straight sub-1.00 WHIP season. That’s the type of dominance that makes him the best pitcher in baseball today, atop a list that has to include Brandon Webb, Roy Halladay, and Jake Peavy very near the top, and possibly the newly Mazzone’d Eric Bedard. Nonetheless, Santana’s recent stretch of a 2.79 ERA and .98 WHIP over a five year period as a starter pales in comparison to the primes of Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez in an even tougher pitching era. Maddux from ’92-’98 posted a 2.15 ERA and .97 WHIP, while Pedro dominated to the tune of 2.20 ERA, .94 WHIP from ’97-’03. (The Maddux and Martinez data appeared at Baseball Think Factory earlier this week as posted by Larry Mahnken)

Also, before jumping off of the positive thoughts train, notice that Tommy Watkins went 6-12 this week with three walks. Sure, all the hits were singles, but Nick Punto didn’t even get those. Good on ya, Tommy.

Biggest Disappointment

I’m going to point out that Rondell White is hitting .145 in 62 at-bats this year. Maybe after one more season like this, Terry Ryan (and especially Sid Hartman) will stop thinking of August 2006 as his true ability and see it for the fluke that it was.

What’s more troubling is the recent swoon of Joe Mauer. Whenever it seems like he is fining a groove and lining balls into the gaps, he has an 0-12 slump, or forgets how to hit for any power at all. Remember when he was supposed to start developing power? Remember when it looked like he was actually starting to do that last year? If Mauer is ever going to move off of catcher, he is going to have to either continue hitting .320, or learn to hit 20-25 homers a year to stay at the all-star level we expect out of him. Right now, he is really dragging. He managed five total bases all of last week in regular action. For the last month, his .372 slugging average would fit Nick Punto better than him. He has lost .086 points off of his slugging average for last year, and it is not all due to the drop in batting average. Last year, he got an extra base hit in 10.1% of his at-bats. This year, that number has shrunk to 8.7%. Perhaps he has fallen in love with the opposite field a little too much. In 2006, he hit 8 extra base hits to right or right-center field in the Metrodome, and he only has three all of this year.

The Big Picture

The biggest news impacting the Twins this week from the outside was the below-market extension for Carlos Zambrano. Big Z got about $18 million per year from the Cubbies to stay on the north side for another five years. As if on cue, Johan Santana responded by demonstrating that he is worth a good deal more than Zambrano. Even though the Twins have a pretty good track record of keeping their top talent, that is no reason to get complacent about Santana. He is going to require more than $20 million per year to stay in Minnesota, albeit some of it may get deferred into the future. Trading Santana is unrealistic and no return would be equitable; the Twins best chance to win in 2008 is with a below-market Santana at the front of the rotation, and Terry Ryan knows this. If Hunter and Nathan are allowed to walk over the next two off-seasons, the Twins could theoretically have Santana (~$22m), Morneau (~$15m), Mauer ($10m), and Cuddyer ($8m) combing for $55m of their payroll heading into the new stadium in 2010. The rest of the team is going to cost at least $25-30m, so the only way Santana is going to get paid is if Carl decides that the new stadium is going to bump revenue enough to make his heart grow three sizes. Don’t forget that a rotation of Francisco Liriano, Scott Baker, Matt Garza, and two of Glen Perkins, Kevin Slowey, Carlos Silva, and Boof Bonser could be a pretty good combination. I’m not trying to tempt fate, just calming myself down.

On the Horizon

Lightning round: Seattle comes to town for three before the Twins make their annual pilgrimage to the beautiful Camden Yards. The M’s will send Horacio Ramirez, Jarrod Washburn, and Miguel Batista, while the O’s will counter with Steve Traschel, Jeremy Guthrie, Daniel Cabrera, and Eric Bedard. My most anticipated matchups are Wednesday’s getaway day featuring Batista and Silva, a game that could be over before 3 p.m. considering how fast those guys work and how little patience both lineups exhibit. Sunday’s game will likely match Bedard against Scott Baker in a game between two very hot pitchers, albeit one with considerably more talent and the league lead in strikeouts.

2007-08-13T09:17:00.000-05:00

TWIT: Dead Again

Weekly Roundup

You’ve made your bed, Terry Ryan, now sleep in it. The Twins GM knew at the trade deadline that his moribund offense was going to struggle to keep up with the rest of the division, even as Cleveland and Detroit started sliding slowly backwards. He knew that ripping off a hot stretch on the field could get the team back in the race, at least enough to make the latter part of August and most of September more marketable to fans. He knew that none of these benefits were accessible without more support for a lineup that has nearly stopped scoring runs altogether- as evidenced by the inquiries about Mike Piazza and Jermaine Dye. Instead, the Twins swapped out a weak hitting 2B for another one down on the farm, saving some money and picking up a third string catcher of the future for their troubles. Then, they dumped the half-million dollars remaining on Jeff Cirillo’s contract on the eager Diamondbacks, creating opportunities for people named Watkins and Buschner. But hey, Rondell White was about to come back, and it seemed Jason Tyner was flourishing at the top of the lineup, maybe there would be enough offense to go around.

For one day, there was. Wednesday, August 8, 2007- remember that date, because it may be the last time the Twins score more than five runs in the season. An 11 run outburst, fueled by Cuddyer and Hunter homeruns, is the only time since July 20that the Twins have scored more than five runs. In fact, since the trade deadline passed bye without adding any offensive help, it is the only time the team has scored more than three runs in a game. While going 1-6 over the past week, the Twins averaged 7 runs in their 6 losses, a paltry 1.167 runs per game. Two of those losses this week were of the one-run variety, including a 1-0 flop against the less-than-stellar Kyle Davies, a game in which Matt Garza struck out 6 in 6.2 innings, allowing only five total bases against him. On Saturday, the Twins built a 2-0 lead into the bottom of the eighth, about as much as one could expect from this lineup right now, only to see the worn down Pat Neshek let four out of five batters faced reach base, all eventually scoring. Looking at the games individually, one could say that the breaks simply didn’t go Minnesota’s way. Looking at them collectively, though, shows the total offensive impotence, and just how difficult it is to win without support for a solid pitching staff.

Biggest Success

Doing his best Scott Baker impersonation, Big Chief Carlos Silva allowed only 9 base-runners in 14 IP over his two starts for the week. An 8:1 K:BB ratio bolstered an already strong set of peripherals (including only 1 HR allowed), giving him an outstanding 1.29 ERA. The way the offense has been playing lately, it wouldn’t be surprising if Silva only got one win out of those two excellent starts. It would be surprising, however, if Silva didn’t win a game for the week, which is the case. Only recording one loss is hardly a consolation for a pitcher going through his best stretch of the season, especially in a contract year.

Speaking of Silva’s contract, I may differ from some in my belief that the Twins would be wise to extend Silva for a couple of more years, especially considering that he is willing to take a discount to stay with the team that has been so patient with him. First, let’s acknowledge what he is not: a top of the rotation starter who can be expected to post an ERA in the 3.00s. He is a solid back end guy who can eat up a lot of innings, occasionally work very deep into games, and typically keep his ERA around or below 5.00. That type of pitcher can command $7-8 million on the open market (Jason Marquis, anyone?), and while the Twins can develop cheaper talent than that, they can also keep Silva for less money. I have heard the figure of 2 years at $5 million per season- only a $1 million/year raise from his 2007 figure-, and I would even try to go for 3 years at somewhere between $4.5-5 million per year. He will almost certainly provide more than market value over the life of such a deal now that he has learned to pitch in line with his abilities (no more silly sinkers that turn into gopher balls), and if the deal implodes, it will be easy to find some team to take his contract on the hope that they can fix him. After all, he is an average starting pitcher, and those are worth quite a bit these days. The resulting pitching depth could also facilitate a trade down the road if Terry Ryan decides he is into that sort of thing.

Biggest Disappointment

I gave Justin Morneau a pass last week as a sort of reward for a season well done, but after another miserable week, going .179/.179/.321, it is time to acknowledge that Morneau has found his way into a pretty bleak slump. He has stopped driving in runs this month, letting the league leaders pull way out in front of him. Even more troubling is the fact that he is hitting only .140 for the month of August, and has failed to draw even a single walk. The power is still there, sort of, with five doubles out of his six total hits, but for a player who was supposed to have become a sure thing, a full month with a .278 OBP is the kind of discouraging sign that any fan wants to see reversed as soon as possible.

On the Horizon

Sad as it may sound, it may be time for the Twins to play spoiler. Their west coast swing concludes with three games in Seattle to start the week, highlighted by a Johan Santana-Felix Hernandez matchup in the late game on Monday. Matt Garza will try to get his second win of the season (incongruently paired with a 1.70 ERA) against Horacio Ramirez on Tuesday, but with his recent track record of run support against god-awful opposing starters, I would not get my hopes up. The business person’s special on getaway day features Scott Baker against Jarrod Washburn. A series with Santana-Garza-Baker is starting to look pretty tough if the offense can get any support at all. But beware the resourceful Mariners, who have outperformed their run differential all season, recently ripping off 10 of 14 wins while still getting very little out of supposed offensive stalwarts Jose Vidro, Jose Guillen, and Raul Ibanez.

Over the weekend, the Rangers travel to the dome, playing out the string with less star power than ever before. Go check out a game if you are particularly intrigued by Jared Saltalamacchia, because the pitching matchups are not going to bowl you over. If Kason Gabbard’s stiff forearm allows him to make his Friday start, he will kick off the series, followed by Kevin Millwood and Vicente Padilla, who have been two of the worst regular starters in the American League.

The Big Picture

If you have yet to notice, the Twins indeed slipped below .500 with their butchering of the weekend series against the Angels. It may not make a difference for the postseason this year, but if the team is trying to calm the nerves of its stars who do not feel that the team is serious about winning, the first losing season since 2000 is not the best elixir. The difference between an 82-80 season and an 80-82 one could be bigger for this team than it would be for any other team, excepting a team like Pittsburgh who has endured 14 straight losing seasons. To get back over the hump, the Twins will have to take advantage of a soft portion in the schedule, running into Texas, Baltimore, and Kansas City before the month is over. To win those games, at least two of Mauer, Morneau, and Cuddyer have to start hitting again, and Gardy has to keep the back end of his bullpen rested enough to get another month and a half out of the beaten-down corps. Although making the playoffs may be a lost cause, this team is perfectly capable of rebounding for a winning season, and that improvement can start right away.

2007-08-06T09:34:00.000-05:00

TWIT: Inoffensive

Weekly Roundup

Taking all things into consideration, the Twins had an extremely eventful week. On the field, they went 4-2 without a single game being decided by more than two runs. They picked up enough ground on the division by taking a series from Cleveland that they superficially look like playoff contenders once again, but still face extremely long odds. Off of the field, they traded their starting second baseman for nothing, and may have ended up with a good deal in not having to pay his salary. They also gave away half of a DH/3B platoon to save a half million dollars, which will likely also turn out to have virtually no effect on the standings.

And then there is that matter of the bridge, the 35W bridge just outside of downtown inexplicably collapsing, causing a scene that could be described as anything from terrifying to disastrous. Anyone who has been to Minneapolis has probably driven across the Mississippi river on 35W; it is not some arterial road without traffic. The fact that roadwork had diverted some of the cars may have been a contributing factor to compromising its integrity. If not, it turned out to be a fortunate circumstance that kept more people out of harm’s way. There are so many interesting angles from which to approach this story- the economic impact, the physical causes of the collapse, the stories of the survivors in the school bus, the government’s intervention, the long process of reconstruction-, but this is a baseball site, and there is definitely an impact on the baseball team. The Twins did the right thing in postponing the Thursday game after the bridge collapse, both to let people capture the gravity of the situation and to decongest the insane city traffic. A friend who lives near the site of the bridge told me that he has given up on driving altogether for the time being, a circumstance which the Twins and Metrodome officials have to understand. Attendance could very possibly be down, not because people are mourning the crash, but because they simply cannot get to that part of town. Marketing the new light rail may help some, as well as encouraging other forms of public transportation. Anything to reduce traffic in downtown Minneapolis for the time being will help the city as well as the team.

Biggest Success

Even in a week where the team won four games, taking both of their series from divisional opponents, it would be almost impossible to find an offensive player to reward for anything. Joe Mauer broke out of his mini-slump, putting up the sort of .333/.417/.429 line we have come to expect from him. Jason Kubel also went 4-11, appearing in only four games. Alexi Casilla showed some promise in his first week back after a rough patch in his first big league stint, this time scrapping together five hits in 16 plate appearances, but with only one extra base hit, no steals, and no walks. His youth gives him an excuse, and the experience will only help him.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so for the team to win four games with an average of less than three runs per contest, something must have been going extremely well on the pitching ledger. Indeed, five quality starts in six games fits the bill, even if Johan Santana’s non-vintage second half continued with a 6 IP, 5 R, 3 ER losing effort. The shining star in this arbitrary time period was Scott Baker, and it is not close. Baker allowed six hits and two walks, an impressive stat if he made only one start, but Baker made two starts and went 8 innings in each of them. That works out to a 0.50 WHIP if you are scoring at home. He also struck out 11 and gave up no homeruns, using superb location and much improved pitch selection to keep hitters altogether off balance. Baker has grown into a very appealing style of pitching, but even if he worked like Steve Traschel, I would not complain about a pitcher who goes 2-0 with a 0.56 ERA for the week, nor one who has a 2.55 ERA for the last month.

Biggest Disappointment

I titled the column inoffensive because it fits the most literal sense of the word, as well as the one obvious to the Twins condition. Even though the offense cannot seem to cobble together enough runs to support a pitching staff that has become very solid, they do just enough to stay on the fringe of the pennant race, to maintain the interest of casual fans, and to convince everyone they are serious about winning (everyone, except Johan Santana). Maybe they are not exciting right now, but at least they are inoffensive, and Minnesotans can ask for nothing more. If a team in a more aggressive city, like Philadelphia or Boston, were to compete at the level the Twins have competed in recent years (division titles, playoff appearances, but no serious runs at the World Series), the city would be calling for the GM’s head on a pole. How do I know this? Because it happens in Philadelphia. Many people hate the Eagles because they are judicious with their cap space and try to balance between winning now and remaining competitive in the future. Sound familiar? The Eagles have been the best team in the NFC over the course of the decade, but many fans hate Andy Reid for not taking more chances, making a splash like he did the year they landed Terrell Owens, and really going for broke for one season. Minnesotans do not have that mentality. Garrison Keillor was unavailable for a fold psychology consultation, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with Lutheranism, Scandanavia, or cold weather.

What I’m getting at here is that Terry Ryan deserves a great deal of the blame for the team’s offensive struggles. A simple mistake in player acquisition or playing time allotments can happen, but when the same mistakes occur year after year, they become habits or negative traits. We know that Ryan and Gardenhire, for all of their virtues, privilege good gloves and experience a bit too heavily. This quality manifests itself in Nick Punto going 0-8 yet again, bringing his season average to .208. This man is a backup. Replacements were available. For instance, the San Diego Padres (with more wins and a lower waiver priority) got Morgan Ensberg for beans. Over the course of a season, Ensberg, at his worst, is 3-4 wins better than Punto. That’s not worth trying? Ryan’s conservatism has kept the future intact, but when it becomes a paralyzing habit, it becomes a major disappointment for the team.

On the Horizon

Which brings us to the most pressing issue of the near future: Johan Santana. Although Johan has been missing his lights-out second half by a thin margin in every start, it is clear that he is still the best pitcher in baseball. When he comes out and says that he thinks the team does not care enough about winning and envisions himself leaving, you should probably start listening. The Luis Castillo trade was nothing; Casilla can step in right away at a similar level, the two prospects might be backups in the major leagues 2-3 years from now, and they are off the hook for the last $2 mil+ on Castillo’s deal, giving up only the possibility of a sandwich compensatory pick for their troubles. However, if the ramifications include angering Johan Santana, the trade becomes the mirror image of the Pierzynski trade, one that could utterly cripple the franchise. Now I am not terrified of a rotation that includes Liriano, Baker, Garza, Bonser, Silva with Slowey or Perkins possibly mixed in. On the other hand, keeping Santana and leveraging some of the back end talent for more offense is the sort of power play that championship teams make, but the Twins never do. Trading Silva for Michael Bourn now would have helped both teams in the near term, and the Twins would have been able to seamlessly plug the Torii Hunter hole with an above average player while retaining seven starting pitchers, with more behind them in the minors. Once again, these are the moves that champions make, but the Twins never do. Signing Santana because he is outstanding and helps the team win instead of signing him because there is a gaping hole at SP would be an assertive move that puts the team in a position to win, even if it is expensive and requires them to defer some of the payments into the 2020s.

As for the schedule itself, the Twins finish up their four-gamer with the Tribe today, then hit up Kansas City for Bryant’s famous BBQ and a three game set with the second-division Royals, and wind up the week with a trip to the OC to try to do the Mariners a favor in making bringing the Angels back to the pack. A four win week would be nice with that soft patch in the middle. A five win week with some offensive fireworks might make me soften my stance on their playoff chances, as well.

The Big Picture

My diatribe about the front office tells the story here, so I will be brief. The Twins playoff odds are up to 11% today after a second solid week in a row. The reason they are not higher, even though they are within 4 games of the wild card and 4.5 of the division, is that they have multiple teams to pass at every angle. To win the division, they have to get past both Detroit and Cleveland, which is vaguely conceivable looking at the way both teams have played and the fact that their combined deadline swag amounted to a geriatric Kenny Lofton. Still, passing two teams that have outplayed them all year seems unlikely. The Wild Card is even more of an uphill battle. They still get half of that division difficulty, but they also have to get around the Mariners and the newly invincible Yankees. I said a few weeks ago that the Yankees were the real threat in the WC race, even though they were several games back. Now they are within ½ game, and they look like serious contenders, possibly for the AL East. To overcome those odds would take more bats than the Twins have.

2007-08-05T11:56:00.000-05:00

What went wrong, Jon?

The diminishing fortunes of the Texas Rangers

When Jon Daniels traded Kenny Lofton, Eric Gagne, and Mark Teixeira before the trading deadline last week, he received credit for getting a good prospect return and giving his franchise a future in lieu of its failed present. No matter how well his newly acquired prospects turn out, long-term rebuilding was not the idea when Daniels took over for John Hart at the end of the 2005 season. Under Hart, the Rangers went from 73 wins in 2001 to 89 wins in 2004, featuring a solid nucleus of Teixeira, Hank Blalock, Michael Young, Alfonso Soriano, and Kevin Mench, as well as solid young players like Laynce Nix, Gerald Laird, Adrian Gonzalez, Chris Young, and Kameron Loe.

It looked as if Daniels was poised to take over a contender in need of a couple of pieces in the pitching staff, but otherwise set to challenge the A’s and Angels for dominance in the AL West. Instead, the Rangers have fallen below .500 for the last 2 years, failed to get out of the AL West’s second division, and recently decided to give up that core of young talent in exchange for the next wave. How did such a rosy horizon turn sour so quickly? Did Daniels make mistakes that doomed the franchise, or have the Rangers suffered through some terrible luck? By looking at the problems with the 2007 roster, we can get a better idea of the franchise-wide failures.

At 48-62, the Rangers are the second worst team in the American League, and their 595 runs allowed explain exactly why that is the case. Only Tampa Bay, with a ghastly 671 runs allowed, ranks below the Rangers, who are actually sixth in the league in runs scored. Daniels knew when he took the job that he would have to cope with a home field that favors runs scoring to a high degree. This year, however, the newly re-christened Rangers Ballpark has a 1.004 park factor for runs, which means two things. First, it means that a league average offense would score four more runs than average in that park. Second, it means that this particular Rangers pitching staff is really as bad as advertised.

The 2007 rotation consists of six pitchers, the aforementioned Loe and five starters acquired by Daniels, indicating that he has perpetuated some consistent mistake in acquiring starting pitchers. In a stadium that has historically favored homerun hitting, it stands to reason that Daniels would want pitchers who avoid throwing gopher balls right over the center of the plate. I don’t blame him for looking for pitchers with live stuff, but he has tipped off of the balance point, walking way too many batters to remain effective. The Rangers are dead last in the AL in K/BB ratio at 1.45, way below the league average of 2.00, and even well below the next-to-last Yankees, at 1.66. Additionally, the rotation’s BB/9 rate is 4.3, about a full base runner worse than the AL average of 3.32. Giving away a full out every game is going to have adverse effects on any pitching staff. Teams can get by with one starter with control problems, but when every starter is worse than league average (Kameron Loe is the best at 3.48 BB/9), the pitching staff is in a great deal of trouble.

The pitching acquisitions seem to have some common threads, mostly that Daniels has bought high on a lot of his pitchers. Kevin Millwood, for instance, is a solid pitcher, slightly better than league average. In 11 seasons, he has posted an ERA+ between 90-104 7 times, has gone above that threshold 3 times, and this year is setting a career low at 77. The problem is that Millwood was coming off of his second best year when the Rangers signed him to their ace at 5 years, $60 million. He’s a decent pitcher who is starting to age, and Daniels paid him to be a star in his prime, not a number 2-3 starter.

Similarly, he traded David Dellucci- a valuable chip- for Robinson Tejada. Tejada had 13 good starts for the Phillies in 2005, posting a 127 ERA+, but with a 4.56 BB rate that would make that ERA unsustainable. Tejada has always been a number five starter at best, a fact too common in the Rangers rotation. He also traded for Vicente Padilla after he posted a 4.53 BB rate and a lower-than-commensurate ERA with the Phillies, then signed him to a 3 year, $34 million deal in the worst buyer’s market for starting pitching in recent memory. Most recently, he traded for Brandon McCarthy in the same market, giving up the arguably more talented John Danks in the deal. The starting pitchers’ VORPs for this year show just how bad they have been: Wright- 4.6, McCarthy- 3.4, Loe- -4.9, Millwood- -6.5, Tejada- -13.5, Padilla- -14.8. Part of the problem is the team’s defense, ranking 25^th in defensive efficiency, and part of the problem is a convergence of everyone having a bad season at the same time. Nonetheless, you would have to squint to see any number one or two starters in this rotation, and Daniels bought every one of them at his highest point.

Daniels has even made the same mistake in his trades. He dumped Alfonso Soriano after his worst year since he was a rookie (including a .309 OBP). Brad Wilkerson, the crown jewel of the return, had 32 homers in 2004, then had one of the best offensive seasons of any of the Nationals in their first year in RFK. He traded Chris Young after he struggled through the second half of 2005, posting a 3.34 ERA in April-June and a 5.52 ERA thereafter. He also gave up Adrian Gonzalez in the trade, and got Adam Eaton and Akinori Otsuka in return. Otsuka has been solid, Eaton did nothing for the Rangers, and Young and Gonzalez have rebounded to become stars for the Padres. He did well in trading Laynce Nix and Kevin Mench for anything, but he also gave up Francisco Cordero in the midst of his first ERA+ season below 125 in the last seven. Getting back Nelson Cruz could turn out to be a nice addition, but the centerpiece of the trade was Carlos Lee, predictably having the best OPS+ season of his career.

In his most recent round of trades, he sold Mark Teixeira when he had some leverage, but did not have to trade him. The return looks good for now, but be wary of prospects that John Schuerzholz decided to cut loose. In the Gagne trade, he pulled a classic Daniels move by getting Kason Gabbard, a guy who is barely a number five starter, but has strung together a few good starts in a row that make him look like a number three. Altogether, Daniels has systematically bled his roster dry by trading his best players while struggling, and acquiring players coming off of unrepeatable performances. His most recent trades look like they provide a good foundation for the future, but unless Daniels learns how to put performance into perspective, the team is doomed to perpetual rebuilding, and failure to get out of the second division.

2007-07-30T10:16:00.000-05:00

TWIT: The Distant Future

Weekly Roundup

Haven’t we been here before? Last week, the Twins suffered a miserably disappointing sweep, followed by a pretty solid series where they took two out of three from a better team. This week, well, the Twins suffered a miserably disappointing sweep at the hands of the Blue Jays, and followed it up by taking two out of three from a better Cleveland team. According to the BP playoff odds report, the Twins’ odds of getting into the post-season sweepstakes are down to just 7%, only seventh best in the American league, and well behind the other six contenders ahead of them.

Once again, the road to a subpar week was paved by an inability to score runs during the workweek. Last week, the Twins managed a total of five runs in their three losses to the Tigers. This week, they scored- guess what- five runs in their three losses to the Jays. In some ways, this series was even more pathetic, as the Jays don’t sport one of the hottest starting rotations in the majors, and they fell victim to the indignity of being completely shut down by Dustin McGowan. The Twins pitching was not outstanding, either. Santana got lit up like a Christmas tree his first time out, giving up gopher ball after gopher ball. Carlos Silva struggled in giving up six runs over 5.1 innings, and the situation got worse when Dennys Reyes and Juan Rincon tried to relieve him, but combined to face six batters and let every one of them score without recording an out. Altogether, there were almost no positives in the Toronto series. Minnesota’s weaknesses showed up all at once, crowding out their relative strengths.

The Cleveland series was quite a bit better. It started slowly with a Boof Bonser shellacking, a game which contributed to Ramon Ortiz piling up 5.1 innings for the week- something that doesn’t happen when things are going well. As the weekend went on, though, the Twins starting hitting a little, catching some breaks, and pitching extremely well. Santana looked like vintage second-half Johan on Saturday, teasing at a no-hitter, but settling for 12 strikeouts and five baserunners through seven innings. Matt Garza looked even better on Sunday, where he went nose to nose with potential Cy Young favorite C.C. Sabathia. Sure, the Twins are out of the race, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still cheer, and a weekend series like this one is a good way to feel good about a team that needs an unrealistic hot streak to contend again this year.

Biggest Success

Justin Morneau had another strong week, blasting two homers, driving in seven runs, hitting .409, and somehow not drawing a single walk, even without much support behind him in the lineup (Hunter hit .143 for the week). Jason Tyner mashed his first major league homerun even though I remember drafting him way back in the first fantasy baseball draft of my life.

My pick for biggest success of the week is going to Matt Garza this week. He has been absolutely revelatory for the Twins in the last few starts after looking a little rough around the edges the first couple of starts after his recall. Is it possible that he resented staying in AAA so much that he was dogging it all year? The 3.62 ERA and 95 K’s in 92 IP hint otherwise, but he was much better last year, and insisted he was uncomfortable pitching the way the team wanted him to pitch in the minors. What is more likely is that his experience throwing his curveball more often in AAA is starting to catch on, giving him the lights out pitch that baffled Cleveland on Sunday. He did a great job getting ahead of hitters, and was able to throw a nasty breaking ball that torpedoed out of the strike zone to record 11 strikeouts in six innings. With Boof Bonser, Garza makes two Twins starters who get by on an excellent curve, but they use the pitch differently. Bonser throws his for a strike, but it sometimes flattens out and gets hit hard. Garza has yet to learn how to throw his yacker for a strike consistently, meaning it works as a strikeout pitch, but hitters can sit on the fastball early in the count. If I had to choose, I would take Garza’s setup- it has worked well enough for K-Rod’s slider over the years- and his command should improve as he continues throwing it. If his peak is what we’ve seen his last three or four starts, I’ll take that, too.

Biggest Disappointment

Did anyone else notice that Matt Lecroy is hitting .193/.277/.260 at AAA? That’s pretty disappointing to me. I’m just piling it on now; there’s not much reason to look for more disappointments after a week like this one. The real culprits were the major league hitters who couldn’t get over the Mendoza line for the week. Lew Ford (.111), Jeff Cirillo (.125), Jason Bartlett (.125), Torii Hunter (.143), Jason Kubel (.158), and Nick Punto (.200) all played at least three games and flat out didn’t hit. While the offense’s problem for most of the year has been an inability to hit anything other than singles, even a few singles would have been appreciated this week. With that sort of production, averaging 2.7 runs per game is ugly, but it is not wholly unexpected. If you want to blame someone for the Twins hovering around .500 with the collection of frontline talent that they have, blame Terry Ryan for settling on Jeff Cirillo, Nick Punto, Jason Tyner, and Rondell White as long term solutions in the lineup.

On the Horizon

The Twins have just completed the first three of 20 games in 20 days, a long stretch like they had leading up to the All-Star break that taxes the pitching and requires more than simple push-button managing. I have said repeatedly that this area is one where I fully trust Ron Gardenhire to handle the team correctly; his bullpen management optimizes individual talent without overburdening one or two pitchers. The only concern I have over this stretch is that he will be pressed toward trying to win the division, even though the goal is probably unrealistic, and may continue to use Pat Neshek and Matt Guerrier on back to back days when the risk is unnecessary. It is not a huge concern, but it is something to watch over the next two weeks.

The schedule itself brings the Twins an eight game home stand against the Royals and the Indians. With the way the Twins played against Cleveland this weekend, there’s real hope that next week’s column will have a more upbeat tone than this one. The Royals have played fairly well since the All-Star break, most recently sweeping Texas, but they’re still the Royals, and after Gil Meche on Monday, they the exceedingly mortal Jorge De La Rosa, Brian Bannister, and Odalis Perez to the mound. I’m going to pretend that De La Rosa didn’t already dominate the Twins once this year, and I’m also going to pretend that Kansas City’s trade deadline sell-off will distract the team enough to cripple their focus and confidence.

In the Cleveland series, the most interesting match-up will be in the first game, where Sabathia will get a rematch with Matt Garza, this time on Garza’s (literal) turf.

The Big Picture

Once Tuesday passes and the trade rumors dissipate, it will be time to stop worrying about the big picture for a while and to start enjoying the game of baseball itself. It’s late summer, the team is healthy, and they’re playing every day for the next two and a half weeks. My advice is to sit back and enjoy the majesty of ball and bat.

I’m sorry, I don’t usually engage in that sort of silly baseball mysticism, but I feel like I need to construct a fallback for a team without great hopes of a playoff run. Truthfully, there are lots of reasons to continue enjoying the Twins this year. Santana may be starting a run of excellent starts, Garza and Baker have looked very solid recently, and Justin Morneau could make a run at 40 homeruns. Plus, if you’re into gambling, you can bet on which infielder will catch Rondell White’s popup each time he bats.

In the meantime, the trade deadline still packs some punch. I recently wrote about why I think the Twins should not trade Torii Hunter, since there is just not enough time to work out the right deal. I also know that the team has more or less taken Luis Castillo off of the market, but I would at least shop him around to see if there’s any team that will give up more value that is closer to the major leagues (perhaps an outfielder?) than the two draft picks he will bring back by leaving as a free agent. With the current market for pitching, Juan Rincon and Carlos Silva should also be on the block, just to see if they can set themselves up better for next year by dealing them for prospects who are close to the majors. Plus, it’s possible that the team would be better off with Cameron Cali and Kevin Slowey playing at this point anyway. So even though the Twins are in a holding pattern of non-contention, there are plenty of intriguing story lines to follow, and lots of baseball left to enjoy.

2007-07-29T16:16:00.001-05:00

The Torii Hunter Dilemma

The common thread running through the Twins solid decade has been Torii Hunter more than anyone else. Terry Ryan and Ron Gardenhire have obviously been instrumental in putting together a competitive team despite a roster with a high rate of turnover. Until this year, Brad Radke was the elder statesman, playing through pain and leading by example on the pitching staff. Nonetheless, Hunter’s charisma, ability, and outspoken nature made him the most visible Twin for most of his contract. Even today, with a two time Cy Young winner (Santana), an all-American batting champ (Mauer), one of the best closers in baseball (Nathan), and the reigning AL MVP (Morneau), Hunter remains arguably the most widely recognizable player on the team. As such, it is no surprise that Hunter’s impending free agency looms like a giant fork in the road above the front office as the 2007 pennant race slides out of their grasp. It is difficult to make a judgment on what to do with Hunter in terms of statistics, chemistry, and public relations. In this space, I will examine a few of the advantages and drawbacks of different courses of action.

Keep Hunter for the year, try to re-sign him

Keeping Hunter makes for a good public relations move in two different respects. First, it helps signal that the team seeks to remain competitive throughout 2007, which certainly packs more fans into the stadium than an implicit concession. Additionally, a good faith effort at retaining Hunter would probably reflect well on an owner whose major problem is frugality, at least in the court of public opinion. Even though Carl Pohlad has always found the money to re-up his top level free agents- including Puckett, Knoblauch, Radke, Hunter, Santana, and Mauer- he will undoubtedly face some degree of public backlash for letting Hunter walk.

But that does not answer the real question. Would the Twins be wise to retain Hunter? Even though his physical prime has come and gone, I believe that Hunter is exactly the type of player who will age well. His elite athleticism will help him keep some value afield, and he can survive at the plate without too many walks or an extremely high batting average. His worst offensive season as a full time regular came in 2003 when he managed to hit only .250, but still produced an OPS+ of 97 due to his good power. Combined with strong defense at a premium position, Hunter forecasts to be a solid player even as he ages. Using PECOTA projections, Baseball Prospectus pegs Hunter for a solid big league regular through at least 2010, maintaining a weighted mean EQA above .270 through 2011. If he can keep his defense above average, that sort of player definitely has some value, nearly $10 million per year, according to PECOTA. With the Twins’ dearth of minor league position players, one could make a case that the opportunity cost of losing Hunter is so great next year, and would carry over so much into 2010 (the ETA of the new ballpark), that he is worth the extra money he would require to retain him. Without power or on-base skills, Denard Span has fizzled, and Ben Revere looks like Span-lite. Hunter may mean more to the Twins than to any other team.

Keep Hunter for the year, let him walk

Of course, the first two possibilities are largely indistinguishable, especially if Hunter’s market price goes through the roof. Just how much will Hunter make in the open market? That’s an excellent question, and will likely have a lot to do with what the Twins resolve to do. On one hand, Ichiro’s new $90 mil+ extension makes Hunter look completely unsignable. But the Mariners made the Ichiro deal to keep the Japanese market, an advantage Hunter does not bring, and because his unique skill set seems to position him well for the aging process. If nothing else, Hunter’s contract is unlikely to be as long as Ichiro’s, even if a bidding war mushrooms his salary about $15 mil per year.

Another issue to consider is the recent collapse of Johnny Damon, another elite CF who had a career year at age 31 before becoming a free agent. Inevitably, detractors will invoke Damon’s fate when trying to depress Hunter’s salary, pointing out that his all-out defensive style wore him down to the point that too many singles turned into outs and Damon turned into a pumpkin. One important difference between the two is that Hunter has been more consistent for most of his career. He has slugged between .450 and .550 every year since age 25, a skill Damon was not able to fall back upon. Also, Hunter’s aforementioned 97 OPS+ season in 2003 was the only time he dipped below 100. Damon’s reliance on his batting average instead of power made him more subject to fluctuations, giving him some seasons better than what Hunter has ever done with the bat, but also four seasons below 100 OPS+, one as low as 85. In other words, considering both offense and defense, Damon had had distinctly average seasons before becoming a free agent. Hunter has never done that. Damon needs to hit at least .280 to be above average, while Hunter’s power has allowed him to have four seasons below .280 with an OPS+ above 100. With Damon’s higher peak, Hunter may not have more perceived value, but he is likely to remain a better player longer than Damon, unless one of his homerun saving grabs rips his shoulder out of socket.

Damon entered the free agent market with Carlos Beltran, giving teams options and decreasing the likelihood of an all out bidding war. Hunter enters the market alongside the slumping Andruw Jones, and the slightly less desirable lot of Eric Byrnes, Kenny Lofton, and Mike Cameron. Without much talk of a longer deal, Damon signed for four years and $52 million. Adjusting for inflation and the current market, I suspect Hunter will get something in the neighborhood of five years and $75 million. A team truly desperate for a right handed power hitter who can play a strong centerfield may try to increase the yearly value at the expense of the length, perhaps offer $64 million over 4 years. Either way, I think Hunter will come up short of earning that money by about $10-15 million worth of market value, not a hideous sum, but one that the Twins cannot afford given the necessity to extend whoever they can out of the group of Santana, Morneau, Cuddyer, and Nathan.

Letting Hunter walk, of course, comes with the side benefit of two draft picks so long as the team offers him arbitration. If he signs with a team in the top half of the league in wins, it will be a first rounder. Otherwise, it will be a second rounder, and a sandwich pick between rounds one and two will be part of the deal either way. In that light, Hunter signing with a bad team like the Rangers would cost the Twins about 15 spots in the draft order versus losing him to the Yankees or Red Sox. With the Twins recent history of drafting position players, those picks may be frustrating failures, but they have value nonetheless, and have to be taken into account when deciding his fate.

Try to trade Hunter now

Going into this weekend’s Cleveland series, the Twins picked a terrible time to slump their way out of playoff contention. If they remained within five games of the playoffs, it would be worthwhile for Terry Ryan to pursue offensive upgrades at third base and DH. If they were clearly out of the race two weeks ago- as they are now- they could have put Hunter on the trading block, along with Luis Castillo, Carlos Silva, and Juan Rincon. Without giving other teams time to bid against each other, there is not enough of a market on Hunter to get a proper return, nor is their enough time to work out the details of a deal on a player who may require a window of time to negotiate an extension before the trade could be made.

One possible suitor could have been Damon’s Yankees, who need a right handed bat and could use Hunter’s outfield defense to go with the eroding range on their corners. While Hunter would not be enough to nab elite pitching prospects like Phil Hughes or Joba Chamberlain, but paired with a bullpen arm like Rincon, he could probably return one of the secondary pitching prospects like Alan Horne along with an outfield prospect like Jose Tabata or Brent Gardner. Neither would fill the centerfield void, which is why I have also advocated for the Twins to pursue other trades for centerfield prospects all year. A player like Michael Bourn would help the Twins a little this year by filling in LF while Kubel plays more at DH, and would be able to slide into CF next year, solving a big quagmire on the cheap. An offer of Carlos Silva and a minor league reliever might be enough to get that done.

In any case, I do not believe that trading Hunter would net the Twins more value than the two draft picks they would get for losing him as a free agent. If Ryan had built up a market for Hunter the way Jon Daniels has done with Mark Teixeira, the scales might have tipped slightly. As the timing has worked out, Ryan was too close to contention to start offering Hunter at the appropriate time, so he cannot be faulted for his course of action. Thus, letting Hunter walk has more value to the Twins than trying to trade him in a rushed package.

Conclusion

If Hunter is going to cost $15 million per year, the Twins quite simply cannot afford to keep him. I do not mean that the Twins could never dedicate that much money to one player, but with extensions for so many players on the docket, Hunter’s value does not fit into the equation. Keeping Santana for $18-20 million per year with some money deferred would make lots of sense for the team. Giving Morneau $12-15 million per year might not even break the bank if they are willing to let Nathan walk at the end of 2008, leaving Pat Neshek at the back of the bullpen. As the oldest member of that group, Hunter has the greatest potential for regression, and is the least likely to help the team in 2010. Even though it will once again make Carl Pohlad look like a malevolent cheapskate, it is time to thank Hunter for the good times he’s had, and to let the face of the franchise walk away.

2007-07-23T11:14:00.000-05:00

TWIT: Fork

Weekly Roundup

Fork. In one way, the Twins stand at a fork in the road. Fox’s uber-rumor guru Ken Rosenthal jumped on the Adam Dunn to the Twins bandwagon yesterday, mostly because it makes a ton of sense if the team has an interest in building toward a possible post-season run. A fork in the road because the Twins have reopened the Johan Santana negotiations, reportedly with an interest in deferring some of the money. Ichiro and Mark Buehrle have recently signed new contracts, each offering some good news for Twins fans hoping to retain Santana, Ichiro because his deferred contract could make it easier for the Twins to spread out the dollars over the long term to offer a contract closer to market value, and Buehrle because he’s a top of the rotation lefty in a competitive market, and he signed below market. This year’s trading deadline is at very least a fork in the road for this season, whether they can compete for the playoffs as well, and even effects what team will take the field on opening day 2010, under the stars rather than a sheet.

Fork. In another way, there is a fork sticking out of the Twins’ collective back. After dropping three in a row to the Tigers, the Twins were looking up a 9 game embankment to the top of the division, and sit 8 back of the division, 7 back of the Wild Card. The roster that the Twins have put on the field so far this year has done enough to convince me that they will not make the playoffs with huge holes at third base and DH and an average rotation that cannot do enough to compensate for the offensive mediocrities. Even if you hold the belief that Cleveland will stop outperforming their run differential by 3-4 games and that the difference between them and the Twins is more like two or three wins going forward, you have to be concerned that the Twins have slipped behind the Yankees. Nobody in their right mind would look at the offense that piled 45 runs on Tampa over three games and a rotation that will soon include Clemens, Pettitte, Mussina, Wang, and Hughes, and still believe that the Twins can overtake them down the stretch. Even though the Twins were swept at home by the Tigers in three one-run games, it was enough to effectively crush their postseason chances without any major changes.

Biggest Success

For what it is worth, the Twins played two of the hottest teams in the American league and were only blown out of one game all week. The pitching staff is rounding into form, albeit a couple of months later than necessary, and has reached the precipice of compensating for the Nick Puntos and Jason Tyners of the world. Still, five runs over three home games is not going to get it done. Matt Garza does not deserve to go 12.1 innings, giving up only 14 total base runners and 3 earned runs, while still suffering two losses for his record (bizarre Slowey?). The bullpen gave up only four runs in 14 innings of work, the only non-quality start of the week was a victory (6.2 IP, 4 ER for Silva), and the team still went 2-4.

The offense deserve pretty much all of the blame for a bad week. But that’s not to say the lineup was devoid of bright spots, even against the top two starting rotations in the league. In particular, Jason Kubel led the team in BA/OBP/SLG and was second in total bases despite having a day off. I get the distinct feeling that Kubel has turned a corner and will remain at least a serviceable major league regular until injury or age derails him. He might never become the batting title competitor that he projected to be before his knee injury, but he can provide league average on base skills and above average gap power, making him at least a playable LF, something the Twins have not had for the last year and a half. Although he is somewhat streaky, I believe that Kubel will be good for at least .260/.330/.470 for the rest of the year and next, meaning that LF is not the dire straits that it was earlier in the season. Finding someone to pair with him to alternate fielding and DH’ing would still make all kinds of sense considering his injury history and the team’s gaping wound in the DH spot.

Biggest Disappointment

Everyone knows that the middle of the Twins lineup needs to produce for the team to be successful. Without offensive fireworks from Mauer, Morneau, Hunter, and Cuddyer, all of the seeing eye singles and first to thirds in the world won’t get them to a .500 record. With sprained ligaments sidelining Cuddyer for at least two weeks (hopefully a minimum DL stint, which would have him back the first week in August), the Twins have even less margin for error. Not only does the middle of the lineup have to be even stronger, their fringe players have to offer some sort of resistance to opposing pitching.

For the week, the team did not fare well without Cuddyer. Mauer, Morneau, and Hunter filled in his stead by having slightly below average weeks for all three. None of the three were abjectly terrible, but the top OBP was merely .333, and nobody slugged over .500 or hit more than a single home run. The reinforcements were even worse. Darnell McDonald’s line looks like one of the old Timberwolves box scores where Stojko Vrankovic would have minutes played followed by a whole mess of zeroes. McDonald accumulated 9 plate appearances with zero singles, doubles, triples, homers, walks, runs, RBIs, or steals. Not the best way to ingratiate oneself to a new team. The rest of the marginal players- Jones, Cirillo, Ford, Redmond, Tyner, Rodriguez- had a total of five hits in 38 at bats (.131). Nobody expects them to be world beaters, but they have to hit better than a pitcher.

On the Horizon

I mentioned the difficult forthcoming opponents last week, but Toronto has mercifully remained stagnant, slipping two games beneath .500 to give some sort of psychological respite to the team between four other series against playoff contenders. In the opener, Shaun Marcum will go for the Jays, hoping to continue his success as a starter, but even his revelatory season will have a tough time measuring up the second-half Johan Santana for the Twins. Baker and McGowan in the second game features two young starters who have started coming around as of late, and the series finale will see two guys who struggle more and more as the game goes on in Silva and Jesse Litsch. Between missing Halladay and getting Santana twice in the week, the schedule worked out nicely for this random selection of six games. Against Cleveland, the Twins will probably get Sabathia, but with Paul Byrd and Jake Westbrook in the first two games, it could be much worse.

The Big Picture

For me, the big picture starts to extend beyond the current season at a time like this. With that in mind, let’s take stock of what the Twins have to do going forward. Ultimately I believe that the Twins will find a way to sign Johan Santana to an extension, like Kirby Puckett and Brad Radke before him. Carl Pohlad may be cheap, but he is a good businessman and he knows how popular Santana has become in Minnesota. Considering that he is willing to take less money to re-sign and that the team has already broken tradition to negotiate with him in the season, and all indicators are going the right way. Mauer is already signed below market value beyond the end of his arbitration years, and Morneau’s long-term deal will likely be the next issue to tackle.

That leaves Torii Hunter and Joe Nathan as possible cost cutting victims at the end of this season and next, respectively. With the organization’s ability to develop cheap and reliable relief pitchers, including Hawkins, Romero, Guardado, Rincon, Neshek, and Guerrier, I don’t mind skimping a bit on the bullpen budget. Nathan could make eight figures on the open market, and a mid-market team has no business paying a closer that much money unless he is undeniable the face of the franchise (Trevor Hoffman). Losing Hunter could be a bit dicey. The Twins have not done a good job of developing outfielders since Hunter and Jones came along, with only Kubel to show for their efforts, and Cuddyer switching out of the infield to fill the need. Guys like Eric Byners, Kenny Lofton, and Mike Cameron will be available in the off season as cheaper alternatives, but those approaches do not solve the problem for 2010, the year the Twins are supposed to target to make a big run in a new park. It is too early to start wrangling for the 2009 free agent class, but the Twins are rarely big players in that market anyway, which is why I have continually suggested that they try to make a play for a minor league CF prospect who is within a year or two of becoming a regular. With their surplus of pitching and the relative over-valuing of starters in the current market, I believe a deal could be reached. If they were willing to take a chance on a borderline character, Lastings Milledge and Elijah Dukes would come cheaply, although those are risky propositions. One way or another, I see CF as the biggest challenge going forward for next year and beyond.

2007-07-16T09:44:00.001-05:00

TWIT: Hooray

Weekly Roundup

Four games, four quality starts, four close wins. That recipe yields success under just about any circumstances, and when the offense shows some limited signs of life at the same time, you end up with a sweep of a quality opponent. Even though the Twins outscored the A’s by a total of eight runs over four games, they pulled their home record from a disappointing 22-20 to a more reasonable 26-20, simultaneously reasserting their position as a borderline contender. The formula was relatively unchanged for each of the four wins: the starting pitchers gave up a total of three runs in the first five innings of all of the games, giving the offense a chance to get ahead. In fact, the only real damage done to any of the four starters came against Boof Bonser and Carlos Silva in the seventh innings of their respective starts. The offense managed only one homeruns for the shortened week, but an astounding five triples for the week helped to offset the lack of power. It is unreasonable to believe that the Twins can continue winning games without hitting homeruns, and the pitching rotation has spent a whole season demonstrating why they will not put up 100% quality starts. Nonetheless, this week’s games were extremely helpful in the standings and in the psyche of the organization. It gives Terry Ryan a reason to aggressively pursue a missing piece- hopefully a real DH/LF to go with Kubel not named Rondell- and it keeps the pressure on the teams at the top of the division, who have shown a propensity to crack over the last two seasons.

Before moving on, I wanted to comment on Garrett Jones, who has really impressed me in his limited action so far. I’m not trying to draw big conclusions from his 2-7 start with a double and a walk- I’m more concerned with his approach at the plate. His minor league statistical profile made it look like he might have difficulty adjusting to good major league pitching that could actually make him swing and miss with some consistency. He got by in the minors by swinging often and hitting the ball hard, keeping up a so-so batting average with plenty of power, but not many walks. Many hitters have followed the same path, then seen their contact rate dip so low in the majors that the power alone cannot sustain such a miserable OBP. So far, Jones has shown a willingness to work the count and wait for a good pitch. On Sunday, he churned out a walk in a 7 pitch plate appearance, fouling off a 3-2 pitch on the outside corner before reaching base on the next pitch at the letters. It also seems as though he is relatively comfortable with fastballs and breaking balls, as he has made contact on both. While mistake hitters can have value, I’d take an all-around hitter who could develop any day. I’m not expecting Jones to be a superstar, or even a starter, but if he can catch enough fly balls to keep his spot as the team’s best lefty pinch hitter.

Biggest Success

Mike Cuddyer absolutely ripped his way out of a mediocre last month by going 7-13 in the Oakland series, showing lots of benefit from his extra rest. With three extra base hits and two walks, Cuddyer managed to put together an absolutely phenomenal line of .538/.563/.846. Continued mashing by Cuddyer takes some of the stress off of the bottom of the order, as run production counts at the margins no matter who starts it.

To me, the player who was even more impressive than Cuddyer was Luis Castillo, someone who I have lambasted repeatedly for his inability to hit for any power. Even Bert Blyleven got in on the act this week, pointing out that Castillo had only 11 extra base hits out of 94 total hits on the year after his first triple of the week. But Castillo didn’t stop there, he hit a double and another triple before the series ended, meaning he matched 30% of his XBH count for the season in one weekend. The 11 total bases matched Cuddyer for the team lead, and he also scored and drove in three runs, walked three times, and kept up his stellar ability to avoid strikeouts altogether. Hard as I have been on Luis Castillo in the past, this sort of hitting erases all of that criticism and helps the team win ballgames.

Biggest Disappointment

I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, as a perfect week is a perfect week. There were a couple of minor blips on the radar during the week, but nothing worthy of being a “biggest disappointment.” I was impressed by the fact that Jones, Tyner, Cirillo, and Redmond combined to go 10-22, each adding one extra base hit. Their contributions more than made up for a bad weekend from Jason Kubel, who was hitless in 10 plate appearances.

Reyes also looked a little shaky, not giving up any earned runs, but allowing two inherited runners to score on Saturday after throwing Mark Kotsay a dead hanger on the only pitch he threw that day. He also walked three for the week while only retiring five. Depending on the needs of the rotation, Perkins may be a better situational option than Reyes down the stretch, at least once he makes it all the way back to full health.

Lastly, Rincon continued making the case for Guerrier and Neshek in high leverage situations, coming in to close out Johan Santana’s Friday gem with a five run lead, then promptly giving up three earned runs, hitting a batter, an serving up a homer before Joe Nathan had to come in to put out the fire. I keep saying, bust out he MRI for this guy before he does any more damage to the team or himself.

On the Horizon

As I said last week, the Twins are in the midst of their toughest home stand of the year, and maybe the most important one. After a day off Monday, they host the Tigers and the Angels for three games apiece, both teams leading their divisions and both teams playing quite well at the moment, especially in the starting rotations.

The Tigers will send Robertson, Miller, and Bonderman in the three games, giving the Twins a chance to prove themselves against lefty pitching. Bonderman has given them trouble lately, but then again, at 10-1, he’s giving the whole league trouble. In his last start against the Twins, he went eight shutout innings, striking out seven, so Scott Baker will have his work cut out for him in what Twins fans must hope will become a pitchers’ duel. If it is any consolation, Bonderman is actually 3-6 with a 5.42 ERA for his career against the Twins, but a lot of the damage came when he was too young for the majors and the Tigers were too bad for the majors.

If rotations hold, the Angels will send Lackey, Weaver, and Colon for the weekend. Lackey has been solid all year, keeping his name among the league leaders in wins, but his ERA has been a shade below his peripherals from the outset, so some regression is likely. Whether that will manifest itself in this one game is another matter beyond my powers of prognostication. Weaver has been good since returning from a short DL sting, and Colon keeps winning games, even though he keeps giving up runs. Part of the credit for the starters’ good records comes from the excellent bullpen, where Shields, K-Rod, Speier and others have made a habit of slamming the door. The Twins will have to scratch out runs early and pitch well to win the series. If they do, it could be an extremely entertaining brand of baseball.

The Big Picture

A four game sweep means that the Twins are playing pretty well. Unfortunately for them, most of the other AL contenders who matter to Minnesota are also playing well. Boston has slumped a bit of late, and Oakland is obviously sliding, but Seattle continues to win games, New York is looking better and better, and the AL Central leaders have yet to show any signs of backing down. For the Twins to make the playoffs, they have to catch either Cleveland or Detroit, who alternately hold 5-7 game leads on the Twins, but the also have to pass Seattle (currently 2.5 games up), and hold off New York. The Yankees, in particular, could make quite a run as their pitching staff rounds into form with a fully ready Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Mike Mussina, Chien-Ming Wang, and Phil Hughes. The offense is not what many thought it was, but with Jeter and A-Rod performing as they have, they will score plenty of runs to support that pitching staff. Look out for them over the next couple of months, and keep an eye on their box scores while you wait for Cleveland or Detroit to slip, as the Yankees might be there to swoop in for the Wild Card berth.

2007-07-09T11:28:00.001-05:00

TWIT: Going round in circles

Weekly Roundup

For two games this week, the Twins averaged 16 runs. Over the course of the other six games of the week, they averaged 2.8 runs per game. Friday’s fireworks aside, the Twins squandered the opportunity to make real gains against some of their prime competitors over the last two weeks, leaving themselves right where they have been all season long. Tim Kurkjian and Orel Hershieser summarized it well on Baseball Tonight, ranking the Twins fifth in the American league. That position is respectable, but without any major changes to the roster, is there any chance that they pass Cleveland or Detroit? Even in an era of watered down playoffs, finishing third in one’s own division amounts to a lost season. Just ask the 2006 Chicago White Sox, a 90 win team the appears headed for a fire sale a year later because 90 wins doesn’t always cut it in a division as tough as today’s AL Central. For the Twins, 90 wins remains a troublesome goal, as the would have to go 45-31 in the second half to reach that benchmark of playoff contention.

Nonetheless, a lot of interesting things happened this week. After two walkovers opened the New York series on a sour note, Johan made it clear that he has entered his Cy Young mode for the season, surrendering only 4 hits over seven innings to one of the more dangerous lineups in the league. The very next day, the Twins came back from a 5-2 deficit to tie the game at 5 for 5 innings until Hideki Matsui hit a dramatic two-run homer off of Pat Neshek. The plot thickened in the ninth, when Mariano Rivera could not slam the door, giving up one run and leaving the tying run on base as the game ended. Factoring in Torii’s freak out in the second game, the intrigue of any series at the Stadium, and the fact that it happened over the 4^th of July, and the series was actually quite entertaining, even though the Twins were hopeless in two of the games.

As for the Chicago series, anyone who has watched the team all year was waiting for the other shoe to drop after Friday’s explosion. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take all of the 20 and 12 run games I can get, but it never seemed like a genuine offensive explosion. To me, it looked like Ozzie was more than willing to throw batting practice once it became apparent that each game was out of reach, artificially enhancing the run totals. His discretion proved the better part of valor, as the pitching staff had enough left after the double header to hold the Twins to 4 runs over the next two games. After Friday’s romp, a series split was almost inconceivable. As it turned out, the Twins enter the break with a losing streak, a seven game hill to climb to the playoffs, and very little momentum.

Biggest Success

A lot of players can fit into this category. If we excluded Friday from the calculations, very few players would fit into this category. Friday counts, albeit more so in the run differential column than the wins and losses, so the double header heroes have to get their due. Jason Kubel’s continued improvement netted him a .318/.370/.591 line with two homers and ten RBIs (Kubel is hitting .269/.329/.463 for the last month, so don’t blame the offensive woes on him). Joe Mauer got on base 16 times in 34 plate appearances. Luis Castillo hit .364. Torii Hunter slugged .643. Even Jason Bartlett, with a rough week at .229/.289/.286 managed to cross the plate 9 out of the 11 times he reached base. For all of these relative successes, I expect no one to argue with the selection of Justin Morneau as player of the week.

Morneau started the week in a homerun slump that lasted for nearly two full weeks. He came out of it with a .438/.471/.875 line, aided in no small part to the fact that he started his personal homerun derby four days early. While a 25 point dip in his batting average from last year has made Morneau’s OBP shrink by about 10 points, he is slugging about 20 points better, giving him a park and league adjusted OPS+ of 148, better than the 140 he had last year. He is on a pace to drive in more runs (136), score more runs (105), and hit more home runs (44) than in his MVP season of 2006. I’m not naïve enough to think that he will win another MVP without his team surging to another pennant, but he is quickly securing his position on the short list of great Twins sluggers since Harmon Killebrew. In fact, his average of 17.4 at bats per homerun for his career would rank him third all time in team history, behind Harmon (14.0) and Roy Sievers (17.1). His 13.4 average this year would be the tenth best single season total in team history, second best in the non-Killebrew division (trailing Don Mincher in 1964). In other words, if Morneau continues hitting for power for two more years, there is a good chance that he will go down as the best homerun hitter of the Metrodome era.

Biggest Disappointment

Personally, I was most disappointed by the fact that the team failed to win a single game in which they did not jump out to a large lead. I discussed some of the failings in the intro, so I will be brief. The biggest failure of the week has to be the combination of Boof Bonser and Carlos Silva, the nominal 2-3 starters on the team, who combined to give up 19 runs in 22.2 innings, losing four games in the process. Some of their problems are different- Boof can strike batters out, totaling 10 in his 12.1 innings for the week, and Silva cannot, managing only 3 punchouts in 10.1 innings. Boof tends to have a few good innings before going in the tank, while Silva spends more time getting hammered than Lindsey Lohan. The results are the same, though, with 7 combined losses over the last month and an ERA of 5.18. With Radke and Liriano holding down the middle of the rotation, two guys with 5 ERAs could survive at the back end, but without those reinforcements, it is no wonder that the rotation has slid this year.

The Big Picture

A recent poll on the Twins website asked what has to happen for the Twins to catch Cleveland and/or Detroit in the division. There were four options: Young guns must stabilize rotation; More offense from 3B, SS; Mauer has to stay healthy; Have to acquire a power bat. In my mind, no less than 3 ½ of these things have to come true in order for the Twins to contend.

First, some combination of Baker, Garza, and Slowey has to combined for an ERA close to 4 or below it to function as the middle of the rotation, as described in the last section. With Baker’s recent improvements and Garza’s domination of a tired, blown-out, below-average Chicago lineup on Friday, one could see these two achieving that goal in an extremely optimistic world.

Next, the more offense part mostly has to come from third base. Bartlett has hit .286 with a .345 OBP for the last month, which dovetails nicely with his ability to steal bases and play solid defense. He’s not a power hitter and he never will be one, but a SS with above average OBP skills goes a long way. The same cannot be said for third base, where Nick Punto costs them production on his best day. When he slugs .272 for the season, suffice to say he has not met that “best day” condition. I know that Jeff Cirillo’s knees can’t hold up playing every day, but if he gets starts for the flyball pitchers in the staff- Santana, Bonser, Baker- his defensive liabilities will not show up as much as his .871 OPS over the last month (note to Gardy: excellent job getting him in against lefty pitching. Keep it up). If he gets 60% of the 3B at bats and Punto fills in on defense and groundball pitcher days, the pain of watching Twins’ third basemen will go from torturous to inconvenient.

Keeping Mauer healthy is a no-brainer, as there is simply not enough on-base percentage in front of Morneau and Hunter when he is out of the lineup. To do so, he might need a few more days in the DH slot, and I don’t think it would be the end of the world to have him shag some flies in left if it leads to a few chances to rest his knees and not a permanent position shift. The Yankees did it with Yogi Berra early and late in his career to keep him fresh, and he has a handful of rings to show for his success.

Acquiring a power bat remains a priority. Naturally, we fixate on the big ticket items like Adam Dunn, who could be had for any two guys from the 2002 Twins roster as long as Wayne Krivsky is in the GM chair. But his price tag is too high. If you want to find candidates, look for middle-aged sluggers on teams without postseason hopes. Xavier Nady, anyone? The Pirates need prospects to build for their eternal next year, and Nady has hit .291/.344/.504. He can split LF/DH duties with Kubel, and his bat plays much better than Tyner or Ford.

On the Horizon

Take a deep breath and enjoy the All-Star break…

After the break, the Twins play yet another four game set at home against the A’s, always a tough opponent in the second half. With the days off, we’re sure to see their best pitchers, unless Joe Blanton’s temper tantrum nets him an extended break. On the positive side, the Twins get 10 straight in the Dome (where they have not been at their best this year). On the negative side, they Twins might not play a team with a losing record until July 30^th, when the Royals mercifully return to town. Only Toronto (currently 43-44) provides any sort of respite in the interim. In other words- if you’re going to make a move, do it before it’s too late, Terry.

2007-07-02T10:35:00.001-05:00

TWIT: A Resounding Yes

Weekly Roundup

First order of business: for one week only, this column is not free. In order to gain access to the rest of the article, I’m requiring that you log onto mlb.com and vote for Pat Neshek in the All-Star Final Vote. You can vote for him because he is a Minnesota Twin, joining the rightly chosen Johan Santana, Torii Hunter and Justin Morneau on the roster, but there are better reasons to choose him. Neshek is also one of the most exciting and entertaining players in the major leagues. Because he plays for a middle market in a flyover state, he does not receive nearly the attention he deserves. His style, results, and attitude all make him one of the most fun players in the league to watch and to root for. Even if there are other pitchers with comparable or better results (Hideki Okajima comes to mind), this game is an exhibition in which the exhibit is a collection of the best and most entertaining baseball players in the league. Giving a wider audience a chance to experience the pleasure of seeing Neshek work is exactly why the All-Star game exists in the first place. Not for World Series home field advantage. Not to stroke the egos of the league’s stars. Not to create debate among fans over a game of little consequence. The All-Star game showcases the best and most entertaining aspects of the game of baseball- Pat Neshek is definitely one of those aspects.

In other news, the Twins happened to have an outstanding week in games that actually count. After starting the week by losing two of their first three at the Dome against Toronto, it looked as if judgment week could start on a pretty sour note. The bats came alive on Thursday, though, staking the Twins to an 8-5, come from behind win in Frank Thomas’s 500^th HR game. The teams were quite evenly matched through the series, each scoring and allowing 19 runs over the course of the split set. With Toronto playing well of late, splitting that sort of series is not a bad thing in the least.

The weekend series with the Tigers was far more inspiring, as the team had no trouble with Detroit for the first two games, winning 11-1 Friday, then jumping to an 8-2 lead on Saturday before holding on for an 8-5 win. Try as he might, Scott Baker did not gild the lily on Sunday. Baker’s best start of the season resulted in a complete game, 1-0 loss at the hands of Jeremy Bonderman, and brought his own weekly line to 15 IP, 7 H, 2 BB, 12 K, 1.20 ERA, and a big, fat 0 wins. Don’t blame Scotty, he can’t do it alone if the team doesn’t have the power. The one run they scored between his two starts came after he was lifted in the 2-1 loss against Toronto. The trend is here still a positive one. We already knew that the Twins occasionally have trouble scoring runs. Baker’s improved performance does nothing to change my opinion of the offense, but if he can pitch like a legitimate no. 3 starter the rest of the year, it could be worth 3 or 4 full wins over what I was expecting when he was pitching like a quad-A fill-in.

Biggest Success

Baker’s delayed emergence certainly fits in this category. The offense also had several surprising turns for the better, including a 6-15 (.400) week for Jason Tyner, a homer and a double in 9 plate appearances for Lew Ford, and two more doubles for Jason Kubel. My personal favorite of the week, though, is the strong play of Jason Bartlett, which has become more visible and effectual since his move to the number two spot in the order. One can only abide so much Nick Punto, and as high as Gardy’s threshold seems to be, a week of .087 SLG seemed to further legitimize moving him down in the order. Bartlett responded by going .310/.375/.483 with an outstanding 5 steals in 5 tries. He also led the team with 8 runs scored. Perhaps these numbers do not jump off of the screen, but they absolutely mark a step in the right direction for one of the Twins players who was actually playing below his head, rather than predictably failing (i.e.- Nick Punto).

Biggest Disappointment

Last week, I lamented the struggles and probable injury of Juan Rincon. This week, I would like to broaden the scope by casting a wider net at the about half of the bullpen. The Twins loss on Monday, 8-5 at the hands of the Blue Jays, was a rare case of Matt Guerrier disappointing the team by giving up 3 runs on four hits in an inning and a third. I do not blame Guerrier for that misgiving; I blame the rest of the bullpen for forcing him into so huge number of high-leverage situations. Guerrier, Neshek, and Nathan have been the only reliable relievers of late, and they have paid a price for it. Consider the following:

-In June alone, Guerrier was asked to work on back-to-back days three separate times. In all three cases, he was asked to pitch beyond one inning on the second day. Remember that Guerrier is a young pitcher who was injured last year and who has never been pushed to work back-to-back days with any frequency.

-Former bullpen stalwarts Juan Rincon and Dennys Reyes combined for a total of 14.1 IP for the month of June, fewer than Guerrier pitched by himself. Reyes, limited by injury at the start of the month, remains in situational duty, while Rincon struggles to get batters out (7.27 ERA for the month).

-Joe Nathan pitched only 10 innings for the entire month. Gardenhire may be falling into the Trevor Hoffman trap, whereby a manager limits his closer to very little besides save situations, keeping him fresh, but hurting the team by keeping one of the best pitchers out of the game. He appeared in only 4 non-save situations all month, two of them being tie games in the ninth or later. Giving him one or two of Guerrier’s late-game appearances in non-save situations may help keep the bullpen fresh across the board and prevent bad games like Monday’s.

I do not mean to be overly critical of the bullpen management, which is definitely one of Gardenhire’s strengths. Moreso, I feel that the biggest disappointment of the week is the realization that the team has only three dependable relievers in the bullpen right now. And as the Yankees have shown over the last few years, a team that relies on a few relievers all season tends to burn out in the postseason.

On the Horizon

Seven games in New York and Chicago. There are no surprises here. The Yankees have lost 8 of 10 games, which one can take to mean in a couple of ways. Are they a sleeping giant, waiting to go off for 35 runs in a three game series, or are they just hitting rock bottom, where even the Twins can walk all over them. We have three games to find out, and the Twins will have to solve Clemens, Wang, and Mussina to keep up with a geriatric, but powerful offense. Recent struggles aside, none of those three pitchers have been Minnesota favorites over the years, Mussina in particular.

Chicago also seems to be bottoming out. The trade talk surrounding the team does not center on acquiring Ken Griffey, for once, but includes whispers of the word “firesale.” Personally, I do not think Mark Buehrle should be the one to go, with older guys like Jose Contreras likely to fetch a decent return. Jermaine Dye seems like a good candidate to be traded, but with as many high-minors pitching prospects as the team acquired last year, Kenny Williams ought to be thinking about building for 2009, not 1012. Two more interesting notes on the series regarding Twins pitchers: Johan Santana will likely do is side work in one of the double-header games on Friday, something I have been wanting to see for years. Also, although it is currently “TBA,” Matt Garza will finally get another crack at starting in the majors in one of those Friday games, as well. Here’s hoping that he makes good on his complaints about being passed over.

The Big Picture

Last week, I discussed how the Twins were entering the most important two week stretch of the season so far. Through one week, the acquitted themselves quite well, very nearly sweeping the best team they will play through the four series. With another 4-3 week, all on the road against the Yankees and White Sox, the Twins will likely go into the All-Star break about 5-7 manageable games out of the Central lead, and slightly closer to the Wild Card. If Scott Baker has turned over a new leaf and plays the second half of the season with an ERA closer to 3 than to 6, and Terry Ryan makes good on his promise to rent a hitter, I think making up 4 or 5 games on a potential Wild Card team is eminently feasible. For now, I do not want to jinx the solid stretch the team has started, so I will stop. In the meantime, remember to vote early and often for Pat Neshek.

2007-06-24T18:10:00.000-05:00

TWIT: A Different Drummer

Weekly Roundup

The Twins did things a little differently this week, finding a way to take two road series from two solid National League opponents. Sure, they ran into Jorge Sosa and Josh Johnson at the right times, and nobody expects too many more one strikeout shutouts. Nonetheless, it is exceedingly difficult to trash a team that outscored its opponents 38-20 over the course of the week, especially away from a home stadium that typically serves as one of its chief advantages. The 4-2 road record for the week brought the Twins to 18-17 on the road, tied with Oakland for third best in the American league behind only Anaheim and Boston. To me, the most exciting development of the week is the collection of three wins by four or more runs. Remember, close games can swing on small bounces or luck, but one mark of a really good team is the ability to win blowouts. Minnesota can survive some close games with a solid bullpen pulling them through difficult, high-leverage situations, but giving those pitchers a chance to breathe every so often while carving out a relief role for Ramon Ortiz has to be a good thing. Considering that they only carded two wins of 4+ wins through the rest of the month, scoring enough runs to cobble together some easy wins is actually a bit out of character.

I have spent a goodly amount of effort complaining about the Twins’ lack of power hitting. At first blush, this week looks scarcely different. Heading into Sunday’s season finale with Florida, Torii Hunter had managed the team’s only homerun of the week. On the other hand, once Joe Mauer teed off for his second homerun of the day Sunday, ten different players had combined for a total of 22 extra base hits. Averaging three doubles per game will compensate for quite a few missing homeruns, even when the team’s only legitimate power hitter may be bleeding internally. Finally, with all of the problems the Twins have had finding a DH who can pass as an average hitter, maybe they should consider giving Johan Santana a shot at swinging at some right handed pitching on his off days. In his two starts this week, Johan went 2-7 with a double, a triple, a walk, an RBI, and two runs scored. I do not sincerely want Santana batting every day, but anyone who has watched him hit knows that he is the sort of unique baseball talent who possesses the physical tools and the coordination to do everything well. Just like Rick Ankiel, with developmental time, I am convinced that he could be a solid big league batter.

Biggest Success

Joe Mauer started hitting again, which is a good thing. Two homeruns in Sunday’s game help to confirm that the .333/.448/.500 week was right back on his natural level. Giving up one earned run in 15 innings, tallying two wins, and sticking the inane “slump” chatter in idiot sporstwriters’ ears puts Johan Santana on the short list, as well. But since this list goes to the player of the week, I will choose to recognize someone who needed a good week after a terrible season so far.

Jeff Cirillo began the season injured, struggled through an inability to hit for any power, and could not get a regular job, even with Nick Punto hovering around a .220 batting average. In the last week, however, Cirillo has knocked the leather off of the ball, going 12-20 from last Sunday through Saturday. An 0-5 game with a strikeout to close out the week does little to temper my enthusiasm for a .600/.619/.750 week, right when the team needed it most. Consider this: the Twins 12^th out of 14 in the American league in homeruns, mashing 55 to beat out Baltimore and Kansas City (53 and 52, respectively). The league leader, Texas, has 93 bombs, and five teams have managed at least 86. Even without the DH, 14 of the 16 National League teams have gone yard more times than the Twins. Of the four teams with less total homeruns, the team leaders have 10 (Melvin Mora), 13 (John Buck), 10 (Jeff Kent), and 12 (Ryan Zimmerman). Factoring in Justin Morneau’s 20 bombs, it is clear that the Twins are extremely reliant on a singular power source. Without him in the lineup, having a reserve get hot enough to slug .750 for a week is extremely fortunate.

Biggest Disappointment

Anyone who has watched the Twins for the last few weeks has noticed this trend, but I’m not sure anyone is willing to talk about it, maybe as some sort of perverse jinx: something is clearly wrong with Juan Rincon. He earns biggest disappointment status for the week by giving up 8 runs (7 earned) on 3 homers and 9 total hits in only three innings. With four consecutive seasons of at least 74 innings pitched, it is no surprise that Rincon is showing some natural wear, particularly considering the high-leverage situations he has endured for the last two years. His strikeout rate peaked in 2004 and has dropped considerably each year since, hinting at the sort of trouble he has had this year. Still, it takes more than a tiny change for a pitcher’s ERA to jump two full runs after three stables years, or for him to give up more homeruns in a week than he gave up in either of the two previous seasons. Something is up with Rincon. Just like Jesse Crain showed some seriously diminished skills before discovering a more serious shoulder problem, I think now would be a good time to shut down Rincon for a precautionary DL stint. Before the season, I campaigned for the Twins to sell high on Rincon, shopping him for 3B or OF help while other teams might still see him as a premier setup man. Now, we’re left with a best case scenario of him suffering some sort of minor shoulder injury that rest can save. With the rest of the bullpen finding its way back to health, as well as the unlikely ascension of Matt Guerrier, now is the time to be cautious.

On the Horizon

The quirks of baseball’s schedule seem so unnecessary sometimes. For instance, I will never understand why MLB builds a wall between New York and Boston for the season’s doldrums months. Similarly, I found it odd that the Twins entered their series with Florida having played three more games than Minnesota. Those extra off days start to catch up with the Twins this week, as they will go straight home from Florida to the Dome for four with the Blue Jays, followed immediately by a three game road set in Detroit, four in New York, and four in Chicago. Including the double-header against the White Sox, the Twins will enter the All-Star Break having played 18 games in 17 days. If ever there was a time for the starting rotation to excel, now is that time.

Normally, I would say that missing Dustin McGowan is a bit of misfortune. Considering that he pitched 8+ innings of a no-hitter on Sunday, and running into Roy Halladay and A.J. Burnett in the same series does not seem like such a bad thing. Those two will start the bookend games of the Toronto series, and Shawn Marcum (2.45 ERA as a starter) and the struggling Josh Towers will start the middle games. Twins fans know enough about the Tigers rotation by now, but the junk-balling, crafty lefty will be the recently healthy Kenny Rogers instead of the departed Mike Maroth.

The Big Picture

Once again, the Twins have to find a way to fend off New York and Oakland, while passing either Detroit or Cleveland within their division if they want a shot at the playoffs. Pretenders Toronto and Seattle could remain in the hunt with a few good breaks or trade deadline additions, but I do not believe either has what it takes to win the 90+ games the Wild Card winner will probably win. The Twins will take their shot against a few of these teams over the next few weeks with resurgent Toronto next on the plate, followed by the suddenly division-leading Tigers. The Yankees have cooled after a red-hot tear, and the Twins will have their own opportunity to put some distance between themselves and the Bombers with that four game set next week. And even though Chicago has struggled, a four game roadie against a big-time rival is never a sure thing. Altogether, the next two weeks will tell an awful lot about the team’s chances of contending for a playoff spot after the All-Star Break.

2007-06-17T19:55:00.000-05:00

TWIT: Acceptable Outcome

Weekly Roundup

Six games against two winning teams, all of them at home. In that situation, I feel like one could make the case for 4-2 being the low and high-end outcome for the week. As it went down, the week created about as many mixed feelings as possible, with the Twins cresting early on during their pitching-rich sweep of Atlanta, then tumbling to a lucky win after a blown lead to prevent a sweep on Sunday against the Brewers. After getting wrecked 11-3 in the series opener on Friday, the weekly run differential ended up slightly positive, at 31-30 in the Twins favor. Setting aside the Friday and Sunday pitching meltdowns, the Twins allowed only 10 runs in four games. Those games do count, however, and the Twins were lucky to come out of them 1-1, largely thanks to Justin Morneau’s big day and the belated return of Joe Mauer’s bat.

Last week, I described the difficulty of winning with so much of a drag on the offense coming from the players formerly known as piranhas. In several of the games this week, it became abundantly clear that pitchers have changed their approaches against these hitters and no longer care if they miss with a pitch in the strike zone. The complete lack of power is preventing players like Punto and Castillo from taking advantage of a disciplined approach at the plate, and allowing pitchers to remain economical with their counts. Castillo, for instance, is currently drawing a walk in 6.2% of his plate appearances, down from 8.6% last year and 10.3% for his career. Why would Castillo be losing half of his walks this late in his career, when players tend to start picking up a few more walks? I suspect it has to do with the fact that pitchers tend to face four or five batters in a row in the Twins lineup who cannot really do any damage, even on a mistake pitch. If the lineup ends with Redmond, Tyner, Cirillo, Bartlett, then starts over again with Castillo- or includes Punto somewhere within that stretch- the likelihood of any of the hitters driving the ball is extremely low. As a result, there is almost no disincentive for a pitcher to throw right down the middle to save pitches, because extra base hits will not serve as punishment. On the other hand, Nick Punto, who has spent a good deal of time in the #2 hole, is walking more frequently than usual, possibly because he has a real hitter behind him. Putting Mauer after Castillo may help the top of the order somewhat, although the early returns have been unimpressive.

Biggest Success

Torii Hunter had a tremendous week, with 13 total bases and six runs batted in. Instead of picking him again and discussing the same issues that have been in play all year, I am going to give a sort of season achievement award to Pat Neshek, easily one of the easiest Twins to love. Neshek had an unsurprisingly excellent week, pitching four innings over three appearances, striking out four, walking one, and yielding one hit. Neshek has been an absolute rock all year, posting a ratio of 38 strikeouts to 24 base runners over 32.7 innings. Two homeruns over 32 innings is not an alarming rate, although his style will never allow him to be much better- lefties will occasionally get a read on him very early on and absolutely tag a pitch. Neshek ranks 11^th in all of baseball in WXRL, a measure that combines a relief pitcher’s saved runs with the leverage of the situations in which he saved them. At 2.3 wins so far this season, Neshek is sniffing some pretty rare air, even without pitching in the team’s highest leverage situations. Without factoring in leverage, Neshek’s ranking catapults up to 8^th in all of baseball, ahead of far better known pitchers like Jonathan Papelbon and Billy Wagner, also having strong seasons. The .162 BABIP is not nearly sustainable, even with his quirkiness, but the fact that he ranks third on the staff in VORP (17.4) shows that he can fall quite a bit and remain extremely useful. While I was once concerned that Neshek’s delivery made him so susceptible to lefty slugging that he would never be a successful closer, I am no longer worried about the seemingly certain departure of Joe Nathan.

Biggest Disappointment

I already got into Luis Castillo’s problems, so I won’t beat his .296 OBP to death. I will also give a free pass to Joe Mauer, working his way back into the lineup with a sub .600 OPS. Instead, I am starting to get more concerned with the plight of Scott Baker, who has been consistently bad since his initial success. This week, Baker started sharply against the Brewers in the series opener, then fell apart in the fourth inning. He started the inning by giving up two singles, which is fine, and he even rebounded by striking out Bill Hall. From there, he hit Johnny Estrada to load the bases- a crucial mistake. Clearly rattled, he left a pitch up against Geoff Jenkins, who pulled the ball way out for a grand slam. Baker finished the inning, but compounded the problem by giving up a single, a walk, and a two run double in the fifth, never truly regaining his composure. The point of rehashing this bad memory is that it serves to illustrate how Baker has repeatedly followed misfortune with mistake after mistake. To be a successful starting pitcher, he is going to have to find a way to rebound from mistakes, maybe by challenging hitters a little more, maybe by going to his breaking ball earlier in counts. One way or another, the 7.33 ERA and the 2.0 HR rate are problems that need to be solved.

On the Horizon

It does not get any easier from here, as the Twins open the week by traveling to New York to continue their interleague tilt against the Mets. If it is any consolation, the Twins get to travel in the evening while the Mets have to play a Sunday night game on the road before returning to Shea. On the other hand, that road game is played in the Bronx, so the Twins gain very little in that respect. The Twins will see a hodge-podge of salvaged fly ball pitchers in New York, from John Maine to Jorge Sosa to Oliver Perez. The first two are coming off of week starts, but Perez pitched a well-publicized duel against Roger Clemens on Friday, which he won with 7+ shutout innings. After the New York series, the Twins will head down the coast to play the Marlins, a disappointing team that has lost three straight series. As the rotation works out, Carlos Silva will get two starts for the week, which could be worse considering his recent run of effectiveness.

The Big Picture

With Detroit and Cleveland fighting through their interleague season, the Twins have picked up a couple of games on the leaders, now within 5.5 games of the division and 4.5 games of the Wild Card. With the Yankees coming out of their slumber, it seems reasonable that there will be more of a challenge in the Wild Card race, but it remains clear that the Twins are going to have to find some more offense in order to get themselves seriously in the discussion. Adam Dunn seems like an outstanding solution to that problem, as he plays for a GM who has shown an undue affinity for Twins players in the past and loves dealing with his mentor, Terry Ryan. While Dunn’s remaining salary would probably balance out to an additional $5 million for the remainder of the season, making the postseason can be worth more than $20 million in revenue for a team, so his addition would only have to increase the playoff chances by 25%, which seems eminently possible. Even though the Twins will almost certainly not trade prospects for a big ticket strikeout slugger in his walk year, the consideration fits into the bit picture, and that’s exactly where I’m leaving it.

2007-06-10T20:35:00.001-05:00

TWIT: Harsh Realization

Weekly Roundup

Let’s face it, right now the Twins do not look anything like a playoff team. That’s not to say that they cannot reverse course and make a run in the second half like they did last year, but as the roster presently stands, the postseason does not seem like an attainable goal. On offense, there are four solid run producers, two at premium, up the middle positions (Mauer and Hunter), and two on the corners (Morneau and Cuddyer). These guys form a solid core for the middle of the order, albeit one that has not been intact for most of the season. For the team to succeed, the rest of the offense would have to be exceptionally strong defensively or very good at getting on base. Right now, the lame piranhas act imposed on Castillo, Punto, Tyner, and Bartlett supercedes their actual deficient abilities. Instead, that group has a less-than-stellar .338 OBP between the four of them, mostly due to the fact that Castillo is hitting an insane number of singles (59 in only 47 games). Take him and his slap-happy attitude out of the equation, and three lineup spots have a combined .323 OBP, which is not going to do the trick for three guys who have combined for 2 homeruns.

The offensive futility was on full display in a pathetic series loss to the hapless Washington Nationals pitching staff this weekend. Jason Kubel’s support for Hunter and Morneau helped total 5 runs, which was not nearly enough to compensate for Chief Silva’s terrible evening (seven ground balls and only one fly out! Seven earned to go with it, unfortunately). The next night, a quality start resulted in Johan Santana’s sixth loss of the young season, because Levale Speigner shut the offense down cold, dropping his ERA from 9.10 to 7.79 in the process. For what it’s worth, Castillo, Punto, Tyner and Bartlett went a combined 4-25 in these two games. Losing a series to a last place team is bad. Losing that series on the heels of a disappointing road trip in which the team was lucky to even win a game in Anaheim is even worse. We are now 60 games into the season, and Terry Ryan has to start noticing that something isn’t working.

Biggest Success

I have been hard on Jason Kubel for much of the year, largely because I have so badly wanted to see him succeed. Unlike the aforementioned piranhas, Kubel does not need to rely on ad campaigns to make his reputation. Before his gruesome knee injury, Kubel was one of the top corner outfield prospects in baseball, even flashing his exceptional bat control in a major league cameo at the end of the year. Since his return at the start of the 2006 season, he has struggled with inconsistency and persistent health issues- asking whether he would ever become the player he was once destined to be became a fair question. His talent is obviously still there, but the issue becomes whether his body will let him realize it.

For that reason, I will take success for Kubel in small doses. A .300/.300/.600 line might be aberrant, and it might be one of the worst possible/least sustainable routes to a .900 OPS, but production is production. Kubel contributed six hits, knocking in four and striking out only once in the last week. Even better, he hit two homeruns, showing the power that needs to develop for him to be a reliable offensive force. Although he has not produced much this year, there is hope for Kubel to be at least an average major leaguer, something that this offense needs, and something that Tyner cannot become.

Biggest Disappointment

Jason Miller had a 216.00 ERA for the week, forcing the less mathematically inclined fans to brush up on their place value skills. That all came in one bad outing in a lost cause, though, so the morning-after box score eyesore is as far as the offense extends. Clearly, the offense was more of a problem, and I will continue the piranha scapegoating theme in this section of the article. Giving the four fish a best-ball style benefit of the doubt, you can come up with a leading batting average of .269 (Castillo), a leading OBP of .313 (Tyner), and a leading SLG of .333 (Bartlett and Tyner). That sort of Nison Bartillo hybrid works out to a .646 OPS and 3 extra base hits all week. If 40% of a teams plate appearances go to players who are slightly better at the plate than pitchers, you don’t call that a bad week, you call it the 2007 St. Louis Cardinals. (Ba-dam ching!)

On the Horizon

Even though I am not in the mood to looking forward, it will likely get better from here. Losing five or six at home to the Braves and Brewers next week would be brutal, but the Twins will have lots of good 1991 karma going for the first series and already played extremely well against the Crew earlier in the season. Moreover, the Monday off day could not have come at a better time, with the entire team seemingly going through doldrums. Look for Joe Mauer to continue easing his way back into the lineup- he will not be an instant panacea for all that ails the offense, but he will be a positive contributor and the chaining effect of giving him or Redmond some DH at bats could force Tyner to the bench with his wet noodle. Against los Bravos, the Twins will miss John Smoltz, and will send Santana against the resurgent Tim Hudson on Thursday. Hudson has cooled quite a bit lately, with a 4.83 ERA in his last 10 starts, and at least 5 earned runs in four of his last five outings. His struggles meeting up with the Twins offense is a sort of impotent force versus incapable object dual where everything may collapse onto itself. Hopefully, the presence of Santana will be enough to make the difference. Altogether, even though the Braves are having a “good” season, and the Twins are struggling, Atlanta is only 3 games better than the Twins in a weaker division and league, so it should be an interesting match-up.

Last time we saw the Brewers, they were the toast of the town, riding high atop the miserable NL Central. Now, the Cardinals and Cubs are starting to show up in the “objects closer than they appear” mirror, and Milwaukee has won all of one series since last meeting up with the Twins. Their steady rotation has been a little shakier, and the Twins will definitely face weak link David Bush, so things are setting themselves up about as well as anyone could hope for the week. Personally, I am just excited that I get to see the Twins on my TBS basic cable for three games instead of mlb.tv’s incessant buffering.

The Big Picture

Now that I have all of that whining out of my system, I can give a more objective analysis of the team’s overall fortunes. I am very close to ending the “it’s only _____” mantra for the year, but it really is only June, and there is too much baseball to be played to be placing nails in the coffins of teams within single digits of the division leaders. Cleveland is a very tough team, and Detroit is showing some resilience. It is going to take genuine improvements to catch those frontrunners, and it may be possible using components on the current roster. First of all, Slowey and Baker need to settle into a rhythm of being league-average starters. Nobody expects either one of them to go Francisco Liriano on the league, but they are throwing too much BP right now. An occasional wasted pitch or a pitcher’s pitch on a 3-2 count may be appropriate. More importantly, the offense needs to get something out of the bottom of the order. With all of those outs in the bottom third, it is as if the Twins are playing 6 innings of baseball against the other team’s nine. Seriously, does anyone see the phrase, “due up: Tyner, Punto, Bartlett,” and think anything other than, “good time for a bathroom break?” For what it is worth, the Twins wanted Tyner as a 5^th outfielder, and he would be fine in that role. Punto is not a good third baseman, but there are not so many of those in the league as some might think, and the ones who were available were no great shakes. And Bartlett could be better than he is playing right now. The difference between a playable offense and a failing one really comes down to either Punto or Bartlett getting on base consistently (say a .360 OBP), and Kubel hitting enough to force Tyner to the bench. With those two developments and some health, I’m not so sure the Twins cannot start looking like a postseason possibility once again.

2007-06-03T19:20:00.001-05:00

TWIT: A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

Weekly Roundup

The Twins started the week by sweeping the rival Chicago White Sox behind bats that were alive enough to pique the interest of Ozzy Osborne’s personal chef. That fourth straight series win made it looked like the Twins were poised for a strong start on the West Coast against the depleted Athletics, but those bats that carried them through the divisional series were nowhere to be found against starters as vanilla as Joe Blanton and Chad Gaudin.

The pitching was excellent throughout the week, giving up an average of 3.2 runs per game, with the high of 6 coming in Wednesday’s win over the ChiSox. Perhaps the most encouraging part of the rotation’s success was the fact that they carried the team to a 4-2 week without any great contributions from Johan Santana, whose two starts each featured four runs surrendered and some legitimate scuffling in the early going. As Twins fans, we know better than to worry about Johan, but we’re also wise enough to know that a fourth or fifth starter is not necessarily rotation-worthy just because he received the Ryan-Gardenhire stamp of approval. With Silva putting up 15+ innings between his last two starts and a sub-2.00 ERA, the Twins seem to have a more-than-capable back of the rotation. Kevin Slowey did what Kevin Slowey does on Friday night, and it played about as well as we could have hoped against a major league lineup. Even with noticeable first game jitters early on, Slowey pounded the strike zone, living up to that mythical 2:1 strike to ball ratio and walking only two in his major league debut. Sure, some teams will do more to punish his steady diet of sinking fastballs than the take-happy A’s, but he’s likely to miss more bats against those free-swingers, as well. It is hard to say much based on one major league start, but taking his minor league numbers into consideration makes him a prime candidate to be a mid-rotation stalwart with a low ceiling and a high floor for years to come. Baker, similarly, is somewhere between the star level of his season debut and the dredges of his last couple of outings; he should be a fine and average starter for most of the year if the team remains patient with him.

The glaring problem over the last week was the inability to score runs against a depleted Oakland pitching staff, going down quickly and easily to pitchers like Santiago Casilla and Alan Embree. It has never been more apparent that Joe Mauer’s bat is essential to the team in ways that easily outweigh considerations of where he plays in the field. The lack of production out of DH and 3B make it much easier to envision a future where he moves off of full-time catching duty to an arrangement where he catches a couple of times a week, but gets enough starts elsewhere to keep himself in games and the team in contention. Scoring five runs in a weekend series is not enough reason to push the panic button on Mauer’s positional destiny. Factor in his size at the position, the absence of a single similar player who has maintained success, the certain knowledge that catchers wear down quickly, the problems he has had to this point, the fact that his bat can play smoothly at any position on the field, and the continued lack of offensive fortitude without him in the lineup, and the calculation becomes altogether more clear.

Biggest Success

I hate to sound like a broken record, but the Twins’ offensive output has been a one act play recently, and that act is named Justin Morneau. In a week where Sid Hartman made the unfathomable leap to comparing Morneau to Kirby Puckett, the AL MVP continued making those on the coasts feel less guilty about him taking that award from Derek Jeter last year. Morneau hit only two more homeruns for the week, nearly getting a second on a double off the tippy-top of the baggy against the Sox, but the rest of the stat line filled out nicely. Eight RBIs and a .682 slugging average look good, and the fact that he maintained that sort of power with only one strikeout through his 25 plate appearances should answer any lingering questions about his approach or his demeanor at the plate. The guy has matured from a tentative, one-dimensional hitter who waited on pitches he could hit for homeruns, to a multi-dimensional batter who can go to all fields, beat an infield shift, and remain patient enough that pitchers cannot easily get around him. His only offensive deficiency at this point is his speed, and I doubt more experience will do much to help him in that category.

Biggest Disappointment

Personally, I am a little disappointed that DePaula didn’t get a chance to pitch in a blowout, just to see what would happen. And if you pretend to disagree, then ask yourself if you’ve ever driven past a horrific car accident without so much as peaking into the wreckage for a quick thrill. Ultimately, DePaula cannot be blamed for the fact that he is no good. Players such as Castillo, Hunter, and Cuddyer, on the other hand, can take the blame for letting a winnable game and series get out of hand on Sunday by letting innumerable run scoring opportunities slip through their fingers. The team left a total of 24 runners on base, managing only 2 runs despite totaling 6 singes, 2 XBH’s, and 7 bases on balls. Hunter was the worst offender, failing to plate any of the five runners on base for his at bats, including a characteristic first-pitch popup with the bases loaded in the top of the third.

On the Horizon

The recent soft spot in the schedule gives out just a bit as the road trip takes the Twins into Orange County to face the Angels, a team that has been very similar to the Twins for several years, with the key difference being the ring that they bear from the 2002 season when Adam Kennedy sent the Twins home empty-handed. Kennedy has turned to Kendrick, and a handful of other young players have come through the system to become starters, but the M.O. of the team has not changed recently: pitch well and let Vlad do the rest. Another interesting parallel between the Twins and the Angels is their similarity in run differential this season. The Angels have scored only 10 more runs than the Twins while preventing 4 more for a nearly identical overall run differential. Instead of the 1 or 2 game advantage one might expect from that difference, the Angels enjoy 6.5 games in the standings, mostly due to their own overachieving ways.

After the Angels, the Twins come back to the Dome to start their typically healthy inter-league diet. This year should be no different, as the series starts with the disastrous Washington Nationals whose best news is that Jesus Colome is actually a useful 7^th inning reliever. The pitching matchups for the series include… oh, who cares, nobody knows any of Washington’s pitchers anyway.

The Big Picture

Even if 5-1 seemed within reach, a 4-2 week is a step in the right direction for a team that was struggling through some early doldrums while two divisional opponents got red hot. Detroit and Cleveland have cooled each other down to some extent, letting the Twins get as close as 2.5 games to second place at one point. They finish the week 3.5 back, but with a chance to continue making up ground. It looks increasingly difficult to get past both Detroit and Cleveland, but luckily, only one of them needs to fall. The main obstacles to winning the Wild Card will probably be Oakland (once they get healthy and start living up to their run differential), New York (once they bounce back, unless that bounce is of the dead cat variety), and Detroit, making the divisional games with Leyland’s squad vitally important. The Twins won’t see them again until the last weekend in June. Until then, it’s NL slaying time.

2007-05-28T10:03:00.000-05:00

TWIT: You Say You Want a Revolution

Weekly Roundup

I could hardly be happier. On the heels of a week where the Twins actually finished with a winning record, taking two out of three from a pair of craptastic opponents, I wake up on a sunny holiday Monday to this bombshell from the Strib:

“The Twins haven't officially announced anything, but all indications are that righthander Ramon Ortiz, who has a 10.97 ERA this month, will be demoted to the bullpen.

That would open the door for Class AAA Rochester righthander Kevin Slowey to step into the rotation.”

Eep! Eep! I could not be any more satisfied to be right in reading the Twins front office, correctly predicting that they were waiting to the 40-50 game mark to sit down for a family meeting and start sorting through these difficult issues. Ortiz actually looked pretty good for about four or five innings on Saturday, then he once again forgot that he was supposed to be pitching in a game and not a homerun derby. Toronto went HR-2B-HR against him, and there were two 350+ foot foul balls in the sequence, as well. I don’t know whether Ortiz is tiring, losing focus, or just coincidentally missing pitches the third time through the order, but with the organizational depth in the AAA rotation paired with the recently swiss cheese’d bullpen, it seems like it is about time to put Ramon on mop-up duty. Encouragingly, Ortiz has a sterling history as a reliever, going back to his last stint in the DH league in 2004 when the Angels became similarly frustrated with the fact that he cannot retire batters. That year, he made 20 relief appearances, limiting his ERA to 2.76 (compared to 5.47 as a starter). The most important change was the fact that his homerun rate dropped from 1.48 as a starter to 0.92 as a reliever. While 49 innings is a pretty limited sample size, the fact that anyone who has watched Ortiz this year knows that he struggles deeper into games lends credence to the idea that he would better serve the Twins in a relief role.

Replacing Ortiz with Kevin Slowey is not a lame duck move, either. Slowey has dominated AAA with a 1.54 ERA in 64.1 innings this year, compiling an absolutely jaw dropping 57-5 K/BB ratio along the way. If minor league numbers mean anything, he should step in and contribute right away. His future is bright, as well, with PECOTA projecting him to be worth 114 runs of VORP over the next five seasons, maintaining about a 40% chance to play at a “star” level across that period. The knock on Slowey in scouting circles is that his tremendous fastball command has compensated for the lack of an out pitch in the minors, but it will leave him vulnerable to getting smacked around in the majors. Kevin Goldstein, the most scouting-oriented writer at Baseball Prospectus wrote that, “Slowey’s pure stuff is middle-of-the-road, which already ran him into occasional trouble in Double-A, and leaves many observers wondering what his major league out pitch will be.” And while the K/BB ratio is impressive, the fact that he isn’t even striking out a batter per inning in the minors seems to confirm that suspicion. Still, if Slowey ends up being a solid 3-4 starter instead of a 1-2 guy, nobody is going to complain. Right now, all he needs to do is keep his ERA under 5.00, and nobody will say boo.

Biggest Success

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that Mike Cuddyer needed to get himself back into slugger’s form, and that other members of the offense needed to start supporting Justin Morneau a little more until Joe Mauer returns from injury. Cuddyer’s .400/.556/.700 line with 2 HR, 7 R, and 7 RBI certainly qualifies him for success. Luis Castillo getting 9 singles for a .333 average and .379 OBP also helps. Morneau, though, has been an absolute beast, coming up with the right hits at the right times, and making one beautiful belly flop onto first base to beat out a chopper on Sunday. Morneau clearly lead the team for the week, hitting .400/.444/.900 with 4 HR, 13 RBI, and 23 total bases. He only drew one walk for the week, but there’s a big difference between an empty .300 hitter and an empty .400 hitter, and with all of those homeruns, he’s not even falling into that category. The most encouraging part is that Morneau has seemingly recaptured the heady approach at the plate that brought him so much success last year, going the opposite way when the pitchers are trying to avoid him, such as that bases loaded, two out chopper that plated two runs against A.J. Burnett.

Biggest Disappointment

It might be silly to keep piling it on Ortiz, and I want to give Jeff Cirillo (.143/.250/.214) a grace period, even though I have high hopes for his season. I give this award, then, to the sloppiness that turned what could have been an inspiring win on Saturday night into a depressing 13 inning loss that taxed an already exhausted bullpen. Scott Ulger ran the Twins into two outs at the plate that were not even close to scoring runs, one of which came with only one out in the inning and was followed by Mike Cuddyer’s two (woulda been 3) run homer. Later in the game, Torii Hunter tried to stretch a completely run-of-the-mill leadoff single into a double for no particular reason, getting himself thrown out by about a full second. Then, during their comeback in the ninth, Hunter batted with runners on first and second with nobody out, and grounded into a weak double play that squashed the chances for a walkoff hit. Those four scoring chances would have given them the win in regulation, but instead they stretched it out and lost in 13. All of that and I haven’t even mentioned the shining star that is Jorge DePaula. I know he must have thrown strikes at some point in his life to get here, so there are probably nerves at play. Nonetheless, giving up 8 runs on 6 hits, 5 walks, and a hit batsman in a single inning pitched (over two games) is completely inexcusable. I mean, that is Rafael Betancourt level failure out of the bullpen. Forget it, I’m going to stay positive this week.

On the Horizon

More home games to start the week, with three against the White Sox followed by the start of a six game Left Coast road trip at Oakland and Anaheim. The White Sox series could be interesting, because the Twins enter Monday’s game two back of the Pale Hoes in the standings. I’m a little concerned about the status of the bullpen, though, as Neshek had to work two on Saturday, and Rincon and Nathan had to pitch on both Saturday and Sunday. If ever there was a day for a Johan Santana CG, it will be Monday afternoon’s series opener. Catching Oakland right now is not such a bad thing, either. Like the Twins and Blue Jays, they have been decimated by injuries, although they knew it was coming by stacking their outfield with guys they could get on the cheap because their ability to stay healthy did not match their ability to play baseball. Kotsay, Snelling, Stewart, Bradley… no wonder they are walking wounded. Justin Duchscherer may return by the end of the week, so the Twins might not have the pleasure of facing new closer Allen Embree, who is 67 years old, but the A’s bullpen is in rough shape anyway.

The Big Picture

I already covered the major issue in the introduction, with 20% of the starts possibly going to a competent pitcher rather than an incompetent one. The bullpen should be better, as well, with Nathan, Rincon, and Neshek being backed up by Ortiz and Guerrier, then the less inspiring fresh faces down the road. The top-level guys have great career numbers against lefties, so the lack of a LOOGY should not doom the team in high leverage situations.

The Twins also moved ahead of Chicago in the adjusted standings since the Twins are +6 for the year in run scoring and the Sox are -17. With Mauer set to come back later in the week, the offense is poised to improve upon their 7^th place rank in the league for runs scored and with the more optimistic forecast for the starting rotation, the run prevention could move up a bit from its current 5^th place rank. With Chicago continuing to scuffle and Detroit finally suffering due to their inability to prevent runs from crossing the plate (3^rd worse in the AL), the Twins have a good opportunity to get back into the race over the next couple of weeks. Now, I finally believe they have the right alignment of their personnel to make that happen.

2007-05-26T15:11:00.001-05:00

The Time Has Come

Hitting a baseball is about timing. Mastering that timing requires a batter to find a balance between patiently waiting for the right pitch and being aggressive enough to hit the right pitch when it comes. Effective management necessitates a similar skill set of knowing precisely how long to wait before pouncing. In Moneyball, Billy Beane extols the virtues of appropriate managerial patience within a baseball season. Teams who respond to quickly to especially strong or weak starts are usually punished in kind when the player returns to a previously established performance level. And while different stats take different amounts of time to stabilize, 40-50 games is a generally accepted rule of thumb for how long it takes before one can start making generalizations about a team. The Twins have subscribed to this theory pretty doctrinally over the last couple of seasons; it is no coincidence that Sidney Ponson received his walking papers 37 games into the season, Juan Castro lost his full-time starting job 47 games into the 2006 season, and Francisco Liriano got his first start in team game number 42.

Now that Minnesota has completed 47 games of the 2007 season, a few glaring weaknesses have started to show themselves. Offensively, the team has done a slightly better job of getting on base up and down the lineup than it had in many previous seasons, but besides Justin Morneau, there has been far too little power. The DH, LF, and 3B positions have not produced nearly enough offensively, and the team will struggle to support a less-than-dominant pitching staff if the status quo remains. In the rotation, Terry Ryan has already started to address the problems at the back end. Sir Sidney met his fate last week, and Ramon Ortiz has to be feeling the heat to pick up that 1-5 team record in his last 6 starts. Further complicating matters is the fact that the bullpen has collapsed onto itself, as a mysterious shoulder parasite has been gnawing at the sinews of Jesse Crain, Dennis Reyes, and Glen Perkins. With the impending free agency of Torii Hunter after the season, and contracts running out for Johan Santana and Joe Nathan after next year, the Twins have to straddle the balance between making moves to contend now and putting themselves in a position to remain competitive when moving into their new stadium in 2010.

Addressing these difficulties requires an honest assessment of the team’s stock in the majors and minors. Starting pitching is a position of strength, with an A+ ace at the top, an established, young member of the rotation in Bonser waiting on his first arbitration hearing, four big-time prospects who are either ready or close to ready to contribute (Baker, Perkins, Garza, Slowey), and a gaggle of prospects who would be far more distinguished in any other system that does not cast such a long shadow (Alexander Smit, Kyle Waldrop, Eduardo Morlan, Jay Rainville). On top of that group is a wildcard pitcher who outpitched Santana for long stretches last year, that being the absent Francisco Liriano.With pre-arb pitching prospects in vogue- as evidenced by the market value of recently-traded players like Brandon McCarthy and Jason Hirsch- that embarrassment of riches could help patch over lots of other organizational shortcomings if Terry Ryan chose to make a challenge trade or two. Additionally, the Twins have at least one position player who is ready to step into the lineup this minute in Alexi Casilla, who can do a pretty good Luis Castillo impersonation right now. Finally, one underrated resource is that the Twins grew a lot of their talent themselves, giving them additional leverage through arbitration or buying out those arbitration years in a long-term contract. In other words, the Twins will have several more years of players like Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Jason Kubel, Jason Bartlett, Mike Cuddyer, Boof Bonser, and Francisco Liriano at prices below market value.

At the moment, I see two moves that could dramatically improve the Twins for the next few years and would also decrease payroll. First, I still desperately want the Twins to address their third-base problem. Nick Punto has value as a utility player with some on-base skills and a very good glove. As an everyday corner infielder, his lack of power becomes extremely troublesome. Also, Jeff Cirillo is a fine option to spell lefties at DH or an infield corner, but the fact that his only listed position is “DH” hints at the trouble with playing him there everyday, not to mention the fact that he is extremely likely to break down if he continues playing so frequently.

To the Twins potential benefit, Edwin Encarnacion is a third baseman with some power who has fallen out of favor with the Wayne Krivsky’s Reds, a former Twins employee who has shown an affinity for collecting his former charges (Joe Mays, Juan Castro, Kyle Lohse, Eddie Guardado). Since the Reds were bearish enough on Encarnacion to sent him to AAA earlier this month, it does not seem unreasonable to think that he could be had for the right price. With Cincinnati’s organizational pitching deficiency, I believe the Twins could find a pretty solid match. Offering Krivsky’s choice of the second-tier pitching prospects in the system might be enough to fetch Encarnacion. If not the Twins should at least consider sending Slowey for a player PECOTA saw hitting .277/.350/.482 this year with room for even more growth. Altogether, PECOTA sees Encarnacion as an even bet to reach “star” or “superstar” levels every year from 2008-2010, all of which would come before he reaches his first free agent contract. A right-handed hitter with decent patience and a powerful bat would fit extremely well lower in the Twins lineup, and would look especially potent compared to the man he would replace- the chances of Punto slugging .482 are slim and none, and slim just left town. And even though Encarnacion has had a very difficult 100 plate appearances to start the season, his strong 2006 and previous minor league accomplishments show that he is a quality batsman. The average in the .220s just means the Twins have a chance to buy low from a team that is in a position to blow it all up.

Playing off of their primary non-pitching resource, I believe it would be intelligent for the Twins to aggressively market Luis Castillo for another young bat. Casilla might not replace Castillo’s current hot-hitting, but he’s a better bet to be a productive member of the team after this season, and the difference between them for two or three months (Castillo is a free agent at season’s end) is not nearly great enough to make the difference between contending and falling out. With championship aspirations and a glaring hole at the keystone, the Mets would make a perfect trading partner for the Twins on the Castillo front. Even better, the Mets have a glut of young talent in the outfield, and not enough playing time to go around. With Omar Minaya’s affinity for Latino players, former top prospect Lastings Milledge has seemingly fallen out of organizational favor, sliding out of the outfield rotation. Even with Shawn Green breaking a bone in his foot, the team said it planned on giving the extra at bats to Carlos Gomez, leaving Milledge in New Orleans with his .333 batting average. Milledge’s glove excels at an outfield corner, and can play in center as well, giving the Twins the option of playing him in left this year and immediately solving the Hunter conundrum at season’s end without having to taste the inevitable Denard Span disaster. PECOTA sees Milledge as a .285/.356/.461 batter this year, part of an upward trend continuing for the next 5+ years for the 22 year old. Milledge is far from a finished product- for instance, I have heard some concerns about his makeup. What better way to help a player mature than by putting him next to Torii Hunter, a team leader and an ambassador for the game who happens to play the same position? It doesn’t hurt that the Hunter is one of the most fully established African-American players in the game. Milledge would also have to improve his plate discipline and develop his power potential. Both of these goals are better achieved through playing every day in the majors rather than continue to mash a level of pitching he has already mastered. While the Encarnacion deal seems like a good idea, the Milledge one seems like an absolute slam dunk for both teams to the point where I would be severely disappointed if it didn’t get done.

If the Twins made these trades, it would give them the ability to start a lineup looking something like this:

Casilla- 2B
Mauer- C
Hunter- CF
Morneau- 1B
Cuddyer- RF
Milledge- LF
Kubel/Cirillo- DH
Encarnacion- 3B
Bartlett- SS

Factoring in Hunter’s possible departure (a fate of which I am not yet nearly convinced), putting Milledge in center makes it much easier to find a LF option within the system (Ford, Tyner, Kubel) or on the cheaper side of the free agent market- far easier than paying top dollar for someone with enough of a glove for center. The reason these trades appeal to me is that I think it strikes a balance between their interests for this year and the ability to compete going forward. Both players are cheap today and will remain cheap into the future. The players surrendered in the trades come from spots of organizational depth, lessening the impact of their departures. Addressing these issues now puts the team in a position to compete, just like last year when the Twins proactively addressed their weaknesses. While it is still early enough to make up a steep deficit within the division, enough time has already passed to see some problems clearly. Dealing with them now strikes the delicate balance patience and activity.

2007-05-21T11:07:00.000-05:00

TWIT: A New Hope

Weekly Roundup

A second straight week looked like it was going to be utterly disastrous before the team got enough of a rebound over the weekend to let fans exhale, albeit just a little bit. Going 2-4 and looking absolutely miserable in getting swept by Cleveland (outscored 24-8) is a pretty ominous start to the week. Taking a series against a division leader and nominal rival on the road while coming up a couple innings short of a sweep helps temper the sting just a little bit, and keeping in mind that this road trip has been one of the particularly difficult kind provides the kind of excuse that any worthy failure would desire.

If there was a theme to the Cleveland series, it was that the Twins never really had a chance. Getting blown out by 8 in the slow-pitch softball series opener- Ortiz versus Byrd, 28 combined hits, 10 for extra bases- set a nasty tone, since the bullpen-reliant team had to five relievers for eight innings on the first day of nine straight games. Carlos Silva gave them six mediocre innings the next day to aid in the recovery, although they were not nearly good enough to keep the offense in the game against a dominant C.C. Sabathia. Between Silva and Sabathia giving a combined 14 innings of work, I am extremely glad that I was not the pitching mound, trampled under foot by two of the girthiest pitchers left (now that Sid has beached himself in Aruba, of course). The next day, Johan Santana was out-dueled by Fausto Carmona, who lived up to the rhetorical idiom, “Who is the best young starting pitcher in baseball? Whoever starts against the Twins.” Carmona did nothing more than keep the ball down and in the strike zone, and the Twins gleefully obliged, hitting 17 ground ball outs. The idea for a ground ball pitcher is to work deep into games, give up hits here and there, but limit walks and extra base hits to keep the damage to a minimum. Against Carmona, the Twins hit 6 fly balls, and only one extra base hit, a double by Morneau. A team total of five total bases does not usually get the job done.

At least the weekend series saw the Twins hitting Milwaukee at just the right time, as the Brewers have seemingly hit the high-water mark and are in the process of regressing to their true level of ability, still good, but not .700 good. Boof kicked off the festivities with one of the team’s best starts of the year on Friday, making fans forget all about poor, departed Sidney. Ponson’s replacement, Scott Baker, followed suit on Saturday with another strong outing, propelling the team to an easy win and hopefully restoring organizational confidence that he can be a solid major league pitcher, even if he doesn’t have a dominating out pitch. Ramon Ortiz looked good for four innings on Sunday, and a 5-2 lead gave the appearance that the team was headed for a sweep and a full rebound from the Cleveland debacle. Three Brewers runs in the fifth and another lackadaisical outing from Reyes (against a pair of lefties, no less) ended that notion, preventing a truly happy Monday.

The team is still struggling to hit for power and to get on base. The bullpen is still below what we anticipated coming into the year, especially with one of the better pitchers on the shelf for the remainder of the year. The rotation still has major problems, as Silva is good for innings exclusively, and Ortiz cannot even say that. Nonetheless, I think the highs and lows of the early season are starting to plane out, as the team is hitting about as well as it should without Joe Mauer, and the pitching is starting to become predictable. The next step is finding solutions to the now-apparent problems, which I will discuss later.

Biggest Success

Even though Boof Bonser had an exceptional start on Saturday, functioning like an ace in stopping the team’s bleeding through sheer force of will, he was not the most impressive success of the week. That title goes to newly promoted Scott Baker, the triple-A all-star who won plenty of supporters with a gritty and effective outing against a good offense on the road. Before losing his spot in the rotation, Sidney Ponson’s top single Game Score was 66, a May 1^st outing against Tampa Bay- his average GS for the year was 37. Against a tougher offense, Baker came up with a GS of 68 on Saturday, not a career performance, but pretty awesome in comparison. Through seven starts, Ponson had exactly one quality start, the aforementioned Tampa game; Baker matched that total in his first outing. In 37.2 innings of work, Ponson accrued -6.9 runs worth of value over replacement level, while Baker’s one start was worth 3.3. Obviously, Scott Baker is not going to go 8+ innings in every start, and his stats will look different when he gets back into the DH league, but when he has already bested six weeks worth of work by Ponson in only one night, there is finally some room for optimism at the back end of the rotation. Why Baker needed another 30 or so AAA innings instead of starting the season with the big club is beyond me. Why the Twins felt the need to pay Ponson the salary that only became guaranteed when he made the major league roster is also beyond me. How the Twins could imagine that Ponson was going to be part of a contending ball club is way beyond me. But those demons are in the past, and it’s now time to worry about the future. If that future includes an honest shot at a full-time gig for Scott Baker, I think his extensive minor league track record should speak for itself.

Biggest Disappointment

Now that the Ponson situation is resolved, the Twins only have three starting pitching candidates who are more qualified for the rotation than Ramon Ortiz. Ortiz compiled a stunning 18.56 ERA over two starts last week, keeping the team in one game and keeping them out of another. When a good day includes 4.1 innings of work and five earned runs, it might be time to pursue other career choices. The junk that Ortiz got to work in April is simply not working in May; he’s routinely getting tagged as if he were throwing batting practice. In 5.1 innings for the week, he gave up an astonishing 17 hits and 11 earned runs. His control is fine, as he walked only one, but it may be a little too fine, considering that he only struck out a pair of batters. Even though he’s not terribly old (34 on Wednesday), the weak, straight fastballs suggest that Ortiz might be totally done. I’d rather give Perkins, Slowey, or Garza a whirl than spend another 2-3 months trying to figure that one out.

On the Horizon

It wasn’t easy to do, but the Twins finally found a patch in their schedule where they will face a couple of teams struggling even more than they are. The Rangers had high hopes before the season, but at 10 games under .500 and missing Hank Blalock and Kevin Millwood, there is plenty of trouble to go around. Even in a miserable division, the Rangers are already talking about blowing up and starting over, as the Mark Teixeira trade rumors have started earlier than usual this year. Aside from Tex, no regular has an OBP above .335, and the starting pitching has been as bad as it usually is. If not for games like Sunday’s blowout win over the Astros where the team hit six homers, the cause would be even less hopeful. Either way, the Rangers are weak enough that anything less than a series win would be a disappointment for the Twins.

The same can be said for the Blue Jays, whose struggles lie in the fact that they have become the walking wounded. They had a high-risk, high-reward roster, and the season thus far has demonstrated the former part of that duality. It should not come as a surprise that the team has health problems when the last two years’ big ticket items have included Troy Glaus, Frank Thomas, A.J. Burnett, and B.J. Ryan. On Friday, a caller on Philly sports radio commented that the Phillies have no excuse for anything less than a sweep against the Jays. I don’t know how that over-excited gentleman felt about taking 2 of 3, but I’m going to take a slightly more measured approach into the weekend. In any case, if the Twins come out of this week with a losing record, it is something just short of an abomination.

The Big Picture

Cleveland and Detroit are playing extremely well, but recent history has taught us that a seven game divisional lead is not nearly enough to consider run-away-and-hide status. Three games under five hundred is less than optimal, but the Twins are still on the positive side of the ledger in first, second, and third order wins, including a net run surplus of 6 for the year. Since they are losing plenty of close games, there is room for improvement without any major roster tinkering.

That’s not to say that some roster tinkering wouldn’t do them some good. Moving Baker in place of Ponson has probably already given them at least a two win improvement over the course of the season, with the possibility of a much higher upside. The next step must be to fix the “Ortiz” section of the rotation. The franchise has enough bad memories associated with that last name, there’s no reason to miss the postseason on account of another one. With better alternatives up and down the system and enough time having passed to alleviate arbitration concerns, it would be extremely prudent for the Twins to swallow Ramon’s sunk cost and go with whomever they trust out of the Perkins-Slowey-Garza triumvirate. Enough time has passed that we can say that this problem is real and tangible, and the passage of more time will not alleviate it.

Also the offense needs to produce more, even accounting for the absence of Joe Mauer. Specifically, Jason Kubel needs to continue his slow march back to respectability, and Ron Gardenhire has to find a way to get something out of third base. If he can fashion some sort of platoon out of Jeff Cirillo and Nick Punto, they may get a passable amount of production. I’m still concerned that there isn’t enough young offensive talent to support the roster as time goes on, and I would welcome a sort of dashing challenge trade where Ryan tests his scouting chops by trying to get more than value in the form of hitting prospects for one of his young pitching prospects.

2007-05-17T14:35:00.000-05:00

Crain's Winding Road

A season that looked like another difficult reclamation project became an altogether wasted season this week when Jesse Crain’s shoulder diagnosis turned up a double negative: torn rotator cuff and torn labrum. Crain’s recovery from the injury will likely take us far enough into the future that any projection is more speculation than comprehension. Add to that uncertainty the immense variability in Crain’s performance since reaching the majors, and you have one terribly schizophrenic player on your hands.

Crain’s failings to this point in the 2007 season led many observers to wonder if he was compensating for some sort of injury. His pitches looked flat, and he was not so much inconsistent as he was consistently weak. Torn shoulder muscles mean the fulcrum of the pitcher’s power generator has lost its effectiveness, and the pitcher is relegated to throwing batting practice fastballs. In this respect, shoulder injuries differ from elbow injuries, where pitchers often struggle with command, piling up deep counts and walking too many batters, while not necessarily giving up more hits or more solid contact. Crain’s season has followed that trend to a “t,” as his walk rate has increased from 2.1 per nine last year to 2.2 in 2007, a meaningless difference, while his pitches per plate appearances have risen only slightly, from 3.5 to 3.7. The causal factor behind adding two full runs to his ERA is the fact that he can’t throw the ball by anyone, and opponents’ hits are going farther than ever before. Crain is striking out 24% fewer batters than last year, and when balls are put into play, the batters are slugging an impressive .539 against him, unlike the meager .305 and .378 figures he allowed in 2005 and 2006, respectively. Even more impressive is the explosion of his homerun rate, hovering between .70 and .71 for the last three seasons, shooting up to 2.17 in his limited innings this year, a 206% increase. Perhaps this analysis is as meaningless as saying, “I told you so,” without ever having actually told anyone so, but at very least, the injury cannot be considered surprising.

Part of the reason that many observers dismissed Crain’s early struggles is that he had such similar problems last year, which turned out to be a very solid campaign by seasons’ end. After failing to finish even a single inning for the second straight appearances on May 27, 2006, Crain’s ERA crested at 7.97, a far cry from his 5.51 mark that has plagued the bullpen this year. From that point forward, he kept his ERA at a stellar 1.92, striking out three times more batters than he walked, and holding opponents to an outstanding .276 slugging average. Needless to say, Twins fans hoped for the same sort of rounding into for this year as last, pegging Crain as a slow starter who needs time to find a fell for his pitches rather than blaming the horrendous start on the ulterior factor which wound up being the true culprit. Even more telling is the fact that some of Crain’s most comparable players up to his current age have suffered similar fates, including top comp Antonio Osuna (missed nearly two full years with injuries, including a torn labrum in 2001), and Scott Williamson (a notoriously injury-plagued reliever whose biochemistry stood in the way of some nasty stuff).

The intrigue in Crain’s statistical line does not stop there, however, as every season has been something of a departure from the one before it. In the minors, Crain was a lights-out closer with a dominating fastball that he used to overpower batters on his way to an 11.4 K/9 in his final AAA stint in 2004. With numbers like that, some fans (including me) pegged Crain as the next in line for the closers job with Eddie Guardado’s departure after the 2003 season. Terry Ryan knew better, trading for the then-unheralded Joe Nathan to fill that slot in dominating fashion, and Crain split 2004 between Rochester and Minnesota, piling up those gaudy strikeout numbers for the Red Wings, and finding success in a totally different way for the big club. Crain saw limited action in the majors that year, throwing only 27 innings on top of the 50.2 he threw in AAA. In that time, his strikeout rate went from outstanding to miniscule, as he walked nearly as many batters (12) as he managed to strike out (14). Due to an unusually low batting average on balls in play (.194), Crain sustained a terrific 2.00 ERA and earned himself an invitation to rejoin the big club despite the bipolar nature of his major and minor league numbers.

The following season saw Crain continue his balancing act, striking out even fewer batters than the year before. His strikeout rate fell to 2.8, a level so low that even an insane ground-baller like Chien-Ming Wang would do a double take. His walk rate crept above the strikeout rate, putting an incredible amount of stress on the defense behind him, which rose to the occasion, helping him to a spectacular .222 BABIP and suppressing his ERA to 2.71 over a robust 79.2 innings. The .789 defensive efficiency rate for the fielders behind Crain would have lead the majors that year by leaps and bounds, showing just how much help he got from those behind him. Crain did not even do all that much to make their jobs easier, inducing groundballs on only 46.4% of balls in play, a pretty average number. To be fair, when batters put the ball in the air, Crain managed to pop them up remarkably often- 20.2% of the time- a skill which shows that he was fooling batters, jamming them with tough pitches, or both. I credit some of Crain’s surprising road to success to pitching coach Rick Anderson, who said at the time of Crain’s call-up that he would have to pitch more intelligently in the majors to get hitters out, not falling back on dialing up a blazing fastball as frequently as he did in the minors. Still, Crain’s 2005 was fluky in many ways, and did not seem to be a repeatable task at the time.

Oddly enough, Crain avoided the prophecy in 2006 by becoming a “normal” dominant reliever. After trudging through the aforementioned cold streak, he managed to mix together a lethal combination of strikeouts (7.1 per nine and better than 3 for each walk) and groundballs (up to 55.2% of balls in play). That arsenal actually raised his overall ERA to a more normal 3.52, but the underlying improvement can be seen in the decrease in PERA, which fell from 5.02 to 3.36, a more accurate representation of the pitcher’s contribution to run prevention. Perhaps most importantly, Crain made the improvements throughout the season from a struggling pitcher to a successful one, even if his true ability was never that of a 1.92 ERA pitcher.

Coming into 2007, it seemed that Crain was poised to surpass Juan Rincon and his diminishing ability to miss bats as the Twins’ second most reliable reliever. Instead, his entire season has been a tremendous headache, one which fans hoped would culminate in a return to form sometime around June 1^st. Instead, the injury indicates that Crain may have been pitching at or near his true level through 2006, and regressed due to the injury rather than making a habit out of slow starts. With such a major injury, Crain’s performance record to date tells us little about how he will recover and whether he will ever return to elite relief status. If anything, learning the skill of retiring batters without over powering them by placing the fastball (2005) and by utilizing breaking pitches to get outs (2006) should help him recover from the potential loss in velocity. For now, we can only wait for the next surprising twist along the odd career path of Jesse Crain.

2007-05-15T19:49:00.000-05:00

Algonquin for, “The Good Land”

With a 25-13 record and the internet’s recent proliferation of “Are they for real?” columns, it is fair to say that the Brewers are better than most people expected. Before the season, they were a trendy pick in the NL Central, more because the division looked like a disaster than because they looked like a threat to win 90 games. After returning a losing roster plus Jeff Suppan, the Brewers looked like they may be plagued by the same old problems that kept them on the cusp of contention for the last two seasons. Instead, they have broken out forcefully, staking themselves to a 6.5 game lead over the second place Astros in the division and making themselves prohibitive favorites to make the postseason. I am certainly willing to concede that the team has put itself in a better position than I expected at this point in the season. However, I thin the more interesting questions are the ones regarding what has made them so successful, and what we can expect from the team the rest of the year.

Even after dropping two in a row, the Brewers sport a remarkable .658 winning percentage nearly a quarter of the way through the season. As Tom Verducci pointed out in his recent column on the Brewers, teams with that sort of start tend to make the playoffs, not only because they put themselves in a great position, but also because it is difficult to crash that far back to Earth. In order to end up a .500 team, the Brewers would have to finish 56-68- a .451 winning percentage befitting a 73-89 team over a full season. It is fair to say that the Brewers have amply demonstrated that they are better than a 73 win team. Even if they finish the year as the .512 (83 win) team I projected them to be before the season, they would finish the season with 89 wins, a strong number in a division that has been less than gangbusters thus far.

As if the record did not speak for itself, the Brewers’ individual production has been a good deal rosier than anticipated so far. Whether those results come from a genuine improvement or a couple of lucky months requires a deeper look at the changes in statistics. The most profound change has been J.J. Hardy, a toolsy shortstop who has never put it together at the plate or in the stamina department, but who has hit like A-Rod in 2007, putting up a .327/.376/.628 line with 23 extra base hits and a homerun every 14 plate appearances. Considering that PECOTA forecast a total of 12 homeruns in 446 PAs, and a .256/.318/.403 line, his actual production seems extremely fortunate. In fact, his 90^th percentile PECOTA forecast had him at a much more modest .295/.359/.486 line, which would be fairly easily reached after the start he has already put up. Given that many scouts have raved about Hardy for years only to see him succumb to yet another injury, and the fact that he is an athletic, still improving 24 year old, and it is not surprising that he has made strides. A 40-homer pace though? Probably less likely. More than anyone else on the roster, Hardy stands to see a pretty noticeable regression to the mean over the next several months, albeit one that will still leave him with an impressive final batting line.

A couple of other young contributors to the Brewers may have made progress toward becoming stars, as well. Rickie Weeks, for instance, has always had pop- a .155 ISO in his rookie year- but lacked the plate discipline to give wheels to his so-so contact skills. This year, he has yet to remedy the contact issues, hitting only .244 to this point, but by increasing his walk rate from 7.3% to 12.7% of his plate appearances while maintaining his ability to take one for the team (11 in 2005, 19 in 2006, and 3 so far this year), he has raised his OBP to a still-respectable .352. An OPS over 800 for a speedy second baseman is outstanding unto itself, and it will only continue to rise as his batting average exits the doldrums.

As for the rest of the offense, Prince Fielder has developed into an elite offensive force even more quickly than most expected, giving the lineup a masher in the middle. Last year’s revelation, Bill Hall, has kept his bat in the transition to the outfield, hitting .281/.351/.474. Kevin Mench has been unimpressive, but with Corey Hart back from injury and Geoff Jenkins partying like it’s 1999, the outfield has enough firepower to relegate him to bench work. Only third base has caused the occasional tear in Milwaukee fans’ beers, as Craig Counsell and Tony Graffanino have left much to be desired. Luckily, the organization has one of baseball’s top prospects stashed away at that exact position in Nashville, with Ryan Braun walloping .358/.426/.716 with an encouraging 2 errors in 28 games. Braun may struggle with his discipline at first, readjusting to pitchers who can actually challenge him, but his future is bright, and his presence will temper some of the regression from the other hot hitting infielders.

Between Suppan, Ben Sheets, Chris Capuano, David Bush, and Claudio Vargas, the Brewers have had the sort of deep and consistent rotation that has helped teams like Detroit and Chicago make giant leaps forward in recent years. Vargas has been a surprise, but the other four have lived up to their potential as solid, consistent starters who will eat up innings while keeping their team in the game. Sheets has the ability to be something much more, though his depressed strikeout rate- down almost 100% from last year to 4.84 per nine- shows why he has been only average so far. The rest of the rotation has held it together by keeping the ball in the park, allowing only 99 homeruns so far, third best in the majors in a park that does not particularly favor the pitchers. Additionally, the starters have done their best to help out a merely average defense by limiting base runners; nobody has walked more than 3.5 per nine, and Sheets, Suppan, and Bush are all below 2.05.

My primary concerns about the Brewers coming into the year were two of the team’s problems from last year that seemed unresolved. First, the bullpen, constructed out of sabermetric glue and popsicle sticks, had lots of live arms that could not get anyone out. So far, Francisco Cordero, Carlos Villanueva, Brian Shouse, and Derrick Turnbow have all walked too many batters, but have compensated by either striking out loads (Cordero- 12.42, Tunbow- 12.94), or eliminating homeruns from the equation altogether. My second concern was the team’s defense, which struggled mightily last year, particularly in the infield. The return of J.J. Hardy has stabilized the infield to an extent, and giving third base to a couple of guys who can field without hitting has helped enough to bring them to the middle of the pack in terms of defensive efficiency. Overall, the Brewers rank 16^th in the majors at turning batted balls into outs, a number which looks unremarkable, but means quite a bit considering the team’s defensive deficiencies in recent years. The Brewers ranking in the middle of the pack here is akin to the White Sox running away with the category two years ago; some regression should be expected.

Lastly, the Brewers have an interesting situation in their own division. Six and a half games on the Astros is a good number now that Roger Clemens has committed himself elsewhere. The more concerning foe is not the defending World Champions, it is the underachieving Chicago Cubs, who have outscored their opponents by 25 runs despite a below-.500 record. In fact, the Cubs and Reds are the two biggest underachieves in baseball, according to third order wins, and adjusting the teams’ records for their true performance makes the division race look much closer. After that adjustment, the Cubs pull dead even with the Brewers atop the division and the Reds lurk only 2.5 games back. Of course, the Brewers deserve recognition for being the one team in that group who is actually winning games, and the spot atop the others in the division gives them that prize. This exercise does more to tell where they teams are headed than where they have been. If the Brewers continue to be the 22 win team that third order wins peg them to be, they would win 94 games and probably take the division easily. If Hardy and company regress, or if injuries strike like they did last year, the Brewers could end up around 90 victories. For the Cubs to match that total from their 17-19 present, they would have to play .589 ball, ambitious even considering their .583 current third order pace. In that regard, it is not hard to see the Brewers as division champs and postseason participants for the first time since 1982. As far as I am concerned, that is enough of a qualification to make them “for real.”

2007-05-13T19:40:00.000-05:00

TWIT: No Mas (aka Punchless)

Weekly Roundup

Last week, I closed by tempering expectations for a six-game set against two solid AL Central opponents. I commented that it is not such a bad week to be cold, since these games will be difficult no matter what, and a couple of good wins could help jumpstart the team’s collective momentum generator, seemingly still puttering out black smoke from last year’s winterization. In a way, I may have been making excuses in advance, anticipating a putrid performance across an important segment of the schedule and compensating by lowering expectations. After all, if you set your goals low enough, you will be sure to reach them. As it has worked out, the Twins needed a dramatic walk-off homerun by Justin Morneau- legitimately one of the most exciting moments of the season so far- to get a single game during the week (I am writing during the lead-up to Sunday Night Baseball’s feature presentation of Boof vs. Virgil in primetime, so another win is a possibility). My pessimism has fomented so substantially that I saw the name “Virgil Vazquez” on the pitching probables list and thought to myself, “Oh no, first career start, that guy’s going to kill us.”

Joe Morgan hit the nail on the head during the SNB pre-game show, pointing out that most of the Twins regulars have performed relatively close to expectations, and the team is not scoring close to enough runs to remain competitive. After lurching through an easy part of the schedule, ripe for the picking with Kansas City and Tampa Bay, the truth has come out against the real competition: the Twins do not have enough bats to stay in the race. The nagging injuries to role players, and now Joe Mauer, have played a roll in suppressing run production, but do any of these numbers look totally out of line?

Morneau- .265/.353/.529

Hunter- .313/.345/.565

Cuddyer- .270/.316/.407

Punto- .215/.301/.289

Bartlett- .257/.331/.312

Kubel- .243/.295/.320

Mauer- .353/.446/.480

Castillo- .310/.361/.340

Sure, only Mauer and Hunter would have been considered successes at those levels, but only Cuddyer and Punto are noticeably below the range of reasonable expectations. Bartlett is basically a league-average on-base guy with a good glove and little power. And that’s what he has been this year. Morneau is a solid power hitter with so-so discipline whose average from 2006 was destined to come down. And that’s what he has been this year. Assuming that Kubel would start hitting for doubles power and a high average because time had passed was based mostly on blind faith going into the season, yet I remain hopeful to that end. Since his gruesome knee injury, he has been inconsistent across the board, wildly impatient at the plate, and constantly battling to keep his OBP above water. And that’s what he has been this year. I could go on like this, but you get the picture.

The real problem is that the Twins have walked on an offensive tightrope for a long time, getting just enough out of the lineup to support a reliable defense, a solid rotation and an excellent bullpen. This year, however, the lineup has produced too many duds to remain competitive. In the early part of the decade, they relied on consistency from top-to-bottom; only Luis Rivas stands out as a true black hole in any of the lineups that helped win three straight division titles (plus, the competition was weaker). Last year, Mauer and Morneau were transcendent enough to put the entire roster on their backs, get a little help here and there from whomever else was swinging a hot bat, and pull the team back into the divisional race. Subtract Mauer from the equation and bring Morneau back to earth, and that lineup suddenly becomes a group of below average hitters waiting for someone to get hot enough to carry them for a few games at a time. Torii Hunter did it for two weeks, Luis Castillo has tried to do it this week, but they are making a crazy number of outs.

Getting on base has been an issue for many in the lineup, but the problem that really stands out is their inability to generate any sort of power. Over the last week, the Twins slugged .341 as a team, putting them slightly behind the recently departed Shannon Stewart’s season total, and even with Chris Duffy- the same Chris Duffy’s whose lack of power has made him a fringe regular in spite of solid on-base skills and blazing speed. Other than Morneau’s three homeruns and one triple, the entire team combined for seven doubles and nothing else in the XBH department. To reach the AL average of a .407 slugging average, they would have had to turn 14 of their 52 singles into doubles, tripling their non-Morneau XBH total. Bottom line- a team can’t survive hitting for such little power.

Biggest Success

I got a little verbose in the whiny, cathartic part of the article, so I will pick up the pace here. After all, there are so few successes to discuss, that it should not take terribly long. For what it is worth, the starting rotation is rounding into form, as Boof struck out seven, walking only one, and giving up a single earned run in a seven inning start earlier in the week. Johan continued his early season passability, although the lack of endurance and strict pitch count is a potentially worrisome caution flag. Sidney Ponson still sucks, that’s nothing new. I think we’re better of treating him like the fat, old guy in a pickup basketball team who always weasels his way into games and sweats way too much: you don’t expect him to contribute anything at all, so any small victory comes off as a pleasant surprise. (Ah-ha! Just after I have written this, Ponson has been DFA’d- that’s right, he’s been sent to that big steak buffet in the sky. Here’s to hoping Garza gets another shot at the rotation and goes Liriano on us. Or Slowey. Or Baker. Oh, hell, I’m just glad Ponson is gone; it’s the 2007 Batista moment!)

Setting aside Torii’s incredibly catch on Wednesday, the overall player of the week has to be Morneau. Luis Castillo hit .400, albeit as empty of a .400 as you can dream up with only one XBH and 3 walks. Mike Redmond went 9-17 on the week, which is nice. Only Morneau put a stamp on the week, though, with his huge homerun and six runs batted in (the second best total for the week was 2). He hit only .250, but he can get away with it if he keeps slugging .800, or even .500 with the sort of patience that earned him 4 bases on balls in only 24 plate appearances. Wait, that’s not called patience, that’s called being the only batter in the lineup who can hit anything but a single.

Biggest Disappointment

I guess I already beat this horse to death, as well. In lieu of a standout candidate, I will give this week’s award as a sort of seasonal achievement nod to Mike Cuddyer, whose four singles, no extra base hits, one walk, and one run batted in typified how useless he has been to the lineup for the last month or so. After a decent start to the campaign, Cuddyer has fallen off of a cliff at a time that coincided with one of the team’s other two run producers went on the DL. Luckily, Justin Morneau is Canadian, otherwise Cuddyer would have been saddled as the team’s chief run producer for more than one game after the MVP broke his nose.

On the Horizon

When a team struggles, there’s nothing better than a road trip to visit two of the three hottest teams in the game. By the time the Twins reach Texas early next week, the Rangers may seem like a AAA team compared to the buzz saws they will see in Cleveland and Milwaukee for three games apiece. If Cleveland has a vulnerability, it may be shooting photon torpedoes into the back end of their bullpen, where Joe Borowski’s job has to be on the line after horribly botching a relatively easy save opportunity against Oakland on Sunday (two outs, two strikes, two run lead- too little). The Twins will get early-contact pitchers Paul Byrd and Fausto Carmona as the bread in a C.C. Sabathia sandwich (I hear that’s a tender cut of meat). Their groundball tendencies may line up well with Minnesota’s single-it is. Don’t be surprised if the Twins have something like 3 runs on 12 hits and 1 walk in one of these games.

The Big Picture

It’s still early. It’s still early. It’s still early. Repeat the refrain with me. The Twins have the same record today as they did after the same number of games last year. With injuries plaguing them instead of incompetence, it should be even easier to correct the course, right? If there is any value in a cold spell, it’s that the overachieving part of their peripheral statistics has sunk back to even keel, putting the adjusted record very close to the actual record. The other good news is that the Twins have actually outscored their opponents this year, hinting at the possibility that the offensive struggles are due to inconsistency rather than a persistent lack of ability. I still believe that Cuddyer will hit better, that either Punto or Bartlett will round into something more acceptable, and that someone out of the Kubel, Tyner, Ford, White grouping will be get hot enough to approach league average. It is frightening that Detroit and Cleveland have run so far out in front, but just like the Twins were overachieving when they were in first place, the Indians are 3 games ahead of their third order win projection, and the Tigers are 4.6 ahead. These things tend to even out over the course of the season, so keep hope alive. Plus, based on the sample size of the first inning of the Sunday Night game, the offense is right back on track!

2007-05-08T17:33:00.001-05:00

St. Louis Street Sense

Winners get all of the attention. When things are going good, luxury accoutrements tend to fall into your lap. Sure, there will always be detractors who throw stones at the throne out of jealousy or some similarly misguided sentiment. Altogether, though, it is usually good to be on top. For those who watched last weekend’s Kentucky Derby, it should come as no surprise that the frontrunner can be severely disappointed. In baseball, the season is long enough for a team to languish in mediocrity for months at a time before finally righting the ship toward a championship, such as the 2006 edition of the Minnesota Twins, who underperformed into June, but still won 97 games and the most competitive division in all of baseball. Underperformance, overvaluation, and plain bad luck all contribute to teams coming slow out of the gates, but smart teams have a way of systematically reversing these trends over a 162 game season. Certain teams stand out as early underperformers this year, especially the World Champion St. Louis Cardinals. Today, I will look a little deeper at the team’s struggles to discern truth from fiction and see if they have it in them to pull a Street Sense and win going away.

The Cards are not only an excellent case study in slow starts, but the debate surrounding their season going forward legitimately has to sides. Remember two key factors coming down on the side of the pessimists: first, the team backed into the playoffs last year, icing over to an 83 win finish only to thaw out in time to win 11 postseason games behind pitchers who overachieved then left town (Suppan, Weaver). Also, their preseason outlook was not very rosy, especially when run through the computers, as Nate Silver from Baseball Prospectus commented, “I’ve publicly disavowed PECOTA’s projection that the 2005 champs will finish with 90 losses, but it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if that’s where the 2006 champs wind up.” Thirty games into the season, the Cardinals are playing more like a 95 loss team than a 90 loss team (.400 Win%) with an individual performance-adjusted record to match.

The issues afflicting the Cardinals are not limited to run scoring or run prevention alone. As of Monday, the team ranks dead last in the NL in runs scored, just two runs behind the Nationals, who play with Styrofoam bats and bowling balls in their canyon-like dwelling. Their runs allowed, certainly aided by the deft bullpen management of LaRussa and Duncan, still puts them 5^th to last in the league with 146 runs allowed. The problems even extend across situations, as the entire team has a .614 OPS at home, a .658 OPS on the road, a .658 OPS against RHP, and a.576 OPS against LHP (aided by Kip Wells’ impressive 3.500 OPS in exactly 2 plate appearances). In other words, they are hitting like the Nats and pitching like the Pirates, two fates a defending champion usually does not endure.

On offense, part of the problem is that two of their five most valuable offensive contributors have been starting pitchers Kip Wells and Adam Wainwright. And while there’s nothing wrong with a team adding pitchers that can hit, it becomes a problem when you have only two regulars and So Taguchi who can out-produce them at the dish. They are currently getting sub-replacement level contributions out of second base- free agent “bargain” Adam Kennedy and Aaron Miles alike-, shortstop- David Eckstein’s hitting 216/.283/.245 in 20% of a season-, third base- Scott Rolen is scarcely better-, center field- Jim Edmonds might be cooked-, and right field- Preston Wilson, Skip Schumaker and Scott Speizio are all individually below a 0.0 VORP. Even Albert Pujols has under-performed, hitting .259/.357/.464. A line like that would be a letdown in a normal year; when the team needs him to be Lou Gehrig, it is even more harmful. Only Chris Duncan has impressed, hitting .320 and slugging well over .500.

The starting rotation, a major point of concern in the off season, has also had major difficulty. Braden Looper, of all people, has chipped in with a 2.66 ERA in 7 starts, bolstered by the fact that he is not giving up homeruns, period. The rest of the rotation, including Anthony Reyes, Wainwright, Wells, and Randy Keisler, has been at or below replacement level. Wells came into the season as one of those pitchers who needed to earn his way into a rotation rather than out of one, and he has done nearly enough to earn his way out, even without a clear alternative. Getting only one start out of Chris Carpenter has not helped matters in the least. At least the bullpen has been a bright spot, as all of their standard matchup-heavy retreads have produced like only Dave Duncan can make them.

At leas there is room for optimism with the team. Looking at the offense, there is absolutely no way players like Eckstein and Rolen can continue playing so incredibly poorly, especially with established track records indicating a much higher level of ability. PECOTA projected Rolen to hit .283/.367/.504 and Eckstein to hit .278/.338/.348. These guys are .100 points off of both of their OBP and SLG; such an oddity is not a decline, it’s an aberration. Even Adam Kennedy should eventually come around to a level commensurate with a Major League player, if not the star he was for that one afternoon in 2002. Pujols will start raking again, and even Yadier Molina has made a few less outs, putting up a .345 OBP so far, albeit at the cost of some slugging.

The onus for the outfield rests on GM Walt Jocketty, who has to find somebody better than the deadweight in right field, and may have to find a way to gracefully manage the Edmonds situation if his head injuries are still affecting his performance. As for the pitching situation, Reyes and Wainwright are talented pitchers who will improve to average performance at very least, and they may have lucked into a quality starter with Looper. Waiting out the three months for Carpenter’s return with only these three legitimate starters will be a sizable problem, though, maybe big enough to necessitate a move.

For the record, I have counted up a total of nine black holes for the Cardinals so far: second, third, short, center, right, and four starting pitchers. The three infield spots and two of the rotation spots will almost certainly fix themselves as time goes by and players break out of nasty slumps. Center field is a mystery to me, because Jim Edmonds appeared to be at a crossroads heading into the year, and instead of choosing a path, he ran into the fork in the road and knocked himself out. Right field and the other two rotation spots will present major problems for the team, at least until August, when Carpenter may or may not return to anchor the rotation. In the meantime, the Cards have nine full games to make up on the surging Brewers, and four other teams to overcome. Given that this team probably did not have a large margin for error to start, giving themselves a degree of difficulty was probably not a good idea. I can imagine the team getting back to .500 in a best case scenario, but even then, the playoffs are quite a stretch. After seeing a horse pass 18 other horses to win the Derby in ¾ of a mile, I know that stranger things have happened. Still, don’t bet on it.

2007-05-06T18:58:00.001-05:00

TWIT: First and Foremost

Weekly Roundup

It would be very easy for me to fill up 1200 words by talking about the ins, outs, and what-have-yous of the Joe Mauer conundrum. Instead, I will try to be concise and get it out of the way as quickly as possible. First of all, a strained quad can happen in many different ways, but one of the ways near the top of the list is compensating for a sore knee. I will not put it past a catcher to wear out his leg muscles independently of another injury, although anyone who follows players will knee injuries knows that hamstring and quad injuries are more than slightly correlated with them. In that regard, I fear that we have not heard the last of the Mauer knee saga, and that it will continue for as long as he remains at the position. Since the Twins have such a pressing need at third base, I would not hesitate to start working him out at the hot corner sooner than later, but using him in a more creative way to get some defensive contribution from behind the plate. Naturally, finding a replacement catcher is not the easiest thing to do considering the positional scarcity; that is another area where they will be better off if they start considering options now instead of waiting for zero hour to arrive.

In terms of performance, the drop-off does not go straight from Mauer to Redmond since both of them were already in the lineup fairly frequently. If Mauer was getting 90% of a full implement of plate appearances before, Redmond probably gets half of those freed up at bats, going from a half-time player to a full-time one. The rest will be split fairly evenly between reserve outfielders and DH candidates, primarily Jasons Kubel and Tyner. The way these two have been hitting, that’s a dicey proposition, as their combined effort straddles replacement level. I keep hoping that regular playing time will get Kubel’s hitting approach back on track, so there is reason for optimism in his case. We knew that a big chunk of the offense would rest on his ability to hit .290 with doubles power- it’s just becoming crucial much sooner than anyone expected.

As for the week itself, the Twins suffered the ungracious fate of losing four out of six despite outscoring their opponents for the week. The big three game set with the Red Sox yielded a total of five runs scored despite missing six-game winner Josh Becket (who Curt Schilling predicted would get crazy good on his blog due to improved fastball location), and Daisuke Matsuzaka, who just seems like the sort of pitcher who would hold the Twins scoreless on two hits for seven innings. And by that “sort of pitcher,” I mean anyone who is struggling against the rest of the league. Dropping two out of three to Tampa is far more humiliating than losing a couple of squeakers to the hottest team in the league, and they did it in a particularly gut-wrenching way. With two outs in the ninth, the Wednesday game seemed thoroughly in hand. And MLB.com featured the headline, “Twins Squander Chances” for the Thursday game, which pretty much sums it up.

Biggest Success

The obvious choice here, and perhaps the correct one, would be to go with Torii Hunter for the second straight week. As far as the offense went, he carried them. Hunter has continued to absolutely rake, this week going .417/.462/.750 with four extra base hits and six runs scored. He’s stealing bases, he’s not striking out, his defense has looked good, and he is hitting better than he has ever hit in his career. There is an obvious sample size warning here. Nonetheless, it looks like Torii has found a vintage bottle of Alfonso Soriano’s Magical Contract Year Elixir: take it, and price yourself out of your team’s pay-scale.

But I’m not going with Torii; it would be too easy. Instead I’m giving credit where I almost never do. Every time I watched the Twins this week, I was impressed by something that Ron Gardenhire did. In some cases, it was something fairly large, like making the gutsy call to yank Santana after five plus on Saturday, turning it over to a hot bullpen that got the team its only win of the series. In other cases, he did his usually adept push-button job of managing the bullpen. The only runs relievers gave up all week were in the extra innings D-Rays game (and Gardy can’t be faulted for Nathan losing his command two-thirds of the way through a save), and an insurance run in the ninth inning of Friday’s 2-0 loss. I was even satisfied with the way he handled the lineup, abandoning his usual style of subbing a player into a lineup spot as well as a position for Sunday’s matchup with Schilling. While it did not yield a win, moving Hunter up to third in the order and finally moving Redmond down shows that he’s at least paying attention to what happens in games. That might not seem worthy of the “biggest success” label, but considering some of his failings in the past, I’ll take what I can get.

Biggest Disappointment

Joe Mauer. It sure was stupid of him to go out and get himself injured like that.

No, really, the least valuable player of the week probably has to be Justin Morneau. The reigning MVP struck out in more than 1/3 of his at bats (8 of 23), managing a single extra base hit and failing to bring his OBP or SLG over the Batista-ian .300 mark. All of this in the offense’s darkest hour, when a single big hit could have made the difference in any one of their four losses for the week. In Wednesday’s loss, he left three on base in a one run loss. On Thursday, it was 5 LOB and a two run loss (that’s nuthin! Mauer had 9 LOB in the same game). Friday: 3 LOB, 2 run loss. Sunday: 4 LOB, 1 run loss. That means that a red-hot week from Morneau could easily have swung a 2-4 week to a 4-2 week. It is not fair to place the entire onus of a bad week on one player, but Morneau was especially bad.

On the Horizon

It doesn’t get any easier from here, as the Twins return to the Dome for a week that could get ugly, but could also help them turn their fortunes around against their two biggest divisional rivals. The struggling White Sox could provide some sort of respite, although old friend A.J. Pierzynski may have started to reverse their momentum by tying their game with the Angels on a two-run homer in the 8^th, then securing the win with an RBI single in the 10^th on Sunday. At 14-14 and a negative run differential, the White Sox have underachieved in games in which their starting pitcher does not throw a no-hitter, so here’s to hoping the week gets off to a good start against another team playing below its level. The Twins will need to be hot out of the gates, especially since Detroit rolls into Minneapolis for a weekend series. The Tigers have been on fire, winning seven in a row heading into their series with Seattle during the week. Altogether, I think the schedule is fairly favorable, since the Twins are in a lull right now and can get by with a 3-3 record (two against Chicago and one against Detroit seems reasonable) without inching toward disaster. Even a 2-4 record would not send anyone into catatonic shock with Mauer out and the offense already struggling. These low expectations lead to possibly surprising results, and winning four or five of the games is certainly not out of the question.

The Big Picture

I have mentioned third-order wins a few times already, and it is not a stat that looks kindly upon the 2007 Twins thus far. The fact that they are fully two wins ahead of their third order stats means that they are scoring and preventing runs than their individual performances suggest should be possible. Since several key players are not performing up to their standard level- Morneau, Bonser, Crain- it is reasonable that the performance will even out and they will keep their heads above water in terms of run differential.

Two other issues piqued my interest for the future of the Twins beyond the next seven days. Primarily, the Mauer situation, which I have already addressed extensively, could become a thorn in the team’s side, since the backup catching duties fall to Chris Heintz, a player who doesn’t even hit in AAA. Terry Ryan needs to get on the phone with the league of backup catchers to see if he can buy Wiki Gonzalez out of his insurance sales business, or see if baseball seems more appealing that installing seamless siding to John Flaherty. If Mauer returns in two weeks, it is not an issue, but if a third catcher is necessary, there are cheap alternatives to Heintz who can do something well.

Lastly, I’m not sure how much more we need to see out of Sidney Ponson. Short of showing up to a start inebriated (which probably hasn’t happened, although I can make no promises), he has already proven that he is still the pitcher that washed out of every other pitching starved organization over the last two seasons. To paraphrase the immortal Denny Green: He is what we thought he was! If you’re going to knight him, then knight him! He is what we thought he was! He has made no shocking transformation, and Rick Anderson has only so much mojo to go around. Let’s give him a coupon to the Old Country Buffet, call up one of the three starters in Rochester with an ERA under 2.50 (Slowey, Garza, Baker) or stretch out Perkins, then act confused when Ponson returns from said buffet in mid-July weighing 345 pounds. It’s for the good of the land; get it done.

2007-04-30T20:09:00.001-05:00

The Opposite Way

By this point, just about everyone understands the effect that a stadium can have on a hitter’s statistics. A related concept that receives slightly less attention is the effect that a stadium can have on a hitter’s approach at the plate. For instance, a lefty power hitter in Yankee Stadium will go to great lengths to pull the ball at every opportunity, looking for inside pitches and possibly forgoing the opportunity to go the other way. On the other hand, look at the career arc of David Ortiz, who started hitting the ball the opposite way when he reached Fenway in order to utilize the Monster. Ortiz previously struggled to go the other way, creating a hole in his swing that pitchers exploited.

The San Diego Padres have benefited tremendously from one such development. A few years ago, it looked as if former number one pick Adrian Gonzalez had joined the ranks of busted prospects who were once considered “can’t miss” types. A couple of uninspired seasons in Texas saw him hit for low average, fail to draw walks, and hit for too little power for a first baseman. His cat-like speed and reflexes translated into positive contributions in the field, but his batting line was miserable enough that he could not survive at shortstop. Even his 2004 AAA line in hitter-friendly Oklahoma City would not cut it in the bigs, because a .457 SLG for a first baseman only works if you draw enough walks to keep your OBP at or above .400. Despite a solid minor league stint in 2005, the Rangers sent him packing before the 2006 season as something of an afterthought in the Adam Eaton and Akinori Otsuka for Chris Young trade. Solid as Otsuka has been, Eaton’s injuries, taken alongside the success of Young and Gonzalez have made the trade a slam dunk success for Kevin Towers and the Padres, playing a very sizable role in getting them into the postseason in 2006 and keeping them on the radar in a stronger NL West this year.

The transformation of Gonzalez came almost immediately after arriving in San Diego, a very perplexing development considering the fact that PETCO Park is an albatross for most left-handed power hitters. Players like Brian Giles and Ryan Klesko openly complained about the homer-sapping effects of their home field after moving into the new digs a few years ago, and the Padres have essentially given up on acquiring top-flight lefty hitting talent since that time.

Looking at the dimensions of the park, it is no surprise that southpaws would struggle to hit many homeruns. After all, power alleys are the foremost indicators of a stadium’s run environment, and PETCO does a number on anyone trying to pull the ball to right field. Even though the center field fence is only 396 feet away from home plate, the fence actually gets further away in the power alleys, peaking at 411 feet in the right-center power alley, a spot where many lefty power hitters pile up their extra base hits. At 378 in right field, the conventional pull does not get much more help. A right field corner that runs perpendicular to home plate makes the fair pole look like a more forgiving 322 feet, although the angle makes it extremely difficult to hit a fair ball over that fence. Compare these dimensions to left field, where the power alley tops out at 402 feet, quickly juts in to 367 feet, then tapers off to 334 down the line in a much more standard formation. Right-handed hitters have it tough enough in the stadium; lefties have it nearly impossible.

So how has Gonzalez managed to blossom into a star player pushing a 900 OPS in one of the least favorable hitting environments for his skill set in all of baseball? Just as I mentioned in the intro, Gonzalez has made a career-altering adjustment. His numbers saw a small dip at home, going from a strong .311/.378/.527 on the road to a more paltry .296/.344/.471 at home. The second line would not survive at first base in a neutral park, but considering that PETCO is anything but a neutral park begins to put his production into context.

Thanks to the wonderful Hit Chart feature at mlb.com, we can take that analysis a bit deeper. When reading the chart for Gonzalez, it is easy to see how he managed to work around the power-depressing dimensions of his home stadium. Whereas young ballplayers learn to hit for power by pulling the ball relentlessly, Gonzalez had to relearn the approach to go the other way, and he did so brilliantly. Of the 16 doubles he hit at PETCO last year, 2 of them snuck into that funny right field corner. The other 14 went to the opposite field. And I’m not talking about dead center or a mild pull; I mean that he hit all of these doubles into true left field, a majority of them directly down the line. Even the homeruns he hit at home were skewed to the left, as 5 of the 10 went to center or the opposite way. Compare those splits to the way he hit on the road, where 9 of his other 21 doubles went to the opposite field. Even though that percentage shows some residual effect of his adjustment, he clearly makes a point of going the opposite way when the stadium dictates it as a necessity.

This perverse development puts Gonzalez in a unique position for the rest of his career, since statistical projections typically do not account for a player making a radical adjustment to his style to accommodate a stadium. It begs the question of what would happen to Gonzalez in a different hitting environment, although his road statistics seem to indicate that he knows what he’s doing there, as well. Ultimately, I do not believe that any projection system can fully account for the way Gonzalez has made the most of a difficult situation, nor do I think they can pick up on how intelligent of a player this adjustment indicates that he is. For both of these reasons, I expect him to play above the projection levels for several seasons, especially considering that he is still only 25 years old and has plenty of room to grow. PECOTA sees 2006 as his career year, forecasting a drop from being a seven win player last year to hovering around five wins worth of value over each of the next four. Part of the problem with that progression is that it sees his success at home as a bit fluky and regresses heavily to the mean. In reality, Gonzalez got smart instead of getting lucky, and deserves credit for it. Don’t blame the projection systems- treating every improvement as a breakout season would lead to a proliferation of over-projections. On the other hand, there is the occasional David Ortiz who makes sudden and real improvements in his game that the system must chalk up to unaccounted variance. Just as Gonzalez has replicated his 2006 form so far in 2007 (.308/.359/.551), expect him to remain a cheaply-acquired franchise first baseman for several years to come.

2007-04-30T17:41:00.001-05:00

TWIT: The Wild Thing

Weekly Roundup

A 3-4 record and a run differential of 29 scored against 26 allowed seems innocuous enough, a seemingly middling and boring week that will be forgettable by the end of the year. The broad strokes do not describe the full picture, though, as the team went from ice cold to red hot over just a few days, then gave it all back with a depressing loss behind Johan Santana. If there was a way to quantify a team's momentum, the Twins likely would have run the gamut over the last seven days. The ignominious start to the week featured the completion of a four game losing streak in which the bats would not awaken, no matter how many bad first pitches at which the team decided to pursue. Scoring ten total runs over the first four games of the week gave a pretty good summary of how miserable the entire offense was. Winning the last of the four games 1-0 in 11 innings, though, seemed to reassure the team in some odd fashion, leading to two very good wins to open the weekend series in Detroit. Sure, losing to Kansas City four out of five times over the course of a week is depressing and sad, but making up for it against the teams who will actually remain in competition to the end of the year helps to temper that sullen feeling. Think of it this way: when reading the morning box scores, seeing Detroit lose to an anonymous opponent means far more than seeing Kansas City drop one because the Tigers figure to remain close. Thus, beating the Tigers two out of three ensures a loss to a key opponent, whereas losing to the Royals is scarcely different from losing to a non-divisional opponent. That does not mean that 6-13 record against the perennial cellar dwellers is desirable, nor does it make the last week's offensive futility excusable. Nonetheless, one need not become overly upset at a few games in April while the team lingers around first place.

Biggest Success

Looking at the recent offensive splits, it is extremely easy to pick a pair of winners for this category in Joe Mauer and Torii Hunter. Aside from a few singles by Jason Kubel, every other position player hit .241 or worse over the last week, making it no wonder that the team struggled to score runs. The faces of the franchise held it together, though, combining for 19 hits and 30 total bases. As is usually the case, Hunter and Mauer to different routes to success at the plate. Hunter managed a line of .360/.370/.680 without drawing a base on balls, keeping the aggressive approach at the plate that has worked for him thus far. Perhaps an impatient style is not optimal, but if you can have a center fielder who plays plus defense and manages an OPS over 800 every year, you take it no matter how that split breaks down. The positional scarcity is that crucial in the calculation. Even though there are even fewer quality catchers around the league, Mauer stands out even further above the rest of his peers. Last week's .391/.517/.565 harkens back to the early months of last season when sportswriters started paying attention to the homegrown golden boy because they would look silly if he hit .400 and they had not written a wave of puff pieces about his sideburns and general affability. Even better than the insane OBP over the last week was the encouraging sign that Mauer finally got his first round-tripper of the year in Saturday's romp over the Tigers. If he can manage to keep his walks and batting average up through patience and pitch recognition alone, then more power to him, but if Mauer's ability to mash develops over the next few seasons, it will only give pitchers another reason to keep the ball off of the plate. Since that is yet another way to prevent making outs, the Twins will be better for it.

Biggest Disappointment

Jesse Crain had a down week, but his failings would have been much less noticeable if the offense had picked him up at some point along the way. Instead, I would prefer to use this space to defame the entire offense. Since I doubt I can hold anyone's attention long enough to go through every misstep that has occurred, I will focus on the middle infield tandem of Jason Bartlett and Alexi Casilla, who were responsible for more "outs" in the last week than the GLAAD awards. Casila hit .190/.227/.238 over the last week, making everyone long for the days when Juan Castro would hit .215 and stretch a handful of his plate appearances to three or four pitches. Instead, Casilla has swung at everything in site, presumably thinking that his speed will make up for the fact that he's hitting the ball about as hard as that omnipresent obese kid on the tee-ball team. Normally, I would blame the front office for exposing Casilla before his skill set has fully developed. In this case, I think Casilla deserves the blame, though, since he has the underlying skills to be a patient and disciplined hitter, but left them somewhere between Rochester and Minneapolis. If he can remember how to draw a walk, it will be much easier for fans to see why he drew so many comparisons to Luis Castillo by statheads and scouts alike. Bartlett's .208/.269/.250 line looks alright compared to Casilla, but that is like calling Mussolini a bastion of democratic ideals relative to his geopolitical allies. In an article earlier this week, Ray Felix did a good job breaking down the parts of Bartlett's game that have gone awry so far this season, and we had better hope that he fixes that (especially his approach at the plate) in the near future, because the only other alternative is the guy I just compared to Hitler.

On the Horizon

Last week, I commented that the coming week would help sort out the division just a little. Since so many teams had inconsistent starts due to weather- especially Cleveland- it seemed appropriate to reserve judgment until a later date. Alas, since the Twins week was every bit as inconsistent as the ones before it, the division is even more log-jammed than it was before. Entering May, we're only a couple of weeks away from being able to make more generalized statements about the team. I'm worried about that time coming a little too soon considering the difficult schedule coming up in the near future. Traveling to Tampa used to be a slam dunk for the Twins, but with struggles against the newly dangerous D-Rays at the Dome, the upcoming three game set could be a downer. At least we miss Scott Kazmir, who is the kind of lefty who should strike fear in the heart of any Twins fan. Following that series by starting a 9 game home-stand against the white hot Red Sox makes the next week a dicey proposition. Curt Schilling and Johan Santana miss matching up by a day, narrowly costing us a chance to see a repeat of the Twins' most exciting game of last season. Splitting the six games over the week would please me. Anything more would be almost shocking.

The Big Picture

On the positive side, the Twins have outscored their opponents by more runs (12) than any other team in the division. More realistically, the team's performance has outpaced its component parts pretty significantly. It is one thing for a team with a strong bullpen to outperform its Pythagorean projection, it is quite another thing for a team to systematically score more runs and prevent more runs than the hitters and pitchers produce. There are only so many two out hits and stranded runners for a team over the course of the season. Once again, I will reiterate that it is extremely early in the season, that the team is still in the middle of the competition, and that what happens in August and September is imminently more crucial than what is happening at the moment. At the same time, the Twins deifnitely have a seedy underbelly, and the more than can do to patch it over at this point, the better.

2007-04-23T07:43:00.000-05:00

This Week in Twins: The Start of Something New

[Note: This column will appear weekly on both this site and the new site Minnesota's Sports Guys, to which I will be a regular contributor. Also, be sure to read the following article about Eddie Murray/Murphy which I posted just below this one over the weekend.]

Weekly Roundup

The Twins endured an up-and-down road trip, sweeping the usually feisty Mariners in Seattle, then succumbing to the Royals twice over the weekend. While it is hard to complain about a 4-2 record, the Twins have yet to take a bit out of the meat of the schedule. Even though Kansas City is not the pushover they have been the last few years, there is no excuse for managing one run against Jorge De La Rosa.

Before the disappointment came the glee of pounding the Mariners, averaging 7.3 runs per game in the series, even if some of that good fortune came at the expense of Felix Hernandez’s royal sinews. Mike Cuddyer led the hit parade, piling up 8 total bases and five runs batted in through the series. The starting pitching continued to impress, as well, with Ortiz, Silva, and Santana turning in a trifecta of quality starts. These early season trips to Safeco have become something of a tradition in the last several years, and they usually give the Twins fits- despite the disparity in the quality of the two teams over the last five years, the Twins are only 8-8 at Safeco since 2002. In that light, a series sweep looks even more appealing.

While the Twins sparkled against the M’s, all that glitters is certainly not gold. The same team that looked so capable mid-week looked inept throughout dropping two of three to a team that has come to know a thing or two about ineptitude. Game one saw another seven runs scored, including another Cuddyer homerun and three hits from the typically scorching Joe Mauer. The run prevention side of the equation left us wanting, though, as Sidney Ponson kept the question open as to whether his ERA or his waistline would end the year further above league average. I would say Ponson is some sort of pathetic example of déjà vu from 2006, but nobody on that roster- not even Tony Batista- was as remarkably hopeless as Ponson. If he remains this out of shape, he may challenge Patrick Ewing’s record of “sweatiest athlete in the first five minutes of a sporting event.” Sixteen hits and four shutout innings of relief helped to pick up Boof Bonser in Saturday’s 7-5 win, making it the weekend’s biggest highlight. The week ended on a sour note nonetheless, as poor weather kept the team from hitting any batting practice. And keeping in mind the adage that “how you practice is how you play in the game,” it should be no surprise that the Twins did not hit in the game either. Jorge De La Rosa cast an eight inning spell on the entire lineup, allowing only another RBI double from Cuddyer. Buddy Bell wisely switched to Joakim Soria for the ninth, putting De La Rosa back in his carriage before he turned back into a pumpkin. The game was something of a microcosm for what has gone wrong for the Twins outside of the pitching staff- although Cuddyer and Mauer each played well, the rest of the lineup mustered only a few singles, and Bartlett committed his Jeter-esque 6^th error of the young season. Now I don’t want to tempt fate by suggesting that he needs more AAA seasoning, but if he keeps fielding this poorly, the AL Gold Glove voters might start thinking of him as serious competition for Jeter’s throne.

Biggest Surprise

Even though it seems counterintuitive to believe that a lifelong underachiever could turn around his career after spending one month with a new pitching coach (his fourth), I keep hoping against hope that Ramon Ortiz is for real. He has been the team’s most valuable pitcher in terms of Value Over Replacement Player, and he has done it by pulling off his best Carlos Silva impression. No, not that Carlos Silva. I’m talking about the one who kept the ball over the plate constantly, but with enough downward movement to prevent extra base hits. Sure enough, Ortiz has given up some singles- a respectable, but not earth-shattering, 6.6 per nine- but walks and homeruns are tougher to come by. His two quality starts this week only resulted in one victory, although the 25-12 groundball-flyball ratio hints at the potential for continued success. Let me be clear: I don’t make a policy out of banking on pitchers with a 3.3 K/9 rate; he’s demanding entirely too much from his defense. With a little improvement, however, the rest of the peripherals are there to keep up a very solid season, munching innings just as Terry Ryan had hoped.

Biggest Disappointment

Maybe it is not fair to call it a disappointment if everyone could see it coming. In any case, Nick Punto’s .204/.283/.315 line could not cut it in the middle infield, and it certainly does not cut it at the hot corner. I know he has not been entirely healthy this year, and I know that he actually managed 5 hits (2 XBHs) over the weekend. Still, this piranha has a long way to go before he convinces me that he is more solution than problem. The history books are littered with guys who could draw a walk now and then with good pitch recognition skills. Without the ability to punish mistakes, though, these same batters eventually stopped walking as pitchers realized they could throw the ball over the plate without repercussions. With an anemic .342 career SLG, Punto does not profile as a Mark Teahen type who eventually learns to start pulling the ball. If he can use his speed and ability to make contact to squeak out a few hits or turn some singles into doubles here and there, he could make himself a solid contributor as an infield super-sub. As a full-time player, though, he is all disappointment.

On the Horizon

The Twins have a full slate this week, welcoming Cleveland and Kansas City to the Dome for two apiece, then traveling to Detroit for three over the weekend to rekindle a matchup that generated some very entertaining games a year ago. Cleveland has looked good, if a little disjointed. That fault can be easily forgiven considering their odd schedule so far. The Twins will likely see the back end of Cleveland’s rotation, with Jeremy Sowers matching up against Silva on Monday, and Fausto Carmona trying to prevent Santana from starting a new Dome winning streak on Tuesday. The Twins could feast on this pair of starters with 5+ ERAs, or they could make them into this week’s Jorge De La Rosa. Only time will tell. Against the Royals, the Twins will get a repeat look at Odalis Perez and Zack Greinke. All four starters saw the opponent over the weekend, so there should be plenty of runs scored.

The Big Picture

Nobody ought to complain about first place in the division. Be wary, though, as the competition has not been terribly stiff and the rest of the division has not found any consistency so far. The Twins are already a win and a half above their run differential, and two and a half wins above their third order projections (based on how many runs they should have scored and prevented, derived from individual performance). According to those numbers, they’re only a .500 team so far, not so hot after facing a bunch of teams who figure to occupy fourth or fifth place in the standings by year’s end. The early returns on the playoff odds report from Baseball Prospectus place the Twins as roughly an even-money bet to make the postseason. Since I saw them as something less than a playoff team before the season began, I have no complaints.

2007-04-22T11:30:00.000-05:00

Brotherly Love

As a child, I recall having difficulty remembering the difference between Eddie Murphy and Eddie Murray. I knew that one was an actor in movies my parents did not want me to watch and that the other had been playing baseball for a very, very long time. Eventually, I caught up on my baseball history as well as my 1980s comedies, making it much easier to keep the two straight. So imagine my surprise when I found, through a blog article on Baseball Reference’s Bullpen, that Eddie Murray had a less successful brother named Charlie Murray. When Eddie Murphy’s big brother Charlie achieved notoriety a few years ago for his contributions to Dave Chappelle’s Comedy Central show, it made for an odd Hollywood family tree branching out in a strange sequence. A similar development in Murray’s family would risk even more confusion with their similar sounding names. In order to maintain some semblance of order to the universe, these pairs of Charlies and Eddies have to be compared and dissected, so let’s go to the tale of the tape.

Greater Overall Value: The Eddies make for a classic comparison between a high peak and great longevity. Murphy burst onto the scene in the early 80s doing impersonations and his Mr. Robinson character on SNL, quickly starred in 48 Hrs. and Beverly Hills Cop, and has spent the last 20 years trying to replicate the success of the first five. Eddie Murray had unbelievably little variation in his remarkably lengthy career. He hit 20 or more homeruns sixteen times, but never more than 33. He had 18 seasons with at least a league average OPS, 12 of which were between 30 and 60 percent better than average. Charlie Murray was more top-heavy, hitting 37 homeruns for the Modesto Colts in 1964, but only 63 in his other 6 professional seasons combined. Since Charlie Murphy was able to break out of similar early-career obscurity to achieve semi-stardom of his own in the last few years, I’ll give the nod in this category to the actors. Advantage: Murphy

Longevity: As I mentioned in the previous comment, Eddie Murray had incredible longevity, a record of consistency as impressive as any in the history of Major League Baseball. The Murphys, too, have stayed in Hollywood for a much longer stretch than the average comedic actor. Despite having ups and downs, both Eddie has been a household name across a couple of generations, and Charlie has been working fairly consistently since his brother cast him in Harlem Nights in 1989. Eddie’s shelf life speaks to the quality of different vices common among celebrities. While Eddie saw comedians like John Belushi and Chris Farley achieve similarly radiant peaks, their drug habits ended their success early. Eddie chose sex over drugs, with eight children by four mothers as evidence, and it was a good decision. Aside from a likely high tolerance for penicillin, he has suffered very little over twenty-five years in showbiz. I’m choosing the Murrays on this one based only on the historic consistency of Eddie’s career, but it is a closer race than it may appear at first. Advantage: Murray

Peak Value: Since it is difficult to even define a peak for Murray, the Murphys have a clear advantage in this field. Finishing in the top five in MVP voting each year from 1981 to 1985, including four consecutive 156 OPS+ seasons makes for a pretty solid stretch. In fact, it was good enough to lead the Orioles to a pair of pennants and one World Championship. Nonetheless, Murray was never even the best known player on his own team, whereas Eddie Murphy was arguably one of the most famous and popular personalities in the entire world for a five or six year stretch in the mid-80s. Even though some of his more recent movies have not been as popular or critically acclaimed, they have done his wallet no harm. He explained his motivation as such, "Every bad decision I've made has been based on money. I grew up in the projects and you don't turn down money there. You take it, because you never know when it's all going to end. I made Cop III because they offered me $15 million. That $15 million was worth having Roger Ebert's thumb up my ass." Twenty million apiece for Pluto Nash, Dr. Doolittle 2, and the Nutty Professor 2 demonstrates that he has had two different periods of remarkable success: one popularly and critically, the other financially. Advantage: Murphy

Versatility: In his career, Eddie Murray played 6 games at third base and 3 in the outfield. Other than those rare occurrences, he mainly plodded around first base and the batter’s box as a full-time DH later in his career. He did manage to steal 110 bases in his career, and possibly ranking behind only Mickey Mantle as the second greatest switch hitter of all-time gives him at least a few points for versatility. His brother, by all reports, was an extremely raw player who never had a chance to fully grow into his skills. Never having played a game until his senior year of high school contributed to developmental difficulty, making him something less than a jack of all trades. Between acting and standup comedy, the Murphys take a decided lead in terms of versatility. Eddie started by pushing the envelope, then starred in a slew of children’s movies (quite successfully), and recently received an Oscar nomination for his dramatic role in Dreamgirls. He can supposedly sing, as well, though “Party All the Time” serves as no evidence of that suggestion. Advantage: Murphy

Debuts: Eddie Murray did about as much as one can ask of a rookie. He debuted as a fully developed 21 year old player, having roughly the season he would have 15 or 20 more times in the future. He hit .283/.333/.470 with 27 homeruns, winning the AL Rookie of the Year Award. His brother managed to hit 16 homeruns in his first professional season, but an average of .180 has to dampen one’s enthusiasm. He repeated that performance the next year, leading the Georgia-Florida League with 15 homeruns, while managing a sub-Mendoza .194 BA. Eddie Murphy’s debut in 48 Hrs. was a very good one, if not his very best work. On the positive side, he got to work with Nick Nolte, and he set the stage for the deluge of 80s buddy cop movies that brighten up cable TV lineups to this day. On the other hand, the movie has not aged particularly well, and it is now almost impossible to find it anywhere on TV. As I mentioned earlier, Charlie Murphy’s first movie was Harlem Nights, the sort of mediocre nepotism which I do not hasten to endorse. Advantage: Murray

Comebacks: Charlie Murray sat out all of 1967 and 1968, possibly to serve in Vietnam. He returned to play in 1969 and 1971, albeit not very well. Charlie Murphy’s renaissance on Chappelle’s Show is one of the more remarkable true Hollywood stories, to the point where a small sect of the population may know more about Charlie than his brother. Before Chapelle, Charlie’s only movie role in three years was Paper Soldiers, basically a neo-blacksploitation movie put together by Jay Z’s Rocafella records partner Damon Dash. If all goes according to schedule, he will have seven movies released this year alone. Since the Eddies have remained famous enough not to necessitate any comebacks, this category belongs to the brothers, and Murphy has a clear win. Advantage: Murphy

Awards: While the Charlies dominated the last category, their more acclaimed siblings have won many more awards. Murphy has won pretty much every award that exists, from Grammys for his comedy albums, to Emmys for SNL and the PJs, to a Golden Globe for Dreamgirls. He has never won an Oscar, which has to be considered the MVP of acting trophies. Perhaps more importantly, he got a Razzie in 1989 for acting in and directing Harlem Nights, which was a bad, bad movie. Murray also failed to reach the pinnacle in his sport, compiling a pair of MVP runner-ups, but losing out to Robin Yount in 1982 and teammate Cal Ripken in 1983. With the aforementioned Rookie of the Year under his belt, eight All-Star Games, three Gold Gloves at first base, and three Silver Slugger awards, Murray has a very strong resume. Altogether, it is a very close race. Slight Advantage: Murray

In conclusion, after breaking down the most important achievements of Eddie/Charlie Murray and Murphy, the Murphys come out ahead 4-3, confirming my intuitive believe that the Murphy brothers have had a slightly more prestigious career. Comparing them to Eddie Murray and his more accomplished brother Rich might have been a more fair comparison, but it lacks the intrigue of similarity. As a result, those trying to keep track of which Eddie plays baseball and which acts cannot rely on family ties alone, but can fall back on the Murphys being the ones with greater success.

2007-04-14T10:41:00.001-05:00

Same Song, Second Verse

Why has it been seven years since the New York Yankees won the World Series? Roster construction, situational hitting, bullpen depth, and managerial decision making have certainly played a roll in The Boss’ torment, but starting pitching stands out as the number one factor differentiating the three-peat Yankees from the $200 million albatross continually crapping out before the pennant. The continuity of Andy Pettitte, David Cone and Orlando Hernandez served them well through the late ‘90s, and more recent teams have scrambled to find the right mix throughout the regular season, and especially into the postseason.

My point here is not that the Yankees need to rededicate themselves to finding consistent starting pitching. While that may be a desirable end for New Yorkers, I believe it is more instructive to look at teams who have captured lightning in a bottle long enough to get good performances out of an entire starting rotation. The 2005 Pale Hoes blew people’s sox off by winning about 20 more games than anyone expected, mostly behind the simultaneous ascension of the entire starting rotation. In looking for the 2006 version of Cinderella, very few analysts fingered the Detroit Tigers, and it would be hard to blame them. The sheer improbability that Detroit would make the leap from mediocrity to dominance the year after reshaping their entire roster did not sound like a plausible proposition at the time, and it still seems at least a bit quizzical.

Looking at the teams’ components, though, it ought not shock anyone that the Tigers were up to the task. In broad strokes, the team featured a fly catching outfield and a rangy infield without any pronounced weaknesses. Offensively, they mimicked the White Sox top-to-bottom consistency, as well as their lack of an overpowering force that would distinguish them from other average offenses. The pitching staff, though, seemed to have far less upside than the one that broke through for Chicago the year before. Jeremy Bonderman and Justin Verlander both had high ceilings, but neither had achieved anything like greatness in the majors. And the rest of the rotation did not seem to provide the depth that kept the Sox in so many games the year before, as Kenny Rogers and Mike Maroth struck fear in the hearts of few. Nonetheless, the Tigers exploded early in the season and kept the pace long enough to get to the World Series. Here, I will take a deeper look at the numbers behind the similarities to see if there is some sort of trend that has benefited the Sox and the Tigers at the expense of teams like the Yankees.

Last	Year	IP	ERA	EqH9	EqBB9	EqSO9	EqHR9	VORP	BABIP
Buehrle	2005	198.3	4.47	10.2	2.0	5.1	1.0	35.1	NA
Garcia	2005	178.7	4.55	9.4	2.6	6.5	1.1	30.5	NA
Contreras	2005	129.3	4.91	8.9	3.6	7.3	1.1	17.1	NA
Garland	2005	169.3	5.05	10.1	2.9	4.7	1.2	19.7	NA
Hernandez	2005	113.0	4.35	8.8	3.2	7.0	1.1	24.2	NA
McCarthy	2005	82.3	4.77	9.3	2.4	6.5	1.4	12.7	NA

Buehrle	actual	236.7	3.12	9.1	1.5	5.7	0.8	54.8	0.295
Garcia	actual	228.0	3.87	8.9	2.4	5.8	1.0	45.7	0.285
Contreras	actual	204.7	3.61	7.8	3.3	6.8	1.0	42.1	0.263
Garland	actual	221.0	3.50	8.6	1.9	4.7	1.0	50.7	0.27
Hernandez	actual	128.3	5.12	9.6	3.5	6.4	1.3	6.9	0.306
McCarthy	actual	67.0	4.03	8.3	2.3	6.5	1.8	13.6	0.251

Last	Year	IP	ERA	EqH9	EqBB9	EqSO9	EqHR9	VORP	BABIP
Verlander	2006	153.0	4.20	8.7	2.9	6.5	1.0	19.4	.287
Robertson	2006	184.7	4.35	9.3	2.8	5.6	0.9	18.9	.295
Rogers	2006	167.0	4.87	10.2	2.6	4.3	1.1	7.1	.299
Bonderman	2006	194.7	4.05	8.8	2.8	6.8	0.9	28.1	.294
Maroth	2006	192.7	4.41	9.8	2.2	4.6	1.0	19.4	.296
Ledezma	2006	78.7	5.39	9.9	3.8	5.8	1.2	-0.5	.304

Verlander	actual	186.0	3.63	9.0	2.9	6.0	1.0	47.5	.297
Robertson	actual	208.7	4.28	8.9	2.9	5.9	1.3	42.4	.281
Rogers	actual	204.0	3.84	8.6	2.7	4.4	1.0	40.6	.265
Bonderman	actual	214.0	4.08	9.0	2.7	8.5	0.8	39.8	.323
Maroth	actual	53.7	4.36	10.7	2.7	4.0	1.8	10.0	.291
Ledezma	actual	60.3	3.58	9.0	3.4	5.8	0.8	12.6	.286
Miner	actual	93.0	4.84	9.7	3.1	5.7	1.1	9.6	.305

The data in the table compares PECOTA’s projections before each team’s breakout season with the starting pitchers’ actual contributions. Although the projections for the teams’ pitchers do not look wildly different, it is important to note that not everyone saw them on the same path going into their respective years. The White Sox were often seen in an unflattering light. Having just traded Carlos Lee for Scott Podsednik, it seemed that their powerful offense would have more trouble keeping up with a solid, yet unspectacular, pitching staff. Joe Sheehan predicted 71 wins, largely due to the fact that he did not believe in the starting rotation.

“The pitching staff isn't going to make up for the falloff in runs scored. Freddy Garcia and Mark Buehrle are mid-rotation innings guys who get paid like aces. They head a rotation that's long on hope--not just one, but two Cubans with shaky recent track records exiled from the Bronx--and short on anything you can rely upon.”

I do not mean to pick on Sheehan; I believe his comments are representative of many fans going into 2005. The White Sox came out of the dark to the point that I was still anticipating their collapse when they were ahead 2-0 in the World Series. The Tigers, on the other hand, at least looked as if they had some chance to improve. Sheehan picked them to win 78 games, commenting that they would be “an interesting team to watch.” While short of contention, he at least saw some positives coming out of the motor city.

Obviously, the results of the games told a different story, as each team came close to 100 wins and caught fire in the postseason. Is there some common theme that we should have identified to help us see these teams coming? Looking into the data, there does not seem to be any systematic shortcoming causing under-projections for either team. Chicago skinned the cat by dramatically limiting base runners: every started except El Duque outperformed both the walk and hit surrendered projections. On average, the White Sox were 9% better than the projections in hits allowed per nine, and a whopping 16% better in walks per nine innings pitched. Naturally, teams will have trouble scoring runs when most of their plate appearances end in outs.

Detroit’s projections were not so far off. Like Hernandez in Chicago, Mike Maroth was the lone disappointment standing out from a group that met or exceeded expectations, although this unit’s improvements were less staggering. As an aggregate, their actual performance was within 3% of the cumulative projections for all of the major rate stats- hits, walks, strikeouts and homeruns. They beat or met their ERA projections across the board, so some of the variance comes from factors outside of this relatively broad scope (such as stranding runners, turning double plays, and other factors over which the pitcher has less control). Despite these differences, I can identify five key similarities between the two staffs, some by design and some by happenstance.

An ace taking a big step forward, regardless of defensive help. Mark Buehrle’s career year was a major factor in Chicago’s 2005 success. He did not replicate that step in 2006, and has started shakily in 2005. Nonetheless, Buehrle was fantastic in 2005, far above the label of innings eater, primarily because he made very few mistakes (miniscule 1.5 BB/9 and 0.8 HR/9 rates). These numbers indicate that he trusted a very strong defensive unit, and did so without cutting down on his strikeout rate. Justin Verlander did not have the consistent track record that Buehrle had going into his breakout season, but he was a highly touted prospect who arrived all at once. Across the board, his numbers came very close to PECOTA’s projections, except for his ERA, which was more than half of a run better. That luck combined with his solid durability at a tender age made him the most valuable of the team’s starting pitchers, at least in terms of Value Over Replacement Player.

A mid-rotation starter who looked much better by getting defensive help and limiting walks. Jon Garland, meet Kenny Rogers. Sure, the gambler has a much longer rap sheet than Garland, but look at how much each player benefited from his defense. Even though there were no projections for batting average on balls in play in 2005, notice that every prediction for 2006 hovered between about .290 and .300 with small variations for extreme groundball or flyball pitchers. Garland’s defense took about 25 points off of that average, giving up only a .270 average on balls in play. Rogers got even more help with a .265 BABIP, though he did not slice a full walk per nine innings off of his rate projection like Garland did. In any case, each pitcher chipped in over 200 innings with an ERA below 4.00, and very strong defenses deserve some of the credit in both occurrences.

Beating innings projections by keeping their most effective pitchers healthy. One of the interesting aspects of the Yankees’ starting pitching is that they consistently had 4 starters making 27 or more starts in each of their four World Championship seasons in the ‘90s, and have returned to that level of consistency only twice in the last six years. With four 200 inning pitchers apiece, the White Sox and Tigers got consistent performances out of their best pitchers, which helps for the simple reason that each inning pitched by a good starter is one that does not have to be completed by a lesser replacement. I do not know if there is some demonstrable effect on a defense or a pitcher’s endurance after remaining consistent through the regular season, but these teams’ rates of success seem to indicate that there is even more benefit to keeping pitchers healthy than is readily apparent. The coaching staffs for the teams also deserve credit for getting the most out of their starters without overworking them and keeping them ready throughout the season.

Getting some luck by losing their ineffective pitchers to injury and having young starters replace them with greater success. It is a valuable skill to be able to keep your effective players healthy. It is considerably luckier to have the ineffective ones break down. Perhaps Orlando Hernandez and Mike Maroth were hindered by pitching with pain, which would explain some of their struggles. If not, the teams were quite fortunate that they went down, since Brandon McCarthy, Zach Miner (for whom no PECOTA projection even existed in 2006), and Wil Ledezma provided much stronger innings than the men they replaced. It is no surprise that pitching depth is a good thing, and these teams did well to stock up on major league ready talent that did not cost several million dollars to serve as insurance policies.

Little regression among older players. While there is a great deal of volatility with younger players, both teams have to be thankful that guys like Jose Contreras and Kenny Rogers did not start feeling the effects of age. El Duque showed some wear and tear, but even he was better than most pitchers in their late thirties (or maybe even mid 40s, who knows).

Ideally, these similarities would provide some sort of formula for projecting future breakouts. Unfortunately, I do not think it is quite so clean as that. A handful of teams have some of the characteristics, but lack some key components. The Phillies have a rotation that goes six deep with breakout candidates at the top in Cole Hamels and Brett Myers. Without any semblance of a defense, though, it is hard to see them impersonating the White Sox and Tigers. The Diamondbacks have a good defense and lots of name pitchers. On the other hand, I do not see Randy Johnson, Doug Davis, and Livan Hernandez all making it through the season healthy. Maybe the best candidate is yet another AL Central team, the Cleveland Indians. With lots of young pitching talent and an improved defense, it would only take some surprises from Paul Byrd and Jake Westbrook to change a pretty good unit into an exceptional one.