Thread: Sooooo.... Capps

In an attempt to quell my residual anger from a certain trade that will not be mentioned..... I'm going with the belief that splitter-happens this Spring. But as to sample size, take a look at the following link compared to the regular season stats.

2009 Spring Training http://espn.go.com/mlb/springStats/_...009/type/pitch
2009 Regular Season http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/MIN/2009.shtml
--> Vast assumption is that these are accurate.

Some numbers track into the regular season, some don't.

Spring Training is a time for the coaches to evaluate new talent, and for the established veterans to work on stuff. No matter how much fun it is to try and rely on the Spring stats (and I fall into this trap myself every year), we just won't know how bad he is, I mean how well he does, until the year starts.

I predict he'll be about league median for closers, meaning nothing special. He'll "save" 80% of his opportunities. Hopefully he overachieves and some other club that over values closers will trade for him.

Originally Posted by mike wants wins

I predict he'll be about league median for closers, meaning nothing special. He'll "save" 80% of his opportunities. Hopefully he overachieves and some other club that over values closers will trade for him.

Is it possible for the Twins to trade him to themselves?

I wasn't a fan of the Capps for Ramos deal, wasn't a fan of resigning him instead of signing multiple other relievers for the same price (and getting yet another pick), and generally am not a fan of Capps.

BUT...let's keep this in perspective. People are talking about the guy like he's complete garbage, and he isn't. He's had 6 big-league full seasons, and four of them have been excellent. He rebounded from a terrible 2009 to close games for both the Nationals and Twins in 2010, and for what that job requires (which isn't much), he did pretty good.

I refuse to believe there wasn't something wrong with him last year. Throughout his career, he's never been a "flamethrower", but he could strikeout 7.0+ per nine innings. Last year, that dipped to an abysmal 4.7 K/9. And yet, because he has excellent control for a loser, the end result was a 4.25 ERA and a still very good WHIP of 1.20. In fact, he has a career WHIP of 1.197, which basically means that he doesn't let many people on base.

This is the direction we went. It's not the direction we wanted, but this bullpen is now very shallow and Capps and Perkins are really the only two guys I trust to any degree coming out of it. I understand that he's frustrating for the fans to watch, and he has seemed prone to a few dramatic blowups where everything goes wrong at once. But I'm also not prepared to completely abandon him as a Twins fan just because he had one bad year, which wasn't even that big of a disaster. If you believe at all in a track record, the odds are in favor of Capps bouncing back and being useful this year.

but blown-saves are not...

So Weaver, Sabathia, Holland et all won't be able to step up their games and will all end up with ERA's over 5.00? Professional athletes change their focus based on the stakes, I expect his execution to be much better once the season begins, we'll see if that's good enough.

Perhaps we should have kept Nathan, his ERA is over 10.00, granted it's only over 7 innings but if I were the Rangers I wouldn't be too ecstatic about the $14 million I just spent.....not that I don't love Joe.

Originally Posted by twinsnorth49

So Weaver, Sabathia, Holland et all won't be able to step up their games and will all end up with ERA's over 5.00? Professional athletes change their focus based on the stakes, I expect his execution to be much better once the season begins, we'll see if that's good enough.

Perhaps we should have kept Nathan, his ERA is over 10.00, granted it's only over 7 innings but if I were the Rangers I wouldn't be too ecstatic about the $14 million I just spent.....not that I don't love Joe.

That Rangers team is loaded. Nathan's second-half performance last year (after he got some time to get his arm back) was actually pretty good. Granted, the stakes weren't exactly that high, and the knock on Nathan (for me anyway) was that he tended to implode at the worst possible times in September pennant runs or in the ALDS. He was a dominant reliever for many years, but his success was inflated to a degree by the fact that he got to fan out wussy Indians and Royals lineups over and over again. And since he's only brought into the game against a team we're already beating, it's not like he even had that many opportunities to pitch in the 9th against the Yankees and Red Sox.

Nathan can fail and they still have Mike Adams and Uehara. Or could shift Feliz back to the pen. The TWINS have far worse concerns with their bullpen, for sure.

Many players, especially pitchers experiment in ST. Pitchers work on new pitches and try to get a feel for their regular ones. I'm with Thrylos, we don't know what pitches he was throwing when he gave up those dingers. If his line looks the similar on May 1, then I will be concerned.

Well, I'm concerned, and I don't think it is foolish to be so. Whether Capps was trying to work on a new pitch, or whether he wasn't at full strength last year - we know these things because Capps was saying after the fact. He has literally done nothing over most of last year and this year to inspire confidence, and so I don't feel foolish being ill at ease.

The good news is that there's still Perkins. That might just mean Capps blows leads earlier in the game, but at least that means it's earlier in the game, when the Twins have an opportunity to come back.

Originally Posted by It's The Trees.

closers are overrated.

Closers might be, but blown saves are not. Let's do some back-of-the-napkin figuring....

Capps blew 40% of the games he was trying to save last year, an absurd percentage. The average closer, even if he's trying to protect just a one-run lead, converts something like 90%.

A closer on a good team is asked to save about 50 games. The difference between blowing 5 of them (90%) and 15 of them (70%) is a ten game swing. And because they happen in the ninth inning, the team generally has very little chance to come back from them. Even if they just to go extra innings, that's a five game swing, which is huge for a competitive team.

"Closers are overrated" can mean a lot of things - they've overpaid, they're babied, etc. So I don't know what that means. Instead, I'll state a truth is so obvious as to make the statement itself absurd: it's REALLY important to protect a close lead in the ninth inning. And the guy that the Twins are giving that role to has been really bad at it, and didn't inspire any hope this spring that he's got any better at it.

@John Bonnes,

Actually an Elite Closer converts about 90% of his save opportunities, the average closer is probably closer to 80%.

My concern with Capps is and always has been is that he isn't a prototypical closer. Most closer have at least one out pitch to get them out of a jam. I don't see that with Capps. He has a fastball that doesn't move and tops out at about 93 mph, a slider that hung a lot last year and an average changeup. He is fine for a run of the mill reliever, but my belief is that if you are going to designate a guy your closer he needs to have something that is an A+ pitch that can get guys out for 1 inning. If I were the Twins I would treat the 9th inning like any other inning and pitch to the situation, instead of designating a guy who realistically has a 50/50 chance (4.50 ERA = 1 Run every 2 innings pitched) of giving up a run every time he comes into the 9th.

I just replied to this conversation in general but wanted to add on to your 90% conversion rate. I think Capps will have an ERA around 4.50 this year. Again some back of the napking figuring tells me that in an average 9 inning game he would give up 4.5 runs. Now extrapolate that throughout an entire season and inning by inning and you could figure that he would give up 1 run every other save opportunity. Now if you figure he gets 60 save chances and assume that 1/3 of those are 1 run leads he is in to protect. Of those 1 run leads using this forecasting assumption he would blow 10 of 60 save opportunities (assuming he never gave up more than 1 run and converted all 2 and 3 run leads). 50 out of 60 is 83%, which is well below the average. Personally I think Capps is more like to convert somewhere between 70-75% which is 15 blown games. . . I guess what I am longwindedly getting at is, I don't think Capps should be a closer. Go into the 9th and play the odds and the situation until you find a legitimate closer.

I didn't read anywhere in these posts anyone complaining about Capps continuously going out to pitch when he knew he was injured. Why is that fact being ignored? To me that is the most irritating thing about the whole situation. I understand not using it as an excuse, but if you are injured you are injured. Go and the DL and get better.

My opinion on the Capps signing is that the Twins knew they weren't going to be needing a closer that much this year. No need to go crazy and pay big money to a closer that probably is not much better than Capps. Sign Capps and hope if by some miracle the Twins contend this year, Capps will be able to do the job. If they are out of it by July, try to trade him and have Perkins and Guttierez audition in the second half of the season for the closer spot. When the Twins turn this around, the majority of these players aren't going to be on the team. The next two years are basically buying time until the younger players improve.

By the way, you got to love Rick Anderson's response to the fact Capps is working on a new pitch. He said pitchers come up with a new pitch when they are starting to lose it. He didn't say that exactly, but I am paraphrasing.

6-5 Twins, 1 win, 1 close...

Capps wants to prove to all the Twins fans he can close. Last night he did. Now he has to keep doing it.

Every closer we have ever had, made me nervous. The thing I like about Capps? He throws hard and he throws strikes. Everyone eventually gets knocked around, but make them earn their way onto the bases. Did you see Broxton last night. Two HBP's in a row to lose the game for the Royals.

I believe that Capps is a good Pitcher, but today was a prime example of why most Closer's need to be power Pitchers that miss bats.

Pitch to contact + too many Balls in play can = trouble.

They dodged a Bullet.

2-for-2!! Woo hoo!

I don't care how Capps does it, as long as he finishes his job. he'll blow a few, but his track record shows more then a few, hope 2012 will be different. -Go Twins!