How does the Twins performance up the middle compare to the other teams of the AL Central? With the help of fangraphs, here is how the AL Central teams performed up the middle. Catcher (Ranked by wRC+) Tigers (4th) 100 Royals (7th) 87 Indians (8th) 86 White Sox (9th) 80 Twins (13th) 56 For fear of long discussion about WAR, I will leave it out. For the other positions, I will put some defensive rankings. We could start a thread and argue about catcher defense and framing also. I will state
The Twins bullpen has the poorest strike out rate in the majors. This is not a surprise and was projected when the 25 man roster was announced. The Twins may need to trade for bullpen help at the deadline. Before that happens, I hope they look at solutions internally. The Twins need at most one LOOGY as opposed to the two they are using now. These pitchers are possible internal solutions. The split rates are since 2011 unless otherwise specified. That allows a large enough sample in taking a
As Ervin Santana gets ready for his first start in Rochester, I wondered what the impact of his loss has been on the Twins thus far. Mike Pelfrey was his immediate replacement and he has certainly stepped up to the task. He has far outperformed what we might have expected from Santana. It isn't really fair to compare his performance to just Pelfrey though. I looked at the performance of Pelfrey, May and Milone. All three had opportunities that may not have been available had Santana not let do
With the depth of the Twins system, they will have several players that need to be put on the 40 man roster this winter to avoid the rule 5 draft. Are there so many that the Twins should consider trading some of them this summer? How many spots will reasonably be available this winter? With the DFA of Tim Stauffer, the Twins currently have 40 men on their 40 man roster. There is one spot available as Ervin Santana will not count until he return in July. The Twins will have some players ente
Terry Ryan has had success finding bargains in winter free agency. Kurt Suzuki was an all star. Jared Burton was a top set up man. Ryan Doumit provided a very good bat. In all three cases, the Twins chose to extend into their thirties rather than sell. It is not possible to know what the offers could have been for those players. They were all performing well enough to be valued by other teams and there would have been offers. All three could point to some aspect of their games or health that had
You have to be excited about Adam Brett Walker's performance in AA. He leads all AA players with an ISO of .312. This isn't new. He had the second best ISO in the Florida State League last year at .190. Where is all of the top prospect love? It is hard to get past his strike out rates. Not only does he lead all AA players in ISO but he also leads in strike out rate at 35.5%. Some look at the strike out rate and dismiss Walker as a prospect. Certainly major league pitchers would take better adv
Reading the article on the first big Twin trade, helped me recall the first three Minnesota Twin trades that were minor on the field yet involving three legends. Ernie Oravetz was traded for Ed Palmquist and Joe Altobelli. All three were career minor leaguers and Palmquist and Altobelli did play some for the Twins after they acquired them. Altobelli managed in the major leagues for the Giants, Orioles and Cubs. He won a World Series for the Orioles. People in Rochester know him as Mr. Baseba
Spring training is meaningful. Jobs are won and lost as a result. They should be. Statistics from spring training exhibition games have no meaning. They should not be kept, reported or used in support of roster making decisions. I hope the Twins don't keep them or use them. Not only is the data in a sample too small to be meaningful but the level of competition varies. It is critical the Twins get the roster right though. They need to rely on the skill of the coaching staff and other staff
The Twins have invested over 100 million dolars in their pitching rotation buying 8 seasons of starting pitching. What can they expect for their $100,000,000? I started with Ervin Santana looking for a similar group. From ages 27-31 he has performed at a 99 ERA+ with about 1000 innings pitched. I wondered how other groups of pitchers performed from ages 27-31. With the help of BR's play index, I searched for all pitchers since 1975 who have pitched at least 900 innings in their age 27 through
Are we confident in the Twins handling and developing of Alex Meyer? Does he need more time in AAA? Should he have been called up last June? We don't really know what has prevented the Twins from calling up Alex Meyer. We speculate it is his walk rate. How unusual is it for a pitcher with his stuff to give up a lot of walks in AAA? How would other teams respond? Do all teams wait for their pitchers with good stuff to manage their walk rates? Here are some pitchers and their walks per 9 in
What do the Twins do about Plouffe and Dozier? Extend? Go year to year? Hope to sell high at 30? There has been some great discussion started by Seth on Dozier and Plouffe. There also have been studies that show aging curves in the post steroid era are changing. Fewer players are maintaining their peak seasons into their thirties. There are many studies to read. Here is one by Jeff Zimmerman for Fangraphs. I wondered how players currently around 33 years old have aged. With the help of pla
The Twins have been notoriously slow at moving pitchers through the system while they wait for consistency. I thought it might be interesting to see how some of other young pitchers moved through their systems. How about Yordano Ventura? Yordano Ventura and Alex Meyer both pitched in the Carolina League in 2012. Meyer started in low-A and arrived about the time Ventura was leaving. What was the Royals plan for Ventura? Did they wait for consistency? 2010- He started the year in the Dominican s
Jordan Schafer is at his 4th stop having moved from Atlanta to Houston to Atlanta prior to being claimed by Minnesota. He enters next season as a 28 year old with a significant 1398 plate appearances. Is there a chance that the once highly rated prospect can turn it around at age 28? Has it happened before? I used Baseball Reference's play index seeking an answer. I wanted a group of outfielders that had a similar number of plate appearances and performance through age 27. A group where Schafe
Baseball Prospectus has pitch framing data organized by battery. Framing data by battery The data looks at pitches where the umpire needs to make the call and compares actual strikes with predicted strikes. While looking at splits creates small sample sizes, I wondered if it would be clear that Josmil Pinto's framing skills are significantly worse than Kurt Suzuki. The natural place to start is Glenn Perkins. Chances Predicted Actual +/- Josmil Pint
Glen Perkins talked about Josmil Pinto and his ability to frame pitches. He didn't mention Kurt Suzuki. I guess he wasn't asked. Nor was he asked about Ryan Doumit in previous years. Since 2011 it has been debated about the Twins decision making on catcher and defense. At best, they are waiting to see if the data that has been available for many season has validity. At worst, they are ignorant and that ignorance shows in their roster decisions as well as their development of catchers in the mi
With the signings of Kubel, Bartlett and Guerrier, comments overwhelmingly went like these below. No risk? No impact on the 40 man roster? Alex Presley Brooks Raley Darin Mastroianni Signing decline phase players (even to minor league contracts) does have a risk. It kept the Twins from seeking other younger solutions. It invests playing time into players with no upside. It costs a few younger players on the 40 man roster who have a better long term shot at being a role
Sample sizes for a few ratios are becoming large enough to consider. For pitchers, strike out rate stabilizes at 70 batters faced and ground ball and fly ball rate stabilizes at 70 balls in play. By stabilizing, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is the new expected rate. It does mean that any significant changes from previous year cannot be written off to small sample size. For minor leaguers a drop or change likely coincides with a step up in classification and the necessary adjustment. It is al
The contrast in rebuild between the a White a Sox and Twins is shown in the acquisition of 27 and under players since last opening day. White Sox Adam Eaton Adrian Nieto Avisail Garcia Jose Abreau Leary Garcia Maikel Clato Conor Gilaspie almost makes the list. He was acquired last spring training. Twins Phil Hughes (actually it is his age 28 season and he is older than any of the White Sox 7) There has been an argument that the Twins can't go young because they don't gave any
I thought and hoped this would be the year where the Twins would go with youth. I should have known better. The direction for the winter roster construction was made clear when they retained Josh Willingham last August. Earl Battey was the catcher when I first became a young Twin fan. I recall his western oil 8x10 card hanging my wall among other Twin heroes. Those years were great. I didn't know how lucky I was to follow a team that was competitive or at least entertaining every year. There h
There are two teams with winning records the last three seasons in the Grapefruit League. The Twins and Tigers. In fact, the Twins have the longest string of winning records and haven't had a losing season since 2007 thanks to the performance of players like Aaron Hicks, Luke Hughes, Cole DeVries and Matt Maloney. ... and it means nothing. Spring training records and individual stat lines have no meaning. They shouldn't be used to argue that one player or another should make the roster.
Mike Berardino reported yesterday that Terry Ryan expected Kurt Suzuki to start at catcher. At the time of the signing, it appeared that Suzuki was signed to gibe the Twins a veteran backup. On this site, there were certainly questions about his defense and concern about the workload he carried early in his career. At the time, the best available options other than Suzuki were John Buck or retaining Doumit. While Suzuki has shown to be a poor pitch framer, Doumit and Buck are at the bottom. P
Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) measures what a player’s ERA should have looked like over a given time period, assuming that performance on balls in play and timing were league average. Fangraphs relies on FIP to calculate WAR for pitchers. Is FIP independent of the catcher? The following table shows pitching performance by catcher over the last two seasons. [TABLE=width: 500] Catcher Inn K/BB FIP Joe Mauer 1286 2.32 4.32 Ryan Doumit 865 1.65 4.78 Drew Butera 307 2.53 3.80 C
Two topics that appeared in the forums led me to wonder which teams are getting the platoon advantage. How did the Indians do it? I look at their numbers and see a combined 6.1 WAR from Jan Gomes and Ryan Raburn. Those cheap additions will be the difference between contending for the wild card and being on the fringe. Francona has found a role for them to put up fantastic numbers. We also debated about how platooning might help the Twins. I wondered how often teams are getting the platoon
My last blog topic on catcher defense was last November. The trade of Butera has prompted a revisit. Through July 26 while Ryan Doumit was catching, 46 out of zone balls were called strikes and 205 in zone strikes were called balls. They convert it to a ratio which for Doumit would be 0.22 extra strikes/lost strikes. That ratio is the worst in baseball and the next for a current catcher is twice the ratio at 0.44. The data is from Baseball Prospectus. How much difference does that make in te
I am not a follower of Donald Trump. I have participated in several no kings rallies and am disgusted with what he and his followers have done to our country and the world. I would like to know what most Brazilians feel about the United States now and about the folks our citizens have elected to represent us.
Just read your article on Twins defense this year and I couldn’t agree more. Pair poor defense with an over abundance of left handed hitters, players who have failed to show they can hit consistently, and a pitching staff lacking in quality starters (Ryan excepted) and we have the makings of a team that is going to lose90-100 games this year.
hello Seth......you'll wanna correct the date in headline of today's minor league report. :-) Brad· 0 replies
I am not a follower of Donald Trump. I have participated in several no kings rallies and am disgusted with what he and his followers have done to our country and the world. I would like to know what most Brazilians feel about the United States now and about the folks our citizens have elected to represent us.· 1 reply
New Game thread format!· 0 replies
Just read your article on Twins defense this year and I couldn’t agree more. Pair poor defense with an over abundance of left handed hitters, players who have failed to show they can hit consistently, and a pitching staff lacking in quality starters (Ryan excepted) and we have the makings of a team that is going to lose90-100 games this year.· 0 replies
