Fangraphs (and other national publications) on the Twins

[Mike Sixel]

Mario Mendoza12:24 Jorge Polanco???? FG prospect writers always spoke highly of him, but man, he was so bad, and, now, he's so hot. Did something click? What do expect for 2018?

 

Eno Sarris12:24 Maybe that's what I should write about. Because it's crazy to me. And I don't know why.

 

Art Vandelay 12:37 I know the Twins have a rough playoff history against the Yankees, but I feel like a wild card game is exactly the thing to exorcise those demons. I'm here for it. WIN TWINS! WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

Eno Sarris 12:37 Put it all on Berrios?

 

$11 Worth of Taco Bell  1:27 Should Max Kepler hit for more power than he has?

 

Eno Sarris  1:27 Does not hit the ball very hard or in great angles. But wears out the ball down the line and is smart. Good player, not great, shouldn't hit for more power unless he adjusts.

 

1:33 Heraclitus: Does Trevor Hildenberger have top-ten reliever upside?

 

1:33 Eno Sarris: Funky release, tough on guys who haven’t seen him before, doubt he’s a closer type.

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/eno-sarris-baseball-chat-91417/

 

 

[Mike Sixel]

An article on Polanco:

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jorge-polancos-three-step-process/

 

[Mike Sixel]

9:35Julio Pepper: Byron Buxton is running a 250 wRC+ on bunts. While there are diminishing returns to doing more of anything in baseball, it feels like Byron Buxton isn’t at that point. Should he be bunting a lot more?

 

9:35  Jeff Sullivan: His wRC+ on bunts last year was 78
9:36  Jeff Sullivan: He’s already third in baseball this year in bunt hits. I think he could probably stand to bunt a *little* more often but now that he can actually hit, it’s more something to keep in his back pocket

 

 

10:35   Otani Danza: Twins have six games against NYY(3) and CLE(3) but have 5 games against DET.  Mariners have six against HOU and CLE and they’re 3.5 back.  Mariner chances of hauling them back over under 10%?

 

10:35   Jeff Sullivan: Mariners need a miracle
10:36   O’s Nos : Realistically does anyone have a shot at the second AL wild card other than the Twins, Angels, and maybe the Mariners?
10:36   Jeff Sullivan: Not really. Twins’ recent strong play has mostly locked it up

 

11:01   Jay: Am I wrong to still not buy these performances from Buxton and Zunino? Both running high BABIPs, K% only slightly improved and Buxton’s BB% is actually down all while neither have seen a huge change in batted ball profile.

 

 

11:01   Jeff Sullivan: You’re not wrong to be wary. Zunino is kind of maxing out his power, and that’s a volatile skill. And with Buxton, I was encouraged by his improvement in contact rate, but lately that’s started to go away again
11:02
Jeff Sullivan: Maybe the more important takeaway is that neither player needs to be a good hitter to be valuable, because Zunino is a catcher, and Buxton is a tremendous baserunner who might be the best defensive center fielder on the planet

 

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jeff-sullivan-fangraphs-chat-91517/

[Thrylos]

Baseball Prospectus by Mr Matthew Trueblood: Rubbing Mud: The Arrival of Kyle Gibson

 

Draw your own conclusions.

[old nurse]

 

9:35Julio Pepper: Byron Buxton is running a 250 wRC+ on bunts. While there are diminishing returns to doing more of anything in baseball, it feels like Byron Buxton isn’t at that point. Should he be bunting a lot more?

 

9:35  Jeff Sullivan: His wRC+ on bunts last year was 78
9:36  Jeff Sullivan: He’s already third in baseball this year in bunt hits. I think he could probably stand to bunt a *little* more often but now that he can actually hit, it’s more something to keep in his back pocket

 

 

10:35   Otani Danza: Twins have six games against NYY(3) and CLE(3) but have 5 games against DET.  Mariners have six against HOU and CLE and they’re 3.5 back.  Mariner chances of hauling them back over under 10%?

 

10:35   Jeff Sullivan: Mariners need a miracle
10:36   O’s Nos : Realistically does anyone have a shot at the second AL wild card other than the Twins, Angels, and maybe the Mariners?
10:36   Jeff Sullivan: Not really. Twins’ recent strong play has mostly locked it up

 

11:01   Jay: Am I wrong to still not buy these performances from Buxton and Zunino? Both running high BABIPs, K% only slightly improved and Buxton’s BB% is actually down all while neither have seen a huge change in batted ball profile.

 

 

11:01   Jeff Sullivan: You’re not wrong to be wary. Zunino is kind of maxing out his power, and that’s a volatile skill. And with Buxton, I was encouraged by his improvement in contact rate, but lately that’s started to go away again
11:02
Jeff Sullivan: Maybe the more important takeaway is that neither player needs to be a good hitter to be valuable, because Zunino is a catcher, and Buxton is a tremendous baserunner who might be the best defensive center fielder on the planet

 

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jeff-sullivan-fangraphs-chat-91517/

Byron Buxton has a .332 BABIP. That is not that high for a player with speed.

[Brock Beauchamp]

Byron Buxton has a .332 BABIP. That is not that high for a player with speed.

That's still pretty high. Maybe Buxton can max out around .350 but it's hard to see him higher than that. My understanding is that line drive rate correlates more strongly with BABIP than speed.

[amjgt]

That's still pretty high. Maybe Buxton can max out around .350 but it's hard to see him higher than that. My understanding is that line drive rate correlates more strongly with BABIP than speed.

Seems to me that someone that is bunting for a decent amount of hits is going to have an inflated BABIP

[old nurse]

 

That's still pretty high. Maybe Buxton can max out around .350 but it's hard to see him higher than that. My understanding is that line drive rate correlates more strongly with BABIP than speed.

Speed has a  little correlation.  Buxton has about a 1% higher LD % than league average.  About 25 % than league average,  on bunts. That is about half of the difference between his  BABIP and league average. Spray charts show a good number of line drives over the shortsop.

[Otto von Ballpark]

Thank you. On top of removing agency from the player (and where your lawyer analogy falls a bit short) is the use of "did". That's not passive. That's declaring an act perpetrated by someone (in this case, named).

 

Again, without evidence. With no bias, that statement would have read much more benign and would have pointed out a deficiency in peripheral stats, not an accusation of wrong doing.

 

Doubly so in seven ****ing starts. Fangraphs writers know better than that, which is my real point. Are they attention grabbing ESPN talking heads? Are they Souhan? Or are they Fangraphs writers?

 

I expect better of them because I know they're better, particularly in a situation that was so easily avoidable (and should have been avoidable by default minus bias).

Have you considered that your bias here might be on just as much display as the writer's? Imagine if the question was about buying Trevor Cahill, and the chat response was "No. I don't know what the Royals did to him, but it wasn't good." Is that really a statement alleging "an act perpetrated" against Cahill by the Royals, or is it really just one way to say the earlier performance of this marginal player was not sustainable? Maybe not the perfect way, but virtually the same idea comes up constantly in baseball chats and it becomes a bit of a struggle to try expressing it in a new, creative way. Maybe my hypothetical writer has previously criticized the Royals too, just like some Fangraphs folk have picked on the Twins, and that colored their choice of words. But to reject it and denounce the writer for a literal accusation of malfeasance is almost to deny the basic facts involved (marginal player, common regression scenario).

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Have you considered that your bias here might be on just as much display as the writer's? Imagine if the question was about buying Trevor Cahill, and the chat response was "No. I don't know what the Royals did to him, but it wasn't good." Is that really a statement alleging "an act perpetrated" against Cahill by the Royals, or is it really just one way to say the earlier performance of this marginal player was not sustainable? Maybe not the perfect way, but virtually the same idea comes up constantly in baseball chats and it becomes a bit of a struggle to try expressing it in a new, creative way. Maybe my hypothetical writer has previously criticized the Royals too, just like some Fangraphs folk have picked on the Twins, and that colored their choice of words. But to reject it and denounce the writer for a literal accusation of malfeasance is almost to deny the basic facts involved (marginal player, common regression scenario).

Okay, this is going to be my last post on the subject.

 

Again, he said this:

"I don't know what the Twins have done to him, but it's not great."

 

I am not interpreting his words to mean what I want them to mean. The strict definition of his words imply the Twins did something wrong. There's literally no other way to interpret those 14 words. That's what they mean. If that wasn't the writer's intent - and maybe it wasn't - then he's the one at fault for not properly using the English-freaking-language. If regression was his intent, then he should have used the word "regression".

 

You're the one implying intent, spycake. There's not even a hint of a suggestion a regression to the mean is involved, a statement I actually would have shrugged and and said "yeah, that's entirely possible".

 

It's super-weird to me that I'm using a strict definition of his words and I'm the one being accused of twisting intent and injecting personal bias whereas you just brought up something that wasn't even implied, not even a little bit.

 

If you want to argue that the comment was entertaining snark, I get it. I disagree with the comment but different things appeal to different people. I can dislike the comment, you can think it's fine.

 

But you can't accuse me of personal bias and then defend it by injecting a bunch of stuff into the statement that he simply did not say.

[Vanimal46]

Didn't see this one posted yet: 

"Jorge Polanco's Three-Step Process" by Eno Sarris 

[Mike Sixel]

 

Didn't see this one posted yet: 

"Jorge Polanco's Three-Step Process" by Eno Sarris 

 

meh. post 2013......but no biggie, I doubt many saw it if you didn't!

[Mike Sixel]

Today from TwinsGraph:

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-twins-are-slugging-their-way-to-october/

 

[Oldgoat_MN]

 

Today from TwinsGraph:

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-twins-are-slugging-their-way-to-october/

THAT is really fun! Helps explain a lot.

[Vanimal46]

12:54
2-D: Rockies or Twins, which do you like better to pull an upset in their respective division series if they make it in and get past the wild card game?

 

12:54
Travis Sawchik: Rockies with CarGo finding his swing and Blackmon and Arenado being two of the best 5-7 players in the league
12:55
Travis Sawchik: And is Sano ever going to get back on the field?

 

[Craig Arko]

 

12:54
2-D: Rockies or Twins, which do you like better to pull an upset in their respective division series if they make it in and get past the wild card game?

 

12:54
Travis Sawchik: Rockies with CarGo finding his swing and Blackmon and Arenado being two of the best 5-7 players in the league
12:55
Travis Sawchik: And is Sano ever going to get back on the field?

 

You seem down. Let me cheer you up.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/17/us/neil-degrasse-tyson-on-climate-change-cnntv/index.html

[Vanimal46]

 

You seem down. Let me cheer you up.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/17/us/neil-degrasse-tyson-on-climate-change-cnntv/index.html

 

http://tesseraguild.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/sad-panda.jpg

[drjim]

You seem down. Let me cheer you up.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/17/us/neil-degrasse-tyson-on-climate-change-cnntv/index.html

I don't trust the words and motives of a scientist I've heard of.

[Craig Arko]

 

I don't trust the words and motives of a scientist I've heard of.

I could tell that about you.

[Oldgoat_MN]

Funny people, sad pandas, all on a website that is following a team that could make their first post-season appearance in over half a decade.

Is this an interesting and diverse website or what?

[Craig Arko]

 

Funny people, sad pandas, all on a website that is following a team that could make their first post-season appearance in over half a decade.

Is this an interesting and diverse website or what?

How do you think we survived all these years?

[bird]

 

Today from TwinsGraph:

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-twins-are-slugging-their-way-to-october/

 

I loved this statement in particular:

 

"With the hiring of a new front office last year, the Twins began to move away from some of the long-held ideas about what Twins baseball looked like, and are working to build a winner by finding the best players, rather than just the best players that fit a certain mold."

 

Good job, Derek. Way to purge the organization and the roster to bring in all those new players that fit this incredibly new school mold. You know. Dozier, Mauer, Rosario, Santana, Berrios, Polanco, Gibson, Kepler, Buxton, Sano, Escobar, Rogers, Duffey, Belisle, Hildenberger, Vargas, Granite, Grossman.... 

 

 

[jkcarew]

 

Good job, Derek. Way to purge the organization and the roster to bring in all those new players that fit this incredibly new school mold. You know. Dozier, Mauer, Rosario, Santana, Berrios, Polanco, Gibson, Kepler, Buxton, Sano, Escobar, Rogers, Duffey, Belisle, Hildenberger, Vargas, Granite, Grossman.... 

That's funny!  They have done a very good job of assessing and observing, though.  From what I've observed.

[Vanimal46]

 

I loved this statement in particular:

 

"With the hiring of a new front office last year, the Twins began to move away from some of the long-held ideas about what Twins baseball looked like, and are working to build a winner by finding the best players, rather than just the best players that fit a certain mold."

 

Good job, Derek. Way to purge the organization and the roster to bring in all those new players that fit this incredibly new school mold. You know. Dozier, Mauer, Rosario, Santana, Berrios, Polanco, Gibson, Kepler, Buxton, Sano, Escobar, Rogers, Duffey, Belisle, Hildenberger, Vargas, Granite, Grossman.... 

 

You're forgetting about the revolving door at the #5 spot in the rotation! Bringing in key contributors such as Wilk, Haley, Turley, Melville, Colon, Gee, and Enns... Good lord that's going to be a tough question to answer 2 years from now. Name all of the Twins' #5 SP in 2017! 

[Mike Sixel]

 

I loved this statement in particular:

 

"With the hiring of a new front office last year, the Twins began to move away from some of the long-held ideas about what Twins baseball looked like, and are working to build a winner by finding the best players, rather than just the best players that fit a certain mold."

 

Good job, Derek. Way to purge the organization and the roster to bring in all those new players that fit this incredibly new school mold. You know. Dozier, Mauer, Rosario, Santana, Berrios, Polanco, Gibson, Kepler, Buxton, Sano, Escobar, Rogers, Duffey, Belisle, Hildenberger, Vargas, Granite, Grossman.... 

 

ya, a lot there I didn't agree with. I just post them.....even ones I don't agree with.

[bird]

 

You're forgetting about the revolving door at the #5 spot in the rotation! Bringing in key contributors such as Wilk, Haley, Turley, Melville, Colon, Gee, and Enns... Good lord that's going to be a tough question to answer 2 years from now. Name all of the Twins' #5 SP in 2017! 

 

Yeah, I'm feeling charitable towards the new guys, just like I felt towards the old guy. But if that writer starts to talk about how Thad Levine got Gibby to strike batters out, or how next year's emergence of Burdi, Chargois, Romero, Gonsalves, Jorge, Reed, Curtiss...is because the boy genius Derek broke the old mold, I'll get another good chuckle.

 

I'll be a chuckling Panda.

[Oldgoat_MN]

 

I loved this statement in particular:

 

"With the hiring of a new front office last year, the Twins began to move away from some of the long-held ideas about what Twins baseball looked like, and are working to build a winner by finding the best players, rather than just the best players that fit a certain mold."

 

Good job, Derek. Way to purge the organization and the roster to bring in all those new players that fit this incredibly new school mold. You know. Dozier, Mauer, Rosario, Santana, Berrios, Polanco, Gibson, Kepler, Buxton, Sano, Escobar, Rogers, Duffey, Belisle, Hildenberger, Vargas, Granite, Grossman.... 

Your point is certainly valid.

However, the new hitting coach is clearly up to something different.

I applaud him.

[bird]

 

Your point is certainly valid.

However, the new hitting coach is clearly up to something different.

I applaud him.

 

 

No question about that! Hard to tell how much credit to give him versus players aged 25 and under growing up, but he certainly deserves credit. Interestingly, maybe I've missed it, but I haven't read much in the way of quotes and stuff from players or Molitor lauding or even crediting Rowson. Wouldn't you think there'd be more?

[Linus]

By far the biggest improvement is simply due to young players adapting and improving as big leaguers. I'm sure I'm forgetting something but I can't remember one thing they have done that the description posted in the article. Rowson may be one but hard to know. He seems to have done a lot of work with Buxton which is huge.

[Vanimal46]

12:26
Josh: If the Brewers and Twins each reach the postseason, which do you think will have been more impressive based on preseason expectations?

 

12:27
Dave Cameron: The Brewers, probably. MIN is mostly in WC position because all the other supposed AL contenders fell apart.

 

12:35
Sean: Would Hoskins and Buxton figure prominently on the trade value list at this point?

 

12:36
Dave Cameron: They’d both be in the top 50.
12:36
Dave Cameron: I don’t know that they’d be in the top 25, though.

 

12:44
Mookie Cookie: Re Twins/Brewers: That’s not really fair to the twins. Their offense has come alive in the second half. Also the same analyses works for the NL contenders falling apart (COL, STL, etc)

 

12:45
Dave Cameron: ARI/COL have created a legitimate barrier to MIL making the playoffs by default. The Twins could make the Wild Card with 83 or 84 wins.
12:45
Dave Cameron: The Twins have had a good season. But put them in the NL, they aren’t in the race.