Are we actually under-reacting to the Twins' offensive struggles?

[Rik19753]

In most cases, when an offense that has the likes of Buxton, Correa and Miranda struggle out of the gate, it is mostly a matter of bad luck and small sample size. That is what I thought was contributing to the Twins' early offensive struggles.

 

Until I came across this on statcast

According to xwOBA, which is calculated using K%, BB% and expected AVG/SLG for batted ball events, not a single qualified Twins player is performing above league average. In fact, besides Solano, who is the closest to average, nobody is even particularly close. Now, this doesn't include Gallo and Julien, who may be 2 of our better hitters. But it is very worrying to me that as bad as the offense has been, they deserve to be every bit as bad as they have been.

 

Looking towards the future, I think we can categorize these hitters into 3 groups.

The Studs: Buxton and Correa. The chances of them ending the season below league average are slim to none.

The Sophomores: Larnach, Miranda and Gordon. All showed flashes of their potential last year, but none have looked particularly good so far. 

The Fringe Veteran Bats: Solano, Taylor and Vazquez. While Solano is decent offensively, I don't think we can rely on any of them to be consistent offensive forces in the lineup. The ceiling is probably league-average seasons for them.

 

Considering that we at least need to have 4 players on either side of league average to have a competent offense, it is absolutely crucial that at least 2 of Larnach, Miranda and Gordon join Buxton and Correa on the other side. While I still have confidence that the 2022 version of Miranda will show up soon, I'm quickly losing confidence in the other two.

 

Even with rebounds from Miranda/Larnach/Gordon, we definitely need to add some big bats via trades if we are going to be legit contenders. I hope the pitching can keep the team in contention until the trade deadline.

 

[Riverbrian]

While the sample isn't large enough to over or under react.

I do share your concerns. The offense didn't jump off the page with me this off-season and hasn't in the extreme early stages either.

I'm willing to see what happens as we roll forward.  

My understanding of Expected Weighted On-Base Average... Speed is a part of the formula. I'm not sure of how speed is weighted into the stat but the Twins are going to take a speed hit with the weighting with this collection of players.   

[Brock Beauchamp]

I'm not concerned, at this point I'm mostly concerned about keeping players on the field. The core group here will hit if they stay even a little bit healthy. They likely won't be an elite offense but they should be middle of the pack at worst.

[Rik19753]

13 minutes ago, Riverbrian said:

My understanding of Expected Weighted On-Base Average... Speed is a part of the formula. I'm not sure of how speed is weighted into the stat but the Twins are going to take a speed hit with the weighting with this collection of players.   

Correct. Speed is taken into account, mostly for weakly hit balls where faster players may be able to beat out the throw more often than slower hitters. But since speed is accounted for in the formula to increase the accuracy of the expected stat, the fact that the Twins have some slow runners is already baked into the numbers. Thus, there should be no "speed hit", or a "speed bump", for that matter.

[Muppet]

Correa (at least last year) heated up as the season went on. Buxton has always been extremely streaky. Many of the others are too new to really know if they'll feast or flop. Besides, I'd be willing to bet that their dead streak came at the expense of great pitching (can't see pitching on the computer). It'll take the newbys some time to get used to top notch big league hitting, and we should expect fewer hits from great pitchers in general. 

This is a pitching first, defense second team. They just need to score enough runs to give their pitchers a chance. And no matter what, they'll lose a bare minimum of 60 games this year. 

[Rik19753]

7 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I'm not concerned, at this point I'm mostly concerned about keeping players on the field. The core group here will hit if they stay even a little bit healthy. They likely won't be an elite offense but they should be middle of the pack at worst.

The question is, who is in that "core group"? Other than Correa and Buxton, I don't see anyone that we can confidently point to to bounce back. That scares the hell out of me.

[Brock Beauchamp]

Just now, Rik19753 said:

The question is, who is in that "core group"? Other than Correa and Buxton, I don't see anyone that we can confidently point to to bounce back. That scares the hell out of me.

Confidently? I don't have a ton of confidence in any specific player but some combination of Larnach, Miranda, Gallo, Kepler, Polanco should come back to life. Hell, maybe even Gordon.

The Twins have so many options, which is why I'm not gnashing my teeth. Some of those guys will underperform but some won't.

[weitz41]

It's also worth considering the pitchers they faced the last week. Cortes, Sticky fingers German, Cole and out of nowhere Sale looks like he did 3-4 seasons ago. That may play a part in it. I'm not saying it's an excuse but should be factored into it. 

It's a bit early and things should even out as the temp goes up. That being said a lot of K's and no running game is not easy to get excited about. But that is looking more and more like what the offense is going to be. None of the guys that are new to the team were above average offensively, so I don't expect much from them. 

Pitching and defense that seems to be what we have in abundance. Offense looks to be hit or miss without Buxton, Correa, Polanco or maybe Miranda playing well above average. 

[August J Gloop]

They have faced many tough pitchers who have also pitched well against other competition. German was cheating, Sandy had a Sandy game and Chris Sale rose from the ashes. Of course there will be some bad offensive stat lines in there.  Heck, Bux struck out in 9 straight PAs. That can't be good for team xwOBA.  

They're also at a .670 winning percentage. They don't have any starters vastly out performing their FIP other than Sonny (.65 and should be at 2.7) The only reliever with a meaningful FIP differential is Duran and we can be pretty sure his FIP will settle down pretty fast. I bring this up because the O definitely will get better. It doesn't have to get A LOT better to maintain winning, though. That's because the pitching is not showing signs of getting A LOT worse overnight. 

 

[Vanimal46]

The lack of good bats was my top concern heading into the season and continues to be the top concern. There is a heavy reliance on injury/performance bounce backs, progression from pre-arb players, and maintaining status quo from Buxton/Correa. So far we’re seeing Gallo and Vazquez playing way above expectations, and the rest either below or way below expectations. And the exception of Larnach who is playing at expectations. 

Hopefully in a couple of weeks we see a more ideal lineup with Buxton back in CF, and a hot bat added to DH. If Brooks Lee continues to tear the cover off the ball, maybe he is the spark this offense needs. 

[RpR]

Give it Two Weeks or maybe the middle of May, then what truly need fixing will be fairly obvious.

[Cap'n Piranha]

1 hour ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Confidently? I don't have a ton of confidence in any specific player but some combination of Larnach, Miranda, Gallo, Kepler, Polanco should come back to life. Hell, maybe even Gordon.

The Twins have so many options, which is why I'm not gnashing my teeth. Some of those guys will underperform but some won't.

Add in Kiriloff, Lewis, Lee, and/or Martin as other options.  That's 9 guys; no way all of them hit their 90th percentile level, but its a pretty decent bet that 2-4 will.  Add that to a performing Buxton and Correa, and maybe trade for a big bat at the deadline, and the offense is in business.

[Jocko87]

1 hour ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I'm not concerned, at this point I'm mostly concerned about keeping players on the field. The core group here will hit if they stay even a little bit healthy. They likely won't be an elite offense but they should be middle of the pack at worst.

And the beauty of building a roster with depth is that the two or three hot bats move around and keep the bottom from falling out.  Gallo isn't on that list presumably due to lack of ABs but he's basically won three games with big swings. 

I asked in the game thread yesterday what percentage of the last 10 years would we have been delighted with that starting lineup?  It was pretty darn solid 1-9 and it was our B squad. 

Health is my main concern as well, and I'm even a bit more optimistic.  With good health they can put a lineup with no easy outs 1-9 and really pressure a pitcher.  As Brock says, they will hit.  With good health, they become a very long day for a starter.

Its also a bit early in the season to compare to MLB average.  Lots of outliers in the data.  Whats the historical average?

[jkcarew]

33 minutes ago, Vanimal46 said:

There is a heavy reliance on injury/performance bounce backs, progression from pre-arb players, and maintaining status quo from Buxton/Correa

This.

It never figured to be an above-average offense. Simple matter of probabilities when you're counting on so many to improve on recent performances, whether young guys taking a step or veterans needing to bounce back. Is there a scenario where most of the outcomes needed come to fruition? Sure. But it's not a good bet.

And, while I'm not buying the 'tough pitchers' theory...I do think the offense can be 'near' league average by the end of the year. Maybe. That might be good enough to make a good team if the pitching stays even close to what it has been (and the defense holds up).

[Jocko87]

5 minutes ago, Jocko87 said:

Its also a bit early in the season to compare to MLB average.  Lots of outliers in the data.  Whats the historical average?

Answered my own question, .400 elite and .275 horrible.  2022 league average was .309, do they new rules account for a .016 difference?

That said, Matt Chapman is at .514 and Manny Machado is sitting at .269.  Long way to go and while it has a predictive element it can't account for adjustments made.

[lukeduke1980]

Not expecting a lot of offense this weekend even against the beatable Nats in the March-like weather.

[ashbury]

I don't know how to quantify this, and I realize that to a great extent major league hitting is about taking advantage of pitching mistakes. But I still feel like the real problem is that our Twins batters fatten up their averages against pitchers who don't "have it" on a particular day. 

I keep seeing comments like "they have faced a lot of good pitchers lately," and that's not to pick on any particular poster, but I say the league is full of good pitchers, pitchers who have honed their craft and have mastered their repertoire. I remember seeing a stat from long ago (probably looking back at the days of only 16 teams) that about 10% of all plate appearances had been taken by players in the Hall of Fame. While times change, and the percentage might decrease, the principle still is sound - a lot of players vie for major league slots, but the best players keep getting the playing time, whether they be batters or pitchers.

These good pitchers have good results against teams across the league, but not to the degree they seem to when facing our Twins. No one wins an ERA crown with a 0.00.

Yesterday the Twins jumped all over a "name" guy who came into the game with bad stats and who couldn't locate his pitches. By contrast, the day before, they also faced a well-known player with bad stats, but he located his pitches to perfection (perhaps with a little help from the plate umpire), and were stymied, swinging at bad pitches and letting strikes with movement go by. The game in New York where they scored 9 in the first inning, there were a whole lot of fat pitches that day. And so it goes - we see it as feast and famine, but it could be simply what our team can do when there isn't a steady diet of mistake pitches.

As the season goes along, they will face AAAA pitchers pressed into duty, or bad rotations on last-place teams.  Season averages will perk up as a result, and they may ride the performance to a post-season berth.  But in the post-season, those AAAA pitchers will be long gone and there will be no cellar-dwellers, so they'll need to be able to adapt or else we'll see the same three-and-out performance as in years past.

They may call it plate discipline, but when they wait for a mistake that never comes, they have no Plan B as the innings roll along.

 

[Rosterman]

I think we may be seeing more of an extended spring training here. Of course, being down with the "proposed" starters currently rehabbing or guys who sguffled onto the IL, I'm hoping the team can pull it together. There is a reason players play in spring training, if even just half-a-game. To get used to guys hitting in front and behind them. 

Except for Vasquez coming thru at catcher (and Jeffers, too), the lineup is basically ho-hum and have survived because of great starting pitching. Will Polanco and Kirilloff offer help (and where). I'm hoping Julien goes back to AAA and tears the cover off-the-ball there. The Twins need a lead-off nhitter to help out either Buxton or Correa, in some ways. Kepler it ain't!

Larnach has been okay, well, better than EVERY alternative in the outfield right now. Gallo will be sink or swim. Nice having him at first, but if Kirilloff comes back to first, where does Gallo play. Solano is holding down the utility role much better than, say, Gordon at the bat - which has been an unpleasant surprise (?). Kinda missing what Farmer can bring to the roster.

If anything, decisions will soon be made on where the Twins go offensively in coming seasons.

Overall, have enjoyed the rotation and can't wait for some replacements (varland, Woods Richardson, Ober) to push others aisde. Not seeing much bullpen strength at St. Paul so far, though. Maybe the...weather?

 

[Bamboo Bat]

I don't want to resurrect the Arraez-Lopez debate in one more thread, but this is what I feared when they traded our sparkplug: a sub-par offense from 2022 going backwards in 2023. 

Some stats from 2022: 

Category	Stat	Rank
Runs/Game	4.28	22nd
Batting Avg	0.225	26th
Slugging	0.373	24th
OBP	0.296	28th

While I did cherry-pick some of (to me) the most important stats, it's tough to find any stats the club was better than average in last season, unless you consider triples per game important. 

Point being the Twins offense was poor last year, even if one wants to quibble about the AAA Saints roster playing most of their games in Twins uniforms in September 2022. The addition of Farmer, Solano, Gallo, et al adds some solid depth but losing Arraez might have cost us our 2022 floor. 

There's a lot of potential in this lineup, especially with the return of Polanco & Kiriloff. But unless there is some magic at work, I don't see the 2023 offense as topping better than MLB average. 

 

[Jocko87]

59 minutes ago, ashbury said:

I don't know how to quantify this, and I realize that to a great extent major league hitting is about taking advantage of pitching mistakes. But I still feel like the real problem is that our Twins batters fatten up their averages against pitchers who don't "have it" on a particular day. 

I keep seeing comments like "they have faced a lot of good pitchers lately," and that's not to pick on any particular poster, but I say the league is full of good pitchers, pitchers who have honed their craft and have mastered their repertoire. I remember seeing a stat from long ago (probably looking back at the days of only 16 teams) that about 10% of all plate appearances had been taken by players in the Hall of Fame. While times change, and the percentage might decrease, the principle still is sound - a lot of players vie for major league slots, but the best players keep getting the playing time, whether they be batters or pitchers.

These good pitchers have good results against teams across the league, but not to the degree they seem to when facing our Twins. No one wins an ERA crown with a 0.00.

Yesterday the Twins jumped all over a "name" guy who came into the game with bad stats and who couldn't locate his pitches. By contrast, the day before, they also faced a well-known player with bad stats, but he located his pitches to perfection (perhaps with a little help from the plate umpire), and were stymied, swinging at bad pitches and letting strikes with movement go by. The game in New York where they scored 9 in the first inning, there were a whole lot of fat pitches that day. And so it goes - we see it as feast and famine, but it could be simply what our team can do when there isn't a steady diet of mistake pitches.

As the season goes along, they will face AAAA pitchers pressed into duty, or bad rotations on last-place teams.  Season averages will perk up as a result, and they may ride the performance to a post-season berth.  But in the post-season, those AAAA pitchers will be long gone and there will be no cellar-dwellers, so they'll need to be able to adapt or else we'll see the same three-and-out performance as in years past.

They may call it plate discipline, but when they wait for a mistake that never comes, they have no Plan B as the innings roll along.

 

It feels like this is a pretty good description of xwOba as the original posters states.  I quite often look at the analytics and say to myself, that’s the same thing all these other simpler stats said too, but with more math.  Then I read a bit more, figure out what the data is looking at and reevaluate. When these type stats are pointing against results we can reasonably expect results to be effected to the mean eventually. When they mirror, I pay less attention as it becomes another indicator of the same symptom. 

In this case, as Ash points out, xwOba seems to be a very good indicator of poor, non-competitive plate appearances and matches my eye test. Gordon having 15ish first pitch outs meets both tests. 

An old school fix in the hitters room can fix this new school metric. Get up there and BYTO.  We can live with high strike outs if it’s a result of working to get your pitch, swinging hard and missing, not if you let the pitcher control the AB and swing at bad pitches. 

[USAFChief]

The problem with the offense is, there's no there there.

Good offenses start with a couple great hitters, helped by some good hitters, surrounded by average hitters, crippled by few bad hitters.

The Twins have no great hitters. Who is going to put up a 1.000 OPS? A .950 OPS? 900? 850?

They don't even have many good hitters. How many will end the season above .800?

Now how many below .700?

 

[TwinsDr2021]

8 hours ago, Rik19753 said:

The question is, who is in that "core group"? Other than Correa and Buxton, I don't see anyone that we can confidently point to to bounce back. That scares the hell out of me.

The Core should be Buxton, Correa and Polanco, and so far that core is bad, the next group Miranda, Kepler, bad. Gallo has been decent as have the catchers and Solano. That is not a good offense, but when the core heats up (or plays) the rest won't look so bad.

[DocBauer]

I also had concerns about the offense as there were too many guys either hoping to bounce back, or young bats still proving themselves. To me, the silver lining has always been the sheer numbers of those two camps combined. When you combine everyone together you get something like 16 or so bats to work with. Basic statistics should even out whereby a certain percentage should be excellent, a few good to very good, a few solid, and a few disappointing. 

The highs and lows concern me, as they did last season as well. And to be fair, the highs have come against some good arms, and the some of the lows have been against some mediocre or even poor pitchers that the Twins made look like All Stars on the day.

What I still believe is the biggest current issue is injuries and SSS of 3 weeks. Correa and Buxton and Miranda are all better than they've shown and should return to normal. While still SSS, Gallo has looked like his previous quality self, and not the mess he was in 2022. I'm not going to predict Polanco will be his normal, excellent self right off the bat, but we know he has been, and was last year before getting hurt.

Vasquez is solid, and Jeffers isn't bad, and his hard work may actually be paying off to show real improvement. 

Salono isn't this good, but he's solid, and should still be really good against LHP, even with regression to the norm. Hopefully Farmer won't be out long term, and the same for him. Taylor is defense first with some speed, and not as dangerous as he's been lately, but he's a useful player. 

But then we get to Larnach, Kirilloff, Julien, and Lewis later in the season. All are very talented and have bright futures if healthy, and get regular playing time/experience. Larnach and Julien are healthy. Lewis and Krilloff will hopefully be, though they are on different timelines at the moment.

Don't misunderstand, despite some optimism, I have concerns. I feel this offense is about a year or so away when you can look at the daily lineup and see Buxton, Correa, Miranda, Lewis, Lee, Julien, Larnach, Kirilloff, and whoever else as a daily contributor. That lineup isn't established YET. Might we see something like it by the second half of this year?

It's just, after only 3 weeks, all I see right now is too many moving parts of slow starts, injuries, and debuts just made, or not made yet. Just too many moving parts too early in the season to put me in anything close to panic mode.

[LA Vikes Fan]

We need three things for this offense to be competent (1) the 2019-2022 Polanco in the lineup most every day, (2) Correa and Buxton to heat up to their average levels, and (3) 2-3 bats to emerge from the group of Larnach, Miranda, Gordon, Kirilloff, and Gallo.  Kepler and Michael Taylor won't save us, Julien, Vasquez, Jeffers, are all crap shoots. Lewis can help but that's a ways off. Solano is a nice bench player, but that's it.  

I think there's a good likelihood of numbers 1 and 2 happening.  The key for this season is consistent competent hitting from 2-3 of the aforementioned 5 - .750 plus OPS stuff, not All Star stuff.  I give that a better than 50% probability but it is no certainty. And if that doesn't happen, we're in for a long year. 

[JD-TWINS]

3 hours ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

The Core should be Buxton, Correa and Polanco, and so far that core is bad, the next group Miranda, Kepler, bad. Gallo has been decent as have the catchers and Solano. That is not a good offense, but when the core heats up (or plays) the rest won't look so bad.

IMO - we can’t expect Buxton to lead this team or any team offensively. He’s a streaky - flashy guy with some power. He can win games but he can also not contribute for a couple weeks at a time. He’s not disciplined enough to let him play CF all the time so we’re trying to get the best offensive production we can from him.

Corrrea - Miranda - Vazquez - Polanco - Kiriloff are the every day guys that bring some level of consistency and ability.

Farmer - Taylor - Solano - Jeffers are the platoon guys v. LH pitching that can shine when used properly.

Gordon hit .289 after May 1 last year along with 28 doubles……he’s part of the 1st/2nd groups once he gets rolling.

Gallo - Buxton - Kepler - Larnach…….these guys all bring power & defense & not much else.

[wsnydes]

I'm no more concerned now than I was leading into the season.  I think I'm more concerned with how inconsistent the bars are.  It's feast or famine with nothing in between.  I do expect Correa and Buxton to get going, assuming they can stay on the field.  Similar to last season, I think this team will go as far as the young players will take them.  I think Larnach and Kirilloff will be huge for this lineup.  I'm not sure what to expect from Polanco at this point.

[TwinsDr2021]

8 hours ago, JD-TWINS said:

IMO - we can’t expect Buxton to lead this team or any team offensively. He’s a streaky - flashy guy with some power. He can win games but he can also not contribute for a couple weeks at a time. He’s not disciplined enough to let him play CF all the time so we’re trying to get the best offensive production we can from him.

Corrrea - Miranda - Vazquez - Polanco - Kiriloff are the every day guys that bring some level of consistency and ability.

Farmer - Taylor - Solano - Jeffers are the platoon guys v. LH pitching that can shine when used properly.

Gordon hit .289 after May 1 last year along with 28 doubles……he’s part of the 1st/2nd groups once he gets rolling.

Gallo - Buxton - Kepler - Larnach…….these guys all bring power & defense & not much else.

Buxton's last four years his OPS+ has been 115,125,171,135, when playing, Correa'a lifetime OPS+ is 128, Polanco's is 111, but besides his down 2020 it has been above 110 each year.

AK has shown nothing in the majors that he is a core type player, I blame the injury but regardless besides 35 games in St. Paul last year it is a long way from 2018 season and should be considered a core player (at least not this year)

Vazquez is a good catcher but right now is basically the best he has ever been and isn't a core offensive player.

Larnach is a power guy? He has 36 total homers in the 5 seasons since joining the organization.

Like I said before the core of this offense starts and ends with Buxton, Correa, and Polanco. Hopefully Miranda gets back on track to play second fiddle to those and AK gets healthy for the first time, and the rest are platooned correctly and get hot enough times to help win games.

As for Nick Gordon, I hope I am wrong, but those hoping he someone turns into the hitter he was last year, good luck with that I don't see it happening, he should be nothing more than a defensive specialist last man off the bench for a playoff team, not somebody to be counted on.

I find it interesting that some people want Castro cut (who by the way is younger than Gordon and done more in the majors than Gordon) but think Gordon can turn it around?

[William K Johnson]

Can we get James Rowson back as hitting coach?

[MABB1959]

Terribly concerning.  Only 2 players in yesterday’s line up have batting averages above .250. Another 4 are 200 or lower.  

[MABB1959]

1 hour ago, wsnydes said:

I'm not more concerned now than I was leading into the season.  I think I'm more concerned with how inconsistent the bars are.  It's feast or famine with nothing in between.  I do expect Correa and Buxton to get going, assuming they can stay on the field.  Similar to last season, I think this team will go as far as the young players will take them.  I think Larnach and Kirilloff will be huge for this lineup.  I'm not sure what to expect from Polanco at this point.

I think part of the reason we don’t make the playoffs is because of the “it’s early” excuse.