Connor Prielipp
St. Paul Saints - AAA
LHP
LHP
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Posted by chpettit19,
I do think the organization as a whole is overly reliant on their process/expectations, but I don't agree at all that Rocco depends totally on analytics and no "gut feelings." I do think he relies too much on the pre-game plan, but those plans aren't just built on numbers, but also his conversations with players, coaches, trainers, etc. before the game. He doesn't just look at a spreadsheet and plug guys in. That's a vast oversimplification of the process before, and during, the game.
Manager "gut feelings" can be better quantified now, too. When many people talk about "gut feelings" they talk about pitcher usage and knowing when a guy is tired or has more in them. That used to be done solely by the eye test and a manager using his experience to know when a certain guy is tired. Now they have spin rates, velo, extension, arm slot, and a whole bunch of proprietary stuff outsiders don't even know about that they can look at. They're judging the same thing, but they have actual data to go on now instead of just their eye test of "he looks like he's not getting on top of the ball as well so he must be tired." It's the same process, just more educated.
This is a bit of a difficult idea to unwrap. I don't disagree that individual player performance game to game can't be predicted, but the idea behind most of the stats used in baseball today is that over a large enough sample size things will balance out to a certain mark for each player. The Twins aren't trying to predict individual game performance as much as they're trying to put guys in the situations they feel they perform best in as often as possible so that by the end of the season they've maximized their performance.
This leads to a lot of decisions that I'm not a big fan of as I think their plan ignores some other factors. I don't like the extreme use of pinch hitters nearly every game because pinch hitters as a whole perform worse than guys who started in the lineup. But the Twins weigh platoon advantages higher in their model. They have a lot of smart people in their FO so I'm sure it's a very educated decision, but their pinch hitters (outside of Solano) have performed miserably this year so it's all the more frustrating to me. And I agree with the idea of letting the hot hand roll. That's where I think they are overly reliant on their process. But, if you're going to build your team on platoon advantages and interchangeable parts I do think there is logic in playing it out over the length of the season as that's where the advantage really plays. But then they need to be able to change that plan in the postseason as the sample size shrinks significantly, and those advantages go away since it really does become more of a game to game performance prediction. That's where you really need to just let your best players do their thing.
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