Twins Research Team Won't Tip Their Pitches

“I’m not overly concerned that people see us as middle-of-the-pack, below-the-pack or any of that stuff. Obviously, I’m working on where I want to get to as a department but I’m not concerned what the outside perception is, so to speak.”

By most outside estimates, the Twins likely fall in the middle of the pack. Unlike the Houston Astros who went all-in on analytics from the top down in their ballclub, the Twins seemingly view that as one piece of the equation, one ingredient in the recipe. And, unlike the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Astros, who receive splashy tell-all write-ups from Grantland and Bloomberg touting their organization’s analytical deployment, Goin likes to keep his activities and goals close to the vest.

This past August Grantland’s Ben Lindbergh revealed that the Pirates send 26-year-old Mike Fitzgerald on road trips with the team to provide information when the team is away from PNC Park. Lindbergh notes that Fitzgerald, whose title is Qualitative Analyst, is what most people would consider a friggin genius. A math graduate from MIT, Fitzgerald tags along with the Pirates to provide “direct, in-season information” to the coaching staff.

“Fitzgerald, meanwhile, makes most road trips: If the Pirates are playing, he’s almost always at the park,” Lindbergh writes. “I surveyed several analysts from other front offices, and none of them knew — or would admit to knowing — of another employee with Fitzgerald’s statistical expertise who travels close to full-time with a team.”

As a footnote to his statement, Lindbergh mentions that one of the reasons he may have been unable to find another team to admit they have the same practice is because, like the Twins, most research departments are mum on their methods. Baseball analysts, Lindbergh notes, are the secretive sort.

Goin, however, admitted that the Twins have a similar practice in place, sending one of the members of the analytics department on about sixty percent of the road trips. Like the Pirates, the Twins would be able to feed data to the coaching staff on request. Having someone from the research department traveling with the team allows him to provide insight on pitching matchups, how to pitch opposing players and, what has become increasingly more common, defensive shifts.

In 2013, the Twins fielders shifted -- aligning three infielders on one side of second base -- just 66 times (27th). This year, that number dramatically increased to over 500 times (16th).

“Joe Vavra kind of chipped away at that in 2013, starting to get some shifts involved and then Gardy was starting to go along with it then and we took it to another level for us this year,” explains Goin. “A lot of that was Molitor, he did a lot of video work.”

“I’m not sure how much Gardy liked the shift but as it started to pay off he liked it a little bit more", said general manager Terry Ryan. “We never shifted too much the last couple of years, but neither did anybody for that matter. It was always the David Ortizes, the guys you normally expect. Now all of a sudden you see shifts on three players in every lineup.”

While Goin and his team would provide data, in addition to the video work supplied by the team’s director of Major League video, Sean Harlin, the coaching staff would be responsible for deciding the game plan.

“Paul and Gardy would have a meeting, talk about who they were going to shift and how they were going to shift,” Goin said. “Then after that meeting they would have an infielders or defenders meeting with Gardy and Molitor and whoever else and then they’d talk about it: Here are the charts, how should we shift him? Step-pull, straight-away, two-steps pull or whatever it is.”

It is hard to say if the emphasis on shifting was beneficial to the team’s record in 2014. According to the shift data, the Twins finished in the middle of the pack for hits saved. At the same time, the infield’s overall defensive efficiency took a step back in 2014. In 2013, the Twins’ opponents had a batting average on grounders in play of .235. This year that increased to .258. It is possible that it is, in part, due to that the pitching staff being hit hard or that the team did not position their players in the right spot enough. Consider this, on ground balls in the middle of the diamond, opponents hit .500, the highest in all of baseball.

What Goin and his team provides to the coaching staff evolved based on preferences.

“Sometimes it starts out with a question from him and then you create some type of report from what that initial conversation was,” Goin said. “‘Oh, that’s great but can we add this or move this?’ And you add a piece that you didn’t think of at the initial conversation. They get a standard package and then different coaches get a few one-off packages that they like on their own. Brunansky and Gardy got a couple and Molitor got a couple. Rick Anderson got hitters, Bruno got pitchers and some of the other coaches got reports too. Gardy got everything.”

The Twins’ baseball research department, which started out as a one-man show several years ago, has expanded as the acceptance has increased. In addition to adding coordinator Andrew Ettel, they recently posted for a developer of baseball systems to “develop, deliver, and maintain data driven solutions for analytics and architecture of player information and evaluation systems.” This is more or less a position that has become commonplace within front offices to help create database systems for both readily available statistics like Pitch F/X and proprietary projections.

Perhaps most important for the new hire might be working with MLBAM’s new field-tracking system that was installed in a handful of ballparks, including Target Field, this past year. Unlike the Pitch F/X system which was released to the public and allowed hobbyists like Josh Kalk to tinker with the data that ultimately led to his hiring by the Tampa Bay Rays, the new system will be provided to only the teams. One of the reasons this will not be made available for the general public is because each game’s data will be terabytes. MLB will purportedly release the data to all teams prior to the 2015 season, at which point, it will be a race to see which organization can leverage the information to their advantage.

There is also the perception that the Twins decision-makers are not interested in or resistant to this kind of information. Both Ryan and Goin say that is not true, but that there is some education required.

“I got that in here and I look at it,” said Ryan, gesturing to his computer when asked about his familiarity with Pitch F/X, “but for me to decipher it I have to go to him.”

At the basic level, the Twins research department’s role appears to be the storefront of a butcher shop. Ryan does not need to know how the sausage is made, but he has trust in Goin and his staff that he is not receiving tainted meat.

“There are things that I need to be educated about that kind of catch my eye, and I've got to make sure I know what the norm is, for sure, and I go to Jack,” Ryan said of the role the research team.

It’s a piece.

That’s the common phrase that the pair offered as a response to a lot of inquiries about the use of stats and analytics when it came to decisions in the front office. In the end, the team admits that it is not a guiding light for the direction of the organization. For the stats community and analytics proponents, that may be an unsatisfying answer. For others, that might strike a good balance.