Twins Trade Kintzler To Nationals

Sad.

 

Twins had the type of team over the winter that was obviously ready for a step forward, but had some easily identifiable holes.

 

They do virtually nothing to address those holes, then watch as those holes tank a somewhat promising season.

 

Then dump, for what appears to be most likely org filler.

 

Not my idea of how I want this franchise run.

Did you happen to read the thread once the 25 man roster was announced? I certainly didn't read much or anything on this board, that in any way hinted we were obviously ready for a step forward.

Did you happen to read the thread once the 25 man roster was announced? I certainly didn't read much or anything on this board, that in any way hinted we were obviously ready for a step forward.

After losing 103, it would really be difficult to not move forward.

Speaking only for myself, I'm disappointed that the self-fulfilling prophesy of "we can't compete with these holes" while doing nothing to fill those holes is somehow vindication for yet another wasted season.

 

   "Play for 2019" does nothing for me.  It's what the de-facto farm teams that always seem to be providing talent to the real teams do.

I'm cool with " Playing for 2018".

Yeah, but a 20 game improvement is still only 79 wins. I don't think anyone reasonably predicted the 83+ games it would require to get close enough to the postseason where two players would make a difference.

(not giving the front office a pass for their bullpen decisions though)

It is easy to criticize a team for entering a season with a questionable pitching staff but it is also foolish for a 100+ loss team to go crazy in FA. The Twins weren't under any sort of financial constraints last offseason. They were under a 'don't buy old-ish FA's until you have something resembling a team in place' constraint. And there is always the issue of it being a rather mediocre FA SP market. 

They could have done something in the bullpen but don't somehow Belisle has been lights out in Jul/Aug (and good in June). Maybe he wasn't as bad as we thought he was.

This isn't going to be popular, but is it possible that the bullpen might be better without Kintzler? Even if it's only because Molitor is using his bullpen in better ways?

 

With Kintzler gone there's room for Gee, who is probably the long man this team desperately needed. Pressly and maybe even Duffey can go back to being one inning or even being one batter pitchers if that's whats needed and Molitor is forced to use a young guy like Hildenberger more.

 

Now Belisle slides into Kintzler's 9th inning role, almost always starting a clean inning where there's rarely anyone on base. I never previously would have thought I'd say this, but perhaps the closer is the least necessary arm to strike guys out. Now Belisle and his high contact repertoire is unavailable for the spots when there ARE runners on base, something that his poor 62.5% LOB% suggests he should not be doing but Molitor did anyway.

This was all possible with Kintzler on the team. The key here is that Gee has pitched very well and Belisle has been lights out for two months (who saw that coming?). When more RP'ers are pitching well then the bullpen does better regardless of what roles they are in. Unfortunately the RP'ers aren't actually better but are riding hot streaks. Hopefully this expected regression doesn't occur anytime soon though.

And I don't know that there's anyone pitching over their head right now. Pressly and Belisle are pitching like they did last year finally. Weren't we all just hoping that guys like Duffey, Rogers, Hildenberger and Busenitz could be serviceable rotation pieces?

 

Aside from an early-season stretch by Duffey and a mid-season stretch by Rogers, I don't know that any of them have really been lights out, just simply average to above average.

 

I also like that almost all of these guys have options, if someone does go into a funk, you can easily dip down and give someone else a chance. You don't have to roster-or-lose-em like they did Breslow and Haley.

Belisle has only given up 6H, 2BB and 0 R (or ER) in 1.5 months (15 IP). 

Hildenberger with a 2.70 ERA and a (near) 10 K rate and 1.35 BB rate is a lot more than serviceable or what was expected. Good to see though.

I think we should expect both of these pitchers to regress.

But the point remains - the Twins pen is better because the Twins finally found a few other pitchers to step forward. They didn't have to subtract Kintzler to make that happen since plenty of mediocre-ness has existed all season (for example Breslow).

This isn't going to be popular, but is it possible that the bullpen might be better without Kintzler? Even if it's only because Molitor is using his bullpen in better ways?

 

With Kintzler gone there's room for Gee, who is probably the long man this team desperately needed. Pressly and maybe even Duffey can go back to being one inning or even being one batter pitchers if that's whats needed and Molitor is forced to use a young guy like Hildenberger more.

 

Now Belisle slides into Kintzler's 9th inning role, almost always starting a clean inning where there's rarely anyone on base. I never previously would have thought I'd say this, but perhaps the closer is the least necessary arm to strike guys out. Now Belisle and his high contact repertoire is unavailable for the spots when there ARE runners on base, something that his poor 62.5% LOB% suggests he should not be doing but Molitor did anyway.

And you forgot the most important part...the team (including the bullpen) got a chip on their shoulder after the management "sold."

Kintzler update:

 

Leaving aside the buy v. sell debate, Kintzler is 2-0, with a 0.00 ERA in 7 appearances with Washington. However, his FIP is 2.85

 

I half-way understand the concepts of BIP, sequencing, etc., but even in small samples shouldn't FIP at least nominally reflect ERA, or what is actually happening on the field?

 

Carry on.

If the point is to try to reflect ERA, why not just use ERA?

Not sure if you're dissing me, or the stat

 

If the point is to reflect a true ERA, then FIP should reflect the ERA as it is, even in minimal amounts. Kintzler has not come remotely close to allowing a run to score (at least by reading the box score), yet FIP says that two runs should have scored off him by now.

If the point was to reflect ERA, then FIP wouldn't exist. That's not the point.

FIP is just an algorithm of what happened, like slugging percentage. It's not a subjective stat like defensive runs saved or WAR.

FIP does tell you what happened on the field (xFIP on the other hand baggers bakes in assumptions), it just tells you something different than ERA.

It doesn't use earned runs like ERA does, it uses HR's, walks, and strike outs, so I'm not sure why you are expecting it to reflect the fact that he hasn't given up any runs.

With all due respect, this is a contradictory statement.

 

I looked at his game logs. He has not run into any trouble. He has been the same weak contact ground ball machine in Washington that he was here.

 

I would buy the FIP stat here if it was, say, 0.50, or something below 1. But his FIP with Washington is currently 2.85, so I can't buy it. I don't know which outing those two theoretical runs came from.

What is there to buy?

FIP is not subjective. It's a formula of things that actually happened (HR,K,BB), much like slugging % or batting average.

All FIP is telling you is how well the pitcher controlled the things he has control over, that's it.

It's set on the same scale as ERA, but that's the only thing it has in common, there are no "theoretical runs" that it is claiming happened.

Again, it's not a subjective metric like WAR that can be tweaked or manipulated.

It's an objective stat like batting average or slugging percentage. It can only show what happened, there is nothing anyone can do to make it show anything other than the events on the field that are computed to give a resulting measurement.

If someone thinks it's a worthless stat, they are free to ignore it, just like any other stat, otherwise I'm not sure what you are expecting.

FIP is going to be pretty useless to evaluate Kintzler IMO. The things that affect FIP the most are walks, strikeouts and homeruns. Kintzler tallies few of any of those.

His FIP (in a ridiculously small and should never be used seriously sample size) is simply saying that if he continued to pitch at the peripherals that he currently has, you would expect his ERA to settle in at roughly that neighborhood.

Flawed? No more than any other statistic. Perfect? Not even close, but doesn't try to be either.