Who Solidified Themselves as Playoff Hitters for the Twins, and Who Didn't

1 minute ago, Bodie said:

I agree that power is better than no power, but I am  speaking of approach.  And the Twins DO teach a swing hard as you can approach at the plate.  That isn't a debatable point, they are loud and proud about it.  Then end result is team that does not produce regularly, and seems unworried that the team has the same approach in a 0-2 counts as a 2-0 count.

If you think I'm mistaken about this, take a couple hours this weekend to read "The Art of Hitting".  You might have heard of the author...

Do you work for the Twins? How do you know what they're teaching? They speak about a hard contact approach publicly, yes. But so do most teams. Remember those top 5 scoring offenses? They were also 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th in slugging with 2 strikes. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th in ISO with 2 strikes. They kept hitting for power with 2 strikes. You may not like it, but it's the strategy the best offenses use. The Twins absolutely need to cut down the Ks, no doubt about it, but that's more about the quality of hitter that they have than their approach (in my opinion).

The Art of Hitting is 25 years old. The game has changed. Time to accept that, sorry. Pitchers aren't throwing 2-0 fastballs anymore. Tony Gwynn would still be great. He'd be Luis Arraez, actually. But the stuff guys are throwing, and the pitch selections, are way different now than in 1998. They just are.

1 hour ago, arby58 said:

After the All Star break, Twins runs scored in games (not counting post season):

0 - 5
1 - 3
2 - 6
3 - 8
4 - 5
5 - 13
6 - 4
7 - 9
8 - 4
9 - 4
10 - 5
11 - 1
12 - 2
13 - 1 
14 - 1
20 - 1 (the silly game where Cleveland offered up batting pitching the last few innings)

Five or over gives you a great chance to win, as the median team runs scored per team in MLB this year was 4.55. In the second half, the Twins scored 5 or over 47 times and 4 or less 27 times.  Doesn't sound that awful to me.

Thank you for this. That is encouraging! I'm still not sold on their offense being what it needs to be, but the improvement is nice. They had an incredibly weak schedule the second half, but they got the kids experience, those kids succeeded so likely gained confidence, and they put together a very nice second half offensively. Hopefully the kids take the next step, and they can add at least 1 more big bat to the top of the order.

33 minutes ago, KBJ1 said:

 

Get a RH 4 tool homerun hitter (Juan Soto?- the Padres need to dump payroll)

 

All this without Buxton. If he can play in the field, he can platoon with Martin & DH when hit, sit when cold.

 

FYI, Juan Soto is left handed. Still well worth it because he's an elite hitter all around, but he's not a righty.

And Buxton and Martin are both righties so not sure platoon is the right word to use there.

51 minutes ago, Bodie said:

And the author I'm referring to is Ted Williams...

Then maybe go read the book "The Art of Hitting" and start at the cover where it says "Tony Gwynn." "The Science of Hitting" was a nicely written book by Ted Williams, though. And that book is 53 years old so that's not a better argument. The revision of it is 37 years old. At least with "The Art" you were only at 25 years old.

59 minutes ago, Bodie said:

I keep this short.

If, contrary to every bit of public info, from GM to the last man on the bench, they are coaching hitters to make contact first,  then the coaching isn't taking.  If you lead the majors in Ks (and set a MLB record!) you have to admit that there is a MAJOR failure. 

I haven't seen anyone suggest the Ks are ok. My point is that they are teaching the same things that the best offenses in baseball teach. Hit the ball hard. The Guardians and Nationals had the lowest K% in baseball. They were all about your "make contact first" idea. They finished 27th and 21st in runs scored. They were 22nd and 23rd in OBP. 29th and 23rd in SLG. Would you rather the Twins had their offenses?

I'll keep this short: hitting the ball hard, even with 2 strikes, is the best way to score runs whether you like it or not.

18 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

You lost me at "even with 2 strikes."

 

 

You need to have a reasonable K%, and good to great OBP, but the top 5 scoring teams were also the top 5 slugging teams with 2 strikes (according to my fangraphs splits at least). There's obviously way more that goes into things than this very simple look at things, but the idea of just choking up and putting the ball in play because good things happen even on weak contact is incredibly overblown. It's not as fun to watch, and it's not what the majority of us were taught, but it's pretty clear that the best strategy is to try to hit the ball hard all the time, even if it leads to some extra Ks. Because the number of times that weak contact actually leads to a hit is outweighed by the damage done by the times you make hard contact.

I think the change in approach that is needed for the Twins is getting to 2 strikes less often. Stop taking first pitch fastballs down the middle. Be ready to drive the ball from the second you step in the box. Julien has a great approach this way.

Edit: @ashbury, you posted my second paragraph, with far better detail, while I was typing. But I agree with that take. Not getting to 2 strikes is a wonderful strategy.

12 minutes ago, Riverbrian said:

You are right on the money in my opinion.

That ole' choking up bit is so 1980's unfortunately many of us are still in the 80's and try to apply to today even though it is clearly gone. 😉

Major league pitchers are very very very good. The good ones make a living getting batters to make contact or swinging at pitches that they want you to make contact with.

Major league hitters are also very good and the best ones don't swing at the pitches that pitchers want you to swing at and that can bring them to the two strike brink often. Major league hitters have amazing strike zone awareness. They will get rung up on that two strike pitch dotting the black because they are still looking for that pitch to drive with two strikes.  

The best hitters don't miss the mistakes at whatever count they are thrown. The worst hitters they miss those mistakes more often than they should and the numbers will reflect that. 

With all that said... Man... The Twins have got to cut back on those K's. 

Oh and one more thing. Catch the ball with two hands is something that is still being tossed out from the 80's. 

 

The 80s were a simpler time! Although, I was born in '85 so I don't really have any personal knowledge of that. It's just what people say.

3 minutes ago, ashbury said:

Just because it's turning out to be interesting....

If by top 5 you mean slugging percentage, then this is compelling by itself.  But it may not be the most important thing.  On that page of splits I provided the URL to, there is an under-appreciated feature that you can click on a stat of interest and see how the teams fared in that situation.  For "Two Strikes", yes, the top slugging percentage team is Atlanta.  All well and good.  But if you click on PA to sort teams by plate appearance, ATL shows up at #15.  This, despite their being fourth the majors in total plate appearances.

Results aside, guess which team led the majors in PA reaching 2 strikes? Our Twins.  And their OPS in those situations was close to league-worst.  Despite decent run-scoring totals (and I don't have a handy way to break these numbers down to just the second half, when our run scoring was higher), it may account for some fan frustration with our offense.

I'm sure our FO is aware of these kinds of numbers, but I'd love to have a conversation with them about trying to emulate what appears to be a qualitatively different, and successful, approach.

That is a very fascinating look at things, and I had meant to look up PAs w/2 strikes so I'm glad you provided some context there. I think that was the key to the 2019 offensive success as well (at least that's how it felt). Just don't get to 2 strikes, especially if you get a good pitch to hit early. I'd love to know what their approach was stepping into the box AB to AB this year (I suspect some paralysis by analysis early on with receiving too much info pregame). 

I know the number of times they watched a fastball down the middle for strike 1 was likely very low, but that's one of my biggest pet peeves so my emotional reaction to those make them stick out to me. And I don't just mean on 0-0 counts. 3-0 fastballs down the middle, in the majors, that hitters watch are super frustrating to me as well. Unless you're a bad hitter and it's been like 6, 7, 8 straight balls from the pitcher swing the bat. I'm a big believer in the idea that you get 1 pitch to hit, and you can't miss it or you're in trouble. MLB pitchers are too good to ever watch a fastball down the middle because they can turn 3-0 into 3-3 real quick.

I'd be interested to know if their approach is more pitcher based or hitter based. As in, are they going up looking for what the pitcher is most likely to throw or what they want to hit? Or do they get caught in between trying to marry the 2 approaches? I'd guess watching fastballs down the middle, early in counts, comes a lot from being pitcher based. Hitting is incredibly hard, but I'd wonder if there's some tweaks in these approaches that could lead to them having more success. Jose Altuve has never seen a first pitch fastball in the zone he didn't like. I think we should be closer to that approach.