Brock Beauchamp

That's been the case since Mauer entered the league. He puts the ball on the ground to the second baseman and records an out. He puts the ball in the air to left and gets a hit. What's bad about the take is that Mauer has always been that player. This is nothing new. The problem is that he's no longer elite at making contact with the ball. Again, correct conclusion, completely backward analysis.

It's not the take on Berrios that bothered me, more how limited it was. Say a hitter comes up and has 100 PAs in MLB as a rookie. The guy has a long track record of contact - over 95% on balls in the zone through his MiLB career - and flails at everything against MLB pitching, striking out 40% of the time. Do you say you're "unimpressed with his contact" and leave it at that or do you suggest something went terribly wrong when he transitioned to MLB, something completely out of the norm for this hitter? It wasn't his Berrios take that bothered me, it's the Rubechat-esque nature of the analysis that got under my skin. That was only compounded by the rest of the article, which was mind-bogglingly bad. Merely saying "Berrios needs to fix the fastball command issues he faced last season in limited innings" fixes that entire take on the guy.

I find Grossman really interesting. He was a competent outfielder with the Astros. What happened last year that led to a disastrous -19 DRS? Yes, Houston is a much smaller park but that can't be everything... In 1320 LF innings with Houston, Grossman posted a +3 DRS. His RF stats were more limited - 280 innings - but he posted a +6 DRS over there so LF wasn't an aberration. Of course, we're dealing with relatively small sample sizes here, as his LF time in Houston is just shy of 150 full games. Still, that's not a tiny sample size. That's a reasonable baseline from which to start. As for the left side of the infield, a -28 DRS is certainly possible but Sano has been acceptable out there, posting a -3 DRS in 450 innings. That's a small enough sample size to almost be discarded entirely but it gives hope he's not entirely hopeless at third. If Sano plays a full season at that clip, it's around a -9 DRS for a full season. Polanco is the real wildcard here, IMO. HIs -8 DRS at short last season was abysmal, getting there in just 405 innings. My thinking is that Polanco won't be allowed to reach a -20 or lower DRS (which is where that tracks over a full season) and will be replaced by Escobar if things go that far off the rails. Which brings up another question about the left side of the infield... Escobar. DRS has the guy all over the place. It'd be easy to ignore his 2016 due to injury and "general awfulness" but DRS hated him in 2014, too. But in 2015, DRS thought he was an okay player. All were in limited but not unreasonably small innings, between 500-800 per season. Lots of questions about the left side of the infield but -28 seems a bit high to me. I think the defensive terribleness probably caps out around -25 DRS, as Polanco won't hang around at short if he's that bad and even if Escobar fails, I suspect the Twins will go glove-first at short relatively quickly, which will counter some of the awful play that preceded the move. Of course, it's hard to get a read on Sano, which will cause a lot of fluctuation. Is he a -5 DRS guy or a -15 DRS guy? We can assume Polanco will struggle but I'm unsure how badly Sano will struggle. He has an outside chance of being competent out there, particularly after losing weight and getting back into a rhythm at third.

I think we see a reasonable drop but Dozier remains a very good player: .260/.340/.480 32 HR I think the OBP remains steady as pitchers stay away from Dozier and pitch around him a bit more often. All the other numbers drop a bit.

Yep. I can handle an article that's down on the Twins for a variety of reasons. Those reasons do not include the following: 1. Joe Mauer is now an opposite field hitter. 2. Berrios' fastball command is unimpressive. 3. Dozier could hit 30 homers and the Twins still lose 100 games. 4. MLB corner outfielders need to be offensive players. 5. Kurt Suzuki is a better catcher than Jason Castro. 6. Byron Buxton should bunt and go oppo. To put it bluntly, those opinions are asinine. People have made a few jokes about Terry Ryan, which is funny and all, but some of those opinions pre-date even Ryan. And others are just idiotic (Joe Mauer is now an opposite field hitter? WTF?).

Wowwwwww. I just flashed right back to 1999. I completely forgot that game existed.

I let it slide because the rest of the paragraph was so much worse. At least that statement is subjective and not completely moronic.

In all seriousness, this guy is a professional. He's forgotten more about baseball than we'll ever know. And he's forgotten a lot about baseball.

Showing true grit all the way.

To the people saying there's a lot to agree with here, did you read the entire thing? I've bolded the stupid parts and there's a lot of bold in this paragraph. There's a reason all these guys had 5 ERAs last year. The Twins used to have success developing guys who didn't throw hard but could command the fastball. Now they don't throw hard and they have no command.... Ervin Santana's their ace, but he's actually a three.... José Berrios still hasn't turned the corner. I'm unimpressed by his ability to command the fastball.... Glen Perkins hasn't pitched much this spring. If he can't close for them, they're in big trouble. Well, they're in big trouble anyway.... They gave Jason Castro a lot of money to be their front-line guy. They had a good defensive catcher in Kurt Suzuki and let him walk. I would rather have Suzuki than Castro.... Joe Mauer's health is in question, like always. He's an opposite-field hitter now. If there's a man on third, he will get him home, period.... Brian Dozier is a dead high-ball hitter, but even if he hits 30 home runs, they could lose 100 games. They should have moved him.... Minnesota has brought a lot of guys up before they're ready. Byron Buxton is still a dead pull hitter. With his speed, he should be going the other way, he should bunt, and he doesn't.... Miguel Sano can swing the bat, but he's not very good at third. You hope he knocks in more than he lets in.... . They keep touting their outfield—Eddie Rosario, Buxton, Max Kepler. They all have good arms, but in the major leagues your corner outfielders have to be offensive players.... This team has a chance to be the worst in the league.

Jason Castro is paid $8m a season and he's elite at one skill. Kurt Suzuki is elite at nothing and was paid $6m. If you can get a starting player with one elite skill for $8m a season, you're not exactly hindering your ability to pay other people down the road. If Castro is a backup in 2019 and paid $8m, is anyone really going to care?

That guy needs to rub some dirt on that article and walk it off.

Seriously, it's like we time-warped back to 1998.

Yeah, that scout should probably be fired because "Kurt Suzuki".

Yeah, it'd be a lot of work for not a lot of gain but there could be gains in there and those gains could come at crucial times.

The left/right conversation about lineups got me thinking... Have teams built books on opposing managers and used the data to exploit tendencies? I've never read about it but it seems like an interesting thing to explore, just one more thing to get a leg up against opposing teams. Let's say you're in the seventh inning with l/r/l hitters coming to the plate. In that situation, maybe Terry Francona is 12% more likely than other managers to call a lefty to get that first out and get out in front of a dangerous situation. Or maybe he's 18% more likely than other managers to let it ride with a righty through the first two batters and hope for the best. Or maybe he'll do something the real Francona would probably do and call out half his bullpen to get those three outs. How would teams exploit this, both in lineup construction (predicting later events and already have a lineup set to react to them) or use their own pinch-hitting/running to counteract these tendencies? And would these situations be frequent and/or consistent enough to matter?

True, but that knife cuts in both directions. If you group LHB against righties, that means you're also bunching RHB against righties. The effect isn't as great (usually, anyway) but you're comprising parts of your lineup either way. And in those later innings, the opposing manager doesn't even have to think about it. You've created the perfect storm for him to exploit with left/right pitching matchups.

Anyway, my general point is that LHB are traditionally horrible against LHP in comparison to their RHP performance. Bunching lefties together in the lineup makes the opposing manager's decisions a lot easier from the sixth inning onward.

That's true about starters but lefties get that advantage either way. It doesn't matter if they're split up or in a row. Yes, bunching them together might impact run-scoring a bit but I was thinking of individual OPS performance, which it won't affect. As for leads/deficits late in games, I suspect the lead/deficit would have to be pretty substantial for a manager not to say "aw hell, three lefties are coming in a row, I'm just going to throw a lefty out there to make sure nothing bad happens". Every pen has one lefty reliever and lots have two of them. Chances are, one of them isn't amazing so why not put him out there to face a trio of LHB?

He's definitely a pull guy (most are nowadays though) but not obnoxiously so. http://www.fangraphs.com/spraycharts.aspx?playerid=8722&position=C&type=battedball In comparison, he's no Brian Dozier, that's for sure. http://www.fangraphs.com/spraycharts.aspx?playerid=9810&position=2B/SS&type=battedball

It's hard to know, really. Jay hasn't been a full-time reliever since 2015. It's possible it takes some time to get back into the flow of relieving. It's possible he drops a pitch and rockets through the system in a matter of months. I suspect we'll have a much better idea what to expect by the end of April once he gets a handful of games under his belt.

I was being very conservative. I suspect the timeline is more like 12 months.

I think the reason it was done now is because Falvey and Levine see something in Jay they don't like as a starter. If you have a player who will take 2-3 years to make the MLB rotation and then struggle in a 4/5 role indefinitely, do you allow him to keep starting or do you put him in the bullpen with the expectation he'll be in Minnesota within 18 months and be a better than average MLB reliever? It's not an easy decision to make and I doubt they made the decision casually... But ultimately, you put your players in the position where they will provide the most team wins going forward. And obviously, Falvey feels Jay can do that from the bullpen, not the rotation. And none of this includes any health considerations you have about Jay as a starter and the number of overall pitches he'll throw if he continues starting.

That's a valid point. And I'm not sure lineup position in regards to handedness has been proven irrelevant. Most conversations I've seen revolve around stuff like whether Dozier should hit second or fifth and whether that matters (ignoring Dozier's home runs, just speaking generally about any player, really). I think handedness matters quite a bit. If you stack three lefties in a row, those lefties are going to suffer in the last third of the game as managers throw lefty relievers at them at least once a game, possibly multiple times a game if possible. If you're a lefty facing LHP 10% more often than a typical lefty bat, your season statistics are going to suffer and the difference won't be negligible. Many LHB hit LHP at a .150-.200 lower OPS. That's not a small difference, that's the kind of thing that can move a player's overall season OPS down .020 or more points.

There's a reason the team finished a whopping 12 games under their expected sequencing. The entire team was awful in run-scoring situations. At one point, the team had something like 17 solo home runs and 3 home runs with runners on base. The real kicker to that stat? With the bases empty, the team had one of the best OBP in baseball at the time (2nd or 3rd IIRC). With runners on base, they were dead last in OBP. That kind of statistical anomaly is incredibly difficult to repeat.