Matthew Lenz

You pose a very interesting question here and lots of good information. I do feel that hitters are changing their approach at the plate which is resulting in more strikeouts which would mean it's easier on the pitchers now. I think your last two paragraphs kind of prove this point.

Most of you probably don't know that I am a high school math teacher and junior varsity baseball coach. Recently, a student of mine asked for me to write about the record breaking home run and strikeout rates from the 2017 season. I'm going to dive into those numbers for you today, but then also look at how these numbers are reflected in the projected 2018 opening day lineup for our beloved Twins. League Overview To get a good set of data, I took the K% (K/PA) and HR% (HR/PA) for the last twenty-one major league seasons. Below you will find a graphical summary (follow link for a closer look) of my findings: You will notice that although both statistics see an increase over this timeframe, there is a much more significant increase in HR% versus K%. The most notable differences in both stats can be seen in the "statcast era" from 2014-2017 where exit velocity and launch angle data as literally been changing hitters approaches at the dish. Furthermore, it's been well documented that 2017 was a record breaking year for strikeouts and home runs. Twins Lineup Implications The last two seasons have seen the Minnesota Twins hit the 3rd (2017) and 4th (2016) most home runs in franchise history, which includes the 60 years they spent being known as the Washington Senators. Interestingly enough, they finished 2nd (2016) and 3rd (2017) most strikeouts in a single season over that same time. (If you're curious, the 2013 Twins struck out a franchise record 1,430 times but only hit 151 homeruns which is 70 less than their 2017 total. Ouch.) Comparably league wide, their 2016 and 2017 combined totals put them 15th in the league in homeruns and 6th in the league in strikeouts. Below shows where the each Twins player ended up in 2017 when comparing strikeout and homerun percentages: Not surprisingly you will see Miguel Sano lead the team in both categories and Joe Mauer was at the bottom in both categories, among the regulars. In the middle, you see the average for 2017 was a 3.29 percent homerun rate and 21.6 percent strikeout rate. Ideally, we want our Twins to be closer to the Doziers, Rosario, Escobar, and Keplers of our lineup. Guys who finished below the league average in strikeout rate but above in homerun rate. Here are some of my takeaways: Much ado has been made about Rosario’s plate discipline in 2017. Not only did MLB strikeout percentage drop from a career mark of 25.2 percent to 22.2 percent, but he also set a career high in homerun percentage. He will be very valuable to the Twins if 2017 wasn’t a fluke. Admittedly, I am someone who is ready to see Vargas find another employer. So I was a little surprised to see how high his homerun percentage was in 2017. He can become value to the Twins or elsewhere if he can work on his plate discipline. That’s a big if. Jason Castro was an excellent defensive catcher in 2017. He was pretty good behind the plate too. Though he lost some of his power he tied his career low in strikeout percentage and a career high in OBP. I’d love to see his power rebound a little, but most teams will take any productivity they can get out of their catcher. I mentioned this earlier, but I really like where the core of Dozier, Rosario, Escobar, and Kepler fall. I think this is ideal for the middle of the order where these guys hit. Rosario and Escobar had broke out in 2017...is it time for Kepler? This season is huge from the Twins. They have yet to extend any of their young talent and there haven’t been any rumblings about contract talks. Maybe the organization is waiting to see what happens with Yu first or maybe they are waiting to see what 2018 entails. We all know this is a huge year for our young core. We’ll be looking to see if guys like Escobar and Roario are for real, while looking at Kepler and Berrios as possible breakout stars. What do you think about the data? Is it meaningful or are there other numbers we should be looking at here?

I understand Fox Sports North is not as lucrative as Time Warner (LA Dodgers). I understand that adding a big time free agent or making a splash trade from 2012 - 2015 would probably not have done much with the talent, or lack thereof, that Twins had at the time. Honestly, even in 2015 and 2017 I didn't think of them as "contenders". A possible playoff team? Sure. But not true contenders. Where I completely disagree with you is that calling them cheap is lazy. According to Forbes, in July of 2015 The Pohlad Family is worth an estimated 3.8 billion (with a "b"). In the same article they said he bought the Twins for $36 million and they are now worth $670 million, which is a $634 million profit. I'm not saying that they need to get every big free agent, but if they don't get a big free agent it should never be about money. Ever. For example, from all reports I can find Torii wanted to stay a Twin back when he left for the Angels. If he wanted to stay a Twin, then either they didn't make him an offer (sources indicate that is not true) or they lowballed him (which is what most people think). I have closely followed the Twins for the better part of 20 years. I can't think of a time where the Twins were actually tied to a big name FA. To be fair, not all rumors make the news but I have to assume that if they had actually tried to pursue a top FA we would have heard about it. Pursuing big time FA's is a risk that rarely gives the team 100% value, but the fact is that a lot of teams do it and it is necessary at times to become a true contender. If the Twins didn't even pursue the FA...that's cheap IMO. As much as the Pujols contract is terrible for the Angels, I don't think the Moreno family or the Angels organization has become worth less in the last 6 years. So as much as a "risk" these big contracts are...where is the risk in a no salary cap league?

Personally, I don't think the "out of options drama" is a problem. Like you said, I think Pressly is pretty safe and I won't be at all upset if we lose Vargas to waivers. I have two cases of fatigue when it comes to Vargas and Gibson. Personally, I think we give Gibby a shot at a starting spot, send him to the bullpen, or cut him. No need to set him down to AAA unless they are desperate for arms and AA doesn't have anyone worth calling up. At this point he is what he is. Challenge #5 is what will make or break the Twins season, IMO. Assuming a regression in Santana we need another #1 (Cobb, Darvish, etc.) or we need Berrios to take a big step this year.

Yea, I wish it could be broken down more. I remember that pitch...it should get a good QOPV since the formula doesn't take into account the result of the pitch.

I think this is a very real possibility.

I agree that with Darvish there is less of a need. That said, I think the #4 or #5 spot in the rotation should be completely up for grabs even with Darvish.. I don't have much faith in Gibson and I think Phil Hughes is a major question mark. I would love to see Gonsalves and Meija get an extended opportunity to see what they can do at the major league level. Admittedly, Meija had a rough 2017 but, at 24, obviously too soon to give up and not give him another shot.

Nico job Twins FO. The Twins bullpen is going to be solid this year, even if Rodney were to fall off a cliff for some reason. Now on to Yu!

Not too long ago, Tom had the great idea for the bloggers to list their breakout candidate for 2018 in his Twins Weekly article. So I spent days...nay, hours...nay, minutes(!) scouring some of my favorite baseball resources looking for the dark horse breakout candidate that nobody would ever think of. Minutes (!!), looking for the dark horse breakout candidate that would take me from a blogger-in-training to a Schefter-esque insider. Minutes (!!!), looking for the dark horse breakout candidate that would leave readers wondering if I am some crazy baseball sorcerer or just plain crazy. After awhile I thought to myself: "What are you doing?? Just listen to your gut." So here is where I fell. My breakout candidate for 2018, the 2016 and 2017 TD MiLB Pitcher of the Year, is 23-year-old LHP Stephen Gonsalves. So much for a "dark horse", eh? Gonsalves had a terrific 2017 where his most notable improvement was his command finishing almost a full walk less per nine innings than his career average (2017: 2.54 BB/9 v. 2013-2016: 3.47). Over 46 tracked fastballs (PITCHf/x has only tracked 71 total pitches), his average velocity sits at just 89.72 mph, which means control is going to be a key factor for him to have any success. Surprisingly, and despite his lack of velocity, he finished the 2017 MiLB season with a 9.65 K/9 pitching 87.1 innings at AA and 22.2 innings at AAA and a 10.78 K/9 in 74.1 innings during the 2016 season at AA. In that same timeframe he did struggle with his command posting a 4.48 BB/9, so we could say that 10+ K/9 was a result of being "wildly effective" a la Edwin Jackson. An improvement in command over a two-year period is another reason why I see him taking the next step this year. Gonsalves batted ball data in minors suggests that he is a flyball pitcher, which isn't a huge deal as Target Field is a pitchers park and...well...you know...Buxton/Rosario/Kepler. But what impressed me even a little more is that hitters don't hit him well. At levels where he made 15+ starts his LD% are as follows: 17.2% (2015 High A), 13% (2016 High A), 18.1% (2016 AA), and 19.2% (2016 AA) which are all below the MLB average of 21%. Admittedly, I know this is a little bit of apples and oranges using a MLB average to analyze minor league numbers, but I do think it gives you a gauge of where he's at. Again, Target Field tends to treat fly ball pitchers well especially with our defense...another positive sign that this could be his year. For me the make or break variable for Stephen Gonsalves will be the development of his slider and curveball. Below you will find a graphic from Brooks Baseball that uses a standardized score to rate Stephen's velocity and movement against other pitchers who fit similar criteria. Unfortunately, this is a very small sample as they only tracked 71 pitches over Gonsalves' 2016 Arizona Fall League appearances. To briefly explain this chart, a negative number means he is below average and a positive number means he is above average. You might notice that his slider and curveball weren't great in this limited sample. There is no PITCHf/x data for him other than this and no other resource (fangraphs, baseball ref, etc.) keeps very great MiLB SABR stats. In a recent interview with Seth Stohs, Stephen said that he was able to work on his slider so much in 2017 that "it is almost as good as his change up". If this is true and if he can carry this into 2018, then Stephen already has three solid pitches in his arsenal. In that same interview, he said that he has been working with former big leaguer David Wells this season who was known for his curveball: If Wells can help him develop his curveball into a reliable 4th pitch, then I think Stephen will be primed to make the next jump. As I said before, I think his slider and curveball are his biggest question marks coming into the season and will ultimately define if he spends most if his time in Minneapolis or Rochester this year. So what does all this mean for 2018? I think Gonsalves is part of the Spring Training battle for a back end rotation spot but ultimately starts the year at AAA. He will perform well at AAA to the point where he will be the guy called on to fill in during DL stints or for a spot start here and there. Eventually, he makes his way to the MLB roster and doesn't look back. I think he provides a boost to the back end of the rotation that may not be RoY/Cy Young worthy, but that consistently gives you a chance to compete every 5th day. What do you guys think? Who are some other breakout candidates? Anyone have a breakout candidate from a lower level in the Twins organization who may rise quickly in 2018?

would love your feedback!

I'm in the camp of extending Buxton ASAP. It's fair to confidently think that he will continue to improve on the offensive end, but with his defense being what it is...he can provide similar overall value as an above average to elite offensive player. He's always going to have injury concerns because of his play style. Last thing we want is for him to change how he plays the game.

FIP is fielder independent pitching. The stat is related to ERA, but it attempts to neutralize the pitcher from his defense. Essentially how many runs is the pitcher truly responsible for. A pitcher with a bad defense will typically have a FIP that is less than his ERA, because some of his earned runs were attributed to the poor defense. A pitcher with a good defense will typically have a FIP that is higher than his ERA, because the defense helped the pitcher save some runs. Here is an example...the Twins team ERA in '17 was 5.09 but FIP was 4.57. An indicator that the Twins defense was pretty darn good (which it was). SIERA is Skill-Interactive ERA. Essentially, it is an updated (supposedly) better version of FIP. It's very hard to explain (especially in text)...even fangraphs sends you to a different resource to attempt to explain it. So if you're interested in more details follow the link. The x-axis on the graph above is a standardized value. A standardized value of 0 means the pitcher through an "average" pitch according to QOP's measures, which would be a QOPV of 4.5. A standardized value of +1 means he threw a pitch that is 1 standard deviation above the mean, which would be a QOPV of 6.75 (the standard deviation is 2.75 according to the founder's findings). A standardized value of -1 means he threw a pitch that is 1 standard deviation below the mean, which would be a QOPV of 1.75. You're right, this does take a college level introductory statistics course to fully understand, so I have include the same line graph but with QOPV scores rather than standardized scores. Hopefully that should do a more clear job of showing that ERA/FIP/SIERA all decrease as QOP increases. As I said in my post, this was simply an introductory/overview of the stat. I intend to use it in the future and other writers on Twins Daily have stated they may as well. At this point, the QOP website only tracks year by year. Doesn't do splits or game logs. Hopefully something that will become more developed over time.

As many people have already suggested...Garver has done enough to be given a shot at the big league level. I think what's more important here is to give him a shot to see if he can take over as the primary catcher in 2020 or if we will need to look elsewhere.

I somewhat agree with you. It definitely does take into account location (mentioned in first sentence under "computation" heading), but I think the bigger flaw is that it doesn't take into consideration the situation. I mentioned this in my comment above to Tom...wish I would have included in the original post. But an 0-2 slider in the dirt gets you a bad QOPV although the location might be considered "good" due to the situation. Compare that same exact pitch to a 3-1 count and now we have a terrible pitch due to the situation and should earn a bad rating. This metric gives those two pitches the same rating. At the same time, is there a statistic that gives you a single numerical value to measure a pitchers "stuff"? I am not aware of one, which directly from my post, "I think it provides fans with a different, more insightful perspective than the traditional pitching stats (W/L, ERA, WHIP, etc.), especially when coupled with other SABR pitching stats." FYI, Deduno finished his career (assuming it's done) with a 2.3 WAR and a 4.44 QOPA. A 2.3 WAR is probably higher than you would have guessed based off of your post, yet a 4.44 QOPA is below the major league average.

Interesting finding. This may be my next task at hand...to figure out some of these discrepancies. Another limitation I thought of after I posted is that it doesn't take into account certain situations. For example, a pitcher ahead 0-2 could very likely throw a "garbage" pitch just to get the batter to chase. This pitch, although not bad at all, would probably result on a bad QOPV. Does that happen enough to make Gibson > Kershaw? Probably not, but could be a partial factor. Hope to dig in a little bit more here.

I've spent a lot of time over the last few days reading about a relatively new statistic called "quality of pitch" (QOP), which assigns a numerical value to each pitch a pitcher throws. The values can then averaged together to come up with a pitchers average quality of pitch (QOPA) or you can look at a quality of pitch set of values (QOPV) as another tool to measure the performance of a pitcher. The purpose of this post is to provide a simple overview of this data as it may be referenced in future articles. Background QOP was first publicly introduced in March 2015 by Jason Wilson and Wayne Greiner. Since then it has been written in various publications such as "Baseball America", the "Fangraphs", and by Yahoo Sports! columnist Jeff Passan among others. Meanwhile, Wilson and Greiner have presented their findings at the 2015 SABR Analytics Conference. In short, this statistic was introduced and quickly regarded as a good tool to measures a pitchers performance in a way the baseball community has not previously done before. Computation QOP is computed by integrating velocity (MPH), pitch location, and pitch movement. Pitch movement is defined as the vertical break, horizontal break, breaking distance, and/or rise. These variables are put together and assigned a number 0 - 10, where 0 is a very poor pitch and 10 is an excellent pitch. The MLB average QOP is 4.5 and median is 5. Here is an example of QOP being used. Validation Wilson and Greiner have measured QOP against ERA, FIP, and SIERA which all produced a strong, negative correlation. That is, the better the QOP the lower the ERA/FIP/SIERA. Furthermore, a search of the top 10 2017 QOPA leaders for pitchers who threw 1,000 or more pitches provides you with a list of some of the more effective pitchers in baseball. Limitations As with all stats, QOP has its limitations. From a mathematical perspective anytime we are averaging numbers together the data can be skewed by outliers, and QOP is no exception to this rule. To help minimize the effect of outliers Wilson and Greiner have created a guide to determine the margin of error depending on the sample size. From a baseball perspective, QOP doesn't take into account of a pitcher who misses his spots. That is, if the catcher calls for a fastball high and inside but the pitcher throws it low and outside he could still get a high QOP score despite completely missing his spot. If technology exists for the location and break of each ball to be tracked, then I would like to see something developed that also accounts for the movement of the catcher's glove. Author's Conclusion Again, this post was solely meant to introduce you to this stat without diving into specifics on Twins pitchers. Personally, I look forward to using this stat and wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing it more and more in future posts by me or any other Twins Daily writer. Despite its limitations, I think it provides fans with a different, more insightful perspective than the traditional pitching stats (W/L, ERA, WHIP, etc.), especially when coupled with other SABR pitching stats. I also wonder how well this stat can be used to predict future outcomes. I look at the list above and a couple names surprised me, but specifically Joe Biagini who was also a top 10 QOPA guy in 2016 under the same criteria. A quick look at his fangraphs page shows that he hasn't been great in 162.0 big league innings. Is this the sign of a good pitcher who has just had some bad luck early in his career? Or is he the poster child for how finding the average QOP can, at times, be a misleading statistic? What do you guys think about this stat? Is this something you would look forward to seeing in future articles? What are your thoughts in the curious case of Joe Biagini?

From what I know and am aware of, I think this is a fairly good prediction. As people have mentioned earlier this is three years away, so extremely hard to picture this. I have a hard time projecting Garver to be a starting catcher. I could see him being a valuable back-up, but not somebody who starts a majority of the games. Dozier moving to 3B seems very unlikely. I know the premise would be we need to find a spot for him, but I wonder if later in his career he becomes a super utility. An offensive player who can provide a little value at 2B, 1B, RF and LF or 3B on a limited basis.

I had much of the same thoughts and opinions as you when he first got called up. Figured it was just another average arm that would eat some innings for us. Rather, he became one of our most reliable guys out of the pen. Great analysis on the different arm angles. I think this is something often over looked or even not considered as relevant by the average baseball fan. It will be interesting to see what 2018 has in store for the guy, especially as teams become familiar with his tendencies. A dramatic difference in his arm slot between fastball and off speed could make his fastball very hittable.

I would say no. Or at least a lesser concern.

I really like this. Specifically asking people for what they want to read about. I can already see that one of my biggest struggles will be coming up with interesting topics to write about..especially in the slow off season.

Am I misunderstanding this? Are you saying he will be "let off easy" because of his race? If so, I think Aroldis Chapman (30 games) and Jose Reyes (51 games) are very recent examples of the MLB dropping the hammer on these players who are different nationality but pretty much the same "race" as Sano.

I know the David Ortiz comp gets tired, but what's wrong with Sano being a full-time DH? I may have been too young when Ortiz was here, but was weight a major concern for him? According to fan graphs they are both 6' 4", but Sano is 260 v. Ortiz 250. Whether he has been involved in trade talks or not, we will never be able to trade him until there is some sort of resolution to this sexual assault allegation.

This is the biggest thing I would fix on my first post. I looked up data that I mentioned, but thought it would be too cumbersome to add the specifics in my post. Ultimately, I think it would have made the article a little more insightful to readers. Anyway, here was my line of thinking: This offseason has been slow, but Yonder Alonso signed with the Indians for $8mil per year. Comparatively to Mauer, he provides a little more power, less OBP, and a lot less defense. He's younger, coming off a career year, and also fits the "launch angle" ideal that so many hitters (and teams) are trending towards. Ultimately, my opinion is that the pros and cons of both players provide a similar value to a team although the type of value they provide are different. If that makes sense.I also looked at players that signed in 2016/2017 offseason who were 36+ years old and although the median salary was 7.75 million a few of those guys are getting paid $13 & $16 million. If I were to include 35+ year olds, which is technically how old Mauer will be at the start of the 2019 season, the median is at $8 million and includes Yadier Molina (a career long Cardinal) getting paid $20 million. Although the median is lower, I think the higher deals give Mauer/Shapiro some room to negotiate an above the median salary. Especially if Mauer performs similarliy to how he did in '17.The other thing I should have clarified is that I am making this prediction thinking that Mauer will be as close to full-time as he can be. Which I see being about 120 games as a 1B/DH. If he can only be a part-time player, then yes I see him getting about half of my prediction. Personally, I don't think he would agree to anything less than a multi-year deal.

You're telling me. But in reality, I have to imagine they have some sort of impact on voters. Even if it's just a little bit...I can't believe they mean absolutely nothing to voters.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this Sano news. With that said I think it would be good to mention Escobar's projections. 472 PA, 14 HR, 260/311/431