ThejacKmp

Fun stats. There are things to add (e.g. ball gets by the catcher, a distinct possibility on a crazy throw like that) but the numbers are fun. That said, this is where I think the win probability thing fails the real world test. When the team in the field is up 1, every risky play they make is going to seem good because it ends the game and anything bad only ties it. Under this logic, all kinds of crazy throws and plays become worth it when anyone who has played the game knows that bad plays and poor choices tend to snowball. It's where the stats can't replicate the feel of the game. But still, fun thought-provoking stats.

Depends on the situation. First inning, nobody out, guy on second, yeah it's dumb. And it's irritating when Bert will praise a guy for a productive out in that situation - it's still an out early in the game and while it's a benefit, it's not worthy of effusive praise. 9th inning, same situation in a tie game? You have to hit that ball to the right side of the field. It doesn't mean you're trying for an out but your #1 bare minimum job is to move that runner to 3rd base.

Not just a bad play though, this is a horrendous play. Even slow pitch softball players have the awareness to know that the lead runner doesn't matter, the one who matters is the guy rounding first. This isn't a mistake of aggression, it's a mistake of stupidity and a lack of awareness. Fully support Molitor sitting him - it's okay to be aggressive on the basepaths, it's not okay to not understand a pretty simple situation. Hopefully a day or two off will remind Eddie he needs to know where he is in the game. If this were a reasonably competitive softball team, half the team would be yelling at the guy to use his head.

Yes. Kurt Suzuki is absolutely worried about how many at bats and counting stats he gets - that's how he and his agent sell him for next season. The dawn of advanced stats lessens this a little bit but those numbers still matter in getting another deal. Suzuki sitting down the stretch makes him less marketable for next year. If he is less marketable, that negatively affects the Twins reputation. You can certainly argue a matter of degree (again, advanced stats make pure counting stats less valuable) but this is certainly a factor.

When he talks about that, he isn't talking about the leadoff man in the lineup, he's talking about the leadoff man in the inning. Other than the first inning, the leadoff man is no more likely to be the guy leading off an inning than anyone else in the lineup*. * I guess that's not entirely true in the NL, where whoever bats after the pitcher probably leads off more innings because the pitcher is more likely to make a 3rd out. But you get my point.

A wrinkle, not sure how important it is: Suzuki is a free agent playing for his next contract - he wants to have the ABs and playing time to showcase his skills. If the Twins just bench him (clearly in their best self interest), he doesn't get to do that. That in turn hurts the Twins reputation with free agents. I work in banking and every bank has it's own reputation and it does affect where people choose to work. The Twins don't want the reputation of being a team that will hurt a free agent's leverage for the next deal - otherwise guys will have a disincentive to sign with the Twins because they're seen as a team that doesn't shoot straight. Now I'm not sure how much Suzuki alone matters but my point is more that this isn't just a black-and-white what's best for the Twins thing. There are a lot of factors involved as far as reputation goes. This is why it was criminal not to trade Suzuki. Even if they got nothing for dumping him, they would free up PT without potentially hurting their reputation.

A lot of research on lineups indicates that the roles we focus on are immaterial. Any sequencing advantage is lost after the first inning and you run the risk of not getting as many at bats for your best hitters as possible. If Dozier bats first, he bats more often.

Releasing Centeno makes no sense. He's a fine backup catcher and I don't agree withyour idea that Turner is ready for the bigs. He can't hit AA let alone the majors. They should have traded Suzuki for a bucket of balls and called up JRM and Garver to accompany Centeno down the stretch. I imagine you don't suddenly want two brand new catchers new to the bigs as you try out pitchers down the stretch. Centeno can provide some continuity and figures to be in the Twins plans next year.

I just don't trust that they had no value, I think the Twins just refused to sell low on them. Maybe Plouffe didn't make it through waivers (annoying how obscured the waiver process is - it seems like something that would be of interest to fans so I'm not sure why baseball doesn't make the process more public) but if he did, he would have some value to some contender as a bench bat down the stretch when rosters are expanded. And as for the Twins, getting PT for young guys is worth getting almost anything for him. Some 35th round pick from this years draft would be worth it if it meant seeing Sano at 3B every day and getting ABs for guys like Polanco, Escobar and Vargas who might be in the Twins future. I also think somebody somewhere would have traded some low prospect for Suzuki. Most teams bring up a 3rd catcher in September. Would you rather have some prospect or a guy like Suzuki who might be able to provide a pinch hit or two.

Inexcusable they didn't move him or Suzuki. Get some value. My worry is they're going to extend an offer to Plouffe in the offseason.

It's driven me crazy to watch them promote Turner and Garver in lockstep up until this year. It made too much sense to get those guys in different levels and let them both catch more frequently - it's not like the Twins had so many catchers this would be tough to do and Turner struggled at the plate so being left behind wouldn't be the worst thing. I get that maybe it's nice they learn together but a farm system should have guys at every level who can teach catchers. I don't worry so much that they were too slow with Garver but the lack of catching time is just hard to fathom. Very frustrating.

Bert's opinions on national broadcasts also involve long discussions of his birthday and rants about how soft pitchers are for not pitching complete games. I'm not saying those guys are idiots or that a mechanical issue isn't part of the issue but I'm not sure they aren't just filling time during a season it has to be hard to announce Twins games.

And I for one would love to see Duffey in the pen. I think even if he turns it around that might be his future - he has two pitches and the Twins have enough young pitching coming up that someone is going to get squeezed out. Duffey makes the most sense.

1.) Yeah I am saying that. Pay attention to context, it matters and invalidates the simplistic way you look at things. You're acting like Vargas and Plouffe are both 25 year old prospects. They're really not. Vargas is a young prospectish player and Plouffe is a 30 year old vet the Twins are shopping for a trade before the Aug 31 deadline. Of course Plouffe is going to play, you're hoping to unload him (the Braves just got something decent for Jeff Francouer so there's hope for trading Plouffe if the Twins eat some money and a team needs a RH bench bat). After September 1st, it’s a whole new discussion – Plouffe should play minimally and September call-ups like Vargas and Palka should get the PT. But before then, the Twins future is better served having Plouffe get hot with the stick than having Vargas get PT. That’s not really a question, that’s more of a fact. 2.) “Trevor Plouffe has been awful over a huge sample size”? Let’s not get too hyperbolic here. Trevor Plouffe has been an average third baseman for a half decade. He’s not a part of the Twins future but to claim he’s been awful is stretching it pretty far. Rondell White was awful. Juan Castro was awful. Trevor Plouffe has been a pretty decent player who is getting too expensive and too old to be part of future plans. 3.) You can dismiss small sample size but it's a very real thing. Kennys Vargas took a bunch of walks - in 100 plate appearances. Before that his walk rate was nothing special (9 walks in 184 PA last year). We all hope the trend continues but to say that Kennys Vargas is a whole new player who has figured it out is really premature. His minor league track record doesn’t point to a great walk rate. Guys change but we usually wait to see it for over a full season before we accept it’s there to stay. 4.) I know you’re stretching when you start positively comparing Vargas’ walking to Sano walking. You clearly aren’t paying attention if you think Sano doesn’t have a much nicer walk rate. Kennys Vargas walk rates: 2014: 5.1% in 234 PA 2015: 4.9% in 184 PA 2016: 16.5% in 103 PA Miguel Sano: 2015: 15.8% in 335 PA 2016: 11.8% in 383 PA Unlike Vargas, Sano also consistently showed the ability to draw walks in the minors. Miguel Sano has a proven MLB track record of an above average to great BB rate*. Vargas has done it for 103 PA after being dismal the two prior years (Eddie Rosario as a MLB player has a BB rate of 3.2% so Vargas was basically slightly better than Eddie Rosario). So hey, let’s hold off on crowning Kennys the Walk King and let’s pay some more attention to the numbers behind your “arguments”. D'ohK. * http://www.fangraphs.com/library/offense/rate-stats/

Cool. I just don't think that the numbers really prove much other than, "pitchers who are pitching poorly tend to continue to pitch poorly."

Well, I think what the person was arguing was that as Duffey is 26, there's a concept that he doesn't have as much to gain from spending time in AAA. He doesn't have a very high ceiling so in the absence of other better options, letting him figure it out at the majors is acceptable. As Berrios has a higher ceiling and is younger with less time at AAA, there's a concept that he might have some things to learn. Note that this isn't necessarily my argument, just trying to flesh it out a bit.

You're assuming a causation that isn't necessarily there. Of course guys have worse numbers when guys are on - if they let people on, they're presumably not pitching well so it's no surprise it continues. If they're not letting guys on, their stuff is likely better and they're less likely to get hit around. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the overall point, just the weight of these numbers in proving it. To do that I think you'd need to find what the league averages are for runners on vs. bases empty and compare it to Duffey. That would help.

Because it happened over 85 at bats. In 285 at bats in AAA his OPS was .788. You're talking the shortest of samples and we'd all be howling if the Twins made personnel decisions based on 85 at bat samples. I also don't buy the confidence thing - the team told him it was due to roster crunch and he knows he'll be back up in a week. If a player's psyche can't handle that, then I don't think he was long for the majors anyways.

I agree to this to a point. I'd say it's much harder for a baseball player to carry a team in the playoffs but not that it's impossible. Daniel Murphy last year is a prime example - he threw the Mets on his back and took them to the World Series. Now he didn't do it on his own (their pitching helped) but it can be done. At the same time, I agree that one shouldn't judge players for the HOF based on playoffs. It's super rare for a player to do that in the postseason and Mauer never got much of a chance. Mauer has only had three abortive playoff runs as a Twins and kind of carried them in one (it was only three games but he had a 1.000 OPS and a number of big hits). The bigger issue is that a lot of those teams just weren't as good, especially in starting pitching. The 2009 team had Brian Duensing, Nick Blackburn and Carl Pavano as it's SP. 2010 had Liriano, Pavano and Hughes. The 2006 team was the Twins best (oh Johan) and even it had a guy named Boof Bonser starting Game 2 and the broken arm of Brad Radke in Game 3. Hard to blame Mauer for his lack of postseason success - that's been the Twins fault. It's the same as blaming KG for not getting out of the first round more than once in MN - one guy can only go so far. I think Mauer should be a HOF but I get it may take awhile and may not happen. The difference between him and Mattingly is that he played catcher for his prime, not 1B/OF. For eight years he was by far the best catcher in baseball and provided elite defense while winning three unprecedented batting titles and an MVP. He even has a Pujols year, the ultimate compliment. I think that's a big enough peak to make you HOF but I get the other side of the argument. I hope the sabermetrics crowd continues to gain more influence and can highlight just how amazing Joe Mauer was for his peak. He's not the best catcher of all time but I think he's right around #10 and if you were to pick a five-year stretch of catching to call the best, Mauer 2006-2010 would have to right near the top of that list. I think that counts for something.

This is a different tack and I'm likely a lone voice shouting into the void here but I haven't given up hope that Joe Mauer will have another good season or two. I understand that's getting harder to defend, but the other day I was looking at Joe's career stats and I noticed that he's seen a significant drop in his BABIP. He’s generally had a high BABIP over his career but the past two years have seen the lowest of his career since his first meaningful season at age 22 - .309 last year and .318 this year. His prior worst was two seasons with .319 (in 2007 and 2011, no coincidentally the two injury-plagued/below-.300 years of his prime). Looking at his advanced stats, I can’t see anything that would materially change those numbers. He’s never had a ton of infield hits so a drop in speed doesn’t make sense – and he’s not getting faster but he’s also likely not getting slower. His GB/FB ratio hasn’t changed in any marked way (it was a career high last year but is back to his career norm this year) and his LD % is actually a career high this year. His K rate has gone up over the past five years of course, but not so much to show a .050+ drop in batting average. The only idea for a permanent change that makes sense to me is that Joe has been quite adversely affected by shifts. It would explain a drop in BABIP since the balls that were hits before now aren’t falling. I’m not smart enough to figure out if that is true or not but just from watching games it doesn’t seem to me that he’s incredibly shifted any more. I’ve even heard the unreliable source that is the FSN broadcast team talking about teams playing him more straight up so maybe teams are rethinking it? He’s not a huge power hitter so the shifts may not be as emphasized with him. I guess overall I’m saying that there’s maybe a light at the end of this kind of dark tunnel. Mauer’s BABIP has been very low the past two years and that has the potential to change. I get that two years starts to become a pattern (and three years would definitely indicate one) and I understand that it may not be bad luck (could be aging, shifits etc.) But if his BABIP returned to even low peak-Joe Mauer levels (say .345), he’s be back up to hitting around .300. It would certainly help his HOF case and the Twins in 2017.

Yeah, I'm just not interested in Ramos/Wieters. So many free agent catching contracts get rough quickly. Ramos might be a better gamble but it's still a gamble. I like the JRM/Garver succession plan well enough and am more interested in using Ramos money to start signing Twins guys. Would love to go after Buxton now while the market is low. You wouldn't have to invest a crippling amount in it and the potential payoff is huge if he turns it around.

I guess the counterpoint would be that if those guys aren't worth locking up, keeping Dozier isn't going to matter anyway. So no reason not to trade Dozier while he has value.

I also think the real issue is what else the Twins will want to do in two years. Yeah, the Twins could probably spend $18 mill on Dozier the next few years. The team is relatively cheap and since the Twins aren't likely to pursue a top end pitcher or spend a ton on bullpen help, there isn't a lot of places to spend money. You could go after a SS but the internal candidates are only a few years away. And C seems unlikely since those contracts backfire so much. So that money could probably be spent. But in the next 2-3 years the Twins are hopefully going to want to start locking up Kepler, Sano, Buxton, Berrios, Gonsalves and maybe Polanco, Rosario, Vargas, Garver etc. That's when you're going to want the Dozier money (along with the Mauer money). You've got to think ahead right now, extricate some value for Dozier and save the resources and PT for the next generation.

C'mon Cody, you're better than this. This article is based on a foundation of bogus narrative. "In recent years, the season's second half has not been kind to Brian Dozier. In 2014, Dozier hit 18 home runs in the first half and stole 16 bases. It looked like he could be on his way to a 30-30 season. Things slowed down in the second half as he was limited to five home runs and five steals. His OBP jumped up 12 points but his power numbers declined." I thought we were done with the tired "Dozier slumped in 2014" narrative. I guess not. His splits before and after the break in 2014: AVG/OBP/SLG/OPS .242/.340/.436/.776 .244/.352/.387/.739 There's a slight fall off in slugging but an increase in OBP. Overall this is not much of a drop off. The narrative is almost entirely driven by the differences in his home runs, which we focus on too much. Dozier had 18 HR in the first half of 2014 vs. 5 HR in the second half but also had 16 doubles and no triples vs 17 doubles and one triple. As the first half has 100 more at bats than the second half, the real story is a little less pop with some home runs turning into doubles. This myth of Dozier falling apart in the second half of 2014 colors the way we look at Dozier as a player. He slumped late in 2015 but we certainly shouldn’t be building patterns out of one season and the mistaken impression of another season. And he played everyday through nagging injuries in 2015 - you could argue that the issue was the Twins not giving him a day off, not some failure to finish seasons. "It also signals the first time in his career where his second half numbers are going to be much better than his first half totals." Ummm, no. Categorically false. If you want another reason to disregard the "Dozier second half struggle" narrative, here are his first and second half splits in 2013, his first full season in the bigs: AVG/OBP/SLG/OPS .235/.310/.386/.696 .253/.313/.443/.757 That's pretty clearly a big improvement in the second half of 2013. Overall, in Dozier's four full big league seasons he's had two seasons where he finished stronger (2013 and 2016), one season where he slumped into the end (2015) and one season where he was pretty consistent between first and second halves (2014). This narrative is false and should not be perpetuated by intelligent-minded fans.

Tradeworthy! Plouffe should be playing til the end of the month to build his trade value (he's hitting at least so he's doing his side of the bargain) and then if the Twins can't unload him, he should play minimally in September. Of course it's because he has an option. That's life when you're a guy on the fringe of the 25 man roster. Money is always going to matter at some point. Plouffe could have been designated for assignment but the Twins are rightly hoping someone will give them something at the deadline (Plouffe would be a decent right handed bench bat for a contender and since he can play 3B and 1B has a bit more versatility than most bench bats, especially important for an NL team). Even your biggest Joe Mauer hater doesn't really advocate releasing Joe at this point. So that left Vargas. It's 10 days, we should chill. He'll be back up September 1st and will likely play more in AAA in the meantime. I'm sure they told him its not based on performance so it can't hurt his confidence.