ashbury

I suspect that in cases where he goes more than one inning, the second inning is worse than the first on average. This is because he doesn't get many second innings when the first one is bad.

Best some people can hope for is to learn to ignore their thin skin.

Marquis pitching Sunday means we have a genuine NL pitcher in the 9th spot. He's gone .197/.216/.283. Basically Drew Butera, with a smidgen more pop.

He needs some better luck if he wants another good contract, as well.

Very efficient inning by Capps, with ten pitches. Avila gave him a battle, then Boesch and Peralta made life easy. Not so efficient for the Twins offense though. OBP .389, SLG .500, yet only 4 runs, and one of those was charged to the defense.

Looks to me like Gardenhire wants Carroll as the permanent #9 hitter (that will change with NL games of course). It's one school of thought to put a leadoff-type hitter at #9, someone with the same skillset but less talented than your actual leadoff. That way, after the 1st inning of course, you have two consecutive OBP guys setting the table for the big hitters. Carroll will steal a base and his OBP is .322 this morning despite the low BA - higher than all but 4 players on the team, all of whom do not belong at #9. It's more of an insult to bat #8 in this mindset, and that's where Butera is (and belongs).

Seth, would it be a big project to compile a list of who is available at this point?

A line from the play-by-play we may not see too often: - T. Plouffe homered to deep left, D. Butera scored

This is a great example of the old saying, you have to be a good pitcher to lose 20. Blackburn will not be the next to do it.

Bruno is nine months younger than Vavra so I'm not sure why he'd be better able to relate to younger players; and his resume may be fine as he has moved up the Twins organization but his results so far in 2012 at AAA lack any really signature accomplishments. Mastroianni might be the only hitter he can point to, while Benson regressed, Revere has a nearly empty .300 BA, Towles isn't hitting like he has previously at AAA, etc. Like a pitcher who does well in the lower minors and then has a 5.00 ERA at AAA after his first few starts, Brunansky still needs to prove something before you move him further up. He seems to be a fun guy to be around and that could account for some of the buzz surrounding him.

This must be why Pavano is dominating this year.

"But seriously"? What do you mean? He'd be great!

If you don't like those nicknames, then you *really* wouldn't like the nicknames coach Tom Brunansky hung on Darin Mastroianni and Aaron Bates during spring training. Me, I have no problem with the nicknames. If Lexi or Plouffey are confused about who calls the shots, this won't be the reason.

Just a little takeoff on Seth's blog post today.

May 15: on this day in Twins history, 2012, Jason Marquis gave up three home runs in one inning, in a lethargic 5-0 loss that also featured (not to be outdone) four different Twins grounding into double plays. Wait, what? You have to wait a year to mark a milestone like this one?

May 15: on this day in Twins history, 2012, Jason Marquis gave up three home runs in one inning, in a lethargic 5-0 loss that also featured (not to be outdone) four different Twins grounding into double plays. Wait, what? You have to wait a year to mark a milestone like this one?

There is another aspect to choosing between HS/college, and that is managing your 40-man roster. This was raised in another thread concerning Yangervis Solarte. The rules here are a little complex, and they take into account the age when a player entered the minor league system. Still, if you draft a college player, you most likely will be able to figure out whether he's going to ever be a major league player, and what kind, by the time you have to start making roster decisions about him. If you draft a kid out of HS, you may have to make decisions about him before he's finished developing. Solarte (who I believe was not drafted, but this doesn't affect the point here) seems to have had a good 2011 at AA as a 23 year old, and yet the Twins wound up letting him go because of 40-man roster considerations. He's now doing well at AAA for Texas, though he's cooled off after a hot start. Would we rather have him than Plouffe or someone else at this point? Who knows, it's second guessing anyway. Anyway, I expect this has a lot to do with people viewing college players as "safer". If you draft a raw 18 year old with high potential, you are somewhat committing to adding him to the 40-man before he is ready to contribute to the major league team. You can't clutter your minor league system with too many of those.

Interesting, I don't know if I had heard that before. It seems like something that could be looked up. There are RISP stats on baseball-reference.com, both for league as a whole, and for individual teams. So I gathered information for years 2009-2012, for Batting Average, for OPS, and for "Runs per Plate Appearance", to see if any trends jump out. I'm doing it by hand, so I don't have time to go back an arbitrary number of years. BA and OPS ought to be more or less comparable concepts whether in total or when just looking at RISP; but actual runs scored measured by R/PA will naturally be a *lot* higher in RISP situations than for all plate appearances, because, well, there are runners on base every time. I'm just looking for trends, anyway. Here's what I compiled, and I really hope I didn't make any errors in either transcription or (in the case of R/PA) my long division. (Sorry I don't know how to line these up in columns in this text editor.) AL BA OPS R/PA 2012 Tot .250 .722 .114 2012 RISP .261 .749 .325 2011 Tot .258 .730 .117 2011 RISP .259 .743 .332 2010 Tot .260 .734 .116 2010 RISP .258 .739 .325 2009 Tot .267 .764 .125 2009 RISP .269 .774 .345 Twins BA OPS R/PA 2012 Tot .236 .660 .092 2012 RISP .233 .706 .279 2011 Tot .247 .666 .103 2011 RISP .248 .673 .320 2010 Tot .273 .762 .125 2010 RISP .285 .780 .347 2009 Tot .274 .774 .129 2009 RISP .278 .799 .367 What I see as a baseline (league-wide) is this: 1) Batting average normally is not too different in RISP situations, maybe a little higher overall but in 2010 it was slightly lower. 2) OPS (which measures walks to homers and everything in between) always is a little higher in RISP situations. 3) R/PA is hard to compare but 2009 was a higher-offense year than the years since then. Then what I see for the Twins specifically is this: 1) Their batting average in 2012 is a little lower for RISP situations, but on a scale seen league-wide in 2010. In 2010 their BA was a lot higher in RISP situation, contrary to the league. 2) Their OPS rises in RISP pretty much like it does for the full league, each of these years. 3) Their offense was better than league-average in 2009 and 2010 and their RISP stats reflect that, and their offense in 2011 and (especially) in 2012 is below league average and their RISP stats reflect that too. It still seems to me that the record indicates that if they improve their overall offense, the RISP part of it will take care of itself too. They don't merely need better production during rallies. They need better production, period.

The Twins lost 2-1 yesterday, wasting a pretty good season debut by P.J. Walters. From the AP story: The struggling Twins offense couldn't come up with a timely hit. Minnesota went 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position and stranded six runners over the final four innings. "We had plenty of chances, but it just didn't work out for us tonight,'' Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. Hm. On offense, the Twins had 5 hits total, but 6 walks to go with them. The Jays had 7 hits, and no walks. The Jays grounded into two double plays; the Twins didn't ground into any but had a runner cut down on a fly ball. The teams had two extra base hits apiece:, a double and a homer for the Jays; two doubles for the Twins. For the game: TOR: BA=.219 OBP=.219 SLG=.344 OPS=.563 MIN: BA=.161 OBP=.297 SLG=.225 OPS=.522 These are both poor batting results, as you could expect in a 2-1 game. OPS isn't the greatest stat in the world, for various reasons - but it says that in this game, Toronto did a little less poorly. The Twins did a nearly acceptable job at getting guys on base (league average OBP this year is .317), but their slugging was putrid (league SLG is .405). The eventual game winning hit was Bautista's home run. Mauer and Dozier apparently gave the ball a ride but only collected doubles. That turned out to be the difference in the game. Walks are better than outs, doubles are better than singles, and homers trump them all. Bautista didn't have anyone on base when he connected. But he put himself in scoring position nonetheless while standing at home plate, and the Jays won. (Since the Twins only run was scored on a walk, this means two of the three runs in the game were not covered by the RISP statistic, for what that's worth.) For the season, the Twins are 10th in the league in getting on base. They are dead last in slugging average (and in home runs in particular). Not coincidentally, they are also dead last in runs scored. The table setting is below par, and the power is simply not there at all. Adding Komatsu and Mastroianni only addresses the table setting, at best, and does nothing for the glaring need, throwing the offense further out of balance even if they do better than the players they replaced. Until both facets of the game improve, and a balance between getting on base and driving runners in is achieved, run scoring is going to remain at a premium. And until such time as the Twins still lose despite getting better game-OPS than their opponent, lamenting about 0-9 with runners in scoring position is for, well, losers.

The Twins lost 2-1 yesterday, wasting a pretty good season debut by P.J. Walters. From the AP story: The struggling Twins offense couldn't come up with a timely hit. Minnesota went 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position and stranded six runners over the final four innings. "We had plenty of chances, but it just didn't work out for us tonight,'' Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. Hm. On offense, the Twins had 5 hits total, but 6 walks to go with them. The Jays had 7 hits, and no walks. The Jays grounded into two double plays; the Twins didn't ground into any but had a runner cut down on a fly ball. The teams had two extra base hits apiece:, a double and a homer for the Jays; two doubles for the Twins. For the game: TOR: BA=.219 OBP=.219 SLG=.344 OPS=.563 MIN: BA=.161 OBP=.297 SLG=.225 OPS=.522 These are both poor batting results, as you could expect in a 2-1 game. OPS isn't the greatest stat in the world, for various reasons - but it says that in this game, Toronto did a little less poorly. The Twins did a nearly acceptable job at getting guys on base (league average OBP this year is .317), but their slugging was putrid (league SLG is .405). The eventual game winning hit was Bautista's home run. Mauer and Dozier apparently gave the ball a ride but only collected doubles. That turned out to be the difference in the game. Walks are better than outs, doubles are better than singles, and homers trump them all. Bautista didn't have anyone on base when he connected. But he put himself in scoring position nonetheless while standing at home plate, and the Jays won. (Since the Twins only run was scored on a walk, this means two of the three runs in the game were not covered by the RISP statistic, for what that's worth.) For the season, the Twins are 10th in the league in getting on base. They are dead last in slugging average (and in home runs in particular). Not coincidentally, they are also dead last in runs scored. The table setting is below par, and the power is simply not there at all. Adding Komatsu and Mastroianni only addresses the table setting, at best, and does nothing for the glaring need, throwing the offense further out of balance even if they do better than the players they replaced. Until both facets of the game improve, and a balance between getting on base and driving runners in is achieved, run scoring is going to remain at a premium. And until such time as the Twins still lose despite getting better game-OPS than their opponent, lamenting about 0-9 with runners in scoring position is for, well, losers.

The Twins announced Wednesday night they are promoting Darin Mastroianni to the parent club. Darin's last game for the Red Wings was below par, 0-4 with two strikeouts. So the batting line for his time in Rochester changes a little from the previous report: BA .346 and 14 strikeouts, his OPS drops to .816, and the rest of his counting-stats remain the same. My guess is that he'll be in a platoon in RF with the lefty Komatsu to start out, even though his pro experience has been almost exclusively CF-LF (after that first year at 2B), or maybe even be given a chance full-time considering how poorly Komatsu has started out. He'll likely be designated Span's backup, and will fill in defensively late in the game at LF and/or pinch run, as needed. I doubt he will be a serious candidate to backup at 2B, despite nominally taking an infielder's roster spot (Valencia). Best of luck Darin! [update later in the afternoon: shows what I know. Darin is starting in LF, and Erik has right. JWill is DH'ing, instead.]

Not sure what Dinkelman's status is, he has been hurt at least some of the time. Rather than research it, I should just refer you to his Adopt-a-Prospect page - the most recent note there is from K-Bro at the end of April, saying Brian is rehabbing in Ft Myers and out "indefinitely". You could ask there.

Mastroianni continues with the hot bat and good overall play. He stole home in the third inning of Rochester's 3-1 win over Pawtucket on Tuesday. He's also been seeing some time playing second base, in keeping with the apparent plans during Spring Training, although in Tuesday's game he was back in left field in favor of 2B Joe Thurston (?!?, maybe Tosoni is a little banged up still?), so it's not necessarily a permanent shift yet. He's errorless in 17 2B chances so far, likewise oopsie-free in his LF work. Through May 8 his AAA record in 19 games and 80 plate appearances shows a batting average of .365, two doubles and two triples, ten stolen bases (caught once), and 10 runs and 11 RBI. He's struck out twelve times and walked five times. He's got an OPS of .851, which is pretty darn good for basically a singles hitter with speed.

This assumes pitchers operate like the backs of their baseball cards say.

You can just as easily reverse this view, and recognize that these are indeed grown men, looking for every edge possible in pursuit of success. Knowing who will back down and who will not, is part of that. No one wants Tony Conigliaro events to occur; the game seems to police itself well enough to avoid that.