ashbury

Span is one of the last guys I'd like to see traded. Most teams, except the wealthiest who can try to assemble an all-star team, need to try to acquire above-average talent at some of their positions, and aim for average for the rest, to try to compete for a World Series. Span is one of those above-average players at his position, along with Mauer and (hopefully) Morneau and Willingham. (Signing Jamey Carroll would be an example of "just try not to hurt us" averageness.) Span also has the good contract that leaves you leeway for the rest of the roster - whatever griping we may have about the $100M budget, Span is part of the solution and not part of the problem there. Sure, if some team knocks you over with an offer, you have to listen - that's true of everyone on the roster. But to think replacing an above average CF is easy, is the path to long-term mediocrity, not improvement. I hope no one thinks Denard Span is to Ben Revere as Anthony John Pierzynski was to Joe Mauer.

And Inge is a poor man's baseball player.

I was thinking about the 2012 Twins' imbalance on offense, between getting on base (acceptable) and power (low). A guy we look to for power is Joe Mauer, so I decided to see where he stands at this early stage of the season. Arbitrarily I picked his 2008 season as a benchmark - an excellent season by any standard, but not as insanely high a bar to set as his 2009 season, and one very much in line with his career numbers. In 2008 he had 633 plate appearances, and so far in 2012 he has 83. If I scale up his production proportionally, what do we get? Year: 2008/2012 Hits: 176/175 2B: 31/23 3B: 4/0 HR: 9/8 BB: 84/84 This is almost freakish, especially considering how small the sample-size is for 2012 as yet. He's almost exactly on pace for the same number of hits *and* walks - you can see that the OBP's are similar (.413/.410) but these two components line up too. The home runs are close as well, though largely a coincidence because the lone HR in 2012 could just as easily be 0 or 2. It's the doubles and triples, which I'll combine as similar kinds of hits especially for a lefty, where he's coming up short in 2012. 35 versus 23, if this performance continues, looks like a significant dropoff for a season, and continues the trend from his 2011 season; a dozen fewer chances to drive Denard or Jamey home from first if one is there, a dozen fewer chances for someone else to drive Joe home with just a single. Of course, I have to repeat that this is a small sample size, and a mere two doubles stretched from singles would have brought things into (freakishly) perfect alignment. So... what to make of this? First, clutch/RISP issues aside (which I think to be non-existent for Joe anyway), there's nothing horribly wrong with Mauer's hitting, especially only 19 games into the season. Second, nevertheless, I would like to see something changed. Anecdotally, we've seen too many bases-loaded situations not turn into crooked numbers (or even a vertical); this suggests enough table setting and not enough power. It's not only a question of making better use of these bases-loaded situations; some of these situations would not have been bases-loaded at all if somebody had hit a double to drive in a run earlier in the sequence. We can't ask most of the Twins table-setters to change; Jamey Carroll isn't going to suddenly start hitting doubles in the gap, and Ben Revere won't be launching balls over the fence anytime soon. We can't ask Clete Thomas to stop swinging and missing, for that matter, though we can ask Gardy to stop penciling him in. And the power guys, Willingham and Morneau, are providing the power (Morneau's batting average aside). But Joe Mauer is the one guy on the team who has the range of batting skills, IMO, to adjust his game to the needs of his team in a given year. Joe's getting on base at a .410 clip, as mentioned earlier, which is phenomenal. He needs to stop that. Well, if he could give us 2008 numbers, that would be super. But if he has to sacrifice some of the on-base part of his game, to increase the power above even 2008, I think he should do it. Launch a few home runs, drive a lot of balls to the gap. Fifteen homers and 45 doubles/triples? I think he's capable. If he bats only .280 in doing so, with a few less walks, so be it. This is somewhat independent of being in the #3 slot in the batting order, but that's another good/traditional reason too. I don't want to think of him as Joe Table-Setter. We need to see Mauer Power. Not because it would make him a "better" hitter, but because it's what the team needs this year. It would be an aspect of "quiet leadership", given that he's not known for being a vocal leader, that would help his team a lot.

I was thinking about the 2012 Twins' imbalance on offense, between getting on base (acceptable) and power (low). A guy we look to for power is Joe Mauer, so I decided to see where he stands at this early stage of the season. Arbitrarily I picked his 2008 season as a benchmark - an excellent season by any standard, but not as insanely high a bar to set as his 2009 season, and one very much in line with his career numbers. In 2008 he had 633 plate appearances, and so far in 2012 he has 83. If I scale up his production proportionally, what do we get? Year: 2008/2012 Hits: 176/175 2B: 31/23 3B: 4/0 HR: 9/8 BB: 84/84 This is almost freakish, especially considering how small the sample-size is for 2012 as yet. He's almost exactly on pace for the same number of hits *and* walks - you can see that the OBP's are similar (.413/.410) but these two components line up too. The home runs are close as well, though largely a coincidence because the lone HR in 2012 could just as easily be 0 or 2. It's the doubles and triples, which I'll combine as similar kinds of hits especially for a lefty, where he's coming up short in 2012. 35 versus 23, if this performance continues, looks like a significant dropoff for a season, and continues the trend from his 2011 season; a dozen fewer chances to drive Denard or Jamey home from first if one is there, a dozen fewer chances for someone else to drive Joe home with just a single. Of course, I have to repeat that this is a small sample size, and a mere two doubles stretched from singles would have brought things into (freakishly) perfect alignment. So... what to make of this? First, clutch/RISP issues aside (which I think to be non-existent for Joe anyway), there's nothing horribly wrong with Mauer's hitting, especially only 19 games into the season. Second, nevertheless, I would like to see something changed. Anecdotally, we've seen too many bases-loaded situations not turn into crooked numbers (or even a vertical); this suggests enough table setting and not enough power. It's not only a question of making better use of these bases-loaded situations; some of these situations would not have been bases-loaded at all if somebody had hit a double to drive in a run earlier in the sequence. We can't ask most of the Twins table-setters to change; Jamey Carroll isn't going to suddenly start hitting doubles in the gap, and Ben Revere won't be launching balls over the fence anytime soon. We can't ask Clete Thomas to stop swinging and missing, for that matter, though we can ask Gardy to stop penciling him in. And the power guys, Willingham and Morneau, are providing the power (Morneau's batting average aside). But Joe Mauer is the one guy on the team who has the range of batting skills, IMO, to adjust his game to the needs of his team in a given year. Joe's getting on base at a .410 clip, as mentioned earlier, which is phenomenal. He needs to stop that. Well, if he could give us 2008 numbers, that would be super. But if he has to sacrifice some of the on-base part of his game, to increase the power above even 2008, I think he should do it. Launch a few home runs, drive a lot of balls to the gap. Fifteen homers and 45 doubles/triples? I think he's capable. If he bats only .280 in doing so, with a few less walks, so be it. This is somewhat independent of being in the #3 slot in the batting order, but that's another good/traditional reason too. I don't want to think of him as Joe Table-Setter. We need to see Mauer Power. Not because it would make him a "better" hitter, but because it's what the team needs this year. It would be an aspect of "quiet leadership", given that he's not known for being a vocal leader, that would help his team a lot.

And I guess there's: Jamey Carroll "Burnett"

I'm going to basically repeat what I said in a different thread, and mostly agree with you. It's situational, and sometimes you need baserunners, and sometimes you need some power. Right now, if you look at the team stats, they're doing OK with on-base percentage, despite some absolute dead weight. But they're near the very bottom of the league in slugging. Most of the table setters are not the kind of hitter you can ask to change. The one guy in the daily lineup who could change his approach is singles-hitting Joe Mauer. I'm fine with his approach with the bases loaded, or in one-run situations. But when it's man-on-first, I'd love to see some evidence that his approach is to pick the first hittable pitch and try to give it a ride. 70% failure is a part of baseball but in those situations I'd like to see the outs in the outfield rather than to second base, and the successes be in the gap. Getting back to the subject line, it's somewhat of a subtlety that I wouldn't boo a guy at the park for, of course.

You'd think it might humble Valencia enough to make him coachable. "They're thinking of replacing me with HIM???" But if Sean Burroughs didn't do the trick, I'm not thinking Inge would either.

I'll take a crack at some pitchers: Jason Marquis "de Sade" Jeff "Shades of" Gray Liam "Jimi" Hendriks Nick "Blackburn's Ghost" Carl "Hey!" Pavano Matt "Don't Give Me That" Maloney Alex "Carol" Burnett

Another recycled observation from last year, when a certain someone got reassigned... Is it just me, or does this guy http://tinyurl.com/746qaud look an awful lot like this guy? http://tinyurl.com/2a4u9mk

Another recycled observation from last year, when a certain someone got reassigned... Is it just me, or does this guy http://tinyurl.com/746qaud look an awful lot like this guy? http://tinyurl.com/2a4u9mk

He's at .370 after Wednesday night. At this rate, if you wait a couple more weeks before taking him off, he'll be batting 1.162.

I'm in favor of this too. However, if we think it will result in a true ace pitcher, the 2011 Cy Young voting stacks the odds against. I took a quick look at the top 4 or 5 Cy vote getters (much below that and the ranking is skewed by individual voters), and typically these pitchers are taken midway through the first round, like pick 17 (Hamels and Halladay both, as it happens). Verlander is an outlier up at #2. A couple of guys like Lee and Shields went in later rounds and presumably could have been picked in the range you're talking about. So to address to your point, in Halladay's year, there was Washburn available for the #31 pick, then Tomko, Dempster and Arroyo further down, sprinkled among the wreckage of washed-out picks 32-72. In Hamels's year, there was Jon Lester at #57, Broxton and Crain soon after. If you had ALL the picks 32-72, you'd scoop up some good ones; with a few picks, you're fighting less than 50/50 odds, unless your scouts happen to be godly. Though, even #2 is still a crapshoot. The year Hamels went #17, the Rays got Upton at #2, so they can't second guess themselves too much. But when Halladay went #17, the Padres took catcher Ben Davis at #2 - hardly a bust but not what they probably were hoping for. Again, I hope someone with teh mad database skillz has figured out a better methodology than my cherry-picker approach.

I think what's needed is to trust the scouts, and if they can say "this is the guy" you just take him. Some years that's what happens at #1, #2, #3... If it's viewed as close between a couple of guys, then you look at this kind of historical/empircal study to maybe tip the balance.

Sano's rate of strikeouts to plate appearances, never mind the walks, is nearly twice that of the two gentlemen you named at similar points in their careers.

I raised a similar question in my inaugural blog entry yesterday, although I came at it from the POV of wondering about all those supplemental draft picks, and took a cherry-picker's approach to demonstrate that if the draft pool is thin one year you can end up with little or nothing even with several picks just after the real first round. What you (Seth) have done is a great start, toward the question of what to do with the #2 pick, but surely there exists somewhere a set of data that carries things further: separate the draftees by HS/College and Pitcher/Position-player, and use some metric (WAR as you have done) to assess the empirical record of what has worked the best among these four combinations. Anecdotal evidence (like what I wrote yesterday, or the "for every Justin Verlander at pick #2 I can find an Adam Johnson or even Mark Prior as a cautionary example) only goes so far. Indeed probably one or more major league teams already have done exactly this and it will have colored their choices the past decade or so. Focusing on Boston, Tampa, and Oakland's picks might be very instructive - if only to show that the opportunity to set oneself apart is past.

The hitting, period, has not been as good as we were starting to hope. Team scoring is 11th in the league, team slugging percentage is 11th. They're getting on base at an OK clip, 6th, but without good slugging you end up with lots of bases-loaded situations that may or may not yield runs. (Why yes, I am second guessing based on a few recent outcomes, thank you for noticing.) These team numbers are based on small totals, early in the season, so not much currently separates 7th and 13th in run scoring for instance. Still, it doesn't look to me like you have to resort to blaming clutchness. We just have an imbalance toward table setters (singles hitters and walk takers) and not enough extra-base hitters. Jamey Carroll isn't going to change his stripes, ditto for various others. Mauer's the one guy who's hitting at a high level and with the broad skillset to adjust his game to the current need of his team.

From Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, of the Red Wings 10-5 loss to Syracuse April 25: "Wings leadoff man Darin Mastroianni went 3-for-4, scored two runs, drove in two and stole two bases. He also scored from third on a wild pitch in the seventh. Mastroianni has four multiple hits in four of his seven games and is hitting .370." Darin also had a walk in this game; his base hits were all singles.

Pedroia doubles to shallow left? That's where Revere is - I thought his speed would eliminate that. Someone who saw the game, tell me what happened? (That was Yahoo sports. I checked again on ESPN.com and it said deep left. That makes more sense, although I'll still gripe that I thought Revere was supposed to make outfield hits impossible.)

Plouffe and his .100 BA in preference to Clete's .182, against a righty. Not Doumit either. C'mon Trevor, show us something.

You are mixing two different concepts.

My guy Mastroianni is hitting .304 at AAA, after a slow start in AA New Britain. That ought to be enough to get him off the not-hot list.

Lost velocity on his fastball was what I read.

Regarding the discussion of whom to pick with the #2 choice in the upcoming draft, there is also the group of supplemental picks the Twins will get. Even if the team believes pitching is their sorest need, it's one reasonable strategy to pick a stud position player at #2 and then load up with pitching prospects a little further down in the draft, if you think pitchers are inherently riskier to develop. However, those supplemental draft picks aren't quite the slam-dunk that some people were thinking when the question was whether to re-sign free agents after last season. Here is a lightly-edited excerpt from a posting I made to alt.sports.baseball.mn-twins last December. I'd be interested in people's reactions: ...Supplemental draft picks are of varying value. I prowled around baseball-reference.com's record of drafts, going back far enough to evaluate full careers, and if you look at the second round of the 1994 June draft, i.e. picks 35-63 (about equivalent to current supplemental rounds), the only players who made any significant major league contribution were Troy Glaus and Matt LeCroy. That was admittedly a weak year (1995 had several luminaries like Carlos Beltran and Sean Casey), but LeCroy as the second best player out of all 29 picks after the real first round??? Pretty much the definition of a crapshoot unless your team is awarded all the picks, not just two or three. BTW, I saw a suggestion, probably tongue-in-cheek, that the Twins should sign Willingham and the A's sign Cuddyer, at the same price. Then each team collects the draft pick(s), and trades the two players back for each other.

Regarding the discussion of whom to pick with the #2 choice in the upcoming draft, there is also the group of supplemental picks the Twins will get. Even if the team believes pitching is their sorest need, it's one reasonable strategy to pick a stud position player at #2 and then load up with pitching prospects a little further down in the draft, if you think pitchers are inherently riskier to develop. However, those supplemental draft picks aren't quite the slam-dunk that some people were thinking when the question was whether to re-sign free agents after last season. Here is a lightly-edited excerpt from a posting I made to alt.sports.baseball.mn-twins last December. I'd be interested in people's reactions: ...Supplemental draft picks are of varying value. I prowled around baseball-reference.com's record of drafts, going back far enough to evaluate full careers, and if you look at the second round of the 1994 June draft, i.e. picks 35-63 (about equivalent to current supplemental rounds), the only players who made any significant major league contribution were Troy Glaus and Matt LeCroy. That was admittedly a weak year (1995 had several luminaries like Carlos Beltran and Sean Casey), but LeCroy as the second best player out of all 29 picks after the real first round??? Pretty much the definition of a crapshoot unless your team is awarded all the picks, not just two or three. BTW, I saw a suggestion, probably tongue-in-cheek, that the Twins should sign Willingham and the A's sign Cuddyer, at the same price. Then each team collects the draft pick(s), and trades the two players back for each other.

I think it's somewhere in this thread. Checking again... ah yes, one post up from mine.