ashbury

Target Field is known around the majors as a very tough place to compete, and it's because of the fans. An opposing player, regardless of the team, needs to understand coming in that no matter how stellar a play he might make, the fans will sit on their hands and not even acknowledge the success. The guys on the home team get used to it after a while. But it really weighs down on a visiting athlete if he's not prepared.

There's no question in my own mind that batting average is the most important of the five tools. Sometimes it's interesting to look at the pieces that make it up. People scrutinize strikeouts, and everyone celebrates home runs. BABIP was the last of the three pieces to draw some analysis, and I don't think that the analysis is complete - e.g. Trevor Larnach is reputed to hit the ball really hard without much to show for it, and his BABIP indeed is close to league average, unlike Wallner - what is the difference between the two hitters? If someone misunderstands and thinks BABIP is some kind of ultimate all-encompassing stat, they, well, I just said, they misunderstand.

If only there were a website that brought up-to-the-minute news about the Twins to its ardent fans.

Good point. And fans wanted Joe to try a little harder to hit home runs - that could correlate with popups. Then again, Aaron Judge has kept his BABIP in Joe's range for the past 4 seasons, and few quibble about his power - I don't know Judge's popup rate.

They both strike out a ton and both hit for power. However, Wallner is pretty much the anti-Gallo, when it comes to BABIP, which is what this article highlighted for him. BABIP is a very interesting part of a player's portfolio. It's often used as a synonym for "luck", in that the league as a whole typically hits .300 on balls in play, and if you don't know anything else about a player then if his BABIP is very far from .300 in a given season you might expect the so-called regression to mean. However, not every player's own baseline BABIP is .300. Joe Mauer kept his around .340 for his entire career. Luis Arraez is on a similar pace, so far. I don't believe in "luck" very often, not in a game where trained athletes are competing against other trained athletes who are all trying their best on every play. BABIP regressing to .300 is a useful guide but is not some sort of law of nature. Conversely, a high BABIP is not a Hall of Fame kind of profile, by itself. If you take a look at hitters who've had 2000 PA in the past 4 seasons, and whose BABIP in that timespan has been .330 or higher, you have some absolute studs like Aaron Judge, Bryce Harper and Freddie Freeman, but you also have a sprinkling of "wait, him?" players like Amed Rosario. If a hitter has a high BABIP and also walks a lot and hits home runs (or lots of doubles) then that's a potent combination, but some guys have BABIP galore and don't back it up with additional value. It could correlate, but it's nothing close to a cause-effect. Low BABIP is by itself nothing to hope for, but at the low end of the same group of players*, there is a smattering of guys like Max Muncy, Pete Alonzo, and Kyle Schwarber who are highly productive despite BABIP in the .240-.260 range. Our own Carlos Santana brings up the rear in this group with a .237 BABIP, and yet he's done enough on top of that particular facet of his game to earn major league contracts and will get another one next season. So... what I'm leading to here is that Wallner's career BABIP is currently .359. That's across merely 3 partial seasons, so there is plenty of room for doubt, but all three partial seasons have been in keeping with this, rather than drastically up and down. Joey Gallo? For his career, his BABIP is .254. A full 100 points lower than Wallner. The two batters share some common ground, but in this one area they could hardly be more different, and I think it's an under-studied aspect of analytics. There are many ways to carve out a successful major league career, but BABIP by itself, once it stabilizes, doesn't tell me enough. Gallo has fewer PA than Amed Rosario, yet has scored more runs and driven in more runs, so in a vacuum you want to know more about Gallo than just his low BABIP (namely that he supplements his BA with walks, and he hits balls over the fence). If Wallner continues to walk and hit homers, his BABIP suggests he could be a lot better than Gallo, at the end of his career. If the BABIP isn't entirely a mirage, of course. That's the big unknown touched on by this article. * I'm quick to point out that this choice of players contains a statistical bias built in: you have to be pretty darn good in the first place to amass 2000 PA in 4 seasons. But then again, do I CARE about the batting profile of bad players?

Sad news.

Happy Halloween then. 😀

A worthy champ. Unfortunately.

I was just checking their bench at that moment too. Cupboard looked bare.

Snow in the forecast for tomorrow here in the Sierra, as well. Small world, or something.

And a final blast of entertainment now, whichever way it comes out.

Badly played games (by one team) can be entertaining too.

I tuned in to watch a World Series, and a White Sox game broke out.

The headline is missing its question mark so that I can make fun of it.

While the term SABRmetrics kind of typecasts the organization as statistically oriented, the truth is that at heart it's a research organization, and the historical deep-dives from these experts will bring new insights to anyone with a love of the game. If you're quiet and just want to listen, that's fine. If you want to explore a facet of the presentation, there'll be time for Q&A. And you can also broach topics of your own interest, during the break times with folks who are both highly opinionated (in the good way) and knowledgeable. It's not a Twins Fan Club, per se, but there will be plenty of folks in attendance who root for the home time. (Also, one miscreant Yankee fan who will be in mourning.) The Twin Cities are fortunate to have one of the strongest local SABR chapters in the entire country. Take advantage of this semi-annual event in your own back yard.

A followup: This is what you used to get for your effort in getting to Phoenix.

Concur. One has to enjoy the trip to Phoenix on its own terms, and then time your trip to take in a baseball game or two, and perhaps see the Twins' utility infielder or 6th inning reliever of the future. 😀

Analytics should explain reality, not be mistaken for the reality. I'm not discussing it further. SB are SB.

I was responding to a view of "Controlling run game - Below average". Since the Twins as a whole are almost exactly average in the AL at controlling the running game*, and since Vazquez and Jeffers have highly comparable baserunner stats, I find it hard to call either of them below average. I like a deeper dive as well as the next math geek, but not when the pieces don't add up to the sum that we plainly see in the actual record. The purpose of analytics is to reconcile the record, not alter it. But now "below average" is yet another hill you want to die on for some reason. The Twins' control of the running game was not below average in 2024. If you say Vazquez was, then you're in the curious position of saying Jeffers was above average at it. * maybe even a little better than average - this is in comparison only to their AL peers, whereas across the majors they have fewer than average SB attempts against them, in large part because the 3 teams who try it the most are all in the NL. When in doubt I take a conservative view, but one could make a case for better than I said.

Failure Tax. (On my less charitable days, Stupidity Tax.)

I'm not a Vazquez woofer and I wish his contract weren't guaranteed another year. And it doesn't look like your view of this one aspect weighs terribly heavily in the overall scheme. Still, I note that opposing teams attempted fewer stolen bases against the Twins than average. Looking at Vazquez versus Jeffers seems pretty equal. So, somehow the running game is controlled enough to where it's not an issue. CS% by itself doesn't tell more than a small part of the story - Salvador Perez threw out only 23% of the attempts against him this year, but the stolen base totals were nevertheless tiny because hardly any runners even tried against him. Call Vazquez average to maybe a hair above average in this trait, and I don't think there's much else to quarrel with in your breakdown.

Oh no! He didn't have all four of these all-stars to plan his day around, every game of the season? How ever did he cope?

Go back for a visit and try it again. I'm sure they're just as mellow about it now. 😀

Wow! Very precocious. Really looking forward to how good your writing will be once you exit the womb!

I like this series as Caretaker extras. Keep 'em coming!