markos

Sure, but it will change the quality of the return. For example, consider Marcus Stroman with the Blue Jays. He is (arguably) a 2-3 WAR pitcher with 4 seasons of team control remaining. That kind of pitcher is extremely value and exactly what the Twins need. I could legitimately see the Blue Jays trading Stroman for Dozier if they thought Dozier is a 6 WAR player going forward, but not so much as a 4 WAR player.

This is an interesting problem with Dozier: How exactly are the professionals projecting this offensive outburst? From June 1, 2015 through May 31, 2016 he had a 84 wRC+. Since then he has had a 178 wRC+. How are teams going to balance those streaks. Will he be valued as a 6 WAR player like he is currently playing? Or just a 4 WAR player like his career average? And how will teams project his decline? He is turning 30, and while his defense has held steady so far, it wouldn't be shocking to see it start to slip over the next two seasons.

I would be cautiously optimistic. If his tenure at Toronto is any indication, he will invest a lot in acquiring young, high-upside arms both in the draft and internationally, and he won't be afraid of using those arms to improve the big-league team. Drafts from 2010-2015... 76 players taken in top-10 rounds. 50 pitchers (66%) 29 high school pitchers (38%) Look at the 2011 draft... http://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/index.cgi?team_ID=TOR&year_ID=2011&draft_type=junreg&query_type=franch_year Not necessarily a lot of success, but pitcher after pitcher drafted, most of them high schoolers. 2013 was pretty much the same. By comparison, during the same stretch the Twins drafted 6 HS pitchers.

There is a theory out there that the ball has changed, and the version used in the minors is different than the one in the majors. This has been a common explanation for the current home run spike. Keith Law (and maybe others?) have mentioned this as an possible explanation for why rookie pitchers across baseball are doing poorly this year. This is arguably the worst that rookie starters as a class have performed since 2009. http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=sta&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2016&month=0&season1=2005&ind=2&team=0,ss&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0

This is a little off-topic, but is AA on your shortlist?

The final talk of Twins-related note came from Dr. Brian Mills from the University of Florida. He has been tracking the strike zone changes over the past year, and his presentation dove into the changes as they may (or may not) relate to the increase in scoring (and home runs). One can find the slides of his presentation here. Borrowing liberally from the the slides, he showed that umpires are calling few low strikes on the edges and more high strikes. Further, pitchers are responding by throwing more pitches inside. If you follow the rest of his talk, he delves into the details of the change in contact locations and how much impact that will have on the current run scoring environment. The short answer is that is probably explains ~10% of the change. But sitting in the auditorium, my immediate thought after seeing these slides is that this might explain part of Dozier's success this year. Fewer outside and low pitches combined with more high and inside pitches seems like the perfect combination for Dozier. Dr. Mills indicated that the overall change is rather small - approximately 1-2 pitchers per game. The Twins have played 130 games, so we are talking only 130-260 pitches for the season. But Dozier leads the team is pitches so far, and he has seen over 11% of the total pitches. So he has possibly had somewhere between 15-30 extra inside pitches this year compared to last year. That might explain some of the extra home runs this year.

I am down on the Rays and Astros. Rays have seemed rudderless over the past few seasons (especially since Friedman and Maddon left) and have really struggled to develop their own draft picks. Interesting fact - the Rays have only won 9 more games than the Twins since 2013. I think the Astros have made a lot of questionable decisions over the past few seasons. They took Appel over Bryant, had the messy situation with Aiken, traded a lot for Carlos Gomez, traded a ton for Ken Giles, gave up arguably too early on several players like JD Martinez, Grossman, Villar, Carter, decided to go with 4 starters with sub-90s fastballs. They are currently an 85 win team with a substantial core (Altuve, Springer, Keuchel) that all pre-date the current regime.

I agree with wsnydes. This is the right move. Now they just need to pick the right person.

Valuing catcher defense has been one of the more, um, fluid issues within the sabermetric community over the past two decades. I won't rehash the entire history (and I'm probably not able to do it justice), but I don't think it is unfair to say that the value allocated to a catcher's defense has ranged anywhere from zero (It doesn't matter at all! Why do these no-bat catchers still have jobs?) to 50+ runs per season (Why isn't someone paying Jose Molina $20M a year?!) over the years. Many baseball analysts (certainly those who presented at this conference) seem to have gained a bit of humility throughout the entire process. The folks that talked at this conference certainly didn't exude any sort of confidence that they have solved this problem. It was more of a "we like our methods, and we've got some number that we think are pretty good. They seem pretty reasonable, but hey, we are probably still missing stuff." Case in point, just last week Joe Sheehan tweeted the following: With that background behind us, the folks at Baseball Prospectus have spent the last several seasons refining their catcher defense metrics. They are using sophisticated statistical techniques to attempt to model the interplay between pitchers, catchers, batters, base-runners and umpires in order to tease out the contribution of the catcher for the results of each pitch. These metrics currently broken down into pitch framing, throwing out base-stealers, discouraging steal attempts and blocking pitches. Inspired, in part, because teams continue to employ catchers that, by their metrics, cannot hit or field, they have started to look into try to quantify the softer skills of catching. Harry Pavlidis and Jonathan Judge presented their work at quantifying "game-calling." Harry gave the first half of the presentation, and he mostly looked at how much a catcher influences the pitch selection and pitch sequence. Using similar methodology to what they used for for the above statistics, he was able to determine that pitcher-batter-catcher breakdown on both pitch selection and pitch sequences is roughly 80%-10%-10%. So the pitcher dictates 4/5ths of the pitch selection, and the batter/catcher split the rest. The rates slightly in various situations, but that was the general gist. This makes intuitive sense, as many catchers (including one at this conference) will say that they focus on a pitcher's strengths rather than attack a batter's weaknesses. Jonathan Judge's half of the presentation focused on quantifying the value of a catcher's "game-calling." His methodology was rather clever. Basically, after adjusting for all of the catching influences that they are already explicitly calculating (the framing, throwing and blocking), does the mere presence of the catcher had any impact on events? And the result was that yes, the mere presence of different catchers will impact a pitcher's walk rate, strikeout rate and home run rate even after adjusting for the catcher's framing skills. The effect isn't large (basically ranged between +/- 15 runs in 2015), but it does correlate positively from year-to-year. Again, there isn't any claim for what exactly this is specifically measuring. It might be pitching selection, or maybe pitch sequencing, or maybe the confidence a pitcher has with the catcher, or maybe an ability to settle down a rattled pitcher, or maybe an ability to fix subtle mechanical issues on the fly. It is probably a little bit of all of those things. I bet you are wondering why I'm taking the time to bring this up. Well, it turns out that the 4th best catcher in "game-calling" in 2015 - squeezed in between Jason Castro and Yadier Molina - was Kurt Suzuki at 10.3 runs better than average. Unfortunately, even that extra added value isn't enough to move him above replacement-level in 2015 (at least from BP's perspective). The BP folks indicated that they will be posting this research online.

This is why any discussion about trading Dozier needs to define the goals for the trade. Looking specifically for a pitcher or pitchers that can help in 2017 is very different than targeting a window of contention that starts in 2019. For example, the Yankees can't really help with the former but could with the latter. Advocating for trading Dozier to improve pitching is easy. The hard part (or fun part, your mileage may vary) is determining (arguing over) what kind of pitching: how much? how good? how soon? how long? etc.

Not at the deadline but maybe this offseason (I'm a big believer in the inflated price at the deadline so I'd want more if they moved him a month ago). I think part of my opinion is that I really liked Holmes in the 2014 draft (I considered him a legitimate option at #5), so that probably clouds my judgement a little bit. But I think this package, in the abstract, is essentially what will be on the table for Dozier: one pitching prospect ~#50 overall plus one or two B/B- pieces.

I think the Dodgers are the only realistic option, and they did pay a fairly steep price (in pitching prospects) when they traded with the A's at the deadline. So I think they will be willing to trade. They have multiple infield holes to fill (Turner and Utley are both free agents), and I don't think they have any obvious internal option that is ready to step in right now. Dozier would be a good player to bridge the gap for them at either position even with Kendrick still under contract. And they have the pitching prospects that would make the trade attractive from the Twins perspective. The big question is if they are willing to part with one of De Leon or Alvarez. I'm skeptical - a high-payroll team like the Dodgers probably keeps their A prospects (potential stars) but trades their Bs (potential regulars) - but I could see a De Leon + something (maybe Barnes?) swap being worth it for the Twins. The Mets are probably out. I don't think they have the minor league pitching, and given the injuries to their starters this year they probably aren't going to give up a young guy like Matz for Dozier. The other teams with major 2B needs (Royals, Angels, White Sox) don't have the prospects or players to make it worthwhile, unless you think a guy like Fulmer from the White Sox would suffice. Maybe Fulmer and Alec Hansen? I don't see any other team in the win-now category that has a big need at 2B. And I don't know how much a team will be willing to pay for just an incremental upgrade. Teams like the Giants, Rangers and Blue Jays have solid young players. Are they going to be willing to pay top dollar to go from 2 WAR to 4 WAR at 2B when they could use the same resources to try to fix a more glaring hole?

My memory is a little fuzzy at this point, so I may be mis-remembering. But his presentation (videos and slides) mostly focused on the testing aspect. I'm pretty sure that he said that it could be used for training purposes, but I don't remember him presenting any results from a training program.

There has been some work by Glenn Healey (and I'm sure others) to develop a better model for assigning value for a hit based on the batted-ball characteristics. Here is an article from March that he presented at Saberseminar: http://www.hardballtimes.com/the-intrinsic-value-of-a-batted-ball/. He calculated an expected wOBA based on exit-velocity, launch angle and horizontal angle. Using this model (or something similar) to grade contact will work better than simply using average velocity since the results don't follow a linear pattern - 50mph hit + 100mph hit != 2 75mph hits. Using a model like this (built off of major league data) to grade minor league players has the added benefit that it allows you to grade a prospect by major league standards. For example, it could identify players that are taking advantage of minor league-specific conditions (poor, inconsistent defenders, smaller ballparks, worst grounds-keeping) that may inflate a player's stat-line.

Though Saberseminar didn't have any official topics, one area of emphasis this year was visual perception for batters. Three separate talks looked into this topic. The first talk was by Dr. Art Shapiro from American University. He specializes in visual perception and presented research regarding the ability of people to correctly identify spin axis when exposed to a glimpse of a baseball rotating at different spin rates and direction. Not surprisingly, he showed that people had a hard time distinguishing spin direction when the spin was at a higher RPM and when the exposure time was shorter. This was strictly laboratory work tested on the general population, so the results may not be applicable to major league hitters. Another area he talked about was optical illusions. First, objects that appear to be rotating are often perceived to be moving even when they are not. Second, the perception of a rotating object is strongly impacted by contrast differences. Neither of these examples were baseball specific, but it isn't difficult to see how they could be extended to hitting. Batters often talk about how certain pitches seem to 'move' differently than what PitchF/X indicates. And it also would explain how pitch perception is impacted by lighting, background, etc. The second talk was by Dr. Michael Richmond. He was presenting results from a study by a team of Japanese researchers. They created a system that connected a pair of special pair of glasses to a pitching machine. The batter would wear the glasses, which would turn opaque at differing times after the pitched had been released. They discovered that there is a certain point (approximately ~150ms before the pitch crosses the plate, if my memory is correct) at which point vision no longer matters and the quality of contact is just as good as with full sight. This passes the smell test, as the time it takes for a big league batter to go from 'loaded' to 'bat in zone' is ~120ms-130ms. Piggy-backing on the previous talk, Dr. Peter Fadde talked about his system for testing and training pitch recognition. He created an video training system that tests players to identify pitch type and pitch results (ball or strike) based on showing the player only the first 150ms after pitch release. He has collected data at the Cape Cod summer league and worked with some teams at the big league and college level. He contends that his system can predict BB% and BB/K rates, diagnose specific pitch identification weaknesses and provide prospect advancement criteria. Further, he suggested that pitch recognition was a trainable skill that players can improve on, to a certain degree, with practice. Fadde specifically name-dropped Buxton as a player he would like to test. Overall, I think visual perception testing/training will rapidly become standard procedure across the league for player development and draft preparation. My only hesitation for the latter is that the Players Association (or more specifically agents) may object to this kind of testing prior to draft. But if it is regularly used by big league teams to test/filter players, I would imagine there will be a demand for training programs at the high school and college level.

I was lucky enough to attend Saberseminar 6 at Boston University two weekend ago (Aug 13-14). While none of the presenters addressed Twins-specific issues or players, several talks did touch on topics that were applicable to the organization in general or specific players. I'll have a few more comments in the days ahead from the seminar, but to start here are my thoughts on presentations or Q&As given by current front-office members. Tom Tippett - Senior Baseball Analyst for the Red Sox. This talk was amazing, and unlike anything I've seen from a Twins front office member. His presentation was basically a retrospective of the 2011 season - the season where Red Sox finished with an epic September collapse and where they lost out on the playoffs on the last day of the season. He walked through their thought process during the prior off-season when they traded for Adrian Gonzalez and signed Carl Crawford. This led to a slide describing their internal win projections going into that season and tracked how the team was performing relative to those expectations. He spent some time talking about their strategy going into the trade deadline including a list of players available and how they actually performed. Like I mentioned in the beginning, this was a talk that I've never seen from a member of the Twins front office. He was completely comfortable with the sabermetric jargon and was very open about how their projections and models were included in the decision making during the off-season and trade deadline. He said that their initial internal projections had them 3rd in the AL East (behind the Rays and Yankees) for the 2011 season despite projecting them for 95 wins, and that this deficit was one of the factors going into the Crawford signing and Gonzales trade. Quick aside - he mentioned almost in passing how the game has changed a lot with the advent of the second Wildcard spot and the current parity in the league, and that it would be crazy today to be disappointed with a 95 win projection. John Baker - Player Development for Cubs Baker is a former catcher who now works in player development for the Cubs. His primary focus is to help develop mental skills for players in their minor league system. He didn't give a presentation (he was part of a Q&A session with Brian Bannister), but my takeaway is that he is working to instill the following three mental skills for the Cubs players: 1. Mental focus for each pitch. This seemed to deal with creating checklist for players to think through prior to each pitch, and then a mental step of intense focus for the 2-3 seconds just before and during each pitch. 2. Compartmentalization of baseball. Once the game is over, stop thinking about baseball. Have another mental outlet available after games to wipe the slate clean. 3. Ability to deal with failure. For almost every player, the ability (or lack there of) to handle failure is one of the most critical skills for players. He was a little New Age-y but also Science-y as well. It was an interesting combination. And it fits with Epstein's reputation that he is willing to try new things. Q&As with Dave Dombrowski (President of Baseball Operations for Red Sox) and Bryan Minniti (Assistant General Manager for Diamondbacks) Both of these Q&As were closer to the generic baseball front-office talks that I am more familiar with. Neither was particularly focused on analytics, and for the most part the audience questions gravitated towards other topics. Both talked about how there is just so much stuff going on in the front office that the GM (or head of baseball operations) has to trust their subordinates to get the job done. Minniti worked with Neil Huntington and Mike Rizzo prior to going to Arizona, and he said the same about both of them. Dombrowski talked about how he is the face of the front office and ultimately has responsibility for the decisions, but it is imperative to hire good people and let them do their jobs. Baseball operations departments are too big these days to micro-manage. Looking at each talk from the perspective of a fan of an organization actively searching for a new GM, they both shed some light on the upcoming transition. Namely, that the process will be slow. Dombrowski specifically said how it has taken him almost a year to learn about everyone in the front office and the job that they do, and that he hasn't made a lot of personnel changes in the front office. I'm not expert on baseball front offices, so take this all with a grain of salt. But in addition to this seminar, I have (coincidentally) read and listened to various baseball sources discussing front office changes. And reading between the lines, it seems likely that the transformation of the Twins front office will be slower than many people expect. I've certainly adjusted my own expectations. Many new GMs are restricted from bringing colleagues with them to a new organization - essentially they have to deal with non-competes. If, for example, the Twins were to hire someone from the Cubs, it may be months or even years before the new GM is able bring in other members of the Cubs front office that he or she wants in the organization. Also, while teams are generally very good about letting front office members move for a promotion, lateral moves depend contract expiration. In the interim, I'm guessing that the Twins front office will mostly stay intact for the first 12 months. One final note: I did meet two members of the Twins front office at the conference.

I can see why you might think that, but the argument that this writer put forth was a little more nuanced. Basically, shortish pitchers like Berrios need to create a fair amount of momentum and burst from their lower half in order to (in his opinion) safely generate arm speed. If the top-half (arms, shoulders) are moving too slow, it ends up lagging behind the lower half. That lack of sync causes the release point to be behind and pitches to drift armside. I wish you could see the article. He added a couple of nice gifs that contrasted two pitches against different lefties. They may have been cherry-picked, but even to my untrained eye I could see a subtle difference between them. Basically, if you look at where Berrios's arm is when his left foot hits the ground, you can see that his arm is just a little bit behind on a arm-side miss than when he throws a good strike.

Do you think the movement has to be in a specific direction relative (opposite? perpendicular?) to the fastball movement? Basically, it is easier for a hitter to slow down a swing (or keep the barrel in the zone?) long enough that a change up that differs in only speed will still be hit (or easier to hit?). But if the movement is drastically different, the batter has to adjust timing AND swing-plane, which makes a change up much more difficult.

I can't seem to find the article on BP from earlier this year, but one of their writers pointed out two things (if I recall correctly...) 1) Berrios's command, relative to past seasons, has been off all year - spring training, majors, minors; he has struggled to one degree or another at every level. 2) In his opinion, Berrios has slowed down his delivery relative to past years, and he thinks this is the problem. Berrios was able to generate such good stuff due, in part, to a fast delivery. But now the delivery doesn't quite match the arm speed, so his arm ends up lagging a little bit and he missed to the glove side. I was able to dig up the article. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=29065

There is actually a decent argument that they aren't one of the worse 10 teams in baseball right now. They have been unlucky just as much as just bad. Despite everything that went wrong to start the season, they are 19th in BaseRuns record right now - ahead of the A's, Angels, White Sox, Yankees and Royals in the AL. Their BaseRuns record, for a full season, would be 75-87. Would you make the same prediction if they were on pace for 75 wins?

Exactly. Though I also thought about the 1996-2007 Twins, a stretch where it seemed like Ryan won seemingly every trade. The 2006 team, arguably the pinnacle of that era, had the following players acquired via trade: Punto Bartlett Castillo Ford Casilla Santana (via Rule 5) Liriano Nathan Bonser Lohse Silva Adds up to 20-25 WAR that season. Compare that to this season: Nunez Escobar Murphy May Meyer Jepsen Milone Probably negative WAR at this point?

An under-rated aspect of the Cubs rebuild has been their savvy trading: Miguel Montero Anthony Rizzo Dexter Fowler Jake Arrieta Pedro Strop Kyle Hendricks Addison Russell Travis Wood Carl Edwards Hector Rondon was a Rule 5 pickup. For the most part, they were able to hit on every one of their rebuilding trades.

Interesting tidbit that came up this weekend on Twitter. Chris Mitchell created a KATOH projection system to rank minor leaguers purely by their minor league stats. This past offseason he had Kepler ranked #7 and Buxton ranked #43. He got a lot of grief for that ranking, but so far it looks pretty good. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/katohs-top-100-list-now-incorporating-multiple-years/

Using the methodology Fangraphs (and others) use for calculating surplus value, Dozier probably has ~$30M over the next two seasons with reasonably estimates of his production over the next two years (3.5 and 3 WAR). Using the research done by the folks at The Point of Pittsburgh, that is equivalent to the value of a pitching prospect in the #26-#50 range - basically Berrios pre-2015.

Playing devil's advocate, the rebuttal to this would be: 1) Cespedes last year was better than Dozier has ever been: 123 wRC+ with plus defense, 4 WAR at the deadline. 2) Cespedes has always been seen as someone with some upside left. 3) Teams traditionally are willing to pay a lot more at the deadline than during the off-season. Some estimates suggest that they pay twice as much. 4) The version of Fulmer pitching for the Tiger's right now isn't the same as the guy traded last year. Last year he was a 22-year-old in AA who hadn't yet cracked a single top-100 prospect list. Even this offseason he only topped out at #47. In some ways he was similar to Gonsalves now in terms of prospect quality at the 2015 deadline. 5) Teams will be paying for future performance; not what Dozier has done in the past. So a lot will depend on how they expect him to age in his age 30 and 31 seasons. If teams think he is peaked, they won't pay as much for a declining player. 6) Cespedes provided some positional flexibility - he could play (sort of) all 3 outfield positions. So he was a legitimate option for any team with an outfield hole. Dozier can only play 2B, so the list of potential suitors may be smaller. As another datapoint, the Mets traded for Neil Walker this offseason. He is a 2B, a step below Dozier but still solidly average-to-above, with only 1 year of team control and $10M contract. So he definitely had less value than Dozier will this offseason. However, Walker was acquired for Jon Niese, a #4/5 starter making $9M with two team options. That is less encouraging.