Thrylos

Yeah... it's hard to tell. I did a kind of an interesting exercise last spring: I created a consensus Twins' top prospects' list using as sources all Twins' prospect lists (you can find it here.) And that was 25 sources and ended up being a top 66 (was 71 but 5 were gone from the organization) list. Here is the top 15 from that list: 1 Miguel Sano 3B 2 Eddie Rosario 2B/OF 3 Oswaldo Arcia OF 4 Aaron Hicks OF 5 Joe Benson OF 6 Liam Hendriks P 7 Kyle Gibson P 8 Levi Michael IF 9 Adrian Salcedo P 10 Brian Dozier IF 11 Chris Parmelee 1B/OF 12 Alex Wimmers P 13 Travis Harrison IF 14 Hudson Boyd P 15 Max Kepler OF 3 do not qualify for 2013, and I suspect that 3 of the Twins 2012 Draft picks will take their place there. On the other hand, there is a particular player who was number 56 in the consensus list (thus absent from most of the 25 lists) who would really have to have top 15 considerations and probably top 10 considerations: Kennys Vargas. Add Buxton and Berrios and this is pretty much your top 15 list. Benson, Gibson, Salcedo and Wimmers will probably drop (because of the same reason - injuries; ) Michael might drop, even though he has been doing better recently. Kepler will probably rise, but that's about it. Not sure that the consensus top 15 would be much different that this next season (pre-season)

Glad that he made it. He deserved it. I would not be surprised to see Tosoni get DFA'd or Nishioka (nobody will claim him). Manship and Perdomo too, but the last too might get claimed and they have been pitching pretty well in AAA and the Twins are flirting with Rochester. Maybe they even keep Parmelee there for that reason as well. But good to see Carson get another chance.

yeah... and here is a good one from that article:

Really good stuff. Enjoyed reading all of those. Thanks for sharing!

I doubt this is the case. I'm not saying that he wasn't promoted, I'm saying that he definitely wasn't promoted last night. The Twins would have to make an additional move in order to promote Carson as he isn't on the 40-man roster and it is currently full. As of now (12:58 PM EDT on Thursday) The official Twins' 25 man roster stands at 23. The transactions of optioning Manship and Perdomo were recorded today, but Swarzak has yet to be activated and mystery position player to be identified. The Twins have an off day today and a late game at Seattle. Twins' players are still in the Twin Cities. I suspect that mystery player will meet them there and fly with the team but I do not know when they are leaving for Seattle. The Red Wings beat writer in Rochester, NY, thinks that Parmelee is the most likely to go to the Twins, but incorrectly, he speaks about Swarzak's activation like it happened (which will happen but has not yet). So not sure whether he has inside information at this point.

Did not think of the limits, so I went to see what Jonathan Mayo says for his limits for the MLB.com top 100 list. This is what he says: So: Hendriks, Dozier, Diamond, DeVries and Parmelee are over the limit, but Diamond should be in the Rookie of the Year discussion (not first, but top 5)

I wouldn't be surprised if Berrios passes Gibson and cracks at least some of the top 100 lists for next season. Unless Gibson has a stellar AFL performance, he is probably behind even Hendriks in some lists.

From 20000 feet away, if you look at the 12 regulars (I am including all of Casilla, Dozier, Carroll and Mastroianni as regulars at this point) only the middle infielders have OPS+ less than 100. I can live with this and a team can win with this, if they play good defense. On the other hand the rotation needs major improvement and that is where efforts should be focused (and maybe an extra arm in the pen to replace Capps) Now if you are going to move Span and Morneau, the story might change a bit, but from what Mastroianni and Parmelee have shown, there might not be much of a drop off. The places I am mostly concerned about drop off is 3B (is Plouffe a fluke and what about that thumb?) and at LF (Willingham has a career year at 33, can he stay up there....) So really, by itself, middle infield is not much of an issue. In the big picture of things, it could be...

Anthony practically said that Gibson will go unless he has a set back. Arcia might go to Venezuela. BJ Hermsen will probably go. Evan Bigley too (a big surprise this season; at least in how much the organization thinks of him). Beresford and Benson are also Candidates. On the pitching side Logan Darnell, Matt Houser and A.J. Achter in addition to Gibson and Hermsen are also candidates

Vasquez is an interesting situation: He was a full time starter last in 2007 in AA Southern League in Mobile where he did really well as a 23 year old. Next season he move to the PCL as a spot starter and spend the next 3 afterward full time in the Diamondbacks' pen. So unlike Deduno and Perdomo, he is a 3 year major leaguer with no options left. This season is the first season he started since 2008. And he just started 6 games. He might be better as a starter than as a reliever. I had a chance to watch him play up here (Lehigh Valley) May or April (funny enough Deduno started that game and Vasquez relieved in for 3 innings or so). He has better control than Deduno and he fires BBs but pretty straight BBs. Maybe when he starts his FB is a 91-93 instead of 94-96 and has more movement. Happens with some pitchers some times. He does deserve a chance, just because the Twins do not have many options for 2013. They got to see what they got. I can see him start and put Duensing in the pen full time.

I cannot agree more. I have watched Parmelee play the OF both while in New Britain and at Spring Training the last couple of seasons and it is really bad. Doumit has more range there. And really who cares at this point at where the Twins are, but the biggest concern I have is that he might take bad things happening at the field with him on the plate. Carson deserves it but the need a 40-man spot (DFA Nishioka, Manship, Tosoni, Perdomo or something) The other way they can get Parmelee playing time this season (but August is already over) is to send Butera down, have Doumit exclusively at back up catcher, have a rotation of Parmelee/Morneau/Mauer at 1B and Parmelee/Morneau/Doumit at DH. Span sounds like might be available tomorrow so they will have 4 OFs... So really insisting on having Butera warming the bench cuts down on Parmelee's playing time..

Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch (where the graphics might be bigger and more readable) --- For a while I wanted to take a bit of a formalized look at the Twins' pitching this season to see what we have learned and see what would make sense for the team to do in the future. Also, it has been a while since I took a formalized look at Twins pitching, so it was about time. The metrics I like to use to do this have been some simple things of my own device: Pitching Effectiveness or PE and Expected Pitching Effectiveness or xPE. I fiddled around with PE in 2008 and with xPE in 2009. Here is the reason I devised PE and here is the reason I optimized it to xPE. My main arguments were a. I felt like xFIP and FIP and DICE weigh too much things like home runs (which anyone who watched the home runs by Miquel Cabrera and Delmon Young against the Twins yesterday cannot deny that they are a matter of inches and ballpark and luck and fielding performance from being a long fly ball). Also these formulae are hard to memorize and I wanted something simple I can calculate looking at a stat sheet and also something that you can calculate using splits (e.g. how has Brian Duensing or Glen Perkins been as a starter vs as a reliever); you can find xFIP around, but not in a spit form. So in 2008 I devised PE, which simple takes account three things: Strikeouts, walks and hits. So a pitcher who strikes out more people, walks fewer and gives lesser hits is more likely to succeed than someone who doesn't. And all hits are counted equal because the difference between a single and a triple might be the difference of having Delmon Young or Ben Revere play Left Field or the difference between a fly ball out and a home run might be the difference of having Torii Hunter or Rich Becker playing Center Field. And I use WHIP, K/9 and K/BB to calculate PR. xPE normalizes for BABIP to account for "luck" with hits. And unlike FIP and ERA, these two measures go the opposite directions (higher is better) and have a large variation (0.x to 100+) to allow for granularity in comparisons vs. compressing performance from 0 to 10 or so. Fast-forward to 2010: Matt Swartz and Eric Seidman in a series of 4 articles at Baseball Prospectus (part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4) introduced the metric of Skill-Interactive Earned Run Average or SIERA. Automatically, I realized that these guys had something (because a lot of their argument of creating this measure were similar to my objections with FIP and xFIP) and the more and more I dug, the more and more I like it. It basically looks at individual ways of pitching skills like inducing ground balls vs fly balls, striking out people, not walking people etc. Which is great. I think that is has become my favorite ERA-like measure (it too is on a ERA scale and lower is better) to look, but it is also a pain to derive (one needs Excel, on the other hand it is available in places like Fangraphs), but good luck try to figure splits like ground balls allowed as a starter vs as a reliever... The formula for posterity's sake is: SIERA = 6.145 – 16.986*(SO/PA) + 11.434*(BB/PA) – 1.858*((GB-FB-PU)/PA) + 7.653*((SO/PA)^2) +/– 6.664*(((GB-FB-PU)/PA)^2) + 10.130*(SO/PA)*((GB-FB-PU)/PA) – 5.195*(BB/PA)*((GB-FB-PU)/PA) So, if it does not fit on a T-shirt (and it doesn't), I still need a quick way of looking at things. In the following table I took aggregate (i.e. Duensing's numbers are both for starting and relieving) Twins pitching numbers from 2012 from Fangraphs, including ERA, FIP, xFIP, SIERA and tRA (another measure I am not going to get into right now), calculated PE and xPE and looked at how all correlate with SIERA, xFIP and ERA: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7137/7794563422_719e7c83fb_z.jpg As I mentioned PE and xPE go on a different direction (bigger number is better) than the others (ERA, FIP, xFIP, tRA and SIERA) so -1 is the best possible correlation factor for those (that would be a perfect match) Happy to say that xPE, xFIP and SIERA correlate really nicely with themselves than with FIP and tRA and they all do not correlate with ERA, which is a good thing. Actually, I can get more into the nitty gritty dirt and say that xPE seems to correlate better with SIERRA in good to average performances and less in the bad performances, but still a .89 vs .91 correlation factor difference with this sample size is not significant. (one of these off-seasons I promise I will play with bigger data samples, but I am keeping this about the Twins and their 2012 pitching....) So how about them Twins? I am looking at splits, so I am using xPE. And I am looking at starters vs. relievers vs. the league averages trying to compare the Twins rotation and pen to those and see if I can make any sense doing this. When I started this 3 and 4 years ago, PE and xPE average for AL starters was around 10 and for AL relievers around 11.5. And here are some ranges and classifications Rotation: xPE 35+ Ace 25-35 #1- #2 Starter 15-25 #2- #3 Starter 10-15 #3 - #4 Starter 7.5-10 #5 Starter Bullpen: xPE 35+ Closer 25-35 Closer-Setup 15-25 Setup- Long Relief 8-15 Long Relief-Mopup The dual classifications indicate positions in Championship-caliber teams vs average teams. So in other words, in a championship team you better have 3 start pitchers with xPE above 15 and 2 with and xPE above 25 and a forth with xPE above 10. Here is the data for the Twins rotation and pen (and for pitchers like Swarzak and Duensing I used their individual splits in each to calculate respective xPEs). Huge surprise (should not be huge but...) : By looking at the AL Averages, either pitching has improved, especially in the pen (where average xPE is 16; vs 12.5 in the rotation) or hitters do not hit the ball as well. A 2.5 point jump in averages for starters and 5 point jump for relievers is huge. And that would be an interesting thing to look during the off-season and might actually make me to adjust the classifications above upwards a bit. Here are the numbers for the Twins rotation: http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8292/7794560350_874a17217e_o.jpg and here for the bullpen: http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8282/7794560406_8cec4ae7bf.jpg So as far as the rotation goes: The Twins have had 4 number 3 type starters (and not all the time - a lot of Diamond's and De Vries' starts were given to Marquis, Walters and Blackburn) Pavano has been injured and Liriano has ranged from a number one to below replacement. Going forwards the Twins can build on the fact that they have a couple of pitchers who can be number 3 starters in a good team (Diamond and De Vries) and someone who can be a number 5 starter (Hendriks) and seek a couple #1 and #2 starters to make a competitive rotation. Brian Duensing and Anthony Swarzak are better in the pen Something needs to be done with Nick Blackburn As far as the pen goes: The Twins have a core of 3 very good relievers (Robertson, Perkins, Burton) Casey Fien has been a pleasant surprise Adding Duensing and Swarzak completes a nice pen that would need an additional arm (could be a free agent or some September call up to step up) It could be Capps, but his performance is not proportional to the $6.5 million option Alex Burnett, Jeff Gray, Jeff Manship, have not been effective (the jury is still out on Perdomo, Oliveros, Maloney and Waldrop because of the small sample )

Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch (where the graphics might be bigger and more readable) --- For a while I wanted to take a bit of a formalized look at the Twins' pitching this season to see what we have learned and see what would make sense for the team to do in the future. Also, it has been a while since I took a formalized look at Twins pitching, so it was about time. The metrics I like to use to do this have been some simple things of my own device: Pitching Effectiveness or PE and Expected Pitching Effectiveness or xPE. I fiddled around with PE in 2008 and with xPE in 2009. Here is the reason I devised PE and here is the reason I optimized it to xPE. My main arguments were a. I felt like xFIP and FIP and DICE weigh too much things like home runs (which anyone who watched the home runs by Miquel Cabrera and Delmon Young against the Twins yesterday cannot deny that they are a matter of inches and ballpark and luck and fielding performance from being a long fly ball). Also these formulae are hard to memorize and I wanted something simple I can calculate looking at a stat sheet and also something that you can calculate using splits (e.g. how has Brian Duensing or Glen Perkins been as a starter vs as a reliever); you can find xFIP around, but not in a spit form. So in 2008 I devised PE, which simple takes account three things: Strikeouts, walks and hits. So a pitcher who strikes out more people, walks fewer and gives lesser hits is more likely to succeed than someone who doesn't. And all hits are counted equal because the difference between a single and a triple might be the difference of having Delmon Young or Ben Revere play Left Field or the difference between a fly ball out and a home run might be the difference of having Torii Hunter or Rich Becker playing Center Field. And I use WHIP, K/9 and K/BB to calculate PR. xPE normalizes for BABIP to account for "luck" with hits. And unlike FIP and ERA, these two measures go the opposite directions (higher is better) and have a large variation (0.x to 100+) to allow for granularity in comparisons vs. compressing performance from 0 to 10 or so. Fast-forward to 2010: Matt Swartz and Eric Seidman in a series of 4 articles at Baseball Prospectus (part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4) introduced the metric of Skill-Interactive Earned Run Average or SIERA. Automatically, I realized that these guys had something (because a lot of their argument of creating this measure were similar to my objections with FIP and xFIP) and the more and more I dug, the more and more I like it. It basically looks at individual ways of pitching skills like inducing ground balls vs fly balls, striking out people, not walking people etc. Which is great. I think that is has become my favorite ERA-like measure (it too is on a ERA scale and lower is better) to look, but it is also a pain to derive (one needs Excel, on the other hand it is available in places like Fangraphs), but good luck try to figure splits like ground balls allowed as a starter vs as a reliever... The formula for posterity's sake is: SIERA = 6.145 – 16.986*(SO/PA) + 11.434*(BB/PA) – 1.858*((GB-FB-PU)/PA) + 7.653*((SO/PA)^2) +/– 6.664*(((GB-FB-PU)/PA)^2) + 10.130*(SO/PA)*((GB-FB-PU)/PA) – 5.195*(BB/PA)*((GB-FB-PU)/PA) So, if it does not fit on a T-shirt (and it doesn't), I still need a quick way of looking at things. In the following table I took aggregate (i.e. Duensing's numbers are both for starting and relieving) Twins pitching numbers from 2012 from Fangraphs, including ERA, FIP, xFIP, SIERA and tRA (another measure I am not going to get into right now), calculated PE and xPE and looked at how all correlate with SIERA, xFIP and ERA: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7137/7794563422_719e7c83fb_z.jpg As I mentioned PE and xPE go on a different direction (bigger number is better) than the others (ERA, FIP, xFIP, tRA and SIERA) so -1 is the best possible correlation factor for those (that would be a perfect match) Happy to say that xPE, xFIP and SIERA correlate really nicely with themselves than with FIP and tRA and they all do not correlate with ERA, which is a good thing. Actually, I can get more into the nitty gritty dirt and say that xPE seems to correlate better with SIERRA in good to average performances and less in the bad performances, but still a .89 vs .91 correlation factor difference with this sample size is not significant. (one of these off-seasons I promise I will play with bigger data samples, but I am keeping this about the Twins and their 2012 pitching....) So how about them Twins? I am looking at splits, so I am using xPE. And I am looking at starters vs. relievers vs. the league averages trying to compare the Twins rotation and pen to those and see if I can make any sense doing this. When I started this 3 and 4 years ago, PE and xPE average for AL starters was around 10 and for AL relievers around 11.5. And here are some ranges and classifications Rotation: xPE 35+ Ace 25-35 #1- #2 Starter 15-25 #2- #3 Starter 10-15 #3 - #4 Starter 7.5-10 #5 Starter Bullpen: xPE 35+ Closer 25-35 Closer-Setup 15-25 Setup- Long Relief 8-15 Long Relief-Mopup The dual classifications indicate positions in Championship-caliber teams vs average teams. So in other words, in a championship team you better have 3 start pitchers with xPE above 15 and 2 with and xPE above 25 and a forth with xPE above 10. Here is the data for the Twins rotation and pen (and for pitchers like Swarzak and Duensing I used their individual splits in each to calculate respective xPEs). Huge surprise (should not be huge but...) : By looking at the AL Averages, either pitching has improved, especially in the pen (where average xPE is 16; vs 12.5 in the rotation) or hitters do not hit the ball as well. A 2.5 point jump in averages for starters and 5 point jump for relievers is huge. And that would be an interesting thing to look during the off-season and might actually make me to adjust the classifications above upwards a bit. Here are the numbers for the Twins rotation: http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8292/7794560350_874a17217e_o.jpg and here for the bullpen: http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8282/7794560406_8cec4ae7bf.jpg So as far as the rotation goes: The Twins have had 4 number 3 type starters (and not all the time - a lot of Diamond's and De Vries' starts were given to Marquis, Walters and Blackburn) Pavano has been injured and Liriano has ranged from a number one to below replacement. Going forwards the Twins can build on the fact that they have a couple of pitchers who can be number 3 starters in a good team (Diamond and De Vries) and someone who can be a number 5 starter (Hendriks) and seek a couple #1 and #2 starters to make a competitive rotation. Brian Duensing and Anthony Swarzak are better in the pen Something needs to be done with Nick Blackburn As far as the pen goes: The Twins have a core of 3 very good relievers (Robertson, Perkins, Burton) Casey Fien has been a pleasant surprise Adding Duensing and Swarzak completes a nice pen that would need an additional arm (could be a free agent or some September call up to step up) It could be Capps, but his performance is not proportional to the $6.5 million option Alex Burnett, Jeff Gray, Jeff Manship, have not been effective (the jury is still out on Perdomo, Oliveros, Maloney and Waldrop because of the small sample )

Yeah. I'd love to see Blackburn and Duensing in the pen for the rest of the season, Manship DFA'd and Vasquez up to start

I think some of the early Bill James derivatives, like Runs Created, are close to what you are talking about. Here is the formula explained (and yes it is a pain to calculate. but) Baseball reference has is both as total (RC) and per game (RC/G). Here are the 2012 Twins' numbers at BR. There are other similar stats, but I like RC for some reason. About Pavano (and the rest of the pitchers ) the ERA is actually there just for looks. I think that it is practically meaningless. BTW one of Nishioka's errors in Cleveland was called a hit today, so Duensing has added to his ERA. Makes really no sense to use for predicting performance or even describing how well he pitched.

How so? Diamond and Deduno have been more effective than Devries. The 3rd best starter on a rotation like this is nothing to be proud of. Devries did better than expected and his dream came true this season. I'm happy for him and that's cool. The Twins aren't a miracle network (unlike their High A affiliate) for players who won't cut it at the professional level, however. If the Twins were to trot out the same guys as they did this year, it would be a disaster. Devries is an extremely risky low ceiling player who has pitched inconsistently for 60 Innings. I hope you don't think Walters should get a shot as well. I for one would like to see some free agents on the team for 2013. Not AAA players. I'm not even sold on Deduno right now. Here is my ranking of the Twins' rotation this season. And I am including only pitchers who are currently wearing a Twins uniform. De Vries' numbers do not include today's start (so they might go down a bit) and Duensing's and Swarzak's include their numbers only as starters this season: Diamond: 2.97 ERA, 1.187 WHIP, 5.0 K/9, 3.78 K/BB (.295 BABIP) - 16.2 xPE De Vries: 4.77 ERA, 1.210 WHIP, 6.3 K/9, 3.50 K/BB (.254 BABIP) - 16 xPE Pavano: 6.00 ERA, 1.397 WHIP, 4.7 K/9, 4.13 K/BB (.330 BABIP) - 15.8 xPE Hendriks: 7.04 ERA, 1.748 WHIP, 5.4 K/9, 2.30 K/BB (.353 BABIP) - 8.6 xPE Swarzak: 8.35 ERA, 1.855 WHIP, 4.9 K/9, 2.50 K/BB (.368 BABIP) - 8.4 xPE Deunsing: 6.34 ERA, 1.696 WHIP, 4.5 K/9, 2.38 K/BB (.350 BABIP) - 7.6 xPE Walters: 5.40 ERA, 1.527 WHIP, 5.6 K/9, 1.64 K/BB (.315 BABIP) - 6.5 xPE Blackburn: 7.33 ERA, 1.682 WHIP, 4 K/9, 1.64 K/BB (.327 BABIP) - 4.4 xPE Deduno: 3.38 ERA, 1.550 WHIP, 6.3 K/9, 0.93 K/BB (.252 BABIP) - 3.3 xPE Took me a while to calculate xPE (expected pitching effectiveness, if you want you can read more about it here) and this is how I like to look at pitching performance. Correlates pretty decency with xFIP but I never understood why xFIP and FIP put so much weight in HRs (which in my mind have a lot to do with park and luck) so I do not use them, but they also are peripheral number derived. xPE is a fairly fast calculation as well and does not use weights like FIP and xFIP, but again they are closely correlated with xPE putting more stress on BB allowed and treating all hits the same (unlike xFIP and FIP that weigh HRs and multi base hits more... and it is a pain to derive without excel) League average xPE is about 10. So the Twins had 3 SPs above average and a couple close.

Yeah after today, Devries should be on the hot seat too. Even after today, De Vries has been the second best starting pitcher for the Twins this season (and still leads the starters in K/9.) He earned a spot in the rotation. So did Deduno. You got to see whether these guys are part of the equation (as number 4 and 5 after Diamond) for 2013. So they got to pitch. Blackburn should be in the hot seat and I don't know how many more times Duensing needs to prove that he is great in the pen but iffy as a starter. Very much Perkins like. I am all for giving Swarzak another chance to start (he did have sporadic success there previously), but Duensing (or Blackburn) should move to the pen instead of demoting the Twins' second best starter.

Luke French too , right? (he was assigned yesterday)

This assumes that a. they will be in the post-season b. will actually be playing 5 games into the post-season and c. Cabrera will stay in shape working out with himself or with a college or high school team or something... If the season ended today, they would not be in the post-season (Dodgers have the tie-breaker)

The problem with that is that it will start his clock plus the Rock Cats are in a playoff chase. Parmelee's clock has stated and logically, he will be it. I can also see them DFA someone like Tosoni or Perdomo or Nishioka and giving their spot to someone like Matt Carson (who deserves the call up) but not sure they will do that.

Some of the PTBNL are as you say, a team is given a list and they pick. Some others are players who were agreed upon but signed (from a draft) less than a year from the day of the trade and cannot be named and traded until a year passes. And sometimes when a team receives a PTBNL during the off-season is because they had a full 40-man roster and wanted to wait until it was reduced.

I suspect by now (8/15) everyone of the 3 passed waivers and Morneau might have cleared. Not for salary relief but for someone like Kyle Crick or Heath Hembree; it would be a nice deal for the Twins, plus they have a ready replacement in Parmelee. The Giants are hurting right now and might be a great chance for the Twins to do something. As is right now they are tied with the Dodgers for the division and trailing the Pirates half a game for the second WC spot...

I think that any of Morneau, Willingham and Span would be a match, but I suspect that the last 2 will not clear waivers. Interesting to see what happens

Well, then there is door number 3 (And I think that the Twins need at least 2 and maybe 3 top level pitchers to be competitive in 2013) : You trade your top prospects to supplement veteran lineup with veteran pitching. Like trading Sano, Hicks and Hendriks for Roy Halladay (let's say) and three more top prospects for another pitcher at that level (Benson, Gibson and Rosario) and then sign a top free agent to give them 3 top starters. But they will never do that (thankfully)... And because they will not give free agent pitchers 4 and 5 year contracts (while other teams will do), the Twins will have to build within their system. So they got to break that core and get young pitching to compete when Sano and Rosario and Arcia and Hicks will be here with Plouffe and Mauer and Revere etc...

I think that this has all the information to answer the question on the title