Thrylos

Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch ---- This is the third and last, but not least, segment in this series. You can find the first segment (fixing the bullpen) and the rationale for the series here, and the second segment (fixing the outfield) here. I think that the most important (and some times the hardest or the easiest) thing to fix for the Twins to win, is the team attitude. How do you measure attitude and how does attitude prevent some one to win, and what is that "attitude" thing anyway. Isn't that thing that your parents and teachers talked about when you were growing up, or something else. Well, as far as baseball goes, I will let former Twins' player and Texas Rangers' manager Ron Washington describe it in this 30 second video. To borrow Washington's words from there, a winning attitude is when you "expect to win" and "do everything you need to do to win". Arguably, the Minnesota Twins the last couple of decades has as motto (at their best,) do all you can do (aka bust your tail) and you win some, you lose some. Those were exactly the words of a smiling Michael Cudduyer at the Twins' dugout, on September 30, 2008, after the Twins lost game 163 at the White Sox (and part of the reason was that Cuddyer did not do what he needed to do to win, colliding with and forcing the ball out of AJ Pierzynski's glove to score.) And giving it all and being "good enough" has been the Twins' motto. And the majority of the fans were ok with "good enough", winning the title of the weakest division in baseball about half of the time, going belly up during the post-season and when they played the AL East, in the 00s. And if the fans are happy with "good enough", you get a brand new ballpark and brand new season ticket sales and that is more that "good enough" as far as revenue goes, when it is not broken, why even bother to think about fixing it? That was the Twins' past decade of "Glory", in half a paragraph. And then it went South. What happened? Well, the Twins did not even do all they could do in the ballpark; add that to a culture of favoritism in the clubhouse, where it did not matter to whether the veterans did all they could do, but when people outside the inner circle opened their mouths were thought under the proverbial bus; add that to not expecting to win, to start with, and you got 99 + 96 + 96 + 92. And most importantly, no excuses for even the most single-sighted fans to believe that this team can win, thus a drop in tickets, thus a drop in revenue, thus... To win, a team needs a leader who expects to win and make sure that his players and coaches do everything they need to do to win. Here was the most common expression of the previous Twins' leader during games the last several seasons (hanging on to the dugout railing optional) : Is this the expression someone who is doing all he needed to do to win and lead by example. Is this the expression of someone who expects his team to win? Or is this the expression of someone who looks defeated and solemn? Rhetorical question. There was not a more obvious time for me to see that the Twins players not only doing what they needed to do, but not even all they could do, and was fine with the manager and the coaches, than this particular game last spring training. Before I went down there last season, I did have hopes that with the changes they made in the rotation, plus some players improving, had a chance to break even and have an 81-81 record. But after what I saw, I predicted that the Twins will end up the 2014 season with a 70-92 record. That is the past, and tomorrow I am landing at Fort Myers where I will be for more than a week and be able to see how thing are, but I have a good feeling that they are heading the right way. Other than getting rid of their manager and pitching coach, which by itself is adding 10 wins pretty much, and replacing them with good baseball people and a Hall of Famer as manager, they brought back Torii Hunter. It did not make much sense at the beginning, and I think that they guy is a prick, plus he left the Twins' in free agency just for money and he added insult to the injury, by singing with the biggest division rival in his second free agency, but there might be something positive: As I indicated here, Hunter can help the young players (who were tainted by the Twins' clubhouse attitude, it is no secret) realize that they have to at least give it all and lead by example. I have seen signs from Molitor that he is leading his players towards doing what they need to do. First example, was the no-cell phone policy during game days, which was awful last season. Players need to focus in the game and not in their social media during game day. Second, he benched Aaron Hicks during a game for losing track of outs; a gesture that has not happened during a Twins' Spring Training since 1965, when Sam Mele, the Twins' manager, took Zoilo Versalles (the eventual 1965 MVP) out of the lineup because of lack of effort. And you know what the Twins did in 1965. Also, after a couple of mishaps in short fly balls and lack of communication between infielders and outfielder, Molitor had extra drills of those circumstances with the whole team. The whole team. In previous years, veterans and the inner circle would be excluded and only few would participate in similar drills. There are a lot of positive signs about (at least) a realization that the teams attitude needed to change to win, and actual steps taken this direction. I will be able to know more about how things will play out in this department, in 10 days or so, after I return from Fort Myers and see the team play this Spring. Last year I predicted that 70-92, based on what I saw, I hope that this year, it is the reverse...

Problem is that he is not better now. Will he? Maybe (I don't think that he will be better than Meyer). Pelfrey and Milone have been lights out this Spring. Berrios not so. And they got to see Meyer and May who are more ready. Stauffer is not part of that equation. Berrios is in Buxton's shoes, pretty much. 2016 or 2017.

So it looks like 18 were cut today (between the announced and unannounced cuts,) leaving the roster at 43, with 18 more to go, 9 pitchers and 9 position players. Pretty symmetric. Trying to keep track here.

Gets worse: Darnell, Polanco, Salcedo, Diaz, Wheeler & Oliveros all also cut. Farris and Grimes likely as well

Sano was cut too. That, I don't understand.

Thanks for the masterful insight.

The thing is that Berrios will not make the Twins. There is a pretty sizable battle for the 5 rotation spot and they are remaking the bullpen. It is better to give innings to players who have a change to make it, so they can evaluate them against MLB hitters, than to Berrios. He will be better off learning to throw to the catchers he will throw in AA as well...

They will probably got to the New Britain Chattanooga Group, which is likely group 1. Not much bumping yet. That will start when the extra 27 players in the Twins' MLB camp (that is the Rochester roster plus) start to getting cut... The players who got cut here are AA and high A

.289/.397/.408, 135 OPS+, .356 BABIP (career average .348) 0.81 BB/K, second half of 2015. I am really not worried about Joe Mauer

Seth, really agree with your train of thought here. But you got to go one more level deep: there is another stat that drives BA, and pretty much tells what kind of hitter one is. This is BABIP. Unlike, pitchers' BABIPs (that indicate how lucky a pitcher is, since BABIPs should approximate the league average of around .290), hitters' BABIPs indicate performance. And the higher the batting average in balls in play, the higher the batting average. Hitters with high BABIPs are slap hitters. Ben Revere's and Denard Span's career BABIP is .320 or so. Gary Gaetti's career BABIP (who I think might be a good comparable for Dozier's power ceiling) is .270. I spent some time graphing Dozier's BABIP and IsoP thought out the years. Here: So it looks like when Dozier used to hit for a high average with a High BABIP, he hit like Span and Revere. And as his IsoP increased, his BABIP decreased to the point that his BA was suppressed. Gaetti had a career .179 IsoP, a career .270 BABIP and a career .255 Batting Average. I think that this is where Dozier might be heading or towards the career numbers of his current hitting coach, .188 IsoP, .259 BABIP, .245 BA, if you want another example

You think playing a kids' game and having fun as an adult and getting paid $ to do it, is "wasting someone's life" (whatever that might mean?) His deal. It is not like he is robbing 7-11s and doing time in jail or something....

Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch ---- A great article was written today by Jonathan Judge and published at The Hardball Times, called FIP in Context, introducing an new metric, called cFIP, or contest-adjusted FIP that attempts to "estimate the pitcher’s true pitching talent during a particular season". Always interested in new pitching metrics development, and not only because I have partaken myself in the endeavor. this is an interesting one, albeit much more complex than PE and xPE. It also correlates well with SIERA, which along with xPE (because it is easy to calculate) are my 2 favorite predictive metrics regarding pitching performance. I will not steal Jonathan's thunder, please read that excellent article, but I will present his framework and then present his work regarding the Twins' pitchers (he calculated cFIPs for every pitcher in the league the past 4 years, including Jamie Carroll.) The cFIP scale is normalized to 100 for average, just like OPS+ and ERA+, but it is a minus scale, meaning that less is better, like ERA and FIP and SIERA and all similar metrics. Should have been called cFIP-, but that is a different story. So 100 is average and less is better. Jonathan Judge has the following buckets of pitchers, according their cFIP: <70 nbsp="" p="" superb="">70–85 Great 85–95 Above Avg. 95–105 Average 105–115 Below Avg. 115–130 Bad 130+ Awful Let's put the 2014 Minnesota Twins' pitching staff in those buckets. For reference, players that are not still with the team are in (parenthesis). I am also including the 2015 cFIP numbers of the newcomers this off-season. They have an asterisk behind their names, that would have made Barry Bonds jealous: Superb: Phil Hughes 70 Great: Glen Perkins 74 Above Avg.: Casey Fien 89 Tim Stauffer 91* (Yohan Pino 94) Average: Aaron Thompson 98 Logan Darnell 99 Ricky Nolasco 100 Trevor May 101 Ervin Santana 101* Michael Tonkin 102 Caleb Thielbar 103 Blaine Boyer 103* Lester Oliveros 105 Below Avg.: (Jared Burton 106) (Kris Johnson 106) (Sam Deduno 107) Stephen Pryor 108 Kyle Gibson 109 (Anthony Swarzak 111) A. J. Achter 112 Ryan Pressly 112 Brian Duensing 114 Tommy Milone 114 Bad: (Matt Guerrier 116) (Kevin Correia 119) Awful: Mike Pelfrey 132 A few obsevations: According to this, the Twins had a superb pitcher, Phil Hughes, a great pitcher, Glen Perkins, and 13 total (I am not counting the newcomers) pitchers (that is a full MLB staff, ladies and gentlemen) who were average, above average, great or superb. Mike Pelfrey (who tied for worst in the majors in this metric) was the only awful pitcher in the Twins' staff But, The Twins had the second worst bullpen in the majors according to xFIP and SIERA and the third worst rotation in the majors, according to SIERA (fourth according to xFIP) Other than Yohan Pino, who was an unfortunate loss, The Twins' front office seems to behave pretty well according to this metric: The pitchers they let go, are all bellow average or beyond. They did keep a few below average pitchers, and they did keep Mike Pelfrey, who is better suited for the pen and was injured. Other than Duensing who had a down season, the below average pitchers are all young. Big issue in the big picture here: The Twins had a whole staff worth (13) pitchers who were average and above, yet they managed to be almost at the bottom of the league in pitching. Those things seem pretty conflicting. Let's dig deeper and check out the 2013 Twins' cFIP buckets that Jonathan Judge calculated. For reference purposes, players who left after 2013 are in parenthesis and I added Ricky Nolasco (with an asterisk) as well Superb: Glen Perkins 63 Casey Fien 67 Great: Nobody Above Avg.: Jared Burton 91 Caleb Thielbar 91 Ricky Nolasco 93* Michael Tonkin 94 Average: Anthony Swarzak 97 Brian Duensing 97 (Shairon Martis 105) Below Avg.: Mike Pelfrey 109 (Liam Hendriks 110) Ryan Pressly 111 (Cole DeVries 114) (Andrew Albers 115) Bad: Kevin Correia 116 Samuel Deduno 116 (Josh Roenicke 118) (P.J. Walters 122) (Vance Worley 124) Kyle Gibson 125 (Scott Diamond 129) Awful: Nobody This is some really interesting data. Here is what I see: I think that I either underestimated the Twins' Front Office use of metrics in personnel decisions building the team or Jack Goin should buy me a beer next week at Hammond Stadium, because this tool really describes what the Twins are doing regarding personnel decisions: The tend to get rid of below average and below pitchers and add average and above pitchers. Hughes was around 100, but I did not add him here. This is a stop the presses type of statement, me coming close to shake my head in approval of what the front office is doing... This tells a tale of 2 cities: All the Average and above pitchers were relievers. All starters were bellow average or worse but not awful. And Pelfrey was the best. Enough with 2013. What happened in 2014, comparatively to 2013? Every single reliever from Perkins down regressed, while the starters (save hurt Pelfrey and replacement level Correia) improved. This is fundamentally interesting, because it kinds of breaks some old school axioms. And the one excuse for the decline of the Twins' pen in 2014 was that, they were worse because they were too tired because the rotation was so bad. This data, turns this upside down: The Twins 2013 rotation was worse than the Twins 2014 rotation, and the 2014 Twins' pen made the 2014 Twins rotation worse. So a bad pen can make a rotation worse. Like a reliever coming in with 2 outs and the bases loaded to give a grand slam and 4 runs to the starter. What a concept... I am starting to really like this metric... So (and this is really hard for me to say) the Front Office did some improvements for 2014, that actually seem to be supported by real data, but the pitching tanked compared to 2013. Why? I'd love to hear your theories after this, and this is what I am thinking: Look at that 2014 list up there. In your mind, normalize it for playing time. That would shift the buckets heavier to the below average. How many games did Pino or May start compared to Pelfrey, Correia, Deduno? Why was Burton used in high leverage situations over better relievers? Yes. Do the same normalization for playing time for the 2013 data. And you are looking at evidence of what has been written here loudly and clear about mismanagement of the Twins' pitching staff by Gardy and Andy for ages. This has to be part of the reason cause for the pen decline in 2014, and the root causes are described within there. And they have to be fixed. And, yes, metrics can be devised to normalize and approximate defense independent pitching, but I have not yet seen one that could estimate the madness of the Twins' 2014 OF (what is the range factor of a bucket?) This actually makes me more hopeful, because it seems like the Twins are doing an effort to address some things. So, what do you say?

Yeah, it's tough. Especially for players with College education like Grimes; they do have alternatives. I hope that the whole minor league salary situation gets fixed. You cannot have whole low level teams making less money than a single MLB rookie's minimum salary. And it is on the players' union as well...

We shall see if he does the same thing if a veteran makes a mistake. That was part of the issue with Gardy. He had his pets who could do no wrong... Btw, the first base coach is at fault as well. He should have kept track of the outs and discuss strategy with Hicks based on the outs. Apparently he did not do that. Hope that Molly had a talk with him too...

If Sano, Rosario and Polanco start the season in AA, someone should be fired. They have zero to prove at that level.

Cheap? Was he the manager who played catchers, first basemen and DHs at the OF? And short stops? Was he the manager who played 11 LFs, 7 CFs, and 10 RFs the season? The fact that he is not around, will improve the team. This is a legitimate point, supported with data.

That number is 3 (as far as relievers at AAA & AA go) : Achter, Pryor and Oliveros, if you are looking at under 3.50 ERA and under 1.200 WHIP (and maybe you can add Pressly, 2.98 ERA, 1.260 WHIP.) All 4 are getting a look. I'd add May to that category. There is not that much in the high minors... The wealth of the Twins' good relievers are in A and high A.

Perkins has a down year like Duensing did. The problem is that if your best reliever is "not great but okay" and you go downhill from there, you are going to have the kind of bullpen the Twins had last season...

Got to dig for those, but my gut feeling says that this is the case. Probably their average is slightly below Duensing's 2014 FBv.

Thanks. Part 2 is already up here.

Agreed. Slowey was a better starter than Wade Davis (until Gardy n' Andy ruined him ) but he would make a horrible reliever. My argument with Pelfrey having what you say the "right profile" as a reliever has to do with his stuff. Like Nathan and Perkins he has a couple of good pitches and that will take you nowhere as a starter, so he has to supplement that with junk. Very hittable junk, like Nathan and Perkins did as starters. So, getting rid of that junk and relying to his strengths he could be a good reliever. And his FB as a starter is a good 3-4 mph faster than Nathan's and Perkins' as starters. That was the train of thought here...

Funny thing about this: Ryan today (again) was talking about how "Meyer and Berrios are knocking on the door". There are 3 pitchers (and Gibson) with multi-year contract ahead of them. I don't see Gibson going away. I don't see Hughes going away, I don't see Santana going away (yet.) The math is so there...

I am being realistic, based on what the Twins have been doing with him and that a. they did not add him to the 40 man roster (as discussed, but that is correctable) but, even more importantly, they did not invite him to the major league camp in Spring Training. Should they? Heck yeah. But I am trying to be realistic here. How do I feel about Burdi? I ranked him as the Twins' 10th prospect and wrote this (among other things) here in my prospect rankings: A high 90s nasty fastball that often reaches triple digits, complemented by a low 90s even nastier slider, and there is no wonder than many, including the author of this, were wondering why Burdi did not start his pro career in the majors, since he is the best RHRP in the Twins organization at any level, since he was drafted. But this is not the way the Twins are thinking. The 22 year old had nothing to prove in a league whose average age was 2 years + older. He will likely have nothing to prove in Chattanooga and be called to the majors by mid-season to serve as the Twins' set up man or even the closer. He is not on the 40 man roster and has not been invited to the MLB Spring Training camp as of yet. So you are really preaching to the choir about Burdi here But for some reason, Ryan will not do it and I did not want to go into what ifs, but trying to be realistic within the parameters they have set.

Robinson was integral part of the 2012 and 2013 Cardinal teams (as a late inning defensive specialist, PR etc) that went to the NLCS and WS respectively. So if he is good for a competitive team's bench, he should be good for the Twins' bench.

Santana was pretty bad with the glove at CF and was part of the problem. Benson was with the Rangers, then with the Marlins last season and had knee surgery finally. He signed with the Braves this season and might make that club. Sounds pretty healthy. Mastro is with Toronto as their AAAA guy. The Twins have effectively replaced him with Shane Robinson.