Willihammer

Its certainly an intriguing idea on paper. He's only 34, we all know how good he is when healthy. Problem is, you'd need a qualified medical person to look him over, his surgery history, and figure out if that shoulder is physically capable of performing at a high level again. I'm not sure if the Twins have any of those.

Is that a football term too?

Sano's hit 30 HRs in 2013. His HR rate has actually climbed since being promoted. He's 20 years, 3 months and 3 days old. At this point is it safe to say Sano has the highest floor of any prospect the Twins have had since Mauer?

Yeah I guess with Beltran in RF that helped push the Mets over the top probably. By the way, Carlos Beltran, HoFamer?

I wouldn't doubt its harder for an umpire to stare over a 6' 5" frame than a 6 foot one. According to umpire.org: Emphasis mine. Shorter catchers would be able to crouch lower, allowing umpires to crouch lower, giving them a better view of low pitches and presumably call more strikes down there.

Dirty little fact that probably doesn't mean anything: The 2012 Twins were a better than .500 ballclub in the 33 games where Butera started at catcher. I was a little surprised to see Mauer had showed up on the wrong side of the 7/26 week's framing leaderboards. Parker's already pointed out how Mauer doesn't get many low strikes, but if he isn't getting the side to side strikes or the high strikes anymore, then there's even less reason to keep him crouching on that twice surgically repaired left knee. I think with Morneau leaving, and Mauer going into his age 31 season, the time is ripe to take a shot at a David Ross or Jose Molina this offseason while these elite framers are still cheap. Then shift Mauer into the primary 1B / backup C role once and for all.

Miguel Sano at Minor League Central Select year. He has maintained very small splits throughout and I would agree this is a very good sign.

Yes, yes he is.

I'd love to get a 40 yard dash time on Hicks. People keep saying he takes long strides, and that what we perceive as slowness is an optical illusion but I'm not sure I buy that.

If Plouffe's not a good bunter, then why give the Indians free strikes attempting and probably failing to bunt? I like Plouffe to be swinging there.

It is an interesting story. Might there have been a subconscious link between the trade demand, the immediate success with the Yankees, and the yips? I mean, guy requests a trade in 97, gets traded, plays 2B in '98 for the Yankees, wins a WS, plays 2B all of 99, and wins another world series? Is there a little leprechaun that shows up at that point and starts whispering in his ear "well that was easy, wasn't it?"

Man, that is a pretty lousy list of batters who've floated on the to-switch-hit-or-not-to-switch-hit bubble.

5.11 ERA

If there's anyone in the org with nothing left to prove in the minor leagues, I would think its Richardson.

And here I thought "refract" meant "nap." After reading these rankings, I was left asking myself "whose rookie card price could possibly rank higher than Joe Mauer's?" A champion must be crowned!

TIL GH is short for Ron Gardenhire

For all the mods encouragement of people to blog, its a small crime that nobody front paged this one. A+ post. My thoughts: A. Its time to start referring to Jordan Zimmerman as an ace. Which gives the Nats, what, 3 aces when everyone's healthy? B. I'm just not buying that Florimon's current numbers reflect his true talent, but I don't really have any statistical backing for that opinion. His plate discipline has improved for the 2nd straight year. His defense has been fine (this past weekend notwithstanding). Even his BABIP could stand to gain a few points probably. But my eyes are telling me that he is Alexi Casilla 2.0. Hope I'm wrong. C. Parmelee. I've been a skeptic all along and I really hope the Twins don't bend any further over finding a way to get him playing time. The overwhelming majority of his professional career has been mediocre, save a few hot weeks in AAA in 2012. But even Clete Thomas can get hot for a few weeks in AAA. I hope neither of those guys stops Arcia getting a full share of playing time now that his shoulder's better. D. I watched a few of Liriano's starts, including one a few weeks ago where he struck out 7 in a row, tie-ing a Pirates franchise record. He's still filthy, his changeup has been especially filthy this year, but he still falls behind out of the stretch more than he should. He has been bailed out on more than one ocassion by Clint Hurdle's shifts though. That said, he has been nearly unhittable out of the windup. Side note, I'm going to go ahead and predict Hurdle for MoY in the NL right now. The Pirates are a good team.

As we're all aware, step 4 of the 21 Point Plan to More Twins Wins! is upon us. Step 4 of course is the first of a subseries of steps which looks at how the Twins AAAA bubble guys figure to fit into the next wave of All Star talent currently playing in Cedar Rapids and Ft Myers. Dozier, Hicks, Parmelee, Plouffe, Florimon, Gibson, Deduno, DeVries, and Hendriks. In Step 4, we isolate the position players. Smarter minds than I have calculated that the 150 PA plateau marks the point where we can say with a high degree of reliability what a guy's final scores will be at the end of the season in several metrics. Namely: Swing% (50 PAs) Contact % (100 PAs) K rate, LD rate, and pitches/PA Here is how our bubble guys weigh in: http://i.imgur.com/eMxs0wv.png So, if these figures hold reasonably stable for the remainder of 2013, do we pencil these guys in for step 21? Who gets cut?

As we're all aware, step 4 of the 21 Point Plan to More Twins Wins! is upon us. Step 4 of course is the first of a subseries of steps which looks at how the Twins AAAA bubble guys figure to fit into the next wave of All Star talent currently playing in Cedar Rapids and Ft Myers. Dozier, Hicks, Parmelee, Plouffe, Florimon, Gibson, Deduno, DeVries, and Hendriks. In Step 4, we isolate the position players. Smarter minds than I have calculated that the 150 PA plateau marks the point where we can say with a high degree of reliability what a guy's final scores will be at the end of the season in several metrics. Namely: Swing% (50 PAs) Contact % (100 PAs) K rate, LD rate, and pitches/PA Here is how our bubble guys weigh in: http://i.imgur.com/eMxs0wv.png So, if these figures hold reasonably stable for the remainder of 2013, do we pencil these guys in for step 21? Who gets cut?

A 1st round pick way too much compensation for Hawkins? Man I don't know. Hawkins had turned a corner by the end of 2003 and continued to be a very solid middle reliever to this day. And its not like his price ever really went up.

Instead of asking "In hindsight, would you have signed Carlos Silva to a 5 year contract after 2007 because he was 28?" (which he didn't sign), is, how have pitchers who commanded 5 year+ contracts in free agency at age 28 faired historically, and how can we use that sample, instead of this pretty random group of 28 year olds from 2007, to make some kind of prediction about how a 5 year commitment to Sanchez will eventually wind up looking? Obviously to do that you would have to go back through the years 2007 and earlier. Maybe I will blog about it myself one of these days if you don't want to.

Take the poster child for "classic bad pitching contract," Barry Zito. 7 years, 126 million. He's in the final year of it now, and earning less in terms of AAV than Buehrle and Santana. But he was signed a year earlier, and got locked into 2006 salaries and projections instead of 2008 or 2012 salaries and projections. It should go without sayin but those things tend to go up pretty fast in baseball. Which is why I think this aversion to long-term contracts is overblown. Even if your guy turns into a Zito, a team can still be a consistent contender as the Giants have shown. I like the longitudinal approach here but I think you should compare how much the guys who have been piecemealed onto contracts over that span have earned and produced, as compared to the guys who were locked up to big deals early. Carlos Silva earned 45 million between 2 separate 2-year contracts after leaving the Twins while posting a 6.77 ERA in under 200 innings. Nowhere near as bad as Zito's in retrospect. Heck, even Meche managed to post two 200+ inning seasons of sub-4 ERA ball in his 5-year, 55 million/deal. A bad contract but hardly an albatross in 2012 money, the final year of his deal. *edited for clarity

Aaron Hicks has struck out 22 times in his first 17 big league games. His K-rate currently sits at 31.4%, tied for 10th worst in baseball with jay Bruce. a career 23.7% k-rate batter. According to Charlie Adams at Beyond the Boxscore (courtesy of Pizza Cutter at StatSpeak.net) k-rates stabilize after about 150 PAs. But instead of waiting 20 more games for Hicks to reach that benchmark, I'm going to instead look at contact rate and guesstimate what Hicks' true k-rate might be based off that. Because as it turns out, contact rates stabilize before k-rates - right around 70 PAs, in fact. And contact rates correlate well with strikeout rates (somewhere between -.81 and -.91). Below are the current contact rates for Twins batters: [TABLE=width: 310] Name PA Contact% SwStr% Chris Parmelee 62 79.40% 7.80% Brian Dozier 63 86.50% 5.50% Josh Willingham 65 74.70% 8.80% Trevor Plouffe 68 83.20% 6.90% Ryan Doumit 68 73.30% 10.60% Aaron Hicks 70 73.80% 9.30% Justin Morneau 78 83.60% 8.20% Joe Mauer 84 81.50% 6.50% [/TABLE] To get an idea of how these rates compare, I pulled the sample of qualified batters dating back to 2010 (min 1000 PAs). Next are the 10 hitters whose contact rates most closely match Hicks' current 73.8% contact rate, and their k-rates over that period: [TABLE=width: 263] Name Contact% K% Tyler Colvin 73.20% 25.70% B.J. Upton 73.40% 26.40% Alfonso Soriano 73.50% 23.10% Kelly Johnson 73.60% 25.20% Jay Bruce 73.80% 24.40% John Buck 73.90% 23.80% Sean Rodriguez 73.90% 22.30% Mark Trumbo 74.00% 23.90% Nelson Cruz 74.20% 20.90% Geovany Soto 74.30% 23.40% [/TABLE] Sure enough, there is our man Jay Bruce again. So, is Hicks destined to strikeout in the 23-24% range for his career? I don't think so. Certainly Austin Jackson wouldn't think so. Guys do improve, but judging Hicks' early contact rates, I feel confident that we can pencil Hicks in for a 20%+ k-rate for the rest of 2013 at least. While still pretty lousy, that would technically be an improvement over Hicks' current k-rate of 31.4%.

Aaron Hicks has struck out 22 times in his first 17 big league games. His K-rate currently sits at 31.4%, tied for 10th worst in baseball with jay Bruce. a career 23.7% k-rate batter. According to Charlie Adams at Beyond the Boxscore (courtesy of Pizza Cutter at StatSpeak.net) k-rates stabilize after about 150 PAs. But instead of waiting 20 more games for Hicks to reach that benchmark, I'm going to instead look at contact rate and guesstimate what Hicks' true k-rate might be based off that. Because as it turns out, contact rates stabilize before k-rates - right around 70 PAs, in fact. And contact rates correlate well with strikeout rates (somewhere between -.81 and -.91). Below are the current contact rates for Twins batters: [TABLE=width: 310] Name PA Contact% SwStr% Chris Parmelee 62 79.40% 7.80% Brian Dozier 63 86.50% 5.50% Josh Willingham 65 74.70% 8.80% Trevor Plouffe 68 83.20% 6.90% Ryan Doumit 68 73.30% 10.60% Aaron Hicks 70 73.80% 9.30% Justin Morneau 78 83.60% 8.20% Joe Mauer 84 81.50% 6.50% [/TABLE] To get an idea of how these rates compare, I pulled the sample of qualified batters dating back to 2010 (min 1000 PAs). Next are the 10 hitters whose contact rates most closely match Hicks' current 73.8% contact rate, and their k-rates over that period: [TABLE=width: 263] Name Contact% K% Tyler Colvin 73.20% 25.70% B.J. Upton 73.40% 26.40% Alfonso Soriano 73.50% 23.10% Kelly Johnson 73.60% 25.20% Jay Bruce 73.80% 24.40% John Buck 73.90% 23.80% Sean Rodriguez 73.90% 22.30% Mark Trumbo 74.00% 23.90% Nelson Cruz 74.20% 20.90% Geovany Soto 74.30% 23.40% [/TABLE] Sure enough, there is our man Jay Bruce again. So, is Hicks destined to strikeout in the 23-24% range for his career? I don't think so. Certainly Austin Jackson wouldn't think so. Guys do improve, but judging Hicks' early contact rates, I feel confident that we can pencil Hicks in for a 20%+ k-rate for the rest of 2013 at least. While still pretty lousy, that would technically be an improvement over Hicks' current k-rate of 31.4%.

One thing that us skeptics have yet to hear from the pro-FO crowd, is exactly what KC might have changed that would give cause to expect KC's future results to be better than his past results. Maybe this is something Parker could look at, if he reads this. I for one would be very interested. Certainly in his first few starts, I've been impressed with his command. With the exception of a handful of cutters, its been impeccable. But he's historically pitched best in March and April. Maybe as the weather gets muggy, he gets fatigued and starts leaving balls up. Maybe he goes through a dead-arm period every August where he drops his arm slot and gets wild. I'm certainly rooting for continued success from him but until someone shares a concrete observation about a permanent change to his approach, I'm not going to hold my breath.