Willihammer

So... it sugarcoated it?

Maybe, Jim Pohlad's real passion is golf? Or RC flying, or dominatrix roleplay. Maybe its (gasp) not baseball, like it is for you and me. Maybe he leaves the office at 5 o'clock and tries to forget about what he did at the office that day just like every other schmuck.

Pass the hell this way so we can melt this god forsaken snow already

Dick Bremer said he talked to Torii after the opener. Evidently those 3-4 o'clock shadows were making Worley's cutter really hard to pickup.

I give Korea credit for throwing strikes. Limiting walks can get you a long way, esp. if your stuff is lackluster. There were some hard hit balls mixed in that found gloves too, Peralta creamed one right at Florimon. Avila blasted one on a line about 400 feet to center that Hicks caught. But he is paid to make use of the defense and he certainly did that I guess. I noticed Parmelee struggling with the inside comebacker against RHPs in spring training and he struck out on one again yesterday. That is a pitch a righthander should fear throwing to a lefthanded power guy, but guys are throwing him there with impunity. Sanchez looked good. Its easy to forget that he's got 95 mph gas in his back pocket, he doesn't always use it, except in critical situations. Pulled one out against Mauer, eventually putting him away with something off-speed. We didn't need him though. Tigers defense was not as sharp as the Twins all day. right up to Escobar's game winner which was Jackson's ball all the way. Slowey looked like Slowey. 88 mph meatballs, but somehow managed to limit the damage to 1 run over 5. Just another indication of how down the league is right now in scoring. Denard Span looks a little fat.

I broke down the career numbers for Doumit, Mauer, Morneau, and Willingham by when they played as a position player, and when they DH-ed (throwing out Pinch Hitting appearances). There's a pretty significant DH penalty for all of them. Might be Wililngham (or someone else) could 'grow' into a full-time DH role though. edit: Just realized I didn't copy in the names. They are in alphabetical order

280 nice little AAA PAs, after 2700 PAs of mediocrity. Chris Parmelee is not Jose Bautista. He had a hot streak. That is all.

Bauer reminded me of Oswalt a little bit. Not as fast, but just as flat edit: Ok looking at his velo charts he might be as fast. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong about him.

I can't recall anyone pitching with earrings on. I doubt any team, or umpire, allows it. What was the other rule Hernandez broke?

For as much as we like to complain about the Twins MI, the White Sox should have cut the cord on Beckam after the last two seasons, in my opinion. And they brought in Keppinger for 3b, that will be... interesting, at best. But, I like their bullpen and starting 5. Their lineup is spotty but everyone's is in this division. KC still doesn't have enough starting pitching to do anything, I think. What a waste of a really strong bullpen. I don't like anything Cleveland's done this offseason. Bauer did nothing for me, in what little I saw of him last year. Tigers are still topheavy, short an arm or two in the bullpen. The divisions up for grabs again, I think. edit: also, with Scherzer's wild fluctuation in velocity last year, he looks like a possible TJ-type candidate

Haha, great post.

No, its not unlikely at all.

Riberbrian is like the Joe Posnanski of Twinsdaily bloggers. Curiously long posts

Yeah its normal for a pitcher who moves from the rotation to the pen to experience velocity gain and also to throw the fastball with greater frequency. +0.8 mph is somewhat unimpressive but for whatever reason, that gain plus better movement maybe, the whiffs went up. I would consider these starters who are aging and experiencing velocity decline to be a subset of the relief pitching dumpster, even if they don't always like to think of themselves as relievers (yet). Brett Myers may be another guy, although it looks like the Twins would stick him back into a starting role. I got the data from brooksbaseball via Oswalt's game log page on baseball-reference. The "Pitches" Column is linked to the pitcher/date page at brooksbaseball

It was pretty obvious that Oswalt struggled as a starter down in Texas last year, earning him a couple different assignments to the bullpen. I went through his pitchf/x data for the season to differentiate Oswalt's effectiveness in the two roles and found some evidence that he could still be a valuable piece coming out of the pen in 2013. In a small sample, Oswalt's fastballs missed bats about twice as often when he was coming out of relief (15.93% versus 8.39%). I believe this is a good sign for Oswalt, because he's relied heavily on his fastballs for success over his career (64.2% frequency, +132.5 runs). https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5pIzP28qdp-YWc5dVZJRXVrX00 http://i.imgur.com/DYFzm.png?1 Would Oswalt be worth pursuing? What should the Twins be willing to pay?

It was pretty obvious that Oswalt struggled as a starter down in Texas last year, earning him a couple different assignments to the bullpen. I went through his pitchf/x data for the season to differentiate Oswalt's effectiveness in the two roles and found some evidence that he could still be a valuable piece coming out of the pen in 2013. In a small sample, Oswalt's fastballs missed bats about twice as often when he was coming out of relief (15.93% versus 8.39%). I believe this is a good sign for Oswalt, because he's relied heavily on his fastballs for success over his career (64.2% frequency, +132.5 runs). https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5pIzP28qdp-YWc5dVZJRXVrX00 http://i.imgur.com/DYFzm.png?1 Would Oswalt be worth pursuing? What should the Twins be willing to pay?

I'm revisiting this topic after the Case for Trading Span thread discussion. I believe that Revere's extreme contact proficiency is causing him to prematurely terminate at-bats to the detriment of his OBP. Here I want to estimate what Revere's OBP would be if he never swung at another 2-0, 3-0, or 3-1 pitch again by looking at the probabilities of outcomes based on Revere's first 1068 PAs. For data, I'm using fangraphs' PITCHf/x Plate Discipline, and Baseball-Reference's Pitch Summary -- Batting pages. I will assume that pitchers throw Revere strikes at a constant rate, regardless of count. I admit that in terms of a game scenario where there' s a man, and not pitchFX calling balls and strikes, that this is a bit of a reach owing to things like the Compassionate Umpire effect, although there is a more or less equivalent counter effect in the Merciless Umpire. For my calculations, I will not account for human error in calling balls and strikes. For Revere, the rate at which pitchers throw him pitches that fall within PITCHf/x's strike zone is 53.4%. This is before Revere swings or doesn't swing. Of Pitches, inside the zone, Revere swings at 51.4%, making contact 96.7% of the time and whiffing 3.3%. Contact is defined as balls put in play or fouled off. Unfortunately, I'm unable to assign different foul ball swing%'s to balls in or out of the zone, so I will assume it is the same for both. That rate (called F/Str on baseball-reference) is 21% of all strikes seen. 64% of pitches are either a swinging or non-swinging strike. And Revere's Z-swing% is 51.4%. So of all strikes thrown to Revere, 39.3% are swung on and put into play, 10.4% are swung on and fouled off, 1.7% are swung on and missed, and the rest, 48.6%, are taken. Revere's O-Swing% (Swings at pitches out of the zone / Pitches out of the zone) is 26.2%, and his contact rate is 82.1%. so of all pitches thrown outside the zone (46.6%), 16.9% are swung on and put into play, 4.5% are fouled off, 4.0% are swung on and missed, and the rest, 74.6%, are taken. in 1068 PAs so far, Revere's seen 122 2-0 counts and swung 41 times. We can assume 5.0 of those were balls (26.2% O-swing% / ball rate of 46.6% x 41). Of the 36.0 strikes swung on, 27.3 were put in play, 7.3 were fouled off, 1.4 were whiffed.

I'm revisiting this topic after the Case for Trading Span thread discussion. I believe that Revere's extreme contact proficiency is causing him to prematurely terminate at-bats to the detriment of his OBP. Here I want to estimate what Revere's OBP would be if he never swung at another 2-0, 3-0, or 3-1 pitch again by looking at the probabilities of outcomes based on Revere's first 1068 PAs. For data, I'm using fangraphs' PITCHf/x Plate Discipline, and Baseball-Reference's Pitch Summary -- Batting pages. I will assume that pitchers throw Revere strikes at a constant rate, regardless of count. I admit that in terms of a game scenario where there' s a man, and not pitchFX calling balls and strikes, that this is a bit of a reach owing to things like the Compassionate Umpire effect, although there is a more or less equivalent counter effect in the Merciless Umpire. For my calculations, I will not account for human error in calling balls and strikes. For Revere, the rate at which pitchers throw him pitches that fall within PITCHf/x's strike zone is 53.4%. This is before Revere swings or doesn't swing. Of Pitches, inside the zone, Revere swings at 51.4%, making contact 96.7% of the time and whiffing 3.3%. Contact is defined as balls put in play or fouled off. Unfortunately, I'm unable to assign different foul ball swing%'s to balls in or out of the zone, so I will assume it is the same for both. That rate (called F/Str on baseball-reference) is 21% of all strikes seen. 64% of pitches are either a swinging or non-swinging strike. And Revere's Z-swing% is 51.4%. So of all strikes thrown to Revere, 39.3% are swung on and put into play, 10.4% are swung on and fouled off, 1.7% are swung on and missed, and the rest, 48.6%, are taken. Revere's O-Swing% (Swings at pitches out of the zone / Pitches out of the zone) is 26.2%, and his contact rate is 82.1%. so of all pitches thrown outside the zone (46.6%), 16.9% are swung on and put into play, 4.5% are fouled off, 4.0% are swung on and missed, and the rest, 74.6%, are taken. in 1068 PAs so far, Revere's seen 122 2-0 counts and swung 41 times. We can assume 5.0 of those were balls (26.2% O-swing% / ball rate of 46.6% x 41). Of the 36.0 strikes swung on, 27.3 were put in play, 7.3 were fouled off, 1.4 were whiffed.

I believe the Rays proprietary defensive scheme has allowed them to "artificially" inflate the market value of their pitchers. While the rest of baseball lags behind, someone will overpay for their pitching talent. Since 2011, only the Nats and A's have outperformed their xFIPs better (xFIP minus ERA). And no one has been more reliant on that defensive scheme than Hellickson (7.3 FDP wins in the last two years). I will be watching this closely, whoever trades for Hellickson, unless they plan on warping into the Rays defensively, is going to get fleeced.

We did the same. Got up there Friday and uncle Joe already had about a 5 drink head start on us. "Take the 4 wheeler and put out some apples over there by the clearing," he tells me. Not an hour later there's a 8 pointer standing there, tail down. Evidently Uncle Joe had gotten him into a habit. So he grabs the .338 and sits himself on the picnic table outside the garage. My brother who lived in Seattle for the past 10 years talked him out of it, luckily. "Save some for us deer virgins." So okay he puts it down. Joe paid us back Sunday morning though. We are just about to head in for the day, pack up and make the 4 hour car ride south to the cities when bang. 50 pound spike buck, great. Oh, Uncle Joe also happens to be allergic to deer so guess who had to dress it, skin it, and butcher it. That venison meat up in St Louis county tastes like dogsht anyway. I'm done with deer hunting.

If he is going to keep stranding runners, they had better get someone behind the dish who can actually catch those pitches.

Looks like a fine park

sorry, I should proof read before posting

Ben Revere doesn't swing and miss often. So he doesn't reach many 3 ball counts, and what follows below can be taken with heavy salt. Still, if there is meaning in his small sample of 3-ball data, then Ben Revere's high contact percentage allows for absolutist decisionmaking at the plate in order to maximize on-base percentage. Observe, Ben Revere is already a patient hitter: http://i.imgur.com/tJLMP.png But Revere puts balls in play at such an efficient clip, relative to the no. of swings he takes, that he doesn't see enough 3-ball counts to draw any walks. If you carry out the 62% strike % (which includes swinging strikes, but to be conservative with estimates I will use that figure), then Revere would see 84 3-0 counts per 1000 PAs (conveniently, Revere sits at 1000 PAs currently). By comparison, Span sees fourty-three 3-0 counts/1000 PAs. Again, assuming the red light stays on for 3-0 counts, that works out to 52 walks per 1000 PAs just by Revere having a red light on all 2-0 and 3-0 counts. Accounting for a full .050 points of OBP. Give him the red light on all 3-1 counts, and his OBP jumps another .022. But, how would Revere's batting average fair, when the pitcher throws a strike on 2-0 and 3-1? http://i.imgur.com/FrbfC.png Like most hitters, Revere struggles in 2 strike counts (except full count). But Revere's ability to put balls in play is so elite, that he rarely gets into such counts. In 1000 PAs, he has see just 151 counts, of 02, and 210 counts of 1-2. By comparison, Span sees 180 counts of 0-2 and 271 counts of 1-2. He just doesn't miss the ball in 0-strike and 1-strike counts, to his detriment sometimes. Thus, Revere needs to be given hard red lights in order to increase his OBP and turn him into a long term serviceable leadoff hitter.

Ben Revere doesn't swing and miss often. So he doesn't reach many 3 ball counts, and what follows below can be taken with heavy salt. Still, if there is meaning in his small sample of 3-ball data, then Ben Revere's high contact percentage allows for absolutist decisionmaking at the plate in order to maximize on-base percentage. Observe, Ben Revere is already a patient hitter: http://i.imgur.com/tJLMP.png But Revere puts balls in play at such an efficient clip, relative to the no. of swings he takes, that he doesn't see enough 3-ball counts to draw any walks. If you carry out the 62% strike % (which includes swinging strikes, but to be conservative with estimates I will use that figure), then Revere would see 84 3-0 counts per 1000 PAs (conveniently, Revere sits at 1000 PAs currently). By comparison, Span sees fourty-three 3-0 counts/1000 PAs. Again, assuming the red light stays on for 3-0 counts, that works out to 52 walks per 1000 PAs just by Revere having a red light on all 2-0 and 3-0 counts. Accounting for a full .050 points of OBP. Give him the red light on all 3-1 counts, and his OBP jumps another .022. But, how would Revere's batting average fair, when the pitcher throws a strike on 2-0 and 3-1? http://i.imgur.com/FrbfC.png Like most hitters, Revere struggles in 2 strike counts (except full count). But Revere's ability to put balls in play is so elite, that he rarely gets into such counts. In 1000 PAs, he has see just 151 counts, of 02, and 210 counts of 1-2. By comparison, Span sees 180 counts of 0-2 and 271 counts of 1-2. He just doesn't miss the ball in 0-strike and 1-strike counts, to his detriment sometimes. Thus, Revere needs to be given hard red lights in order to increase his OBP and turn him into a long term serviceable leadoff hitter.