Parker Hageman

You only have two choices: will he be better or worse in 2013?[ATTACH=CONFIG]3059[/ATTACH] 2012 Recap There are two things you won’t find in Minnesota: A liquor store that will sell you booze on Sundays and consistency at the shortstop position. The Twins were hoping that the latter problem would be solved by Brian Dozier. Dozier, a shortstop drafted by the organization (another rarity), was given the opportunity a month into the season to claim the role as his own. Alas, he did not. Dozier’s stock shot up in the spring when the 26-year-old earned the praise of coaches and media members based on his performance in Florida. Sent to Rochester to begin the year, overall suckitude by the affiliate’s parent team incited his May call up. In his first 10 games, he provided false hope by hitting .286/.318/.476 with two home runs. Once scouting reports spread his numbers dropped faster than fan’s interest in the team. He got extremely pull-happy. His plate discipline disappeared. His frustrations at the plate seemed to lead to defensive miscues. Demoted in August, Dozier returned to Rochester and continued where he left off with the Twins. Why He’ll Be Worse In 2013 After a fast start, opponents quickly exploited his holes in his swing and his numbers dropped. His plate discipline swiftly eroded as team’s started to attack the outer-half of the zone and he managed to walk in under 5% of his plate appearances. To make matters worse, after being sent down to Rochester in August to work on this, he walked just twice in his final 76 PAs (2%). It was like his soul was crushed. While his minor league track record is decent enough, it is possible that teams have figured out his number and will play him like a fiddle (see: Valencia, Danny) until the team is forced to admit he is not capable of being an everyday player. Why He’ll Be Better In 2013 As mentioned above, he’s put up decent enough numbers in the minors and, in most cases, hiccups are to be expected as a player ascends to the next level. The struggles in 2012 could simply be part of a player’s natural learning curve. Plus, he’s reunited with his former minor league hitting coach Tom Brunansky, who has been credited with improving his approach while with New Britain. Together the pair may be able to help make the necessary adjustments to adapt to the competition. What will it be? A continuation of his 2012 season or will the 27-year-old finally emerge as a starter in this lineup? Click on this link to see our official thread AND take the survey. Then leave us a comment saying why. Read from our past For Better Or Worse series: Joe Mauer.

Just to be clear: Haren and Myers both received one-year deals. Dempster got a two-year deal. Marcum, because of his injury, is heading for a one-year deal.

Here at Twins Daily, Twins general manager Terry Ryan has faced some criticism for his handling of the offseason as it relates to improving his team for 2013. Twins Daily's Nick Nelson pointed that out that Ryan's statements from earlier in the winter did not quite jive with his actions when it came to fixing the pitching staff. In their weekly podcast, John Bonnes and Aaron Gleeman addressed the same topic and discussed how the team's projected payroll ($78.5 million) is essentially the same as the 2007 opening day payroll of $71 million. Both pieces make compelling arguments for spending more on resources for 2013. Meanwhile, 1500ESPN.com's Phil Mackey takes the stance that the Twins should not feel pressured to invest in this current season: Mackey is likely correct in assuming Marcum and Saunders would be better than Correia in terms of moving the win-column needling upwards but not to the point where it would help them necessarily compete. However, let's say the Twins spent that remaining $20 million and added Marcum, Brett Myers and/or Dan Haren/Ryan Dempster to the equation. Now they have a rotation of Dempster/Marcum/Diamond/Worley/Myers in 2013. Would that elevate this team to be able to compete in the AL Central? Or would it be spending money just to spend money? Which side of this debate to you come down on?

Think of it similarly to the BABIP theory. If a player's BABIP is abnormally high or low, there will likely (not always) be a regression to the mean. Yes, HitTracker's data can also help identify players who are "unlucky" and should see their HR totals increase as well. But, no, no one has done a complete comprehensive, thorough study on the data. Because of this, I refer to it as a "theory" rather than something that is completely accepted in the sabr/stats community.

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[ATTACH=CONFIG]3040[/ATTACH]For a significant portion of the year, Josh Willingham fueled the Twins offense and gave the fans something to watch while the team sank deeper in the standings. He proved that Target Field was not resistant to home team home runs. In fact, his 21 home runs at home easily trumped long-standing fan-favorite Michael Cuddyer’s 17 hit in his two years at Target Field (2010-2011). Jim Thome managed to swat 21 home runs as well but needed 14 more plate appearances than him to do so. Fan looking for a reason to believe in the 2013 team will be interested to know if Willingham will continue his vicious pace set last year. Unfortunately, indications suggest that his home run total is almost certain to decrease in 2013. And here’s why: Stats. [Drops mic; leaves the stage.] But stats kept hometown hero Jack Morris out of the Hall of Fame even though he single-handedly won the World Series for the Minnesota Twins and once saved a baby seal or something. So why should we believe stats? [Walks back on stage. Picks mic back up.] True and I totes agree that we should burn down all stats and calculators and stuff right after I finish this piece but, for now, hear me out. One measurement that suggests the Willinghammer will see a dingers decline in 2013 is because of his home run distributions -- as captured by HitTrackerOnline.com. For those unfamiliar, Hit Tracker charts all home runs hit and, through methods that go beyond my mathematical capabilities, calculates their “true landing spot.” Whereas ballpark present distances that are based mostly on the architecture of the existing facility and projecting where the ball would have landed had it not have been stopped by, say, the batter’s eye in center field, HitTrackerOnline.com factors in atmospheric data and speed off the bat to generate their data. This, in theory, should be a more accurate representation of a player’s true abilities to hit and sustain home runs. With their data, Hit Tracker has made three classifications for home runs. Those which clear the fence by 20 vertical feet and pass it by 50 feet are considered a “No Doubt” home run. Think Giancarlo Stanton’s 494-foot bomb off of new Twins pitcher Josh Roenicke. At the other end of the spectrum are home runs which exit the field by 10 vertical feet or land one fence height past the wall. These are labeled as “Just Enough” home runs. Just Enough home runs are wall-scrapers like Tampa’s B.J. Upton’s 323-foot home run off of Ervin Santana which nearly grazed the foul pole and the left field wall at Tropicana. Finally, everything else in between is considered “Plenty.” Based on their figures, a standard distribution of home runs have been 18% No Doubt, 55% Plenty and 27% Just Enough. If a player is well above the Just Enough 27% threshold, the prevailing assumption is that he had good fortune of having a few additional balls escape the playing surface thanks to weather, ballpark configurations or simply the blessings of the baseball gods. In Willingham’s case, he had a whopping 45% of his home runs fall under the “Just Enough/Lucky” category. What this means, if the Hit Tracker theory holds water, is that Willingham’s home run totals will start to slide back to his career norms – which had been 22 heading into last season. Furthering this idea that he is poised for home run decline is the fact that Willingham is coming off a career year in terms of home runs-to-fly ball ratio. In 2012, 21.2% of his fly balls left the yard - which was well above his career average of 15%. This will almost assuredly regress back to the mean as well. In terms of his home run totals, Willingham is almost a text book case for regression. That said, it does not mean he will drop drastically in value. As I stated prior to his signing, he is almost the ideal hitter for Target Field – a right-handed pull-hitter with power. More than that, Willingham stresses patience in his approach at the plate leading to a healthy walk rate and on-base percentage. Perhaps it went unnoticed because of his power numbers, but he chased after just 21.7% of out-of-zone pitches, the fifth lowest rate in baseball last year. That was lower than such plate discipline luminaries as Denard Span and Joe Mauer. That skill set should ensure that he continues to provide a great deal of value even if a few fly balls fall short on the warning track in 2013.

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[ATTACH=CONFIG]3014[/ATTACH]In yet another Geek-less installment of Gleeman and the Geek, joining Aaron Gleeman on this week’s GATG podcast is Twins Daily’s Parker Hageman -- who fills in for the globetrotting John Bonnes. Podcasting live from Panino Brothers in Eden Prairie, the pair discuss the Twins’ involvement in sabermetrics, projecting the Opening Day roster, why no one wants Kyle Lohse, Shaun Marcum and the best of the remaining free agent pitchers, saying something nice about Samuel Deduno, New Year’s resolutions, and making friends with drunk women (#VoteWashington). Check out the latest episode via any of these channels: the podcasts the rss feed if you want to subscribe and the podcast on iTunes.

+1 on the photo.

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[ATTACH=CONFIG]2989[/ATTACH]When asked how he feels that the outsider perception of the Twins’ use of statistical analysis is behind the rest of the game, Jack Goin, the team’s Manager of Major League Administration and Baseball Research, simply replied “That’s fine.” Goin cites the St. Louis Cardinals as an example of how he wants his operations to be viewed. Whereas teams like Tampa, Cleveland, Boston and New York have been well-known and forthright about their endeavors into the statistical world, the Cardinals have been extremely stealth yet very much active in research. If it were up to him, he would just as rather have people continuing to overlook the team while they continue to improve. Over the last decade, the Minnesota Twins have developed a reputation of being an organization run on scouting or traditional ways. Just three years ago, the team’s assistant general manager, Rob Antony, acknowledged that the organization – born of harden scouts like Terry Ryan and Mike Radcliff – had been more focused on the traditional way of thinking. Stats, analysis and research were ignored. Goin would be given the difficult task of providing analysis to decision-makers who have, by and large, been resistant to the analysis. The truth is, Goin says, they view themselves as a middle-of-the-road team when it comes to using statistical analysis. There are the overachievers, there are a few on the bottom and the rest, like the Twins, reside somewhere in between. One way in which they have progressed in just a few shorts years is that Goin has turned to MLBAM’s Pitch F/X system – a relative unknown to the staff as recently has 2010 – when attempting to analyze potential free agent pitchers. “We’ll use it to decipher,” Goin said. “You get the scouting grades, let’s say, so you get the scouting grade and [the scout] puts a 5 on the curveball. So we go in and look at it and if the guy has been in the big leagues, now we can see maybe the curve is a little better than a 5 or maybe it is a little worse than a 5 or maybe it is right on based on rankings among other pitchers.” Goin and a dedicated full-time intern have used Pitch F/X to evaluate specific pitchers, a need that has no doubt grown exponentially with the Twins’ overwhelming need for serviceable arms. This offseason alone the team has added three pitchers to the rotation, all of which were likely examined in some capacity with Pitch F/X data. “We used it just a few weeks ago on a free agent pitcher we were looking at. We were talking about his sinker and trying to figure out what’s going on with it. He had been injured the last few years and we were trying to figure out where that sinker is in terms of when it was really good and where it is now. So we looked at it and tried to figure out how much vertical break was on it and how much horizontal break was on it and tried to distinguish some of the contact rates.” For those versed in Pitch F/X understand what the levels of break translate to can relate to what Goin is attempting to accomplish in his research. This is standard analysis that can be found regularly on sites like Fangraphs.com, BaseballProspectus.com and even on TwinsDaily.com. While this may seem like a rudimentary use of the information, making groundbreaking conclusions based on the data is not necessarily the object of even the front-running organizations. In 2009 interview, Tampa Bay Rays Vice President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman said that the challenge for teams using Pitch F/X is not finding new knowledge but rather using the system and data correctly to supplement existing evaluation tools. Trying to explain the intricacies of the data to life-long ball guys and what it means can be overwhelming, so Goin keeps it simple. Rather than inundate the organization’s decision-makers with vertical break figures or horizontal movement rates from the system, he simply uses it to levy an opinion as a scout would – perhaps with a greater advantage. Where a scout is able to pick up on mechanics, positioning other elements that cannot be captured with data alone, Pitch F/X can help provide a greater picture of how a pitcher’s “stuff” is working or not working over the course of a season. “Scouts gets [a pitcher] for one day. A major league [scout] gets them for four starts – or twenty-to-thirty innings. Who knows what happened in those four starts? Guys will tell you that they have 10 really good starts, 10 really bad ones and the rest fall in between. We try to verify or bring up questions to think about.” Because of the ability to capture and track with accuracy a limitless amount of pitches, Goin has expressed interest in affixing Pitch F/X cameras through the team’s affiliates to better capture their prospects’ developments. Of course, the cost of installation and an annual fee for having the system may prohibit this from becoming a reality. Going beyond Pitch F/X, Goin uses statistics and data to help uncover players found at the margins of the game – the Clete Thomases and Darin Mastroiannis of the world – whom the Twins can pick up through waivers. Additionally, he and his intern are integral in the process of identifying candidates in other organizations that could eventually get included in a trade. “We try to find not a hidden guy but a lesser known guy – someone not on all the prospect lists, maybe not on the scout’s radar for whatever reason it might be,” says Goin. “You try to find another guy we might at least talk about because when you are trying to make a trade, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do. You get turned down a bunch before someone says ‘yes.’ You have to come up with multiple names.” Since his promotion to the newly-created position in 2011, Goin believes the team has made progress improving the research department – including implementing some medical tests provided to players in hopes of creating a baseline and understanding injuries better. If there has been one area of the game in which a team can quickly create a competitive advantage, it is being able to prevent or limit injuries. Still, the description of the working of Twins’ research department sounds quaint in comparison to some of the other organization’s efforts where extensive studies are conducted and a significant investment is made by the team in personnel and a support staff. In Houston, Luhnow created an entire department titled “Decision Sciences” run by Sig Mejdal, who, like Luhnow, was hired away from the Cardinals. They also added leading Pitch F/X analyst Mike Fast, who spends a portion of his day creating models and databases for the major league and farm system. Whereas teams like Tampa Bay, whose inner workings were well-documented in Jonah Keri’s book The Extra 2%, and Houston have aggressively beefed up their research departments the past few years, the Twins’ find themselves somewhere in the middle with the majority of teams in the game’s research-oriented revolution. Other teams too are embracing this philosophy and expanding their research departments – like the Kansas City Royals who appeared to be one of the non-stats teams just a few short years ago as well. This is a fact that does not seem to be missed on Goin and the lack of manpower is the biggest barrier for the Twins to do those types of analysis. “That’s definitely where the game is going. Sometimes it is a budgetary thing, sometimes it is getting the people who make the decisions to believe this is what we need to do.”

In the Star Tribune's recent piece on Hennepin County's debt repayment schedule for the Target Field construction costs, Twins president Dave St. Peter told the paper that in addition to the current upgrades at the ballpark (which include the creation of patio seating in the obstructed-seating right field bleacher seats - see image below), the Twins have intentions of adding more to the facility. Most make sense, although I'm not quite sure what constitutes a "stronger connection" to the neighboring Target Center. The plaza pretty much accomplishes that.

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[ATTACH=CONFIG]2938[/ATTACH]The Minnesota Twins continue to stockpile arms for what could be an interesting competition for a rotation spot this spring. First reported by the Star Tribune’s LeVelle Neal yesterday, the Twins moved quickly and signed right-handed starter Rich Harden to a minor league deal to include a spring training invite. Harden, 31, missed all of 2012 after a shoulder strain necessitated rotator cuff surgery. Interestingly enough, the injury’s origin, Harden believes, was sustained in 2007 when he tore the capsule attempting to field a comebacker bare handed against the Yankees. The Athletics did not disclose the injury because of medical privacy laws. In order to combat the problem, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, Harden revamped his mechanics in 2008. The disruption in his shoulder may have sparked a lengthy list of other ailments as he tried to compensate for his original injury. When healthy, he has been a front-end type starter. In fact, dating back to 2008, no one has missed more bats than Harden. Armed with a lethal slider, Harden has a career swinging strike rate of 12.5% and has a career strikeout rate of 24.2%. Of course, the is plenty of risk suggesting that following a rotator cuff surgery, he may never fully regain his stuff prior to the repair. As Houston’s team physician, Dr. David Lintner, told MLB.com in 2007, unlike Tommy John surgery, rotator cuff repair is not nearly as easy to return from: Linter goes on to estimate that of pitchers who have complete tears of their rotator cuff, there is a fifty-fifty chance they get back on the mound. Harden could wind up this year’s version of Joel Zumaya: an oft-injured pitcher with tons of promise but ultimately ends up a failure to launch in Florida. That notwithstanding, the Twins have made a calculated signing and have acquired for pennies an arm that is capable of missing a substantial amount of bats – something lacking at the highest levels. If he does not pan out as a starter, Harden could still be a serviceable arm in the bullpen in a limited capacity. In addition to inking Harden, the Twins also announce their list of spring training invitees. The list includes pitchers Bryan Augenstein, Nick Blackburn, Deolis Guerra, Alex Meyer, Lester Oliveros and Anthony Slama; outfielders Brandon Boggs and Clete Thomas; infielders Jeff Clement, Chris Colabello, Ray Olmedo and Mark Sobolewski; and catchers Kyle Knudson, Danny Lehmann and Dan Rohlfing. Also revealed, starter Scott Diamond had a scope on his left elbow to remove some bone chips on Tuesday.

According to the Star Tribune's LaVelle Neal, the Twins have been in talks with representatives from pitcher Rich Harden. Harden has not pitched since 2011 -- at which point he threw just 82.2 innings after working just 92.2 innings the previous season. When healthy, he's missed a whole lot of bats but his health has never been a friend to him and those days may be long gone. Still, he represents a deviation away from the pitch-to-contact methods used by the two more recent signings in Kevin Correia and Mike Pelfrey. For a minor league deal, it is a perfect gamble - even if it winds up just like Joel Zumaya.

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