Parker Hageman

Per the Boston Globe's Peter Abraham, here's who the Red Sawks will be using today:

That's one of the bigger things to watch this spring/season - does Valencia begin to use the entire field, particularly the middle of the field he used so well in 2010.

Listening to the Rays broadcast of today's games, their radio team mentioned that the Rays had significant interest in Willingham but all their talent evaluators said that he is a DH not an outfielder. In terms of his actual arm strength, those who had followed him and rated it at the Fans Scouting Report suggest that his arm is decidedly average. In the past three seasons his arm scored a 45 (out of 100 possible) which was around the middle of the pack over all LFs with 1,000 innings. Nothing special but not a detriment.

You can view the page at http://twinsdaily.com/content.php?271-Mackey-Twins-respond-to-Hardy-Ortiz-comments

ESPN1500's Phil Mackey details the Twins perspective in what have become 'going-the-other-way' gate. In terms of J.J. Hardy, according to hitting coach Joe Vavra, the Twins were trying to balance out the hitter who was completely lost at the plate. Hardy was a mess at the plate in Milwaukee the year before the Twins acquired him. The Brewers made attempts to adjust his swing, even sending him down to AAA Nashville to correct what they perceived was a detrimental "arm bar". Shortly after the Twins traded for him, I had the chance to sit down with assistant GM Rob Antony, who said on Hardy: So the Twins were not alone on thinking Hardy needed some adjustments. The Brewers were also guilty of trying to change things up which likely made Hardy more open to advice from people like Rod Carew. Good or bad, Minnesota simply went about it by trying to get him to hit the 'Twins way' rather than re-connecting him to his previous strengths like Baltimore did. Mackey also addressed perhaps Patient Zero of the 'going-the-other-way' approach in David Ortiz. Ortiz famously told the Boston Globe that: On with 1500 recently, former manager Tom Kelly said of the Ortiz situation: As Mackey so appropriately points out, Ortiz has developed into a damn good opposite field hitter with Boston, holding a .408 wOBA when going the other way dating back to 2003.

Giolito gets a lot of hype - and as a high school kid hitting triple digits in February, he should - but the thing I don't necessarily like about him mechanically is his leg involvement. Here's a video of him pitching on 2.11 of this year. Watch his leg lift. It goes up, then it goes right back down. That means a substantial amount of his velocity is generated from his arm instead of his lower-half.

Moonshot Scott is in mid-season form -- has surrendered a home run to Ryan Lavarnway.

There’s plenty of concern internally for Justin Morneau’s future. Now former teammate and friend Nick Punto has echoed that concern. On Monday, Punto described a game of phone-tag he’s been having with Morneau and he sounds like he’s having some concerns that the big Canadian is not returning his calls. From Gordon Edes’s ESPN Boston article: Perhaps Punto may be reading too far into the meaning behind Morneau’s non-calls. Perhaps not. Certainly Morneau’s comments to the media in Florida last week made everyone take a step back but so far, he’s been in practice every day – even hitting a bomb off of Francisco Liriano – and went on the record to clarify his previous comments that got everyone so riled up: As it has been stressed, Morneau is on a day-by-day life right now. So far, there has not been any indication of concussion symptoms in spring’s infancy however, given that his last one was received while diving for a ball, there’s no telling when the next one could occur.

There’s plenty of concern internally for Justin Morneau’s future. Now former teammate and friend Nick Punto has echoed that concern. On Monday, Punto described a game of phone-tag he’s been having with Morneau and he sounds like he’s having some concerns that the big Canadian is not returning his calls. From Gordon Edes’s ESPN Boston article: Perhaps Punto may be reading too far into the meaning behind Morneau’s non-calls. Perhaps not. Certainly Morneau’s comments to the media in Florida last week made everyone take a step back but so far, he’s been in practice every day – even hitting a bomb off of Francisco Liriano – and went on the record to clarify his previous comments that got everyone so riled up: As it has been stressed, Morneau is on a day-by-day life right now. So far, there has not been any indication of concussion symptoms in spring’s infancy however, given that his last one was received while diving for a ball, there’s no telling when the next one could occur.

Per Michael Silverman, here's the Red Sox order of pitchers:

Solid points Seth. I detailed the same thing last winter (http://overthebaggy.blogspot.com/2010/12/construction-of-twins-bullpen-has.html) after the loss of Jesse Crain and Matt Guerrier. The fact is, the Twins have been very good at cobbling together a bullpen in the past decade. I think the Twins have a outstanding core of talent evaluators who missed last yearbut there are plenty of arms in camp that someone should be able to emerge.

Beyond that, the additional teams that are still in the "race" for the final wild card spots will surely benefit from added interest if their team which would have been eliminated from contention last year is now on the verge of making the playoffs this year.

FoxSports' Ken Rosenthal tweets today that sources have told him that baseball will expand from eight to ten teams, adding that one-game wild card play-in. This means that 33% of all teams will make the playoffs in 2012. That's a hefty number - not quite NBA or NHL big - and it certainly dilutes the meaning of the 162-game regular season just a bit more but it also adds excitement of fall baseball to fringe teams' fan base who would have otherwise been focusing their attention elsewhere. Your thoughts: Is this a good or bad thing for baseball?

\ That was an incredible milestone in my life. https://twitter.com/#!/mindyvalencia22/status/174628599507324930

Without knowing the ins-and-outs of the Diamond Mind runs saving accounting systems, I can't speak to the strengths and weaknesses of it. I do know the Plus/Minus system and Stats Inc's methods so I can rely on that. I will say this, Plus/Minus does not think outfield arms costs nearly as many runs Diamond Mind seems to think - even from the worst CF arms - and I tend to agree with that, even factoring in the distances of the throws. What's more is that Span's arm hasn't been substantially better than Revere's to even merit the consideration of pushing him out of center field a given. P/M finds that Revere's arm - although rated one of the worst - was only 3 runs below average. Span, whose arm was also fairly bad last year, was 2 runs below average - making him at the bottom of the list - and he was run on at about the same frequency as Revere. In his introduction to center field and Target Field in 2010, Span struggled with (1) the leadership role of center, failing to call off corner outfielders and pulling up to allow a Cuddyer or Kubel to attempt to get a gapper when he had the ability to get to it and (2) the wind effects of Target Field. Now, Span did improve in both areas in 2011 but Revere, in his first year, was much more poised at the position and carried a bit of that Carlos Gomez catch-it-at-all-costs attitude when patrolling center. As I said before, there's a 100 additional plays in CF each year versus the corners so I would prefer to have the better fly-catcher out there and, so far, I believe that is Revere. I've seen this scenario outlined before and I can't recall if Span cheating towards right this was mentioned by Gardy in the winter caravan or not. Here's the thing, I don't believe this will play out in reality. While you would want to have that alignment, the majority of hitters in baseball are right-handed and thus Span will likely cheat towards left. Of course, I'm sure the outfielders will be positioned on a case-by-case basis depending who's hitting, pitching, and what the runner and outs situations are. In the end, I don't think it is a bad decision to go Revere-Span-Willingham in the outfield. That's still a very above-average defensive alignment 2/3rds of the way through.

John Shipley had an article this morning regarding Danny Valencia and shared some of the spillage of information gathered from general manager Terry Ryan in his blog. Ryan on how he handles players: On his defensive struggles: On Valencia's clubhouse presence: On Valencia's future: I've certainly heard from a few front office members who have not quite embraced Valencia's "swagger" attitude. That doesn't exactly fit the Twins mold. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing either, but when a team is losing, those sorts of traits are magnified (a hundred times more when your production drops off from your rookie year as well). Even with his personality that might rub people the wrong way, you have to appreciate that he is attempting to improve on the field, working on both his offense as well as his defense. If Valencia makes the necessary tweaks at the plate - returning to someone who thrived going back up the middle instead of trying to turn on every pitch - I wholly expect his numbers to be significantly improved in 2012. If that happens to be the case, I would anticipate the comments regarding his attitude to subside.

John Shipley had an article this morning regarding Danny Valencia and shared some of the spillage of information gathered from general manager Terry Ryan in his blog. Ryan on how he handles players: On his defensive struggles: On Valencia's clubhouse presence: On Valencia's future: I've certainly heard from a few front office members who have not quite embraced Valencia's "swagger" attitude. That doesn't exactly fit the Twins mold. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing either, but when a team is losing, those sorts of traits are magnified (a hundred times more when your production drops off from your rookie year as well). Even with his personality that might rub people the wrong way, you have to appreciate that he is attempting to improve on the field, working on both his offense as well as his defense. If Valencia makes the necessary tweaks at the plate - returning to someone who thrived going back up the middle instead of trying to turn on every pitch - I wholly expect his numbers to be significantly improved in 2012. If that happens to be the case, I would anticipate the comments regarding his attitude to subside.

According to La Velle Neal, Francisco Liriano's live pitching session didn't go all that well. First, he plunked Danny Valencia (but who doesn't want to do that, what with all his swagger) and then gave up a "long one" to Justin Morneau (maybe Liriano's fastball is the cure for a concussion). It's spring so it's hard to put too much emphasis on it but for those counting on a rebound to his 2010 form, that's not a great start.

This should get you expelled from TwinsCentric.

Cody Christie started a fairly popular thread when he asked the question what everybody's favorite baseball movie is. I'm heading in the opposite direction and will ask what everybody's LEAST favorite baseball movie is. I'll kick things off by recommending Summer Catch as the worst baseball movie I have ever seen. How about you?

Right, he didn't go oppo as much either with the Twins but he did go up the middle a bit more thus "using the whole field". One big differential between his time with the Twins (and Brewers before that) was his ability to turn on an inside pitch better. That could be a response to focusing on pulling the ball more or it could be that his wrist was fully healed and allowed him to get to the inner-half better.

Yeah, that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about.

And we also learned today that Rod Carew ruined JJ Hardy's swing.

It was sort of surprising to find out that he did not have this as part of his game. He's got almost zero power and blazing speed. Somehow no one in the system got him to work on this? Will it change him that much? Juan Pierre, who attempted 43 bunt hits got on base a season-high 18 times (41.9% success rate). Now, this is oversimplifying it because who's to say Pierre would not have gotten base knocks if he swung away but if you take away 18 hits from Pierre's line his .279 batting average becomes a .239 batting average and his OBP drops to .309. That's pretty substantial. Even if Revere was able to steal 10 additional bunt hits last season, he would have been hitting .288 with a much more respectable .340 OBP.