Parker Hageman

Trevor May also took up Pilates. That...well, that didn't lead to a breakout year.

The reality is, everyone is on social media platforms. My understanding is that they liked that Lewis stayed away from it.

One of the things the Cubs did when Epstein took over was to instruct their scouting staff to find not only high caliber players but HIGH CHARACTER players as well when they were drafting. From the NY Times: I can't help but think about this when considering Royce Lewis. The Twins' decision to select Lewis over the higher profile Hunter Greene may come down to just that. Insiders say the Twins staff preferred Lewis' makeup to Greene's, citing Lewis' lack of social media presence, staying a safe distance out of the limelight, and a solid family life. There is probably more details behind that selection (after all, the Twins went heavier into the analytics side of the draft than they ever did before). This isn't to say Greene lacks character (he is highly involved in charity work already), but there was something about Lewis that separated him from Greene.

While I agree with a lot of what is being said here, statistically speaking, there is little upgrade to be had between the Twins OF defense and the Rays, after all, the Rays had the second best defensive unit in baseball last year. According to Runs Saved, the Rays were the 2nd best outfield unit (45 RS) and the Twins were 4th (23 RS). Rays' center fielder Kevin Keirmaier had 22 RS while Buxton had 24. While I do think Buxton is a superior defender the difference is not that significant, I don't see this moving the needle in anyway for Odorizzi.

Yeah, again, it's a common mistake because of the movement, but there's no grip evidence that he throws a splitter (unlike Odorizzi). And part of the reason I brought it up in the comments section was because I noticed Rhett and Aaron's articles citing that as such. As a background: MLB's pitchfx data uploads into a raw format without any cleaning and labels a lot of his pitches as a splitter based on algorithms on those movement metrics (which is why BaseballSavant.com's data has him throwing a splitter instead of a changeup). I would guess Rhett Bollinger simply looked there for information (or maybe some other MLB database) which carries the raw pitch data. When the Twins first signed him I initially went there and assumed he threw a split-change. Places like BrooksBaseball.com (and Baseball Prospectus) employ methods to clean it up to ensure pitches are categorized accurately. Those guys actually go through images and get confirmation on what type of pitch each pitcher has before categorizing them. It's the nerdiest of baseball data nerd stuff. So when you look at Fangraphs' "Pitch Info Pitch Type" section under a player's page, that's the data that has been scrubbed. Pitch Info is the group that runs Brooks Baseball. Under the generic Pitch Type section for Sanchez and Odorizzi, it has both pitchers throwing Changeups and no Splitters. However, snce Pitch Info knows Odorizzi throws his with a split grip, they have moved those pitches to the Split Fastball category. It's splitting hairs at this point (pun intending) because if you get the same movement regardless of the grip, should the pitch be categorized by the movement or the grip?

Excellent write-up. I also want to stress how good Gibson's slider was last year. https://twitter.com/ParkerHageman/status/952241529745231872

Just a point of clarification: Sanchez does not throw a splitter or a split change. He has a circle grip that moves more similarly to a splitter movement -- which is probably why Fangraphs has it quantified as such.

Here's some more on the MLB mindset:

What is smart, does not necessarily make for more interesting baseball, though.Diversity of swings and styles of play are dying. To each their own on what constitutes interesting baseball, I guess. Everyone has the same swing, and fewer and fewer seem capable of adapting it if the game situation simply calls for putting the ball in play. I don't think this is the case at all. No one would mistake Justin Turner's swing for JD Martinez's. There are different components. Their ultimate goal is the same but the methods to reach that goal are different. And the strike-out rates, which this evolution contributes to, are already at absurd levels. I find it interesting that people frequently blame hitters' approaches for the strikeout rate, as if the pitchers had no influence over this. Velocity has increased one mile per hour (from 91.2 to 92.8) since 2010. Pitchers are throwing fewer fastballs altogether and more sliders/curveballs than ever before. What's more, we're seeing more and more specialized relievers brought in more frequently. There's more data and video now to game plan a lineup's weakness. Hitters definitely are trading strikeouts for power but more there are savvy teams like the Cubs and Astros have focused on cutting down strikeouts. Cubs players take B-hacks designed to get the ball in play. Astros have a similar approach that helped them win the World Series a year after posting the highest strikeout rate. Here's more on the Cubs' 'B' hack approach...

I don't know what this is driving at. Can you explain?

Data has shown that a combination of launch angle (typically over 10 degrees and under 30) and exit velocity (typically 90 MPH+) results in hits more often. The idea isn't new -- hit the ball hard on a line and they usually drop -- but now it can be quantified and getting the ball in the air has that much more value. So then the question became how do we get hitters to live in that range more often? Some have gone through extensive swing retooling (i.e. Justin Turner, JD Martinez, etc) to meet that criteria later in their careers. Baseball is realizing that these methods should be incorporated earlier in a player's development. The "Wall of Groundball Prevention" is just one means to force hitters into making the necessary adjustments. There are plenty of other simple tricks. For instance, Bobby Tewksbary, the hitting instructor who worked with Josh Donaldson and Chris Colabello, would string up lines around his batting cages to denote where the optimal launch angles is. I hope that clarified some of this for you.

It'll be interesting to see how that plays out in regards to Eric Hosmer. Over the last two years, only Dee Gordon has hit a higher percentage of grounders.

What follows is not a Twins article -- more on that topic at a later date -- but rather a story about how the game is changing below the surface. This is a story about a bunch of screens set up around a baseball diamond. It is a story about how, just as the number crunchers influenced the front office changes over the last decade, a new wave of coaches are making significant changes in the player development systems. Unless you are a real Baseball America stan, you may have missed this trend happening across baseball right now. More and more, teams have increased in the number of college coaches hired to help with player development. The Minnesota Twins added several coaches this offseason from that rank including, but not limited to, Tanner Swanson, Pete Maki and Dan Ramsey among others. In some cases, the Twins hired for a newly created position (catching instructor) and others they replaced long-time coaches with someone with newer ideas.In some ways, major league baseball grew stale in the sense that development people continued to trot out the same methods in spite of a game that was changing around them. Those who failed to adapt were not retained, and younger coaches from the amateur ranks replaced the lifers.Offensively, new data was telling people that hitting the ball in the air was a much more successful means of achieving positive impact yet old school training methods were still implemented. As Derek Falvey told me this winter, he had contact with numerous college coaches from attending various conferences that were rife with new ideas and new methods to training players. These sharp individuals were seen as an untapped competitive advantage. In 2016, while working as an assistant coach for the University of Iowa, Pete Lauritson unveiled what he called "The Wall of Ground Ball Prevention" -- a system of setting up screens around the infield to encourage hitters to increase lift during batting practice. This was well received among the coaching and hitting ranks. It is amazing how ideas from outside pro ball make their way inside. This won’t be the end of having new and interesting training methods spill over into professional baseball. With the increase in data and the greater understanding of what makes a player better (higher exit velocity, launch angle, spin rate, etc), will come new methods to improve those areas. Right now there are thousands of college coaches, hitting and pitching instructors trying to solve those issues. Finding the right ones for the organization could help produce talent at a rate superior than others. In many ways this is a new Moneyball era. Click here to view the article

Prefacing this by saying super loud that THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A PITCHING PROSPECT. Especially at 18 years old. Enlow has two plus pitches but ultimately needs a third and some seasoning before you can say he's got it. It might seem easy to take a right-handed curveball specialist and say he's a Tyler Duffey type but that's doing a disservice to where Enlow's curveball is at right now. In his senior year, his curveball's spin rate was the highest in the draft class, measuring over 2700 RPMs on average. That puts him in some elite territory immediately. MLB's average curveball spin is 2490 in 2017. By comparison, Tyler Duffey's curveball spins at a 2475 rate. It's not as sharp, it's not a late-breaking. It's a good pitch, to be sure, but we're talking two different types of curveballs. Again -- TNSTAAPP -- but we're talking an 18-year-old with two plus tools.

Major league hitters do not hit or lay off of good curves. They hit or lay off mediocre ones.

I think y'all should watch Enlow in action before you make up your mind. https://twitter.com/ParkerHageman/status/963089845097844736

I think there is a big unknown in the public realm about what Zack Littell is packing on the mound, mostly because the gen pop doesn't have access to spin rates and the other statcast metrics that teams do, but I tend to think the Twins tapped him because of some of those underlying metrics that they have access to which we do not. The Twins have had their system-wide trackman in the minors before a lot of other teams and probably have a longer background of data of those opponents. MLB Pipeline alluded to it but it sounds like Littell has one of those lower velo/high spin fastballs which gets plenty of swinging strikes and weak contact. I think most prospect evaluators have viewed Littell's curveball very much as a plus pitch. Small sample sure but I think you can get a feel for the movement and the hitter's reaction on these two clips. https://twitter.com/ParkerHageman/status/891671501354790913\ So we don't know where LIttell's fastball spin rate sits. Let's assume it is above 2450 RPM making it one of the top rates in the league. It is really kind of hard to find an existing comp for that -- a high-spin, low heat velo fastball and big curve. Most of the ones that sort of fall under that are aging variety (Matt Cains, Jake Peavys) or are left-handed. Zack Grienke has also been that pitcher with his fastball the last five seasons, but he also has three plus pitches to draw from after that. What's more is all of those pitchers once had much better velocity and grew experience before reducing to that velocity level. The younger(ish) upside comp might be Dylan Bundy, with a low-90s fastball and big curveball, or perhaps Tyler Chatwood. The wild card here is if he can hone in on that third pitch. Some evaluators have said the changeup looks good at times and he's just started using the slider more. If not, a two-pitch combination can play well as a reliever. He's a super intriguing prospect to me and I'm looking forward to seeing more from him.

Mejia's fastball is super interesting. It's one of the highest spin rates of all left-handed pitchers in baseball (sixth highest behind Minor, Chapman, Rivero, Hill and Hand). Typically that equates to higher swings and misses. For the majority of the year, that wasn't happening (he had a 4% swinging strike rate on his fastball the first two months of the season). When he changed his mechanics and had the higher arm slot, his swing and misses on the fastball grew. In September his swinging strike rate was 10%. Now, the old scouting adages is that you don't put too much stock in September numbers (what with call-ups and teams trying to audition prospects for the next year and the small sampling of three outings) so it's entirely possible that those are inflated somewhat. That said, Mejia also made enough adjustments to potentially build on this for next year.

Until the day they release the flying cars and automated strike zones*, a catcher who receives the ball the right way is going to be more valuable than those that do not. Like it, lump it, make your mind up to it because it's here to stay. *Baseball Prospectus today just published a detailed look at why this is too complicated to roll out any time soon. https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/37347/robo-strike-zone-not-simple-think/

Incorrect. Most catchers I've spoken to hate the term "pitch framing". The correct term is "receiving the ball the right way". That doesn't just mean "stealing strikes". It also means keeping pitches in the zone from being called balls. This was as significant problem for the Twins from 2014-2016: They'd lose more pitches in the strike zone than any other teams. The Astros were one of the best at the "framing" statistic in that time. Here's what Castro said about what the Astros' focused on: “Keeping strikes in the strike zone,” he explained. “Not doing anything to the pitch to take away from its quality. If it is on the corner and it is breaking one direction, you are trying to counteract the break so it doesn’t, by the time you catch the ball, pull your arm out of the zone.” It's not about yanking a glove back across the plate -- it's about receiving the ball in a manner that maximizes the pitcher's intent.

Yes and no. In the general sense, yes, outside of two teams, everyone else overlooked him. Didn't even bother to actively scout him. In that way, all the teams said "no". As Thome discussed in a book about the Cleveland Indians, there were only two scouts that were tracking him and having conversations: the Twins' Ellsworth Brown and Cleveland's Tom Couston. Brown actually presented Thome as an option and Twins directly said no. In that way, the Twins are really the only team to have said "no".

Interestingly enough, Castro did not perform well in 2-strike situations as a receiver. According to ESPN/TruMedia's data, he ranked 61st out of 71 qualified catchers per their Framing Runs Above Average stat (Castro was -1.34 FRAA with 2-strikes). In the raw form, with 2-strikes, Castro had just 64% of 2-strike pitches, that were in the strike zone and taken by the hitter, called a strike. Obviously there is an umpiring bias in those situations where umpires will shrink a zone with two-strikes and widen it during 3-0 counts, but Castro's rate was well below the league's average of 69.4%. Comparatively, Kurt Suzuki held a 66% rate last year. I do believe you do see some of the skills highlighted in the video that Tom was talking about. The part about him making himself small is spot on. That's one thing Castro talked about this spring: “I’m a bigger catcher, so I figured it is something even more important for me to position myself to give the umpire a better lane to see the pitch,” he says. “That definitely helps. You can definitely tell when you are set up on one side of the plate and your pitcher misses, you can tell when you probably blocked the umpire from see where the pitch really crossed. For bigger guys, it’s something to take into account.” It's a hard skill to see visually, that's for sure. And even if a catcher executes everything properly, the umpire may still call it a ball because of the bias or because the pitcher had been somewhat erratic. One catcher who I have come to love to watch work behind the plate is Roberto Perez. He's a solid receiver (one of the best "framers" in 2017) but he also plays mind games with the hitter, shifting constantly before the pitch and brushing dirt, setting up high before dropping down low. Hitters start thinking a high fastball is coming based on his set-up then, nope, slider down. Keep an eye on him when the Indians play.

In June 1989 the MInnesota Twins completed what would be one of their most well-rounded drafts and one that aided in bringing a second World Series title to the organization. In the first four rounds they nabbed Chuck Knoblauch and Scott Erickson (two pillars of the 1991 team) as well as Denny Neagle (who the Twins would trade to Pittsburgh for 20-game winner John Smiley in efforts to replace the departing Jack Morris for the 1992 season). In the tenth round they would land future Rookie of the Year outfielder Marty Cordova, then pitcher Mike Trombley, who provided nine years of service for the organization, in the fourteenth. Oh, and even the Twins’ long-time utilityman, Denny Hocking, was selected in the fifty-second round. It was a good yield, to be sure, but the Twins passed over on one player who would have made that draft class legendary.Earlier that spring, 18-year-old James Howard Thome, all of six-foot-four and fungo thin, was manning shortstop at Illinois Central College. The Limestone High School graduate from just outside of Peoria, was getting little interest from within the professional baseball ranks. The summer after high school Thome attended a St. Louis Cardinals camp and was dismissed. Dozens of scouts would be at the junior college games, mostly looking at players on the opposing team. One scout, Ellsworth Brown, had noticed him. He saw him in high school and followed him around the state’s junior college circuit. Brown was working for the Minnesota Twins. Several years prior, he had scouted Kirby Puckett and eventually signed the center fielder. Brown could recognize hitters no matter the shape. He believed, in spite of the obvious positional limitations, that Jimmy Thome would indeed hit. Download attachment: Thome.PNG He tried to convince everyone above him that this kid would hit. For their part, the Twins’ higher ups told him that they didn’t believe Thome could play shortstop. There are eight other positions, Brown informed them. According to Terry Ryan, then the team’s scouting director, power was a high priority in the draft. It was the reason the team spent the second round pick on a little remembered outfielder out of Riverside, California by the name of John Gumpf. Other picks were spent in search of power. As Brown was trying to convince his superiors that Thome would be worth the investment, the Cleveland Indians had a scout named Tom Couston who was also enamored of Thome’s hit tool. After spending a game with the intention of tracking an opposing player, Thome caught his attention by hitting rockets all over the field. According to Couston, Thome was seen running a 5.2 down the line to first, which is a full-second slower than the average left-handed major leaguer. Couston also had timed Thome running a 6.8 60-yard dash time so he was confident there was enough athleticism to find him a position. Watch this kid hit, was the mantra Couston repeated to his bosses. With Couston’s endorsement, the Indians opted to draft Thome in the thirteenth round of the 1989 draft, with 332 players drafted ahead of him. They offered $10,000 to sign him. He asked for $15,000. They agreed. Two rounds prior, the Twins drafted Dan Masteller, a first baseman out of Michigan State, who saw a spattering of starts in 1995. A round later, they drafted a catcher, Alvin Brown, who eventually converted to being a pitcher in the Tigers organization. They drafted outfielders and middle infielders, leaning more towards athleticism than power. Eventually they tabbed two hulking first baseman in the later rounds hoping for some slug. None, of course, would compare to Jim Thome. Needless to say, the draft is filled with stories of scouts saying they begged their bosses to draft so-and-so, whether it was Mike Trout or Albert Pujols or Jim Thome. With every great player comes the tale of a scout who believed in him when others doubted. It is hard to say what his career trajectory would be had the Twins listened to Brown and drafted Jim Thome. The Twins obviously had Kent Hrbek at first but you could easily see them shifting Hrbek to the DH spot in 1993 or 1994 and allowing a young Thome to learn first. Had the Twins drafted him, the mid-to-late 1990s could have been radically different. Instead of shoehorning Dave McCarty at first or experimenting with Scott Stahoviak for several seasons, they would have had 40 home run potential locked in. It’s possible they never trade for David Ortiz or try to draft Travis Lee (which means they don’t get Matthew Lecroy either). Thome’s presence with the Twins would not have fixed the dreadful pitching problems but it could have been improved considering he wouldn’t be in a Cleveland uniform blasting white missiles into the blue seats at the Metrodome. At the same time, it’s possible Thome never fulfills his destiny if he were drafted by Minnesota. After all, Thome credits a lot of his success to working with Charlie Manuel while in AAA Charlotte. It was Manuel who gave Thome is iconic pre-pitch bat point, a move he borrowed after watching The Natural. It was after that season that Thome’s home run power arrived. Then again, hitters hit. It would likely be a matter of time before he sandblasted baseballs all across the universe no matter what uniform he was in. Fortunately, MInnesotans did get to witness Thome’s Hall of Fame power up close and firsthand. While he was in the twilight of his career and moving at the speed of a glacier, Jim Thome could still melt baseballs like no other. The 600th home run milestone was achieved in a Twins uniform and that moment will forever be associated with the organization. Still, what if Terry Ryan and others listened to Ellsworth Brown when he described Thome’s hitting abilities all those years ago? How different would the Twins’ franchise look today? While we can all dream of an alternate history, in the end, Jim Thome reaches the Hall of Fame, he will don a Cleveland Indians hat, just the way the baseball gods intended. Click here to view the article