Parker Hageman

I, for one, welcome my new shortstop overlord.

I believe Gold Caretakers will receive a voice mail from John saying "Annnnnnd welcome.'

Having been on the national club circuit with some 16 & 17U players the last two years, I've had some interesting conversations about Minnesota talent. The two things that people for outside of the state (and usually in the warmer states) say that our teams really can hit and pitch. I think when you break it down, that's where the vast majority of the offseason development time is focused. Minnesotans can get into cages for swings and throw bullpens in gyms, field houses and warehouses. The downside is that the defensive talent is usually 12 months or more behind the warm-weather kids. They just get more reps at a younger age. It takes a while for the northern class to catch up. But the state has been known to produce dudes so more D1 schools are making a swing through the state to look at the high school talent whereas they wouldn't have just a few years ago.

Or Woodbury's Adam Mazur who had nine punchies in six for Iowa on Opening Day while chucking 97 mph darts. (can do this all day so many minnesota contributing across the country right now it's so much fun.)

Whoa whoa whoa whoa. No Will Rogers shoutout?

Dead inside.

Parker Hageman and Dan Anderson visit CHS Field and attempt to catch a homer... with a beer in their hands. View full video

I think a bench coach adds a lot to the culture and the operations of a team. There was a good MLB Network feature on Derek Shelton from 2019 that demonstrated how valuable a coach can be to a manager. Does it effect the win-loss column much? Maybe. Maybe not. Being prepared certainly doesn't hurt.

This isn't to say that velocity doesn't help. Fastball velo plays. But more teams have recognized that more outs happen on non-fastballs. If you are going to miss bats and chase strikeouts, development begins to focus on movement.

TruMedia. Baseball Savant counts cutters as fastballs. TruMedia doesn't. Given the increased movement of cutters lately, I think that's more accurate to exclude them from the fastball pool.

I think the real question you have to ask is if fastballs even matter anymore. Most competitive teams have started to go away from fastballs. The Rays pitchers threw fastballs in just 43% of their mix. Twins were 49% (up from 43% from last year, thanks Joe Ryan). Dodgers, Yankees, Braves and Astros were all also under 50% fastballs thrown. The future of this organization is not fastballs.

Thielbar is almost a completely different pitcher this second time around. And his time with Driveline and the new pitching development staff with the Twins have unlocked a lot for him. This thread is from August 2020, but it still applies today. Driveline helped him improve his spin rates/spin direction so that the fastball and the curveball now have mirror spin at nearly 100% active rates. The Twins helped him activate more lower half muscles by staying in his glute longer during the delivery process (it's probably no wonder why he's able to generate a little more velo, especially late in the season, when he's not solely generating off his quad and arm). I think this year you also see a little bit better movements out of his top half as well. He get a bit more layback in his shoulders, aiding in that slight velo increase. Credit him and the S&C staff for working on that. He's also moved over to the third base side of the rubber this year, allowing for a more direct path to the plate. As someone with that good 12-6 spin, this provides the best route and maximizes that spin direction.

oh no evidence that i wore cargo shorts.

"Tell 'em like it is, Koos" is a great line.

Wrote about Polanco's 2020 season and how there was a definite change in his swing last year. All of the changes resulted in a longer swing in 2020. This was before we found out that he was playing hurt. And this year he acknowledged that the injury was causing him to alter his swing, which makes sense: His swing got longer because he was likely trying to muscle up more, but the change also made his swing worse. This year's swing looks so much more like his 2019 cut: The output now is very similar to the 2019 juiced ball era: Polanco vs RHP 2019: 40% pull rate / .441 pull-side BA / 334 ft pull-side FB distance 2020: 38% pull rate / .229 pull-side BA / 307 ft pull-side FB distance 2021: 57% pull rate / ,417 pull-side BA / 343 ft pull-side FB distance The one other notable change in-season this year is that he opened his stance more and backed away from the plate, given him much better barrel coverage throughout the entire zone: He's a switch-hitter, obviously, but because he faces more right-handed pitchers, his left-side swing really has to carry him through the season. His performance from the right-side has been almost the same over the last three years so finding his swing from the left-side was much needed.

Is that backed by some data or based off of visual scouting reports?

His slider was a work in progress this offseason. Because he has altered his arm angle and is now presetting his wrist angle for his fastball (trying to increase the vertical carry numbers), he felt that his slider needed more work. You can see the shape on some of those in this video from May. It's ok, he just needs to get more consistent with it. The thing that I want to stress about him is that because of his low release point and high fastball carry, his attack angle plays a lot like Josh Hader. Obviously he's not as side-windy or coming at hitters from close to the first base bag, but what makes his fastball difficult to hit is that it come out of a low slot and then the ball just doesn't fall. So, data-wise, Varland has that effect. The velocity is really nice, don't get me wrong, but the special sauce is that angle plus carry.

26 and 39? Oh boy. WCCO's Cory Hepola and Parker Hageman discuss the current state of the Minnesota Twins. Topics include: What are you hoping to see right now? If the Twins stayed 50% more healthy this year - what’s their record right now? Managing a Bullpen? WALK OFF WIN: Are you able to enjoy the moment? What needs to be done for the Twins to compete in 2022? Watch ⬇️

Let me add something here: Because the sampling sizes are so small, it's sometimes difficult to decipher if this is an actual approach change by pitchers/opponents or a glitch in the data. For instance, in the first stretch, Kirilloff saw 14% cutters and 15% sliders (29% total). Post-IL, he saw 3% cutters/26% sliders (29% total). MLB's data center buckets cutters as fastballs and sliders as breaking balls. (There was a good thread by a Driveline researcher that showed how sliders/cutters are sort of blending together.) So this may be a product of teams wanting to give him some run and the Royals (who threw him a high percentage of sliders) just have more arms that throw sliders rather than cutters. When you look at just 4S/2S data, there really isn't that much of a difference: 36% before, 38% after. But, in terms of how teams are attacking him with those fastballs, teams are seemingly throwing fewer in the zone. In the first stretch, he saw 64% of fastballs (excluding cutters) in the zone. Post-IL, he received 48% in-zone -- 54% being league-average. So it would appear that teams are taking note of his ability to obliterate fastballs and just showing him those off the plate (although SSS is still in consideration here).

Rob Refsnyder has been so damn hot at the plate he’s practically glowing. This stretch has been the intended results of a plan he devised nearly six years ago. After a short yet productive rookie season with the Yankees, Refsnyder stated that he was going to add the element of power to his game. “I’m going to try to hit home runs next year,” Refsnyder told Fangraphs’ David Laurila in September 2016. “I’ve had a lot of good conversations with people and I’m going to try to completely change my game. I think it will help my career.” While he might have tried, he did not hit a home run, let alone many home runs, the next year. In 2016, Refsnyder was a 25-year-old floating between Triple-A and the New York Yankees. The Arizona State alumni -- a former College World Series’ Most Outstanding Player to boot -- had yet to make an impact on his club. He had a brilliant idea: He would add power to his game. His idea involved mirroring the approach of Minnesota Twin Brian Dozier. He noted that Dozier’s short, compact swing provided him with a high pull rate. The spray-to-all-fields approach wasn’t going to give him the requisite direction to hit home runs in bunches, he believed. So, over the next few years he tried to pull the ball. Refsnyder would finally pop his third career home run on April 27, 2018, by this time in a Tampa Bay Rays uniform. He would do it again on May 30 in Oakland but would not enjoy the slow jog around the bases again for almost three years. https://twitter.com/BallySportsNOR/status/1395888740976009218 A lot has happened between major league home runs. Refsynder has been with four different organizations. He didn’t see any MLB time in 2019 while with the Diamondbacks and Reds. The following year, he was a member of the Rangers’ alternate site in 2020 and received 35 plate appearances in Texas. He would do a stint in St. Paul, first at the Twins’ preseason alternate site, then as a member of the Triple-A Saints. Notably, his swing morphed from a loosy, leg kick with multiple parts (left) to an inward twist (middle) and then back to a hanging leg kick with more stability bridging the upper and lower half while creating a stretch with the front and back (right). You can see the drastic change between his previous swing with Texas and his recent one with the Twins. You would understand that, after all those years of not being able to trot around the bases, that Refsnyder would take a moment to bask in the adulation for destroying a Triston Mckenzie fastball left up. But he did not. What did Refsnyder do? He thanked his Triple-A hitting coach. “I was working on a couple things with Borgs,” Refsnyder told the media when asked about his swing, “and, thankfully, it has been working out.” Matt Borgschulte, or Borgs as Refsnyder called him, said that it is a testament to what type of person Refsnyder is to take the time to give recognition to those who have helped him. “All the credit goes to Rob, I’ve learned a lot from him as well,” says Matt Borgschulte, pointing out that Refsnyder’s career through multiple organizations comes with tacit knowledge on hitting. Each stop gives him a new perspective from different coaches and players. Smart players are able to retain and transfer that to their next destination. Refsnyder was signed by the Twins in November and invited to spring training. He wasn’t thrilled with his performance in March, deriding the pull-side ground balls he hit, so he and the Twins’ staff reviewed video of his swing and re-wrote the plan. He said he was able to try some things while in the alternate camp without the worry of what his performance looked like. “Not having to worry about games means not worrying about numbers or statistics that are on the back of baseball cards,” says Borgschulte, emphasizing the process over the outcome. The Twins work on fitting hitters with their best movements. But in doing so it becomes a conversation between the player and the staff. Refsnyder had a vision and, as they rebuilt his approach, they would have a back-and-forth on what felt good, what was working and what needed adjustments. Borgschulte highlighted Refsnyder’s load as an important component of his swing, setting him up to be in a good position to attack good pitches. When asked about the physical changes to his swing and how that impacted his ability to drive the ball, Borgschulte deferred and spoke toward Refsnyder’s overall approach: “Thinking too much about mechanics can be difficult on your approach,” he said. “Rob worked on trying to stay on the ball, going up the middle with it to the right-center field gap.” That’s very different from the approach Refsnyder outlined in 2016 when he began to be hyper-focused on pulling the ball. In his limited time with the Twins, the majority of balls off his bat have gone to center field (52%) while less than a quarter have been pulled. Maybe more importantly to Refsnyder’s results, just 24% of batted balls have been on the ground. The Twins organization has implemented a system for communication between coaches at different levels, so after Refsnyder left the Saints, hitting coaches Edgar Varela and Rudy Hernandez were able to continue with -- and enhance -- the preparation plan for him when he arrived at the big league club. To be fair, getting excited over less than 40 plate appearances is not advised. After all, Refsnyder’s line (.438/.472/.719 with 2 HR) looks an awful lot like Robbie Grossman’s (.361/.452/.694 with 2 HR) after 11 games in a Twins uniform. Still, there are signs that this might be the culmination of Refsnyder’s 2016 plan to add power and, if that is the case, having a right-handed outfielder with some pop isn’t a bad addition. Enjoy the ride. View full article

There hasn't been a publicly provide update on the attack angle (or other swing data) since 2017 so it is difficult to say if there has been a significant league-wide shift on that. It's possible it is a factor in combination with the trend of higher velo, higher located fastballs. In regards to Max Kepler, in 2017 Kepler had one of the lowest attack angles in baseball at 4 degrees. The "optimal" attack angle for fastballs was around 8-10 degrees. By comparison, Joe Mauer was 11 degrees and Nelson Cruz was 12. It makes sense about Kepler considering coaches said that they felt he was too steep into the swing zone and that resulted on him getting on top of balls (grounders into the shift). I can't say how much he has or hasn't changed in terms of attack angle. He has acknowledged that in 2019, he tried to chase launch angle -- and he both increased that, his exit velo and pulled the ball more. I don't know how much of that is from the coaching side either. Another factor is VERTICAL BAT ANGLE. This is another measurement of the degree at which the barrel of the bat is compared to the knob of the bat at contact. There is a good thread on this concept here but, simply, a flat vertical bat angle produces more in-play mi****s (infield field balls and weak grounders) while a steeper vertical bat angle will typically produce more mi****s out of play (foul balls) and squarely hit balls. If you look at the picture in this 2017 article, you can see an example of Kepler's flat vertical bat angle. It's possible that Kepler still has a very flat swing (attack angle-wise) which is resulting in that high rate of infield flies and ground balls. As far as backspin goes, research by Dr. Alan Nathan shows that the best and most consistent way to hit balls with backspin is by (1) hitting them square and (2) slightly south of the ball's equator. If your attack angle is steep, like Kepler's in 2017, you have to have nearly perfect timing to get to that spot. With an optimal attack angle closer to 8-10 degrees, you have more room for error. Adding to this, high backspin, as shown in some research, isn't optimal either. A recent Fangraphs' study showed that players who have high backspin underperform compared to those in the square contact group. High backspin adds flight carry but does not necessarily get as many hits. While it is good to have a backspinning ball flight, exit velocity is a superior indicator of hit potential. This is to say, hitters shouldn't focus on backspin contact. I don't know if this has answered anything but it certainly killed some time.

Byron Buxton, a father who happens to play center field for the Minnesota Twins, was asked how he approaches working with his young son on his game. On the Sports Info Solutions podcast with Mark Simon, Buxton said that he lets his kid hit anyway he wants. “When we go out to hit, before we do anything, he’ll hit like any player he wants to hit like. He wants to hit like Max Kepler or hit like Cody Bellinger. Anybody he wants to hit like, that’s what I let him do,” Buxton says. “For him, he likes Mookie Betts’ leg kick but he likes where Cody Bellinger’s hands are at. I’m not going to make you hit like me or hit like this person because there are days where you might have to back off the plate or open up a little bit. So it’s one of those where I’m literally whatever he wants to do on the diamond, I do whatever he wants to do because that’s what keeps it fun.” There are coaches and parents who give relentless instructions until the young hitters conform to some preconceived notion of what a hitter should look like. This presents several problems. This first is that motor learning rarely progresses well from that style of teaching. And what works for one hitter, might not for another. People need to have creativity and freedom to explore movements in order to find optimal ones for them. “I was forever trying a new stance, trying to hit like [Hank] Greenberg or [Jimmy] Foxx or somebody, and then going back to my old way,” Ted Williams wrote in his book, The Science of Hitting. “I recommend that for kids. Experiment. Try what you see that looks good on somebody else.” Read the rest of the post at Get Better Baseball.

WCCO's Cory Hepola and Parker Hageman discuss the current state of the Minnesota Twins. Topics include: More depressing: 2011 or 2021 Twins? How is this happening? Should we have seen this coming? What’s worse: Pitching or Defense? What do you do with Miguel Sano? Give me ONE positive? Who does Trevor Larnach remind you of? Can this team save this season?