Parker Hageman

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3596[/ATTACH]About a year ago, the Minnesota Twins left Florida with a roster of 25, bound for the Twin Cities and, ultimately, the basement of the American League Central. Quite a bit of turnover has occurred from that collection of individuals – a whopping 12 from the 2012 Opening Day roster are no longer with the organization. Several of those players caught on elsewhere but have deemed unfit to place on another team’s 40-man roster. A few of those are out of major league baseball. Among the departed is last year’s Opening Day starter (Carl Pavano, who remains unsigned because of a life-threatening injury sustained while shoveling), the team’s closer (Matt Capps, who was recently cut from the Cleveland Indians but was retained on a minor league deal), two of the five bench bats (Sean Burroughs, unsigned, and Luke Hughes, who last played in Australia) and their situational lefty in the ‘pen (Matt Maloney, who may not pitch much due to recovering from Tommy John surgery). Beyond that group, Opening Day third baseman Danny Valencia failed to catch on with the Baltimore Orioles this spring and will start the season with their Triple-A affiliate. Reliever Jeff Gray did not merit enough of a role to even make the Chicago White Sox’s 40-man either and will be stashed with their International League team as well. Think about that for a second. These were supposed to be either key contributors or maneuverable pieces that turned into flotsam and now a vast majority of the other 25 teams would not bend over to pick up for nothing. Just one year removed from the Twins evaluators determining these guys were among their best 25 players. [How did they ever win 66? It’s a miracle. It’s a miracle.] With the finalization of the roster occurring over the next few days, the Twins staff will be attempting to move on from a group that went 6-16 through the season’s first month. The objective of the offseason was to create a rotation that can keep the Twins in the game long enough to remain competitive but this year, the staff is having troubles identifying their number one guy as the Opening Day starting pitcher still remains unknown (but is widely believed to be Worley). Outside of Jamey Carroll, the bench will consist of athletically talented yet unproven players in Eduardo Escobar, Wilkin Ramirez and Darin Mastroianni. Maloney and Gray will be replaced in the bullpen with Tyler Robertson and Ryan Pressly, two guys who have 25 major league innings between the pair. While the success of the team is dependent on the rotation, the starting lineup and defense, depth plays a large role as well. Is this group solid enough to finish April at or near .500, let alone for the duration of the season?

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3564[/ATTACH]On Thursday night, the Minnesota Twins showcased two of their potential starters for their remaining rotation vacancy – Liam Hendriks and Cole Devries. Together, the pair silenced the Yankees’ bats over eight innings, allowing just one unearned run over eight innings. Of course, spring training is not about the results but the process. For Hendriks, that process included peppering in more non-fastballs. As was discussed during the Fox Sports North broadcast, the Twins staff were looking for Hendriks to mix in more of his secondary offerings after he became what they felt was too reliant on his fastball during his last outing. “It was coming out of my hand well,” Hendriks told reports afterwards. “Curveball was good. Mainly slider to the righties, curveball to the lefties." Perhaps Hendriks’ biggest issue right now is his inability to shut down right-handed hitters. Last year, lefties slapped him around to the tune of .768 OPS. Righties, meanwhile, torched him with a 1.020 OPS. Among starters with a minimum of 30 innings against right-handed hitters, Hendriks’ .351 batting average was the highest in baseball. Against righties, he is a two-pitch pitcher, arming himself with a fastball and a slider. The slider, up to this point in his career, has been a detriment to his success. According to BaseballProspectus.com’s leaderboard, Hendriks’ slider created the lowest percentage of outs in baseball last year. His slider had “put away” just 4.1% of hitters on the times it was thrown, making it terribly ineffective. C.C. Sabathia, a Yankee sitting across the field from Hendriks yesterday, managed to retire 32% of his opponents on that pitch – the highest rate in baseball. It does not take a math major to realize there is a huge chasm between the results of Sabathia’s offering and the one Hendriks spins. Did we learn anything new from this most recent spring start? Probably not. After all, the Yankees only threw out three right-handed hitters against Hendriks: Kevin Youkilis, Eduardo Nunez and Francisco Cervelli. A literal non-Murderer’s Row of Yankee sluggers. Nevertheless, to his credit, with the exception of the fourth-inning walk to the shaved Youkilis, Hendriks did his job – none of the aforementioned righties reached base. I’ve cited several times over that one of Hendriks’s biggest issues is his slider and the coaching staff likely recognizes this as well. During his last bullpen session prior to the start, the 24 year-old struggled with his secondary offerings’ location. “During my bullpen, during my offspeed, I could not locate a single thing,” Hendriks told reporters. “It was disgraceful. [Anderson] said ‘Stay back, stay relaxed.’” Unquestionably, the curveball looked sharp. He maintained a strong 12-to-6 break with this pitch and kept the Yankees’ left-handed unit at bay, one that included renowned sluggers like Travis Hafner and World Baseball Classic winner, Robinson Cano. Hendriks’ fastball command helped set up that giant breaking ball and kept the lefties off-balanced for the duration of his outing. But there were occasions in while he seemed to lack the confidence in that pitch. During an early battle with Hafner, the Aussie held a 2-2 advantage but shook catcher Drew Butera off twice before throwing a fastball (a ball) and then followed it up with a second fastball (fouled off) before missing with a curve. The shake-off could have been a cat-and-mouse game of shaking off a fastball only to set up Hafner for the fastball still, however, his admittance of command issues of his breaking stuff in his recent pen session only seems to reaffirm the notion that Hendriks shook off a curve. If 2012 has any bearings on it, Hendriks has demonstrated that he shies away from his breaking stuff when he is ahead of the hitters. Look at his pitch breakdown from BrooksBaseball.com from last year: [ATTACH=CONFIG]3565[/ATTACH] What Hendriks needs is more confidence in his secondary pitches. He pitches backwards by throwing his non-fastballs out-front but he fails in the sense that he does not have a put-away pitch. Spotting his fastball will only get him so far. And, to this point in his career, that has meant success at Triple-A. With Samuel Deduno making a strong case for one of the two positions open in the rotation, the race is tightening between Hendriks and Devries.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3534[/ATTACH]It is probably an indictment of the Minnesota Twins’ rotation when the biggest conversation of the month of March is focused on the performance of a pitcher who is currently not on the team’s 40 man roster. As Mike Pelfrey, Vance Worley and Kevin Correia continue to turn in clunkers in the Grapefruit League, Samuel Deduno’s sometimes sloppy, sometimes dominating but always energetic outings in the World Baseball Classic -- including last night’s five inning, two hit, three walk and five strikeout victory – has captured many fans’ attentions back in the Upper Midwest. Despite not maintaining the same free and easy motion as he showed during his start against Spain earlier in the tournament, Deduno forged his way past the United States (even while walking in a run and facing several 3-0 counts) and then kept Puerto Rico at bay to help the Dominican Republic capture the World Baseball Classic title. What helped the right-hander up to and in the championship game was having a filthy curveball. This is nothing new for Sammy. Last year, Pitch F/X-ly speaking, he held one of the best curves in baseball – allowing an average of just .160 on the hook, 14th lowest among those who threw it 200 or more times. He was also one of the most frequent users of the curveball, by percentage. Throughout the World Baseball Classic he showed great confidence in this pitch. In his start against Team USA, Deduno had the misfortunate of not only loading the bases, but walking USA’s Eric Hosmer to give the home team an early first inning lead. With the bases still loaded, Deduno went to a full count on Adam Jones and sent him packing with a 3-2 curve for a called strike. Ballsy pitch. In another instance, he would go on to throw a 3-2 bender to his potential battery mate, Joe Mauer, only to get the catcher to roll over to the first baseman. You know how often Mauer had seen a 3-2 curve in 2012? Six times. Last night, of the 14 batters Deduno retired, nine of those came on his curve. When facing Puerto Rico’s Angel Pegan and a runner on second, Deduno spun a 3-2 curveball to get Pegan to turnover and knock into the second out of the inning. Two innings later, Deduno fell behind Jesus Feliciano and ultimately lost him on a curve out of the zone, he proved that he was not going to lay a fastball in there (if, you know, he’s capable of that). As I’ve repeated numerous times, Deduno has got electric stuff which has helped him defy statistical convention for success at the major league level. If opponents are unable to square up pitches and are constantly off-balance with curveballs in fastball counts, it is hard to drive home those hitters he walked. It’s a tightrope act but, so far, Deduno has pulled it off.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3513[/ATTACH]Technology is amazing, isn’t it? Sure, we’re missing the flying cars, moon colonies and hover boards but the fact that we all basically carry around personal computers/television sets that can make phone calls in our pocket is pretty mind-blowing. Baseball, while it may seem archaic with the bats made from trees and game play which doesn’t involve a time clock, is actually progressive and embracive of new technologies off the field. Not long ago, the Pitch F/X cameras installed at all stadiums opened up a whole new world of data to the general public. This new insight has provided teems of information on pitchers, hitters, umpires and, most recently, catchers. Suddenly, we know whose curveball gets the most swing-and-misses (AJ Burnett at 44.1%), whose fastball generates the most groundballs (Scott Diamond at 58%), and whose catcher can coax the most strikes on pitches just out of the zone (Jose Molina, 13%). For front offices, this seems like really important stuff, particularly when evaluating free agent talent. But baseball does not want to stop there. MLB has been working on going beyond just the batter-pitcher matchups by exploring the world of contact (Hit F/X) and defense (Field F/X). Once available, the latter will be able tell us who gets the best jumps, who positions themselves the best and who covers the most ground. The former, Hit F/X, will be able to provide details on what kind of contact is necessary for a towering home run, a line drive, an opposite field double, and so on. At the SABR Analytics Convention in Phoenix a week ago, Baseball America dispatched Matt Eddy to cover the event which discusses these forthcoming technologies. While there, Eddy was treated to a presentation from Graham Goldbeck, a data analyst from Sportsvision – the creator of the F/X systems. Goldbeck released some new information farmed out from the nearly 600,000 ball-in-play situations captured by their Hit F/X system. What Hit F/X does is tracks the batter’s contact point, batted ball speed, the horizontal spray angle (like a spray chart) and the vertical launch angle. From this, Goldbeck found that hitters who tend to make contact out in front of the plate have a greater tendency to hit from home run power than those who make contact deeper in the zone: This is analytical evidence of something that probably already knew from observation of two members of the Minnesota Twins who are on opposite ends of the spectrum: Josh Willingham and Joe Mauer. When it comes to Willingham, we knew one thing: He pulls the living fire out of the ball. Last year, his .487 isolated slugging percentage when pulling wash tied for sixth-highest in baseball. (Think if he had a more hitter-friendly home ballpark.) Why is he so good at pulling the ball? That is because he makes outstanding contact out in front of the plate, much like Goldbeck’s research suggests. Take a look at his connection point in this home run: http://apps.startribune.com/blogs/user_images/theeight_1363367962_Willingham.PNG Now, compare Willingham’s contact point to Mauer’s, who just sliced his patented left-field double. http://apps.startribune.com/blogs/user_images/Mauer.PNG Mauer has been one of the game’s foremost connoisseur of going the other way. Part of the reason behind that is that he can let the ball travel much deeper into the zone than Willingham has ever allowed. As such, the natural conclusion is that he would have a much harder time of reaching the same home run totals as Willingham because his swing is not conducive to generating the kind of power. Dingers aside, Mauer’s approach affords him superior contact rate over Willingham’s approach. Another thing that Goldbeck’s research said about Willingham is that he has one of the most consistent contact points. This means that he is susceptible to other pitch types or various locations away from his standard impact zone. As such, we see that he had a well-below contact rate average (75.9% versus 79% league average) in 2012 compared to Mauer who was well above that mark (87.8%). Additionally, although it is possible that Mauer may suddenly start hitting the ball out in front and launching dingers into the newly minted party deck in right field, the study suggests that the likelihood of this happening is low. It is rare for hitters to change their stripes: We’ve reached an age where we have a greater understanding of the game than ever before. We confirm why Josh Willingham can decimate Target Field while many other hitters cannot. We know that while everyone may wish for Mauer to take that step forward and hit home runs by the bushel, we are learning from the technology that it just simply may not be possible – that is, unless the left field fence is moved in 50 feet or so. Technology is amazing.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3475[/ATTACH]Don’t look now, but Samuel Deduno has not walked a batter yet this spring. I know, I know: It has been five meaningless spring innings. Give it time, right? And, sure, four of those innings were against Spain in the World Baseball Classic, a team whose lineup was littered with players lacking even minor league deals. Pump the brakes, Parker. The reality is that last year he handed out more free passes than the gals standing out front of Dream Girls gentlemen’s club. With 121 innings split between Rochester and the Twins, he walked 75, or 14% of all the hitters he faced. Five measly innings of not throwing four balls in a given at-bat is not going to change that fact. His inability to work ahead of hitters put Deduno in many precarious situations in 2012. A whopping 8% of his match-ups resulted in 3-0 counts (league average being 5%). Overall, hitters knew his reputation and refrained from chasing much of anything outside of the strike zone. According to Fangraphs.com Deduno got opponents to chase after just 23.5% of all out-of-zone offerings – the second lowest rate in baseball with a minimum of 70 innings pitched. Here’s the catch: Despite being behind hitters frequently, he was not damaged significantly. He walked plenty, but teams were unable to put the ball in play sharply. Thanks to his incredible movement of his fastball which had an MLB-best 67% ground ball rate, the opposition showed they simply could not square up. Even in situations where they should have an advantage, they were unsuccessful. While the rest of the American League’s pitching staffs had a .299/.465/.513 batting line when behind in the count, Deduno produced a walk-heavy yet respectable .244/.524/.389 line. With his nearly unhittable fastball (not to mention decent curve), Deduno has the foundations to be a very good pitcher. The giant elephant on his chest is his incapability to throw the ball over the plate consistently. Behind the small sample size, there may be some reason why he is throwing the ball better. Look how free and easy his motion is – particularly his finish - while in the World Baseball Classic compared to last season: file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/JHageman/My%20Documents/Downloads/Sam2.gif file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/JHageman/My%20Documents/Downloads/Sam3.gif file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/JHageman/My%20Documents/Downloads/Sam4.gif file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/JHageman/My%20Documents/Downloads/Sam5.gif file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/JHageman/My%20Documents/Downloads/Sam6.gif Notice the “Francisco Liriano” twirl with his back leg after his follow through. He is finishing higher with his upper body. This is the follow through of someone who is not over-thinking, not aiming, not over-throwing on every pitch. He’s just letting it fly, as they say. Maybe that is all that it takes with him to achieve that next level. Then again, who is to say that this will carry over to the season? At 29 years old, he’s had numerous opportunities to try to get his walk rate in order and failed. Frankly, Deduno represents a fringe player; one whose skill set can get him near the top level but never fully entrench him into a starting rotation. That said, it is still important for a an organization to have a pitcher like Deduno available. As Russell Charlton’s research at Baseball Prospectus showed that pitchers who have had previous injuries have high odds of a reoccurrence. For example, pitchers who have had elbow injuries have had a 27.4% chance of re-injury. That means three-fifths of the projected rotation - Vance Worley, Scott Diamond and Mike Pelfrey – stand the likelihood of spending time on the DL in 2013. If Deduno is able to harness his control, he could be a valuable contributor in some capacity. Deduno will get the start for the Dominican Republic on Thursday, taking on a far superior Team USA lineup. Watch his command, walk total and scrutinize his mechanics – if he is throwing free and easy, it could translate to a rough day for Team USA in the WBC.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3413[/ATTACH]Liam Hendriks could very well be one of the five starting pitchers the Minnesota Twins take north when camp breaks at the end of the month. He has the minor league numbers to show that he capable of retiring batters. He just needs to do the same against major league hitters. One area he needs to improve on in 2013 is achieving better result when he releases a slider from his fingertips. Coming off the season he had last year, no one would blame him from shelving the pitch indefinitely. Just under 200 times, Hendriks twirled his slider towards home. He retired a batter on that pitch in less than 5% of those occasions – the lowest rate in baseball with a minimum of 100 pitches in 2012. On seven instances, that slider became a home run. Admittedly, six other pitchers managed to surrender more jack jobs on the slide piece but those pitchers also threw the breaking ball at least 300 more times than Hendriks did. Those are some stomach-churning results. A 2012 interview with MILB.com’s Andrew Pentis may help illuminate Hendriks’ struggles with the pitch. According to the interview, the then Rochester Red Wing told Pentis that he had acquired the slider in 2008 from former reliever Graeme Lloyd, another hurler of Australian descent who was coaching down under. Hendriks said that the slider is his “fourth pitch”, behind his two fastballs and change, and he likes to throw it in on lefties and away to righties. When it comes to the latter, therein lies the problem. Last year I examined some of Hendriks’ tendencies and video to find that his closed landing foot causes an inability to hit the outer-half of the plate to righties as effectively as he would hitting the inside corner. Here we see his heat map of where his slider crossed the plate: [ATTACH=CONFIG]3414[/ATTACH] While it appears that he is trying to work away with his slider -- as evidenced by his sporadic spotting down and away -- the majority of his offerings fall within the zone, specifically in the dreaded “middle-middle” location. These are easily feasted upon and have led to a .341 average against (15-for-44) with seven of those hits becoming home runs in 2012. His second start of the spring, a three-inning affair, showed promise that his future remains bright. Following the game, Hendriks told reporters that he had been working on his mechanics: Hendriks continued by saying he did want to remain closed “a little bit” to add to the deception. That may not be a bad thing. After all, it may be a part of this deception which allowed him to maintain a reverse split: a .786 OPS facing lefties and a .998 OPS facing righties. But the improvement in the motion could be enough to allow for better placement of his slider – something that he told reporters felt better after his second spring start. With sustained success in the majors his ultimate goal, finding a stable breaking offering to throw to right-handers will be somewhat critical. If this mechanical adjustment can help facilitate that, then he may be able to replicate some of his minor league triumphs at the big league level.

Vance Worley is poised for his second unofficial start for the Minnesota Twins today. Compared to the other recent additions to the rotation, the 25-year-old right-hander’s first outing in the Grapefruit League was very positive. He worked two innings, allowed a pair of hits but didn’t allow any runs. Feedback from his new manager was good. “I like him. He looks like a gunslinger with that windup,” Ron Gardenhire told reporters following the team’s 5-4 victory over the Pirates. “It looks like he’s ready to draw a pistol. I always liked guys like that.” Of course, first impressions are sort of Worley’s thing. It is meeting people a second and third time that the newest member of the team needs to work on, as you will see. Heading into the 2012 season Worley grew concerned that the rest of the league was going to catch on to his sinker, a pitch that had been wildly successful for him in 2011 when he finished 11-3 with a 3.01 ERA in 131.2 innings and took third in the Rookie of the Year voting. “I need to develop a change-up this spring so I can have it ready for this season,” Worley toldYahoo.com’s Dave Brown, “The whole league knows I throw a sinker now, and my cutter is OK; it can be good at times. But definitely I need a third pitch.” True to his word, Worley set out to install the change as his third pitch. Up to that point in his career, his version of the change was the standard “circle” grip, named such because when the pitcher’s thumb and index finger make the “OK” symbol and the ball is thrown with the aid of the three remaining fingers. Still, the results on the pitch in 2011 were lackluster. Because he threw this change at a high velocity (averaging 84.7 mph according to Fangraphs.com) he had little separation between that and his sinker and cutter (thrown on average at 90 mph). Opponents smacked the change around to the tune of a .309 average. Even coming off his solid rookie campaign, Phillies pitching coach Rich Dubee reiterated the need for Worley to add an additional pitch. “Hitters will adjust after seeing him,” he told the media. “He has to adjust, too.” Worley had the good fortune of being employed alongside one of the best pitchers in the game, Roy Halladay. Just a few years prior, Halladay learned a new change-up grip that helped win him the National League Cy Young Away in 2010. Rather than the circle grip he split his ring and middle fingers out wide on what would have been a prototypical two-seam fastball grip, a less wide version of the split-finger fastball. What the former Cy Young winner did was develop a “split-change” that had heavy sink and enough speed variation to make it extremely effective. In camp in 2012, Worley hoped to come away with the new version of his change-up but despite the fact he had shaved a tad off of the velocity (down to 83 mph), he still did not feel comfortable throwing it frequently throughout the year. Nevertheless, Worley had success despite not missing bats was due to his deceptive delivery andoutstanding movement on his sinker/two-seamer. He froze opponents regularly, ringing up a baseball-high 57% of his strikeouts looking. What’s more is that umpires (with some help from his catcher) gave him nearly 10% of his pitches not swung at and thrown OUTSIDE of the strike zone a strike. That’s well above the league average of 7%. It appears, at least judging by the statistics, that opponents figured out not to be fooled as much by the movement or deceptive delivery the second or third time around. Worley’s splits may show signs of how he was affected by his shallow arsenal. According to Baseball-Reference.com’s pitching splits, Worley labored as the lineup continued to turnover in 2012. After the first time through the order, the spectacled one held the opposition to a 620 OPS coupled with a 22% strikeout rate. This success would slide significantly as the game progressed. The second time through the OPS increased to 863 while his strikeout rate dropped to 17%. The third time around, the floodgates would open as his OPS allowed spiked to 971 while his strikeout rate came in at 13%. With a lack of a solid third pitch, was the shifting numbers a result of opponents zeroing in on his sinker and cutter? While those segmentations are small sample sizes, the OPS allowed in the second and third time through the order were noticeably higher than the league average. As Worley said prior to the 2012 season, he was in need of an additional pitch. He threw a solid cutter, one that had the highest percentage of swing-and-misses among his repertoire last season, but that has been below average among all pitch types in that department. There’s probably some hesitation as to why Worley had mistrust in his change. It is a “feel” pitch and, given the fact that he allowed three of the 12 home runs surrendered on the pitch while throwing it less than 8% of the time. Look at his intended location versus his actual location for this change when facing Pittsburgh’s Pedro Alverez: http://apps.startribune.com/blogs/user_images/theeight_1362146832_Worley_Spot1.PNG http://apps.startribune.com/blogs/user_images/Worley_Result1.PNG Yes. That ball went way far, far away. The reason was that instead of down and away as desired, this slow mover went middle-in and allowed Alverez to nearly send that pitch back to the other side of the state of Pennsylvania. If a pitcher does not have confidence to hit his spots consistently, that pitcher may withhold throwing that pitch. And it appears that Worley still does not have faith in that offering either. “My changeup is usually just terrible all around, all the time,” Worley told reporters after his first outing this spring. “So if I can not use it, I won’t use it.” True, Worley only faced eight batters so he did not have the lineup turn on him and likely did not need to show them anything else. Yet switching to the American League, where, thanks to the DH, lineups are more robust, it should accelerate the need to refine that pitch. If he is able to hone that pitch, he may have better success against his opponent that second and third time through the order in 2013.

Vance Worley is poised for his second unofficial start for the Minnesota Twins today. Compared to the other recent additions to the rotation, the 25-year-old right-hander’s first outing in the Grapefruit League was very positive. He worked two innings, allowed a pair of hits but didn’t allow any runs. Feedback from his new manager was good. “I like him. He looks like a gunslinger with that windup,” Ron Gardenhire told reporters following the team’s 5-4 victory over the Pirates. “It looks like he’s ready to draw a pistol. I always liked guys like that.” Of course, first impressions are sort of Worley’s thing. It is meeting people a second and third time that the newest member of the team needs to work on, as you will see. Heading into the 2012 season Worley grew concerned that the rest of the league was going to catch on to his sinker, a pitch that had been wildly successful for him in 2011 when he finished 11-3 with a 3.01 ERA in 131.2 innings and took third in the Rookie of the Year voting. “I need to develop a change-up this spring so I can have it ready for this season,” Worley toldYahoo.com’s Dave Brown, “The whole league knows I throw a sinker now, and my cutter is OK; it can be good at times. But definitely I need a third pitch.” True to his word, Worley set out to install the change as his third pitch. Up to that point in his career, his version of the change was the standard “circle” grip, named such because when the pitcher’s thumb and index finger make the “OK” symbol and the ball is thrown with the aid of the three remaining fingers. Still, the results on the pitch in 2011 were lackluster. Because he threw this change at a high velocity (averaging 84.7 mph according to Fangraphs.com) he had little separation between that and his sinker and cutter (thrown on average at 90 mph). Opponents smacked the change around to the tune of a .309 average. Even coming off his solid rookie campaign, Phillies pitching coach Rich Dubee reiterated the need for Worley to add an additional pitch. “Hitters will adjust after seeing him,” he told the media. “He has to adjust, too.” Worley had the good fortune of being employed alongside one of the best pitchers in the game, Roy Halladay. Just a few years prior, Halladay learned a new change-up grip that helped win him the National League Cy Young Away in 2010. Rather than the circle grip he split his ring and middle fingers out wide on what would have been a prototypical two-seam fastball grip, a less wide version of the split-finger fastball. What the former Cy Young winner did was develop a “split-change” that had heavy sink and enough speed variation to make it extremely effective. In camp in 2012, Worley hoped to come away with the new version of his change-up but despite the fact he had shaved a tad off of the velocity (down to 83 mph), he still did not feel comfortable throwing it frequently throughout the year. Nevertheless, Worley had success despite not missing bats was due to his deceptive delivery andoutstanding movement on his sinker/two-seamer. He froze opponents regularly, ringing up a baseball-high 57% of his strikeouts looking. What’s more is that umpires (with some help from his catcher) gave him nearly 10% of his pitches not swung at and thrown OUTSIDE of the strike zone a strike. That’s well above the league average of 7%. It appears, at least judging by the statistics, that opponents figured out not to be fooled as much by the movement or deceptive delivery the second or third time around. Worley’s splits may show signs of how he was affected by his shallow arsenal. According to Baseball-Reference.com’s pitching splits, Worley labored as the lineup continued to turnover in 2012. After the first time through the order, the spectacled one held the opposition to a 620 OPS coupled with a 22% strikeout rate. This success would slide significantly as the game progressed. The second time through the OPS increased to 863 while his strikeout rate dropped to 17%. The third time around, the floodgates would open as his OPS allowed spiked to 971 while his strikeout rate came in at 13%. With a lack of a solid third pitch, was the shifting numbers a result of opponents zeroing in on his sinker and cutter? While those segmentations are small sample sizes, the OPS allowed in the second and third time through the order were noticeably higher than the league average. As Worley said prior to the 2012 season, he was in need of an additional pitch. He threw a solid cutter, one that had the highest percentage of swing-and-misses among his repertoire last season, but that has been below average among all pitch types in that department. There’s probably some hesitation as to why Worley had mistrust in his change. It is a “feel” pitch and, given the fact that he allowed three of the 12 home runs surrendered on the pitch while throwing it less than 8% of the time. Look at his intended location versus his actual location for this change when facing Pittsburgh’s Pedro Alverez: http://apps.startribune.com/blogs/user_images/theeight_1362146832_Worley_Spot1.PNG http://apps.startribune.com/blogs/user_images/Worley_Result1.PNG Yes. That ball went way far, far away. The reason was that instead of down and away as desired, this slow mover went middle-in and allowed Alverez to nearly send that pitch back to the other side of the state of Pennsylvania. If a pitcher does not have confidence to hit his spots consistently, that pitcher may withhold throwing that pitch. And it appears that Worley still does not have faith in that offering either. “My changeup is usually just terrible all around, all the time,” Worley told reporters after his first outing this spring. “So if I can not use it, I won’t use it.” True, Worley only faced eight batters so he did not have the lineup turn on him and likely did not need to show them anything else. Yet switching to the American League, where, thanks to the DH, lineups are more robust, it should accelerate the need to refine that pitch. If he is able to hone that pitch, he may have better success against his opponent that second and third time through the order in 2013.

Ryan Pressly’s odds of making the bullpen when the Minnesota Twins break camp in April appear somewhere between slim and none. On a liberal guess, there are likely three spots open and two of those may already belong to Alex Burnett and Anthony Swarzak. The remaining vacancy? That’s competition between a Twins’ bullpen incumbent in Casey Fein, baseball’s relief innings leader last season in Josh Roenicke, and two former major leaguers trying to re-establish their careers in Rich Harden and Rafael Perez. So where does that leave a 24-year-old Rule 5 draft pick who has fewer than 30 innings of experience above Double-A? Probably with a one-way ticket back to Pawtucket with all the clam chowder he can eat waiting for him. Because of the Rule 5 draft’s rules, if Pressly is not placed on the 25-man roster, he must be offered back to Boston. However, there is another route Pressly could go to remain within the Twins’ system and that is if the team pulls a trade similar to the one that landed them Scott Diamond from the Braves. In order to do so, the Twins will need to place him through the waivers, exposing him to all the MLB teams, prior to negotiating a trade with the Red Sox. Would Pressly be worth it? There are plenty of people within the organization who firmly believe in his capabilities as a major league contributor. When the Twins selected him in early December out of the Red Sox organization, plenty of officials were already infatuated with his stuff. The Twins director of scouting Vern Followell, who followed Pressly since high school, said that he envisioned the right-hander to be a solid back-of-the-bullpen arm. Early in camp, manager Ron Gardenhire was also keen on the youngster, noting that while Pressly was a bit erratic, he was impressed by his fastball. What’s more is that Pressly was facing the meat of the big club’s order during his live BP sessions including Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Josh Willingham, and Trevor Plouffe. Pressly works with a three pitch repertoire that is comprised of a mid-90s two-seam fastball, exquisite tilt on his curve and a good changeup. With those three pitches, the Sox had designs of making him a starter. While he did well with his secondary offerings, Pressly’s fastball often got him into trouble and he wound up with a high number of free passes issued. What is interesting about Pressly is that he make opposite handed hitters – lefties – miss more often than same-sided ones. This is not usually true as right-handed pitchers are much better at striking out right-handed batter thanks to the ability to hide the ball better and spin pitches away from their swing. Given the , one would assume he would thrive against righties but that has not been the case. Still, in 2012 – his first year in the bullpen – Pressly struck out 14% of right-handed batters faced but yielded a 25% strike out mark against lefties thanks to a strong running fastball and changeup combination. Take a look at this clip of his changeup thrown to Justin Morneau this week: http://apps.startribune.com/blogs/user_images/theeight_1361543132_Pressly.gif (Video courtesy of MLB.com's Rhett Bollinger) According to the StarTribune’s Phil Miller, this incited the Twins first baseman to describe the pitch as “nasty” afterwards. Pressly’s changeup has a strong bite down and away from the left-handed swing. Based on this action, one can easily conclude how he is able to achieve such a high percentage of strikeouts against the opposite hand. Competition may ultimately keep Pressly out of the hunt for the final bullpen spot but his strengths as a reliever should not go unnoticed this spring. Keep an eye on his ability to command his fastball. If he impresses enough, he may be given an opportunity to remain with the organization.