AlwaysinModeration

So a week or so ago I came across a reference to a study (which I will need to dig up) pointing out one of the only things that you can take away from early season returns: hard hit balls. Specifically, the operating theory was that players who hit balls really hard early in the season were likely to have an increase in their slugging percentage for the entire season. The metric that was focused on was the (in my view, somewhat arbitrary) threshold of 108mph. The site that was linked to was https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/, and on that site there was a way to pull up all of the early season 108mph+ hit balls. The Twins had a few early on when I looked. I was intrigued at the time, and wanted to go back and see how that played out going forward. So I went back yesterday and started to do a little bit of digging, focusing on that 108mph bar. How were the Twins faring, and were there any trends? I found some interesting information. First of all, I found that the Baseball Savant site https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/ is awesome. You can find a listing of every single batted ball by every player on every team, complete with a link to a video clip of the play. I went through and looked at a bunch of the Twins' 108mph+ hits. It's pretty easy to see why that arbitrary line was set - if a player hits a ball that hard, which is really, extremely hard, it is almost always going to result in a home run or an extra base hit, because the ball made it all the way to a wall. The only exceptions are when the ball is hit right at someone. There are a number of groundouts, lineouts and flyouts (also lineouts, really) among this group, but they are outs only when the player barely has to move. Amazingly, this includes outfielders, too - they better be pretty close to a ball moving that fast, because otherwise it will rocket by them at that speed. Clearly, hitting a ball in excess of 107.9mph is good thing. So in pulling together some information about the Twins results, I decided to pull the numbers for the current Twins players, looking at their numbers over their entire careers, their 2018 season, and their results so far in 2019. I started this yesterday morning, and then went to update for the double header yesterday. There were four Twins' batted balls that surpassed the 108mph threshold; Cruz had two such balls, while Schoop and Cron also had one each. (Renato Lopez hit four such balls yesterday - watch out for that guy). Over their careers, three current Twins have managed to net 5% or more of their hits at 108mph or more: Kepler (5.5%), Cruz (also 5.5%), and Cron (5.0%). Schoop is next, with 4.7%. No other Twin manages even 3% of their hits that hard, however, there is a group of three Twins who are between 2 and 3%: Cave (2.6%), Garver (2.4%) and Buxton (2.1%). All other Twins do it less than 1% for their career. Turning to the numbers from last year, we can see that the biggest outlier was actually Cruz. He hit 78 balls out of 519 ABs at least 108mph, good for 15%, way above his career norm of 5.5%. Schoop had a down year (as we know), with only 14 extremely hard hit balls out of 473 ABs, or 3%, down from 4.7%. Kepler was also down, at 3.6% (from 5.5%), but everyone else was in their general career range. Polanco managed it1.3% of his ABs, up from his career average of 0.6%, and perhaps that is a trend worth watching, as we add in the early 2019 returns. Which brings us to this year. How has the team done to start off the season? So far, the story looks very good. Cruz: 9 out 46, for 19.5% of his at bats Schoop: 6 out of 51 for 10.2% Cron: 5 out of 53 for 9.4% Buxton: 5 out of 56 for 8.9% Kepler: 4 out of 62 for 6.5% Polanco: 3 out f 65 for 4.6% Of note...for as amazing as Garver has been to start the season, he actually hasn't hit one ball that matched or exceeded 108. And Rosario has only one such hit - but that is actually not surprising, as he's only done it three times in his entire career! Obviously, it's early, so all of this may just be small sample size. But it does make you wonder whether the new manager is emphasizing this in any way with the team. The Baseball Savant website has page in which you can see the team averages. Last year, the Twins were slightly below average as a team in terms of "hard hit" % (which they define as 95mph+), at 33.5% of their batted balls, compared to the league average of 34.2%. This year: the league average is still at 34.2%, but the Twins are at 40.4%. While I was looking up the numbers, I perused a few other names to see how they stacked up. Here are the number of career hits of 108 or greater for a few players of note: Eduardo Escobar: 10 Willians Astudillo: 0 Brian Dozier: 4 Joe Mauer: 5 Tyler Austin: 20 (including 16 in 2018, for 6.5% of his ABs) Logan Morrison: 82 - 2.5% for his career The fact that the FO signed three guys (Cruz, Cron, and Schoop) who end at least 4.7% of their career ABs with a ball they hit at least 108mph, added to the fact that six of the Twins players (Cruz, Schoop, Cron, Buxton, Kepler, and Polanco) have seen a jump in their % of extremely hard hit balls this year compared to their 2018 or career numbers makes me think this is a point of emphasis for the front office and the new manager. Or maybe it's just hitting against Baltimore?

Kind of wondering if Balazovic need to start being listed as an honorable mention in the top 20 prospects listing at the bottom. He’ll be joining that list soon enough. And I guess it doesn’t really matter; he always seems to get listed as the pitcher of the day when he pitches anyway.

Nice job, Matt. I particularly liked how you wrote about de Jong’s performance by skipping over it entirely. I also hope you mean it is only a matter of when, not if, Jake Reed gets the call to the Twins’ bullpen.

And back in first place!

They were up an early touchdown in that game. Atlanta went for two for the win on the road. That’s going to sting.

Missed it by ten feet.

We’ll work on reeling in Buxton’s first homer here in a minute.

So far, my son got a ball tossed to him by Cave. (It was underthrown, but my son made a nice catch.) The Hanser Alberto Home run landed two rows in front of us, exactly in front of us. Then the Renato Nunez homer (second) landed about ten seats over.

So anyhow, a nice night in Baltimore. For home runs.

Well, not the cycle. But not bad.

Garver may need more playing time.

Gonzalez flashing some serious leather tonight.

By the way, the Orioles fans are now doing the Bronx cheer for every Twin out.

So this morning I was doing some research on balls hit 108mph or greater by the Twins. It seems like the team has improved the rate at which they have been hitting these this year. (In addition to adding three guys who do it a lot...Cruz, Cron, and Schoop). Buxton’s rate is up, as is Garver’s and Kepler’s. Interestingly, Rosario does not do it very much (although we’ll have to check on today’s hits...) This offense is legit.

Very nice zip code-like number developing on the scoreboard here. Also, Cron is good defensively.

lucky bounce

Well, a double, anyway.

Boom

Checking in from Camden, here for the nightcap with my two younger sons (after afternoon Little League). Beautiful night for some baseball, and a nice start to the game. Now if Schoop can make Baltimore regret not resigning him....

This was some really exceptional analysis. I am awarding TwinkiePower a TPCV (TwinkiePower Column Value) a +7. You know, I am suspicious that at least Jack Morris, if not both Jack and Dick, are regular readers of TD. The other day I posted a long piece on Buxton’s stolen base streak, including info on his last caught stealing. Jack mentioned some details about that caught stealing in the next broadcast that I mentioned in the piece. Made me think he might read the site to get fodder for broadcasts. So anyway, I bet Dick hears about his “corners” in a broadcast soon!

33

Alright, I read it on the web after logging. Here is a quote: “A lot of guys sometimes will get back there too fast,” he said. “They go to jump and they jump into the wall, and they get stuck. So, what I like to do is I like to at least make sure I go up before I get to the wall. That way, my momentum will carry me back and at least I’m already up. Nothing makes me more mad than getting to the wall, go to make my leap, and jump, and then I get brought down by the wall. I feel like I just wasted an opportunity.” He also describes the wall as a horror movie villain, and talks about how he hates diving forward for balls because you can break your wrist, and how he has learned to go limp before contact in order to reduce injury.

That’s the one. I do subscribe, but this article is 9 months olds and they don’t appear to store articles that old on the app.

Romero would have been a good option the last two days in the Minneapolis.

I know that the line - 6IP, 1ER, 5Ks - looks good, and it’s plenty good for a fifth starter. And I like that Perez gained a few ticks on his fastball. But watching him pitch, I’m not sold. He gave up a lot of hard hit balls, including at least 2-3 that should have been hits, and a gift out on the bases, too. His fastball doesn’t have much movement, and hitters seemed to tee off on it. And he didn’t seem to have a pitch to put hitters away with. That start made me nervous for future Perez starts.