cmathewson

Some of this is just a good old fashioned slump. He was smokin' hot in spring training. Stayed on the ball really well. He had several hits the opposite way. Now he's cold and pulling off the ball. E,g, the pop-up last night. He was out in front of an outside change-up and his head was actually pointed toward first base when he made contact.

I think it's back up 'cause he went 4-6 in last night's double header. When his bat woke up at E-Town last year, I was very pleasantly surprised. I'm so glad he's continuing that trend. I just wish they put him at short full time. But with Goodrum there, he's kind of blocked.

That Parmelee strike was made worse by the fact that he had been very stingy on strikes on the outside corner with a lefty hitting all night. Pelfry had several that I thought were on the corner or on the black called balls. Relative to many of those, that one was six inches outside and four inches low. It was one of the most inconsistent zones I've seen all year.

I did look up stats. I am not lazy in that way. In the original post I wrote, I was trying to play Devils advocate by stating what I think is the Twins philosophy. Philosophy is not about stats. When questioned, I did post stats. I get the blowback, and I don't mind. I can take it. I'm perfectly happy to play this role if it makes for a livelier discussion.

Well, as I've written, it was badly stated in the first place. To add to that, I picked a really bad example in Santana, who is a very efficient pitcher who could strike people out. I've already tried to correct what I wrote, so I won't dig a bigger hole by repeating myself. I don't mind failing fast and learning from that. Not a problem.

I wasn't stating, I was asking. It wasn't clear from the post.

The alternative is someone not on the 40-man. The two available in Rochester who can play center (though not all that well) are Boggs and Thomas. Boggs had a very good spring and nearly beat out Wilkin for the 25th man. I don't think either is an option to start a lot of games. But just to give Hicks a break when he was clearly struggling would have been a blessing. Purportedly (Phil Miller, I think) Gardy asked Mastro about it three times in the first week and he said he couldn't play for a full game. At that point, they should have DLed him and brought up Boggs, imho.

52 starters had K/9 rates above 7? I'm thinking a lot of those pitchers are relievers. And I think the Twins have several of those. Burton, Perkins and Fien all had K/9 rates higher than 7 last year. The only starter in the rotation right now who had K rates above 7 the last three years is Worley. Kyle Gibson has consistently put up K rates above 7 per 9 in the minors. So that would be two this year. By next year, they should have Meyer and May, who feature K/9 rates in the double digits i the minors. So that's four. We're getting there.

Also, that was about the time the top salary in Baseball was $1 million, and the minimum salary was like $40K. I can see how you could make money with 600K fans and a payroll of $10 mil.

Actually, I was trying to frame it, albeit clumsily, as a case of trying to pitch as efficiently as possible given your limitations. If you can get strikeouts any time you want, you will not have a problem putting up innings. But if you can't, your only hope of eating innings is pitching to contact. If you try to strike guys out and you can't, you will end up throwing a lot of pitches and get pulled after five. Also this: To my knowledge, the Twins only preach pitch to contact for pitchers who struggle to get strike outs (most of their pitchers). When they had Santana and briefly Liriano, they were happy to have the strikeouts. The problem is not with the philosophy. The problem is with the lack of strikeout pitchers they have had. I can excuse that, though, because true strikeout pitchers are rare and expensive.

Looking at the game logs from 2006, he had 6 games when he left in the sixth or before. He had 4 games when he left after six. He had 15 games when he left after seven. He had eight games when he pitched through the eighth. So he pitched 6 or fewer in 30% of his starts. That was common for him throughout his career Also, it's worth noting that the games he had his best stuff, he got more strikeouts. Not surprisingly, those were the games where he pitched deeper into the game. When he didn't have his best stuff, he left in the sixth with just a few strikeouts. I get the math. It's kind of a law that you will pitch more innings if you have more strikeouts. But not everybody can get strikeouts when they need them. In fact, most guys can't. So they muddle through pitching to contact. I'm suggesting that for the Nick Blackburns of the world (in his prime) it worked a lot better to get ground balls than to try to get strikeouts.

Given the choice, I'm sure the Twins would love to have a staff full of Harveys. If memory serves, he was the eighth overall pick in the 2010 draft. That year, we drafted in the late 20s, as we have for most of the last decade. There just aren't a lot of pitchers with the kind of stuff to get a high K rate available when we draft. Shooter Hunt does not count. Point is, we can rail against the team's lack of K pitchers. But true K pitchers who don't also have high BB rates are actually really rare, and difficult to acquire. To get a sense of the value of them, look at the Span trade. Given the pitchers who we do have an opportunity to get, it makes sense to me to not have them try to strike everybody out. 'Cause they will fail at it. Of course guys with high K rates eat a lot of innings. Those are the best pitchers. They just are not that easy to acquire. And when you get them, they are expensive to keep. Given what you can get, I don't think pitch to contact is a bad philosophy. The Twins are not the only team in the league to adopt it.

There's that word again. Evidence. What counts as evidence for you? Just stats? How about inductive reasoning from stats? How about quotes from the coaches? How about observations? Stats only provide you with a limited view of reality. If you're going to limit the discussion to stats, you're going to be disappointed with a lot of what I write. I don't have any control over whether you accept what I write or not. Give me a counter argument and I can work with you. My theory is you have to be able to get quick outs to get into the eighth regularly. If you strike everybody out, you're going to average around 15 pitches in inning. That's seven innings, assuming no hits and no walks. Best case scenario, you go seven, with today's pitch counts. The best pitchers pitch to contact and can strike people out when they need to. Verlander comes to mind. He throws sinkers in the low 90s early in the game. When he gets into trouble, he breaks out the high 90s four seamer and the curve. That's why he leads the league in innings every year. He primarily pitches to contact and only tries to strike people out when he gets guys on base. Then again, Verlander is a rare bird. Teams are lucky to have one such pitcher on their staff. Most staffs have a lot of middling pitchers. If you have those guys, what do you emphasize? I would emphasize getting quick outs if they can. It saves the bullpen and gives you a better chance to win.

He re-injured it towards the end of the game, on a cut in the field. He's played in two games as a regular and both times he was really hurting afterwards. This time, he could barely walk off the field. I'm not a doctor, but I had a similar injury that lingered. After three months, we went back for X-Rays and it showed there had been microfractures all along, they just didn't show up on the X-Rays at first because of all the swelling. I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing is happening here. Reportedly, he's walking in a boot today. The crap in question is the medical staff letting a player talk them into hanging around on the bench while thinning the bench in the process. He should have been disabled to start the year. We've had a short bench because of it for the whole year. I don't blame Mastro; This was his first chance to start the year with the big club and he wasn't going to let a little bone bruise get in the way. But the player should not have any say in the matter. The medical staff should say he needs to go on the DL, not let something like this linger for three weeks before disabling him.

LEN III posted something recently, saying he was surprised that Correia has been able to get through 7 innings a start considering he is not a strikeout pitcher. This reflects a misconception: Strikeout guys struggle to complete more than six innings because Ks require more pitches than the quick outs a sinkerballer can get, when he's on his game. This points up the reason the Twins prefer contact pitchers. In a word, innings. The two biggest strikeout pitchers in Twins history--Blyleven and Santana--tended to hit 100 pitches after six innings. Bert pitched before pitch counts and was an absolute horse. But Santana lived within pitch counts, and only rarely pitched into the eighth inning. Six innings was common for him. And he is exceptional in his own right. His combination of high Ks and low walks is almost unheard of in the game. Guys who have strikeout stuff but don't have Santana's control struggle to get through five innings, especially when they are developing. Because everyone wants strikeout pitchers, they are really expensive. Strikeouts are like home runs, they're expensive. So you can only really afford to have K pitchers when they are developing. Getting more than five innings out of a developing K pitcher is rare. If you have more than a couple of guys in your rotation who only give you five innings on a regular basis, and then you have a short start every other time through the rotation or so, you need 13 pitchers. That is a huge cost for the love of strikeouts. The Twins prefer to have guys who get quick outs and have a chance to get you into the eighth inning regularly. Then you bring in the strikeout guys to shut the door. Good contact pitchers are also rare, which is why we end up with the likes of Blackburn and Correia. But it makes sense to me to develop better contact pitchers. Not to abandon the philosophy of contact pitchers. I hope Gibson is the kind of contact pitcher we need. We could have the luxury of a strikeout pitcher with good control in Meyer for a while. And if he turns out to be that guy, we should find a way to keep him long term. May looks more like the prototypical strikeout pitcher, one who will pitch five innings with six Ks and four BBs.

Angel Morales

It's a wash talent-wise, but not in terms of control. Barring injury, Meyer will be in the Twins rotation from 2014 through 2019. Span's contract runs through 2016.

Nothing in his numbers showed improvement. Many of his numbers were regressing. In particular, his numbers the second and third time through the order continued to deteriorate as more major league hitters figured out that the only time he threw a breaking ball for a strike it was a hanger. That was why most bloggers I read thought he'd be a better fit in the bullpen. He dominated the first time through. After that, it got worse and worse as guys timed his fastball. You can go back and look at the numbers. They ain't pretty.

It was one of the best catches I've seen. Full sprint back, leaving his feet to catch it over his shoulder and landing on his belly on the warning track. It reminds me of a catch Jacque Jones made in 2002. Revere plays so shallow, he needs to make catches like that to get to liners. A lot of center fielders don't have to dive for that ball. But most center fielders don't steal as many singles as he does.

Kwak, I was looking at Gameday while watching TV. Gameday uses a Pitch F/X like system to determine location. You have to go over to the other thread. It's amazing.

Now this is what I call revisionist history. I don't ever remember comps to Halladay, outside of his mother and a few bloggers who had a bromance going with his minor league numbers (ahem, Seth). Kevin Slowey had a decent fastball and very good control. What Halladay has and Slowey never has had is a major league second or third pitch. Maybe he finally learned how to throw a change-up. Maybe he has a better breaking ball now. Maybe he learned a cutter. But he hadn't learned any of that stuff consistently when he was with the Twins, which is why he could never consistently get out of the sixth inning. Comparing him to Halladay is just laughable. It is like Aaron Gleeman comparing him to Johan Santana. But Halladay is a future HOF pitcher. Santana is maybe a Twins HOF pitcher. It's still utterly ridiculous to compare a fifth starter (at best) with a Cy Young award winner. But it actually makes more sense than the Halladay comp. As for "blossoming," I don't know what you're talking about. He had one year with an ERA+ over 100 and it was four years prior to his departure. Otherwise, he was consistently below average (in the low 90s). Slowey had two healthy seasons of his five with the Twins in which he pitched around 160 innings. Otherwise, he couldn't break 100. (By comparison, Halladay's career average ERA+ is 133, and his has pitched over 200 innings 8 times in his career).

Hopefully he pitches well enough for your scenario to work, and at least one guy in Rochester pitches well enough to warrant taking his place in the rotation. Pelfrey is probably the first guy to be traded in such a scenario. If both are in that position and there are two arms ready, we really are getting into fantasy land.

If he can have a 4.25 ERA and 200 innings, he'd be worth all $10 mil or so. They could DFA him in the first week of 2014 and they'd still get their money's worth.

I would be cautious to compare him to Ortiz or Hernandez. They are good examples of why not to get too hyped up in April. But the trajectories of those years don't necessitate that Correia will have the same or similar drop off. It just makes it slightly more likely that he will. Put them in the context of every 30-something sinkerballer with his history in the modern age, and you might get a clearer picture. It's still not good, but it's not Ramon Ortiz bad either. Livan is a better comp.

Don't feed the troll.