bertrecords

The letter from Jim Pohlad certain sounds like the way Terry Ryan talked. Management of the Twins seems very much like the management of a grocery store or a bank. Policies. Procedures. One example is the DFA of Oswaldo Arcia, and the immediate landing point on the Rays starting lineup. It seemed from my perspective that Oswaldo was not following the rules when he joked after his very first homerun that people could learn Spanish if they wanted to understand him. He was never going to be head cashier with that attitude. He doesn't follow our policies and procedures. Let him work elsewhere. Another example is the laughable announcement that Eduardo Nunez was the Twins all-star. Seems like a nice guy. Had a great BA this year. Can't play SS. Follows policies and procedures. Our kind of guy. A third example is the yanking around of big time prospects like Buxton and Berrios. Judgements seem to be made on very little evidence. If you are going to call up Berrios, then don't yank the job at the first truly bad start. Likewise, a couple weeks batting .380 in AAA is not evidence of much of anything. Don't call up Buxton, if you are just going to send him back down after the next slump. The knowledge that every other team seems to have about what types of statistical baseball performance is meaningful seems to be lost or irrelevant to the Twins. The Twins operate as if the casual fan from 1970 who can relate to BA, HR and RBI is who you need to impress. The Twins fail to understand that even these people are more impressed by W and L. Assuming Jim Pohlad understands that running a baseball team is different from running a grocery store, then we have a chance to improve. It would be nice to have baseball operations that genuinely care about and understand baseball at a level beyond the manager of the grocery store or the bank. But, I am not confident that a knowledge of statistical significance in baseball performance is something that fits tidily into a process or procedure. Maybe, we want Jim to sell the team.

I notice that Pelfrey has his seasonal K rate (8) above his BB rate (7). Definitely an improvement over last year. Apparently, he believes he is accomplishing something. Very disheartening having these stats being touted as serviceable for a SP. That could only happen on a truly terrible team. Could Pelfrey be an above average RP? Maybe the velocity goes up with pitching one inning at a time instead of five innings at a time. (Pelfrey has 51 IP over his last ten starts, so yes, he has been a five inning pitcher.) Does Pelfrey want to continue a career? He should try to stick as a relief pitcher. Or, he could revamp his approach in the minor leagues to see if better results are possible. But, the strikeouts and the walks indicate that what he is doing currently is not major league quality. If he is too stubborn to understand this, Mike Pelfrey will soon find himself to be an ex-major leaguer. Teams that trot out terrible starting pitchers year after year do not sell tickets.