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Greg Logan

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  1. Greg Logan
    The other day I was listening to one of my go-to baseball podcasts, Effectively Wild. The hosts interviewed John Bitzer, creator of BaseballTradeValues.com. BTV is designed to simulate trades scenarios and estimate relative value of the players included, and the model incorporates variables like projected performance, prospect rankings, committed salary, inflation, years of control, aging curve, and roster flexibility.
     
    The timing couldn't be better with the trade deadline fast approaching. I spent literal hours on BTV today and came up with some interesting scenarios. The site is quick to note that they won't be 100% accurate and don't factor in things like a specific club's propensity to spend or its roster needs, but even so, it's a great way to double-check your own assumptions about what a player on the Twins or a potential trade partner is worth relative to other trade chips. You could make a case that Royce Lewis should be a bit lower given his early season struggles or Jordan Balazovic should be significantly higher after a strong start, but most of the Twins values feel pretty close.
     
    Below are a few examples of trades BTV gave a thumbs up to as fair for both sides:
     
    Diamondbacks: Robbie Ray
    Twins: Brent Rooker, Nick Gordon, Fernando Romero
     
    Blue Jays: Marcus Stroman, Ken Giles
    Twins: Brusdar Graterol, Nick Gordon, LaMonte Wade Jr.
     
    Mets: Noah Syndergaard
    Twins: Royce Lewis, Lewis Thorpe
     
    Mets: Jacob deGrom
    Twins: Alex Kirilloff, Nick Gordon
     
    Giants: Madison Bumgarner, Will Smith
    Twins: Wander Javier, Lewis Thorpe
     
    Comment with some trades you work out on BTV!
  2. Greg Logan
    “Every artist gets asked the question ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ The honest artist answers ‘I steal them.’” - Austin Kleon
     
    As Twins fans, we tend to look at roster moves through Twins-colored glasses. We know there are approaches to roster construction and talent acquisition outside of the Falvey/Levine mold and we try our best to keep track of them, but it’s difficult and time-consuming to monitor 29 other rosters for ideas the Twins could adopt. Unfortunately opposing players don’t have “amateur free agent” or “trade acquisition” on their jerseys along with their name and number.
     
    The good news, friends, is that your humble author has done the hard work for you. Over the past few weeks I’ve studied the teams that made the 2018 postseason in an effort to better understand to what degree they relied on homegrown talent (i.e. drafted and signed internationally) and external talent (i.e. free agents and trade acquisitions) to reach the postseason. I looked at every player that suited up for these clubs and tracked how they were acquired and how they performed. The results were surprising and fascinating, showing one key area where the Twins have fallen behind - an opportunity they can’t afford to continue to miss if they want to return to the postseason.
     
    Before we dive in, a few notes on methodology:

    All WAR figures are based on FanGraphs’ WAR formula. If you aren’t a fan of WAR, you may want to turn back now, but you’re reading a baseball site on Super Bowl Sunday so my guess is we’re safe.
    The 2019 Twins projections below are FanGraphs’ Depth Chart projections, which are a blend of Steamer’s projection system and playing time estimates by FanGraphs’ staff.
    Several types of averages below help summarize the postseason field as a whole, including median, unweighted average (mean) and weighted average. The weighted average favor the clubs that advanced further into the postseason (crediting 19 games for advancing to the World Series, 12 games for advancing to the league championship series, and so forth). So the Red Sox are weighted more heavily in that average than the A’s, for example.
    The “Small Market Average” is an average of Cleveland, Oakland, Milwaukee and Colorado, meant to represent the postseason clubs more closely aligned with the Twins’ revenues and spending capabilities.

    Okay, let’s get started.
     
    Homegrown Talent
     
    Any conversation around Minnesota’s underwhelming 2018 starts with the struggles of Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano, but readers may be surprised by how competitive the Twins’ homegrown core was relative to those of the postseason clubs, even factoring in Buxton and Sano’s struggles. Let’s take a closer look at the numbers:
     


     
    In fact, players the Twins drafted or signed as amateur international free agents contributed 19.6 wins to the 2018 club, roughly even with the average playoff team. Among the contending clubs, the Red Sox and Rockies led the way with 23.7 and 23.5 wins respectively from their homegrown talent, while the Brewers managed to lead the National League in wins despite only 3.6 wins’ worth of production from players they’d drafted or signed internationally.
     
    Fangraphs projects the Twins’ drafted and international signings to continue to produce at or above the level of a postseason team in 2019, but 2018 showed us that this won’t be enough to take the club to October. So if the Twins maintained pace with baseball’s best in homegrown production and still fell short, where did the eventual postseason clubs pull away?
     
    Free Agency
     
    The state of free agency has been a hot topic this offseason, and it’s no secret to Twins fans that the free agent market wasn’t kind to their club in 2018. Logan Morrison, Lance Lynn and Addison Reed fall flat, and key free agent investments from previous offseasons Ervin Santana and Jason Castro were non-factors. Let’s take a look at free agent production as compared to the 2018 playoff teams:
     




     
    While the Twins got a mere 1.3 wins from players acquired via free agency, playoff teams enjoyed an average of nearly 8 wins apiece. There were outliers even within one division, with the Dodgers needing nearly 14 wins from former free agents to squeak into the postseason while the Rockies needed less than 2 free agent wins to do the same. The NL West race also demonstrates a split in strategy between larger- and smaller-market teams, with the smaller predictably relying less on free agents than their larger-market counterparts.
     
    If Twins fans are looking for some good news, it’s unlikely their luck will be nearly as poor in 2019. FanGraphs has rosy projections for former free agents Nelson Cruz, Michael Pineda and Jonathan Schoop, but a return to the postseason will likely hinge on every ounce of the 13.5 wins FanGraphs projects the Twins getting from players acquired in free agency.
     
    But here’s where things get interesting, because if the homegrown core still looks promising and the free agent acquisitions appear poised for fairly strong production, there’s only one player acquisition strategy left that jumps off the page as a missed opportunity for the Twins, and if you took a close look at the charts above you may be way ahead of me.
     
    The Trade Market
     
    While last year’s playoff teams may have had a step up on the Twins in free agency, they absolutely torched the Twins when it came to finding surplus value in the trade market. Let’s take another look at the breakdown of external production:
     




    Outside of the trade for Jake Odorizzi, the Twins have been largely absent from the trade market, and it shows when you compare them to the best teams in baseball. Excluding midseason trades, which we’ll omit due to the Twins having very different goals in those trades than the other teams on this list, trade acquisitions contributed only 6.1 wins to the Twins in 2018, and those were largely concentrated between Odorizzi and erstwhile fan favorite Eduardo Escobar.
     
    By comparison, 2018’s postseason teams averaged a whopping 17.9 wins from players acquired via trade, again excluding midseason trades. That’s nearly 40% of their production coming from such trades, and the number balloons to nearly 50% when you look at just the smaller market clubs. The A’s and the Indians have written the book on building a small market contender by acing the trade market, with the A’s acquiring over half their 2018 production and the Indians acquiring four of five pieces of a dynamic rotation (all of whom were worth 4 or more WAR) via trade.
     
    If there’s one lesson to take from this review of the 2018 postseason field, it’s that effectively leveraging the trade market is critical to building a postseason contender, and the Twins have not kept pace with their competition. Twins fans have seen what can happen when trades go wrong, but we also saw in 2018 the effect that conservative trade activity can have on a club that has eyes on the postseason. Is it time to get out there and make some aggressive moves?
  3. Greg Logan
    The Twins offense has been right around average so far in 2018, ranking 7th in the AL in runs scored per game and 9th in wRC+. It’s early, but if we assume that Logan Morrison, Robbie Grossman and Byron Buxton (once healthy) improve as the season progresses, and even if Max Kepler can’t maintain a 1.000 OPS and Ryan LaMarre isn’t the greatest hitter of our (or any) generation, the Twins offense should eventually settle closer to the top-5 offense they displayed in 2017.
     
    But in order to do so, they’ll need to address one potential weakness. Let’s consider the Opening Day lineup, the Twins' most frequently used to date, and their career OPS against left-handed pitching:
     
    Dozier - .889
    Mauer - .742
    Sano - .898
    Rosario - .697
    Morrison - .694
    Escobar - .736
    Kepler - .542
    Buxton - .697
    Castro - .564
     
    Dozier and Sano both crush left-handed pitching, but among Twins Opening Day starters they represent the only two career marks above .745 (last year’s MLB average against LHP). It begs the question: are the Twins vulnerable to left-handed pitching?
     
    It’s a question Paul Molitor luckily hasn’t had to address with much frequency to start the season. Fewer than 17% of the Twins’ plate appearances have been against left-handed pitching so far, the second lowest rate in baseball. But the southpaws won’t be held at bay for long, and if Saturday’s lineup is any indication, Molitor is already exploring ways to mitigate the issue.
     
    With Rays left-hander Blake Snell on the mound, Molitor opted to bat Robbie Grossman fourth despite a horrendous .077/.143/.115 start to the season. It was a bold move to be sure, and Molitor deserves credit for looking past early-season struggles and even medium-term platoon splits to acknowledge Grossman’s longer-term track record of hitting left-handers.
     
    Across his career, Grossman owns a .750 OPS vs. LHP across 500 plate appearances. That OPS number places him behind only Dozier and Sano among Twins hitters, even after it declined a bit in 2017 with Grossman actually hitting better against right-handers. A single year’s sample of platoon splits is rarely as reliable as multiple years, and it’s encouraging to see Molitor making decisions based on the larger sample.
     
    It’s anyone’s guess how long it might take for Grossman to return to his usual production, but multiple seasons' worth of above-average hitting against left-handed pitching can’t be ignored, and we shouldn't be surprised if we continue to see Robbie Grossman's name penciled into the middle of the order against opposing left-handers.
  4. Greg Logan
    As we near the two week mark before pitchers and catchers report in Fort Myers, we're starting to see signs that this painfully frigid free agent market may be finally thawing. The Brewers staked their claim on a crowded NL Central with two big outfield acquisitions last week, and rumors abound that Yu Darvish is closing in on a decision that might open the free agent starter floodgates.
     
    While we wait to hear whether Darvish picks the Twins or sends the front office scrambling for Plan B, let's take a look at how the top four free agent starters – Darvish, Jake Arrieta, Lance Lynn and Alex Cobb – stack up against the existing Twins rotation candidates by the numbers. Today we'll start with rate stats, and I'll follow up with a "Part II" that takes a deeper look at the major WAR and projection models.
     

     


     
    I imagine every Twins Daily reader is familiar with the drawbacks of both ERA and FIP. ERA holds the pitcher completely responsible for every ball in play, ignoring defense, ballpark factors and dumb luck. FIP clears the pitcher of any responsibility on balls in play that don't leave the ballpark, ignoring quality of contact on those balls in play.
     
    Enter this author's new favorite pitching stat: Statcast's new xwOBA metric. You can find a detailed description at the previous link, but you could say that xwOBA takes FIP to the next level: maintaining the pitcher's responsibility for strikeouts and walks while also giving pitchers due credit (or penalty) for their quality of contact beyond just home runs.
     
    Ervin Santana is a great case study here. Erv's 2017 ERA was stellar, but his FIP suggests that it was helped out quite a bit by some combination of defense, ballpark factors and luck. xwOBA helps us cut through the noise here by showing that Santana's overall production (.292 vs. .320 lg avg) was more in line with his ERA (3.28 vs 4.49) than his FIP (roughly lg avg).
     
    Yu Darvish's numbers, especially in the second half, tell a similar story. xwOBA suggests that he was far and away the best of the available free agent starters in spite of his inflated ERA, and that his second half was terrific despite some of the traditional results suggesting he faded. Perhaps this, and his strong early starts in the playoffs, suggest that his World Series collapse was in fact the result of pitch tipping rather than an overall fade in production.
     
    Arrieta's second half may be even more interesting. His ERA drops substantially in the second half, and while his FIP suggests that it may have been more luck than production, his xwOBA reinforces that he was indeed generating significantly better quality of contact to go with his continued strong strikeout and control rates.
     
    With Lance Lynn and Alex Cobb we can say with some certainty that either would have slotted well ahead of any Twins pitchers not named Santana or Berrios in 2017, but let's take a closer look at the numbers. Nick recently applauded Lynn on Twitter for his consistency and the numbers back him up here, particularly looking at xwOBA which suggests that an inflated 2017 FIP may not be that concerning. With Cobb, many have pointed to his hot second half as a positive, but his FIP remained essentially the same and his xwOBA actually regressed in the second half, suggesting his second half surge may have had a fair amount of luck attached to it.
     
    What else jumps out at you in these numbers? Mejia's second half? May's strong 2015 xwOBA as a starter?
  5. Greg Logan
    It’s been another painfully quiet week for the free agent market, with Yu Darvish at the center of another series of rumors. Last week I wrote about how the top free agent options stack up by various rate stats, and it was clear by those metrics that Darvish stands well above the rest of the free agent pack – and well ahead of any of the pitchers currently slotted into the Twins rotation. But just how much might one of the “Big Four” impact the Twins’ projections for 2018? That is where we’ll turn our attention for Part II of “By The Numbers.”
     
    To start, let’s look at where the Twins currently stand by the one major projection system that’s been fully public so far. On Fangraphs you’ll find an early look at their projected standings for 2018 based on the Steamers projection system. Fangraphs writers have cautioned that their projected standings will be updated sometime in March to incorporate ZiPS, so expect these estimates to change, but Steamer currently projects the Twins to finish at 80-82, or 12 games behind Cleveland in the AL Central and 9 games behind the Yankees and Angels, who are projected about even for both wild cards.
     
    Even if an AL Central teeming with 90-loss teams gifts the Twins a few extra wins in the Wild Card race, Steamer seems to think the Twins have a ways yet to go to catch up with the Yankees and Angels after their aggressive offseasons. So how did the free agents stack up with the Twins’ candidates in 2017, and what do the major projections systems expect from them in 2018?
     
    Let’s take a look:
     

     

    *As mentioned above, Fangraphs hasn’t yet released their formal “Depth Chart” projections, which aggregate ZiPS and Steamer and prorate for the Fangraphs staff’s playing time projections, so I’ve calculated the Depth Chart projections manually based on Fangraphs’ methodology and the ZiPS projections that have been released so far. Jake Arrieta’s ZiPS projections have not been released, so his Depth Chart projection is based only on Steamer.
     
    Unsurprisingly Steamer and ZiPS both project Yu Darvish to lead the pack in 2018, but what is a bit surprising is by how much the projections see him outperforming the rest the field. If you look at the aggregated rankings, he is projected to outperform Jake Arrieta and Jose Berrios (ranked 2 and 3 above) by more than a win and to outperform every other free agent starters by at least 2 wins. Maybe more surprising is that the aggregated projections do not project Lance Lynn or Alex Cobb as clear improvements over Kyle Gibson as the 3rd starter and or even anything more than a slight improvement over Adalberto Mejia as the 4th starter.
     
    Of course, the Twins will eventually need a 5th starter, and signing Jaime Garcia or even Chris Tillman could likely help avoid a replacement-level solution (see: Phil Hughes) every fifth day until top pitching prospects Stephen Gonsalves and Fernando Romero prove they’re ready for the show.
     
    Do these projections change your opinions of any of the free agent starters? Who would you have the Twins sign?
  6. Greg Logan
    One of the luxuries of being nine games over .500 at the All-Star break is the chance to take a closer look at some of the often-ignored corners of the roster for upgrades. Building a bench that can make a difference late in a ballgame is tough, and in fact most teams in baseball have struggled to do so in recent years, but no team has struggled to quite the extent that the Twins have. Let’s start by taking a look at how American League pinch-hitters have fared over the last five years:
    2011: .216/.299/.321, .620 OPS, 73 wRC+
    2012: .207/.290/.339, .628 OPS, 74 wRC+
    2013: .208/.300/.343, .643 OPS, 79 wRC+
    2014: .221/.303/.329, .633 OPS, 82 wRC+
    2015: .215/.289/.342, .631 OPS, 80 wRC+

    Clearly fielding strong pinch-hitting options has been a struggle for AL clubs, with pinch-hitters statistically performing 18-27% worse than a league-average hitter according to wRC+, a statistic that attempts to measure such things. By comparison, here’s how the Twins have performed in pinch-hitting situations during the same timeframe (390 PA):
    BA: .178 (last in AL by 19 points)
    OBP: .250 (last in AL by 26 points)
    SLG: .247 (last in AL by 65 points)
    OPS: .497 (last in AL by 100 points)
    38 wRC+ (last in AL by 27 points)

    Not only have the Twins been the worst pinch-hitting team in the AL over this stretch, based on the gaps above it hasn’t been particularly close. Judging by wRC+ they’ve been nearly 30% worse than anyone else. And to add insult to injury, in their 35 pinch-hitting opportunities so far in 2015 they’ve been even worse:
    .086/.158/.114
    .272 OPS
    -23 wRC+

    That’s impressively bad, and while it certainly won’t continue across a full season’s sample size (unless you’re the 2006 Orioles, apparently), the consistently poor performance across five years is concerning.
     
    As the July 31st non-waiver trade deadline approaches, it will be interesting to see if a bench bat is a target for the Twins front office or whether they feel they have enough talent in the wings with players like Oswaldo Arcia, Kennys Vargas or even a promising bat like Max Kepler.
     
    If it’s the latter, is the team ready to table everyday development for young players in favor of bench production? It could be a fascinating storyline as we approach the deadline.
  7. Greg Logan
    “Each year, the Twins have a group of players who are under team control but have accumulated enough major-league service time to be arbitration eligible. This means that the player and his agent have a say in the matter of compensation. Both the club and player submit figures that they believe will be fair, and then the two sides typically reach a compromise in the middle. In extremely rare cases where an agreement can’t be reached, an arbitrator hears the case and selects the figure offered by either the player or the team. [Arbitration eligibility] means that the player and his agent have a say in the matter of compensation. Both the club and player submit figures that they believe will be fair, and then the two sides typically reach a compromise in the middle. In extremely rare cases where an agreement can’t be reached, an arbitrator hears the case and selects the figure offered by either the player or the team.” - Nick Nelson, Twins Daily 2015 Offseason Handbook
     
    This brief explanation from Nick Nelson’s arbitration segment in the Offseason Handbook paints a good picture of one of the first stages of the offseason for the Twins, and one that could have a bigger impact on the rest of the Twins’ decisions than most fans realize.
     
    Step 1: Committed Payroll
     
    To set the stage on how arbitration figures and non-tender decisions might impact the payroll and offseason moves, let’s look at a a very conservative (and very unlikely) projection of a 2015 roster, based solely around current team control:
     
    C – Suzuki - $6M
    1B – Mauer - $23M
    2B – Dozier - $0.5M
    SS – Escobar - $0.5M
    3B – Plouffe - Arb
    LF – Schafer - Arb
    CF – Santana - $0.5M
    RF – Arcia – $0.5M
    DH – Vargas - $0.5M
     
    B – Pinto - $0.5M
    B – Hicks - $0.5M
    B – Nunez - Arb
    B – Parmelee/TBD - $0.5M
     
    SP – Hughes - $8M
    SP – Nolasco - $12M
    SP – Gibson - $0.5M
    SP – Milone - Arb
    SP – May - $0.5M
     
    CL – Perkins - $4.7M
    SU – Fien - Arb
    LHP – Duensing - Arb
    RHP – Thielbar - $0.5M
    RHP – Tonkin/Pressly - $0.5M
    RHP – Swarzak - Arb
    RHP – Pelfrey - $5.5M
     
    There's a lot of room for variation here, but the point of this exercise isn’t necessarily to predict the 25-man roster. In this example, the fixed portion of the payroll (before factoring in arbitration-eligible players) shakes out to roughly $65M, with Plouffe, Schafer, Nunez, Milone, Fien, Duensing and Swarzak rounding out the 25-man roster as arbitration eligible players.
     
    Step 2: Arbitration Projections
     
    Projecting arbitration figures is tough work, and everyone has their own ways of doing it. I’ll illustrate this by comparing the Offseason Handbook’s projections (trying to keep the player-specific arbitration figures a mystery for the authors’ sake) to those of the folks at MLB Trade Rumors. For the Twins Daily staff, the total for the arbitration-eligible players came out to $17.3M, or a total of $82.5M in payroll in the example above. By comparison, MLB Trade Rumors projects these players at a total of only $14.8M, for a total payroll of $80M.
     
    Two things should jump out to you:
    How close both are to the roughly $85M the Twins spent last year, a figure that Terry Ryan has been quoted as saying he “does not see… going down significantly.” If you take Mr. Ryan at his word, Twins fans shouldn’t expect a big investment on a left fielder or a starting pitcher in the unlikely case that all arbitration-eligible players are retained.
    The difference of $2.5M between the two, which displays how much uncertainty is associated with these figures. This $2.5M range could impact the free agent tier the team is able to land if/when they do test the market this offseason. For example, the difference between a $7.5M/year pitcher and a $10M/year pitcher could be significant.

    Step 3: Non-tender Decisions
     
    As mentioned above, it’s highly unlikely the Twins will retain all seven arbitration-eligible players this offseason. Plouffe, Fien and likely Schafer will get their raises, but the remaining non-tender candidates are at risk due to either younger, cheaper alternatives (Duensing, Swarzak and Milone) or a simple lack of production/upside (Nunez).
     
    An aggressive approach to the non-tender process, perhaps involving the latter four, could yield an extra $8-9M in extra payroll flexibility (depending on the projection) that could be applied to free agent offers. In this scenario the Twins would land at between a $73.3M (TD) and $73.1M (MLBTR) in payroll, leaving them with roughly $12M to spend before hitting the $85M mark.
     
    Step 4: The Impact
     
    Putting all of this into context, $12M is decidedly not a lot of money for a team hoping to fill holes in both left field and the rotation. Every little bit counts, however, especially with the competitive disadvantage the Twins struggles give them in signing free agents. An extra $2-3 million from non-tendering a Brian Duensing or a Tommy Milone could push the Twins above a more competitive team for a free agent.
     
    What’s your take? Is Duensing worth the money with no proven alternatives to fill the lefty roll in the bullpen? Is Milone due for a bounceback (hint: outfield defense)? Can Schafer maintain enough productivity to warrant ~$1.5M as a fourth outfielder?
  8. Greg Logan
    As we near the end of yet another September stretch that's given Twins fans little incentive to tune in, our de facto staff ace Phil Hughes is about to give us one big reason to pop in the headphones at work on Wednesday: a genuine shot at history.
     
    As reported by NBC's HardBallTalk on Saturday, Hughes currently sits at the highest single-season K/BB rate in baseball history going into his Wednesday start against the Diamondback. His 11.31 K/BB rate narrowly edges Bret Saberhagen's 1994 rate of 11.00.
    By my math, Hughes needs to accomplish one of two things against the Diamondbacks to take the record:
     
    1. Issue zero walks
    2. Issue a single walk while striking out 7 or more
     
    I should also mention that if Hughes goes 8.1 innings, he hits the 210 IP mark that qualifies him for an extra $500k bonus. I think we can all agree he deserves it.
     
    So skip work if you can, pop in the earbuds if you can't, and cheer hard for strikes (under your breath if you have to). It ain't every day you get a chance to witness history, folks.
  9. Greg Logan
    As reported by Jackson Alexander of MLB.com, Ron Gardenhire was quoted Thursday as stating that "we've got to take some pressure off our starters." While it's clear that the Twins' 28th ranked rotation (dead last in August) could use some help, it seems shortsighted to call out the offense, which despite two quiet nights at the plate has led baseball in most major categories this month.
     
    The Twins' offense has been a force in August, leading baseball in runs scored, batting average, OBP, wOBA and wRC+. Using a relatively consistent lineup for the majority of the month, the Twins seem to have found their identity on offense; and even more promising is the fact that they did it using mainly players that most would consider key pieces of the next Twins playoff team.
     
    Ultimately, fans across Twins territory demand more from a team 15 games out of first and flirting with its fourth straight 90-loss season, and rightfully so. But the question should be asked, why is the manager placing blame on the offense and not on his struggling rotation and a suddenly spotty bullpen?
     
    Most would agree that the rotation is in a difficult position, with Phil Hughes and Kyle Gibson being the only points of reliability. Trevor May hasn't been able to translate the improved command he showed at AAA into major league success, and Tommy Milone has seen an expected dropoff in his early inflated numbers after moving from the A's 17th-ranked defense to the Twins' 26th-ranked squad. Nolasco remains an enigma, as the team needing a few more starts to truly feel out whether he is healthy or whether he may simply be struggling with AL offenses.
     
    The Twins will likely have to ride out the rotation in its current form for the remainder of the season to gauge where it stands going into 2015, but Gardenhire isn't doing the team any favors misrepresenting them as merely needing run support to be successful. Baseball is a game plagued by small sample sizes, and it feels as if the skipper was quick to jump on two games of quiet bats rather than challenge his struggling arms to step up against the division leaders.
  10. Greg Logan
    It's over, folks. Time to throw in the towel. Again.
     
    As we push past the trade deadline into the final 50-ish games of the season, conventional baseball wisdom would suggest that the younger players should be getting the majority of the plate appearances and innings. I say we throw caution to the wind.
     
    Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that we find new homes for the likes of Willingham, Suzuki, Correia, and even Duensing, and let's also assume, as expected, that Twins Daily is given complete control over the roster for the remainder of the season. What's the worst that could happen if we refuse to give another PA or IP to anyone under the age of 30?
     
    A 30-or-younger active roster might come out looking like the one below. Try to look past the fact that I have 31-year-olds Mauer, Perkins and Nolasco in there. The guys have contracts. We might as well be realistic here.
     
    25-Man Roster
    C Josmil Pinto
    1B Joe Mauer
    2B Brian Dozier
    SS Eduardo Escobar
    3B Trevor Plouffe
    OF Aaron Hicks
    CF Byron Buxton
    OF Oswaldo Arcia
    DH Kennys Vargas
     
    C Eric Fryer
    C/OF Chris Herrmann
    SS/OF Danny Santana
    1B/OF Chris Parmelee
     
    SP Phil Hughes
    SP Ricky Nolasco
    SP Kyle Gibson
    SP Alex Meyer
    SP Trevor May
     
    CL Glen Perkins
    SU Casey Fien
    LHP Caleb Thielbar
    RHP Ryan Pressly
    RHP Stephen Pryor
    RHP Michael Tonkin
    LHP Logan Darnell
     
     
    Frankly, I've yet to find anyone who can convince me that this isn't a good idea, or at very least a replacement-level one. I'll admit that you probably keep Buxton in AA, but you gotta put fans in the seats somehow, right?
     
    Fire away. Santana or Hicks in CF instead of Buxton? Eddie Rosario in the mix? Go all-in and throw in Jose Berrios? Go for it. It's your organization. TR and Gardy are just working in it.
  11. Greg Logan
    My first exposure to Danny Santana was a spring game against the Red Sox in March. While I certainly remember his flashy play (1-3 with a 2B, a walk and a SB), it was a costly 5th inning fielding error, leading to a 2-run Red Sox rally that gave the defending champs the game, that stuck with me as a perfect example of the inconsistency of Santana’s young career.
     
    That defensive inconsistency was the reason many assumed Santana’s first call-up in early May would be a short one, but he slammed the door behind him with a blistering pace at the plate. He has now hit at a .340/.382/.447 clip for roughly a month and a half, thanks in a large part to a .423 BABIP. Even his defensive shortcomings have been masked by a shift to center field, where lack of experience on defense has been helped by lowered expectations given the limited options at the position.
     
    Between his tremendous offensive output from the leadoff spot and the injuries to Aaron Hicks and Trevor Plouffe, it seems that Santana has cemented himself in the lineup for the foreseeable future. But for how long can a young man with a career minor league batting line of .274/.318/.393 be expected to perform at this high of a level?
     
    The Bad News:
    As the sabermetricians among us will point out, a .423 sample BABIP won’t last long. A high BABIP will inevitably regress toward the player’s career average BABIP given enough ABs, which for the league average player was .297 in 2013. If Santana maintains the same K%, BB% and batted ball rates, we can expect him to hit at roughly a .287/323/.412 line the rest of the season if he follows league averages for BABIP.
     
    The Good News:
    While we can assume Santana’s BABIP of .423 won’t maintain, it may not normalize to quite as low a level as we’d expect. The above projections assume league average BABIP for ground balls (roughly .241), and players with Santana’s speed tend to have above-average BABIP for grounders. Santana has already shown the ability to outrun routine grounders and even bunts consistently. Hard hitting speedsters like Mike Trout and Andrew McCutchen were able to maintain GB BABIP’s of over .300 in 2013, but a more conservative ground ball BABIP for Santana would be Dozier’s 2013 rate of .277
     
    The Other Good News:
    The guy hits a lot of line drives, and line drives get you hits. Danny Santana leads the team (minus Eric Fryer and his 5 AB’s) in LD% with 29.7%, and line drives yield a league average of a .695/.688/.894 line. While I couldn’t find Santana’s minor league batted ball rates (note: any suggestions for this would be much appreciated), it’s fairly safe to assume this will regress a bit, but it does bode well for his normalized numbers to land above his minor league averages. Santana’s speed will also continue to stretch line drives from singles into doubles and from doubles into triples.
     
    The Bottom Line:
    Trying to project Santana’s numbers as the season progresses, we can make a few reasonable assumptions: A) his BABIP will drop substantially; his ground ball BABIP will be well above league average; and C) his LD%, if maintained, will keep his average decent and yield a good number of extra bases.
     
    If he can maintain his LD% and keeps his GB BABIP up around .275, he would project at around a .300/.335/.417 slash, but splitting the difference between his LD% and the team’s rate of 21.4% would yield closer to .282/.319/.409, which seems more likely given his minor league averages.
     
    With Eduardo Escobar covering third base for the next few weeks, Santana will have to prove that his bat can outperform the inconsistency of his glove. If he can meet these projections, he just may be able to hold his spot on a healthy 25-man roster for the long-term.
  12. Greg Logan
    I’ll start by saying that I’m not an Aaron Hicks lover. I can’t disagree with Rob Antony and Ron Gardenhire’s critique of his preparation, and I’ve always been an unabashed Denard Span guy (note: hugely excited that he ended up in DC, where I live now). But I do think we (the Twins-loving public) have been giving Hicks a raw deal by bashing the year he’s having.
     
    First off, the easy part: let’s look at his OBP. I noticed today that, of the 32 major league center fielders that have 100+ plate appearances, Hicks is actually in the top half with an OBP of .339. That’s well above league average and good for 14th out of those 32. In spite of the batting average that’s been getting all the attention, this is certainly not the Aaron Hicks of last year, who got on base at a .259 rate.
     
    Now, granted, he isn’t hitting for any power, as shown by his almost Revere-ish .073 ISO, but for a guy in the 8 or 9 hole in the lineup, most teams would take an above league-average on-base guy any day, power or not. Speaking of Ben Revere, I should note that both he and (gasp) Denard Span sit well behind Hicks in the OBP rankings, at .287 and .284 respectively. Even if you take a look at wOBA, which factors in power numbers, you still don’t have Hicks as far down the rankings as you might think when looking at his batting average - 23rd out of 32 with a .290 wOBA.
     
    Next, Hicks’ BABIP is substantially lower than any guy with his kind of speed has any business maintaining. If we take a look at his batted ball rates, we see part of the issue. He’s hitting grounders 53.8% of the time (league average 45.6%) and hitting line drives only 16.9% of the time (league average 20.2%). But, even normalizing his batting average based on league average BABIP for those different batted ball rates, he’d be batting closer to the .230 mark than the .198 mark he’s showing now. (Note: I’ll be putting out another entry in the next few days explaining how I calculated this). And that’s assuming he continues grounding the ball so often and lining the ball so rarely, which both seem unlikely.
     
    Also of note, for a guy who’s shown a history some pop, Hicks has a HR/FB rate of only 5.3% (league average 10.1%). This tends to normalize to career average over a full season, so I would assume that a few more of these fly balls will be finding the seats, particularly as the Twins spend more games away from Target Field between now and the All-Star break.
     
    Now, I’m not saying Hicks is the top-of-the-order guy the fanbase wanted him to be when he took the CF job last spring, but I do think if he continues to improve on defense and his offense starts normalizing, he can be the fairly-decent placeholder for the Byron Buxton era that this team needs. A little prep work can go a long way, and if what Gardy and Antony are saying is true, Hicks could see substantial improvement on his K% and overall batting average by putting in a bit more time in the clubhouse.
     
    And, after all, let’s not forget that he’s only 24.
     
    Agree? Disagree? “New Breed Stat Guys” nonsense, as Bob Ryan would say?
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