Jham

Mauer again responding to the taunts of the td community!

I jumped up when Escobar homered, popcorn bowl went flying, too lazy to clean it up today, I'm going with.

Ima have to find my broom for tomorrow maybe? Edit: for kepler's sake is a 4 game series?!

Did kepler grab at his left shoulder after that slide? Please no.

Make them pay again Sano!

Rogers backdoor breaking ball seems much more effective to righties than trying to break it toward the back foot.

Wow, warning track power. Let's make some quality pitches!

Unfortunately so is Escobar...

Yeesh... close...

I still like Gibby, but his inconsistency and corner picking is pretty frustrating...

Not your best comparison jimmer. Not Mauer's best attempt either I'm afraid.

That stellar Mauer defense that can't be moved to dh or anywhere else...

Hmmm...less fun.

Respecting the rookie. So Salazar goes to the dl the night after the trade deadline. Ouch.

Goodness... fun to watch.

How did Kepler develop all of this power? Also nice work on the game thread both hosts.

That's why you don't just throw guys in to the League and let them struggle their way through UNLESS you're convinced they can make it (hopefully Buxton). If Meyer was fully exposed as a flawed MLBer, we may still have Nolasco, and no chance to assess Santiago. I think we traded Meyer just in time.

Interesting. It appears his BABIP is fueled by his rather extreme FB tendencies: 47% this year compared to 34% league average. He's also been above average at getting infield fly balls (5% better this year). He's right at average for HR/FB, meaning the difference probably isn't his ability to stay in the ballpark in general. In fact, due to his FB tendencies, we'd expect greater than average HR allowed, a bad combination when combined with high BB's. You would think the walks and HR's would more than compensate for the fact that fly balls turn into outs at the highest rate (Low BABIP). Something other than pop ups and K's are keeping those walks from scoring apparently. New hypothesis: Santiago gives up a disproportionate amount of solo home runs, attacking hitters with no one on base. Santiago then picks when a runner gets on, looking for the pop up or strike out. He's good at getting both. His high pitch counts and short outings indicate picking. Basically, he'd rather walk in a run than give up a grand slam. Which is fine as long as he doesn't walk in a run then give up a grand slam. So you would look at total baserunners/9ip and multiply by HR/9ip, and that would be the expected amount of runs plated HR's. Then compare with the actual number of runs plated by the HR to remove even more luck out of the equation (premise whether a ball is caught or HR is somewhat luck). Then look for trends to see if a pitcher has a skill of avoiding more damaging HR or is more or less lucky. I get most of this would be within expected ranges for normal calculation of FIP, but for situations where you're looking at potential outliers, figuring out where the missing runs have gone (or in Nolasco's case, where extra runs came from) could be a useful tool .

Here's the Angel's forum's reaction: http://www.halosheaven.com/2016/8/1/12348720/breaking-down-the-hector-santiago-trade Interesting takeaways: 1) Halos fans think they won, or at least tied in this trade. 2) Angels fans are more frustrated than Twins fans somehow. 3) They hate Santiago, his walks, and his pitch count. 4) They love Meyer's upside, 1 poster even suggesting that Antony got fleeced and taken advantage of. 5) The Angels have one of the worst ranked farm systems in the game, Busentiz was unranked, and despite their lack of prospect talent, Meyer ranks only 12 in their system. They make a good point about our salary dump. If we arbitrate with Santiago and pay him $8-$10 mil next year, along with $4mil of Nolasco, we didn't really shed any salary at all. They speculate that our intention is to non-tender Santiago after the season. Basically both sides got rid of frustrating players and are snickering waiting for the other to realize their mistake. Sort of funny actually. From a homer standpoint, I think they don't know how well they had it with Hector.

Per the fangraphs xFIP explanation page: http://www.fangraphs.com/library/pitching/xfip/ Most often a pitcher's ability to outperform xFIP exists because they can limit HR. Particularly HR/FB%. Additionally, some pitchers tend to give up solo blasts while cruising with a 3-5 run lead (common for aces) which obviously hurt less than 3 run blasts. Those pitchers would be expected to have low walks. To me, this explained a lot of Trevor May's under-performance last year. He limited walks and HR to a degree he never had before, but still gave up big innings and 3 run HR at a larger than expected rate for his walk and HR totals. Nolasco seems to fall into the big inning trap as well. Anecdotaly, he is pitching somewhat deep into games but is giving up a lot of runs. He may be sacrificing hits for walks which will look darn nice in FIP or xFIP terms, but as the few remaining BA fans out there will tell you, a single produces a much better outcome than a walk. Without reviewing the stats, my hypothesis is that Santiago is really good at limiting HR or giving up solo HR, a skill that Fangraphs acknowledge exists that throws off xFIP. It also appears Santiago walks a lot of guys. But the walks must hurt him at a less than expected rate which could mean he doesn't give in to guys, has a knack of following up with a K, or has above average ability to convert 1 base walks into double plays. Now I need a team of interns to check the stats.

The moves aren't supposed to make us competitors next season. Buxton, Sano, Kepler, and Berrios are.

Except in reverse... Maybe the Twins analytics team is using a projection other teams don't have, or maybe the Angels fell into the same trap the Twins did waiting for Nolasco to "rebound" to his FIP numbers... My favorite part of analytics is figuring out what variables lead some players to break the mold, so to speak. In a modern game where everyone is looking at stats, correctly assessing the outliers is the only way to stay ahead. One question I have regarding FIP and xFIP is how much steadier they are than ERA as a stat from year to year and even throughout the year. Like it's pretty much agreed that it's a better stat than ERA in most cases, but HOW much better?

Milone is relatively cheap, modestly effective, and requires almost no commitment. He's the perfect pitcher for a rebuilding team waiting for someone to replace him. It's not his fault we have 4 other replaceable starters being paid more and for longer.

How Buster Olney analyzes the Nolasco deal: "At its heart, Twins' deal with Angels is essentially Meyer for Busenitz, with Angels getting an additional year w/ Nolasco vs. Santiago." We also pay $4 mil to Angels next year. Busenitz is more than a throw in.

Just in time to block the Twins rebuild from ever making it out of the Wild Card round... (again)