Hosken Bombo Disco

On the other hand, last year's World Series participants seem like the type of cookie-cutter teams I was minimizing earlier in my post. So there's that.

This discussion has been music to my ears! lol My defense of Rocco, such as it is, is that Rocco doesn’t look much different to me than a bunch of other managers in the game right now. Same with this front office, I guess. I think we are in a period where fundamentals have been downplayed, in favor of data, and maybe we are exiting that cycle now. I don’t know. This is very anecdotal, but a few times during the last few seasons, I have seen a player on the other team look frankly no better than a typical minor leaguer (still very good I might add) batting and fielding, and think to myself, how is this guy in the majors? And then I check his exit velocities, and they are very high. The Twins have players like this too. Carlos Correa is very good and has very high exit velocity, which maybe played a part in his signing. Luis Arraez, terrible exit velocity. Traded. And we see many teams maybe think they are going to be the real innovators, to use the wonderful example above, but are all really doing the same thing. I don’t know. Maybe that makes them really to be codifiers or exploiters. That old Far Side cartoon comes to mind, of the single penguin among thousands, shouting “I’ve got to be me!” The Twins are one of the penguins who look like all the other penguins to me. I have been waiting for some smart baseball writer out there to publish that seminal essay of our time about Why The Game Has Changed, but have yet to see it. Because in the StatCast era, I really think it has. However, this does not explain the massive collapse at the end of this season, which interests me. The teams we see in both league’s championship series this season (or at least 3 or them) strike me as strong in many or most of the fundamental things teams traditionally have worked for—scouting, development, coaching, culture, yes analytics, taking the right risks, and yes money plays a role. The Dodgers and Yankees are not where they are solely because of their market or payroll, not in my opinion.

Meanwhile, the business office is already making preparations for this year’s TwinsFest:

Not to pick on you specifically… but, as has been noted elsewhere, the Detroit Tigers “traded everyone” at the deadline this year, and it actually supercharged their performance to the point where they made up ten games in the standings on the Twins, made the playoffs, and are now one win away from advancing to the ALCS. (Where they would probably get their butts kicked by NYY, but still) this came as a surprise to everyone, even the manager and young quant guy GM in Detroit who executed the moves to clear the way for the young guys. So, bottom line, we don’t really know what effects trading away Royce Lewis would have. 🙂

Shaping up that way. This has been an incredible postseason so far.

Detroit/KC in ALCS -- who's with me

Now we get ready for the next game; I heard the umpires will be sporting different umpire shirts tonight. Tired of living a lie, they will just openly admit to it

Turns out that he bleeds, and surrenders earned runs, like any other man

Didn’t realize Skubal was getting squeezed…. Following from work I feel like both teams deserve to win this game.

You got it

Skubal retired the first 13 Cleveland hitters, then got a needed dp ball in the 5th

Correa for Baez, straight up, and the Twins save $9 million a year for the next three years that they can apply to other free agents 🙂 (but also lose a gold glove fielder)

Falvey sounds like a guy unburdened by what has been, and what can be 🙂

When removing the Viking losses, Vikings opponents so far have a record of 13-7. What they said about the difficult early schedule appears to be true.

does the phrase “no walks” mean anything to you

I am mostly neutral on the quantitative & hard data side of analytics. I trust that teams are finding data that helps them. My guess is that front offices have instructed analytics people to seek exit velocity (EV) and see that as their holy grail, with everything that goes into achieving a high EV and the benefits that come from putting a ball in play with high EV. I am also observing costs and downsides of chasing EV. I just see a lot of teams that all kind of look like each other (to me) in MLB today. Kind of like all those cookie cutter stadiums built in the 50s and 60s. The same, but different—but basically the same. Another guess with my EV theory is that teams mostly know what the other teams are doing. “That team is going for EV, and so are we.” Different from Oakland 20 years ago and Oakland’s search for on base percentage (OBP), when other teams didn’t really pay heed to it. The irony Oakland and the Moneyball story is that Michael Lewis didn’t really write much about the Oakland pitching staff in those years, which was very good. The story was mostly about the OBP. With my theory about teams prioritizing EV, I also concede that I am likely to be wrong or only seeing a small part of the picture. With all that said, I am more interested in the qualitative softer side of analytics, questions like “how did the Detroit Tigers sustain that hot streak in the end?” or “can pitch framing be coached” or “why is Jhoan Duran so poor in non-save situations” or “did Royce Lewis’s slump coincide with the Twins asking him to play second base?” or “why did all the Twins infielders except for Carlos Correa all go into a slump at the same time?” And so on, Are these valid questions for an analytics department today? Is today’s analytics asking them?

Wow momentum can swing in this sport. Last week when it was 21-0 (and then jt actually became 28-0) I thought to myself, are we at the high point of the season right now? Does it only go down from here? So that’s what I am thinking right now too, because I am a lifelong Vikings fan 🙂

It was meant as a joke, nothing more. Riverbrian saw what I was going for. Not even a put down or snide remark, just an opportunity to be silly for a moment. Honest.

Another great post rb. I like your point about what a pitcher can do to confound the best laid plans of analytics. Think about how many runners Pablo Lopez (or say Jose Berrios) can leave on base. “They shouldn’t be as good as they are! How are they so lucky?” It is just an instinct for pitching there, for how to get a batter out when needed, for what pitch to throw in any given situation. Or how & where to throw a given pitch that the catcher calls, or is called by the dugout. Especially getting batters out like Wallner, Larnach or Julien (sorry if any of those three are anyone’s favorite.) My gut tells me this is part of why offense is down; enough pitchers who know how to pitch on a gut level. Greg Maddux was the best. Bailey Ober has this skill too. If Paul Skenes has this instinct, combined with his physical talent and stuff, he will be this generation’s Clayton Kershaw or Pedro Martinez. “gut” can’t be measured of course; but neither can “hotness” (talking about the 2024 Detroit Tigers, not Ryan Gosling 🙂) Pure baseball talent will be cool again someday. Lots still to talk about. We are not done with this subject.

ignore the spreadsheet?

Have a game, Kirko.

100% correct.

I appreciate the find. However, it’s from May 2017, and I don’t think it says what you claim it says. Levine said he came from a risk-taking organization (Texas) and he said he attempts to balance decision making, depending on the situation. Levine does not come out and say “I’m the risk taker here” or anything like that.

Good luck to Levine. I liked his interviews. There was no way Levine was the final sign-off for the bigger decisions, like the Pablo-Arraez trade (fair to say is working out well), the Donaldson signing (heh) or the Correa signing $200 million with $33 million a year locked up. So, not sure Levine leaving really moves the needle.

Another thing the Padres are doing is turning over their managers every couple years.