Teflon

Credit Tsuyoshi Nishioka for making Delmon Young's Twins' tenure look better in retrospect. If only Nick Blackburn had some Japanese sense of honor, too.

The two closest historical comparisons I can find for pitchers in Deduno's age range and comparable ratio of hits, walks, and Ks per 9 innings are the 29 year-old Steve Barber of 1967 and the 25 year-old Bo Belinsky of 1962. Barber went 24-28 over the remainder of his career (6 years) while Belinsky was 18-40. (7 years) I look for Deduno to be more of a Bo Belinsky. (Without the interesting Mamie Van Doren press sightings, unfortunately) http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/images/2008/08/19/bo_belinsky_1963_0406_crop.jpg

The Twins of 1984 would be an example of a year in which this happened. Ken Schrom - who had been the 1983 Twins' version of Scott Diamond -compiled the only winning record among the starting rotation in 1983 at 15-8. The staff ERA was 4.66 and the team won 70 games. In the off-season, the Twins sent outfielder Gary Ward to the Rangers for starting pitchers Mike Smithson (10-14) and John Butcher. (6-6). Smithson and Butcher joined Schrom and Frank Viola (7-15) at the top of the rotation. While Schrom disappointed (5-11), Smithson and Butcher combined for 28 wins with ERA's in the mid 3's and Viola emerged from a horrific 1983 to become one of the league's top lefties in 84 with 18 victories. The Twins ERA dropped to 3.85 and the team improved to 81 wins. So who on 2012 Twins has a comparable trade value as a Gary Ward in 1983?

Top 5 Reasons Anthony Slama has not been called up: 1.) Mistakenly put in witness protection after witnessing "twin-killing" at second base. 2.) Dyslexic Front Office keeps trying to call up Anthony Salma. 3.) Porn mustache freaks out everyone but Pavano. 4.) Twins waiting for challenged fans in left field to figure out how to update the "K" signs first. 5.) Lack of ability to pitch to contact.

You can view the page at http://www.twinsdaily.com/content.php?1011-When-Does-the-Honeymoon-End-at-Target-Field

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2259[/ATTACH] My Twins season ticket renewal package arrived today in the mail. As per usual it's a beautiful and oversized PR masterpiece "dedicated to the greatness of our season ticket holders." In an attempt to come up with a theme to convince us to once again fill the seats at Target Field, the Twins are appealing to our loyalty for 2013. "There will be ups," the packet says. "There will be downs... Yet at the end of the day, the uniform remains." Many of us will be considering in the next few weeks whether this rather major investment is one we want to make again in 2013. The Twins are banking on us (literally) to choose to re-up, but indications are that a pair of sub-70 win seasons have quickly cooled our infatuations. But to what extent? In looking back at the history of the enormous wave of baseball-only ballpark construction that began with new Comiskey Park in 1991 and beautiful Camden Yards in Baltimore the next year, the question is just how quickly the novelty wears off of these new ballparks and when we might start seeing attendance levels more directly tied to the on-field product. To answer this, I looked at the average attendance per game in the first season that each new park was open and used this as a baseline to index the subsequent attendances for the next 10 years of each park. If a team drew 40,000 per game the first year and 32,000 the next year, for example, that would be an index of 80. Excluding Target Field, the average attendance index for all new ballparks opened since 1991 (20 total) goes in this sequence: 1st year - 100 (obviously), then 91, 87, 87, 88, 86, 85, 87, 81, 75. Since this includes teams that have both played well initially in their new parks like Cleveland and Atlanta as well as those that played poorly like Pittsburgh and Detroit, the effects of wins and losses are somewhat countered. I think it's safe to say that about 10-15 percent of the fan base at a new stadium will erode in the first couple of years unless the team plays great. We've seen that pattern repeated at Target Field as the Twins index based on per-game attendance has been 100 in 2010, 98 last year and 88 in the games played this year. Looking ahead, I tried to identify the teams and ballparks opened previously that had the best similarities in their first three year attendance trends to the Twins and came up with Atlanta, Cincinnati, Houston, and San Diego as the most similar. While they all played slightly better baseball than the Twins, they seemed to be consisitent enough from year-to-year in wins and losses that I trust their attendances to be indicative of their fans' levels of interest as the ballpark stops being a novelty. Their trends tended to mirror the overall average for the first 4 or five years, but then dipped farther below the rest around year 6. I look for the Twins to be more like this group. 2013 and 2014 should continue to see crowds of 80% to 85% of capacity eventually dropping and leveling out another 5% to 10% lower, assuming the Twins don't do something crazy like winning 100 games. The attendance indices for the first 10 years of each ballpark along with their number of wins is shown in the chart below. Some data for ballparks that opened in the 90s is affected by the strike of 94 and 95. I noted these figures in red. [ATTACH=CONFIG]2260[/ATTACH]

A pitcher who puts a larger proportion of his baserunners on via walks compared to hits should strand a higher percentage than pitchers who's ratio is more skewed to hits since walks only advance runners a base at a time. I made this observation in another post and was skoffed at. Explain to me the fault in this logic.

I thought "Tommy John for Lester Oliveros" was a roster move the Twins were considering. With Roger Clemens pitching again, it didn't seem that far-fetched that Tommy John would be considering a comeback, too.

111 runs is actually an improvement from last year - providing we don't double that in the last month of the season. You have to credit Willingham's arrival plus the semi return-to-form of Mauer and Morneau to have bettered the run discrepancy outlook.

I would make a waiver claim just to be a pest.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2106[/ATTACH] More Chunder from Down Under

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2107[/ATTACH] An athletic Athletic keys a Twin twin-killing.

By 2014 we probably also would have gotten him to convert those bombs he hits into opposite-field doinks, instead.

Blackburn's and Nishioka's bad performances are significantly more chronic than just a "rough spell at your job" to use your analogy. To put it in more accurate terms of those real world jobs, If the Twins were Allstate Insurance, Blackburn would be the salesman with the lowest sales totals for the last two years - not in the company - but in the entire insurance industry. If Nishioka waited tables at Applebees's he would try to hit on your wife, mess up your dinner order and then spill your tray of dishes on the way out from the kitchen. Employers don't hesitate to dismiss those kinds of employees rather quickly. The main thing keeping the Twins from acting sooner was the financial obligation to both.

Nice piece Cody.

This would only be true if you were leaving BAPIP out of the equation as well as GB rate and HR/FB rate. Going forward you would expect Harang's BAPIP to climb some and for him to give up a similar number of HR's as Haren. Irrelevant. My only point is that a walk is a better outcome than a hit. Deduno's walks hurt less than if they were hits.

On July 28th, Matt Hauser was promoted from Single A Fort Myers, where he had compiled a 4-2 record with a 2.88 ERA in 31 games (including 6 starts) to AA New Britain. Howser has since appeared in 7 games for the Rock Cats - all in relief - pitching 11 innings, allowing 11 hits, striking out 7 and walking 4. He has no wins, no losses, a 2.45 ERA at New Britain and has picked up one save. (as the 5th pitcher used in a 8-6 win over the Altoona Curve on August 4th) Hauser was also called up to New Britain last year, but only pitched in 1 game. Hopefully, this latest promotion indicates that the Twins organization is ready to permanently advance the capable 24-year-old righty beyond A ball after spending the bulk of two years with the Miracle.

Can you give some examples of "low-hit high-walk" pitchers (let's say a BB/9 above 4.0, but the closer to a 7.0 BB/9 the better) who sustained above-average success by that approach? And would any pitchers on such a list also have a K/9 below 6? I think you would look for pitchers with comparable WHIPs and then compare the percentages of walks of each. My supposition would be that the pitcher with the higher walk total should give up fewer runs, barring a large discrepancy in extra-base hits between the two. For instance, Aaron Harang and Dan Haren have almost identical WHIPs (1.391) in a fairly comparable number of innings (143 - 129) with a similar number of strikeouts (112 - 101) Harang has walked twice as many batters (67) as Haren (33) but has an ERA over a run lower. (3.65 to 4.90) To my mind, Harang would be the better choice between the two BECAUSE he walks more batters. I'm not saying Harang would be better than a pitcher with a lower WHIP - just better than a pitcher with a comparable WHIP and fewer walks.

Deduno has only given up 37 hits in 46 innings whereas most Twins pitchers give up at least a hit per inning. (ahem Nick Blackburn - 143 hits in 98 innings) In most cases a walk surrendered is a better outcome than a hit surrendered in not moving baserunners as far around the diamond and keeping the double play in order - so a low-hit high-walk pitcher should fare better than a high-hit low-walk pitcher if their baserunners to innings pitched are proportional. I'd like to see some kind of stat that measures how many feet of bases both hitting and advancing a pitcher surrenders per inning pitched. For instance, if Blackburn gives up a single and then another single with the runner moving to third, that would be 1 base for the first single, and 3 bases for the second single - for 4 total bases. If Deduno gives up a single and then walks a batter, that would only be 3 total bases. Over the course of a season, they may put the same number of runners on base, but fewer runs would score against Deduno because the runners are not advancing to the same degree. It's sort of like the argument that a Joe Mauer who struck out more with men on base might actually be a good thing based on the number of double plays he grounds into by not striking out.

Shoot, I missed the first 19 parts.

I was never fond of the Ray Miller as manager era - although it's lack of success did hasten the advent of the Tom Kelly as manager era.

Upgrade the Twins scoreboard and other electronic signage to full 3D. (Also introduce the first 3D players uniforms)

Maybe we're really using this trade to evaluate Don Cooper as a pitching coach prospect for next year.