John Bonnes

Pitch To Contact - at this point, I think we can go with capital letters, don't you? That phrase and philosophy have drawn a fair amount of criticism, a chunk of which is just snark, but some of which at least tries to ground itself in statistical analysis. In a thread started yesterday on Twins Daily, there was a lot of debate on Pitch To Contact, what it means and what we really know about its effects. When Bill James unveiled several new tools for analyzing baseball, the most fundamental ones usually started by analyzing team stats.[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] For instance, by studying teams' wins and losses, he found a correlation with runs scored and runs given up. And by studying team runs scored, he discovered a correlation between getting on base and total bases. From there, it's a short step to assuming that if you get a lot of players who get on base or hit for power, you'll score more runs. But how about teams that don't give up many runs? If we take a look at teams for the last few years, can we see a trend in those that don't give up many runs? And does that trend match or contradict a "Pitch To Contact" philosophy. So let's do a very quick-and-dirty back-of-the-napkin study. I looked at 150 teams, or all the teams from the last five years, ranked them by runs/game (R/G) and then searched the stats that most closely correlate with it. I did this using the "CORREL" function in Excel, which generates a coefficient between 0 and 1. 1 means a perfect correlation. 0 means it is entirely random. The full results are at the bottom, but here is a summary. Those who are critical of the Pitch To Contact philosophy are usually reacting to the reduced emphasis it puts on striking people out. The K/9 correlation to runs per game is .54, one of the lower correlations on the list. That's lower than I would have expected. Clearly, having a staff that strikes out a ton of batters isn't especially important. The defenders of the Pitch To Contact philosophy like to say that it's essentially saying "throw strikes." Presumably, that would imply not walking people, something that the Twins have certainly emphasized. However, the correlation of BB/9 to R/G is about the same: .56. Like strikeouts, not walking players is good, but not great. Combing the two gets us a little closer. SO/BB has a .69 correlation. Close to that correlation is something else the Twins have been especially good at this year: not giving up home runs. HR/9 has a .65 correlation. But the winner, without question, is hits. H/9 has a correlation of .88, crazy high compared to the other traditional stats in the list. That might seem obvious - if you don't give up hits, you shouldn't give up runs. So the question changes....how do you avoid giving up hits? Well, it isn't just "strike people out". In fact, we proved just the opposite - that's fine, but a very small part of the story. So the difference is...defense? Luck? Secret sauce? The truth is we don't know what it is. Sabrmetrics is still remarkably poor at predicting pitching. But we know what it isn't - it isn't as easy as gathering Ks. And whatever philosophy one adopts, its goal better be limiting hits. ~~~ Here is a link to the spreadsheet to check things or play with it yourself: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-8jvp4eyF3CdDBpeFZHLTZtcVk/edit?usp=sharing ~~~ And here are the final numbers.... Stat Correl R/G 1.00 R 1.00 ERA 0.99 ER 0.99 WHIP 0.93 H/9 0.88 H 0.86 ERA+ -0.81 BF 0.80 SO/BB -0.69 L 0.66 W-L% -0.66 W -0.66 HR 0.66 HR/9 0.65 tmSHO -0.65 SO -0.57 BB/9 0.56 SO/9 -0.54 #Pitch 0.54 BB 0.53 SV -0.53 IP -0.51 cgSHO -0.36 GF 0.32 CG -0.32 HBP 0.27 WP 0.27 BK 0.20 PitchAge -0.13 IBB 0.01

Aaron and John's Minnesota Twin podcast moves to KFAN 100.3 FM, but that's not the only change. The Twins relatively positive start also fuels their most optimistic episode, where they talk about Kevin Correia's fantastic start, the bullpen's impact and depth and the struggles some of the younger players in the lineup are facing. Here are: the podcasts the rss feed if you want to subscribe and the podcast on iTunes. [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] Or click below to listen.

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Twins Daily is very excited to welcome Ticket King to our community today. Actually, Ticket King started being a part of our Twins Daily community a couple of weeks ago – you might recall that the owner Mike Nowakowski blogged about meeting Josh Roenicke at the Welcome Home Luncheon. Ticket King also prides itself on being part of the Twin Cities community. Their offices are located in downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul. They like to meet and talk with Minnesota sports fans. (Just stop by the Minneapolis office sometime and ask to Mike to show you around.) Ticket King’s attachment to that community philosophy is deep enough to run upstream of the online ticket boom. Unlike some of the monstrous ticket web sites, Ticket King focuses mostly on the Twin Cities ticket market, whether it be Wild, Vikings, Wolves, Twins or concerts. What’s more, they don’t just “broker” ticket sales. They own a good chunk of their inventory, so you can escape the fees other sites charge by dealing directly with the locally-based Ticket King. The value of community is one we relate to at Twins Daily. So we’re very pleased that Ticket King has agreed to sponsor several site takeovers (like you see today) throughout the Twins 2013 season. They’re also adding some much needed functionality to the site – a 2013 Minnesota Twins schedule. You can also expect some stories from them about the different fan experiences at Target Field. So please join me in welcoming Ticket King to the Twins Daily community. We hope that if you need Twins tickets, you’ll give them a chance to prove to you what they’ve proved to us – that they’re dedicated to providing Twins fans with the best possible experience for their money.

Aaron and John return to 612 Brew and are joined by a couple guests: Parker Hageman of Twins Daily and 612 Brew's head brewer Adam Schill. Together, they recap a ridiculously short week for the Twins, admire Big Papi's speech, wonder from whom will Oswaldo Arcia take playing time, explain why you should subscribe to Minnesota Business magazine, catch up with some top Twins prospects with hot starts, explain what happened after the last podcast, review the Darin Mastroianni injury saga, and summarize Dick Bremer's and Bert Blyleven's discussion on "cybermetrics." [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]Here are: the podcasts the rss feed if you want to subscribe and the podcast on iTunes. Or click below to listen.

Aaron and John's Minnesota Twins podcast visits a bar for sale. Then they talk about Aaron Hicks historic struggles, their move to KFAN, what went right for the Twins this week, conficting explanations for how the Twins ended up with a low-K pitching staff, Oswaldo Arcia's role this week, what makes Aaron curl into the fetal position, misperceptions about the infield, batting practice misfires, charging the mound and #42. Here are: the podcasts the rss feed if you want to subscribe and the podcast on iTunes. [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] Or click below to listen.