John Bonnes

Who IS This Guy? Reese McGuire is a left-handed hitting high school catcher that is ready for the majors defensively, but will need several years to develop similar offensive skills. He has been projected to go anywhere in the draft from among the top five to 20th overall. The Minnesota Twins have been linked to him by Jim Callis of Baseball America and are definitely interested. [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] Besides McGuire’s skill set, he is intriguing for another reason: by signing him at a below-slot level value, the Twins could bank that leftover money for more aggressive (and expensive) draft choices later in the draft. Who Could He Be? His floor would be Drew Butera – a poor-hitting but defensively superior backup catcher. McGuire’s “pop” time – the amount of time it takes for him to receive a throw and get it to second base – is already at a major league level. Offensively, he is not nearly as developed but he projects to have some left-handed power (10-15 HR) and in this video Keith Law thinks he can hit .270 or .280 in the majors. Those stats line him up to be something like AJ Pierzynski only with Yadier Molina’s glove. That's a very valuable player. How Soon Could He Be Playing In Target Field? The last first round catcher the Twins drafted moved up in two-and-a-half years – but that was Joe Mauer. Four years is a much more realistic timetable, so he would debut in 2017, when Mauer is 34 years old, and a year before Mauer’s contract expires. If the Twins Draft This Guy, They Messed Up Because... If the Twins draft McGuire they are likely going to be widely criticized, some of which will be fair and some not. The widely held sense is that the Twins need to add pitching, that they are too enamored with defensive catchers and that they are unwilling to spend money. Drafting McGuire would reinforce these perceptions. But beyond the public relations problem this would cause, there are some real concerns. They will have passed on three college-age arms – Braden Shipley, Ryne Stanek and Sean Manaea - each of which could help alleviate a desperate need in the organization. They would also then have passed on a high school pitcher with as much upside as any arm in the draft – Kohl Stewart – and several other high-upside talents. Finally, high school catchers are inherently very risky draft picks. In last night’s Gleeman And The Geek podcast, Jeremy Nygaard listed the high school catchers drafted in the first round since Mauer in 2001. The only one who has made any kind of mark is Neil Walker – and he had to move from catcher. If the Twins Draft This Guy, They Nailed It Because... The Twins are in the unpleasant position of drafting fourth in what is widely considered to be a three-player draft. In any other sport, the wise strategy would be to move down in the draft, but MLB draft picks can’t be traded. However, if they sign McGuire for #7 money instead of someone else for #4 money, they can use the money they saved for “overdrafting” in later rounds, essentially adding two first round picks. For instance, if the Twins draft McGuire and sign him for #7 money, they would have an extra $1.3M to add to their budget for their 2nd round (43rd overall) pick, which is slotted at $1.3M. So they would have $2.6M to offer to the player they chose, who will be the 34th player chosen, which is as much as the 14th overall pick. That’s important in the MLB draft, because players drafted in high school or as juniors in college don’t need to sign. For instance, Manaea’s stock has been dropping as he has dealt with injuries. Once he falls into the second round, he’s unlikely to sign with whoever drafts him and teams know this, so he just keeps dropping. But the Twins could grab him there, offer him close to the money he originally thought he might get and end up with (essentially) two first round picks. Or, if the Twins feel like the value in this draft is in later rounds, they could use similar tactics in rounds three through ten. That’s the best case scenario, but the Twins would be taking a big risk that a player like Manaea falls to them and is willing to sign. This also requires a lot of preparation – you don’t want to draft a player if you’re not SURE he'll sign. MLB Draft Player Profiles: Monday, May 20-- Sean Manaea, SP Tuesday, May 21-- Austin Meadows, OF Wednesday, May 22-- Trey Ball, OF Thursday, May 23-- Ryan Stanek, RHP Friday, May 24—Clint Frazier, OF For MLB Draft Day Coverage, make sure you follow @TwinsDaily on Twitter!

On the best Minnesota Twins podcast, Aaron and John talk about the Twins' free fall, options for the No. 4 pick in the draft with Twins Daily's Jeremy Nygaard, a ton of roster changes including losing Joe Benson, sending down Oswaldo Arcia, not calling up Kyle Gibson, what happened to Justin Morneau's power, Chris Parmelee in center field, leveraging Glen Perkins, a WHOLE lot more about the draft and meeting listeners at the Apple Store. Here are: the podcasts the rss feed if you want to subscribe and the podcast on iTunes. [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] Or, just click on the link below:

Jim Mandalaro of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle tweeted today that PJ Walters told Mandalaro that Walters will be promoted to the Minnesota Twins and start a game this weekend. This solves the mystery of who will be taking Vance Worley's spot in the starting rotation and puts to rest speculation that prospect Kyle Gibson will be making his major league debut in the immediate future. How the Twins will juggle their 25-man and 40-man roster to make space for Walters is still unknown. Walters joined the Twins prior to the 2012 season as a minor league free agent, but was called up in May as the Twins rotation was besieged by injuries. He started the year with four quality starts but faded badly in June and was eventually placed on the disabled list with shoulder soreness. He returned to the majors in September with mostly poor results, ending the year with a 5.69 ERA. He was dropped from the 40-man roster this offseason. The 28-year-old has reestablished himself this year in Rochester. In nine starts, he has posted a 3.31 ERA with 46K in 54.1 IP and 16BB. Maybe most critically, he has given up only 2 home runs, which has been his Achilles Heel in the major leagues. Last year, he gave up 12 home runs in just 61.2 IP. The Twins will need to make room for Walters both on the 25-man roster and on the 40-man roster before his start. Since the Twins shorted themselves a starting pitcher this week, finding room on the 25-man roster will mean demoting a relief pitcher or carrying 13 pitchers and demoting a position player. There are several likely candidates but no obvious choice. In addition, the Twins will need to find room on the 40-man roster. Seth listed seven candidates in a story earlier today. In each case, it's possible that the Twins could lose that player from the organization.

Numbers are so clean. Until they aren’t. Yesterday we studied strikeouts/game and runs/game for teams and found a “correlation coefficient,” which is a number between -1 and 1. 1 means there is a perfect correlation, like the temperature in Fahrenheit and the temperature in Celsius. -1 means there is a perfectly negative correlation, like the amount I spend and my checking account balance. And 0 means there is no correlation, like the amount I spend and the temperature in Celsius. Unfortunately, the number we found was not 1, 0 or -1. It was .54. So what does that mean?[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] It means it is somewhere in between. Our number shows that strikeouts aren’t everything, but it also shows that they’re something. Can we find something comparable? We can if we look at a different set of correlations. The most obvious place to start is in another realm of baseball – hitting. If we do the same exercise – compare the runs per game a team scores to their basic stats for 150 recent teams, what kind of correlations do we see? (The full results are at the bottom. Also, here is a link to the data.) The strongest is what you might expect – OPS, which has a .96(!) correlation. In fact, it is this crazy high correlation that drives the interest in OPS. The stats which make up OPS – OBP and SLG – also have high correlations: .87 and .92, respectively. The most widely used traditional stats for evaluating offense fall a little lower down the list. Batting average is .76. Home runs are .70. I even worked out HR/AB and HR/PA and they ranked a little lower: .67 and .65. We still haven’t found the stats that have a correlation close to the .54 that K/9 has to runs given up by a pitching staff. The stats closest to that level are at-bats, walks and doubles, each of which has a correlation around .60. Converting the last one to a rate statistic, I find that doubles/at-bat has a correlation of .547, which is almost dead on. So we might want to evaluate pitchers by strikeouts about the same way we evaluate batters by doubles. For instance, given a choice between two players, one who hits a lot of doubles, and one who doesn’t, we probably want the guy with the doubles. We also might mention how many doubles a player has as a data point to demonstrate that they have extra power. Doubles are far from a worthless item to track. But here is probably what we wouldn’t do. We wouldn’t say a free agent is worthless because he was one of the worst at his position in doubles. We probably wouldn’t comb through an organization’s minor league affiliates and suggest that their hitting philosophy is messed up because none of their teams are hitting a lot of doubles. And we wouldn’t suggest that a team scoring lots of runs won’t be able to maintain its pace because it ranks dead last in the league in doubles. Yet we do all of that when talking about strikeouts and pitching. The bottom line is that there isn’t a real clean break point here. Strikeouts are important. They might even be the most important stat we can easily evaluate for pitchers, due to a combination of impact and predictability (though we haven’t studied the latter). But it is exceptionally easy to get carried away with strikeouts, and I think most of the sabrmetric community has, including me. It may be time to step back and admit what we don’t know. And acknowledge that clean numbers aren’t always so clean. ~~~ Below is a complete list of the correlations we have found, both for hitting and for pitching. The hitting ones are compared to runs scored per game, while the pitching ones are compared to the runs given up per game. ~~~

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.