John Bonnes

You can view the page at http://twinsdaily.com/content.php/2688-Gleeman-and-the-Geek-Episode-134-Cribs-Mat-Garza-and-Bathroom-Etiquette

You can view the page at http://twinsdaily.com/content.php/2687-Who-ARE-You-People-!

Re: the concerns With umpires - you would think if the umpires were that important in this study, the results of the correlation would be more random, right? It's not like a catcher's umpires that he happens to catch in front of are consistent from year to year. Re: pitching staffs - I just reran the same study, only this time, I only chose catchers who also changed teams from one year to the next. That would seem to negate the impact of pitchers. It came back with only 46 examples (as opposed to 189 from the previous study) so there is a higher deviation, but the results were still ridiculously strong: .68 for the season and .75 for pitches per game. This is a skill, folks.

You can view the page at http://www.twinsdaily.com/content.php/2685-Catch-Framing-Predictability

[attachment=6871:4039.attach]There has been more and more talk lately about pitch framing, which is the ability for catchers to impact the runs scored in a game by garnering strikes from pitches outside the strike zone. My initial skepticism around it has largely been due to the huge impact it can seem to have. For instance, last year the difference between the best pitch framer (Matt LuCroy) and the worst (John Buck) is estimated at 50 runs. That's a [I]five win [/I]difference. That's hard to believe. But today I wanted to look at a different aspect: its predictability. That is, if a catcher is good at framing in one year, can we reasonably assume he'll be good at it the next year? One way to look at this is to look at all catchers and how they did from year to year. If they do well one year, will the do well the next and vice versa? [I](I wondered this because I was looking up Kurt Suzuki's framing numbers. They're usually been negative, but there have been some positive ones sprinkled in. I wondered how common that is.)[/I] There is a neat little statistical gizmo to do this called a correlation coefficient. A correlation coefficient examines two sets of numbers and gives back a number between -1 and 1. [LIST] [*]1 means there is a perfect correlation, like between the temperature in Celsius and the temperature in Fahrenheit. [*]-1 means there is a perfectly negative correlation, like the amount you spend in a month and your checking balance. [*]And if it's 0, that means the numbers have no correlation, like Joe Mauer's batting average and the migratory penguin population. [/LIST] You can [URL="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Au8jvp4eyF3CdHpmVk50RnAtd20tYk03emNpTFo3bnc&usp=sharing"]find the results of my study here[/URL]. The bottom line: there is a lot of predictability. The runs per season had a correlation of .76, which is high. But the correlation on pitches per game is even higher .82. So catchers who have had a large positive effect end up continuing to do so. Unfortunately, most of the Twins who will play catcher this year didn't have a large positive effect last year. In fact, none of them did: Kurt Suzuki: -9.1 Josmil Pinto: -4.3 Chris Herrmann:-4.6 Eric Fryer: -0.8 I didn't choose that order to emphasize the negative. I chose listed them in my predicted order of innings caught. It's almost as if the worse they are at pitch framing, the more likely they are to play catcher. And this is where John starts rubbing his temples. And yet, that still might be better than last year. Because last year Joe Mauer was average (0.4) and Ryan Doumit was horrendous (-15.9). Still, it appears that new catching corps may not be doing the Twins revamped pitching staff any favors this year. [CENTER]~~~[/CENTER] [I]Since I'm sure you might want to do something like this yourself (and really, why wouldn't you - YEAY MATH), I thought I'd spell out the steps. 1. I pulled all the data I could from [URL="http://statcorner.com/CatcherReport.php"]this great site[/URL] and pasted it into a spreadsheet. It has all the catcher framing data from 2013 through 2007. 2. I added one column to that data: "Prev Yr." You'll see why in a minute. 3. I imported that spreadsheet into an Access DB twice, once as a table called "Following" and another as "Previous". 4. I created a query joining those two tables, joining fields First Name, Last Name and "Prev Yr" from following to "Year" from the Previous field. I pulled the Names, Years, Per Game and RAA fields from each table. 5. Copy and paste the results from the query back into an Excel spreadsheet. 6. Use the "Correl" function to compare the values in the two "Per Game" and two RAA" fields. Ta Da![/I] View full article

I was just commenting in a blog about how early top prospects are send down to the minors. Last year, Gibson was optioned to AAA on 3/14, ending any speculation that he might make the Opening Day roster very early. In some ways, it's a pretty efficient way to handle things: they get some time to hang out with major leaguers, still spend most of their time in minor league camp, and it keeps down the swirl surrounding whether or not they make the Opening Day roster. I'm wondering if this year's example will be Sano. Thus, this thread on when the Twins will send him down, so we can all be prepared. I'll put the over/under at 3/13. Which side do you take? (P.S. Hicks might be another example.)

Thank you for contributing. I look forward to seeing your writing develop. I have to agree with the other comments - it would take an armageddon-like scenario for Buxton to break camp with the Twins. If either Presley or Mastroianni or Hicks is healthy, they would be the center fielder. And to be honest, I think the Twins still might not make Buxton the center fielder. It'll be interesting to watch how long Buxton is on the team this spring. It's not unusual for a top prospect like him to be sent down very early, like within the first week or so of games. He'll have had a chance to hang out with big leaguers for a couple of weeks and for the coaching staff to see him up close. But sending him down early gives him a full camp with the minor leaguers and also keeps speculation away about whether he could break camp with the team.

(John curls into the fetal position)

Jim Souhan lays out a very reasonable argument for signing Josh Willingham to an extension, while also acknowledging his faults. http://www.startribune.com/sports/twins/246267161.html

Just a reminder as spring training starts - this is a nice page to bookmark to see the latest news from any number of sources that often talk about the Twins.

Well, I'm glad to see that at this point, there aren't a Big 4 that the Twins are just going to miss out on. (Though there is plenty of time for that yet, of course.) I guess I'm not picky. I'm not opposed to an outfielder if he's clearly better than the other options, but if it's close, a SS or C sure sounds tasty. A college pitcher might serve as a nice bridge to some of the low minor arms we have coming. It feels like Day 1 is going to be a good day.

Thanks. Brock, let me know if I need to follow up with any ad company about this.

Coaches are eligible, right? (I love this thread.)

That's a good question. We'll be in the pressbox but also wandering around, I would guess, trying to see the game from different areas. We will have some "Twins Daily" polo shirts on occasion, but probably not every day. Look for our gorgeous mugs, I guess? Or maybe we'll tweet out someplace for postgame cocktails?

It's nice that he likes it here. If some guys fail to develop, that might make sense.

Giddy-Freaking-up!

Or Escobar.

You can view the page at http://twinsdaily.com/content.php/2673-Gleeman-and-the-Geek-Episode-133-Pitchers-and-Catchers-Report