chpettit19

Whoa, whoa, whoa are we sure it's even allowed for Rocco to do something right? I've heard the team only wins in spite of him so he must've done something wrong.

I understand. My point is that the metrics we're talking about now that are measuring current players don't need to take into account positioning since other metrics are already positioning players in optimal spots. You said "There is what the statistics do not measure. That is the limitation of these statistics." And I'm saying it's not a limitation.

Because of stats every infielder knows the best positioning for every situation now.

A player like you're describing (always in the right spot so doesn't have to range far to make a play, but makes the plays on balls they can get to) would grade as an average fielder. They're not getting their team extra outs by making plays the average player can't because of great range or arm, but they're not making their team get extra outs by booting it on balls hit right at them. So they'd be right around 0 on all these metrics.

Watching the games the Twins feel like an average-ish fielding team. Some days they're a little above average, some days below. But generally they're just ok. The Correa numbers surprise me. Urshela is a little worse than I'd have guessed, but not terribly. Mostly the numbers feel just about right. The defensive metrics are still a work in progress. I've worked for a couple of the companies that develop these stats and I'd suggest not taking any of them as gospel on their own, but if/when they all say someone is good, bad, or ok that's probably what that player is. There's a long ways to go in really dialing these metrics in, but if there's a consensus on a guy it probably means that guy is what the metrics say they are. These aren't dumb people putting the numbers together. "Analytics" haters should sit down before they read this part....the eye test is actually part of how these metrics are calculated ? But the people entering their eye test scores aren't just watching the Twins and a couple random games here and there, they're doing nothing but watching baseball all day, everyday (well 5 days a week, but everyday sounds better). So Urshela is getting his boost for "Wow!" plays. So the fact that he's still rating negative should say something. (Part of that something is that we're emotional beings so when a player on our team does something either great or really bad we tend to remember those things more and give them more weight in our opinions so our eye tests for our own favorite team is heavily biased)

If the reason you give for not trusting stats is that they can be manipulated then the obvious logical conclusion to you not trusting stats that say Correa is bad is that you feel they're manipulated.

OAA says he's struggling with his range.

What's the motivation for the companies that produce these stats to manipulate them to say Correa is bad? Their company's future relies on teams trusting their stats to be accurate and useful.

It's a cumulative stat. Urshela has played more than Miranda so he's had the chance to accumulate more bad plays. Same reason why the article points out that Buxton playing more would lead to him having more OAA.

Ask and you shall receive... Miranda at DH tonight.

There's no reasonable debate about Urshela being the best defensive 3B in the league as was claimed. Unreasonable people can make the claim. That doesn't make it a debate, it just means people are allowed to say what they want on the internet, even if what they say is not based in reality. Urshela is a fine fielder. He's not elite, but he's not bad. If you want to claim he's better than the average 3B I wouldn't really fight too hard. But any test will show he's not even close to the guys I named (and a couple others I didn't). Eye test, analytics test, asking unbiased baseball people test, whatever test you choose. With the current options the Twins have Urshela at 3B and Miranda DHing makes a ton of sense. When Polanco and Sano are healthy the situation changes and playing Urshela at 3B may not be such a clear cut idea. Will be interesting to see what happens when (if?) everyone gets healthy. If the difference in batting lines stays what it has been recently I'd 100% start Miranda at 3B over Urshela since Urshela's glove doesn't make up for that much hitting difference.

One thing to keep an eye on is the 2nd half of the season numbers when the minors move 2nd base closer to the plate. I want to say it's going to be significantly closer to 1st and 3rd at that point and we could really see a spike. I don't have time to look up the exact movement amount, but I want to say it was close to a foot. But I could be totally wrong. But will be an interesting thing to track. Bigger bases and closer to 1st could be a cause for a big spike in stolen base attempts.

Urshela is not even close to the best defensive 3B in the league (whether you mean majors or just American). He's a fine defensive 3B and the defensive stats probably undervalue him a little, but he's not in the same universe as the Chapman, Machado, Arenado, Ke'Bryans of the world. It's not even a debate. He's not in their league. Go look at some of their highlights. You'll see 10 plays from each that are more impressive than the one you provided of Urshela.

He has DHed twice in June, but I agree with the overall take that he should definitely be DHing over either of the catchers. For a multitude of reasons.

Will be very interesting to see how they handle him coming back. Hot Sano in the 6/7 range of the lineup could be a huge boost. Cold Sano could really hurt an already inconsistent offense. Days with Sano at 1B, Sanchez DH, and Jeffers catching would probably have me not watching the team for those days. If he gets off to a good start in his rehab stint he'll get a shot to show he's middle-of-the-season Sano and launch some bombs. If he gets off to a cold start in his rehab I hope he isn't just automatically inserted back into a full time role.

There's some kid named Canterino who'd like a word with anyone who thinks college pitchers throwing 120 pitches a game isn't detrimental to college kids arms...

This didn't age well...

That's an interesting argument. Correa was on a perennial WS contender (a team he actually won a WS with) and left for a team coming off a last place finish in maybe the worst division in baseball. It would seem that winning was perhaps not as high on his list of desires as you suggest.

Welcome to Twins Daily! FYI the Twins came into today with a 22.2% strikeout rate which is exactly league average. They have the 17th lowest SO% in baseball. Worst is LAA at 25.6% and best is Cleveland at 18.5%.

Adding outside players as the change isn't likely a real possible right now, but I'd hope it's a real possibility in a few weeks. Otherwise I think there's some internal player changes that could be made now/soon that could be paired with some strategy changes that could (should?) take place. Winder was officially optioned to AAA (talk of him being called up to start in a doubleheader game on the 28th) and Rocco says the team isn't interested in returning to a 6 man rotation. Which is fine, but it's a chance for a player/strategy combo change. Winder back up in long relief/piggyback to give the short relief an extra day off each week. They need to accept that Archer isn't getting real deep into games anytime soon. Ober should be back in 2/3 weeks and then you have 7 starters available. I'd move Archer to the pen as a 2 inning weapon at that point. I'd bring Moran back now and see if he can actually be an option. His first 10 innings this year weren't completely lights out, but 15 Ks and 2 runs allowed is a good start. I think there's a foundation for a competitive staff with Gray, Ryan, Duran, Ober, Winder, Archer, Jax, Smeltzer, Pagan, Moran. That isn't a complete staff and you'd like to see someone in the Gray/Ryan range of starters added along with someone in the Duran range of relievers before the deadline, but I think those arms can be competitive with minimal outside additions and some strategy/usage tweaks.

The worst part is I was on the field for batting practice and had the chance to talk to both Falvey and Rocco, but didn't give them any of the answers TD has for fixing the team and guaranteeing a world series ring. I may be the worst TD poster of all time. The powers that be were right in front of me and I had the chance to save the team with the brilliance of TD and I failed! I probably should've just told Falvey to fire Rocco on the spot and implement a TD survey as manager for the rest of the year. I'm sure @Brock Beauchamp could set something up to have a constant survey of in game decisions that TD users could use to run the team. Next time I see him I'll let Falvey know and we can all get our WS rings as the collective Twins manager.

Agreed. I agree with not letting average, or worse, starters see lineups a 3rd time on a regular basis. The data is quite clear that that's not a recipe for success. But if your rotation is full of those types of starters, and you know MLB is changing rules to make it harder to ship arms back and forth between St Paul and Minneapolis, you need to have a better plan for the bullpen than they've had. I like most of what the FO does, and think Falvey did a great job updating the minor league development processes, but they missed on their pitching staff strategy this year. I didn't mind the Rogers trade (hindsight has proven it to be a disaster for this year), losing Alcala early put them behind the 8 ball in terms of 1 inning relief arms, and the injuries to rotation arms early messed with what was an unclear plan for Winder/long relief/piggyback starters. I think they made a mistake thinking they could start the year with a rotation full of guys they knew couldn't get through more than 5 innings for a variety of reasons and only having 1 long relief/piggyback option on the roster to start the year. I know they were expecting to build their starters up to be able to do longer outings, but they should've had Smeltzer in the bigs along with Winder to be able to piggyback Archer for sure, and have the other long guy go once a week and get the short relief some relief. It was unsustainable to have a pen full of short inning guys while knowing they'd need to cover 4+ innings more often than not. Maybe they miscalculated how long it'd take for the starters to get stretched out. No matter what caused the reliance on short relief combined with short starters, it's time to adjust before the season is lost. These were 2 brutal losses (first 2 games I attended this year so I'll take some blame), and they've been on a downward trend for a couple weeks, but there's still 92 games left. The season isn't lost, despite what the MN sports fan in us wants us to believe. But the season could be lost by the deadline if they don't get things turned around. So it doesn't really matter to me what exactly went wrong to get the staff to the spot it's in now, what matters is how they get themselves out of it. Sticking with the current, failing plan isn't an answer. Either change players or change strategy. The easiest change is likely changing players. But they need to start those changes now.

They're not in free fall, but they're not playing well either. The pen is brutal outside of Duran. The starters are a unit of the walking wounded trying to get their footing again. The offense is boom or bust game to game. The base running is awful. And the defense can make some spectacular plays, but too often makes bonehead plays (no excuse for Larnach throwing to the plate in the 9th and not keeping the go ahead run at first) or boots routine plays that the spectacular plays are outweighed by the bad. This would be a great time for the All Star break so they could regroup for a week before getting back to it, but instead they need to get the ship straightened out over the next month without blowing up the season. We're not even halfway through the season so all the doom and gloom is premature, in my opinion. But there are real concerns with the pen and health of this team. There's not much that can be done to fix the pen externally at this point as other teams aren't willing to make trades yet, unless you drastically overpay, and that'd be an awful/desperate decision. They need to make some hard decisions on players like Duffey and Thielbar. It's all well and good to wish, hope, and maybe even expect a return to their previous quality performances, but you can't allow that hope to destroy the season. Duffey seems like a good dude, and I'm sure it's not fun DFAing good guys who have done a lot for your team, but that's what needs to happen sometimes. It's time to make some decisions on the arms this team has available and shake things up. Change some strategies. The plans may have been solid to start the year, but now you've been punched in the face and it's time to adjust. People always say baseball is a game of adjustments. Hitters have to adjust to new ways pitchers are trying to get them out, and front offices and managers need to adjust to the new reality of their teams. Can't let this season get away in the next month because you're not willing to make the tough calls.

It sure does.

The Duffey/Thornburg situation is only a problem, in my opinion, because of how they run/manage the pen. If your strategy is "Fireman, 7th inning guy, 8th inning guy, Closer" then you want the Duffey/Thornburg types as cheap arms you use during blowouts. But the Twins use a situational/matchup/all hands on deck pen and you can't have multiple guys that don't fit in any situation/matchup. I generally like the FO, and think Rocco is an average manager, but they've all combined to put themselves in an awful place with the pitching staff. It's time to pick a strategy and build the team to fit it. If the plan is to have 8 guys who can all be thrown at anytime they need to get 8 guys capable of throwing at any time. If they don't want to/can't get 8 guys who can throw at anytime then they need to change how they use the pen. No using Duran, Pagan, or Jax (assuming those are the 3 guys they really trust based on how they've been using them lately) for multiple innings ever. You need to be able to use them in back to back games to finish wins. I've defended Rocco's bullpen use in the past, but he's got to change his strategies if he's no longer willing to use a number of guys in the pen in close games. Need the 3 guys you trust to be available as many games as possible if that's the strategy.