Eris

I am wondering if the Twins management has given any consideration to putting a lot of extra padding on the outfield wall, especially after crashing into the wall 2x vs the A's.

Harvey has become cancerous. It is really telling that none of his teammates are willing to stick up for him. I don't see how Harvey is much different than Jonathon Papelbon. He hasn't pitched in ML since the Nationals released him.

Not too many years ago, management had similar concerns about a contending team with a sub-optimal closer and ended up trading Wilson Ramos for Matthew Capps. Lets not even think about going there again. It is even more challenging now as closers are even more expensive, e.g., last years deadline trades for Chapman and Miller will help make the Yankees contenders for years. My biggest concern is that the decision to go to Kintzler in the 9th is almost automatic. How about if a reliever is pitching well in the 8th, let him pitch the 9th too. Right now, there are not too many good options. I agree with Han Joelo, I would give the ball to Duffy.

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/catch_probability_leaderboard?min=0&year=2017 On the home page, https://baseballsavant.mlb.com, it is found under Applications (right most menu on the top tool bar). You can also access 2015 and 2016 data from this menu. I posted in the forum about my analysis of the 2016 data about 1 month ago. I transferred the data to a spreadsheat and also looked at % of balls caught. It gives a better picture as elite outfielders catch about 80% of their opportunities. http://twinsdaily.com/topic/25407-statcast-and-twins-of-defense/?do=findComment&comment=596761

Is this refusal by ML teams to consider having 2-way players based on data or is it just how things have always been done and no team wants to be the first to try (and perhaps fail). It seems to me if this could be done successfully, it would give a team a significant advantage-especially a NL team. In recent years there is increased usage of NL pitchers as pinch hitters. Marcus Stroman pinch hit in a game last night. I find it interesting that both McKay and Greene, likely the two top picks in this years draft could both be drafted as a position player or a pitcher (although Greene is likely to be a pitcher). Shohei Otani has managed to be a successful 2-way player in Japan. If he were to come to the U.S., would he continue being a two-way player or would teams force him to choose (or choose for him)?

I think Rosario is the weak link. Here is his statcast catch probability data: 2/27 in 5 star opportunities 4/9 in 4 star 8/11 in 3 star 19/21 in 2 star 23/24 in 1 star (https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/catch_probability_leaderboard?min=25&year=2016) He caught 61% of the fly balls last year. Really good is 70%, and elite is 80%. The data from 2015 is also very similar, where he caught 57% of the balls in play. This data only captures Rosario's ability to catch balls and statcast suggests that Rosario needs to improve. He has a very good arm, which is not measured in this data.

I won't try to defend D. Santana's poor performance, however a player who can cover 6 defensive positions is exactly the allows a team to go with 13 pitchers. The idea (and possibly the skill set) is there, unfortunately the execution has been lacking. According to a recent statcast article on the Twins outfield, Santana had the 3rd highest arm strength on competitive throws last year. However, this translated into only 2 assists. (Data on assists is from fangraphs). http://m.twins.mlb.com/news/article/221699212/minnesota-twins-2017-statcast-preview/

Jennings hit .200 last year and has a below average arm. The analysis is on catch probability only and doesn't take into consideration any other factors. http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1965&position=OF#fielding I think the Twins player who is may profile similar to Jennings and Lagares is Zack Granite. The difference is that there is hope that maybe Granite can hit for a decent enough average to be a positive contributor offensively. Whereas Jennings has already demonstrated that he can not. Some place on TD there is a thread on Granite based upon KATOH. I can't find the thread, but the original article is http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-2017-all-katoh-team/

Inspired by this Statcast article on mlb http://m.twins.mlb.com/news/article/221699212/minnesota-twins-2017-statcast-preview/?topicId=27118388 and http://m.mlb.com/news/article/221576208/statcast-ranking-of-top-defensive-outfielders/ I visited https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/catch_probability_leaderboard?min=25&year=2016 downloaded data and did a few calculations in an excel file. The calculations were based on giving a player the inverse of the catch probability for making the catch and substracting the difference from 1 for a missed opportunity. Being that these are bucketed into 5 brackets I took the average for that bracket. For example, for the 5 star bucket, I used 0.875*# catches and subtracted 0.125*#misses. For the 1 star buckett, 0.07 was used for a catch and 0.93 for a missed opportunity. This was done across all buckets and divided by the total opportunities. Several issues with the method. Being that averages are used a large number of data points are needed to get decent data. The range of a 5 star opportunity is 0 - 25% (or 1 to 0.75 for making the catch if the methodology could applied for each specific incident. Also, the statcast current methodology does not take into consideration, direction of running and proximity to the wall. This will significantly skew the results for several types of plays (such as balls near the wall or areas with short foul distances. For example, I believe that if the sample player played LF and RF in Fenway Park, his stats in LF would be significantly worse. Sorry, I don't have permission to upload this excel file. In the calculations on the spreadsheet, 0 would represent an outfielder who matched the probability expectations when summed across the entire set of opportunities. I have pasted some poorly formatted data below. The first number, is the overall ranking across all outfielders with at least 25 opportunities in 2016 (there were 156 players who met this criteria). The first number after the name is the Calculation described above, the last number is the % balls caught. (Other factors such as arm strength is not considered) The truly elite outfielders (Hamilton, Kiermaier) catch 80% of the opportunities. Byron Buxton is very good, but not elite. The reason for this is that he only converted 38.5% of his 4 star opportunities into outs. This is exceptionally low and stands out. Hamilton converted 75%, Kiermaier converted 87%. Although limited to a part time role for the Mets, Juan Legares converted 100% of his opportunities that were 4 star or less. Kris Bryant is a very decent outfielder. Kepler and Rosario only converted about 60% of their opportunities. They show up in the mid-tier of good, but not great outfielders. For Kepler this is because he failed to convert a number to opportunities 3 stars and below. For example, Kepler missed four 1 star opportunities. If you correct for these, Kepler is almost a good as Lorenzo Cain. Rosario is harder to evaluate. He had 27 five star opportunities and only converted 2 of them. Statcast is not very kind to Aaron Hicks. He is only slightly above average. Danny Santana shows up in the range of OF like Denard Span, Carlos Gomez and Mike Trout (a little more than slightly below average or about as below average as Rosario is above average). Interesting for Santana the issue is that he only converted about 55% of his 2 star opportunities. This kind of reflects the Santana we have come to know, great play one minute and basket case play on the next. As an outfielder, Miguel Sano profiled very similarly to Oswaldo Arcia. Robbie Grossman was/is horrible. Readers of TD know this. Only Daniel Nava and Mark Trumbo were worse. For Grossman, the data is reflected in the significant number of 1 and 2 star opportunities that he missed. He only converted 75% of this 1 star opportunities. He had 6 fielding errors last year (after having 5 with the Astros the previous years). As another reader on a different thread had pointed out, he wasn't this bad with the Astros. He also failed to convert none of his 19 five star opportunities. Other notes. Shane Robinson is a decent outfielder. Statcast is not kind to J.B. Shuck and Drew Stubbs. This was a surprise to me because if the Twins are bringing in players to evaluate as a 4th outfielder, the minimum criteria should be that they are above average defensively. Neither is the case, if fact both rank near the bottom using this methodology. (Of course they didn't make the team either and Statcast suggests that was a really positive development) 1 Desmond Jennings 18.8 82.7 2 Juan Lagares 16.8 80.0 3 Billy Hamilton 16.4 77.8 4 Kevin Kiermaier 15.5 83.7 5 Jake Marisnick 14.3 67.9 6 Travis Jankowski 13.5 78.2 7 Andrew Toles 13.3 73.3 8 Ender Inciarte 12.8 72.0 9 Keon Broxton 12.4 82.1 10 Peter Bourjos 11.9 65.6 11 Jason Heyward 11.8 71.9 12 Albert Almora Jr. 10.4 88.0 13 Byron Buxton 10.0 70.5 14 Mookie Betts 9.6 71.2 15 Kris Bryant 9.6 71.1 16 Adam Eaton 9.5 71.5 17 Enrique Hernandez 9.0 72.4 18 Shane Robinson 8.7 73.5 19 Jarrod Dyson 8.6 77.3 20 Kevin Pillar 8.2 68.8 24 Lorenzo Cain 7.2 67.7 45 Ichiro Suzuki 3.5 61.4 46 Max Kepler 3.1 59.8 53 Eddie Rosario 2.7 60.9 59 Ben Revere 1.2 67.1 62 Aaron Hicks 0.9 66.7 64 Alex Gordon 0.4 60.9 91 Mike Trout -2.8 60.8 94 Carlos Gomez -2.9 57.5 97 Denard Span -3.1 58.8 99 Danny Santana -3.4 55.6 135 J.B. Shuck -9.1 57.4 141 Oswaldo Arcia -10.9 52.5 143 Miguel Sano -11.0 55.6 144 Danny Valencia -11.1 51.4 146 Drew Stubbs -11.9 46.2 154 Robbie Grossman -14.9 42.7 155 Daniel Nava -16.5 44.8 156 Mark Trumbo -28.8 32.8

There was a write up last year in fan graphs about Kepler's elite pitch recognition skills. https://www.google.com/amp/www.fangraphs.com/blogs/a-case-study-in-pitch-recognition-with-max-kepler/amp/ As far as I can tell, non of the analytic sites are predicting a sophomore regression. He has the tools. Kepler will be a star. Watching him and Buxton develop together will remind us of the Puckett and Hrbeck development. Now we just need to identify someone assume the roles of Viola and Gaetti. (Note I have left Eddie Rosario off this list because I think his lack of discipline will prevent the Twins from having a truely elite outfield).

I think the Twins and the White Sox are in a very different part of the spectrum (except in on field performance). The Twins path to a World Series is that the current group of young players gels and they becomes contenders by substantially upgrading the pitching staff. (As was mentioned earlier in this thread, the Twins opening day roster has 7 players under 27 who were top 100 MLB prospects) In the next 2-3 years the Twins need to sign probably at least 2 front line starting pitchers and develop a good SS. They have almost no one (except maybe Dozier) whom they are willing to part with and will bring value in return. The White Sox, on the other hand have/had three player with a lot a value (Sale, Eaton, and Jose Quintana). They were able to trade these players for some very good/top prospects. Who do the Twins have that would bring the return received for Sale or Eaton.

You're not giving the FO any credit for this. I don't have any information and am only speculating. Wimmers could have signed with any organization. He chose to come back to Twins. There is probably a gentlemen's agreement/understanding here some place, which I expect will be honored. The baseball world is a small community and if FO don't keep their word, this information gets out there and signing such free agent players in the future becomes harder. I suspect also the both Gimenez and Breslow were promised spots/a good shot to make the team). Considering the "40 man roster crunch" they got Park through waivers. Just about any other time in the off-season they would probably not have gotten Park through waivers, but did it right before Spring training when other teams rosters were set for spring training. An accident or a clever calculated move?

Related to JRM discussions. Hicks loses right field position battle to Aaron Judge. http://www.nj.com/yankees/index.ssf/2017/03/yankees_aaron_judge_vs_aaron_hicks_the_final_argum.html

A simple explanation is that the moves were made to avoid making 40 man roster moves. Sending Park down is not all that different then sending Alex Wimmers to AAA. It was done to put off a decision on who to cut. It is of course difficult to comprehend how the worst team in baseball can have a 40 man roster crunch. Part of this can be attributed to poor player management and adding players to the 40 man roster before they are ready to contribute. Also, most of the deadline trades last year involved players who had to be kept on the 40 man or risk being lost. Pat Light is an example. Not sure if it would have been possible to work these trades receiving players who were a couple of years from needing to protected. The Twins are even lucky to have these decisions to make on Wimmers and Park as both could have been picked up by any team. There are some obvious candidates to be released or traded. One of the questions is how much value to they have a this time. For example do you try trade JR Murphy for a lottery ticket, or just release him. Before coming to the Twins he was a capable back-up.

You are correct. I have made mistake. I was working on fangraphs this morning (2015 and 2016 data) and I have no idea how I made that mistake. I am no longer able to edit the my post from this morning. If one of the moderators would like to remove the sentence about the Twins being second in runs scored that would OK with me.

Nick. Thank you for the article. It is always nice to wake up to article that represents hope and optimism. What will be interesting to see is how the new front office addresses some of the Twins problems going forward. From my perspective the factors that they can have an impact on is defense and the draft. The Twins were second in ML in runs scored last year. Run prevention is an issue. They are limited by what can be done with pitching. But defense is an area that can be improved. At least on the margins. The data below is DRS from fangraphs. http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=fld&lg=all&qual=0&type=1&season=2016&month=0&season1=2016&ind=0&team=8&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=9,a Robbie Grossman accounts for a good chunk of of the negative DRS with -19. It will be very interesting to see how they manage his playing time in LF. I have the left side of infield accounted for -28 DRS. The interesting game decisions here is will the Twins more aggressive in making defensive substitutions in close games. They have vested most of there options here in Ehire Adrianza, who unfortunately is hurt at the moment, but I am expecting him to make the team. The other component of the defensive metrics is how Danny Santana is managed. Drafting (has discussed elsewhere on TD) and player development has been a one of the main culprits in the Twins current run of failure with few of their 1st round and supplementary picks having a significant impact since 2000. It will will be interesting to watch how the Twins manage this year's draft.

Unfortunately, these things tend to self perpetuate in in MLB circles. Marcus Stroman is 5'9" and the guy can pitch. The learning/opportunity here is that maybe some excellent pitchers available in the later rounds and are available only because they are short. Although this article was in 2010 it provides a perspective on effect of height on ML pitchers. The summary is that there is a correlation between height and the round drafted and also becoming a starting major league pitcher. There was no correlation between height and effectiveness across a broad category of parameters. BB, WHIP, HR, etc.

Chargois has had a difficult spring. A WHIP over 2. There are only 5 pitchers in the Twins camp whose WHIP are worse. He deserved to be sent down. We get seduced by Chargois' velocity but he has been very hittable.

I was looking fangraphs DRS. They have Buxton at 3 DRS in 773 innings last year. This does not seem correct. http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=cf&stats=fld&lg=all&qual=100&type=1&season=2016&month=0&season1=2016&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=10,d Look at some of comparisons. Jayson Hayward had 4 DRS in 171 innings in CF. I really question these numbers. OK. I know I am biased Twins fan and Heyward is decent, but Buxton is an elite defensive CF. On stat cast his route efficiency is really good (high 90s).

Kinsler is expressing his displeasure with how other cultures play the game differently. Narrow-minded, maybe. Racist? I don't think so. Stupid to discuss his displeasure on the world stage? Definitely yes. There many examples of the traditions and unwritten rules of baseball that even within this country people don't agree with. If everyone played the game the same way, there would be no new strategies or changes developed. I enjoyed very much watching the Japanese team in the WBC. I think this is precisely because they play a different style of baseball.

Do the Twins have to keep Turner on the 40 man roster if he is returned?

From the information that is on the internet, Alex Kirilloff did pitch in high school. Maybe that is a contributing factor. http://www.maxpreps.com/athlete/alex-kirilloff/4jHvRvTsEeKZ5AAmVebBJg/default.htm

It is about time the Twins organization was serious about SS. I am trying to remember the last time the Twins had an above average SS with sustained success. I would think this is Greg Gagne (1983-1992). By WAR he was the 10th ranked SS over this time period. The Twins have many potential SS but none of them seem to work out at SS.

Phillie fans can be a rough bunch. While I hope you are right as I am a Twins fan, MLB has Mantis as the their 6th best OF prospect. Keith Law has Mantis at 30 and Kirilloff at 97 on his prospect rankings.

Your memory is correct. Polanco was called up both in 2014 and 2015 and played in 4 or 5 games each year. He was called up because of injuries on the MLB roster and because he was the only infielder who could be called up without making a 40 man roster move.