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Cap'n Piranha

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Everything posted by Cap'n Piranha

  1. Cap'n Piranha
    I've never understood people who oppose the DH because they think it's ridiculous that a pitcher not be required to hit, but don't think it's ridiculous that hitters aren't required to pitch. In fact, if the concept behind baseball is that there are three separate aspects to the game (hitting, pitching, and fielding), shouldn't each spot in the lineup be required to do all 3?
  2. Cap'n Piranha
    Ok, you misunderstood. The .0002% chance is not the chance of dying if you contract the illness, it's the chance of dying from the illness if you live in the United Sates (assuming the rates of infection and deaths are identical to the reported numbers from China). 760 divided by 330M is .0002%. It's the same rate as one person in the entire city of Minneapolis dying. I'm fully in support of people being careful, limiting or eliminating contact with others, self-quarantining when necessary, and forcing the quarantine of people who won't self-quarantine, but to pretend like coronavirus is Ebola or Bubonic Plague, or even the Spanish Flu is hysterical and breeds panic, which is the greater danger in the current climate.
  3. Cap'n Piranha
    I'm confused--you're saying my numbers are false and that I'm downplaying the severity, yet the number I gave (based on actual news reports) is higher than the number you quoted. Therefore, if anything, I'm "upplaying" the severity.
  4. Cap'n Piranha
    Or it could be like China, which is now (if Chinese sources can be trusted, which I'll grant is a big if) in steep decline--only 24 new cases for the entirety of mainland China yesterday. China had to keep things under lock for about 6 weeks to get this result, but it's a good result--80k total cases and 3.2k deaths; the US equivalent would be 19k cases and 760 deaths. That would be a 0.005% chance of a US citizen being infected, or one out of every 17k people, and a mortality chance of 0.0002% (1 out of every 434k people). The coronavirus should certainly be taken seriously, and suspending sporting events is part of that, but from an infection/death standpoint, the coronavirus is likely to be of far less impact than the annual winter flu is every single year.
  5. Cap'n Piranha
    "Quantity has a quality all its own" -Napoleon Bonaparte
  6. Cap'n Piranha
    An amazing "Bad Ball" hitter is likely to still be worse than an average "Good Ball" hitter. The beauty of baseball, distilled to it's simplest level, is that the pitcher has to put the ball where he least wants to put the ball. Therefore, swinging at pitches outside of the strike zone (which is what "bad balls" are), helps the pitcher. There are times where a batter can succeed in hitting a pitch outside of the zone, but over the course of a season, the odds are heavily in the pitcher's favor. In the second half of last year, Eddie Rosario swung at 49.1% of pitches "outside" the zone (3rd highest out of 140 in baseball). As a result, he saw the 10th lowest percentage of pitches "in" the zone. This insistence on chasing led him to post the 35th lowest rate of hard contact and 61st highest rate of soft contact. This directly degrades his power--Eddie had 12 homers in 266 PA's in the second half, compared to 21 from Sano in 271, 18 from Garver in 183, and 15 from Kepler in 231.
  7. Cap'n Piranha
    I have to concur with the majority of the posters here. In looking at Almora's defensive stats on fangraphs, he was below average last year, albeit slightly above average in 2017 and 2018. As such, I think what you would be adding is a league-average fielder. At the plate, he swings at 40% of pitches outside the zone, and as such, has really bad rates of both soft and hard contact (6th highest soft contact rate out of 241 players with 350+ PA's, 17th lowest hard contact rate). Add in that he's now arbitration eligible, and plays at a position group where the Twins are 5 deep in MLB-quality regulars, and where at least 2 and possibly 4 of our 5 best hitting prospects play, and I have no idea why the Twins would add Almora for free, much less give something up for him. The floor for this Twins team, thanks to a killer lineup, deep bullpen, and broad collection of decent starters, is quite high. Therefore, if the Twins are making a trade, it shouldn't be to try and win a couple more games in the regular season; it should be to win a couple more games in the postseason.
  8. Cap'n Piranha
    Ummm, last year the Twins bullpen had only .2 WAR less than the Yankees, with a better FIP and essentially identical xFIP. The Twins bullpen had a better k-bb%, an identical WHIP, and a better SIERA. The only real advantage the Yankees pen had was in giving up less hard contact, and getting more soft contact. That being said, if you look at only the second half of the season (which more closely resembles what our current bullpen will hopefully look like), the Twins pen was better in WAR, FIP, xFip, k-bb%, WHIP, and SIERA, although the contact disparities remained. I think it cannot be said with any amount of certainty that the Yankees bullpen is better, much less a huge advantage. The pens seem likely to be a wash.
  9. Cap'n Piranha
    Since the schedule is not equal, it's entirely possible for an inferior team to win more games. Fangraphs projections show the Yankees to be in a division with 2 other teams essentially as good as the Twins (Rays at 90 wins, Twins at 88, Red Sox at 87). The Central is projected to have the worst champion, worst runner up, and worst 3rd place team, while the 4th and 5th place finishers are each 2nd out of the three divisions. Put more succinctly, the Twins are likely to play nearly half their games against a markedly easier schedule than either the Yankees or Astros.
  10. Cap'n Piranha
    I think whether or not there is a gap in the pitching staff depends largely on when the injury/underperformance occurs. The Twins are 10 deep in "respectable" starting options (Berrios, Odo, Bailey, Maeda, Pineda, Hill, Chacin, Dobnak, Smeltzer, and Thorpe) before accounting for any prospect breakthroughs. That seems better than the Yankees, who are already turning to a guy who pitched to a 4.95 FIP last year, with 4.5 bb/9, a 1.5 WHIP, and only induced 13% soft contact. It seems to me when Falvine realized top of the rotation help wasn't gettable, they shifted to depth of the rotation help, which leaves them in good position to absorb injuries.
  11. Cap'n Piranha
    Not quite true, I think the FO is ok with one of them in the rotation, but has no found ways to ensure Dobnak, Smeltzer, and Thorpe can be your shuttle depth/doubleheader extra guy. What they've done is gone from a rotation that had 6 guys (Berrios, Odo, Pineda, Dobnak, Smeltzer, Thorpe) to one that now has 10 guys (Bailey, Hill, Chacin, Maeda). This means we can now absorb 3 injuries to starters beyond the reduced availability of Pineda and Hill, and still "only" need to use Dobnak, Smeltzer, and Thorpe, instead of Balazovic, Duran, and whatever warm body they can snag off the waiver wire. This move is 100% about depth, not a lack of confidence in Dobnak, Smeltzer and Thorpe.
  12. Cap'n Piranha
    The issue in your article is that you state "what really makes the difference for them in their worse performance against left-handed hitters is that their best hitters are right-handed". Based on the OPS stats you provided, all four of the Twins best hitters not only in 2019, but for their entire careers have been better against righties than the Twins collectively were last year. The Twins were worse against righties because they gave 600 PA's against lefties to Gonzalez, Rosario, Polanco, and Arraez who all OPS'd below .800 against lefties, compared to 1,761 PA's against righties to Buxton, Cave, Adrianza, Schoop, Gonzalez, Astudillo, and Cron, all of whom OPS'd below .800 against righties. Having 4 guys who are merely very good against righties in contrast to being death against lefties isn't the problem--the problem is the bottom of the order needs to be better. A full season of Arraez and Kepler (.887 and .845 OPS against righties) will help, as might a late season call-up of Rooker (1.024 OPS against righties) or Kiriloff (.816 against righties in a lost season), or possibly even a trade for a left-handed corner outfielder, should injuries mount.
  13. Cap'n Piranha
    I had no idea, and neither did you. If you knew, you'd be setting lines in Vegas, not posting on a Twins message board. Was I optimistic the Twins would win? No, but the Twins defense giving up 2 unearned runs didn't help Berrios, nor did Kyle Gibson giving up 3 runs in his one inning, nor Zack Littell getting no one out in the 5th, and putting Duffey in a tough spot. The Twins were tied with the Yankees when Berrios left the game, and still only 1 run behind going to the bottom of the sixth when Stashak served up two homers. Berrios didn't lose to the Yankees in game 1, and while we all hoped for more, he remains far and away our best bet to start a potential game 1 in 2020, barring a huge trade between then and now. Pineda, Odo, or Hill will not be better options.
  14. Cap'n Piranha
    If all teams with good bullpens have good k/bb ratios and ERA estimators, doesn't it follow that those are therefore good indicators that a bullpen is good? After all, would we ever look at a bullpen with bad k/bb ratios or ERA estimators, and deem it a good bullpen? And if they are good indicators of a bullpen's quality, wouldn't it be reasonable to declare that a team which performs better in these metrics than another team who also performs well, but not as well, has a superior bullpen? I agree they don't tell the whole picture, but that being said, when one team is invariably first, at a certain point that starts to matter. Furthermore, I disagree that batting average against is a particularly useful standalone metric, as it cannot rule out the effects of defense, which the Twins were strongly below average at, particularly at 2nd, 3rd, and short; in the second half you can add center field to that list too. This story is told by the fact that the Twins had the 6th worst BAA in the second half, but the worst BAABIP. While you're correct that the Twins threw more strikes in the second half (44.1% zone percentage) than any other team, they actually had the 7th lowest zone contact percentage, because they had the 5th highest swinging strike rate--Twins relievers stayed in the zone because they could avoid contact and get swinging strikes. By-the-by, that swinging strike rate of 13.1% was better than either the Astros OR the Yankees. In short, as best as I can tell, the only statistical metric you actually want to use to gauge bullpens' relative value is batting average against, which, given the fielding dependent nature of that metric, seems at best flawed. Outside of that, your dismissal of the Twins bullpen as potentially being an advantage over Houston or New York seems to come from bias and assumption.
  15. Cap'n Piranha
    That's fair, I included the note on babip to demonstrate that the Twin's bullpen was the best in baseball at controlling those things they could control. That being said, based on your dismissal of the stats I provided alongside your failure to provide any other stats upon which to gauge bullpens, I am at a loss as to how you specifically determine relative bullpen quality, other than gut feeling and bias. Stating that it's not that important for bullpens to have the best ratio of strikeouts to walks (which is what the Twins had) also befuddles me; it flies in the face of all modern thinking about baseball--avoid balls in play/homers/men on base, which can only be done via a strikeout. Your theory about the Twins and Yankees bullpen also doesn't hold water. When limited to relievers with more than 10 IP, the Twins had 8 relievers with a FIP- under 90 in the second half, the Yankees had 6. The Twins had 3 under 60, the Yankees only 2. The Twins had 9 relievers with a k/bb over 4, the Yankees only 3. The Twins outperform the Yankees in Siera as well--the only advanced metric they don't is xFIP, where the two bullpens line up pretty evenly. At least compared to the Yankees, it can be easily argued the Twins have both a more elite AND a deeper bullpen. If you'd like to make the argument that the Yankees are only one team, and your theory that the Twins bullpen is not better than other competitors holds true, then you'll need to provide the stats, otherwise I unequivocally dismiss your claim that the Twins bullpen is not better than other playoff caliber teams; "That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence"
  16. Cap'n Piranha
    Berrios had a horrific August, true, but in 5 September starts averaged over 6 IP/Start, with a 3.79 FIP and 3.97 xFIP, which ranked 25th and 24th respectively in all of baseball. If you think a top 30 pitcher in baseball shouldn't crack the Twins 4-man postseason rotation, either you're much higher on the Twins rotation than anyone else on the planet, or you have an agenda against Berrios.
  17. Cap'n Piranha
    For the second half of 2019, the Twins bullpen was 1st in FIP-, xFIP-, SIERA, and k-bb%, despite having the highest babip and 9th lowest lob%. I think the Twins bullpen (if they can reproduce this performance) is much better than you're giving them credit for, and is very much a relative advantage.
  18. Cap'n Piranha
    Are you really saying that Berrios, who despite his August struggles the last 2 years is our clear cut number 1 starter, proven by the fact that he started game 1 last year, would be demoted to the bullpen for the playoffs?
  19. Cap'n Piranha
    Of the 8 prospects you named, its likely 3-4 of them won't ever be more than replacement level at the big league level. If the plan is to keep your elite offense humming by promoting from within, you probably need to keep all of them so you know which ones will actually translate. I am not opposed to trading prospects for immediate big league help, I'm just very wary of draining our system for a rental.
  20. Cap'n Piranha
    I think the bullpen needs to be considered when discussing chances of postseason success as well. I think there's every reason to think the Twins could trot out, at minimum, 6 quality arms (Rogers, Duffey, May, Romo, Clippard, Littell). While Rogers, and maybe Duffey, are the only ones that potentially qualify as elite, having that kind of depth, before even considering options like Stashak, Graterol, Duran, or Alcala means we should be able to shorten the game for our starters in the playoffs. Should the Twins attempt to add a game 1 starter? Absolutely. Do they need to add a game 1 starter? I don't think so.
  21. Cap'n Piranha
    Doesn't mean it can't still be addressed. Preventing a run through defense is just as good as preventing a run through pitching.
  22. Cap'n Piranha
    First part true, second part unquestionably false. It is well within the realm of possibility that Kiriloff, Lewis, or Larnach play a similar role to Arraez in 2019. It's also certainly possible that the known commodity one trades for completely craters, like when the Reds acquired Ken Griffey Jr., and proceeded to pay him almost $100M for barely 10 WAR across 7+ seasons. Some other really fun times teams traded unproven prospects for known commodities; 2004--Edwin Jackson for Scherzer 2003--Pierzynski for Liriano and Nathan 2012--Vernon Wells for Napoli 2012--R.A. Dickey for Syndergaard 2013--Scott Feldman for Arrieta There's obviously many, many more examples that aren't quite as notable. But just because someone has played to a certain level doesn't mean they will continue to. Also, I'm not opposed to trading prospects at all; I would have been ecstatic if the Twins had sent Lewis, Larnach, AND Kiriloff, plus more to the Nats in the early stages of last season for Rendon and Scherzer; I just think "always trade prospects for established players" is a foolish mantra; if we had done that in 2015, we wouldn't have Polanco, Kepler, Garver, or Berrios on this team
  23. Cap'n Piranha
    You can actually take the opposing view here, which is that since you don't know if an individual prospect is going to pan out, you should hoard as many as you can, as that increases the chances at least one works out, and if more than one does, you have the best of all problems on your hands. For example, let's say Lewis, Kiriloff, and Larnach are all 30% to be successful in the majors (just a random number, no idea if it's accurate). Below is the probability at least one hits depending on how many of them you have; Keep only one--30% chance Keep only two--51% chance Keep all three--66% chance By keeping all 3 of these prospects, you actually more than double your chances of getting a player that hits, for which the worst case scenario is, essentially, a 6 year $50M-ish deal.
  24. Cap'n Piranha
    Your first paragraph is just flat out wrong. There are myriad instances in major league history where the team trading for a "known commodity" regretted what they gave up, and there's a simple reason; every known commodity in the major leagues was, once upon a time, an unsure minor league option. While it's true the Twins have a good core of young hitters with Kepler, Polanco, Sano, Garver, and Arraez under team control for the next 4 years, Buxton can be gone in three, Rosario in two, and we currently don't have a long term DH or 1B (switch to 3B if Sano shifts across the diamond, as I think he should). Wouldn't it be nice to replace Buxton with Lewis, Rosario with Larnach, and slot Kiriloff into 1st/DH, all for $1.5M a year, rather than sign middling veterans for 10 times that much? I don't think any fan thinks our prospects are worth 10x what they are, but nor should we think they're worth 10% of what they are. My suspicion is that Falvine, once they realized they wouldn't be able to sign impact FA pitching, understood they now have until August 1 to improve the roster. I think they will swing midseason deals to improve the team, and this team will be better when the season ends than when it begins.
  25. Cap'n Piranha
    Or the players highballed it. Because arbitration is a binary win/lose system, where the arbiter either chooses the team's number, or the player's number, and nothing in between, it is patently NOT in a team's interest to make a lowball offer, as that will make it more likely the arbiter rules for the player, and the team ends up overpaying. Both sides are attempting to make an offer that is slightly closer to a fair number than the other.
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