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Cap'n Piranha

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Everything posted by Cap'n Piranha

  1. Cap'n Piranha
    Putting the ball in play also has a marginal chance of becoming negative. Double plays, lead runners being thrown out, guys getting cut down at the plate; none of which can happen on a strikeout. On the whole, I agree that strikeouts are worse than ball-in-play outs, but the difference is not quite so large as a number of posters on this site want to believe. Additionally, if strikeouts are the price you pay for higher home run rates, than you can argue strikeouts are a good thing. After all, which inning would you rather have; a lead-off single, and three straight ball-in-play outs, or a leadoff homer and three straight strikeouts?
  2. Cap'n Piranha
    This is inaccurate. You're assuming that his BABIP stays the same if he changes his approach; it's quite possible it would change, and change drastically. Willians Astudillo is an elite contact hitter, and owns a career .290 BABIP. Eddie Rosario is another very good contact hitter--his career BABIP is .313. It's most likely that if Sano works to cut down his strikeouts, the trade off will be making less hard contact, and probably a lower BABIP. I'm not super interested in trading strikeouts for weak contact.
  3. Cap'n Piranha
    He has a better OPS on the year than Rosario, Adrianza, Schoop, Gonzalez, and Astudillo. By the way, if chasing pitches is bad, then Astudillo is a far bigger issue, with his 46.6% chase rate.
  4. Cap'n Piranha
    Agree with this. Strip out Gibson's first two starts, when he was still trying to gain weight/strength, and here's what you get; 11 starts, 3.38 FIP, 3.18 xFIP, 9.4 k/9, 1.6 bb/9, completely reasonable .287 babip and 74.4% lob. That FIP puts him at 20th in the league, just behind Greinke, while the xFIP puts him 7th, just behind Strasburg, and ahead of deGrom. Not too shabby for a 3rd starter. Even if you don't strip out those first two starts, Gibson is 11th in xFIP; Berrios is 38th and Odorizzi is 44th.
  5. Cap'n Piranha
    Larnach is a 22 year old in the most pitcher-friendly professional league there is. He's 4th in SLG, He's 1st in doubles, tied for 20th in homers (and it should be noted, only 3 guys have more than 8 homers; one big series and he pops up to top 10 easily). He's leading the league in average (one of only 4 guys above .300), and is third in OBP. This might be heretical, but I'm increasingly open to the idea that Larnach is on a par with Kiriloff. Kiriloff's OPS+ of 168 as a 20 year old in A+ is definitely better than Larnach's 150 as a 22 year old in the same league, but if Kiriloff will get you a much better return, I'm ok with trading Kiriloff to keep Larnach.
  6. Cap'n Piranha
    So with these numbers, it's an 8.2% chance for a DP, which means its slightly more likely of an occurrence than a walk (8.1%). Which suggests Chief feels Twins hitters should not take pitches, as it's a statistically insignificant chance that they would be able to work a walk.
  7. Cap'n Piranha
    Cruz in High Leverage Situations--.984 OPS, .423 wOBA, 168 wRC+, 28.6% hard hit rate, 28.6% soft hit rate. Sano in High Leverage Situations--1.262 OPS, .503 wOBA, 222 wRC+, 66.7% hard hit rate, 0.0% soft hit rate. You were saying about not trusting Sano in high leverage?
  8. Cap'n Piranha
    Strikeouts are good for pitchers, and bad for hitters, but its by degrees. A hitter is going to make outs at least 60% of the time. While balls in play can move runners up, or get them in, they can also erase lead runners via double plays or baserunning gaffes. A strikeout is always one out, unless the ball gets away from the catcher, and a runner tries to advance. So in the sense that a certain number of outs are guaranteed, the upside of balls in play is at least somewhat cancelled by the downside of balls in play, whereas strikeouts are neutral.
  9. Cap'n Piranha
    Sano has almost 1700 career PA. Austin has less than 500 career PA. That's 3 times the sample that puts Sano at a HR rate that would place him 100th all time if he had 3,000 PA's. It would also put him at 14th among active players. Given his HR rate is accelerating (1 every 13.2 PA this year), that seems likely to hold up.
  10. Cap'n Piranha
    He's hit 6 homers in 18 games. That's 54 homers in a 162 game season; that's only happened 26 times in baseball history. His BABIP is .286 (well below his career average of .345), which is 105th in the league. His soft contact percentage is now under 5, at 4.9%. That is best among the 345 hitters with 80 or more PA's this year, by almost 2 percentage points (Tyler Austin is next at 6.8%). His hard contact percentage is at 51.2%, which is 11th among the 345 hitters with 80 or more PA's. This is what Miguel Sano is--a guy that will always strikeout a lot, but will be legitimately one of the very best power hitters in the league when he doesn't. There is immense value to that.
  11. Cap'n Piranha
    I have to throw some cold water on the Larnach love, as he has slowed down since May--his 1.040 OPS in June is down from 1.075 in May. In all seriousness, he's now up to an .873 OPS in the pitcher-friendly FSL as a 22 year old. I expect him to stay there through July so as not to risk a dip in his numbers at AA, leaving his trade value unaffected (unless of course Falvine thinks of him as untouchable). If Lewis doesn't string a couple of good months together, Larnach will be nipping at his heels in the prospect rankings.
  12. Cap'n Piranha
    Miguel Sano before tonight's (Wednesday) game; 1.009 OPS, .406 wOBA, 156 wRC+. Not only is his offense seen as above average thus far this season, so is his defense AND baserunning. He's accumulated 0.8 WAR in only 14 games--in a 154 game season, that's a 9 WAR season. Sure he strikes out a lot, but he also has nearly a 50% hard hit rate, and only a 6.5% soft hit rate--in other words, the 65% of the time he makes contact, it's medium contact or better 9 times out of 10. This piece smacks of something the writer threw together on the heels of Monday's 0-3 with a strikeout, without any manner of research whatsoever. I'm not sure how else a piece running Sano down could be posted.
  13. Cap'n Piranha
    I'm not too concerned with the pitching, this is a chance to see what our depth looks like should we need to use internal options to replace injured/ineffective starters. I'm not even concerned about the offense for the rest of the season. What I am concerned about with the offense is a potential vulnerability based on it's philosophy. The 2019 Twins are like a boxer who has a huge uppercut, and therefore becomes a knockout artist. If the punches are landing, and usually they are, you're going to be unbeatable. But if you face someone who never gives you that opening, what's the fall back? Last night, Bieber was at 36 pitches through 2 innings, and 67 through 4. He somehow pitched into the 8th. In the first game of a series, getting to the bullpen is a good thing. I would have liked to see a more patient approach in innings 5 and 6 on a guy who was at 60% strikes on the night
  14. Cap'n Piranha
    MLB Drafts are crapshoots, particularly when they're being mocked by non MLB FO types. Based on mocks, Mike Trout would have been a tremendous reach in 2011. Eddie Rosario and Justin Morneau are two more examples of guys who would have been reaches in the first round. Also, power can develop; witness one Brian Dozier. Not saying any of this will happen, just that being upset about the draft picks right now is like being upset about a team's offense after they go down 1-2-3 in the first inning of game 1 of the season.
  15. Cap'n Piranha
    I think in one game samples, run differential is an extremely important stat.
  16. Cap'n Piranha
    Not sure if you've heard or not, but apparently we haven't played in the Metrodome in a decade.
  17. Cap'n Piranha
    The starting pitching problem was at least somewhat fixable--go after Keuchel, or make a play for Corbin. As for catching a break, while it's certainly over the top to have 5 starters get injured, the Yankees have also had an insane run of bad injury luck, yet are 10 games over .500 and leading the AL East. Pujols hasn't been good for a couple of years now, so saying Pujols getting old and hurt is not catching a break is less bad fortune and more bad planning at this point. It seemed to me when Trout signed his extension this past offseason that the Angels were consigning themselves to 2-3 more years of mediocrity barring a run of good fortune. So far the Angels have been exceedingly mediocre.
  18. Cap'n Piranha
    My two cents; I'm a big fan of Arraez, and have been for a couple of years, but he should be sent back to AAA when Cruz is ready to return. Keeping Adrianza in order to ensure maximum depth and flexibility is important. At some point, one of the infielders will get hurt again, and then you can call Arraez right back up. The 2019 projection for the Twins on fangraphs is now just under 95 wins, with a 72.5% chance to win the division. Interestingly, fangraphs, based on their projections, thinks the Indians are exactly as good as the Twins, as they expect them to lose the division by 5 games. Some teams are described as being greater than the sum of their parts. This Angels team seems to be lesser than the sum of their parts; they have 11 players with a wRC+ over 100, and yet are 3 games below .500 and in 4th place in an aggressively mediocre AL West. They are 6-9 against teams with winning records, which means they're exactly .500 in the 32 games they've played against sub-.500 teams. As I predicted before the season started, the Angels seem set and content to waste yet another year of Mike Trout's prime. If Ohtani and Simmons are both out these next two games, the Twins should get the sweep.
  19. Cap'n Piranha
    I think an underrated aspect has also been the ability to go out every day and play. Reps mean improvement, more reps means more improvement. He's still better against lefties (1.026 OPS) than righties, but his .808 OPS against righties is quite good. He's doing very well when pulling the ball (1.362 OPS), and has actually thrived in high leverage situations (1.681 OPS)
  20. Cap'n Piranha
    Why do the Blue Wahoos wear red jerseys?
  21. Cap'n Piranha
    Do you remember the times not shifting has hurt us badly? The totality of the logic behind shifting is to place more defenders in areas to which each individual batter is more likely to hit the ball. Smart teams move their defenders to maximize the odds of success--that doesn't mean it can't look really bad. Just like how in blackjack smart betters double down on ten when the dealer is showing six. That doesn't mean you won't get a 2, and the dealer won't flip a five and then get a face card.
  22. Cap'n Piranha
    I gotta keep giving love to Arraez too. He just turned 22 in April, is at AA, and is hitting .342 with a .415 OBP. Almost no power to speak of (no homers, and only one triple), but that makes the fact that he has more walks than strikeouts even more impressive. He's played games at second, third, short and even left field. He has a real shot to make this team straight out of spring training next year.
  23. Cap'n Piranha
    IN this series, Twins pitching gave up 13 runs in 36 innings--3.25 ERA. Hildenberger gave up 4 in 2 innings for an 18 ERA, meaning all other pitchers had a 2.38 ERA. All that is to say--what injury do we think Hildenberger will be diagnosed with today?
  24. Cap'n Piranha
    Imagine if the Twins had taken Nola, Conforto, Turner, or Chapman in 2014 instead of Gordon, and Benintendi or Buehler in 2015 instead of Jay
  25. Cap'n Piranha
    Particularly for a college reliever with speculation around being able to help the Twin's bullpen the year he was drafted.
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