tobynotjason

What on earth re: Correia is particularly suited to Target Field (which btw had an above average HR Factor last year)? Why is anything about his stuff likely to play significantly better than DIPS numbers would suggest? I mean, sure, superior defense (which has nothing to do with your home park) will proportionately help low K pitchers more than high K pitchers, but it helps all pitchers a lot, and in any case that's an argument at the extreme margin. (Note that I'm not suggesting the Twins have "superior defense", just addressing that argument were that TR's plan.)

Worley is 86th in the league in SIERA among qualified pitchers to lead the Twins. (I assume you're interested in what's likely going forward, not what SSS BABIP and HR/FB numbers have posted.) Correia's 88th. Pelfrey 104th (of 108). Sanchez is 3rd. Jackson's 45th. You might have wanted Saunders, but "ew". (He's 103rd, btw.) Haren's 63rd. McCarthy's 51st. Dempster's 11th. So per the best one-number statistic we have to measure how well a pitcher's done the things he can actually control and how well he's likely to do going forward: yeah, Terry Ryan picked poorly and the one guy who's done superficially "well" (if you ignore everything lately) hasn't posted any numbers that suggest he's anything but thoroughly mediocre. (His ERA actually outpaces his BABIP, by the way, which itself ranks THIRTY TWO places higher than his SIERA. Unsustainable much?)

What other people said re: K%. Every time I see someone cite K/9 or BB/9 I cry inside. My rant: an R squared of .05 (for BABIP) FTW? Really? (Not to mention, McCracken actually found an R of .153 for BABIP in the original study; hits aren't a DIPS stat: they include Home Runs.) And as has been widely understood for almost decade, the year-to-year correlation in BABIP was pretty much totally explained by (1) year-to-year consistency in the team's defense/home park (players who switch teams show close to zero correlation: as in an r of .04); (2) DIPS themselves, which predict BABIP better than BABIP; and (3) pitcher-type tendencies, including the knuckleballer/junkballer effect and gb vs. fb pitchers, with a heavy emphasis on (1). So yeah: strikeout rate and walk rate - ACTUAL rate, not per 27 outs - are THE thing.

I haven't even been on a Twins forum in months. I came here to see why Sano and Rosario weren't playing, hoping they'd been moved semi-aggressively to New Britain. (Of course not, I have learned.) And then I read this article and am immediately reminded of some of the key reasons why I am no longer a Twins fan per se, and of the typically predictable and enervating actions/blather of several of the clowns who embody those reasons (see: Gardenhire, Bremer, Gladden). It was a nice play. His flip carried no risk. But HOW DARE HE not possess that s(t)olid midwestern-protestant-overachiever nose-to-the-grindstone (white) work ethic that, at times, seems to be the ONLY thing extolled by the Twins org. Gladden and Gardenhire were players with very limited skill sets. Their post-playing baseball careers are built on similarly management-friendly mediocrity. Bremer has no discernible skills of any kind. Aaron Hicks has baseball tools they can only dream of. (That said, he should be in AAA developing his hit tool, as was obvious in March to anyone who understands minor league projections and what a red flaggy 25.7% K/AB ratio [his 2012 number vs. RHP] all but guarantees, but my interest in beating such drums on the reg has long since been beaten down to a fine "meh" by the pervasive awfulness of the organization's culture.) Imagine the unadulterated hate if he happened to be a smart guy! I've come to love the Pirates, my former "second team", with more of my soul than I ever loved the Twins. That said, Clint Hurdle does a TON of incredibly irritating things tactically and has a big red face, so sometimes I feel like I haven't really escaped Gardenhire. Then I see stuff like this and realize that, however asinine Hurdle's bullpen management or stubbornness WRT sac bunts and steals, etc., I have never sensed that he's any kind of intolerant, passive aggressive jerk the way I always do WRT Gardenhire. Watching Hurdle put his arm around Starling Marte after he TOOTBLANd in the bottom of the 8th today puts his tactical "genius" in perspective. (Imagine how bad it would have been if Blyleven had been there, too.)

He had 6 awful starts to begin the year vs. 11 starts in his good run, so really, he was good more than he was awful. The thing is, Pitch F/X data proves beyond any doubt that his stuff was 'nother class beginning 5.30.2012. It's actually as good as it's ever been post-TJ surgery. (That is, it is incontestable that he is throwing all pitches harder with better movement.) So it's really not that he's been awful with a little good. He's been throwing world-beating stuff (TOTALLY unlike what he threw in early 2012 and in 2011) that he's at times struggled to command. That's objective reality, not dicknbert "narrative". That is, this isn't how he's "always been". This is how he's been this year, since the the end of May, period. His stuff wasn't nearly as good in 2011. It wasn't even quite as good in 2010. Then he gets traded FOR NOTHING after a clunker, just before a shot at redemption, AND just before the deadline would have forced put up or shut up offers. That's why this is so maddening.

So GUESSING that a better offer won't materialize after a guy whose stuff per pitch f/x is unequivocally, demonstrably, objectively TOTALLY DIFFERENT than it was in 2011 and early 2012 (and actually even better than 2010) makes another start is OK, because, y'know, "he didn't expect better[offers] to come by Tuesday". Just: no. The F.O. is toast. At least Liriano, of whom I'm a much bigger fan at this point than the Twins Org., writ large, will get a chance to work with a real pitching coach.

Best decision I ever made: deciding to commit to watching/following the Pirates as much as I did the Twins in 2008 when the Neal Huntington regime was settling in. It's just SO damn nice cheering for an organization with a front office that realizes it's the 21st century and rarely does anything to incense anyone who's realized similar things. Hopefully the Pohlads decide to cash out on the gift given to them by the people of Minnesota and an owner with a clue comes in and cleans house in the F.O. and field staff. Not. Holding. My. Breath.

He's not hurt, dude. The pitch f/x numbers from his last start show that his velo was still at it's post-TJ peak and his sinker had, in fact, EPIC levels of sink. In fact, it may have been TOO lively, leading him to throw straight 4-seamers in order to throw strikes, which he located poorly and for which he was punished. His slider topped out at 89. It had great movement numbers too. His stuff is fine, ergo his arm is fine. There is NO explanation other than that the Twins FO are utterly incompetent dinosaurs. How they thought 2 piles of crap was preferable to running him out for a shot at 2 piles of semi-exciting vs. nada is beyond me.

diehard, Presley's rehabbing. He's their starting LF and lead off man with Tabata down.

From the perspective of a Pirates fan, this is bordering on ignorant. FYI. Span as a semi-long-term corner? Um... Starling Marte, Robbie Grossman, and oh by the way Alex Presley except for April and May this season. If you've watched the day in, day out you wouldn't have much if any leadoff angst. Sutton's a hot-hand fill-in. Presley raked in his AAA concussion rehab tonight. Willingham has been discussed at length for months on Pirates' boards. Liriano gets an occasional mention. I don't think I've ever heard Span's name even mentioned save as "well, the Twins are probably trying to deal him, but he's not a fit."

Pirates pick next year for Appel would be #8b.

very good news.

I wouldn't say every such argument is "simplistic" (unless it's really merely "THEY'RE RICH AND THEY'RE CHEAP!"), although "ignores real world situations" is absolutely accurate.

No, it isn't. Last year his K/AB as a LHB was 27.5%. (If you meant something else, apologies, but his awful K/AB ratio was the point/raison d'etre of my post. Certainly he is squaring up a bit more [15.9 v. 12.7%] v. RHP [apologies for the "as" vs. "vs" brainfarts above] on balls in play, but his overall profile v. RHP right now doesn't project well at all.)

Law is in deep, deep speculation land (and not at all representative of industry consensus) when he says Appel is the best bet to go 1.1. You never really know how a draft is going to shape up until a couple months out, anyway. Smart Pirates message boards are basically A-OK if he walks, content that next year's draft can't be worse. And lots of very smart folks are just not high on Appel at all: did you hear how underwhelmed Goldtein was on his podcast a couple months ago? But as far as the link goes: Yeah, it's Heyman, ergo it's Boras. It's just posturing, and nobody knows anything. This Pirates fan, FWIW, hopes they sign Buehler with most of the extra money, then offer Appel slot plus any leftover crumbs.

At first this read like laughable apologetics, but further statements by the OP make me think it's just a matter of emphasis (notwithstanding factual inaccuracies re: real world ownership). If you want to make an argument like, "Look, MLB owners are greedy capitalists. They're incredibly rich people that got incredibly rich the way pretty much all incredibly rich people get incredibly rich: by screwing people over in generally legal and applauded ways. Getting the public to hand them a $300 million asset is par for the course. The Pohlads are no different. Carl Pohlad got started foreclosing on farms in the Depression. He fleeced the public for his ailing bus company. Fundamentally he made his fortune in that noblest of productive arenas: [pause to vomit] banking. So don't expect the Pohlads to sink one cent of personal money or their expected profits back into the team. I want to have a realistic discussion, and that's just naive," that would be perfectly reasonable. You'd basically be saying: let's have a debate that's relevant to readily-potential reality. And that's actually worth saying, since a discussion about the best course of action for the Twins (or any MLB franchise) that relies on "the owners should worry less about their bottom line" is only ever going to be pie-in-the-sky, and it might be more intellectually interesting to say "what would I do if I were GM" than "what would I do if I were God." The thing is, lots of people don't want to have a debate relevant only to the status quo and its most likely permutations. Lots of people think people like the Pohlads kind of utterly suck, and don't really care about their expected profits or net worth. People like this are always going to criticize them for not spending enough on the payroll. They're right from their point of view, and irrelevant from the viewpoint of the status quo. But pointing out that there's a board of directors has nothing to do with who owns the Twins, nor with excusing the state of the payroll.

Re: Hicks's splits "evening out". The batted ball profiles are still quite different RH v. LH. He just doesn't square the ball up much from the left [edit for brainfart] side, and most of his value there has come from walking a ton. Unfortunately, his K/AB (a far better measure than K/PA for evaluating/projecting minor league hitting talent) from the left [edit for brainfart] side is sitting at 28.4% thus far in 2012, which is well above the red flag line. When you have whiffage like that, BB numbers tend to disappear as you climb the levels barring elite power, which he's not close to showing (as a LHB [edit for brainfart]). The fact that he's maintained the super-elite walk rate in his jump to AA is certainly worth noting, but the gap in pitchers' command between AA and MLB is huge. Still just 22 though...

just threw this up at Twinkietown. http://www.twinkietown.com/2012/6/22/3110845/bad-teams-or-good-liriano

Good article. Unfortunately it utterly pooh-poohs the notion that anything but steroids could possibly have had anything to do with an ISO explosion that looks, in year-by-year graphical form, like a plateau. Because, you know, everybody started using them at once, then everybody stopped at once. Plus, they didn't help pitchers and/or pitchers didn't use them. Oh wait...

I just threw this up at Twinkietown http://www.twinkietown.com/2012/5/30/3053388/did-liriano-get-lucky-keep-the-ball-down-in-the-zone-do-something More downward movement on all this pitches than he's had this year. Velocity didn't look like 2010, but his fastball moved more like a sinker and less like a sitting duck. Ditto his change.

I was going to say "why not just use xFIP/SIERA/etc." but then I clicked the link (and realized I'd already read this). The high result of Ks and relatively low result for BBs mirror what Tango found for his "future FIP". Any DIPs stat is going to beat simple K/BB, I would think, since they weight things more appropriately in terms of value.

So if enough Gardenhire supporters say so, the demonstrable fact that the AL Central has been the weakest division in baseball over the past decade somehow doesn't matter if you're interested in evaluating exactly how good the Twins have been over the past decade? All that matters is the titles and nyah nyah nyah nothing else matters. There's a reason the argument against this is hard to articulate: IT DOESN'T EXIST. Good for them for winning their division a bunch. But it simply was not as difficult as winning elsewhere, and ignoring (or worse, denying) this blithely seems like saying "MLB, market to me, baby! How about 15 divisions of two teams each and I'll be overjoyed when 'we' go on a 10 year run of 8 division titles vs. the Royals."

This thread is funny. Guys loudly proclaiming that a rebuild involves (wait for it...) the rebuilding team trading their prospects (and strangely alluring replacement level MLB talent) for actual MLB talent... presumably to win 73 instead of 65 games while eviscerating their future? GMs around the league chomping at the bit to get their hands on Valencia, Casilla, etc.... Sure. When you've resigned yourself to what is going on, here is the deal: rebuidling teams don't trade prospects unless they get a silly return back. Do the Twins have a bunch of OF prospects? Sure. Do they know which ones, if any, are going to work out? Absolutely not. So unless you are offered absolute blue chippers back in an area of need (middle infield, starting pitching) there's no point to moving them. Certainly not to add a few wins onto lost seasons. Span is reasonably priced and signed through 2015. This is the reason NOT to keep him. Sure, MAYBE everything falls into place and the Twins compete in 2015. If things get incredibly crazy, 2014. You are still looking at a minimum of two and very probably three utterly lost seasons paying him for no reason. Meanwhile, the fact that he is reasonably priced through 2015 means other teams that are competitive now will pay A LOT more for him now than they will a similar guy at the deadline in his contract year or one year removed. His reasonable contract and talent are exactly why he SHOULD be moved. Pay some salary if it brings back more/better prospects. If Willingham gets hot again: ditto. Rebuilds are ugly at the MLB level. You can't afford luxuries when you're trying to go from "guaranteed to suck now" to "good chance of not sucking in the medium future." Which is what a rebuild is.

Way late but: nobody replying really addressed what I actually wrote. I said "nasty stuff", not hard throwers, for a reason. (Not that Hoey was even responsive as a late 20s guy they traded for, but he's exemplary of how you can throw hard with mediocre stuff.) I said high school for a reason. I cited the examples of dominant off speed breaking balls for a reason. One guy says Hoey and Shooter, which, to the extent it can even be claimed to be an answer to my question, confirmed my point (precisely because it ISN'T an answer). Hunt's name gets dropped again, along with Bashore. How were they projectable high school arms with potential that could be developed? Waldrop and Rainville were taken, what, EIGHT years ago? I certainly agree that pitching is volatile. It shouldn't be THIS volatile given solid scouting and good development. Certainly things are magnified by the fact that Baker isn't back from TJ this season instead of just going under, by Slowey's wrist injury and subsequent ineffectiveness, etc. But when you draft tons of pitchers who have NO HOPE of ever missing bats at or above the MLB average rate, what do you expect?

So Johan Santana was really just pitching to contact? Come the fark on: either words mean something or they don't. And since it's being preached as a vital truth at the core of the organization's philosophy, it's pretty clear these words DO have a specific meaning that isn't just "throw strikes". And since we have a loooooong track record of seeing what kind of pitching the Twins praise and what kind of pitching they loathe (when is the last time they drafted a high school guy with nasty stuff but unrefined command?), it's pretty clear it boils down to "use strikethrowers who lack dominating stuff but 'know how to pitch', because somehow the laws of pitcher BABIP in MLB just won't apply to our guys". I've watched James McDonald and Eric Bedard pour nasty breaking ball after nasty breaking ball into the strikezone in the past few days for the Bucs: 10 Ks in 7.2 and 11 Ks in 5. McDonald, especially, was just locked in with his wicked curve ball. He wasn't "pitching to contact" simply because he was throwing strike after strike. He was doing the opposite: throwing filthy pitches with every intention of missing bats.