jorgenswest

Just wondering... How much would it cost a team to bring salaries up to a reasonable wage? Is it possible that on doing so, a few more players would make the majors that otherwise wouldn't?

Thanks for the article. He messed up on the bases and the manager dealt with it in game. I respect that approach much more than making offhand comments in a press conference. I think Hicks will also and respond positively. His approach at the plate is moving in a positive direction. I trust Molitor to know where he should begin the season.

At some point the Twins need to see how Pelfrey does when he comes in with runners on base. His performance as a starter with runners on base was significantly worse than with the bases empty. It contributed to ERAs that were worse than his FIPs. It could be his slowed pace with runners on. It could be a drop in performance when pitching from the stretch. They also need to see how his arm bounces back and whether he can pitch on back to back days without loss in velocity or command. I am not sure that can all be assessed in spring but as soon as they determine he is not a starter they need to be putting him in situations they expect him to see as a reliever.

For 2 million dollars you get a decline phase veteran reliever that was used in low leverage situations with poor performance outside of Petco park. Good set up men cost north of 5 million on the open market. Only the eyes of the Twins staff should be able able to gauge whether to be concerned on his performance earlier this week. There is good reason for anyone to be concerned that the Twins see him as a late inning reliever based on his performance outside of Petco and age. There could not have been many teams competing for his service this winter.

I hope the entire bullpen outside of Perkins are fighting for a job. I hope the Twins are willing to let Duensing and Stauffer go as soon as a younger player shows they are ready. If that is opening day, so much the better for the Twins.

Fien has a very high fly ball rate at 49%. He needs a strikeout rate closer to 30% or at least north of 25% to be effective with that fly ball rate. Unless he has a role where he comes in with no one on base, he is a disaster waiting to happen from the pen. His strikeout rate dropped from 29.9 to 19.6 last year and it wasn't just the end of the year. It was around 20 all year. He needs to be closer to his 2013 rate than his 2014 to be a useful reliever.

Framing would effect balls and strikes and therefore be considered defense independent. A pitcher's FIP and xFIP are based heavily on strike outs and walks so any change in those numbers due to framing would result in a pitcher's FIP or xFIP that didn't represent his true abilities. Framing has significant impact on those measures. Outfield defense would have no impact on xFIP and little on FIP unless there was some superman effort in stealing home runs therefore resulting in a lower than expected FIP.

There is little evidence the Twins value framing data or the skill and technique related to framing pitches. You only have to look at the signing of Doumit, the extending of Doumit, the signing of Suzuki and the extending of Suzuki as evidence. Pinto has been trained in the organization since 2006. Despite 9 years, he enters 2015 with very poor technique and skill particularly in the area of framing. He is still young enough to improve his skill, but it doesn't seem likely the Twins can help him. It is hard to have any confidence in the organization's ability to develop or even recognize a catcher's ability to frame pitches. Let's hope the other clubs are wrong and this skill has little effect on runs given up.

Spring training is meaningful. Jobs are won and lost as a result. They should be. Statistics from spring training exhibition games have no meaning. They should not be kept, reported or used in support of roster making decisions. I hope the Twins don't keep them or use them. Not only is the data in a sample too small to be meaningful but the level of competition varies. It is critical the Twins get the roster right though. They need to rely on the skill of the coaching staff and other staff in spring training to get the best 25. They need to be able to assess whether Milone, Pelfrey and Nolasco are healthy and throwing the ball like they did when they were more successful. Suzuki can help assess Milone also. They have to make the correct assessment on these three and have plenty of time and plenty of eyes to get it right. They need to assess whether Hicks has fundamentally changed his approach and possibly swing. They need to assess whether Schafer's numbers the last two months were result of a fundamental change or simply variation due to sample. Last year's staff should have seen a fundamental change in Kubel's bat speed. They should have seen Bartlett's inability to play outfield. They should have seen the need for Pinto to catch every day in the minors. They should have seen enough from Worley to retain him in AAA once he cleared waivers and was off the 40. The Twins can't afford to miss again this year. They need the skill to correctly assess the pitching and bring the best 12 north. They need to be right on Hicks and Pinto and put them in a role where they will best help the team win games. Spring training is critical to the Twins this year. Let's just hope they ignore the numbers and rely on their eyes. Let's hope the new Twins staff is more skilled than last year's staff. Spring training is meaningful. Spring training stats are not. Let's not use them.

Rosario has 649 plate appearances in AA in which he performed basically at league average. His slugging is slightly better and on base slightly worse. He did this while being much younger than the league. Combine that sample with a good AFL performance and it isn't stretching him to place him in AAA. He needs to be in AAA and if he dominates over 50 games, he needs to be in the Twins OF. Best case, he pushes Hunter to the bench because of his play combined with the emergence of Hicks and Arcia.

Harrison does need to be in AA. There don't need to be blocks at any position. Rosario and Sano need to be in AAA. At 25, Hicks is an organizational player. He can be 1B at any level that needs him. If 1B is Harrison's spot, put Hicks in A+ or AAA.

You have to at least wonder why the defense was consistently really bad for just Nolasco. While the Marlin team ERAs were always greater than the team FIPs they were much much closer than the Nolasco difference and a good portion of that difference is due to Nolasco's numbers.

It will be a positive sign for the future when someone with range forces their way into Hunter's spot in the line up. If on August 1 Buxton, Rosario, Arcia and Hicks are on the roster, the poor defense in the outfield will soon be forgotten.

The frustration should be with the Twin management. Through his prime 5 years of 26-30 he had an ERA+ of 90 in around 1000 innings. That is number 4 starter territory. Very few guys keep getting an opportunity to pitch when their adjusted ERA is 10% worse than league average through their primes. You don't give these guys four year contracts. There were some signs that pointed up for him before he signed. He always had a much better FIP. He did well with the Dodgers. There were reports that the improvement came with a change in pitch mix and pitching backwards. A single season FIP is a better predictor for the next season than ERA. 1000 innings of FIP that is far below ERA and teams should wonder what in his skill set causes the discrepancy. Reality hit when he came to Minnesota. The FIP was still a lot better than the ERA but neither was acceptable. With the Twins, he went back to fastball first and he wasn't able to establish his fastball that had always been mediocre through his career. At 32 the likelihood that he will perform close to a league average pitcher is very slim. The only hope I have is that Allen and Guardado will see something in his time with the Dodgers that they can bring back this year. They need to help him find his slider that was dominant in 2013. He needs to find it and use it often. If he can't find that slider, he isn't a major league pitcher. Last year's plan of first establishing the fast ball was never going to work.

There were six 31 year old pitchers in 2010 with ERA+ ranging 99-133. They are all better than and mostly significantly better than Santana's ERA+ of 92 last year. Cliff Lee had plenty of room for decline and has put up four good seasons. Johan Santana matched Lee at 31 and hasn't pitched well since. Wandy Rodriguez had two seasons of slight decline and two seasons injured. He had more space for decline starting at 110. Jeremy Guthrie was healthy four seasons. His ERA+ was 108 and he has had one season of better than league average (102) ERA+ in the last 4. The others were OK Performing as number 4 or 5. Mark Buerhle has been healthy 4 seasons and continued to pitch league average or better than his 31 year old season. John Lackey was awful for a season. Missed a season. The last two seasons he has been league average or better. The problem for Santana is that he doesn't have space to decline. He can't take a decline like Guthrie and be anything more than a number 5 pitcher. Lackey, Santana and Rodriguez lost two or three seasons to injury. Lee and Buerhle are very different pitchers. Expecting one very good year and two average to above average years is very optimistic for a guy who through his prime seasons was just league average and enters his age 32 season having been below league average at 31. It doesn't fit very well with how other pitchers have aged after 31.

If he doesn't show he is a league average pitcher, they won't be able to clear salary by trading him for nothing.

The Twins have invested over 100 million dolars in their pitching rotation buying 8 seasons of starting pitching. What can they expect for their $100,000,000? I started with Ervin Santana looking for a similar group. From ages 27-31 he has performed at a 99 ERA+ with about 1000 innings pitched. I wondered how other groups of pitchers performed from ages 27-31. With the help of BR's play index, I searched for all pitchers since 1975 who have pitched at least 900 innings in their age 27 through 31 seasons. There are 128 pitchers headed by Pedro Martinez and his 228 ERA+ through ages 27-31. The top is loaded with current or future Hall of Famers. I won't be comparing Santana to them. Time for a little sidetrack. Why ERA+? I used ERA+ to adjust for era and ballpark. While a single season of ERA does not predict future ERA as well as FIP or xFIP, a sample size of around 1000 innings does a good job. At that sample, it is more likely to wonder why a players FIP is far different than his ERA and speculate which skill set caused them to outperform or underperform their FIP. For the whole group, it didn't surprise me that the FIP and ERA were within 2% as FIP is supposed to project ERA. Another note on FIP. I looked at players who had FIP over those 5 years significantly different than their ERA. Ricky Nolasco and Ervin Santana can be found at different end of that spectrum. Nolasco has a far better FIP (3.75) than ERA (4.51) and Santana has a better ERA (3.88) than FIP (4.21). Should the Twins hope on Nolasco's FIP while at the same time ignore Santana's? Though FIP might indicate otherwise, I suspect Santana is the better pitcher and ERA at this sample size can be trusted at least equally with FIP. Sidetrack#2 Ricky Nolasco is in the list. He ranks 127 out of 128 with his ERA+ of 87 from ages 27-31. I can't come up with a good comp group for Nolasco. Very few pitchers can pitch at below a mid #4 starter through their peak seasons and be given the ball enough times to gather at least 900 innings. Even if his poor 31 year old season is thrown out and ages 26-30 are used instead, you get a 90 ERA+. That moves him ahead of Jaime Navarro for the 126 spot on the list. Sidetrack#3 I was surprised to see Dennis Martinez at number 128. He had a very interesting and unexpected career after age 31. At 32 he was traded with a player to be named laster (catcher John Stefaro) to the Expos for a player to be named later in Rene Gonzalez. The Orioles had essentially given him away. Martinez was named to the first of 4 all star games at age 36 and pitched until he was 44. I am not sure what he changed once he joined the Expos but walks were down, strike out were up and hit batsmen were way up after the trade. Sidetrack#4 I had play index help set levels for starter numbers. I looked at over the last 10 seasons (and 1500 pitchers with the most starts per season) and sorted starters by ERA+ grouping them in sets of 300. The 150th rank should be the mid of the number 1 starters. Starters ranked around 300 would be strong #2/fringe #1 starters. I have done this before and the results were similar. Number ERA+ #1 133 (121- ) #2 114 (107-121) #3 100 ( 95-107) #4 90 ( 84- 95) #5 76 ( - 84) So a pitcher like Nolasco had the performance of a number 4 starter at the time the Twins signed him. Back to Ervin Santana. Of the 128 pitchers in the group, Santana ranked 106 with an ERA+ of 99. The 99s ran from 106-111. That isn't very exciting as a rank but it is possible to build a group of pitchers on both sides of his performance. I chose a group that included 16 pitchers below and above him. They had ERA+ ranging from 95 to 103. The group can be found here I then had to throw out some of the pitchers. I don't know how Jason Vargas will perform after age 31. He is the same age as Santana. Some guys like Rick Langford, Erick Hanson or Russ Ortiz were injured in their age 31 season. Theie careers were over as a result. One guy was in prison. I kept Mike Scott and Dave Stewart though they had significantly better age 31 seasons and would probably earned a contract somewhere around Lester. It would be really nice of I knew how to do tables. The image above is a picture of a table. Not sure if it is a link or picture. The results can also be found on sheet 2 of the google doc. Essentially of the remaining 26 pitchers in the group 13 performed with an ERA+ of 94 or better and 13 below. I think it is reasonable to expect Santana to perform as a number 3/4 starter next year. The group changes to size 25 at age 33 as Eckersley became a closer. There number of pitchers that performed at or above 94 is now 10 and there are 11 pitchers either did not pitch or would be classified as a number 5 pitcher. The median is a number 4 pitcher with a 40% of the group performing better. The median drops to number 5 starter at age 34 and not starting at age 35. How will Santana Perform? If Santana follows the age curve of similar pitchers the Twins might expect for him to start as a fringe #3 next year and decline to a #4, #5 and possibly the bullpen in the following years. There is hope that at age 34, 32% performed at least at an ERA+ of 94. The number drops to 16% at age 35 but it isn't 0%. Nolasco doesn't have enough comps that have pitched similarly. They have one bad season out of him. Is it reasonable to hope that they will get a number 4 and maybe a number 5 out of him in the next three years. Maybe not. 2016 and Beyond It looks as if the Twins can hope to have filled their number 4 and 5 pitching slots in 2016 with their $100,000,000. They just to fill in the top 3. Let's hope it comes from Hughes, Meyer, May, Gibson or Berrios. That is a lot to expect of a young pitcher. It might be better to sign a top of the rotation guy and fill the 4-5 slots with young pitchers struggling to adjust to the majors. As for 2017, they really need those young pitchers to adjust quickly so they have the pitching to back up the young hitters. They could have a lot of money committed to two guys fighting for the number 5 spot.

Walker starting in AA isn't a push. He needs to be there. Earning a move to Rochester mid season would give him unquestioned prospect status. At 23 if he can't earn a spot in AA to start the season after two full seasons in A ball, it is very unlikely he will have a major league career of any significance.

Simply cite the first hand report characterizing Milone as a complainer. The original Rosenthal report for fox sports and the Gleeman report for hardtalk simply started he asked to be traded. Kurt Suzuki's take on Tommy Milone

Why take a shot at his character? I can't find anything in reports other than a guy who loves baseball, works hard and did not want to get sent down to the minors. Do the Twins want an established player who easily accepts a demotion to the minors? He requested a trade after being sent down with a 3.84 ERA in nearly 500 innings. He had options. Other guys didn't. I hope he and his wife don't look at this stuff. If so, they must be secretly hoping that he can move to a team where the fan base has better character.

The use of "complain" and "demand" are words that carry a connection to attitude and paint the picture of a guy sulking in the AAA clubhouse. Ken Rosenthal has the original report that was repeated by many outlets "Left-hander Tommy Milone has asked the club to trade him, major-league sources tell FOX Sports. The A’s sent Milone to Triple-A on July 5 after acquiring right-handers Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel from the Chicago Cubs. It is not unusual for players to request trades after getting demoted. Milone, though, is more established than most – in 468 2/3 major-league innings, he has a 3.84 ERA." That gives me a different picture. Ask is different from demand. No mention of complain. I don't see attitude in that report. I would hope established players would not easily accept a demotion to AAA. He has an option left. The Twins would be wise to use it if he doesn't earn the fifth starter job. There will be an opportunity if he returns to form in AAA and the Twins are better off keeping him stretched out. I would expect he would work his tail off to get back to the majors either with the Twins or through trade.

Are we confident in the Twins handling and devloping of Alex Meyer? Does he need more time in AAA? Should he have been called up last June? We don't really know what has kept the Twins from calling up Alex Meyer. We speculate it is his walk rate. How unusual is it for a pitcher with his stuff to give up a lot of walks in AAA? How would other teams respond?Do all teams wait for their pitchers with good stuff to manage their walk rates? Here are some pitchers and their walks per 9 innings in AAA prior to coming to the majors. Hernandez 4.9 Price 4.6 Lester 4.3 Samardzija 4.2 Ventura 3.9 Kershaw (no AAA but AA was 3.9 in 16 starts) Kluber 3.9 Scherzer 3.7 (4.9 in AA) It isn't unusual for pitchers who throw hard and have good stuff to walk batters in AAA. Why does their walk rate per 9 go down in the majors? I am not sure. I would imagine that better hitters put the ball in play before a walk results. AAA hitters may be experienced enough to lay off a pitch they can't hit or they foul it off. Longer counts and more walks result. It could also be the quality of the umpiring. High walk rates do not stop other teams from bringing up their pitchers with good stuff to the majors. I think some teams would have brought Alex Meyer to the majors last June. Is it the Twins plan to wait until Meyer brings his walk rate down before bringing him up to the majors? I hope not. That might not happen until his stuff isn't as good and the AAA hitters start putting the ball in play more often. Click here to view the article