twinstalker

Hopefully the six months the Twins wasted here won't prove a negative. Well, that' silly. It is a negative. Just plain stupid. When he's put on the 40-man roster, he'll be six months behind. When he runs out of options, he'll be six months behind. When he's needed as an emergency pitcher while in the upper minors and on the 40-man, he'll be six months behind. Six months behind where he should be.

Ugh. Regression to the mean refers to the selection of a group on the extreme of a scale and finding the expected value. The sample average of values the subjects take on is offset from it's expected value, which is closer to the overall mean. If you take a random sample of 10 players' batting averages, the sample average is centered around the expected value of those ten players. Compare the sample average of the 10 BAs with the average of those players' 10 lifetime averages. Take the difference. Repeat this process n times. The average difference will be 0 as n goes to infinity. Now take the ten highest batting average players one year, do the same thing. Unfortunately, there are only 100 years of this, but there are ways to make it work and avoid some biases that creep in. Compare the average of the 10 season long BAs with the average of the lifetime BAs of those ten players. Calculate the "sample" mean minus the lifetime mean. I would guess that almost all those differences would be positive, indicating a bias. It is, of course, a selection bias. The true expected value of batting average for those 10 players is not the center of the sample averages. It is offset toward the mean of the whole population. This is called regression to the mean. Regression to the Mean has little to do with eventually ending up at the mean. So how does this fit with the Twins? Well, we didn't select them because they were the best team, but we're sort of talking about them because they're doing so well. There are so many issues that affect record at any one time, but one of the biggest issues in baseball is autocorrelation. Hot streaks, cold streaks. Probability of success changing due to prior success the day before or over the last week. If the games thus far represented a random sample, and if autocorrelation didn't exist, and if the team didn't change in any way over the course of the summer, then maybe the winning pct now can produce a confidence interval for the season winning pct that shows a tight interval excluding anything resembling the last four years. But with the issues of autocorrelation, changeover, injuries, and such, it's totally unclear how the Twins will do with a new manager and prospects coming up, though having played 35% of the season lowers variation and keeps the interval tighter. My feeling is that the Twins are better with Molitor, Allen, Polanco, and Buxton, and it wouldn't shock me if they finished above .500.

First, Hicks was a different animal. There was nothing but hope that said he was ready for anything other than an attempt at AAA in 2013. The Twins stunted his development by crossing their fingers. Given his development rate at the time, 2013 should have been spent at AAA, last year he should have seen his first substantial time in the majors, and this year he should have been expected to be ready. Buxton, on the other hand, learns and adjusts very quickly. The Twins have many considerations wrt Buxton and their current makeup. They have Schafer and Robinson in there currently, they are not yet out of contention, they have Hicks mostly ready and Rosario possibly close enough. Both will be given a chance (it's obvious that Molitor has a lot of affection for Rosario). Buxton will need to stay in the minors through most of June to guarantee non-super two status, and the Twins will need his impetus at the gate when there's not much else to cheer for. This all screams for sometime in July.

I see no upside for the Twins on this. If he deserves more at the end, he would be easily tradeable. What is more likely is that they're fixed into paying $6 million and $9 million for a guy who won't be the best 2B on the team at that time. Dozier has no financial incentive to play well until the 4th year now, whereas he'd have to battle to keep his spot without the contract. There was just no reason for the Twins to do this. I know they want their brand to have consistency in personnel, but this doesn't really get at this, other than not allowing them the option of dumping Dozier and his salary.

You appear great at googling 1977, because I doubt you remember Jobs and Wozniak from then. What you should remember is that it was the Summer of Sam, and that seemingly every celebrity died that year. When I think of 1977, I remember Elvis and Bing dying and the Twins big year, which ended up being about huge years from individual players. I remember that Sunday afternoon at my dad's apartment in Fridley, listening to Herb call the game, and how excited I was because we'd ended 1976 so well--I thought we had a chance. Besides all the stud seasons from Carew, Hisle, Bostock, and Goltz, what I remember most about that season is Glenn Adams and Rich Chiles joining the team (Adams big year), Tom Johnson winning a boatload of games, Geoff Zahn and Paul Thormodsgaard (sp?) being iron men, and at the very beginning of the season I think it was Mike Pazik and Don Carrithers getting into an accident and losing their seasons. To me at a young age, I had held high hopes for Pazik that year. The way I remember it, he had started out on fire, and then his season (and maybe the Twins') went up in smoke because some woman went the wrong way on an exit ramp or something. No googling. :-)

Well, if Terry Ryan is in here anywhere, I'll ignore the rest. :-)

I would point out that Hughes seems to be one of those every-other-year players. While a number of those careers are of course due to random variation, it's easy to conceive that some are not; that they are the product of a negative autocorrelation. Perhaps he "bears down" after a bad season and relaxes after a good one. That's a possibility to consider, but otoh his FIP has been very consistent over the years, and it's down nearly two points this year. Just saying: he's a pitcher, and one year does not mean he's a god going forward. The best course of action is NOT to extend Hughes. It is to figure out good deals when the time comes, like they did with Hughes, and then figure out the next good deal with another pitcher when the time comes. Phil Hughes will never be a good deal again. Be happy with the three years. As for the bonus. If the Twins really wanted him to have a shot at it, they wouldn't have pulled him after 7 innings and 90 pitches vs Cleveland on Friday. Instead they guaranteed he'd have to pitch into the 9th for the first time all year in his last game, if he were going to achieve it. Sure, it's easy to act as if you wanted him to earn the bonus, and I have no doubt that Gardenhire would have given him the 9th, but the Twins protected themselves pretty well. It's like they said "well, we'll give him the chance if he proves (again) that he deserves it, but odds are very much in our favor."

He's a good player, and he's got a good reputation league-wide. While the Twins don't yet have a replacement, they will very, very soon in Polanco. Polanco is going to hit and field well at 2B. His bat is quick, and he's shown the ability to adjust to higher levels. He should be very similar to Santana, though I think his bat will be better. I think Polanco is the safest bet in the organization, after Buxton. Given all that, yes, you need to deal Dozier next season. You're not losing Dozier, you're gaining whatever you get back, because we'll have his replacement in the wings. The Twins, though, besides having very little clue on optimizing talent, absolutely love Dozier, from what I can tell. I think they think he is the model ballplayer. They're not necessarily wrong there, but the importance they place on that is probably far too high.

Guys with 150 IP and 115 K at A+ or AA almost always do not become major league starters. Or if they do (because their organization doesn't recognize the issue), they get knocked around until their fate becomes bullpen or bust. There are exceptions and nuance to consider, but I wouldn't get too high on any pitchers in this category. That's why Meyer,Berrios, Thorpe, and (eventually, with K/9 improvement) Stewart, and a couple others are the real hope, and the others are real longshots.

Ugh. Schafer. Scrap heap. Fooled. Next.

He's not on the 40, but there's no difference now for him to be placed there compared to putting him on in the fall to protect him from Rule V. He'll still have three years of options starting in 2015. If it's not Correia getting DFA'd to make room for Meyer, I think it's Florimon. He needs to get MLB starts, though, because he'll be in rotation next year.

You're right that Santana needs to play SS. He might be the best CF the Twins have until Buxton gets there, but Buxton will be there by July, barring injury, and Santana has to be able to handle short to play. I'll take issue that Hicks doesn't need time at Rochester. At Rochester he'll face a number of pitchers who have proven breaking balls and change-ups, at least at a superior level to AA. That's what he needs to prove he can hit. A good slash line at AAA is important for Hicks. Another guy who needs to prove something at AAA is Arcia. Unlike Hicks, though, it's not the slash line, because Arcia will have a terrific slash line there and has proven it in the past. His problem at MLB is his K rate, and if you go back to his AAA numbers, his K rate there is alarming. I've said before (maybe here, maybe elsewhere), and Roy Smalley mentioned it on the telecast yesterday, that Arcia can't identify pitches. Until he is able to do so, his upside is Jacque Jones, and that would be a shame. He's got way too much talent to simply be a "guess" hitter like Jones was. This one is really on Twins management. Arcia should not be flailing at the big-league level. He should be sent down with a complete understanding of why and what he has to do to get back, which is strike out less while maintaining decent hitting stats.

Thank you!

John, The old RSS isn't working, and I don't find a link to the new one. No icon. Can you help me?

My hope when Arcia was rehabbing was that the Twins would see his strikeout rate was far too high even at AAA and keep him there with the mission that he needed to figure that part out prior to coming back to the Twins. That's still what I would do (demote him). Unfortunately, the Twins don't have any OFers to bring up, except Hicks, who also needs to figure things out at AAA. It's probably time to give Mauer an outfielder's glove and consider giving Vargas, already on the 40, a chance as DH and backup 1B for a while. Arcia and Hicks need to spend their time through July down on the farm with specific goals in mind. Arcia can obviously destroy pitching there, but apparently he can't not strikeout a lot there. Fix that and come back.

If the Twins planned on signing two FA pitchers, and they signed two plus Marcum, I'd be okay with getting him at a safe price. Otherwise, I view him as damaged good.

DeVries has no chance of staying on the 40.

The sad thing is that there will always be a solid segment of the population that wants to believe that natural variation/noise in their favor is actually truth. Mastroianni has batted well in the minor as a much older player, much like Dozier. However... Dozier has done it as a pretty good middle infielder. Mastroianni has played a grand total of seven minor league games at 2B after his first season (five years). DM's hitting at the high minors, after posting a .390 obp as a 24 yr old in AA in 2010 (Dozier-like), has actually be mediocre since, or worse if you adjust his .276/.358/.389 for playing in Las Vegas, the easiest park to hit in. Even this year his minor league numbers were .283/.341/.345. How people expect this guy to be even that good at the MLB level is beyond me. Because he hustles and had a good game? The Twins will try to hype anything and everything they can, so I imagine a lot of people get influenced by TV and such. He wasn't good enough to play 2B in the Toronto minor league system, he hasn't hit well enough to deserve anything Yet people are crossing their fingers and hoping for a miracle. When an older non-top prospect destroys AAA for a period of time, such as the recent examples of Span (2008), Plouffe (2011), and Parmelee (2012), then he's ready for a true shot at MLB. Or when an age-appropriate player proves he can hit AAA decently (hopefully Hicks next year), then he deserves a true shot.

It would be interesting to know what the idea behind Nishioka is, or whether it's just a "we're out of it, and we feel bad for Nishi" type move. With Mastroeanni (sp) able to play 2nd, they don't really need an infielder.

Officially the Twins traded Mulvey for Rauch, but in reality giving up Gomez and Mulvey were as much about Bill Smith trying to fool the MN public that he was getting something ultimately for Santana. Hardy and Rauch were contracts their teams wanted to get rid of, no one wanted to take them on...except for Bill Smith, who was trying to twist perception.

As long as it doesn't hamper any positive moves, and as long as the Twins are willing to get rid of him at any time, this is okay. Get Revere the AAA time he needs. Unfortunately, the Twins, as usual, cannot be counted on for understanding this, and we already have our first indication they might think a 28 yr old with mediocre minor league stats is actually viable: I'm sure Gardy recalls the one homer and two triples Thomas has hit against the Twins. The same way he recalled how difficult it was for Joe Mauer to hit Dusty Hughes. Revere gets to play everyday for now. Hopefully that's all this is about.

I can think of three off the top of my head...Baker, Mauer, Morneau. No three guys are more ready to celebrate a division win after already celebrating clinching a playoff spot. %2006%

Ideal Scenario: Wimmers will start 2012 back at Fort Myers. Assuming he has regained his control he should end the season in AA New Britain. I would say that's the realistic scenario. I wouldn't expect Wimmers to spend much time at A+. He's likely going to stay only until it warms up in New Britain. The hoped for scenario wuld be that he spends a couple months both places and ends up at Rochester.

Baseball America is seriously downtrending on Appel. They don't like his strikeout rate for a college pitcher...and isn't that what we're really looking for? OTOH, they're really high on Zimmers from USF. Just because someone once used "Verlander" in a sentence with "Appel" and "potential," I'm not convinced he's the guy. It does seem like the Twins are going to take a power pitcher, though. The safer (and also necessary due to one of the worst trades in Twins history) pick might be Mike Zunino, C, Florida.