The front office

SI just printed an article naming the Twins front office as the worst in baseball. I don't know if it was the worst but it is close. I would really have to look at everything other teams did.

I don't think it can be considered the worst since they made 1 good trade in getting Castillo.

But there are a number of mistakes.

Not getting Koskie.
Signing Batista
Keeping Batista through spring training so he received his entire contract.
Letting Batista play full time.
Keeping Barlett in the minors
Letting Castro play after it was obvious his range has diminished greatly.
Signing Rondell. Though I still thought it was a good signing at the time.
Not trading Lohse when he was still worth something.
Sending Kubel down early in the season.Basically showing no patience with young players like Bartlett, Baker & Kubel.
Not finding a backup in centerfield. I'll never understand why Lou Ford gets so much playing time. He had 1 good season with minimal power and limited patience.
There is probably more.

Sid wanted to give up on the season

Sid Hartman wanted to give up on the season he says in his column.

"Yes, I was one of the media who was encouraging Twins General Manager Terry Ryan to give up for the season and bring in the young kids to gain experience."

Those of us who actually know something about baseball wanted the young kids to play more because while being young, they are better players than the old statues who were not adding anything offensively or defensively to the team.

Where would this team be now if they would have made the switch sooner?

Stewart....

If Gardy is a good manager he will make sure that Kubel does not lose any at-bats. He should be taking at bats away from Lou Ford, Sierra and White.

They are 3 players who are not helping this team and I don't see them being any use in the years to come. Kubel is a young up and coming player who deserves to play 90% of the time.

With that being said, Stewart will probably take a lot of playing time from Kubel. Gardy hasn't shown any ability to understand that some times veterans decline and young players do actually improve.

I think Stewart will be a good addition to this team as a DH. DH has been the Twins weakest position so far and Stewart is still a good hitter.

Why does Sierra still have a job in the Major Leagues? What has he shown in last 10 years to prove he has the ability to still hit?

No DH a benefit for the Twins.

This weekend, Dick mentioned how surprised he was that the Twins were able to do so well in National League parks with out a DH.

I was flummoxed by this statement. I know Dick isn’t stupid but come on. Think about it.

Playing with no DH is the great equalizer for the Twins. DH is our worst position on the team. In fact Rondell wasn’t hitting any better than most pitchers. So the fact that we don’t get a DH helps our team. In a way we were playing with 8 hitters and a pitcher in the AL against teams that had a DH. In the NL this hole is filled in because both team’s now have the same weakness.

Let’s hope the NL wins the All-Star game so when the Twins play in the World Series this year we have more games without a DH.

It will be tough to lose the All-Star game with such a fiery manager like Ozzie Guillen.

Can Silva keep improving?

I wrote of DIPS early when I talked about Jesse Crain and the defense behind him. I surmised that Crain would improve and he has. Can Silva improve?

I am not a fan of Silva I don’t think he strikes out enough batters to be a quality pitcher and he is not the groundball pitcher everyone makes him out to be. His groundball percentage this year is about 51%. That is less than the league average. I think if he was really able to become a groundball pitcher he would really improve.

Now I wanted to look at Silva and briefly look at his DIPS ERA and see what that means for the rest of the season. So far this season Silva has an ERA of 6.43. That is horrible. He has been improving this, mainly due to the fact that he is allowing fewer homeruns and fewer hits. The hits allowed are primarily due to the fact that he finally has a better defense behind him.

His DIPS shows that with an average defense he would have an ERA of 5.39. Still not good but at least it is something he can improve on. And he has.

Since he went back into the rotation his ERA has been an average 4.06, with a DIPS of 3.78. That is a good pitcher. I don't know if he can keep that up but it is great to see an improvemnet.

His defense still isn’t doing as good of a job as it should but at least it is improving and isn’t costing him a run a game. If he can pitch the rest of the season with an ERA around 4.00 he would still be a valuable 4th starter for this team.

I believe this is the pitcher he is. I don’t think he will ever post a sub 4.00 ERA but he can keep it close, and if does so for the rest of the season he will win the Twins many more games.

I think he will keep the improvement up and remain the slightly below average pitcher I hope he can be.

One more thing. We shouldn't have been surprised by his decline this year. I was expecting a fairly large decline, but not this bad. Last year he had an ERA of 3.44 and a DIPS of 4.33. Showing that his ERA was better than he actually pitched. These things have a way of evening themselves out. So far this year they have.

Of the top 10 pitchers who had the highest DIPS to ERA ratio only Kenny Rogers is pitching better this year. In fact, all of the other pitchers ERAs have ballooned too. Clemens had the highest ratio and has barely pitched this year. All of the other top 10 have ERAs are over 1 run higher. One exception is Hudson whose ERA has only risen about 3/4 of a run.

Joe Morgan is an idiot

Sorry to state the obvious.

Last night he was talking about the Mets and how Jose Reyes and David Wright were possible MVP candidates. While both are having really good years Obviously Wright is a much better player but not too Morgan. With the speed Reyes has he can do more on the base paths. Finally, he makes a decision and decides that Wright is the better player because he drives in more runs while Reyes scores more runs. He goes on to so that it is harder to drive in runs than to score runs.

He doesn't back this up with any statistical basis but just that we should believe him because he is a Hall of Famer.

He goes on to say that Reyes was even a great player before this year. He says this because he can score more runs when he gets on base because of his speed. So are we to believe that a .300 OBP is valuable leading off because he can steal bases.

Doesn't he understand that you must actually be on base to score?

Also, getting on base means you are not making an out. If you are not making an out you are continuing a rally, even if you do not score or get an RBI you are adding value to your offense.

Last year Reyes had the most ABs in the league and had only 99 runs scored which is 26th in the majors. That is not a very good percentage of plate appearances to runs scored.

Such notable speedster Like Ortiz, Texeira, Ramirez and Dunn scored more often then Reyes did last year.

I will agree with Morgan on one thing, Reyes is having a good year this year. But last year he was a drain on his team’s offense and he was leading off.

According to Morgan, Reyes is great because he scores more when he gets on than when some slow guy gets on base with a walk. That may be true but if he never walks he has a lot less chance to score. The player who is on base more will still score more because though his speed does not allow him to steal or take the extra base, he scores more often because he is on base more often.

Morgan is telling us that it is important to score more runs and that Reyes was the most efficient at it last year. Is that true? It depends on how you look at it.

I looked at the top players in runs scored (out of ease more than anything) and figured out who scored more runs per plate appearance. This seems the most efficient way to look at it.


Here is the top 40 players from last year, ranked on how many runs they scored per plate appearance. The 2nd column is Runs scored per time on base minus caught stealing. The 3rd column takes homeruns out of the equation. Finally, at that point Reyes is number 1. He indeed is the most efficient run scorer when he reaches base with out a homerun.

Hear are the rankings from last year.
PLAYER PA OB OB-HR
David Dellucci 1 1 6
Albert Pujols 2 16 20
Alex Rodriguez 3 17 26
Derrek Lee 4 24 33
Manny Ramirez 5 11 22
Johnny Damon 6 9 5
David Ortiz 7 28 36
Derek Jeter 8 15 14
Travis Hafner 9 32 34
Vladimir Guerrero 10 27 28
Adam Dunn 11 21 29
Marcus Giles 12 12 10
Grady Sizemore 13 5 8
Chone Figgins 14 7 2
Jeff Kent 15 22 21
Jimmy Rollins 16 6 4
Jason Bay 17 37 31
Gary Sheffield 18 26 25
Michael Young 19 33 19
Miguel Cabrera 20 35 30
Mark Teixeira 21 30 35
Hideki Matsui 22 25 18
Richie Sexson 23 29 37
David Wright 23 34 23
Ichiro Suzuki 25 13 11
Felipe Lopez 26 18 17
Alfonso Soriano 27 2 15
Chase Utley 28 31 24
Carl Crawford 29 8 7
Craig Biggio 30 4 12
Paul Konerko 31 36 39
Bobby Abreu 32 39 32
Edgar Renteria 33 14 9
Rafael Furcal 33 20 13
Andruw Jones 35 19 40
Brady Clark 36 23 16
Brian Giles 37 40 38
Juan Pierre 38 10 3
Jose Reyes 39 3 1
Raul Ibanez 40 38 27

The problem is that Reyes obviously doesn’t reach base enough. He would be a great player if there were no such things as homeruns. But it is not 1968 anymore. Homeruns are part of the game so Reyes did not add any value to his offense last year. In fact he hurt his offense.

Let's Hope Guillen gets fired.

According to Joe Morgan the White Sox can't win with out Guillen. It is his fiery nature that makes the White Sox win.

It isn't the fact that the team leads the league in homeruns and run scored, or that the team has a quality pitching staff, it is because Guillen has a fiery nature. Like the Morgan' Reds of the '70s, who only could win with Sparky Anderson as the manager, the White Sox can only win with Guillen as the manager.

He must manage like C. Montgomery Burns. He tells Strawberry to hit a homerun. He says "OK Coach." Then proceeds to hit a homerun. "I told him to do that." Burns says afterword.

I guess Guillen gets Thome so fired up that he proceeds to hit 24 homeruns so far. It makes you wonder how Thome has ever hit any homeruns up to this point in his career.

Somehow we, as Twins fans, have to provoke Guillen into saying something stupid and offensive. SO Guillen gets fired. Then the Whiteys will go into the tank and we can steal the division from them.

Bremer and Fielding Percentage

Dick Bremer said something this weekend that I am tired of hearing, especially by a baseball announcer who should know better.

He was talking about Cleveland and how they are doing so poorly because of their bad defense. “The only defense worse is the Angels.” Dick said, meaning that only the Angels have a worse fielding percentage than the Indians.

He watches more baseball than I do. He must understand by now that defense is much more than errors but also includes range and the ability to get to balls that other players can’t get to.

After watching Fatista play all season he should really understand this fact.

So I looked at the fielding stats of these 2 teams and the Twins to see who does have the worst defense.

If you look at Defensive Efficiency Rating we see that the Twins are still last in the league with a DER of .667. Cleveland’s is and slightly above average .688 and the Angels have a respectable .698. This means the Twins are turning 66.7% of all batted balls, not including homeruns, into outs. This means that the Twins have the worst range in the league, by DER.

DER is not a perfect stat for defense (I don’t think there is one). So will also look at the +/- used by the Hardball Times. Looking at this the Twins again are last allowing 40 more hits than an average team. They are -40, Cleveland is -14 as are the Angels. So by using this stat we see that the Twins still have the worse defense in the league. But the Angels and Cleveland both have an above average outfield defense, it is their infield defense that has limited range.

The Twins fail in both categories so they are not just giving up hits but are giving up extra base hits.

Errors are still important so I will add in non-throwing errors into the mix. I will do this because I want to see exactly how many balls in play were not turned into outs. I don’t need to see, at this time, whether a throw gave a runner an extra base.

The Twins have only 16 non-throwing errors. Cleveland has 29 and the Angels are indeed worst in the league with 39. This must be tempered with the fact that errors are subjective. Official scorers have been known to make mistakes. I think Castro had naked pictures of the Twin’s scorer. He was very generous to Castro.

So add these numbers together and the Twins have allowed 56 extra outs than an average team, Cleveland has allowed 53 and the Angels have allowed 63. Some of this is obviously subjective but I think we can lump the Twins in with the Indians and Angels as some of the worst defensive teams in the League.

Range is probably a better way to look at a team’s defense than fielding percentage. Though it is difficult to determine it should be talked about announcers if they are going to talk about a team’s defense.

Gardy isn't the only one who doesn't understand bullpens

This is not an exact quote but it’s very close. It was said after we see Tom Gordon pitching in a non-save situation. It was said on Baseball Tonight by Jeff Brantley.

“He brought his closer in to pitch the 10th, on the road in a tie game.” He said in a tone as if the Charlie Manuel was letting a small child sit in his lap while he was driving. He then said. “If he can’t manage his bullpen any better than that he won’t win.”

Charlie Manuel brought Gordon into the game in the bottom of the 10th with score tied and with Boston’s best hitters coming up, including Ortiz. Ortiz eventually hits a 2 run homerun off of Gordon. Brantley is mad at the manager for the loss. I think Ortiz had a little to do with Philly losing the game. I heard that he is a pretty good hitter.

If Manuel wants to win he did the best move he could do in that situation. For some reason Brantley thinks closers can only pitch when they have a lead on the road, that the best way to win on the road is to pitch your 2nd, 3rd or even 4th best reliever in the closest, tensest situations. I consider an extra-inning tie game more tense than a 1 run game.

Why should a manager only pitcher his closer in save situations? I do not know. The only reason I can think of is to pad your closers stats. That is not the manager’s job. His job is to win. To do that you want you’re best players playing at a time when each run means more to a win than it did earlier in the game.

Think about it, its 3-3 in the 10th inning, you are the road team so any run ends the game. Wouldn’t you want your best pitcher in at this time? Yes, and Gordon is the Phillies best pitcher. This year he is pitching great.

NAME W L Sv IP H ER R HR BB SO K/9 WHIP ERA
Gordon 2 2 20 30 19 5 5 2 9 40 11.7 0.91 1.47

He is also the Phillies best chance against Ortiz. Gordon has been pitching better vs. lefthanders this year and has equal splits over the last 3 years.

SPLIT AB H 2B 3B HR RBI BB HBP SO SB CS BAA OBP SLG OPS
vs. Left 51 8 0 0 1 4 5 0 23 0 0 0.157 0.232 0.216 0.448
vs. Right 57 11 1 0 1 3 4 1 17 2 0 0.193 0.258 0.263 0.521


Brantley wants to save closers only for save situations, at a time when their value is actually less. There is no room for error in a tie game. With just a 1 run lead there is a little room for error. The pitcher can give up 1 run and his team can still win. In a tie game this is obviously impossible.

I’ll put some numbers to this situation and look at the situation simplistically. Lets say you have closer “A” who allows a run scored on him in 15% of his innings. Then reliever “B” allows a run in 25% of his innings and reliever “C” allows runs in 35% of his innings.

It is now extra innings and the games it tied. You are the away team. Who do you pitch?

If you pitch A you have 15% chance of losing, B you have a 25% chance and C it is 35%. So pitching your best reliever in this situation gives you the best chance of not losing, which in turn gives a better chance of winning.

Let B and C pitch when there is more room for error. If you have a lead and they give that lead up in a save situation you still have a chance to take the lead again in the next inning. You don’t have that opportunity if just 1 run is given up in a tie game.

It annoys me that Brantley was so angry at Manuel for doing the right move. This guy is on national TV saying things that are idiotic. I wish I got paid to say stupid things. My wife claims I do it all of the time, for free.

Will Bartlett be sent down?

Bartlett made an error last night. The Twins won but I am filled with dread that Gardy will bench Bartlett or worse send him back to the minors to work on his leadership skills.

Of course, I say this tongue in cheek, sort of. I figure since Castro is gone there are really no replacements for Bartlett. But if history shows us anything it shows us that Gardy is not the wisest person with young players. Right now I am very thankful that Ryan traded Castro.

Has anybody noticed that the Twins record has improved dramatically since the Fatista-Castro experiment has ended?

Hunter still hitless against Clemens!!

I have as many hits against Clemens as Hunter does. And I have done it in a lot fewer at-bats.

Before the game Hunter says he is going to be more patient against Clemens. We better get him a dictionary because I don’t think he knows the meaning of patience. He is as patient as a 6 year old during Christmas.

He falls down 0-2 in the first at bat. But they were 2 decent pitches before he flies out. Then the next at bat he swings at ball 1 and ball 2 and then fouls off ball 3 before eventually striking out.

Was he playing mind games with Clemens before the game by saying he would be patient, or does not know the meaning of patience? Someone send him a dictionary and a Bible, maybe he can read the Old Testament and learn the patience of Job. (Rhymes with earlobe you heathens)

Groundball Pitching

It is truly fun to watch Liriano pitch. It is rare for a pitcher to be both a groundball pitcher and a strikeout pitcher. When you have this combination you are going to have a good pitcher.

Though it is still early, Liriano puts it together like no other pitcher this year. There are only 3 starting pitchers who strikeout more than 8 batters per 9 innings and also have a groundball percentage over 60%. After these 3 there really isn’t anyone close to these numbers. The other 2 are Bonderman and Heredia. They have a K rate of 8.55 and 8.8 respectively. Both have a groundball percentage of 67%.

Liriano beats them both with a GB% of 69.4% and a K rate of 10 per 9 innings. With stats like that it is easy to see why Liriano is doing so well. And the defense is now playing better behind him. He has lowered his BAPIP to .294. As a reliver it was about .350, blame Batista and Castro.

Why are groundballs and strikeouts so important for a pitcher?

First of all, strikeouts are so great because they are nearly always turned into outs.

Groundballs are good because they are rarely turned into extra base hits. It is impossible to hit a homerun with a groundball and generally only grounders down the line are turned into doubles or triples.

It is generally easier to get a hit with a groundball but as I have stated earlier they are almost always turned into singles if they are hits. The other positive is that groundballs are the easiest way to get a double play.

So a high strikeout pitcher will allow less balls in play which will reduce the number of hits, including homeruns, allowed. And groundballs will then reduce the number of homeruns allowed even further. All of this will combine to give you a quality pitcher, if he has good control.

We saw how important all of this was tonight. Liriano induced 3 double plays with his groundballs. And the 1 of the few flyballs was turned into a homerun.

It was a ridiculous homerun. That left field porch is ridiculous. It is way too easy to hit a homerun to left field. That ball tonight was not well hit. I guess it makes it more important to get groundballs and strikeouts in Houston.

Who's to blame?

Do we blame Lohse for not getting 1 out late in the game? That would be like blaming me for not being able to run around the block in less than an hour.

Or do we blame Gardenhose for not putting his players in a position to succeed. His main job as a manger is put players in positions where they can do their best and to put the players in a position where he can succeed and help the team win.

It would be like starting the worst defensive infield possible and then blaming his young up and coming pitcher (Baker) for not being able to get anyone out. What manager would ever put his players in a position where they are bound to fail? He should know his players better than this.

The fact that Gardenfire brought in Lohse maybe the worst decision since Britney Spears deciding to have another baby.

Besides the fact that Lohse can't pitch, he has never shown himself to be able to get righthanders out any better than he can lefthanders out. He has pretty equal split over the last few years. Also, Wilson has shown more power against righthanders.

This is how the batters have have fared in the last 3 years against Lohse.

Right /Left AVG/OBP/ SLG / OPS
vs. Left .288/0.343/0.463/0.807
vs. Right .294/0.334/0.440/0.775

There is nothing here to show me that Lohse can come in and get the righthander out. There is a righthander in AAA that would specialize in doing such a thing. Neshek is pitching unbelievably in AAA. His side arm delivery plays havoc with righthanded batters. But Lohse is a veteran so he is probably a better pitcher. Right Gardy? Plus, Lohse has shown better leadership than Neshek:)

My main beef with bringing in Lohse is not that he wasn't the right man for the job, he wasn't, but why take out a pitcher who has thrown 2 pitches for 2 outs just because he is lefthanded and the batter is righthanded? Especially since the batter is Preston Wilson who is statistically about equally effective against righthanders and lefthanders. Here is his stats over the last 3 years.

Handed AVG /OBP / SLG / OPS
vs. Left 0.273/0.348/0.465/0.813
vs. Right 0.266/0.325/0.496/0.821

He has power to righthanders but has a higer OBP to lefthanders. I think at this point in the game a walk is better than an extra base hit. So why take Reyes out?

I am a big proponent of platooning but some times it is riduculous. If this is the way Gardenweasel wants to manage why not just pitch 1 pitcher per inning depending on who is coming up to bat.

I was wrong about the bullpens

I guess I was wrong but why does Silva even hit after the 6th. He has given us a good start take him out so he can leave the game with a good feeling and the lead.

Now the bullpen is has to try to correct his mistake when he issues a leadoff walk. If he is on that short of a leash don't leave him in when it is his turn to bat.

So the bullpen failed, Rincon didn't do the job tonight. So Gardenfire brings in Reyes, who may be the only major leaguer fatter than I am. So he quickly gets 2 outs. How does get repaid? He is pulled for Lohse. Yes, you heard me Lohse is pitching in a tied game in the 8th inning, Lohse.

I guess Wilson is a righty so Gardy has to bring a righty in. Its the rules of the game. I guess Gardy didn't know that Wilson has been a better hitter against righties than lefties. It is tough info to come by. He should have had some idea, he hit a homerun off of Nathan the night before.

So Lohse does his job and strikes Wilson out with an 0-2 pitch right down the middle of the plate. Why he would throw a pitch right down the middle with an 0-2 count I'll never know but he does it.

Somehow Wilson doesn't swing at it and somehow the ump doesn't call it a strike. I can't believe it, neither can Lohse. It all falls apart after that. And we are down 5-3 in the 9th.

So we need runners. Bartlett coaxes a leadoff walk on 3-2 pitch that was a foot outside and 6 inches low. But now the damn ump decides to call a strike. Bartlett strikes out looking and is probably as dumfounded as I am watching the game.

The strike zone shrunk and moved all game ruining what could have been a good game. Every team is screwed by bad calls. It just went really bad this game. It makes me nervous for tommorrow.

Who do you think will be getting the close calls the rookie or the veteran starter?

Tonight's Matchup

Carlos Silva vs. Wandy Rodriguez

Tonight's matchup does not look too good for the Twins, at first glance. But even though I am not a Silva fan I think this matchup looks OK for the Twins.

First, Silva has been improving and pitching better lately than his stats show. Plus, as bad as his ERA is, 7.07. His Defense Independent Pitching Stats (DIPS) have him with an ERA of 5.79. DIPS is determined, basically, by looking at the stats a pitcher can control, strikeouts, walks and homeruns. It looks at those stats and figures out what the pitcher's ERA would be with an average defense, meaning what would a pitchers ERA be if he had an average BAPIP.

Wandy's DIPS is 4.88. It is a full run better than Silva's but with the improving Silva, the improving offense and the improving defense I think we can be very competitive.

Also, if we keep it close our bullpen will outpitch their bullpen.

It also depends on how many lefty Wandy sees. He has been incredible against lefthanders, holding them to an OPS of .563. His OPS versus righthanders is a Silva like OPS of.903. So if we give 2 of our lefthanders a break tonight I think we can win this one. I would give Kubel a rest and one of the M&M boys a rest.

Radke pitched well.

I know that seems counterintuitive since he gave up 8 hits 2 homeruns and 4 runs in 6 innings last night. But would those homeruns been even hits in any other park. I think they would have been easily caught in the Dome and would have been hits probably only in Boston.

The LF porch in Houston is ridiculoulsy short and makes long flyouts turn into homeruns. Then again he did give up 1 long drive to CF which could have been a homerun in the Dome. the CF has just the opposite effect and flyballs go there to die.

Houston would not be good park for a flyball pitcher like Radke to play his home games in.

Why can't managers juggle their rotation better to make the pitchers who are better suited for different ballparks pitch in those ballparks. In this situation it would be difficult but generally why couldn't his be done?

Kubel a defensive liabilty?

Does Gardy really believe that Kubel is a defensive liabilty? It seems he assumes because a player is young he plays poor defense i.e. Kubel and Bartlett. Kubel hasn't shown me any reason why he should be taken out in the late innings.

In fact, I am not exactly sure that Ford is actually an above average outfielder. I believe he is but the jury is mixed on his defensive capabilities. Kubel has a much higher Zone Rating than Ford, though it is a small sample size, and I have never heard any complaints about his defense.

It just doesn't seem like there is much value in make the switch and taking Kubel out and using Ford as a defensive replacement, especially in LF. Houston has the smallest LF of any park in the league. If any change should have been made it should have been to remove Cuddyer and replace him with Ford. Cuddyer hasn't shown himself to be a very good defensive player so why not make that change. I know the answer, because Kubel is a rookie and Gardy thinks that young players can't play defense.

Also, I think he needs to justify Ford being on the roster. Someone tell me what he adds to the team. I guess he is better than Rondell and Sierra.

Timely hitting wins again

The Twins are hitting better this year in Late Innning Pressure Situations (LIPS) than any year since 2002 when the won their first division championship. This year is also the first year since 02 that they are actually hitting better in LIPS than in normal situations albeit this year it is a small amount. But that is much better than last year when they withered away in clutch situations. Last year in LIPS they barely hit better than Juan Castro.

Its good to see the Twins hitting well again. It sure makes for a good game when they do hit in the clutch. The best player is Cuddyer. Yes, I was surprised too. He has the highest OPS in LIPS of any everyday player. Morneau is right behind him. He has more homeruns but has a much lower Avg and OBP than Cuddyer.

Lets hope it keeps up.

Streak due to small-ball?

I just read the article by Jason Williams in the Pioneer Press. Here is the headline "Small-ball style works". The article is claiming that the Twins have just won 7 games in a row to get to .500 by using the tried and true ways of small-ball.

Where does he get this? He focused on yesterday’s game by looking at the fact that Castillo got an infield single and Punto laid down a bunt that was misplayed for an error as evidence that the Twins are playing small-ball.

Yes Jason, they scored 8 runs in the last 3 innings playing small-ball. Let’s see Hunter tied it up with a homerun. Then the next inning the really big hit was a base loaded double by Morneau. Is that small-ball?

The article hints that the Twins are on this streak because they are playing small-ball. This couldn’t be further from the truth. What is small ball? It is basically stealing bases and bunting. So I looked over the past week’s stats to see if it really was small ball winning the last 7 games. It wasn’t. In fact, small-ball is costing us runs. In the last 7 days we have 3 sacrifices, 2 stolen bases and 4 caught stealing. So we have lost 4 base-runners due to small-ball this week. With the sacrifices, small ball has cost us a total of 7 outs. Nice work.

In fact, we have been playing the opposite of small-ball. We have hit 9 homeruns and have an OBP of .357 in the last week. That is not small ball. That is how baseball should be played, get on base and hit a homerun.

Never, in the article, does it mention the real reason the Twins have won 7 in a row, pitching. The ERA for the last week is 1.74, leading the league in that time.

Do some research before you write an article for a paper. I did 5 minutes of research and figured out how wrong Jason’s article is.

Winning Streak

The Twins are winning, finally. It seems the addition by subtraction of Batista and getting rid of Castro has made a big difference. Those 2 holes in ouroffense are now filled by better offensive and defensive players.

It will be fun to look at the difference of our left side of the infield, at the end of the season, and determine approximately how many wins that Batista and Castro cost this team.

The big turn around is in pitching. I do think the changes in the defense was as much a factor as any other aspect in lowering the team ERA. Some other factors are luck, natural improvement, getting a better pitcher (Liriano) in the rotation and the Plexiglass Principle.

The Plexiglass Principle is a theory of Bill James that basically says that everything will always tend to move towrds the middle. For example, if a team is playing .800 ball it will eventually play closer to .500 ball. And in the Twins case, if a team has a 6 ERA it will tend to lower that ERA as the season wears on. The opposite would be true also. If a team has a 2.00 ERA it will also move towards the middle of the pack.

This is also one reason I thin Crain will improve from this point on. He has already had one great outing on Saturday.

I think the Twins will play better from now on, now that they have their best team on the field. Hopefully Sierra won't see much playing time. I still don't understand him on this team.

I am working on looking at the stats of players by age and how they do in the clutch. I think it will show that veteran players are not always needed on a team, especially when the haven't offered anything offensively in years.

Sierra to Replace Castro:(

Sierra is taking the place of Castro. We are trading 1 out machine for another.
Why do mangers and GMs fall in love with veterans? Especially veterans who have had only 1 above average year in over a decade? 2001 was the only year in a long time where his OPS was over .800 and he only played a half a season. Why do teams keep getting this guy at-bats? Even when he was good he was overrated.

At least he shouldn’t be getting to many at-bats. He should only be stealing at-bats from Rondell and Lou Ford. If he starts eating to Kubel’s playing time I think I will have a coronary.

Castro Traded, Castro Traded!!!!!!!

This the best week for the Twins in a long time, Batista was let go and now Castro was traded. Some idiot in Cincinnati even gave us more than a bag of peanuts for him. In fact, the idiot who traded for Castro use to be Terry Ryan’s assistant. Wayne Krivsky is the GM for Cincy and he is the genius who suggested we sign the out making machine in the first place. I guess some people will never learn.

It sounds like Gardenhire is going to miss Castro’s “slick fielding”. Read the article in the Strib.


Manager Ron Gardenhire was adamant about the Twins' middle-infield defense being better this season, leading the team to appoint the slick-fielding Castro as the Opening Day shortstop. Despite committing a team-most seven errors, Castro stabilized the middle infield. Anything Castro, a career .230 hitter, gave the Twins offensively was viewed as a bonus.


I wonder if he watches the same games I do. Beyond the numbers of how bad Castro has become defensively, has he made a great play at any time this season? Has he made a play where you said “wow”? Has a made a play on a ball that you were sure would be a hit when it came off the bat?

The answer for me is no. I think I am happier than Bartlett is at this time.

Ortiz gets a laugh

Chad Greenway sighting at the Metrodome. Watch the video

No Defense for Jesse Crain

Jesse Crain is having a miserable season. Last season was fantastic by any measure. This year things have changed and his ERA has more than doubled. Somehow he is now pitching horribly. What has changed? Did he suddenly lose control? Are his homeruns allowed up? Did he somehow lose his strikeout pitch? Something he is doing is wrong and he needs to fix it, right? Wrong.

In fact this year he is actually pitching better than last year. His walks are down. He is striking out nearly 3 times as many batters and while he has allowed a higher homerun percentage it is only up a little from last year. So what is the difference from last year?

The difference, as with most Twins pitchers this year, is the defense behind him. Last year he allowed a Batting Average of Balls in Play (BAPIP) of .204 and this year it is .412.

What does this mean? It means those balls that are hit that are not homeruns are dropping for more hits than last year. This is mostly attributed to defense and luck.

BAPIP is a newer stat that has not gained wide acceptance yet in the baseball community. But it is a good stat to see how much bad luck a pitcher has had and how bad his defense has played behind him. In its simplest form it is (H-HR)/(AB-K-HR). The premise is that a pitcher controls the strikeouts, walks and homeruns he allows while all the other balls in play are controlled by the defense and luck.

This seems hard to believe but it has been tested and the best proof is that from year to year a pitcher’s K, BB and HR rate are fairly consistent but his BAPIP is rarely consistent. This does not mean that a pitcher has no effect of balls in play but that he actually has a much smaller amount of control than previously believed. The one exception is knuckle ball pitchers.

The Twins are on a record pace to have one of the worst BAPIP of all time. The flip side of BAPIP is Defense Efficiency Rating (DER). Generally, if a pitcher has a .300 BAPIP the DER of the team playing behind him is .700. This means that they turn a batted ball into an out on 70% of balls in play. It is kind of like a zone rating of the whole team.

The league average of BAPIP is generally around .290. For the Twins this year it is .343, last in the majors. That is a lot of extra hits allowed by the defense. The league leaders are the Tigers with a BAPIP of .277. Groundball pitchers tend to have a higher BAPIP, than flyball pitchers. But they also tend to have less homeruns than flyballers.

Now to look at Jesse Crain, the Twins defense has failed him more than any other pitcher. The DER of the team behind him is .588. That means that nearly 40% of the balls that Crain can’t control are now hits. Last year it was only 20%. That is quite a difference. This probably has a lot to do with his groundball percentage rising sharply and the Twins infield defense making a dramatic decline.

Crain has actually improved on the things he can control over last year. His strikeouts are way up, which means he is allowing less balls in play. Could you imagine how bad his season would be if had the same K rate as last year? His walks are down a fair amount and only his homerun rate has risen slightly. Again he is pitching much better than last year and I think he will only improve his ERA from this point on.

I think this because many of the causes of the bad defense are now getting less playing time. Batista had the worst Zone rating (ZR) of any everyday 3rd baseman. And was the worst by a lot. Castro has the 2nd worse ZR of any starting shortstop, but he is only .002 ahead of the worst shortstop.

The replacements for 3rd and Short will be better and improve the pitching of not just Crain but of the entire staff.

Castillo is last in ZR at 2nd. I think he is better than this but he may continue to struggle. It is my theory that it has more to do with his nagging leg injury than with anything else. Morneau has one of the best ZR of any starting 1st baseman. He is improving and not as bad as we all thought he would be.

The outlook for the rest of the season looks better for the pitching staff. With an improved defense the Twins should improve dramatically. I don’t think it will be enough to make the playoffs though. It is too bad that the recent changes were not made sooner.

Tori Hunter Traded!!!

My brother, Travis, has been signed to replace Tori. I'm surprised he can reach the top of the fence. You can't tell by looking but he is actually jumping to save a homerun.


Gardenhire will love this plucky prospect, he can't hit and can't field but he has great leadership abilities. He has shown this by leading his kids' T-ball team to an undefeated record. After 2 games they are 0-0.

No losses and no wins. If there is a winner there has to be a loser. We don't want our children to lose:)

Don't you love Homonyms

I have to change the name of the person in the story to protect the innocent. Let's call her X. Late last night, after spending the evening staining the deck, X and I were watching the Twins game. It had gone extra innings and X wondered how they keep stats of games that are shorter and longer than 9 innings.

I explained that all stats are kept but usually games don’t actually go shorter than 9 innings.

X then asked. “What about knothole games?”

A little confused I answered. “Knothole games are just as long as other games.”

“No.” She replied. “When I went to a knothole game as a child it was shortened, you know it was a ‘not-whole’ game.”

It was then that I laughed for about 5 minutes. Becky, I mean X explained to me that she always thought a knothole game was a shortened game. It was not a whole game. It was in fact a “not-whole” game.

Finally

Bartlett was called up late last night, Batista was designated for assignment. Now the Twins have 10 days to trade him or send him to the minors.

3rd base will be played by many different players, including JuanCastro, Nick Punto, Luis Rodriguez and Terry Tiffee. Lets hope we see a lot of Punto and some Rodriguez. I think LRod can be a quality hitter, at least he shows some patience at the plate and plays good defense.

Castro vs........Punto

Has anybody noticed that Punto is batting over .300 and has an OBP over .400. Second on the team to Mauer. Plus did you see the play he made last night to save at least 1 run. I know I was sure that was going to be a hit. Everything hit on the ground and up the middle this year has been a hit. It was exciting to see a great play by an infielder, especially a shorststop.

His defensive numbers show that he is a better fielder than Castro. Though Castro has a slightly better fielding percentage his Zone Rating of .794 is dismal compared to Punto's Zone Rating of .870. Of course this is in a limited number of innings but after seeing last night's play i am convinced Punto is a better shortstop. Plus he is showing the same good Zone Rating at 3rd.

Also, last year Punto had the best Zone Ratings at 2nd, 3rd and Short on the Twins. I think this shows he can be a quality defender.

Bartlett vs Castro part 2

It is my contention that Bartlett’s defense is not really all that bad, and even if he plays sub-par defense, his bat will more than make up for it, at least compared to Juan Castro.

Castro plays because of his “leadership” abilities. I have no idea what that means and because of his stellar defense. As I have already said in an earlier post, I don’t think his defense is all that spectacular any more. I don’t feel that there is any way that his defense makes up for his incredibly bad offense. So I will look at some numbers and try to figure out exactly how much Bartlett could really help this team.

First I will look at last years stats and figure out what would have happened if they both would have played full-time. Then I will look at what could have possibly happened this year.

The Fielding Bible by John Dewan. It takes a real critical look at defense and admittedly it is not perfect but I believe it is very good tool for looking at defense.

The good thing about looking at last years stats is that both Castro and Bartlett played about the same amount of time. Bartlett played 585.2 innings and Castro played 568.2 innings.

My first step is to look at last season and see what each player added offensively and defensively. I want to look at it in real world terms to see how many runs each player may have saved and added to the team. The simplest way to figure out their offensive contributions is too look at Runs Created per 27 outs (RC/G). Castro created 3.28 and Bartlett created 3.68 runs per game. If the both played full-time and played 140 games they would have created 51 and 57 runs respectively, difference of 6 runs. Not much. Not even enough to add 1 win.

But I think we have to consider that Castro was playing above his head and had close to career highs in average, slugging and on base percentage. We also have to consider that Bartlett was a rookie and probably would have improved in all offensive categories.

Obviously Bartlett is a better offensive SS but with a lot of room to improve over last year. So how do they stack up defensively? According to The Fielding Bible Bartlett is a slightly better SS!!!

Bartlett made 7 errors and had a .979 Fielding percentage. He was expected to make 243 outs and made 257 outs for a +/- rating of 14 outs. Castro was close to this with 5 errors and had a .985 Fielding percentage. He was expected to make 237 outs and made 246 outs for a +/- rating of 9 outs. These are stats I found in The Fielding Bible.

Bartlett had a lower fielding percentage but actually had better range. Castro was only slightly better at turning the double play. The important number is the last one, +/-. It is the amount of plays each player made + or - what an average SS made. Bartlett made 14 more plays and Castro made 9 more plays than an average SS.

If I pro-rate these stats out to 140 games we see this. Bartlett would make 15 errors and have a .979 Fielding percentage. He would also have a +/- rating of 30 outs. Castro would have 11 errors .985 Fielding percentage. He would have +/- rating of 19 outs.

Bartlett makes 4 more errors but makes up for it by making 11 more plays for a total 7 extra hits, all singles, allowed by Castro!!! An almost negligible amount for a total amount of 3.3 extra runs allowed by Castro on the season.

Let me be the devil’s advocate for a moment. What if Castro was not playing his best defense in the first half of the season and Bartlett was playing the best defense of his life and would have played worse in the second half. I will pick an arbitrary number like 25%. I will say that Castro will improve 25% and Bartlett will decline 25%. Even after doing those calculations Castro only made 4 more plays than Castro. That would only have saved less than 2 runs on the season.

Now I’ll look at this season and try to figure out what Castro & Bartlett might have done. I will use Castro’s 2006 stats and Barlett’s projected stats. I am using The Bill James Handbook 2006

I will use those projects basically because that is all we have to determine Bartlett’s value offensively, plus he was very close in predicting Castro’s offensive value.

If Castro kept up his current pace and played 141 games he would create about 30 runs. Bartlett is projected to create 61 runs in 141 games. That is quite the production differential, about 2 to 1. Can Castro possibly be that much better defensively? That is nearly impossible. In fact this year his fielding percentage has dropped to .968 and his zone rating is a paltry .796, one of the worst in the league just behind the overrated Jeter. I don’t see how, even if his defense is the worst in the league, anyone can justify Castro adding enough defense to make up for his paltry offense.

What if the defensive stats are wrong? They aren’t. If you have seen the Twins defense, you know the whole infield has been playing below average. I’ll pretend that Castro is a great defensive SS and Bartlett is one of the worst. According to The Fielding Bible over the last 3 years the best SS has averaged +25 extra outs while the worst has averaged -25 extra outs per season. For arguments sake I’ll say Castro is the best and Bartlett is the worst that equals 50 extra singles that the pitching staff has given up.

Also, the worst defender has averaged 30 errors over the last 3 years and the best defender has averaged 7 errors for a difference of 23. That is now a grand total of 73 extra outs that the best SS would have made over the worst SS. This works out to a total of 35 extra runs allowed.

In this case, Barlett’s offense of 61 RC versus Castro’s 30 would not be enough to overcome his bad defense. If you subtract 35 from 61 we would get a total of 26 Runs Created, including defense. Still only a total of 4 runs difference between the two shortstops. This is assuming that Castro is the best defensive SS and Bartlett is the worst. I think we all know this is not true.

Even if Bartlett is not as good defensively as Castro it is not enough to justify an older less qualified player playing over a young up and coming and even cheaper player. The Fielding Bible ranks them about equal, with Bartlett slightly better defensively. We know what we are getting with Castro. We are getting a solid defensive player who is one of the worst everyday offensive players in the league. But at least he has great leadership qualities. Bartlett is an X factor but we can make an educated guess that he will be better offensively than Castro and may not be the defensive liability that the Twins make him out to be. This team is going nowhere this year lets find out what Bartlett can do.

Home Runs Percentage and winning

Karl Ravech, on Baseball Tonight last night, stated that the “Tigers have scored 40% of their runs off of home runs. And it is tough for a team to win that way.” I thought it was a ridiculous statement and thought it didn’t really matter how your runs were scored as long as you scored runs. If you relied on home runs you better hit a lot of home runs. The only thing that matters that you hit home runs, it is the single easiest, fastest and most efficient way to score runs.
It is my supposition that teams that rely on home runs will in fact score more runs than those that don’t. And in doing so will increase their chance of winning.

So I thought I would look into the numbers and then realized that those numbers were actually hard to find. I found the leaders and trailers on an article about small ball in the HardballTimes. http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/small-ball-whos-who/


Teams Least Reliant on Home Runs
Team RonHR Pct
WAS 0.260
KCA 0.285
FLO 0.300
SDN 0.301
SEA 0.303
TOR 0.307
PIT 0.310

Teams Most Reliant on the Home Run
CLE 0.406
ARI 0.414
CHN 0.421
CHA 0.424
NYA 0.440
CIN 0.444
TEX 0.477

Let’s look at runs scored first. All of the teams that relied on home runs were in the top half of the league except for Arizona and the Cubs. In fact, the Yankees, Rangers and Reds were 2nd, 3rd and 4th in the league in runs scored.

The opposite was true for teams that did not rely on the homerun. 5 of the bottom 7 teams to rely on the home run to score runs were in the bottom 3rd in total runs scored.
The fact is that the top 7 teams scored an average of 786 runs while the bottom 7 scored an average of 699 runs. That is about a ½ a run a game, over a whole season that can really help a team win.

Do teams actually win that rely on the home run to score runs? The White Sox won the World Series, the Yankees also made the playoffs and the Indians nearly made the playoffs. That seams to be a quick yes. But we can dig a little deeper and look at the winning percentage of the top and bottom 7 teams.

The winning percentage of the top 7 teams to rely on the home run is .525. For the bottom 7 the winning percentage is .457.

So yes Karl teams can rely on the home run to score runs and to win. In fact, I would tell you that the Tigers really don’t rely on the home run as much as many other teams. They wouldn’t even have cracked the top 7 from last year. The “small-ball” White Sox won a World Series relying on the home run at a higher percentage than the Tigers are this year.

I really wish that broadcasters would really do their home work before spouting misinformation. I have to believe that they have some down time to do a little research.

To top it off, on of the analyst then said that they “strike out too much”, hinting that it will be tough to score runs when they strike out too much. That is a report for another day.

Castro vs Bartlett

http://www.startribune.com/509/story/344446.html

Juan Castro will be the Twins' Opening Day shortstop, while Jason Bartlett will head to Rochester to work on leadership skills.
He's a quiet kid," Gardenhire said. "But in the middle, you have to be vocal. You have to lead, and that's what I told him you need to do. 'You go down there and take control of the infield. You be the leader. Once you start getting that part of the game down, you'll be more confident all the way around.' "
Gardenhire compared it to the presence of a quarterback in football. He referred back to the Twins infields from their World Series teams of 1987 and 1991, the way Kent Hrbek served as the infield leader.

Has anybody else ever heard that a SS must be a vocal leader? Shouldn’t the manager of the team be the leader? I don’t remember ever hearing that Kent Hrbek was considered the leader of the infield. In fact this is the first time I have ever heard of an infield leader. Is Mauer being a leader? From what I hear he is very quiet on the field and in the clubhouse. It seems to be that the infield leader should be at catcher. He is involved in more action than any other player than the pitcher and he even talks to the pitcher more than any other player.

The fact is that we don’t need leaders we need players, Mauer is a great player, Juan Castro is as good a player as Fidel Castro is a dictator.

If it is so important to have an infield leader then help Castillo be the leader, he is a Gold Glove 2B and he is a veteran. Why Bartlett? I wonder what Bartlett did to deserve this treatment. Was he dating one of Gardy’s daughters? Does Castro have naked pictures of Gardy? That’s all I can assume. It is so illogical and irrational to keep playing a sub-par hitter who has also turned into a sub-par fielder.

What’s strange is that last year they were both fairly equal players. Defensively Bartlett and Castro were basically a wash. Castro had a Fielding % of .985 while Bartlett’s was .979, very close. But Bartlett had a much better Zone rating than Castro’s tt was .865 vs .813. Not really close at all.

Now I am not necessarily saying that Bartlett is a better fielder, but that argument can be made. What I am saying is that if Castro is indeed better than Bartlett defensively that it is not by enough to justify his offense.

Last year they were both dreadful offensively, they both had an OPS of about .660. But at least the much younger Bartlett should some patience at the plate with a .313 OBP while Castro’s was an anemic .279. My guess is that if Bartlett played everyday he would likely have a batting average higher than Castro's OBP. This year Castro is batting .238/.262/.315. And he is being paid a million dollars to do so.

Castro is playing now for his defense and leadership abilities I have not seen that this year. His Fielding % has dropped to .965 and his Zone rating has dropped to .796. Both are not the stats of a defensive specialist. I will admit that these stats don’t show the whole picture, but there are no perfect stats for defense. Even watching defense is sometimes an imperfect way to determine a good fielder. But are any of you tired of 8-hoppers being hit up the middle that you assume will be turned into an out but instead rolls slowly into centerfield. I know I am sick of it. Also, a leader doesn’t drop a throw from the catcher to nail a base stealer. Castro does this.

Even if Bartlett’s defense is atrocious I have to believe that his offense will overcome that and prove to be much more value than what Castro provides.

I will look at the numbers this weekend and try to put a more definitive number on the differences offensively and defensively.