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.