A bitter Terry Ryan

If you didn’t watch the Twins game you missed Terry Ryan’s discussion on the near trades.

Basically what he said is that a GM came to him with a deal for a right handed cleanup hitter (Soriano?). But when Ryan showed interest in the deal the GM pulled the deal back.

I think he is a little bitter about it.

Later he was asked about possible trades in the future if any players clear waivers he said it would be difficult since they are so low in the pecking order. Then he was asked if there was a gentlemen’s agreement not to claim a player you don’t want. He answered something to the effect that there are now few gentlemen GMs.

It sounded like a shot at the GM he was dealing with today.

Did anybody else think he sounded really bitter?


Also, Bert told one of my favorite jokes. I think it made Dick a little nervous. What do you do to an elephant with 3 balls?

Lohse traded

The Twins have traded Lohse for a minor league pitcher named Ward. He is pitching great in class A now. he has good strikeout numbers and has only given up 2 homeruns so far in a 100 innings.

Any trade with Krivsky is probably a good trade for the other team. I base this on the trades he has doen previously but mostly on his trade for Castro.

The only player I would trade for Castro is a player to be named later and have Castro as that player to be named so I can send his old hitless butt back.

I would still love Soriano on this team but I still don't want to give up too much.
I think he is needed more now that the Yanks have Abreu.

Abreau is very undervalued as a hitter because the only thing he does well is walk. But he does that just about better than anyone in the league.

His actual value is near Soriano's. It really makes the Yanks scary now. He adds an extra 19 runs, through the rest of the season, over Bernie Williams who has played the most so far in RF. Plus he is probably a defensive upgrade too.
So I would surmise that he will add 2 wins to the Yankees over the rest of the season.

Really a game of inches

That was a strange one yesterday. It took a lot of luck and a lot of misplays to win that game. It was a little bit of payback from Friday's game where the Tigers hit 2 balls hard the whole game. It is nice to see the luck even out that quickly.

It was nice to see that the Twins hitters didn't heed my scouting advice from Friday. I just assumed the Twins read my blog, I guess not.

The Twins got to face Rodney and Zumaya over the weekend. They were not patient against these pitchers. Both of these pitchers have high walk rates and are very difficult to hit. So why not be patient and wait for a good pitch to hit or wait for the pitchers to walk you? But the Twins thought that was a bad idea. We see the results from that.

Versus those two pitchers the Twins had less than 2.5 pitches per plate appearance. That is hitting way to aggresive in a situation when they need baserunners and need to get on base. Instead they wave a pitches outside the strikezone. We see the resluts from that.

Though we saw the opposite effect yesterday. In that big 8th inning a few of the "hits" were on 1st pitches.

Its a game of inches

Two of the hits that ended up scoring for the Tigers were on slow rollers that a younger Castillo would have made the play on.

Liriano gave up one well hit ball which cost him 2 runs. I don't know why he throws a change up when Ordonez was way behind on the previous slider. He seemed to be waiting on the change.

Then Rincon only gave up 1 well hit ball too which cost him the game. The hitters failed us.

Myner was a bit wild all game with many 3 ball counts yet the M & M boys kept swing at bad pitches with runners in scoring position, bailing the rookie out. Are they coached to be agressive in this situation. Wouldn't they be more productive being patient? It really bothers me to see Morneau swing at 3 pitches that were not near the plate in a crucial RBI situation.

Then against Rodney, who has bad control, they swing at his first pitch. Why?

Oh well. Not much you can do, 1 run games are usually decided by a bit of luck. It was fun to see a good, well played game.

Tigers Bullpen

The Tigers have a good bullpen, but it can be beat. Todd Jones is the closer who makes Latroy look like Mariano Rivera. If you are a Tigers fan he is scarier than going on blind date with Kathy Bates. He has caused more heart attacks than McDonalds. What I am saying is that he isn't really having a good year.

Their best 2 set-up men are Zumaya and Walker. Walker is the lefty who is having a career year. He really is pitching great. Zumaya is also doing great, he throws harder than anyone the Twins have. But his control is lacking. Be patient with him and Rodney and the Twins should be able to score some runs off of their bullpen.

The key may be Cuddyer. I expect Walker to come in and face Mauer, Cuddy and Morneau. Cuddy will have to make Walker pay when he gets his chance.

While M&M have held their own against lefties they are still much better against righties. Cuddy is batting .314/.383/.602 against lefties.

He may need to be the Twin who gets the big hit.

Good Luck Twins

And wish me luck tonight. My wife and I plan to play an evil drinking game. We will drink every time Bert mentions his birthday, circles someone or says "at the major league level".

I may be dead tommorrow.

Should the Twins trade for Lee or Soriano?

The talk of a trade for Lee or Soriano has really been heating up. I am in the boat that I would love either player added to the Twins, as long as it didn’t cost too much.

What is too much? Garza for sure, and beyond that it is too hard to say.

So what will either play add? I think either will be a large addition to the team. But will they really? So I decided to look at the numbers to see what they will really add to the Twins.

Defensively, if either plays LF the Twins will have a decline over Kubel but since White has been playing more it will be close to a wash. So I won’t look at their defensive contributions. Plus, I believe they will be playing a lot at DH.

In order to figure out what the Twins will be adding, first we must decide who they would be replacing. They would probably be replacing White and Kubel. All three players would probably play a lot of LF & DH with Lee or Soriano and Kubel getting most of the playing time.

I decided the best way to determine what a player would add is to look at the Runs Created (RC) each players has had so far. I will pro-rate the RC out to the rest of the season.

One problem with this is that nobody plays exactly the same all year long. Also, it is obvious that White is a different player now than he was before he was injured. I will try to keep this in mind at the end but for now I will look at the overall RC so far.

White has 1.81 RC/27 outs, Kubel 4.45, Soriano 7.90 and Lee 6.52. By position the leftfielders have an RC/27 of 4.58 and for the DH’s it is 3.98. Then I divide this by 9 to determine what they add to the team as an individual player per game. Then I multiply by 60 since that is how many games the Twins have remaining.

Let’s assume that the player will replace White. For the rest of the season White would give the Twins 12 runs. Soriano would add 53 runs and Lee would add 43 runs.

The difference is 41 runs for Soriano and 31 for Lee.

It has been determined by people smarter than I in the Sabermetric circles that a 10 run difference equals 1 win.

Therefore if all 3 players continued at their current pace they would add 4 and 3 wins respectively.

But I do believe that White will improve. But it is hard to say how much. So I will look at the DH position which has been the Twin’s Achilles heal all season. The DH is projected to give the Twins 26 runs over the rest of the season.

So Soriano would offer the Twins 1.5 wins and Lee would offer .5 wins.

It doesn’t look like much does it? One more benefit would be that the Twins would be more protected if another injury occurred.

The biggest problem is trying to figure out how good or bad White will be the rest of the season. If either player ends up playing LF a lot, possibly because of Kubel’s knees, then their value decreases some more.

My guess is that Soriano would add about 2 wins to the team and Lee would add 1. I have now decided that I am against any trade that includes any of the Twin’s top prospects like Garza, Slowey, Casilla, or Perkins.

Big Sweep

I can't believe we won. Silva actually got the win and lowered his ERA to 6.84. It is time to take him out of the rotation. He was a bit lucky to only have given up 3 runs.

But wow, what a series. The Twins are now tied with NY and Chicago for the wild card spot. The Yankees are losing as I write this so by tommorrow we may just be tied with only the fading White Sox.

The White Sox seem to be having the same year as the Twins did last year. Good for them. At about this time last year the Twins lead the wild card by 1 game. We all know what happened then.


The defense has improved dramatically. The Twins are no longer last in the AL in Defense Efficiency Rating (DER). They now rank ahead of TB and Cle.

This in turn has lead to improved pitching. The Twins now rank 3rd in the AL in team ERA. This should continue to improve the rest of the season with the improved defense of Bartlett and Punto. Also, with Liriano pitching more the Twins should eventually have the 2nd best ERA in the league.

The outlook is good. They will eventually come back to the pack and stop playing so well. But now that they have caught up all they have to do it play better than the Yanks, Sox and Jays. I think they have the talent to do it.



Matt Garza is tearing up the minor leagues. There is talk of promoting him to the big club. Gardy wants him, Ryan doesn't want to rush him. I am still on the fence. All of his numbers have been great in the minors he so will probbaly keep it up.

I don't think that his next start will be as good. He pitched nearly 130 pitches in a shutout yesterday. That is a big mistake for a young pitcher. It has been shown that young pitchers are more susceptible to poor starts following a high pitch count than older pitchers.

It is a reason to worry.

Bartlett played bad defense in spring training..?

Is Jason Willimas the worst local sports writer? I read today's article in it he states that Bartlett did not make the team out of spring training because of his defense.

"He struggled defensively in spring training, leading the Twins to send him to Class AAA Rochester to start the season. Gardenhire challenged the soft-spoken Bartlett to become a take-charge leader in the infield. Some in the organization were starting to wonder if Bartlett, 26, ever would become a reliable everyday shortstop."

Who didn't think he could play shortstop? Why? These are the questions I want answered.

He never showed anything but quality defense. Out of spring training Castro had made 7 errors. Yet they kept that slug on the team over a much better Bartlett. It couldn't have been because of defense. Bartlett showed much more range and equal if not better hands.

The leadership issue makes me gag. I still am at a loss as to why Bartlett was off of the team to start the season. Jason W. should really find out the real reason.

Could they truly believe that Castro was a better fieder?

Cy Young

I watched a bit of Baseball Tonight last night. I do it for the humor. John Kruk, Jeff Brantley and the other loudmouths on that show are a real comedic treat.

A couple of nights ago Kruk was shouting at Harold Reynolds about ARod. Kruk was right on then by saying trading Arod would be very stupid.

But last night was a gem. He gave his top 5 Cy Young Candidates in the league. They were, in no particular order. Halladay, Santana, Verlander, Beckett & Schilling.

Halladay is an ok pick, but he is 5th in the league in ERA, but basically tied with Santana. Verlander is a great pick since he is 2nd in the league in ERA and has been starting all season long, unlike Liriano. Schilling should not even be mentioned in the top 5. He is 10th in the league in ERA. Kazmir, Lackey and Liriano are much better choices than Schilling.

The most ridiculous and unbelievable pick is Beckett. He has 13 wins so he is the best pitcher, right? Wrong. When are these people going to figure out the obvious? A pitcher cannot control how many runs are scored for him. Beckett is getting a lot of run support. He is not pitching well. He is 33rd in the league in ERA, thirty-effing-third!!!
Do you think Radke deserves to be in the top 5 for Cy Young voting? Why not, his ERA is actually better than Beckett’s. Did you hear me? Radke is pitching better than Beckett, yes, Radke.

Beckett does lead the league in homeruns allowed. He is in the top 10 in run support, getting 6.8 runs per start. His DIPS is 5.38 so his luck will probably not keep up, so hopefully the Cy Young talk about him will eventually stop.

The favorites should be Liriano & Santana. They are getting wins and have very low ERAs and are 1-2 in DIPS so they are actually pitching to their ability. Verlander will probably drop off. His DIPS is 4.10. I would put Kazmir, Halladay and Bonderman in the hunt. All have very good stats and very good DIPS. Bonderman has the 3rd best DIPS in the league.

Also, Harold Reynolds was fired. Not because of his inability to understand what is important in baseball like the rest of the ESPN crew but he was fired for sexual harassment.

Even bigger win

That is what baseball is all about.

It can't get much better than that. There was good pitching, good hitting, good defense and erratic umpiring. I still haven't come down from the 9th scare that Nathan gave me.

Could you imagine where the Twins would be without Bartlett? Probably in behind Cleveland. Castro would never have made that great play in the 8th. He wouldn't have hit a homerun either. It is great to have Bartlett on the team providing great leadership:)

A 4-3 win is as good as it gets. Because of that 9th inning I will have to take a double shot of my blood pressure meds. I hope tommorrow's game is a blowout. That is a pretty good bet with Silva pitching. I can live with that though. I will take 2 out of 3 on the road agains Chicago all year long.

Only 1 game back!!!!

Big Win

The Twins are only 2 out.

How awesome was it to see Mauer hit a big homerun off of a lefty? I didn’t see that coming.

It is getting real exciting. I am a little worried that Chicago will get Soriano. I hope the Twins are making some effort to get him.

The 2 Joes

Has Joe Morgan legally changed his name to “The Hall of Famer Joe Morgan”? The ass-kiss Karl Ravetch, on ESPN, calls him by that every time he introduces him.

First Joe is asked about ARod. He says he has to block out the fans and concentrate oon his game when he is hitting with runners in scoring position. He is hitting .296/.431/.557 with an OPS of .988 with runners in scoring position.

Then he proceeds to ask him about Joe Mauer. Of course he must compare him with Johnny Bench, because Joe played with him in Cincinnati. The only good players are players who played with Joe in Cincy. He said that Joe was a great hitter but there is no comparison with Johnny Bench.

Johnny Bench was a great player and Mauer has not had a career that can match up with Bench’s. And Bench had some great years, defensively and offensively he was a rare power hitting catcher. But he was never a good hitter for average. His highest OBP was lower than Mauer’s AVG this year. So yes there is a comparison.

This is not too say that Mauer is a better catcher or hitter than Bench, only that a comparison can be made. At this time Mauer is just starting out and we don’t know what kind of career he will have.

The strange thing to me is that Mauer hits for a great average and Bench never did. If you listen to Joe talk, which is hard to do, he will tell you that average is more important than geeky stats like OBP & SLG.

Right now Mauer is in the top 10 of all time seasons for OPS and Runs Created by a catcher. Bench was in the top 10 of Runs Created in 1 of his seasons.
Mauer also has a great throwing arm like Bench. Compare and contrast they are both great players. Mauer just can’t compare his career to Bench’s yet. But this individual season by a catcher is one for the history books

The rotation

The Twins have to keep it up. They need to keep winning each series. If they can keep it up they will win the wild card and possibly the division. With that being said it will be difficult with a horrible bottom of the rotation.

Silva needs to be removed. He has no ability to strike a batter out. I still believe a 4 man rotation is the answer, if done carefully. Silva should not be pitching.

Baker is a much better pitcher than Silva. He seems to be pitching horribly but his peripherals are not nearly as bad as his pitching shows. His ERA is over 6 but his DIPS is 4.52. If he was allowed to keep pitching his ERA would most likely lower. I worry that he won’t be allowed to keep pitching.

He is striking out a high number of batters, 7.6/9 innings and he is walking few, 1.4/9. His biggest problem is the number of homeruns he is allowing. Also, he is having some bad luck and his defense is letting him too. His BAPIP is .350. So a high number of balls that are hit in play are not being turned into outs.

That is because he is giving up too many line drives you say. Not true his Line Drive % is 19.5%, lower than Liriano’s and Santana’s.

The main problem is his Groundball %, it is 29%. When a pitcher has a high Flyball % like Baker it usually means two things. One, he usually has a lower BAPIP. He doesn’t so this should eventually lower. Two, he will give up more homeruns. He does at a rate of 1.8/9.

But it is good to know that if he can somehow increase his Groundball % that his homeruns allowed will decrease greatly. He is only allowing a homerun on 13.7% of his flyballs, which isn’t too far off average.

So his biggest problem is the high flyball %. I don’t know how to lower this. It may come naturally. He may have to keep the ball down. He does seem to pitch high in the strikezone. Even if none of this happens his ERA should improve because his other peripherals are still pretty good.

What is your least/most favorite Bertism?

Bert is starting to grate on me. I still enjoy him but I get annoyed with some things he says and his attachment to "old-school" baseball.

Let me know what annoys you the most about Bert. Or what you love the most.

Some examples.

Bert's Birthday.

"At the major league level."

Circle Me.

Counting wins as more important as ERA.

Butt kissing of the Twins brass and the moves they make.

How he hates it when a pitcher walks a batter but never appreciates how a batter shows patience in working out a walk.



There are more. What do you think?

Aaron Gleeman

Make sure you check out Aaron Gleeman’s link everyday. He is the king Twins blogger. He is to blogging what Jessica Alba is to hotties. He is the Joe Mauer of the Twin’s blog-o-sphere.

He was my inspiration to start blogging and I can only hope to be as good at as him someday. I expect I won’t though he since has more time than I do and he is a much better writer than I am. And he is probably better looking too.

He has good insights and generally is right on with everything (one exception may be the WPA stat). But he adds a great deal to my enjoyment of the Twins. His blog is the first one I check everyday after adding something to my own. I generally try not to read any other blogs before I write something.

Arod & Jeter

I was listening to Chad Hartman on KFAN yesterday. I don't listen to him very often and here is another reason why. He really doesn’t know much about baseball.

An emailer sent in a good question wondering why Yankee fans are so hard on Arod but love Jeter so much. He compared them to Mantle and Maris. Mantle was loved dearly while Maris was booed. It didn’t make sense.

I thought it was a good comparison. Arod is a much better player than Jeter. In every facet of the game Arod is better, both offensively and defensively. Yet for some reason Jeter is considered a better team player and a better clutch hitter. This is false.

I thought since the day Arod came to NY if Jeter was such a good team player he would have moved to 3B or 2B. Arod was a coming off of 2 consecutive Gold Glove wins before coming to NY and for some reason he was expected to move to 3B. It is even harder to swallow since Jeter is possible the worst defensive SS in the league. Nobody who plays SS full-time has less range than Jeter, though he is improving.

It is Arod who is the team player. He took the move to 3B with grace and dignity while a lesser player played his position horribly.

Hartman also said if there was a player he wanted at the plate in a tight situation it would be Jeter. So I looked into it. I looked at hitting with runners in scoring position and hitting in Late Inning Pressure Situations (LIPS).

Over the last 3 years, since becoming a Yankee, Arod was better than Jeter in these situations. Some years Jeter was better at LIPS or hitting with runners in scoring position. But over the last 3 years Arod was better than Jeter.

The one knock against Arod is that this year in LIPS he has an OPS of about .570. That is ridiculously low. So maybe the pressure is finally getting to him. Or maybe it is because of the small sample size since he has had only 52 at bats in these situations this year.

And over all who would you rather want?
Here is an average season for Arod.
43 Hr 125 RBI 23 SB and AVG/OBP/SLG .306/.385/.573

Here is an average year by Jeter.
18 HR 82 RBI 24 SB and AVG/OBP/SLG .315/.387/.462


They are virtually the same players except that Arod has dramatically more power.

When looking at the amount of Runs Created (RC) that each has the argument isn’t even close. In the previous 2 years Jeter’s best year was not even as good as Arod’s worst year.

Over the last 3 years Arod has created 331 runs while Jeter has created a very respectable 291. Both are great but again Arod is the better player. That is a total of 4 more wins over the last 2.5 years. Not much but not enough to boo Arod. If we added in the defensive production the difference would even be greater between the 2 players.

The only reason to hate Arod is that he seems like a mercenary because of his high contract. Who can blame him? He was offered a ridiculous contract and he took it. Would anyone else do any differently? He is one of the 2 best players in the league over the last 10 years. And its not like Jeter is on food stamps.

Bert needs a dictionary

Did Bert really say "That is vintage Mauer"?

Here is the definition of vintage:
vin·tage ( P ) Pronunciation Key (vntj)
adj.
1. Of or relating to a vintage.
2. Characterized by excellence, maturity, and enduring appeal; classic.
3. Old or outmoded.

Mauer is 23 years old there is nothing vintage about him. Even the baseball cards he bought as a child could not be considered vintage.

Thanks for giving me a laugh Bert.

He did it again

Yes I am talking about Rondell was doubled off 2 times in the same game. He is making the same mistakes he was making before he was hurt. You would think a veteran wouldn't keep making those kind of mistakes. One was on a hit and run so that is somewhat understandable but the other one was less excusable. At least he is finally getting on base. It is good to see some improvement out of him.

Liriano did it again too. He was exceptional fot the 6th time this season he did not give up an earned run. 6 times!!! He did give up a lot of flyballs rather than groundballs for the the first time this season but that was bound to happen too. I didn't really see him capable of have a 70% groundball percentage at the end of the season.

Ouch

First Ford gets hurt which is addition by subtraction. Then in the same game Hunter and Stewart get hurt. That hurts.

Losing s outfieslders with no prospects in the minors gives the Twins no hope for the playoffs. To replace them we now have Tyner, Rondell & Rabe.

Tyner is hot now but has shown in the minors to make us think he is anymore thean a 5th outfielder. With that being said he is probably going to be the Twins starting CF until Hunter returns.

I think we all know what Rondell brings to the team. In his minor league rehab he hit as poorly as he did with the Twins.

Rabe is a stop gap outfielder with no power.

The worst part of the injuries is that their is no possiblility of trading either Hunter or Stewart.

I have a feeling that the loss of Hunter will probbaly hurt the teams defense which will hurt the pitching over the rest of the season.

Who should be the Twins 5th starter?

The fifth start should be Bradsisco Santaniano. The Twins should move to a four man rotation and use their best three starters to fill that hole at the fifth spot in the rotation. There is no reason this can’t be done.

OK there are many reasons. One is that Terry Ryan said last week on the radio that “four man rotations have been tried and they have failed.” I thought about this and did not recall the last time it was tried but I thought it was funny that he said it failed.

In the last century of baseball weren’t the majority of years spent by most teams using a four man rotation? Yes. Did it work? Yes. Nobody can tell me that there weren’t any good pitching staffs in last century. I also don’t remember arms falling off.

There is a great article on four man rotations in the book Baseball Between the Numbers. It was put out by Baseball Prospectus. I will be using most of their data and arguments to support my discussion on the Twins use of a four man rotation.

A good quote from the book is “Throwing is not dangerous to a pitcher’s arm. Throwing while tired is dangerous to a pitcher’s arm.” One thing we need to remember is that every pitcher has a different level of fatigue and it is difficult to remember. For some pitchers it may be that they fatigue at 80 pitches and other it may be 140 pitches.

The main argument is that pitchers aren’t tired after three days of rest so why not let them pitch. If it means that a pitcher pitches less per start so be it. It will be more beneficial to the team. But the data shows that most pitched just as long into the game on five man or a four man rotation.

Pitch counts can be helpful in guarding against injuries. It is most important for a pitcher not to pitch when he is tired. That is when his mechanics worsen and he becomes more susceptible to injuries. Pitching on three days rest does not increase the injury chances.

Another argument against using a four man rotation is that a pitcher is less effective on three days rest. This is not true. BP looked at all starters since 1972 who have had at least 8 starts on three and four days rest each.

It was a statistical wash. Their ERA was slightly better on three days rest, walk rates and strikeout rates were nominally worse. The only stat that had changed dramatically at all was the homerun rate. It actually improved 4%. That was the biggest change. So in fact, pitchers were slightly better on three days rest than four.

But what about pitcher that only pitched on three days rest rarely, less than 8 starts in a season. Again it was a statistical wash. But ERA was slightly up.

One more objection is that the pitchers will tire at the end of the season, again this wrong. The data shows another statistical wash.

The other objection might be that pitchers won’t be able to adjust to the change. Why not? They adjust all of the time. Some starters become relievers or vice verse. They change when they move from the minors to the majors. It happens all of the time.

The last time it was tried it failed. Bob Boone tried it with KC in 1995. It started great but by the end of the season all of the pitchers did indeed get much worse. Maybe this is what Ryan was talking about. So it can fail. But it has work for a century before that. And, most importantly, Boone had his pitchers hit very high pitch counts, sometimes as many 145 pitches.

That is why it failed. Not because of the three days rest. If they were in a five man rotation the chances of these pitchers getting worse as the season went on was just as bad after so many high pitch counts.

So there is no real reason not to have a four man rotation. Then what are the benefits?

First, the worst starter is not pitching in as many games and the best pitchers are now eating up those innings. This will save a great deal of runs in a season.

And there is now an extra roster spot for another hitter.

So how will this affect the Twins? It would give the Twins another 3-5 wins. I base this on three different things. I looked the three pitchers who would take the place of the 5th pitcher, they are Liriano, Santana & Radke. Then I looked at the 5th starter, Silva. I looked at the amount of runs they would give up in 12 games as a guess on how many runs they would give up in that time.

I looked at it three different ways. 1st I looked at total runs against average, 2nd ERA and 3rd I used their FIP. The last way is kind of a guess of how they will pitch the rest of the season.

If all pitchers performed just the same in the 2nd half of the season the amount of runs saved by using Runs Against would be 50 runs. That is five more wins!!! If you just used ERA the four man rotation would save the Twins 44 runs. That is four more wins. If you looked at FIP it would save the Twins about 26 runs. That is about 2-3 wins.

There is no reason to avoid the change to a four man rotation. You would think that an old-school guy like Gardy would want to do this since it is old-school. I will hope they try it but I believe that I have a better chance of passing the Bar exam.

So if at the end of the year we miss the playoffs by three-five games you will know why.

Non-baseball issue.

How dumb are people in Wisconsin? Lets wait in line 10 hours for free gas. Why would you possible wait in line so long. How much gas would you go through idling?

For waiting 10+ hours in long line, in your car, in the heat you are rewarded with a tank of gas, almost. Free gas sounds great but would you really wait overnight in a car line for $30. Who in their right mind would?

The answer, Packer fans.

Twin's Pitching

Don’t look now but the Twins have the 5th best ERA in the league. They are creeping up on the league leaders. It is truly amazing after the start they had. It is due to basic improvement, much better defense and the addition of Liriano to the rotation.

The really amazing thing is that the Twins have the best DIPS in the major league. They are about 2/10ths of a run better than anyone else. If they had the defense they should have had they really could have been a great team so far.

It really makes the signing of Batista and extended play of Castro look even worse now.

If they fielded just an average defense their ERA would have been about 4.00. Much better than the 4.36 ERA they now have. That is about 31 runs which equals about 3 wins. The Twins would still be in the thick of it with 3 more wins, especially if the wins were against Det or Chi.

The outlook does not look good but there is some reason for hope.

Improved Defense

Sorry about not posting as often this last week, I am going caffiene free and it has not been an easy transition.

The Twin’s defense is improving. They no longer have the worst defense in the majors. They are now 2nd to last just beating out the Pirates.

The team DER is .673. That is quite an improvement over their record setting pace they had early in the season. As early as 3 weeks ago the Twins had a DER of .663. That’s quite improvement already.

The improvement is due to the changes on the left side of the field. So far Kubel, Punto, and Bartlett have been huge improvements over the players they replaced.

They haven’t been playing too long so the sample is small but the zone ratings of Kubel, Punto and Bartlett are all much higher than their predecessors. It is not surprising to most of us who watched Stewart, Batsta and Castro waddle around the field and not get to many balls.

The improved defense has really aided in the turnaround of the pitching staff. If we can start playing an extra outfielder in the RF stands to catch all of the homeruns that Silva gives up we would really have a good pitching staff.
I hope to do a 30 day review in a couple of days of the real improvement in real world terms since the call up of Bartlett which triggered the new look defense

All Star Break

What bad way to move into the all-star break. The Twins lost 4 of 6 and it could have been worse. They could have easily been swept on Monday night.

The pitching has been poor and the hitting has been poor. Even Santana has looked bad. He nearly lost to KC and was roughed up after starting well against Tex.

They are 11.5 out. So it doesn't look to good. I would have felt much better if we could have played much better last week and kept the lead down to single digits. They really have too many teams ahead of them in the division and the wild card race. I expect Santana and Liriano to keep up the quality pitching. The bright spots like the M&M boys should keep the offense rolling. I really worry about the rest of the pitching.

Radke will probably OK the second half and may get his ERA under 5.00. I don't believe Silva will. He doesn't have 2 of the 3 abilities that a pitcher needs to win. He doesn't strikeout many batters and he gives up too many homeruns. He did last year too but somehow was able to give up the homeruns with few or no men on base. Its not working out for him this year. He really needs a good defense behind him and the Twins are not able to provide that for him.

With only 3 starters and a good but not great offense it will be very difficult to catch any of the other teams they are chasing. I hope they can do it though.

No more Boof

Boof was sent back to AAA. It was easy to see it coming. He was walking too many batters and he was allowing too many homeruns. He was striking out a lot of batters so I do expect him improve and to be back with the big team in the future.

Pat Neshek has been called up he is a sidearmer who has good control and strikes out a lot of batters. He should be a really good reliever. One problem is that side arm pitchers usually are much better against the same handed batters. But Neshek has been showing an ability to get lefthanders out also.

The real question is, who will be th4e 5th starter when we need one in 2 weeks?

That is a question for another day, specifically this weekend. I will answer the question and it is not who you are thinking of.

Best Lineup

Last night the Gardy played the Twins best lineup.

2b Castilla
3b Punto
C Mauer
rf Cuddyer
1b Morneau
cf Hunter
dh Stewart
lf Kubel
ss Bartlett

Its really not a bad lineup. By far the best the Twins have played with all year. It should be used 75% of he time. Against lefthanders I would rotate some of the lefthanders in the lineup out once in a while.

Lets hope we see this more often.

Its a strange game

Baseball is a strange game. The Twins could have easily been swept this series but with a little luck on Monday they did steal 1 game.

It is strange how a good team on a streak can get beat by a lousy team, but it happens every year. Anything can happen in a short series.

The Twins didn't hit or pitch well all 3 games and now they are on a losing streak. Lets hope it stops tommorrow in Texas. The 2 lefties are pitching so it should go well.

In football they say on any given Sunday any team can beat another team. It is especially true in baseball. On any day any team can beat another team. If great pitchers get bet by bad teams sometimes. It happens all of the time.

Then when it happens in the playoffs that pitcher is a choker when, in fact, its just how thew game works. All year long the worse team sometimes beats the better team. Then it is all magnified in the playoffs and nobody looks at the fact that random chance plays a large part in who really wins a playoff series.

Were the Twins the best team in 1987? No way. The Twins beat a much superior team in Oakland in 2002. It happens. In a short series random chance does not have long to even out.

Can Liriano keep it up?

Will Liriano keep it up? It’s a tough question, one that we cannot know for sure. So I thought I would look at some other great rookie pitchers of the last 3 decades. I picked 3 who seemed to fit the bill as a “phenom” in their rookie season. The three are Mark Fidrych, Fernando Valenzuela and Dwight Gooden.

All of them were Rookie of the Year winners and all had great rookie seasons. They also had a lot of media attention. That is one thing that Liriano hasn’t quite received yet.

Liriano has only pitched in 81 innings so far this season. So it is still early to look at him. But I still would like to know where he stands compared to these other phenoms.

Player W L ERA DIPS BAPIP
Liriano 9 1 1.99 2.42 0.265
Gooden 17 9 2.60 2.09 0.290
Valenzuela 13 7 2.48 2.96 0.255
Fidrych 19 9 2.34 3.65 0.247


Of the 4 only Gooden had a better DIPS than his real ERA. He was really the only pitcher of the bunch who didn’t get a lot of luck in his rookie season. He was just that good. Valenzuela and Liriano have DIPS about a ½ a run higher while Fidrych’s was over a run higher than his real ERA.

Players tend to move towards their DIPS in the following season since it is a better indicator of their ability to pitch.

Of the 3 only Gooden did improve. It isn’t difficult to see why. In his rookie season he had a BAPIP of.290, about average. If he gets anymore help from his defense he is bound to pitch better the next season. He did.

Fidrych was the really lucky player. His ERA was much better than how well he really pitched. He did not strike out many players and relied on his defense a great deal. That with a little luck helped him to his spectacular ERA. Because of injuries he hardly pitched much ever again. So he was never able to match this season again.

Gooden pitched great and even better sometimes over the next 10 years, then drugs and injuries finally caught up to him.

Valenzuela pitched very well over the next 6 years before his career tooka decline.

All-Star snubs

It happens every year and it really isn't a big deal but if you want to win the game why not bring the best players. If you are Guillen and you feel like you have a good team this year and you feel like you have a chance to go to the World Series again don't you want to win to get home field advantage?

So why is Buehrle on the All Star team and worse yet why is he starting. He is not even having that good of a year. Santana should be starting he is having the best year of any pitcher in the AL except for Liriano.

I can understand the snub of Liriano. He hasn't pitched that much but still he is leading the league in ERA by a 1/2 a run and leading the next best pitcher by more than a run. With all of that said I still do understand him being left off of the team.

But Buehrle is not deserving to go, let alone start the game.

The biggest snub is Hafner. He is leading the league in Runs Created, 2nd in OBP, 4th in RBI & HRs. He is the single best offensive force in the AL, and he isnot on the squad. The players that made it instead of him are still good choices but I really think you need to somehow get the best player on the squad.

Konerko is a good player but is still the 3rd best 1B in the league so far. And Thome is great but Hafner is still a better choice.

Do managers always pick so many of their own players? If so should be acceptable?