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