With the season just passing the halfway point and the All Star break fast approaching, here are some widely available players who could help your team.
Rich Harden, SP, Oakland, 10% owned Yahoo, 7% ESPN
Everyone knows what this guy has done in the past when healthy. He struggled greatly last year with his control, but he finally made his 2011 debut on Friday against Arizona and walked none while striking out six. With a career average of over one strikeout per inning, Harden could be an asset in three categories, especially at home in pitcher-friendly Oakland, and can be acquired for nothing. He could struggle in WHIP if he can't keep the walks under control, but he's an easy start this week when he faces Seattle this week at home.
Cory Luebke, SP/RP, San Diego, 14%/15%
Luebke is another starting pitcher with strikeout potential in a favorable home work. Of course, an ineffective offense hurts his chances at wins, but I'd rather have a pitcher like Luebke helping me in three categories than a #4 starter with a high-powered offense who drags down my ratios. The one red flag with Luebke is that the return of Aarong Harang brings his rotation spot into question, but he has pitched very well in his two starts thus far and has an excellent matchup this week at San Francisco.
David Hernandez, RP, Arizona, 23%/18%
With JJ Putz hitting the disabled list with an elbow injury, David Hernandez has assumed the closer's role in Arizona. Hernandez already picked up his first save with a clean inning on Saturday. Hernandez is an obvious option for those looking to fill a short term need for saves, but with Putz's injury history and no firm timetable on his recovery, Hernandez could be worth speculating on for saves down the road too.
Joe Nathan, RP, Minnesota, 34%/32%
After Matt Capps turned a 7-4 lead into an 8-7 loss Saturday, Nathan moved one step closer to reclaiming the closer's role in Minnesota. Then on Sunday, Capps was pulled out of a save situation after giving up two more hits to the Brewers. Capps has always been a placeholder for Nathan until he's ready to resume closing, and with the way he and Capps have pitched since Nathan's return from the DL it probably won't be long now. Keep a close eye on this situation, and consider grabbing Nathan now if you're not usually the quickest to the wire.
Javy Guerra, RP, Los Angeles, 6%/10%
This is a pretty simple situation: Guerra is the Dodgers' closer right now. He may not be that good, the Dodgers may not be that good, and Guerra may not be the closer for the rest of the season, but right now he is the guy. In addition, Jonathan Broxton is now more than likely out for the year, which eliminates one of his main competitors.
Eric Thames, OF, Toronto, 4%/2%
If you hadn't checked the Toronto lineup for a week, you would notice a lot of differences. With Juan Rivera cut loose and Jose Bautista moved to third base, Thames, Corey Patterson, Rajai Davis, and the recalled Travis Snider will man the three outfield spots for the Blue Jays. Thames has been excellent in his second taste of the bigs, hitting three home runs in the past five games (including one each off of Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee). His playing time could come into question, although it's hard to imagine him sitting on the bench with the way he's played since his recall. He dominated AAA this year, albeit in the hitter-friendly PCL league, and offers the rarest of assets in 2011: power potential.
Showing posts with label twin #2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label twin #2. Show all posts
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
The First Four
(16) Arkansas-Little Rock vs (16) UNC-Asheville
My pick: UNC-Asheville
Little Rock was a middle of the pack team in the Sun Belt this season, finishing at 7-9 in conference, but beat 4 teams that they were a combined 1-5 against in the regular season to win the Sun Belt tournament. UA-LR only played 1 game against a major conference team this season, an 84-70 loss at Ole Miss in December, and their best win was at home against Tulsa 4 days later. Basically, they were appropriately seeded here as a 16 seed in the play-in game. They do present an interesting case because they led the Sun Belt in three-point shooting percentage (12th nationally, out of 345), but ranked dead last in the Sun Belt, and 12th to last nationally, in two-point shooting percentage. Little Rock's two-point percent (42.1) was a mere 2.4 percentage points better than its three-point percent (39.7), the closest margin in Division 1 basketball. And despite that, only 31.7 percent of their field goal attempts were threes, ranking in the bottom half of the country. UNC-Asheville, on the other hand, is a bad 3-point shooting team (32.9%) that doesn't take very many of them (26.2%, 314th). However, despite winning a similarly-rated conference (Big South), Asheville was a much better team during the regular season. The Bulldogs still had to pull off an upset over Coastal Carolina to win their tournament, but they did finish 11-7 in conference and have a top 100 defense according to Ken Pomeroy's efficiency ratings, thanks in large part to their ability to force turnovers. As far as 16 seed play-in games go, this seems like a pretty big mismatch; Asheville should be able to shut down Little Rock's offense and score enough to win by a comfortable margin.
(12) Clemson vs (12) UAB
My pick: Clemson
I'm not going to lie, I wanted to pick UAB for this game. I wanted the Blazers to show that Clemson did not belong in the tournament. The Tigers' only win over a tournament team in conference was at home against Florida State, their best non-conference win was a neutral-site victory in overtime against Seton Hall without Jeremy Hazell, and they had bad losses to Virginia, NC State, and South Carolina. But I had to admit to myself that UAB is a worse team that had even less reason to make the tournament. They also beat only one tournament team, VCU at home, and didn't have any other victories of note. Clemson's biggest weakness is being forced into turnovers on offense, and UAB is not particularly good at exploiting that. Clemson will be able to ride their defense to a victory over UAB and a date with West Virginia in the true first round of the tournament.
My pick: UNC-Asheville
Little Rock was a middle of the pack team in the Sun Belt this season, finishing at 7-9 in conference, but beat 4 teams that they were a combined 1-5 against in the regular season to win the Sun Belt tournament. UA-LR only played 1 game against a major conference team this season, an 84-70 loss at Ole Miss in December, and their best win was at home against Tulsa 4 days later. Basically, they were appropriately seeded here as a 16 seed in the play-in game. They do present an interesting case because they led the Sun Belt in three-point shooting percentage (12th nationally, out of 345), but ranked dead last in the Sun Belt, and 12th to last nationally, in two-point shooting percentage. Little Rock's two-point percent (42.1) was a mere 2.4 percentage points better than its three-point percent (39.7), the closest margin in Division 1 basketball. And despite that, only 31.7 percent of their field goal attempts were threes, ranking in the bottom half of the country. UNC-Asheville, on the other hand, is a bad 3-point shooting team (32.9%) that doesn't take very many of them (26.2%, 314th). However, despite winning a similarly-rated conference (Big South), Asheville was a much better team during the regular season. The Bulldogs still had to pull off an upset over Coastal Carolina to win their tournament, but they did finish 11-7 in conference and have a top 100 defense according to Ken Pomeroy's efficiency ratings, thanks in large part to their ability to force turnovers. As far as 16 seed play-in games go, this seems like a pretty big mismatch; Asheville should be able to shut down Little Rock's offense and score enough to win by a comfortable margin.
(12) Clemson vs (12) UAB
My pick: Clemson
I'm not going to lie, I wanted to pick UAB for this game. I wanted the Blazers to show that Clemson did not belong in the tournament. The Tigers' only win over a tournament team in conference was at home against Florida State, their best non-conference win was a neutral-site victory in overtime against Seton Hall without Jeremy Hazell, and they had bad losses to Virginia, NC State, and South Carolina. But I had to admit to myself that UAB is a worse team that had even less reason to make the tournament. They also beat only one tournament team, VCU at home, and didn't have any other victories of note. Clemson's biggest weakness is being forced into turnovers on offense, and UAB is not particularly good at exploiting that. Clemson will be able to ride their defense to a victory over UAB and a date with West Virginia in the true first round of the tournament.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
The Question of Momentum
After clinching the division on September 21st, the Twins finished the season with losses in 8 of their final 11 games and were outscored 72-41. Twins fans are used to exhilarating regular season finishes followed by playoff letdowns (see 2006 and 2009), but this unusually lackluster ending to the regular season has caused some to worry about the Twins' playoff chances. Of course, it's easy to point out that the Twins were resting some of their key players (Joe Mauer, Jim Thome, J.J. Hardy) for many of those games, but the pessimist might point to the 9 total runs scored in the Toronto series, when much of the playoff lineup was intact, as cause for concern.
Normally, I would dismiss an abstract notion such as momentum, especially in this case where it was sacrificed in order to get the Twins as healthy as possible for the playoffs. Rather than simply assuming momentum was irrelevant, I decided to see if the data agreed with me. The question I sought to answer was whether momentum--measured by performance in the final 10 regular season games, as it was the easiest data to find and collect--has a significant impact on a team's performance in the Division Series. Some other data that I collected that I thought might be correlated was overall regular season record, whether the team had home-field advantage in the playoffs or not, and the approximate clinch date for the team. (It would have been too hard to find actual clinch dates, so I used games ahead of a playoff spot at the end of the season. It's not perfect, but hopefully it's good enough.) I used data from the last nine seasons, from 2001-2009.
The first thing I noticed about the data set is that only one other playoff team won as few games as the 2010 Twins did in their last 10: last year's St. Louis Cardinals went 2-8 in their last 10 games and were promptly swept out of the NLDS. One data point hardly constitutes grounds for any sort of conclusion, though. It seems obvious that playoff teams would rarely finish so poorly in their last 10 games, since those teams have to be pretty good in the first place (except for maybe the 82-win Padres of 2005).
The next two things that stood out to me are unrelated to the main theme of this post, but I felt they deserved mention anyways. The first is just how good the 2001 Seattle Mariners were. In Ichiro's first year (and MVP year), the Mariners won 116 games and were a full 31 games away from worrying about a playoff spot. The next farthest ahead was the 2008 Angels, who won 100 games while taking advantage of a weak division in which no other team even went .500 (the A's finished with 79 wins). The other interesting note is that there has not been a 5-game Division Series since 2005; of the 16 division series in the past 4 years, not one has reached a fifth game. Really, the baseball postseason as a whole has been lacking for a few years, with most of the recent World Series reaching only four or five games.
Okay, now back to the issue of momentum. The first problem I ran into was how exactly to quantify Division Series performance. My two ideas were either a binary variable for advancing or not (1 for advance, 0 for not advance) or just a variable denoting the number of wins in the Division Series. I started off by testing if just wins in the last 10 games had any correlation with the variables of interest, but the regression showed no such relationship. The R-squared for both the binary variable and Division Series wins was under 2% with P-values well outside the area of significance. I didn't want to just stop there and conclude that momentum is meaningless, though.
The next step was to check if any of the other data was correlated with success in the Division Series. Regular season winning percentage, for example, had a P-value of 0.041 in a regression with Division Series wins, so regular season wins could at least be a significant factor in postseason performance. Note: it was not correlated significantly with the binary variable 'advance', and I decided at this point that a binary variable was not really the best option for a dependent variable, so though I kept checking it to be sure I won't be mentioning it any further.
So it seems that, as I presumed in the beginning, the last 10 games represents a small sample size that has little bearing on Division Series performance, especially in a case such as the Twins' where results are skewed due to worse players getting extra playing time. Nonetheless, I ran through a few other regressions with the other variables (games ahead and home field) to see if any interesting patterns emerged. However, none of these variables had anything close to a significant impact on the number of Division Series wins.
In fact, the only thing last 10 wins, home-field advantage, and games ahead did have in common was that they were all correlated with regular season wins. Thus, better teams that win more games tend to win more of their last 10 games, have home-field advantage more often, and be farther ahead in the standings. There are certainly reasons you can give as to why the Twins might not win this series, but their sluggish finish to the season should not be one of them. The only thing that definitely helps a team win games in the Division Series is being as good a team as possible, so the Twins did the right thing by resting their players (and maybe costing themselves a few wins in the process) in order to be at their best for the playoffs.
Normally, I would dismiss an abstract notion such as momentum, especially in this case where it was sacrificed in order to get the Twins as healthy as possible for the playoffs. Rather than simply assuming momentum was irrelevant, I decided to see if the data agreed with me. The question I sought to answer was whether momentum--measured by performance in the final 10 regular season games, as it was the easiest data to find and collect--has a significant impact on a team's performance in the Division Series. Some other data that I collected that I thought might be correlated was overall regular season record, whether the team had home-field advantage in the playoffs or not, and the approximate clinch date for the team. (It would have been too hard to find actual clinch dates, so I used games ahead of a playoff spot at the end of the season. It's not perfect, but hopefully it's good enough.) I used data from the last nine seasons, from 2001-2009.
The first thing I noticed about the data set is that only one other playoff team won as few games as the 2010 Twins did in their last 10: last year's St. Louis Cardinals went 2-8 in their last 10 games and were promptly swept out of the NLDS. One data point hardly constitutes grounds for any sort of conclusion, though. It seems obvious that playoff teams would rarely finish so poorly in their last 10 games, since those teams have to be pretty good in the first place (except for maybe the 82-win Padres of 2005).
The next two things that stood out to me are unrelated to the main theme of this post, but I felt they deserved mention anyways. The first is just how good the 2001 Seattle Mariners were. In Ichiro's first year (and MVP year), the Mariners won 116 games and were a full 31 games away from worrying about a playoff spot. The next farthest ahead was the 2008 Angels, who won 100 games while taking advantage of a weak division in which no other team even went .500 (the A's finished with 79 wins). The other interesting note is that there has not been a 5-game Division Series since 2005; of the 16 division series in the past 4 years, not one has reached a fifth game. Really, the baseball postseason as a whole has been lacking for a few years, with most of the recent World Series reaching only four or five games.
Okay, now back to the issue of momentum. The first problem I ran into was how exactly to quantify Division Series performance. My two ideas were either a binary variable for advancing or not (1 for advance, 0 for not advance) or just a variable denoting the number of wins in the Division Series. I started off by testing if just wins in the last 10 games had any correlation with the variables of interest, but the regression showed no such relationship. The R-squared for both the binary variable and Division Series wins was under 2% with P-values well outside the area of significance. I didn't want to just stop there and conclude that momentum is meaningless, though.
The next step was to check if any of the other data was correlated with success in the Division Series. Regular season winning percentage, for example, had a P-value of 0.041 in a regression with Division Series wins, so regular season wins could at least be a significant factor in postseason performance. Note: it was not correlated significantly with the binary variable 'advance', and I decided at this point that a binary variable was not really the best option for a dependent variable, so though I kept checking it to be sure I won't be mentioning it any further.
So it seems that, as I presumed in the beginning, the last 10 games represents a small sample size that has little bearing on Division Series performance, especially in a case such as the Twins' where results are skewed due to worse players getting extra playing time. Nonetheless, I ran through a few other regressions with the other variables (games ahead and home field) to see if any interesting patterns emerged. However, none of these variables had anything close to a significant impact on the number of Division Series wins.
In fact, the only thing last 10 wins, home-field advantage, and games ahead did have in common was that they were all correlated with regular season wins. Thus, better teams that win more games tend to win more of their last 10 games, have home-field advantage more often, and be farther ahead in the standings. There are certainly reasons you can give as to why the Twins might not win this series, but their sluggish finish to the season should not be one of them. The only thing that definitely helps a team win games in the Division Series is being as good a team as possible, so the Twins did the right thing by resting their players (and maybe costing themselves a few wins in the process) in order to be at their best for the playoffs.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
World Cup Review
Obviously, the World Cup is not yet over; Germany just took down Argentina 4-0, while Spain and Paraguay will match up shortly in the final quarterfinal game. But for me, my interest pretty much ended when the U.S. was eliminated. I've still been paying attention to the outcomes of the games, but it's hardly been the compulsive checking of scores and standings that I was doing during the group stages. I watched more soccer over this period of time than I ever had before, and it was more interesting and exciting than I expected. Yet, I couldn't help thinking that there would be some easy ways to improve the game and help increase its popularity (and yes, I know soccer is the most popular sport worldwide). Some parts of soccer, namely the low scores and hence the perceived boringness of the sport to many (especially Americans), are basic parts of the sport and thus not going to change. If someone finds soccer boring because the scores are usually 1-0 or 2-1, I'm not sure the sport can do much to draw them in. However, there are some things they can change in order to bring in fans, like me, who enjoyed the sport during the World Cup, but will quickly forget about it after the final next Monday.
I mentioned some of these suggestions in passing while watching some World Cup games with friends, and was met with fierce criticism from those friends who also consider themselves soccer fans. To me, these were pretty obvious, and harmless, suggestions to improve the game, but some soccer fans apparently consider them inseparable from the game. If there are any soccer fans reading this (which I doubt), let me know how you feel about them. I tried to limit the changes to ones that, in an analogical sense, I would at least consider in my favorite sport, baseball. For instance, I'm open to ideas that would speed up the game of baseball, such as limiting the number of pitching changes per inning, but I would never want to see a clock instituted for pitchers. In that same sense, I'm not suggesting anything revolutionary like adding a second goal to each side, but here are the things that I believe would improve the game:
1. More referees.
There were a number of high-profile blown calls throughout this World Cup, and while this may or may not be the norm, there is an easy way to make sure that it doesn't happen again: add more referees to the sport. The NFL uses a slightly smaller field with the same number of players and has seven referees. Baseball uses four umpires and adds two more for playoff games. The real key, though, is that in other sports the officials don't have to cover the same amount of ground as the players. In soccer, the head referee has to run up and down the field following the ball for 90+ minutes. They wouldn't even have to add an official, since soccer currently employs a fourth official whose sole role is, as far as I can tell, to hold up the scoreboard to show how much extra time there is. If it were up to me, I would add more than just one official, but to keep the change as small as possible, let's just say that we add one referee, so that there is one on each half of the pitch to go along with the two linesman. This should increase accuracy of calls by allowing each referee to focus on a smaller area. This increase in accuracy will produce another positive side effect: reduce the need for instant replay. One of the best parts of soccer, and one thing its diehards often point to in its defense, is the continuous action. For other sports, particularly baseball, I'm in favor of replay because there are very difficult to judge, yet clearly objective, plays that occur regularly (i.e., a close play at first base). In addition, other sports contain constant natural interruptions: baseball has the time between pitches, football the time between plays, and basketball the constant timeouts and out of bounds. Soccer, while it has throw-ins and free kicks, is very free-flowing and lacking in natural interruptions; to change that with replay would be to alter the whole pace and flow of the game. Also, soccer does not have many objective calls, which is what replay is best used for. Most of the calls in soccer, which are in regards to fouls, could be debated endlessly even upon watching replays. Of course, hand balls, offsides, and whether a ball crosses the line or not (Frank Lampard's shot comes to mind, though I'm sure that's a once in a decade type of missed call) are more objective, but the addition of an extra referee would help the referees make more accurate calls on those plays.
2. No penalty kicks.
Soccer has the worst overtime of any sport, period (well, hockey has a similar problem). To break a tie in a sport, you should have to play more of the game, not some schoolyard mini-game that kids lacking field space might come up with. Using penalty kicks in soccer is like deciding a basketball game by knockout. And, unfortunately, games are decided in this way all the time: semifinalist Uruguay has won their last two games on PKs and the 2006 World Cup final was famously decided by kicks as well. Considering the low-scoring nature of soccer, I don't really have a suggestion for overtime other than to just keep playing until someone scores. That may not be the ideal solution, but it's much better than using penalty kicks, which more closely resembles a game of rock-paper-scissors than soccer. To go along with this change, the golden goal should be re-instituted to overtime. I'm not sure why soccer went away from sudden death overtime (to give teams a chance on each end of the field?), but the excitement of a sudden death overtime would add even more to overtime. In a game with such little scoring, I don't see the need to give the other team a chance to come back.
3. Stop the clock.
I'm not sure how this made it down to the third bullet, as it's really the number one change that I think needs to be made. It really just seems absolutely ridiculous to me that nobody knows exactly how much time is left in the game. I know the running clock is an important aspect of soccer to its supporters, so we can keep the idea of extra time. However, instead of having the referee hold up an integer as a guess for the number of minutes lost due to injury, the exact amount of time that the ball was out of play due to throw-ins, goal kicks, free kicks, injuries and other stoppages in play should be kept track of and added at the end of each half. This would also basically eliminate the ridiculous time-wasting actions of players late in games, including players strolling off the field when being substituted for and going down with a career-threatening leg injury every other minute. I don't blame the players for these actions, as they're clearly within the rules and help their team, but it's extremely frustrating as a fan and a rule like this needs to be added in order to eliminate the incentive to do so. Finally, there needs to be a clear end to the game. For example, with three minutes of added time and the clock reading 92:50, Ghana won a corner kick its game last weekend against the U.S. They didn't play the ball in until the clock read 93:05, which means that really the game should've been over: the ball was out of play when the clock ran out. But the referee decided to let them play the ball in one more time. After he does so, how does he decide when to end the game? Does Ghana get one touch to score? Two touches? Until the ball leaves the penalty box? Until it goes out of bounds again? The point here is that no one knows when exactly the game is going to end. With the new extra time system described above, there will be an exact amount of extra time. My suggestion is that, once that time is reached, the game is over once the ball crosses over midfield, so that the attacking team has one last chance to put the ball in the goal, and there is a definitive answer to the question of when the referee should end the game.
I mentioned some of these suggestions in passing while watching some World Cup games with friends, and was met with fierce criticism from those friends who also consider themselves soccer fans. To me, these were pretty obvious, and harmless, suggestions to improve the game, but some soccer fans apparently consider them inseparable from the game. If there are any soccer fans reading this (which I doubt), let me know how you feel about them. I tried to limit the changes to ones that, in an analogical sense, I would at least consider in my favorite sport, baseball. For instance, I'm open to ideas that would speed up the game of baseball, such as limiting the number of pitching changes per inning, but I would never want to see a clock instituted for pitchers. In that same sense, I'm not suggesting anything revolutionary like adding a second goal to each side, but here are the things that I believe would improve the game:
1. More referees.
There were a number of high-profile blown calls throughout this World Cup, and while this may or may not be the norm, there is an easy way to make sure that it doesn't happen again: add more referees to the sport. The NFL uses a slightly smaller field with the same number of players and has seven referees. Baseball uses four umpires and adds two more for playoff games. The real key, though, is that in other sports the officials don't have to cover the same amount of ground as the players. In soccer, the head referee has to run up and down the field following the ball for 90+ minutes. They wouldn't even have to add an official, since soccer currently employs a fourth official whose sole role is, as far as I can tell, to hold up the scoreboard to show how much extra time there is. If it were up to me, I would add more than just one official, but to keep the change as small as possible, let's just say that we add one referee, so that there is one on each half of the pitch to go along with the two linesman. This should increase accuracy of calls by allowing each referee to focus on a smaller area. This increase in accuracy will produce another positive side effect: reduce the need for instant replay. One of the best parts of soccer, and one thing its diehards often point to in its defense, is the continuous action. For other sports, particularly baseball, I'm in favor of replay because there are very difficult to judge, yet clearly objective, plays that occur regularly (i.e., a close play at first base). In addition, other sports contain constant natural interruptions: baseball has the time between pitches, football the time between plays, and basketball the constant timeouts and out of bounds. Soccer, while it has throw-ins and free kicks, is very free-flowing and lacking in natural interruptions; to change that with replay would be to alter the whole pace and flow of the game. Also, soccer does not have many objective calls, which is what replay is best used for. Most of the calls in soccer, which are in regards to fouls, could be debated endlessly even upon watching replays. Of course, hand balls, offsides, and whether a ball crosses the line or not (Frank Lampard's shot comes to mind, though I'm sure that's a once in a decade type of missed call) are more objective, but the addition of an extra referee would help the referees make more accurate calls on those plays.
2. No penalty kicks.
Soccer has the worst overtime of any sport, period (well, hockey has a similar problem). To break a tie in a sport, you should have to play more of the game, not some schoolyard mini-game that kids lacking field space might come up with. Using penalty kicks in soccer is like deciding a basketball game by knockout. And, unfortunately, games are decided in this way all the time: semifinalist Uruguay has won their last two games on PKs and the 2006 World Cup final was famously decided by kicks as well. Considering the low-scoring nature of soccer, I don't really have a suggestion for overtime other than to just keep playing until someone scores. That may not be the ideal solution, but it's much better than using penalty kicks, which more closely resembles a game of rock-paper-scissors than soccer. To go along with this change, the golden goal should be re-instituted to overtime. I'm not sure why soccer went away from sudden death overtime (to give teams a chance on each end of the field?), but the excitement of a sudden death overtime would add even more to overtime. In a game with such little scoring, I don't see the need to give the other team a chance to come back.
3. Stop the clock.
I'm not sure how this made it down to the third bullet, as it's really the number one change that I think needs to be made. It really just seems absolutely ridiculous to me that nobody knows exactly how much time is left in the game. I know the running clock is an important aspect of soccer to its supporters, so we can keep the idea of extra time. However, instead of having the referee hold up an integer as a guess for the number of minutes lost due to injury, the exact amount of time that the ball was out of play due to throw-ins, goal kicks, free kicks, injuries and other stoppages in play should be kept track of and added at the end of each half. This would also basically eliminate the ridiculous time-wasting actions of players late in games, including players strolling off the field when being substituted for and going down with a career-threatening leg injury every other minute. I don't blame the players for these actions, as they're clearly within the rules and help their team, but it's extremely frustrating as a fan and a rule like this needs to be added in order to eliminate the incentive to do so. Finally, there needs to be a clear end to the game. For example, with three minutes of added time and the clock reading 92:50, Ghana won a corner kick its game last weekend against the U.S. They didn't play the ball in until the clock read 93:05, which means that really the game should've been over: the ball was out of play when the clock ran out. But the referee decided to let them play the ball in one more time. After he does so, how does he decide when to end the game? Does Ghana get one touch to score? Two touches? Until the ball leaves the penalty box? Until it goes out of bounds again? The point here is that no one knows when exactly the game is going to end. With the new extra time system described above, there will be an exact amount of extra time. My suggestion is that, once that time is reached, the game is over once the ball crosses over midfield, so that the attacking team has one last chance to put the ball in the goal, and there is a definitive answer to the question of when the referee should end the game.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Safe!
I'm not upset at all. I'm over the Twins' sweep at the hands of the Yankees, and the Angels were thoroughly outplayed last night anyways. It's just funny. And really, really embarassing, which is why Dave Cameron wrote an article advocating essentially the same instant replay system that I did back in August. It's time for MLB to do something, and luckily this something is simple, will actually speed up the game, and should appease all parties involved.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
More Rock Cats Videos
I uploaded a bunch of new Rock Cats videos to YouTube. All of the new videos are from the game on Friday, August 14th, 2009, when the Rock Cats won 7-0 behind a combined one hitter. Here are a couple of the videos from that game; go to my channel to see all of them.
Deolis Guerra:
Loek Van Mil:
Deolis Guerra:
Loek Van Mil:
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Putting Up Zeros
That's exactly what the Rock Cats pitching staff has been doing over the past 4 days. In those 4 games, Rock Cats pitchers combined to allow 2 runs on 24 hits over 39 innings, including the combined one-hitter on Friday night and 12 inning shutout on Thursday. After Mike McCardell allowed a run in the 5th inning on Wednesday night against Erie, New Britain's opponents wouldn't score again until the 8th inning last night, a streak of 32 full innings of shutout baseball. And this wasn't against the bottom feeders of the league either: the first two games were against 62-56 Erie (Detroit affiliate) and the second two against first place Akron (Cleveland affiliate). Let's take a look at some of the statistics from this amazing run and the pitchers who made it happen:
-------------------------Total----------------------Shutout Streak
Innings Pitched:-----------39------------------------------32
Strikeouts:----------------37------------------------------32
Walks:----------------------8-------------------------------6
Hits:----------------------24------------------------------17
Runs:-----------------------2-------------------------------0
ERA:----------------------0.46----------------------------0.00
WHIP:---------------------0.82----------------------------0.72
Opponents Batting:---.172/.221/.201------------------.153/.203/.180
Mike McCardell: McCardell had the shakiest outing of the four starters during this run. He only went 5 innings, throwing 98 pitches and allowing 7 baserunners, though he was the only pitcher who had to deal with any errors as a result of Toby Gardenhire's 4th inning miscue. He still pitched 5 innings of 1 run ball while striking out 4.
Carlos Gutierrez: Gutierrez started the 32 inning shutout streak with a seemingly unspectular 1 inning stint, giving up 2 hits while striking out 1. This was his only appearance in the 4 games, but it continued a good recent run for him with no runs allowed in 5 of his last 6 outings.
Frank Mata: Mata appeared in 3 of the 4 games, missing out only on Friday night's one hitter. He pitched 2 innings on Wednesday and 1.2 on Thursday before an ineffective appearance last night, when he gave up 2 singles to lead off the 8th and was pulled before getting an out. Carlos Rivero eventually came around to score after his leadoff line drive single, charging the run that ended the shutout streak to Mata.
Alex Burnett: Burnett took over closer duties from Anthony Slama after the latter's promotion to AAA and he got the save in both games that he pitched. He picked up a standard 3-out save in the Cats 4-1 Wednesday night and then came in for the more unconventional 5-out save last night. Indians catching prospect Carlos Santana crushed a potential game-tying fly ball off of him, but fortunately it died at the warning track and the lead was preserved.
Ryan Mullins: Mullins continued his unheralded season on Thursday night, padding his Eastern League leading strikeout total with 9 over 7 shutout innings. He also induced twice as many ground balls as fly balls and walked only one in one of his best starts of the season.
Spencer Steedley: The lefty had a rough start to life in New Britain, but pitched well in 3 appearences in these 4 games. On Thursday, he struck out the only batter he faced. On Friday, he got three ground ball outs in a perfect ninth to close out the one-hitter for New Britain. Last night, he did allow an inherited runner to score to end the scoreless streak, but it was on a bloop single followed by a sacrifice fly.
Kyle Waldrop: No longer the giant he once seemed with the call up of Loek Van Mil, Waldrop picked up the win in the 12 inning marathon on Thursday night after pitching 3 shutout innings without allowing a baserunner.
Deolis Guerra: Guerra had arguably the best appearance of any pitcher during this stretch as he threw 6 no hit innings while striking out 9 before his pitch count (93) caught up to him. He looked shaky early on, walking 2 in the first 2 innings, but settled down and really found a groove in the 4th and 5th innings, striking out 5 of 6 batters and winning a fan a Weber grill in the process.
Loek Van Mil: The 7-1 Dutch righthander made his AA debut in relief of Guerra, and he struck out the first batter he faced. He looked impressive over his 2 innings, coaxing ground balls from the next 6 hitters, but unfortunately one of them found a hole and ended the chance for a team no hitter.
Matt Fox: With the shutout streak at 25 innings, Fox got the chance to continue it last night, and that's exactly what he did. Despite struggling over the past month and a half (44 innings, 38 strikeouts, 23 walks, 28 earned runs), Fox shut down the first place Aeros, giving up only 2 hits while striking out 6.
-------------------------Total----------------------Shutout Streak
Innings Pitched:-----------39------------------------------32
Strikeouts:----------------37------------------------------32
Walks:----------------------8-------------------------------6
Hits:----------------------24------------------------------17
Runs:-----------------------2-------------------------------0
ERA:----------------------0.46----------------------------0.00
WHIP:---------------------0.82----------------------------0.72
Opponents Batting:---.172/.221/.201------------------.153/.203/.180
Mike McCardell: McCardell had the shakiest outing of the four starters during this run. He only went 5 innings, throwing 98 pitches and allowing 7 baserunners, though he was the only pitcher who had to deal with any errors as a result of Toby Gardenhire's 4th inning miscue. He still pitched 5 innings of 1 run ball while striking out 4.
Carlos Gutierrez: Gutierrez started the 32 inning shutout streak with a seemingly unspectular 1 inning stint, giving up 2 hits while striking out 1. This was his only appearance in the 4 games, but it continued a good recent run for him with no runs allowed in 5 of his last 6 outings.
Frank Mata: Mata appeared in 3 of the 4 games, missing out only on Friday night's one hitter. He pitched 2 innings on Wednesday and 1.2 on Thursday before an ineffective appearance last night, when he gave up 2 singles to lead off the 8th and was pulled before getting an out. Carlos Rivero eventually came around to score after his leadoff line drive single, charging the run that ended the shutout streak to Mata.
Alex Burnett: Burnett took over closer duties from Anthony Slama after the latter's promotion to AAA and he got the save in both games that he pitched. He picked up a standard 3-out save in the Cats 4-1 Wednesday night and then came in for the more unconventional 5-out save last night. Indians catching prospect Carlos Santana crushed a potential game-tying fly ball off of him, but fortunately it died at the warning track and the lead was preserved.
Ryan Mullins: Mullins continued his unheralded season on Thursday night, padding his Eastern League leading strikeout total with 9 over 7 shutout innings. He also induced twice as many ground balls as fly balls and walked only one in one of his best starts of the season.
Spencer Steedley: The lefty had a rough start to life in New Britain, but pitched well in 3 appearences in these 4 games. On Thursday, he struck out the only batter he faced. On Friday, he got three ground ball outs in a perfect ninth to close out the one-hitter for New Britain. Last night, he did allow an inherited runner to score to end the scoreless streak, but it was on a bloop single followed by a sacrifice fly.
Kyle Waldrop: No longer the giant he once seemed with the call up of Loek Van Mil, Waldrop picked up the win in the 12 inning marathon on Thursday night after pitching 3 shutout innings without allowing a baserunner.
Deolis Guerra: Guerra had arguably the best appearance of any pitcher during this stretch as he threw 6 no hit innings while striking out 9 before his pitch count (93) caught up to him. He looked shaky early on, walking 2 in the first 2 innings, but settled down and really found a groove in the 4th and 5th innings, striking out 5 of 6 batters and winning a fan a Weber grill in the process.
Loek Van Mil: The 7-1 Dutch righthander made his AA debut in relief of Guerra, and he struck out the first batter he faced. He looked impressive over his 2 innings, coaxing ground balls from the next 6 hitters, but unfortunately one of them found a hole and ended the chance for a team no hitter.
Matt Fox: With the shutout streak at 25 innings, Fox got the chance to continue it last night, and that's exactly what he did. Despite struggling over the past month and a half (44 innings, 38 strikeouts, 23 walks, 28 earned runs), Fox shut down the first place Aeros, giving up only 2 hits while striking out 6.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Prospect Videos
I finally uploaded these videos from the 2nd game of a Rock Cats doubleheader on August 1st.
Deolis Guerra:
Luke Hughes:
Juan Portes:
Steve Singleton:
Deolis Guerra:
Luke Hughes:
Juan Portes:
Steve Singleton:
Saturday, August 8, 2009
The Issue of Instant Replay
I almost wrote this post after the Twins' heartbreaking loss to the A's a few weeks ago, when Michael Cuddyer was called out at home trying to score on a potential game-tying run in the 9th inning. After last night's game full of controversial calls, though, I decided it was time for this post.
Baseball is living in the stone age. The technology is there for instant replay, and baseball should be using it to improve the product that it puts on the field. They finally made some concessions regarding home run calls, but that doesn't go far enough. It's unbelievably frustrating to see Cuddyer beat the tag at home, have the opposing pitcher admit it after the game, and see his foot hit the plate before the tag 1000 times on replay, and yet there's nothing anyone can do about it. In order to rectify situations like this, I have a plan that keeps the game moving while getting the calls right at the same time.
To start, an extra umpire would be necessary. Umpires, being the stubborn bunch that they are, would never agree to let any outsider make calls, but it is way too slow to have the umpires all have to gather and walk into the dugout just to review a play. Therefore, you add an extra member to the crew, and umpires have an extra rotation spot: replay booth. The replay booth umpire would be in charge of reviewing every single play. With the nature of baseball, he could easily determine before the next pitch whether the play needs to be further reviewed or not. If he feels that he needs to look at a couple replays, he can let the crew chief on the field know, and the game will be paused for a maximum of 30 seconds as he looks over the replays. If the reviewer cannot tell within that time whether the call should be overturned or not, then there is not sufficient evidence to overturn it.
This system would actually speed up the game. There would be no more lengthy childish arguments with managers; the managers would have no role in replay. It is inevitable that baseball will move towards these technological innovations, but at this point it's going as slowly as possible. Eventually balls and strikes will be called by a system such as Pitch f/x, but for now I'm not worried about that. This replay system would be used for plays on the bases, fair/foul calls, catch or trap, and home run calls.
Of course, there could be problems because of the continuous nature of baseball. If an outfielder makes a catch with a runner on first, but the reviewer determines that it was a trap, it would be difficult to say where the runner would have ended up. Therefore, at this point, it might be best to limit the use of replay to plays where there are no resulting actions to consider.
In no sense is this a perfect system, but it is a big improvement on what Major League Baseball has in place now: an antiquated system in which umpires are incapable of fault and are powerless to overturn calls even they might think are wrong. To be honest, I do not blame the umpires; some of these calls are very difficult to make. What is frustrating is to see them defend their calls even after realizing it's obviously wrong (like the tag play last night where even Granderson admitted that he was tagged) and rebuff efforts to improve the game with instant replay. It would be perfect for plays like the play at home that ended the game against the A's a few weeks ago. To be fair, it would not solve all controversial calls, including some from last night that sparked this post. The controversial balk calls were a matter of judgement and would not be cleared up by replay. The only reason I'm sure that Brendan Harris tagged Granderson is because Granderson admitted as much; the replay was not clear or conclusive. Nonetheless, this system would move baseball in the right direction, towards a goal I think we can all agree is a good one: accuracy in calling plays that are crucial to the game's outcome.
Baseball is living in the stone age. The technology is there for instant replay, and baseball should be using it to improve the product that it puts on the field. They finally made some concessions regarding home run calls, but that doesn't go far enough. It's unbelievably frustrating to see Cuddyer beat the tag at home, have the opposing pitcher admit it after the game, and see his foot hit the plate before the tag 1000 times on replay, and yet there's nothing anyone can do about it. In order to rectify situations like this, I have a plan that keeps the game moving while getting the calls right at the same time.
To start, an extra umpire would be necessary. Umpires, being the stubborn bunch that they are, would never agree to let any outsider make calls, but it is way too slow to have the umpires all have to gather and walk into the dugout just to review a play. Therefore, you add an extra member to the crew, and umpires have an extra rotation spot: replay booth. The replay booth umpire would be in charge of reviewing every single play. With the nature of baseball, he could easily determine before the next pitch whether the play needs to be further reviewed or not. If he feels that he needs to look at a couple replays, he can let the crew chief on the field know, and the game will be paused for a maximum of 30 seconds as he looks over the replays. If the reviewer cannot tell within that time whether the call should be overturned or not, then there is not sufficient evidence to overturn it.
This system would actually speed up the game. There would be no more lengthy childish arguments with managers; the managers would have no role in replay. It is inevitable that baseball will move towards these technological innovations, but at this point it's going as slowly as possible. Eventually balls and strikes will be called by a system such as Pitch f/x, but for now I'm not worried about that. This replay system would be used for plays on the bases, fair/foul calls, catch or trap, and home run calls.
Of course, there could be problems because of the continuous nature of baseball. If an outfielder makes a catch with a runner on first, but the reviewer determines that it was a trap, it would be difficult to say where the runner would have ended up. Therefore, at this point, it might be best to limit the use of replay to plays where there are no resulting actions to consider.
In no sense is this a perfect system, but it is a big improvement on what Major League Baseball has in place now: an antiquated system in which umpires are incapable of fault and are powerless to overturn calls even they might think are wrong. To be honest, I do not blame the umpires; some of these calls are very difficult to make. What is frustrating is to see them defend their calls even after realizing it's obviously wrong (like the tag play last night where even Granderson admitted that he was tagged) and rebuff efforts to improve the game with instant replay. It would be perfect for plays like the play at home that ended the game against the A's a few weeks ago. To be fair, it would not solve all controversial calls, including some from last night that sparked this post. The controversial balk calls were a matter of judgement and would not be cleared up by replay. The only reason I'm sure that Brendan Harris tagged Granderson is because Granderson admitted as much; the replay was not clear or conclusive. Nonetheless, this system would move baseball in the right direction, towards a goal I think we can all agree is a good one: accuracy in calling plays that are crucial to the game's outcome.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Minor League Players of the Month: July
Rochester (AAA):
Juan Morillo: 11 G, 15.3 IP, 21 K, 9 BB, 4.11 ERA, 1.63 WHIP, 3.40 FIP, 56.8 GB%
Morillo has won this award for three months running now. He continues to rack up the strikeouts, but as was the case last month, his win is more a reflection of the unimpressive pitching performances put together by the Rochester pitching staff.
Justin Huber: .286/.381/.536, 9 2B, 0 3B, 4 HR, 1/1 SB, 11 BB, 24 K in 97 PA
Huber improved upon all three components of his slash line compared to June, when he was also Rochester's top hitter. Huber has struggled in his limited major league opportunities, but he is ready should the Twins ever need a right-handed first baseman.
New Britain:
Ryan Mullins: 4 G, 23.3 IP, 25 K, 3 BB, 3.47 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, 1.91 FIP, 45.2 GB%
Mullins cut down on his walks in July which allowed him to win his first pitcher of the month award. The lefty again struck out around 1 batter per inning and he leads the Eastern League with 100 strikeouts on the season.
Erik Lis: .305/.377/.552, 5 2B, 0 3B, 7 HR, 1/1 SB, 12 BB, 20 K in 122 PA
Lis was clearly the best hitter for the Rock Cats in July. He hit more home runs (7) in July than he did in the first three months of the season combined (6), including 4 homers in 4 games in a series against the Binghamton Mets.
Fort Myers:
Michael McCardell: 3 G, 21 IP, 21 K, 1 BB, 2.57 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, 1.68 FIP, 42.6 GB%
McCardell was promoted to New Britain mid-month, but his three 7 inning starts for the Miracle were so good that he was still the best pitcher for Fort Myers. He continued his strong performance, minus a misleading ERA, after his promotion to New Britain, but was placed on the DL near the end of the month.
Joe Benson: .277/.434/.369, 1 2B, 1 3B, 1 HR, 4/8 SB, 16 BB, 15 K in 85 PA
After missing almost two months with an injury, Benson came back on July 5th and continued his best season by far as a pro. He has posted an OPS over .800 in every month and shown much improved plate discipline, including walking in 18.8% of his plate appearances in July.
Beloit:
Andrew Thompson: .333/.403/.449, 3 2B, 1 3B, 1 HR, 3/3 SB, 8 BB, 10 K in 78 PA
Thompson had a great month in July and as a middle infielder could have an impact in a system lacking at that position. However, at 22 he's not young for the league and has been pretty unimpressive overall, though his BB:K ratio has been solid all season long.
Liam Hendriks: 4 G, 24.3 IP, 23 K, 4 BB, 3.33 ERA, 1.56 WHIP, 2.71 FIP, 57.0 GB%
The 20 year old Hendriks has been impressive in his first taste of full season ball, with a lot of groundballs and just around 1 strikeout per inning.
Elizabethton:
Josmil Pinto: .368/.414/.671, 7 2B, 2 3B, 4 HR, 0/0 SB, 7 BB, 12 K in 87 PA
Pinto had the highest OPS (1.085) in July of any hitter in the Twins' system. He benefited from a high BABIP, but still had 13 extra base hits and a .303 ISO.
Tom Stuifbergen: 5 G, 30.7 IP, 24 K, 4 BB, 3.52 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, 2.55 FIP, 69.0 GB%
Kyle Carr also had a great month before being promoted, but Stuifbergen had a much greater impact with almost twice as many innings pitched. He didn't have the best strikeout rate (7.04 K/9), but he didn't walk many (1.17 BB/9) and induced ground balls at almost a 70% clip.
GCL:
Andrei Lobanov: 8 G, 13 IP, 19 K, 0 BB, 1.38 ERA, 0.85 WHIP, 1.69 FIP, 71.9 GB%
The numbers say it all for Lobanov. He had about the best month possible for a pitcher: lots of strikeouts and groundballs with literally no walks.
Wang-Wei Lin: .333/.455/.556, 2 2B, 0 3B, 0 HR, 0/0 SB, 2 BB, 1 K in 11 PA
The GCL Twins struggled offensively this month, so I had no choice but to give the award to Lin despite his 11 plate appearances. No other hitter even had an OPS of .700 in the month of July.
Juan Morillo: 11 G, 15.3 IP, 21 K, 9 BB, 4.11 ERA, 1.63 WHIP, 3.40 FIP, 56.8 GB%
Morillo has won this award for three months running now. He continues to rack up the strikeouts, but as was the case last month, his win is more a reflection of the unimpressive pitching performances put together by the Rochester pitching staff.
Justin Huber: .286/.381/.536, 9 2B, 0 3B, 4 HR, 1/1 SB, 11 BB, 24 K in 97 PA
Huber improved upon all three components of his slash line compared to June, when he was also Rochester's top hitter. Huber has struggled in his limited major league opportunities, but he is ready should the Twins ever need a right-handed first baseman.
New Britain:
Ryan Mullins: 4 G, 23.3 IP, 25 K, 3 BB, 3.47 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, 1.91 FIP, 45.2 GB%
Mullins cut down on his walks in July which allowed him to win his first pitcher of the month award. The lefty again struck out around 1 batter per inning and he leads the Eastern League with 100 strikeouts on the season.
Erik Lis: .305/.377/.552, 5 2B, 0 3B, 7 HR, 1/1 SB, 12 BB, 20 K in 122 PA
Lis was clearly the best hitter for the Rock Cats in July. He hit more home runs (7) in July than he did in the first three months of the season combined (6), including 4 homers in 4 games in a series against the Binghamton Mets.
Fort Myers:
Michael McCardell: 3 G, 21 IP, 21 K, 1 BB, 2.57 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, 1.68 FIP, 42.6 GB%
McCardell was promoted to New Britain mid-month, but his three 7 inning starts for the Miracle were so good that he was still the best pitcher for Fort Myers. He continued his strong performance, minus a misleading ERA, after his promotion to New Britain, but was placed on the DL near the end of the month.
Joe Benson: .277/.434/.369, 1 2B, 1 3B, 1 HR, 4/8 SB, 16 BB, 15 K in 85 PA
After missing almost two months with an injury, Benson came back on July 5th and continued his best season by far as a pro. He has posted an OPS over .800 in every month and shown much improved plate discipline, including walking in 18.8% of his plate appearances in July.
Beloit:
Andrew Thompson: .333/.403/.449, 3 2B, 1 3B, 1 HR, 3/3 SB, 8 BB, 10 K in 78 PA
Thompson had a great month in July and as a middle infielder could have an impact in a system lacking at that position. However, at 22 he's not young for the league and has been pretty unimpressive overall, though his BB:K ratio has been solid all season long.
Liam Hendriks: 4 G, 24.3 IP, 23 K, 4 BB, 3.33 ERA, 1.56 WHIP, 2.71 FIP, 57.0 GB%
The 20 year old Hendriks has been impressive in his first taste of full season ball, with a lot of groundballs and just around 1 strikeout per inning.
Elizabethton:
Josmil Pinto: .368/.414/.671, 7 2B, 2 3B, 4 HR, 0/0 SB, 7 BB, 12 K in 87 PA
Pinto had the highest OPS (1.085) in July of any hitter in the Twins' system. He benefited from a high BABIP, but still had 13 extra base hits and a .303 ISO.
Tom Stuifbergen: 5 G, 30.7 IP, 24 K, 4 BB, 3.52 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, 2.55 FIP, 69.0 GB%
Kyle Carr also had a great month before being promoted, but Stuifbergen had a much greater impact with almost twice as many innings pitched. He didn't have the best strikeout rate (7.04 K/9), but he didn't walk many (1.17 BB/9) and induced ground balls at almost a 70% clip.
GCL:
Andrei Lobanov: 8 G, 13 IP, 19 K, 0 BB, 1.38 ERA, 0.85 WHIP, 1.69 FIP, 71.9 GB%
The numbers say it all for Lobanov. He had about the best month possible for a pitcher: lots of strikeouts and groundballs with literally no walks.
Wang-Wei Lin: .333/.455/.556, 2 2B, 0 3B, 0 HR, 0/0 SB, 2 BB, 1 K in 11 PA
The GCL Twins struggled offensively this month, so I had no choice but to give the award to Lin despite his 11 plate appearances. No other hitter even had an OPS of .700 in the month of July.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Taking One For the Team
In 1887, baseball began officially recording the hit by pitch as a statistic. The all time leader in hit by pitches, Hughie Jennings, started his career 4 years later and compiled 287 over his career of 5639 plate appearances (Jennings also leads the all time list of HBP/PA, minimum 1000 PAs, by a very wide margin). Over 100 years later, Braves and Red Sox second baseman Mark Lemke put together a solid 11 year career with 3664 trips to the plate without ever once being a hit by pitch. At the same time, Craig Biggio was in the midst of a 20 year career in which he fell just 2 hit by pitches short of Jennings's record, but in over twice as many plate appearances. How can players vary so much in this category, when there is seemingly no skill involved in being hit? This question seems especially important considering that hit by pitches positively impact a player's on base percentages, one of the most important statistics that we look at today. Consider that if Mark Lemke had been hit as often as Craig Biggio, his career OBP would have been around 23 points higher (.340 instead of .317). Or if he had been hit as often as Jennings, his career OBP would have been all the way up around .368! Why should Jennings and Biggio get so much credit for something that they don't control, while Lemke is stuck with a below average .317 career OBP? The answer is that maybe there is some link between a player and his HBP rate.
In order to test this, I split up all active players' careers into odd and even seasons, odd seasons being the player's 1st seasons, 3rd season, and so on and even seasons being the opposite. I used only players with at least 2000 plate appearances in both odd and even seasons and compared their hit by pitch percentage (HBP/PA*100) in odd and even seasons. If hit by pitch is just a random occurence regardless of batter, there should be no correlation between a player's odd and even HBP percentage. The results of the 71 players in the data set paint a clearly different picture:
I'll spare you the statistical details, but a convergence like the one we were looking for would show up as a negative association here between the residuals and total plate appearances. That is, the graph above would show a decreasing pattern, but instead there is no statistically significant relationship between the residuals and plate appearances. Thus, the variation in HBP % is not the result of a sample size that is too small.
That leaves us with seemingly one conclusion: getting hit by a pitch is the result of skill, whether it is the inability to hit the inside pitch, a willingness to take one for the team, or even a personality that rubs the pitcher the wrong way. However, despite the strong evidence in support of this conclusion, there are other factors that have not been controlled for, such as the quality of other hitters on the team or pitchers that are generally faced with the uneven schedule. Nonetheless, all the evidence points to the fact that there is something that a hitter controls about getting plunked, and thus the statistic belongs as a component of on base percentage.
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In order to test this, I split up all active players' careers into odd and even seasons, odd seasons being the player's 1st seasons, 3rd season, and so on and even seasons being the opposite. I used only players with at least 2000 plate appearances in both odd and even seasons and compared their hit by pitch percentage (HBP/PA*100) in odd and even seasons. If hit by pitch is just a random occurence regardless of batter, there should be no correlation between a player's odd and even HBP percentage. The results of the 71 players in the data set paint a clearly different picture:
There is an obvious relationship here between the odd and even HBP percentage. Garret Anderson has the lowest HBP rate of all players with at least 8000 career plate appearances, having been hit just 6 times in his 16 year career, including only twice over the past 11 seasons. He has been hit 3 times in 4328 odd PAs (0.069%) and 3 times in 4441 even PAs (0.068%). On the other side of the coin, David Eckstein has the highest HBP percentage (2.66) in this group, and both his odd and even HBP % are higher than any other player's odd or even HBP %. There are no players in the data set with half of an Eckstein career and half of a Garret Anderson career, and the points form a linear pattern. The slope estimate for the regression line is near 1, as it should be if getting hit by a pitch is some sort of repeatable skill; a 1 percentage point in even HBP % should correspond with approximately a 1 percentage point increase in odd HBP %.
The next question to consider is whether this correlation is due to actual skill by the player, or some other factor outside the player's control. Note that skill in this case does not mean ability to move into the way of the pitch. More accurately, it means having certain abilities or traits that increase the likelihood of getting hit by a pitch. Maybe Garret Anderson can't handle the outside pitch, for instance, so pitchers usually try to hit the outside corner, thus decreasing the chance that he gets hit. David Eckstein might have an unusual willingness to let a pitch hit him and Jose Guillen (2nd of the 71 players in HBP rate) might just be such a nasty guy that pitchers like to throw at him. Or, in what I thought was the most likely case before I started this research, good hitters are more likely to get hit simply because they are more likely to get on base, so the pitcher is not worried as much about hitting them. That would not explain why Eckstein, career .658 OPS, tops the list, but I checked for relationships between HBP percentage and batting average, on base percentage, slugging percentage, and weighted on base average.
As you can see, there is no relationship between HBP percentage and batting average. There are slight positive relationships between SLG, OBP, wOBA and HBP percentage, with R-squareds ranging from 0.6 to 1.7, but they are not statistically significant. Therefore, though on some level batters may tend to be hit more if they hit more home runs or walk more, that only explains a very small amount of the variation in HBP %. Another thought that occurred to me was that, with the hit by pitch being a relatively rare occurrence, perhaps all the variation in HBP % was due to the fact that the sample size for individual players was not large enough. This would be shown by the convergence of HBP % as plate appearances increased.
I'll spare you the statistical details, but a convergence like the one we were looking for would show up as a negative association here between the residuals and total plate appearances. That is, the graph above would show a decreasing pattern, but instead there is no statistically significant relationship between the residuals and plate appearances. Thus, the variation in HBP % is not the result of a sample size that is too small.
That leaves us with seemingly one conclusion: getting hit by a pitch is the result of skill, whether it is the inability to hit the inside pitch, a willingness to take one for the team, or even a personality that rubs the pitcher the wrong way. However, despite the strong evidence in support of this conclusion, there are other factors that have not been controlled for, such as the quality of other hitters on the team or pitchers that are generally faced with the uneven schedule. Nonetheless, all the evidence points to the fact that there is something that a hitter controls about getting plunked, and thus the statistic belongs as a component of on base percentage.
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Thursday, July 23, 2009
GM Analysis: Trades
On September 14, 2007, Twin #1 made the inaugural post on this blog. About 12 hours earlier, Terry Ryan had announced his resignation from the general manager position that he held since the early 1990s. The Twins announced that his successor would be his former right-hand man, assistant GM Bill Smith. In his first offseason, Smith guided the Twins through tough situations with Torii Hunter and Johan Santana. The team finished his first season at the helm in a tie for first place, but missed the playoffs when they lost the memorable one-game playoff against the White Sox. The following winter was much quieter than his first, with the biggest move being the signing of Joe Crede in late February. With the trade deadline fast approaching, I thought now would be a good time to take a more detailed look at Smith's (mostly underwhelming) work thus far.
November 13, 2007: Traded PTBNL (Doug Deeds) for Craig Monroe.
The trade in this case was not bad, as the now 28 year old Deeds was at the time and still is a longshot to be a contributor to a major league team. However, the acquisition of Monroe in an effort to increase the Twins' righthanded power was misguided. At the time I thought Monroe could be a good, albeit overpriced, bat off the bench. He certainly turned out to be overpriced, but unfortunately he was not good either. He produced -0.6 WAR in only 179 plate appearances before being designated for assignment on August 1st. This was not a disastrous move, but paying $3.8 million for that kind of production was certainly not a good one.
November 28, 2007: Traded Matt Garza, Jason Bartlett, and Eduardo Morlan for Delmon Young, Brendan Harris, and Jason Pridie.
This trade has pretty much been a disaster for Smith. At the time, Young was being called by some the next Frank Robinson and Smith was being praised for finally taking a risk and trading some pitching for hitting. Since then, though, everyone has found out that trading for Young does not really count as trading for hitting. Or defense. Or any other measurable baseball skill. Young doesn't walk or hit for power, all while playing atrocious defense in a corner outfield spot. Add it all up, and he's been worth a staggering -$7.4 million to the Twins in his year and a half with the team, and he hasn't shown any signs of improvement either. After a career year between AA and AAA, Pridie has fallen back to earth in his time in the Twins' system. He has gotten a couple of calls to the Twins, but has pretty much been a nonfactor in the trade with 6 plate appearances in 11 games. At this point, it seems that's his future with the Twins: AAA player ready to be called upon when they need a 4th or 5th outfielder. Harris is the one player the Twins acquired in this trade that has actually provided positive value. He hasn't produced the way he did for Tampa in 2007 (.341 wOBA, 2.1 WAR), but he's been a serviceable middle infielder for the past couple seasons. The players the Twins traded haven't been as unsuccessful. Bartlett was already a valuable player because of his defense at short, and this season he has .912 OPS for the Rays (flukey, yes, but he's still done it). Garza has not yet become the ace that he was expected to, but he has still been a productive pitcher for the Rays, throwing over 300 innings with about a 4.2 FIP so far for his new team. Morlan was taken in the Rule V draft, but was eventually returned to the Rays and is in his 2nd season at AA. All 6 of the players involved in this trade will be under team control through at least 2011.
January 29, 2008: Traded Johan Santana for Carlos Gomez, Deolis Guerra, Phil Humber, and Kevin Mulvey.
Obviously, there were a lot of factors that went into trading the 2 time Cy Young Award winner, with his pending free agency after the season being the main one. Santana had his worst season as a full time Twins' starter in 2008, but was still a +4.6 win pitcher. In his first season with the Mets, he almost duplicated that season with a +4.8 win season and he's on pace for a similar season again this year. Those are far cries from his three straight +7 win seasons for the Twins from 2004-2006, but it's still enough to make him worth his contract. Gomez, mainly because of his excellent defense, has been a net positive for the Twins, but he hasn't shown as much improvement as hoped for at the plate or on the basepaths. His 2009 statistics are very similar to 2008 thus far, but he has dropped his O-Swing% by about 25%. Humber and Mulvey have both had cups of coffee in the big leagues, with Mulvey being the latest attempt to fix the bullpen. Mulvey has a 3.64 FIP in AAA this year after posting a 4.06 FIP last year, and he still has a shot to be a decent starting pitcher. On the other hand, time is running out for Humber, who is no longer on the 40 man roster and has had a FIP around 4.9 for Rochester the past 2 seasons. The last piece in the deal, Guerra, was supposed to be a potential ace. He was recently promoted to AA, but not really based on his performance. His fastball is still only around 87-88 MPH and his strikeout rate has decreased while his walk rate has increased since his 2007 season with the Mets high A affiliate.
August 25, 2008: Traded Mark Hamburger for Eddie Guardado.
This was Smith's attempt to fix the bullpen last season after failing to address it prior to the non-waiver trading deadline. Guardado turned out not to be the fix the Twins were looking for. His ERA overstated the problems that Everyday Eddie had (4.42 FIP), but he was not the reliable late-inning arm the Twins were expecting, as Ron Gardenhire ceded those duties to Jose Mijares by the end of September. Hamburger is now 22 and pitching in single A for the Rangers. He has posted a respectable 4.01 FIP in 46.2 innings out of the bullpen this season. He could make the majors someday, but is not a top prospect and still has a ways to go.
So, there you have it. Not exactly an impressive resume, huh? Maybe we should hope that Smith doesn't make a trade in the next week.
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November 13, 2007: Traded PTBNL (Doug Deeds) for Craig Monroe.
The trade in this case was not bad, as the now 28 year old Deeds was at the time and still is a longshot to be a contributor to a major league team. However, the acquisition of Monroe in an effort to increase the Twins' righthanded power was misguided. At the time I thought Monroe could be a good, albeit overpriced, bat off the bench. He certainly turned out to be overpriced, but unfortunately he was not good either. He produced -0.6 WAR in only 179 plate appearances before being designated for assignment on August 1st. This was not a disastrous move, but paying $3.8 million for that kind of production was certainly not a good one.
November 28, 2007: Traded Matt Garza, Jason Bartlett, and Eduardo Morlan for Delmon Young, Brendan Harris, and Jason Pridie.
This trade has pretty much been a disaster for Smith. At the time, Young was being called by some the next Frank Robinson and Smith was being praised for finally taking a risk and trading some pitching for hitting. Since then, though, everyone has found out that trading for Young does not really count as trading for hitting. Or defense. Or any other measurable baseball skill. Young doesn't walk or hit for power, all while playing atrocious defense in a corner outfield spot. Add it all up, and he's been worth a staggering -$7.4 million to the Twins in his year and a half with the team, and he hasn't shown any signs of improvement either. After a career year between AA and AAA, Pridie has fallen back to earth in his time in the Twins' system. He has gotten a couple of calls to the Twins, but has pretty much been a nonfactor in the trade with 6 plate appearances in 11 games. At this point, it seems that's his future with the Twins: AAA player ready to be called upon when they need a 4th or 5th outfielder. Harris is the one player the Twins acquired in this trade that has actually provided positive value. He hasn't produced the way he did for Tampa in 2007 (.341 wOBA, 2.1 WAR), but he's been a serviceable middle infielder for the past couple seasons. The players the Twins traded haven't been as unsuccessful. Bartlett was already a valuable player because of his defense at short, and this season he has .912 OPS for the Rays (flukey, yes, but he's still done it). Garza has not yet become the ace that he was expected to, but he has still been a productive pitcher for the Rays, throwing over 300 innings with about a 4.2 FIP so far for his new team. Morlan was taken in the Rule V draft, but was eventually returned to the Rays and is in his 2nd season at AA. All 6 of the players involved in this trade will be under team control through at least 2011.
January 29, 2008: Traded Johan Santana for Carlos Gomez, Deolis Guerra, Phil Humber, and Kevin Mulvey.
Obviously, there were a lot of factors that went into trading the 2 time Cy Young Award winner, with his pending free agency after the season being the main one. Santana had his worst season as a full time Twins' starter in 2008, but was still a +4.6 win pitcher. In his first season with the Mets, he almost duplicated that season with a +4.8 win season and he's on pace for a similar season again this year. Those are far cries from his three straight +7 win seasons for the Twins from 2004-2006, but it's still enough to make him worth his contract. Gomez, mainly because of his excellent defense, has been a net positive for the Twins, but he hasn't shown as much improvement as hoped for at the plate or on the basepaths. His 2009 statistics are very similar to 2008 thus far, but he has dropped his O-Swing% by about 25%. Humber and Mulvey have both had cups of coffee in the big leagues, with Mulvey being the latest attempt to fix the bullpen. Mulvey has a 3.64 FIP in AAA this year after posting a 4.06 FIP last year, and he still has a shot to be a decent starting pitcher. On the other hand, time is running out for Humber, who is no longer on the 40 man roster and has had a FIP around 4.9 for Rochester the past 2 seasons. The last piece in the deal, Guerra, was supposed to be a potential ace. He was recently promoted to AA, but not really based on his performance. His fastball is still only around 87-88 MPH and his strikeout rate has decreased while his walk rate has increased since his 2007 season with the Mets high A affiliate.
August 25, 2008: Traded Mark Hamburger for Eddie Guardado.
This was Smith's attempt to fix the bullpen last season after failing to address it prior to the non-waiver trading deadline. Guardado turned out not to be the fix the Twins were looking for. His ERA overstated the problems that Everyday Eddie had (4.42 FIP), but he was not the reliable late-inning arm the Twins were expecting, as Ron Gardenhire ceded those duties to Jose Mijares by the end of September. Hamburger is now 22 and pitching in single A for the Rangers. He has posted a respectable 4.01 FIP in 46.2 innings out of the bullpen this season. He could make the majors someday, but is not a top prospect and still has a ways to go.
So, there you have it. Not exactly an impressive resume, huh? Maybe we should hope that Smith doesn't make a trade in the next week.
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Monday, July 13, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Twins on Twins on Twitter
We're now on Twitter! Follow us at twitter.com/twinsontwins to get updates about new posts and other quick Twins thoughts that aren't long enough for posts.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Minor League Review: June
Rochester Red Wings (AAA):
Hitter of the Month: Justin Huber, 1B
.264/.333/.500, 4 2B, 0 3B, 7 HR, 1/2 SB, 11 BB, 19 K in 120 PA
The former top catching prospect pounded International League pitching in the month of June to the tune of a .236 ISO. He turned 27 last week and doesn't figure to have much of a future at the major league level with Justin Morneau manning first base for the Twins, but he has consistently put up good numbers at AAA over the years.
Pitcher of the Month: Juan Morillo, RHP
10 G, 13 IP, 20 K, 10 BB, 4.15 ERA, 1.46 WHIP, 2.59 FIP, 39.3 GB%
Morillo's line basically sums up the Red Wings pitching woes during the month of June, as he managed to win pitcher of the month honors for the 2nd straight month despite a decidedly average ERA and WHIP. His strikeout rate, 13.85 K/9 in June, along with his 95+ MPH fastball, remain his two great attributes.
New Britain Rock Cats (AA):
Hitter of the Month: Rene Tosoni, OF
.304/.439/.494, 7 2B, 1 3B, 2 HR, 2/5 SB, 15 BB, 13 K in 99 PA
Tosoni followed up his .971 OPS in May with a .933 OPS in June. He also sliced his strikeout rate almost in half from the first two months of the season, and walked more than he struck out in June. With the Red Wings featuring only three outfielders on their roster, Tosoni could see a promotion sooner rather than later.
Pitcher of the Month: Yohan Pino, RHP
8 G, 13 IP, 10 K, 2 BB, 0.00 ERA, 0.31 WHIP, 2.39 FIP, 46.4 GB%
At 23 years old, Pino is putting himself firmly on the prospect map with over 1 strikeout per inning out of the bullpen for New Britain this season. In June, Pino did not allow any runs while limiting opponents to 4 baserunners in 13 innings.
Fort Myers Miracle (A+):
Hitter of the Month: Chris Parmelee, OF
.297/.391/.554, 7 2B, 0 3B, 4 HR, 0/0 SB, 11 BB, 17 K in 87 PA
The Twins' 2006 first round draft pick has always shown impressive power and posted a good walk rate, but with his low average, high strikeout rate, and lack of speed he has been the opposite of the typical Twins' prospect. That, of course, is not a bad thing. At 21 years old in his first season at high-A ball, Parmelee has posted a .190 ISO and .359 WOBA, without any help from a near career low .311 BABIP.
Pitcher of the Month: Henry Arias, RHP
8 G, 16 IP, 14 K, 4 BB, 3.38 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, 3.32 FIP, 47.7 GB%
In his first season with the Twins' organization, Arias has produced an underwhelming overall line for the season. The 24 year old had an outstanding month of June, though, as his line above demonstrates. Arias has also shown improved control this year, with a K:BB over 2 for the first time in his career.
Beloit Snappers (A):
Hitter of the Month: Ozzie Lewis, OF
.319/.329/.500, 4 2B, 0 3B, 3 HR, 0/1 SB, 2 BB, 15 K in 76 PA
As you can tell from the fact that I chose a hitter with 2 walks all month, there weren't any really impressive among performances among the Beloit hitters in June. Lewis showed some power in June, with a .181 ISO, and that was enough for him to take top honors in June.
Pitcher of the Month: Daniel Osterbrock, LHP
5 G, 27.7 IP, 23 K, 2 BB, 2.28 ERA, 0.90 WHIP, 2.97 FIP, 47.4 GB%
This was a much tougher choice than the hitter, as the entire Beloit starting rotation had an impressive month, with Osterbrock, Bobby Lanigan, Brad Tippett, and Michael Tarsi combining for 91 strikeouts and 17 walks in 104 innings. Osterbrock was the best of the bunch, though, as he began to show the same kind of complete domincance that he displayed in rookie league last season.
Hitter of the Month: Justin Huber, 1B
.264/.333/.500, 4 2B, 0 3B, 7 HR, 1/2 SB, 11 BB, 19 K in 120 PA
The former top catching prospect pounded International League pitching in the month of June to the tune of a .236 ISO. He turned 27 last week and doesn't figure to have much of a future at the major league level with Justin Morneau manning first base for the Twins, but he has consistently put up good numbers at AAA over the years.
Pitcher of the Month: Juan Morillo, RHP
10 G, 13 IP, 20 K, 10 BB, 4.15 ERA, 1.46 WHIP, 2.59 FIP, 39.3 GB%
Morillo's line basically sums up the Red Wings pitching woes during the month of June, as he managed to win pitcher of the month honors for the 2nd straight month despite a decidedly average ERA and WHIP. His strikeout rate, 13.85 K/9 in June, along with his 95+ MPH fastball, remain his two great attributes.
New Britain Rock Cats (AA):
Hitter of the Month: Rene Tosoni, OF
.304/.439/.494, 7 2B, 1 3B, 2 HR, 2/5 SB, 15 BB, 13 K in 99 PA
Tosoni followed up his .971 OPS in May with a .933 OPS in June. He also sliced his strikeout rate almost in half from the first two months of the season, and walked more than he struck out in June. With the Red Wings featuring only three outfielders on their roster, Tosoni could see a promotion sooner rather than later.
Pitcher of the Month: Yohan Pino, RHP
8 G, 13 IP, 10 K, 2 BB, 0.00 ERA, 0.31 WHIP, 2.39 FIP, 46.4 GB%
At 23 years old, Pino is putting himself firmly on the prospect map with over 1 strikeout per inning out of the bullpen for New Britain this season. In June, Pino did not allow any runs while limiting opponents to 4 baserunners in 13 innings.
Fort Myers Miracle (A+):
Hitter of the Month: Chris Parmelee, OF
.297/.391/.554, 7 2B, 0 3B, 4 HR, 0/0 SB, 11 BB, 17 K in 87 PA
The Twins' 2006 first round draft pick has always shown impressive power and posted a good walk rate, but with his low average, high strikeout rate, and lack of speed he has been the opposite of the typical Twins' prospect. That, of course, is not a bad thing. At 21 years old in his first season at high-A ball, Parmelee has posted a .190 ISO and .359 WOBA, without any help from a near career low .311 BABIP.
Pitcher of the Month: Henry Arias, RHP
8 G, 16 IP, 14 K, 4 BB, 3.38 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, 3.32 FIP, 47.7 GB%
In his first season with the Twins' organization, Arias has produced an underwhelming overall line for the season. The 24 year old had an outstanding month of June, though, as his line above demonstrates. Arias has also shown improved control this year, with a K:BB over 2 for the first time in his career.
Beloit Snappers (A):
Hitter of the Month: Ozzie Lewis, OF
.319/.329/.500, 4 2B, 0 3B, 3 HR, 0/1 SB, 2 BB, 15 K in 76 PA
As you can tell from the fact that I chose a hitter with 2 walks all month, there weren't any really impressive among performances among the Beloit hitters in June. Lewis showed some power in June, with a .181 ISO, and that was enough for him to take top honors in June.
Pitcher of the Month: Daniel Osterbrock, LHP
5 G, 27.7 IP, 23 K, 2 BB, 2.28 ERA, 0.90 WHIP, 2.97 FIP, 47.4 GB%
This was a much tougher choice than the hitter, as the entire Beloit starting rotation had an impressive month, with Osterbrock, Bobby Lanigan, Brad Tippett, and Michael Tarsi combining for 91 strikeouts and 17 walks in 104 innings. Osterbrock was the best of the bunch, though, as he began to show the same kind of complete domincance that he displayed in rookie league last season.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Derek Jeter: Almost an Astro
I often like to join most non-Yankees fans in pronouncing Derek Jeter as one of the most overrated players ever, and certainly there are some people who overrate Jeter. To be objective though, I probably underrate Jeter to a greater degree than others overrate him. From 2002 to 2008 (the years for which the data is available), Jeter has earned 85% of his large salary, in spite of his regularly below average defense. Even this season, at age 35, he has already earned $13 million of the 20 million that he will be payed this season by producing 2.9 wins above replacement. Surely, based solely on on-field contributions, Jeter does not deserve to be the face of baseball for the past decade, but he is a legitimately great player and is much better than I ever give him credit for.
All that this brings me to is a story recounted to me by a current Chicago Cubs scout and former Houston Astros scout who was at one of the New Britain Rock Cats games over the weekend. This scout was talking about Jeter and called him the best high school position player he had ever seen (Steve Avery was his choice for pitcher, in case you were wondering). He recounted to me stories of watching Jeter effortlessly fielding balls on the outfield grass and firing rockets over to first base. Having the first pick in the 1992 draft, this scout of course suggested picking the star shortstop from Central High School in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The Astros were on a budget, though, and were not ready to spend the $750,000 it would take to keep Jeter from attending school. Instead, the Astros took Cal State Fullerton prospect Phil Nevin since he was willing to sign for only $450,000, Jeter slid to sixth where the Yankees picked him, and the rest is history. How would things have changed if the Astros had picked Jeter instead? Even if he had become the same player, Jeter would almost certainly not have become the same popular figure playing in Houston. Phil Nevin produced 4703 plate appearances of .814 OPS (though only 69 of those came with Houston, prior to a midseason trade to the Tigers), but one still wonders what would have happened to one of the most popular players of the last 15 years if the Astros had not been so concerned over $300,000.
All that this brings me to is a story recounted to me by a current Chicago Cubs scout and former Houston Astros scout who was at one of the New Britain Rock Cats games over the weekend. This scout was talking about Jeter and called him the best high school position player he had ever seen (Steve Avery was his choice for pitcher, in case you were wondering). He recounted to me stories of watching Jeter effortlessly fielding balls on the outfield grass and firing rockets over to first base. Having the first pick in the 1992 draft, this scout of course suggested picking the star shortstop from Central High School in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The Astros were on a budget, though, and were not ready to spend the $750,000 it would take to keep Jeter from attending school. Instead, the Astros took Cal State Fullerton prospect Phil Nevin since he was willing to sign for only $450,000, Jeter slid to sixth where the Yankees picked him, and the rest is history. How would things have changed if the Astros had picked Jeter instead? Even if he had become the same player, Jeter would almost certainly not have become the same popular figure playing in Houston. Phil Nevin produced 4703 plate appearances of .814 OPS (though only 69 of those came with Houston, prior to a midseason trade to the Tigers), but one still wonders what would have happened to one of the most popular players of the last 15 years if the Astros had not been so concerned over $300,000.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Rock Cats Report
The Rock Cats are now in second place in the North Division, with a record of 33-29 that puts them 1.5 games behind first place Connecticut. I attended all six games of the Twins' AA affiliate's recent homestand, and here are some observations from those games.
-This was my first chance to see the recently promoted Carlos Gutierrez, one of the Twins' first round draft choices from a year ago. He dominated for Fort Myers, earning my minor league pitcher of the month award for April. He struggled with his command a bit in May, but I was still excited to see the former Hurricane pitch for the Cats. Gutierrez's biggest strength is his primary pitch, a sinking fastball, which he uses to induce tons of ground balls. However, his main weakness is his lack of a second pitch to offset the sinker, which is why many feel he will eventually be more well suited to pitch out of the bullpen. Here's the velocity histogram from his start on Saturday in which he walked three and struck out none over 5 innings:
There seem to be three groups of speeds, which indicate that Gutierrez was throwing three different pitches. The fastest and largest group is obviously his fastball, which ranged from 86-93 MPH and averaged 90.1 MPH on the night. The middle group is his slider, which he threw between 79 and 84 MPH and averaged 80.9 MPH. The final group, three pitches at 75 MPH, I am going to call a curveball, though I'm not sure that's what it was. Certainly, with such a small sample, those could just be slower sliders, but watching him pitch they looked like they were different pitches, so I've grouped those three, plus one of his 78 MPH offerings which looked like it had similar movement, into their own group. There were also five pitches which were either missed by the radar gun or obviously recorded incorrectly, so the data only includes 70 of his 75 pitches on the night.
Another interesting graph to look at is the relationship between velocity and pitch number:
Clearly, like any starter, Gutierrez's fastball velocity diminished over the course of the game. However, it seems that the velocity fell rather quickly, especially considering he only threw 75 pitches in the game. This could be due to the fact that he's only returning to starting after Tommy John surgery and then pitching as a reliever at Miami, or it could mean that he is destined for the bullpen as a ground ball specialist. To further emphasize the decreased velocity, his fastball averaged 91.4 MPH with a range from 89-93 in the first inning, compared to 88.4 and 86-90 in the fifth inning.
-The other new player who I was excited to see this past week was the Twins' top catching prospect, Wilson Ramos. He was injured for all the home games in April, so this week was my first chance to watch him in person, and he did not disappoint, hitting long home runs in consecutive games on Wednesday and Thursday. Unfortunately, he got injured again while running the bases on Friday. After lining a single into left, Ramos injured his hamstring trying to stop at third on Erik Lis's double. Hopefully it doesn't end up being too serious, but he could barely put any weight on it afterwards and missed the last two games of the homestand.
-Danny Valencia has really fallen into a slump of late. After being one of the Twins' top minor league performers in April and May, Valencia has watched his overall numbers plummet over the past two weeks. In June, he has gone 6-52 with 11 strikeouts and has produced a slash line of .115/.207/.173. In fact, in his last 8 games, he's struck out 7 times without walking once. His June BABIP is only .146, though, so the numbers should turn around for him soon, but the strikeout and walk numbers are still a bit discouraging.
-On the other hand, Whit Robbins has continued his hot hitting in June. He has hit .400/.471/.578 this month with 5 walks compared to only 4 strikeouts. On this most recent homestand, 42% of Robbins's balls in play were line drives.
-Finally, here are some videos I took from the Rock Cats game against Bowie on Friday.
Here's the first video, Wilson Ramos's last at bat on Friday before his injury. He lined a single into left off of Timothy Bascom of the Bowie Bay Sox in the 4th inning.
The second video is of Danny Valencia's at bat two batters later, with pinch runner Jeff Christy on third and Erik Lis on second. I missed the first pitch of this at bat, but Valencia struck out against Bascom.
This last video is of Alex Burnett pitching to Ambiorix Concepcion in the 9th inning of Friday's game. Burnett was just recently called up from Fort Myers.
-This was my first chance to see the recently promoted Carlos Gutierrez, one of the Twins' first round draft choices from a year ago. He dominated for Fort Myers, earning my minor league pitcher of the month award for April. He struggled with his command a bit in May, but I was still excited to see the former Hurricane pitch for the Cats. Gutierrez's biggest strength is his primary pitch, a sinking fastball, which he uses to induce tons of ground balls. However, his main weakness is his lack of a second pitch to offset the sinker, which is why many feel he will eventually be more well suited to pitch out of the bullpen. Here's the velocity histogram from his start on Saturday in which he walked three and struck out none over 5 innings:
There seem to be three groups of speeds, which indicate that Gutierrez was throwing three different pitches. The fastest and largest group is obviously his fastball, which ranged from 86-93 MPH and averaged 90.1 MPH on the night. The middle group is his slider, which he threw between 79 and 84 MPH and averaged 80.9 MPH. The final group, three pitches at 75 MPH, I am going to call a curveball, though I'm not sure that's what it was. Certainly, with such a small sample, those could just be slower sliders, but watching him pitch they looked like they were different pitches, so I've grouped those three, plus one of his 78 MPH offerings which looked like it had similar movement, into their own group. There were also five pitches which were either missed by the radar gun or obviously recorded incorrectly, so the data only includes 70 of his 75 pitches on the night.
Another interesting graph to look at is the relationship between velocity and pitch number:
Clearly, like any starter, Gutierrez's fastball velocity diminished over the course of the game. However, it seems that the velocity fell rather quickly, especially considering he only threw 75 pitches in the game. This could be due to the fact that he's only returning to starting after Tommy John surgery and then pitching as a reliever at Miami, or it could mean that he is destined for the bullpen as a ground ball specialist. To further emphasize the decreased velocity, his fastball averaged 91.4 MPH with a range from 89-93 in the first inning, compared to 88.4 and 86-90 in the fifth inning.
-The other new player who I was excited to see this past week was the Twins' top catching prospect, Wilson Ramos. He was injured for all the home games in April, so this week was my first chance to watch him in person, and he did not disappoint, hitting long home runs in consecutive games on Wednesday and Thursday. Unfortunately, he got injured again while running the bases on Friday. After lining a single into left, Ramos injured his hamstring trying to stop at third on Erik Lis's double. Hopefully it doesn't end up being too serious, but he could barely put any weight on it afterwards and missed the last two games of the homestand.
-Danny Valencia has really fallen into a slump of late. After being one of the Twins' top minor league performers in April and May, Valencia has watched his overall numbers plummet over the past two weeks. In June, he has gone 6-52 with 11 strikeouts and has produced a slash line of .115/.207/.173. In fact, in his last 8 games, he's struck out 7 times without walking once. His June BABIP is only .146, though, so the numbers should turn around for him soon, but the strikeout and walk numbers are still a bit discouraging.
-On the other hand, Whit Robbins has continued his hot hitting in June. He has hit .400/.471/.578 this month with 5 walks compared to only 4 strikeouts. On this most recent homestand, 42% of Robbins's balls in play were line drives.
-Finally, here are some videos I took from the Rock Cats game against Bowie on Friday.
Here's the first video, Wilson Ramos's last at bat on Friday before his injury. He lined a single into left off of Timothy Bascom of the Bowie Bay Sox in the 4th inning.
The second video is of Danny Valencia's at bat two batters later, with pinch runner Jeff Christy on third and Erik Lis on second. I missed the first pitch of this at bat, but Valencia struck out against Bascom.
This last video is of Alex Burnett pitching to Ambiorix Concepcion in the 9th inning of Friday's game. Burnett was just recently called up from Fort Myers.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Doing the Little Things: Defense
The Twins are often lauded for the way they "do the little things" and play "small ball." One of the things that is usually grouped into those categories is good defense. You continuously hear announcers talk about how the Twins play solid, fundamental defense and hear Ron Gardenhire laud players for being able to catch the ball. The question, though, is whether the Twins actually play good defense. The numbers that most announcers probably look at, errors and fielding percentage, are pretty bad for judging defense, but I'll look at those first to see how the Twins rank in the more commonly examined defensive statistics.
Year Errors (Rank) Field % (Rank)
2009 20 (2) .990 (2)
2008 108 (23) .983 (24)
2007 95 (13) .984 (13)
2006 84 (3) .986 (3)
2005 102 (15) .984 (14)
From this data you could conclude that the Twins have generally been in top half of the league in defense, and have had some excellent defensive seasons, specifically this year and 2006. It would probably be a bit of a stretch, though, to say that the Twins have consistently been a great defensive team over the past few years. Of course, like I mentioned above, these two statistics are actually very poor measures of defense, so I'll redo the analysis using some much better defensive metrics, specifically Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), which measures the number of runs above average a team or player is on defense. Here are the Twins' UZRs and MLB ranks over the past 5 years.
Year UZR/150 Rank
2009 -2.3 20
2008 -2.9 20
2007 -0.1 16
2006 +2.0 9
2005 +4.9 5
These defensive numbers clearly paint a bleaker picture than errors and fielding percent, especially over the last 3 years when the Twins have been a below average fielding team according to UZR. Despite the top-ranked defense in the AL according to errors and fielding percent, the Twins rank in the bottom half of the majors according to the much more reliable and accurate UZR rating. It's hard to judge individual players at this point in the season because the sample sizes are not that big, but it's pretty clear that Delmon Young (-26.3 UZR/150 this year, -14.9 last year) is a terrible leftfielder. Young was actually an above average rightfielder when he played that position for the Rays, mainly due to his excellent arm rating. In left field, where arm is less important because of the much shorter throw to third base, Young's has actually rated below average the past two years. This demonstrates one of the main arguments for having him play right field, but I've basically given up on that ever happening with the Twins. On the other end of the spectrum, Joe Crede and Carlos Gomez have established themselves as excellent defenders, with career UZR/150 of 9.9 and 16.6 respectively. Crede actually leads all third basemen in UZR thus far this season, saving 33.5 runs per 150 games compared to the average third basemen.
Year Errors (Rank) Field % (Rank)
2009 20 (2) .990 (2)
2008 108 (23) .983 (24)
2007 95 (13) .984 (13)
2006 84 (3) .986 (3)
2005 102 (15) .984 (14)
From this data you could conclude that the Twins have generally been in top half of the league in defense, and have had some excellent defensive seasons, specifically this year and 2006. It would probably be a bit of a stretch, though, to say that the Twins have consistently been a great defensive team over the past few years. Of course, like I mentioned above, these two statistics are actually very poor measures of defense, so I'll redo the analysis using some much better defensive metrics, specifically Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), which measures the number of runs above average a team or player is on defense. Here are the Twins' UZRs and MLB ranks over the past 5 years.
Year UZR/150 Rank
2009 -2.3 20
2008 -2.9 20
2007 -0.1 16
2006 +2.0 9
2005 +4.9 5
These defensive numbers clearly paint a bleaker picture than errors and fielding percent, especially over the last 3 years when the Twins have been a below average fielding team according to UZR. Despite the top-ranked defense in the AL according to errors and fielding percent, the Twins rank in the bottom half of the majors according to the much more reliable and accurate UZR rating. It's hard to judge individual players at this point in the season because the sample sizes are not that big, but it's pretty clear that Delmon Young (-26.3 UZR/150 this year, -14.9 last year) is a terrible leftfielder. Young was actually an above average rightfielder when he played that position for the Rays, mainly due to his excellent arm rating. In left field, where arm is less important because of the much shorter throw to third base, Young's has actually rated below average the past two years. This demonstrates one of the main arguments for having him play right field, but I've basically given up on that ever happening with the Twins. On the other end of the spectrum, Joe Crede and Carlos Gomez have established themselves as excellent defenders, with career UZR/150 of 9.9 and 16.6 respectively. Crede actually leads all third basemen in UZR thus far this season, saving 33.5 runs per 150 games compared to the average third basemen.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
May in Review: Minor Leagues
Rochester Red Wings (AAA)
Record: 17-14
Runs Scored/Runs Against: 138/135
Hitter of the Month: Luke Hughes, 3B
90 PA, 5 2B, 1 3B, 3 HR, 1/1 SB, 10 BB, 19 K, .273/.356/.481/.837
The question with Hughes has always been his defense, as he has done nothing but hit for the past couple seasons. This month was not really anything special for Hughes, but it was still enough for him to be Rochester's top hitter for the month. He still strikes out a lot, but continued his improved plate discipline this season by posting a walk rate over 11% for the 2nd straight month.
Pitcher of the Month: Juan Morillo, RHP
11 G, 17 IP, 21 K, 10 BB, 10 H, 5 ER, GB%: 30
Morillo was sent down after a brief walk-filled stint with the Twins, and he pitched well enough to be the Red Wings pitcher of the month for May. He still walks too many hitters, but they did not come back to hurt him as much this month as he allowed hitters to hit only .175 as well as continuing to post an amazing strikeout rate.
New Britain Rock Cats (AA)
Record: 17-13
Runs Scored/Runs Against: 165/161
Hitter of the Month: Whitney Robbins, 1B
109 PA, 6 2B, 0 3B, 5 HR, 0/0 SB, 15 BB, 15 K, .370/.450/.598/1.048
Robbins's great month was just enough to prevent Danny Valencia from winning this award for the 2nd month in a row. Robbins has always been a patient hitter, and this month he showed a lot of the power that we saw in his minor league debut back in 2006. He now has a nearly .200 ISO on the season along with a .405 wOBA.
Pitcher of the Month: Rob Delaney, RHP
15 G, 21.2 IP, 20 K, 5 BB, 19 H, 4 ER, GB%: 56
I've talked about Delaney a number of times here, and basically his call up to AAA is way overdue. His great numbers this month were actually worse than what he did in April.
Fort Myers Miracle (A+)
Record: 20-8
Runs Scored/Runs Against: 134/102
Hitter of the Month: Ben Revere, CF
105 PA, 4 2B, 1 3B, 0 HR, 10/15 SB, 6 BB, 10 K, .388/.430/.449/.879
Revere had a great month in May, though it was even more batting average dependent than usual for him. Luckily for him, he has shown the consistent ability in the minors to hit for a high average, but hopefully this month's decreases in walk rate and ISO were simply blips on the radar rather than true changes in his ability.
Pitcher of the Month: David Bromberg, RHP
6 G, 31 IP, 27 K, 14 BB, 19 H, 5 ER, GB%: 54
This was a tough choice, as Blair Erickson and Spencer Steedley both had great months out of the bullpen, but they pitched only 12 innings each. Therefore, the Miracle pitcher of the month award goes to Bromberg, who was one of the leaders of a pitching staff that allowed only 3.6 runs per game in May. He closed out the month with 12 strikeouts in 6 innings in his last start, and had an earlier start where he allowed only 1 hit in 7.2 innings.
Beloit Snappers (A)
Record: 11-19
Runs Scored/Runs Against: 147/173
Hitter of the Month: Nathan Hanson, 3B
96 PA, 6 2B, 2 3B, 2 HR, 2/2 SB, 8 BB, 16 K, .291/.365/.477/.842
It was a bad month for the Snappers, as they were the only Twins' affiliate to be outscored or under .500, and it wasn't close in either case. Nonetheless, it was not a bad month for the 22 year old former Golden Gopher. He posted a .186 ISO in May after having only 2 extra base hits (both doubles) and an .044 ISO in April.
Pitcher of the Month: Brad Tippett, RHP
6 G, 35 IP, 28 K, 6 BB, 30 H, 9 ER, GB%: 51
Another Australian signing for the Twins, Tippett was one of the few bright spots for the Snappers in May. Tippett showed great control, walking only 1.54 per 9 innings, and induced more ground balls than in the past. His 2.31 ERA led the Snappers' rotation in May, as the staff as a whole allowed almost 6 runs per game.
Record: 17-14
Runs Scored/Runs Against: 138/135
Hitter of the Month: Luke Hughes, 3B
90 PA, 5 2B, 1 3B, 3 HR, 1/1 SB, 10 BB, 19 K, .273/.356/.481/.837
The question with Hughes has always been his defense, as he has done nothing but hit for the past couple seasons. This month was not really anything special for Hughes, but it was still enough for him to be Rochester's top hitter for the month. He still strikes out a lot, but continued his improved plate discipline this season by posting a walk rate over 11% for the 2nd straight month.
Pitcher of the Month: Juan Morillo, RHP
11 G, 17 IP, 21 K, 10 BB, 10 H, 5 ER, GB%: 30
Morillo was sent down after a brief walk-filled stint with the Twins, and he pitched well enough to be the Red Wings pitcher of the month for May. He still walks too many hitters, but they did not come back to hurt him as much this month as he allowed hitters to hit only .175 as well as continuing to post an amazing strikeout rate.
New Britain Rock Cats (AA)
Record: 17-13
Runs Scored/Runs Against: 165/161
Hitter of the Month: Whitney Robbins, 1B
109 PA, 6 2B, 0 3B, 5 HR, 0/0 SB, 15 BB, 15 K, .370/.450/.598/1.048
Robbins's great month was just enough to prevent Danny Valencia from winning this award for the 2nd month in a row. Robbins has always been a patient hitter, and this month he showed a lot of the power that we saw in his minor league debut back in 2006. He now has a nearly .200 ISO on the season along with a .405 wOBA.
Pitcher of the Month: Rob Delaney, RHP
15 G, 21.2 IP, 20 K, 5 BB, 19 H, 4 ER, GB%: 56
I've talked about Delaney a number of times here, and basically his call up to AAA is way overdue. His great numbers this month were actually worse than what he did in April.
Fort Myers Miracle (A+)
Record: 20-8
Runs Scored/Runs Against: 134/102
Hitter of the Month: Ben Revere, CF
105 PA, 4 2B, 1 3B, 0 HR, 10/15 SB, 6 BB, 10 K, .388/.430/.449/.879
Revere had a great month in May, though it was even more batting average dependent than usual for him. Luckily for him, he has shown the consistent ability in the minors to hit for a high average, but hopefully this month's decreases in walk rate and ISO were simply blips on the radar rather than true changes in his ability.
Pitcher of the Month: David Bromberg, RHP
6 G, 31 IP, 27 K, 14 BB, 19 H, 5 ER, GB%: 54
This was a tough choice, as Blair Erickson and Spencer Steedley both had great months out of the bullpen, but they pitched only 12 innings each. Therefore, the Miracle pitcher of the month award goes to Bromberg, who was one of the leaders of a pitching staff that allowed only 3.6 runs per game in May. He closed out the month with 12 strikeouts in 6 innings in his last start, and had an earlier start where he allowed only 1 hit in 7.2 innings.
Beloit Snappers (A)
Record: 11-19
Runs Scored/Runs Against: 147/173
Hitter of the Month: Nathan Hanson, 3B
96 PA, 6 2B, 2 3B, 2 HR, 2/2 SB, 8 BB, 16 K, .291/.365/.477/.842
It was a bad month for the Snappers, as they were the only Twins' affiliate to be outscored or under .500, and it wasn't close in either case. Nonetheless, it was not a bad month for the 22 year old former Golden Gopher. He posted a .186 ISO in May after having only 2 extra base hits (both doubles) and an .044 ISO in April.
Pitcher of the Month: Brad Tippett, RHP
6 G, 35 IP, 28 K, 6 BB, 30 H, 9 ER, GB%: 51
Another Australian signing for the Twins, Tippett was one of the few bright spots for the Snappers in May. Tippett showed great control, walking only 1.54 per 9 innings, and induced more ground balls than in the past. His 2.31 ERA led the Snappers' rotation in May, as the staff as a whole allowed almost 6 runs per game.
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