I'm a firm believer in the idea that, when you're steeped in a culture, even one as esoteric as Twins baseball fan, you tend to pick up unconscious blind spots that need to be probed every so often, so despite not being anywhere near any of these guys in experience or talent, I'll appoint myself as critic of their criticism and point out the things in their joint essays that I either agree with or disagree with:
Livan Hernandez was a good acquisition for the ballclub.
Only Brad Zellar makes the statement in so many words, though neither Robson nor Brauer make any real comment for or against*, so it's likely that they either agree or don't disagree as much as they do about the other points they made.
* - Brauer comes closest, simply saying that Hernandez ate his innings in the first half and that it was time for him to go when he did, as well as referencing an earlier Robson piece saying just about the same thing.
It's become popular among Twins bloggers, especially since the decision to release Hernandez, to lump him in with other recent 'poor' veteran pitcher signings like Sidney Ponson and Ramon Ortiz. I disagree, and side with Zellar on the point -- he notes that none of the Twins young starters is on pace to break 200 innings now (which despite what you may remember about young kids throwing 300+ innings in the 70s is a good thing**), which minimizes both the odds that many of the Twins starters will break down during the stretch as well as the odds that overwork will show up in reduced performance next season. That's a win-win for Twins fans and the team itself, especially as it seems that the staff, while not brilliant, has proven solid -- Blackburn, Baker, and Slowey are all below the league-average ERA of 4 this season, and all are 27 or younger in real age as well as 'baseball age'.
** - it should be noted for fairness' sake that Nick Blackburn in the closest to being on a 200 inning pace, and in effect is pitching at the same 'innings eating' pace that Hernandez himself was pitching at prior to his release -- in 23 starts for the Twins, Hernandez threw 139.2 innings, while in his first 23 starts, Blackburn threw 140 innings. Blackburn starts tonight against Oakland, and if the Twins keep throwing him out there every five days, skipping someone in the rotation to do so, he'll get nine more starts, which might well have him break 200. On the other hand, he'd also be scheduled to start the final game of the season at home against the Royals, which I'd expect he'd do only if the Twins absolutely needed to win that game to make the post-season, which means it's more likely Blackburn will make eight starts, average 6 innings per start, and finish less than 10 innings shy of that dangerous number. We'll see.
The thing that most folks seem to forget is that it was Hernandez that helped the team assemble a buzz in the earlygoing -- Hernandez came out of the blocks with six wins in seven decisions, with the Twins winning all but one of those first nine starts, and the only loss being a resounding 10-0 pounding at the hands of the Rangers. The Twins as a team were just slighly over .500 through Hernandez's first nine starts and actually slipped below .500 later in May, so it's legitimate to suggest that, had Hernandez not started so well (let's not forget he had a 3.90 ERA in those first nine starts, which is better than every current Twins starter save Blackburn), the Twins would not have been in a position to consider themselves in the race, and it's possible that the prophecies of the club staggering to a 90+ loss finish might well have come true.
The Twins have been lucky with runners in scoring position, and a loss of luck in that field might portent a collapse.
Nobody says that the Twins will collapse at hitting with runners in scoring position (I think Robson was specifically thinking of the RISP thing when he asked about 'surprising trends likely to reverse in the last 50 games'), and there's a good reason for that -- they still haven't collapsed yet. Back at the end of May, the Twins were hitting .311/845 with RISP and I noted back then that the trend wasn't likely to continue; heading into play today (August 18), the Twins as a team were hitting .317/858 with RISP, which means that their hitting with RISP has actually improved since June 1.
It's not as though the Twins are a team that 'knows how to hit' with RISP -- as you'd expect, the Twins under Ron Gardenhire have only one other season in which they hit significantly above league-average in RISP situations, and that was in 2006 -- but at this point, with over two-thirds of the season already in the books, I think the question shifts from 'when will the Twins' hitting with RISP come back down to earth' to 'why shouldn't they keep this up for the rest of the year?' After all, players can have good years -- Nick Punto is hitting over .270 for only the second time in his career, for example -- so why can't teams have 'good years' for things that seem to be largely driven by chance?
The bullpen looks bad, and either needs some more warm bodies or is likely to collapse. Meanwhile, give Nathan more shots in the 8th in close games.
Let's take this one in reverse order. Last night was Nathan's second 'eighth inning outing'; an outing where he was inserted in the eighth inning of a close game to ice the save rather than hoping that one of the other relievers can finish the inning to let Nathan start the ninth in a save situation. This outing went better than the last one -- Nathan entered with two out and the bases loaded in the 8th and struck out Adrian Beltre to end the inning. He then loaded the bases with two out in the 9th as well, against the bottom of Seattle's order no less, before retiring Ichiro Suzuki to ice the save and give the Twins the series sweep. Nathan's other such outing this season, ironically also against the Mariners, resulted in Nathan allowing two inherited runners to score and the Twins losing the ballgame.
Does this mean that Nathan can't do the job outside of the ninth inning? No. What it means is that Nathan probably isn't any better than a 'typical' major league pitcher, or at least closer. Let me back this one up with some numbers, since it's likely a fairly controversial claim:
In 2006, Nathan entered 37 games in a 'save situation'; his team ahead by one, two, or three heading into the final inning. The games break down like this:
home games, 1-run lead: 5
away games, 1-run lead: 8
home games, 2-run lead: 6
away games, 2-run lead: 5
home games, 3-run lead: 6
away games, 3-run lead: 7
All told, Nathan entered 37 games with a chance to earn a 'classical' save. Something's a bit screwy in the numbers, since Nathan earned 36 saves in 2006 and blew two, which doesn't match up with the 37 save opportunities, but the discrepancy won't materially affect the analysis. The key is that Nathan blew two saves in 2006 in either 37 or 38 chances.
Here are the expected win probabilities, based on actual game data from 1996-2006 (taken from this online Win Expectancy Finder):
visiting team leading by 1 with 0 out in bottom of ninth: 81.9%
home team leading by 1 with 0 out in top of ninth: 86.2%
visiting team leading by 2 with 0 out in bottom of ninth: 91.8%
home team leading by 2 with 0 out in top of ninth: 94.6%
visiting team leading by 3 with 0 out in bottom of ninth: 96.3%
home team leading by 3 with 0 out in top of ninth: 98.3%
Based on a weighted average of these percentages, a 'typical' pitcher throwing in those situations would likely have blown one of the one-run home leads (5*.819= about 4.1), would probably have blown one of the away one-run leads but would not likely have blown two (8*.862= over 6.5), and would likely have been perfect the rest of the way (the product of the number of appearances and the winning percentage is within a half-point of the number of appearances in each case).
In 2006, Nathan went 7-0 with 36 saves and blew just two save opportunities, and the Twins didn't lose either of those blown saves (each game was won in extra innings, with Nathan actually getting one of the wins). Nevertheless, mathematically, his performance is right at the expected average for all pitchers throwing in those situations from 1996-2006.
Now you could argue that, of course, from '96-'06 the only guys pitching in those situations are closers themselves, which is true. Yet there are two other things to consider:
1. Those performances over that eleven year period also include the performances of all those closers that their fans and teams decided were crap closers -- LaTroy Hawkins in 2000-2001, Mike Trombley in 1999, etc. -- as well as the great performances. Nathan's 2006 fits right in with the mathematical expectation for all such closers, which suggests that it was not among the greatest of such performances.
2. This study by Dave Smith of Retrosheet (and pointed out by Jim Caple of ESPN) suggests that closers haven't actually had an impact on their teams' overall rate of success in the 9th innings, as the winning percentage of teams entering the 9th with a lead is about the same now as it was in the 1900s, when the 'closer' was unheard of. (Of course, this doesn't mean that the best pitcher wasn't necessarily on the mound, either.)
The combination of these two factors suggests that you could, in fact, take just about any pitcher, put him into the 'closer' role, and expect him to achieve similar success to what Joe Nathan has done for the Twins since arriving in 2004. (In fact, the Oakland A's did exactly that for some years, as noted by Michael Lewis in 'Moneyball' -- a process known in the A's front office as 'selling the closer'.)
This, of course, leads to the ludicrous suggestion among the blogosphere and the sports pages that what the Twins need to find is a 'dominant eighth-inning guy', or to use Nathan in that role. More on this myth later.
Delmon Young has been a disappointment defensively in left field.
This one's easy -- this is Young's first season playing home games in the Metrodome, which is a notoriously hard place for visiting outfielders to play, given that the Teflon roof is nearly the same tone as a baseball in flight. What appears to the roundtable as a lack of range is likely just Young still adjusting to his new home park's roof. (Sadly, I've not found defensive statistics broken out by home and road games to test this theory, but I'd expect Young's range to be higher on the road than at home, and not because the Metrodome's left field is a 'much bigger expanse' as Brauer notes. Here's the distances down the left field line and to left-center for each of the five parks in the AL Central:
LFLine LeftCtr
Metrodome 343 385
US Cell 330 377
Comerica 345 370 (395 in 2000-2003)
Jacobs 325 370
Kaufmann 330 375
The Dome has a bit more area, though not as much as Comerica before their 2003 adjustment to the outfield fences. Since all the extra area exists beyond the warning tracks of the other ballparks in the Central***, it's hard to say exactly how that extra area affects Young's range, but it certainly doesn't explain Robson's critique of Young's 'slow jumps...on the ball off the bat'. That seems pretty clearly a roof issue.)
*** - It should also be noted that the Dome has very little playable foul territory in left (and in right as well), which might make up for some of the extra depth in the outfield.
Why are people so hard on Young while giving Gomez so much slack for his own poor performance?
This is Zellar's comment, and it comes at the end of the essay so neither Robson nor Brauer comment on it (though Zellar's comment also applies to what Brauer and Robson have said earlier about Young and Gomez as well).
I have to agree with Zellar. Gomez is 22 in baseball years, but Young is just 23, not at all significantly older. In addition, Young is performing better than Gomez now, and has performed better and at a younger age at each previous level of pro ball where both have played significantly. So why do people seem to gush about Gomez's potential but complain about Young's performance? I see three reasons:
1. Gomez started the season hot, showing spectacular numbers early, and quickly became a fan favorite, and he still gets talked up in the media, both TV and print. Young started slowly and just as slowly improved, to the point where his numbers now look good, but not spectacular. A simple confusion of what baseball statistics mean is part of the problem here.
2. Cognitive dissonance, specifically related to post-purchase rationalization: Gomez is the only player received in the Johan Santana trade who is currently playing in the major leagues, while Young is one of two players received for Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett playing for the Twins (the other is Brendan Harris). Most fans, looking at the two trades, will assume Gomez is more valuable, since the Twins seemed to give up more to get him. (If this is true, I'd expect gushing over Gomez to drop significantly if Phillip Humber or Deolis Guerra become major-league stars.)
3. Relationship with the media. This maps back to point one in a way, but not completely. Gomez is ebullient, quotable, and seems to be available for quotes after games in which he does well as well as games in which he does badly. Young is not always ebullient, and seemed to be protected by the club from the media early in the season when he was struggling. Now that he's doing better, the local sports guys have simply learned not to bother him, which leads to Young not getting the press (and corresponding press-love) that Gomez gets.
Robson predicts that the White Sox will triumph in the divisional race, while the Twins are the pick of Brauer and Zellar. I have no real prediction, though I'll be rooting for the Twins to win, of course. Zellar suggests that even if the Twins win the division, they shouldn't be expected to go far in the playoffs, which I agree with.
Then of course, I also predicted the Twins would lose 100 games this year, which looks absolutely idiotic looking at the standings today.
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