Myth #3: The Twins had an above-average offense in 2008.
This would seem like a difficult myth to support, given that the Twins offense ended the 2008 season with 829 runs scored, the third highest total (and third-highest rate, given that the Twins actually played one more game than most of their rivals on the list) in the American League. Scoring a lot of runs by definition makes you a good offense, doesn't it?
Actually, it depends -- mainly on how you scored your runs, and if that scoring is based on things that are repeatable in subsequent seasons. Let me give you an example of what I mean.
In 2006, the last time the AL Central went down to the final day of the regular season, the Twins scored 801 runs. 801 runs is a reasonable aggregate total, an average of just under five runs per game, but it was only good enough to finish 8th in the AL in 2006. More to the point, that offensive performance was achieved based on career years from a number of Twins regulars -- Joe Mauer had a career year in 2006 (.347/936) en route to his first batting title. Justin Morneau had a career year (.321/934) while winning the league MVP award. Nick Punto had a career year (.290/725); though it might not look like a ton, Punto's 2006 total was significantly higher than his career totals prior to 2006 (.238/623). At the time, I noted that way too many Twins regulars had hit above their heads in 2006, and to expect them all to do it again was simply unrealistic. Sure enough, the Twins trotted out much the same lineup in 2007 and scored just 718 runs -- third worst in the AL -- as nearly every Twins regular hit below his 2006 total.
The 2008 Twins aren't exactly the same as the 2006 Twins -- there were still some good-hitting seasons (especially from Mauer and Morneau), but among Twins who'd been on the roster in 2006, only Alexi Casilla had an improved hitting line in 2008 over his 2006 numbers. (And in Casilla's case, his 2006 hitting line was 1-for-4.)
That doesn't mean that there aren't players to watch for a decline in 2009, however; Denard Span hit .297/819 for the Twins in 2008, though his overall minor league numbers in 6 seasons run at just .287/715. Likewise, Nick Punto raised his career average back above .250 by hitting .284/726 in 2008, but he's only had one season where he's finished within ten points of that career average and just two where he's finished within thirty points of it, and in each case he's had more seasons below average than above it.
Still, Span is just one guy, and Punto might not even be with the team in 2009, given his current free agent status. The bigger worry for 2009 has to be the fluky way in which the Twins offense operated for much of 2008.
For starters, the Twins offense had a very well-documented surge of good hitting with runners in scoring position all year long. The Twins as a team hit .305/826 with runners in scoring position in 2008. Though the Twins led the league in batting average in RISP positions, they didn't actually lead in OPS in those situations -- they finished second behind the Rangers in OPS. And therein lies part of the rub. Compare the Twins offensive performance in RISP versus overall against that of Texas:
BA/OPS in RISP overall
Texas .287/856 .283/816
Minnesota .305/826 .279/748
The Rangers had a bit more pop in RISP than in other situations, but certainly within the realm of both the traditional offense's tendency to hit better with 'runners on' than overall, as well as small sample size considerations. The Twins, meanwhile, were significantly above their overall production when hitting with RISP in 2008, so much so that many observers (myself included) spent much of the year wondering when the offense would come back down to earth.
That they didn't do so during the 2008 season, however, doesn't mean that they can repeat their performance in 2009, and a quick glance at the Twins' historical record in these situations should illustrate that:
BA/OPS in RISP overall
2008 Twins .305/826 .279/748
2007 Twins .276/759 .264/721
2006 Twins .296/821 .287/771
2005 Twins .271/764 .259/714
2004 Twins .277/803 .266/763
2003 Twins .268/746 .277/772
2002 Twins .269/748 .272/769
With the exceptions of the 2002 and 2003 Twins, the club under Gardenhire generally improved in RISP situations about the same way that Texas showed in 2008 -- a small bump in BA and about a 50-point rise in OPS. In no other season under Gardenhire have the Twins ever previously shown the kind of bump they showed in RISP situations in 2008, so unless we can find a roster-specific reason why the 2008 club would be better than other Twins clubs in hitting with RISP, it would be reasonable to expect that they won't hit that well with RISP in 2009, which would lower the team's scoring to some degree.
The problem for the Twins offense is that hitting with runners in scoring position wasn't the only fluke they experienced in 2008. Consider the following comparison:
Metrodome Road Games
Twins offense .289/777 .269/722
Opp offense .255/697 .294/813
That looks weird, doesn't it? The Twins gained twenty points of average and over fifty points of OPS when playing at home, while their opponents lost nearly forty points of average and over a hundred points of OPS in the same move. The superficially sabermetric among the Twins blogosphere simply assume that the culprit was the Twins young pitching staff 'sucking' on the road (as if there was some exercise or coaching that could help a pitcher do better away from home). The folks who make it their business to understand (to at least some degree) baseball statistics, however, awarded the Metrodome the lowest multi-year park factor in its history, suggesting that not only was the 'Dome one of the best pitcher's parks in all of baseball in 2008, but that the real mystery is the performance of the Twins hitters, not the performance of their pitchers.
Compounding the mystery is analysis showing that some Twins regulars did actually have more trouble hitting at home than on the road in 2008 -- Justin Morneau might have won the MVP award if he'd hit as well at home (.286/847) as he hit on the road (.314/897), and though Brendan Harris had only about a half-season of at-bats, his production was still slightly better on the road (.268/724) than in the 'Dome (.262/718).
But just as many Twins regulars in 2006 had career years, many Twins -- and not just the regulars -- in 2008 had a year that bucked the expectations of their ballpark:
BA/OPS/BABIP Home BA/OPS/BABIP Road
Mauer .362/949/.365 .295/782/.320
Young .300/764/.344 .280/716/.330
Gomez .278/689/.360 .236/622/.298
Kubel .299/876/.331 .248/741/.262
Punto .299/767/.340 .267/681/.328
Casilla .314/773/.348 .257/659/.264
Span .291/849/.345 .296/797/.335
Redmond .322/738/.345 .257/584/.281
Tolbert .313/770/.385 .262/669/.304
Including Randy Ruiz would be a bit of a stretch, given that he had less than 40 official PAs on the road and less than 30 at home, but even he shows this trend (.346/837/.500 at home, .222/588/.318 on the road). Meanwhile, had Joe Mauer hit as well on the road as he hit at home in the pitcher-friendly Metrodome, he, not Dustin Pedroia, would have been the league MVP.
The key is the third entry in the numbers above - BABIP, which stands for Batting Average on Balls in Play. Originally posited as a pitching statistic to show how a pitcher may have been aided by his defense or by luck, the batting version of this number, since it's achieved against many different calibers of defensive play, is largely a record of how often balls just 'fell in' for a hitter when he actually managed to get his bat on them. Throughout MLB in 2008, the mean BABIP for all at-bats comes out to a nearly even .300, which suggests that hitting significantly above .300 on your balls in play is lucky, while hitting significantly less than that is unlucky. And the size of the difference in BABIP certainly looks significant in this sample -- the Twins with greater-than-100 point OPS improvements at home are also the Twins who hit 60-70+ points higher on balls in play at home.
Again, as I noted back in 2006, it would be a logical error to assume that just because so many Twins were hitting 'in luck' in 2008 that they'll all hit 'out of luck' in 2009. (That's the gambler's fallacy, to be precise.) Still, it's not necessary for the Twins to be unlucky for their offense to drop in 2009 -- all it'll take is for their production to regress toward the mean, a process so ubiquitous and powerful that even a monkey could predict it.
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