The Al Central Blog

Twins Nail Outfield Decision

2009-05-11T20:44:00.001-07:00

So I'm keeping an eye on the Twins in 2009 and noticing that manager Ron Gardenhire has decided on a regular starting trio of Denard Span, Michael Cuddyer, and Delmon Young in his outfield, with Carlos Gomez being used as an occasional starter and defensive replacement, and I think, "Awesome. This is pretty much exactly how I imagined this would go given my essays on Gomez and Young earlier this spring."

Then I happen to be out on MinnPost.com and notice that Aaron Gleeman is writing there again, and that somehow he's come to exactly the opposite conclusion I have: Twins pick worst option: benching Carlos Gomez in favor of Delmon Young.

It's been a while since I've had the opportunity to pick one of Gleeman's essays apart, and it would make sense that this one, which is so dramatically opposed to my own thinking, would be an obvious place to start up again. Sadly, the experience wasn't nearly as enjoyable as I'd hoped -- by the end of Gleeman's essay, I became convinced that Gleeman, just as any other run-of-the-mill sportswriter, has simply decided to start from his conclusion and grab whatever facts he can muster to fit his existing opinion.

Gleeman makes three big errors in interpreting his data, each of which leads him to his flawed conclusion that somehow Carlos Gomez would help the Twins more by being a starter than Delmon Young is. Let's look at each of them, illustrated with a snippet from Gleeman's own essay.

1. Missing the context of Young's versus Gomez's offensive numbers.

Young is a better hitter than Gomez right now, but the gap isn't anywhere close to as big as their batting averages suggest and pales in comparison to the gap defensively. Last year, Young hit .290/.336/.405 and Gomez hit .258/.296/.360. This season, Young is at .288/.333/.338 and Gomez is at .218/.259/.327. In both cases the difference is about 80 points of OPS, and even that figure is inflated by not accounting for Young's propensity to ground into double plays or Gomez's superior speed on the bases.

Gleeman is correct to note that the differences between Young's and Gomez's numbers, both from last year and this year, add up to about 80 points of OPS (on-base plus slugging). However, Gleeman seems to dismiss two additional observations:

- The difference between Gomez and Young is currently about 80 points of OPS, of which 70 of that is simply on-base percentage, which was not the case last year.

On-base percentage is actually significantly more valuable to an offense than slugging percentage -- slugging percentage merely gives you the expectation of bases per plate appearance, while on-base percentage gives you an indication of how often the player will be on base, which is also an indication of how often the player will not be contributing toward ending the inning. Estimates of the value of on-base percentage as a component of OPS have suggested that each point of on-base percentage is worth anywhere from 1.5 to 3 points of slugging average (more likely closer to 1.5) when it comes to how much that player's offense contributes to team offensive success.

Gleeman's assertion that the difference between Young and Gomez offensively based on 80 points of OPS is about fifteen runs is simply unsupported by the observation that almost all that difference is in on-base percentage. Some studies have shown that a mere 20 point difference in on-base percentage without any other change is worth anywhere from eight to ten runs in a season depending on batting order position, so a difference of 70 points would clearly be significantly larger. This of course assumes something fairly major as well: that both players will continue to hit at about this same level, which leads to the next observation.

- Young is closer to his 2008 numbers than Gomez is to his, and thus from a 'likely to improve' perspective, Young has to be seen as being farther ahead.

The question is, given these players' current production, how likely is is that one or the other will have improved by the end of the season? Well, given that Young is basically hitting at his batting average and OBP from last year, while Gomez is behind in both by about 40 points, there's reason to suspect that Young is ahead of Gomez. Young is much farther behind his previous season's power production than Gomez is, but is that really significant? Only if you assume that Young can't hit anything but a single the rest of the year, simply because he's hit almost nothing but singles thus far.

Think of it this way -- if Young's 'true level of ability' for 2009 were to be above his 2008 numbers, you'd expect him to be hitting somewhere above his 2008 numbers; it's not impossible for him to be hitting less than that, because that's how statistics work sometimes, but seeing him hitting about the same in BA and OBP terms would lead you to believe that he's either about the same player he was last year, or that he's struggling a bit (see drastically low SLG) and might pick things up. It's also possible that his 'true level of ability' is below his 2008 numbers, but then you'd expect his BA and OBP to be farther down than they are right now. Meanwhile, if Gomez's 'true level of ability' were above his 2008 numbers, you'd likewise expect to see him hitting at or about those numbers or a little better -- that he's hitting so far below those numbers means that he's either in a deep slump, or that estimations of his 'true level of ability' as higher than his 2008 numbers are simply false.

Put another way, if Delmon Young hits the way he's been hitting for a month and a half, and simply has a few extra balls find the gap along the way, his power numbers will approach his 2008 power numbers without having to do anything differently or improve at all -- if Young does actually improve, then his numbers will go up even more rapidly. Meanwhile, Carlos Gomez would have to improve his batting average by 40 points (which would also increase his OBP and SLG by 40 points each) just to get back to where he was last year, then try to improve still further. If Gomez keeps hitting the way he has since early April, he'll be the worst offensive player in baseball by the end of the season.

Oh, yeah, and the crack about double plays? That also comes from a lack of understanding context -- Young has hit 28 times with a runner on first base and has hit into 5 double plays. Gomez hasn't hit into any double plays, and his speed is certainly part of that, but just as significant is that he's only hit with 11 runners on first base, giving him far fewer opportunities. (See baseball-reference.com's player game logs, though by the time you look, these numbers will likely be different.)

Oh, yeah, and Young has 13 RBI in 78 PAs with runners on (versus a league-average 10 RBI in those situations with the same number of PAs and just three fewer baserunners), so if Young was really a clutch choker, you'd expect to see it in those numbers, wouldn't you?

2. Taking too small a sample of both Young's and Gomez's defensive numbers.

According to Ultimate Zone Rating as a duo Gomez in center field and Span in left field (or right field) has been 30 to 35 runs above average per 150 games. Meanwhile, as a duo, Span in center field and Young in left field has been 45 to 50 runs below average per 150 games.

The latter total is inflated by Span's unsustainably horrible numbers in limited action as a center fielder, but even if you ignore them to give him credit for being exactly average in center field — which at this point is far from a safe assumption — the Young-Span alignment is 40 to 50 runs worse than the Span-Gomez alignment.

It's not clear precisely what numbers Gleeman is using here, since his link simply goes to the page that says 'Hey, UZR is available on Fangraphs!", but we covered Young's abysmal 2008 defensive numbers in a previous essay, and came to the conclusion that Young wasn't as bad as those numbers given his much better defensive numbers as a younger Devil Ray, and that his numbers should improve both with further exposure to the Dome's unique fielding challenges as well as with the upcoming move to an outdoor home park.

To make things even more confusing, how do you parse these two statements?

Gomez is one of the elite defensive center fielders in baseball, saving the Twins a tremendous number of runs with his glove. His presence in center field also means that Span slides over to left field, where he's also one of the elite defenders in the game.

The latter total is inflated by Span's unsustainably horrible numbers in limited action as a center fielder, but even if you ignore them to give him credit for being exactly average in center field — which at this point is far from a safe assumption

So which is it? Is Denard Span one of the elite defensive left fielders in baseball, or is it far from a safe assumption to say he's even average defensively in center? The truth is almost certainly somewhere in the middle -- Span is a solid defensive centerfielder whose limited numbers look worse than they should due to small sample sizes plus inherent limitations in UZR (which are beyond the scope of this essay), while Young is a below-average defensive left fielder whose numbers also look worse then they are.

Now all of this analysis thus far has seemed to show that playing Gomez over Young would be more useful to the Twins right now, given that Gleeman is presuming that replacing Young with Gomez would be worth somewhere in the vicinity of 25-35 runs (or about 2-4 wins). But Gleeman doesn't stop there.

3. Presuming that Gomez and Young have the same potential upside

In the short term, benching Gomez for Young is costing the Twins a significant number of runs, but the move could have even costlier ramifications long term. Gomez is six months from his 24th birthday and has great athletic ability, world-class speed and little idea what he's doing at the plate. While with the Mets he was rushed through the minor leagues, playing at Double-A as a 20-year-old and debuting in the majors as a 21-year-old after all of 36 games at Triple-A.

Gomez was rushed through the normal development process for a prospect, getting promoted to the majors far sooner than his minor-league performance warranted and then sticking in the big leagues at least in part because he was the centerpiece of a franchise-altering trade. Certainly none of that has helped him mature as a player, but compounding those mistakes by now relegating him to the bench makes even less sense.

Young was born just a few months before Gomez in 1985 and also would benefit from regular playing time, which certainly makes juggling outfielders difficult for Gardenhire.

Pretty much everything you need to know about Gleeman's opinion can be summed up in this passage -- two paragraphs about Gomez's youth and minor-league experience, followed up by one sentence that casually mentions that Young is "just a few months" older than Gomez. We've covered this distinction in detail before, so I'll just repeat the key points rather than cut-and-paste the entire essay:

- The point of Bill James's observation about youth is not just to be in the big leagues at a young age, but to be in the big leagues and to demonstrate you belong offensively at a young age. The younger you do this, the higher your ceiling.

- Delmon Young's ceiling is still legitimately the Hall of Fame, given his comp list.

- Carlos Gomez's ceiling is not just far short of the Hall of Fame, but probably that of a regular starter for just a handful of years, again given his comp list.

Here are two minor-league seasons, both players age 20:

A - .281/773; .350 OBP; 24 2B, 8 3B, 7 HR; 53 R in 486 PA
B - .316/814; .341 OBP; 22 2B, 4 3B, 8 HR; 50 R in 370 PA

You'd say player B, despite the fewer PAs, was probably the better prospect, right? You'd be further justified in that opinion when learning that player A racked up his numbers in AA, while player B's season was at AAA, wouldn't you?

Now consider -- player A is Carlos Gomez's best season as a minor leaguer with at least 250 PAs, while player B is Delmon Young's worst season as a minor leaguer with at least 250 PAs.

Tell me again why Gomez is supposed to be the better prospect?

The one observation that Gleeman makes with respect to Gomez that I'd be inclined to agree with is this one:

However, even if you're convinced that Young is the superior player right now and benching Gomez doesn't hurt the team in the short term, why in the world would you want your incredibly raw 23-year-old center fielder getting one or two starts per week?

If the Twins aren't going to play Gomez, they ought to at least let him continue to develop at Triple-A.

Of course, the answer to Gleeman's question is simple: if the Twins' brain trust has decided that, in fact, Gomez's ceiling is limited, and the best that can be hoped for is a solid defensive sub, then keeping Gomez on the major league roster makes perfect sense. After all, championship teams have had defensive specialists since the earliest days of the game, and Gomez has a better chance of helping the team win games as a glove off the bench in the late innings than proving his 'AAAA player' status in Rochester for a second straight year. You may not care for that answer if you're convinced, now that Phil Humber is gone and Deolis Guerra is still some years away from contributing, that Gomez has to be the justification talent-wise for the Twins' trade of Johan Santana to the Mets.

If you truly believe that, then I will finish with the same observation I made in the Shadow Twins segment regarding Young: there is no sane universe in which Carlos Gomez has more upside than does Delmon Young. Period. What that means for the Santana trade, I leave to others to lament.

Blackburn Stops the Indians Offense in Twins 5-1 Win

2009-04-24T19:46:00.001-07:00

Twins pitcher Nick Blackburn is one of those pitchers that always seems to give the Indians trouble. In six career starts, he's 3-0 against them with a 1.71 ERA. Friday night in the series opener vs the Tribe at Progressive Field, the Indians again had their issues vs Blackburn, pushing across just one run in 7 innings as the Twins beat the Indians 5-1.

He allowed six hits, and the biggest thing was he didn't walk a batter, this after giving up six walks in his first three starts and having command issues. He struck out four, and the Indians lineup provided little pop in their bats against him.

Fausto Carmona in the mind of Eric Wedge pitched an okay game, but he still didn't seem to be overly commanding against the Twins. He gave up five runs, four earned in 6 innings. He also gave up 8 hits, and while he struck out 8 and walked only one, he still took the loss to fall to 1-3 on the season.

It's amazing the Indians have even six wins on the season considering their number one and two starters - Cliff Lee and Carmona, are a combined 2-6 through the first three weeks of the 2009 season.

The only Indians real scoring chance came when they pushed their only run of the game across in the third to tie it at one apiece. Asdrubal Cabrera doubled, then Grady Sizemore slammed a sharp single to right that scored Cabrera to make it 1-1.

That tie lasted exactly one pitch into the fourth inning, as Justin Morneau crushed a Carmona pitch for a homerun to right that made it a 2-1 game. A few batters later, Jose Morales singled to score another run to give the Twins a 3-1 lead. With the Indians offense stale, it might as well been 100-1 at that point.

Minnesota added two more in the 7th off of Carmona and Rafael Betancourt to make it 5-1. Other than that, the fireworks postgame were for sure not for the Indians offense on this night.

The loss drops the team to 6-11. Carl Pavano (0-2, 9.69) goes for the Indians vs Kevin Slowey for the now 8-9 Twins.

Tribe Survives Wild 8-7 Win at Home Over Royals

2009-04-21T19:54:00.000-07:00

Do you get a sense that nothing will be coming easy for the Indians in 2009? Me too.

With a bullpen that couldn't get some good high school teams out (at least it seems that way), no lead is safe, and once again that was on display Tuesday night at Progressive Field in the teams 8-7 wild win over the Kansas City Royals.

It wasn't the win that got all the attention, it was the fact that the team was up 6-1 entering the 8th, only to have to hang on and have a late Victor Martinez homerun in the bottom of the 8th end up as the margin of victory. Kansas City scored four runs in the 8th off of relievers Joe Smith and Masa Kobayashi, only to have Jensen Lewis save the day and get them out of the inning.

In the 9th with the team up 8-5, Kerry Wood, who's been good to this point, allowed a two-run long ball to David DeJesus to close the gap to 8-7. The reliever came back to strike out Billy Butler to end the game and give Eric Wedge and the team a big sigh of relief.

The offense had a good effort against Royals pitcher Sidney Ponson. Martinez was the star, going 4-for-5 two RBI and a homer. Grady Sizemore was 1-for-4 with a three-run homer. The team collected 9 hits on the night, and drew a solid 9 walks as well.

Aaron Laffey went 7 pretty solid innings, allowing just one run on seven hits, with three walks and three strikeouts. He's making the most of his opportunity with Scott Lewis on the shelf to come in and make an impact on the Indians starting rotation.

On a night that saw temps hover around 40 degrees with overcast skies, fans didn't exactly clamor into Progressive Field, as the reported attendance was just 11,408. That crowd according to reports is the smallest in history of that ballpark, easily beating the 14,841 that saw the Indians beat Chicago on April 10th, 2003.

The team is now 5-9 on the season, and they are playing much better ball over the last several days than when they were floundering off to a 1-7 start. Wednesday they will throw Cliff Lee on the mound, as he comes off his win last Thursday in New York.

Your 2009 Shadow Twins - Center Field

2009-04-12T19:18:00.001-07:00

Baseball demands a different makeup than football; it demands a Steve Garvey rather than a John Matuszak. It demands a percentage player.

And yet, and this is the central point of this essay, many fans do not realize this or will not accept it. The fans don't go to the game every day. They don't feel the pain if something gets torn. To them the only thing for an athlete to do is to go out and give it everything he has on every play; if he doesn't play that way, he's not doing what he should be doing. He's not earning his pay. If the ball is in the seats, he's supposed to dive in after it. If it requires him to go to the wall, he is supposed to hit that wall. A player who plays all out will always be a fan favorite; a percentage player will never be accepted by the audience unless he is able to overcome that impression some other way.

- Bill James, originally published in the 1982 Bill James Baseball Abstract

There are numerous disadvantages to procrastination.

First off, things can change on you -- between the time I wrote the left field entry and today, baseball-reference.com has undergone a complete site redesign, and one of the things that's happened is that the minimum number of PAs/games/what-have-you to qualify for a comp list has increased. So, while Carlos Gomez had a comp under the old bbr regime, he doesn't anymore.

Another disadvantage is that you lose the chance to appear prescient, and instead just get to talk about what seems obvious to everyone. My own feeling about the two men being considered for the Twins' center field position was that you couldn't find two guys with such different sets of expectations, and because of that, one of the guys should easily get the nod over the other. That seems obvious now, after a week, but it wasn't through spring training.

The last disadvantage is that things can happen that make your analysis look silly. Had I posted this essay after the second game of the season, where Gomez had gotten an electrifying triple and triggered a ninth-inning, two-out rally with a base-on-balls, it would have looked a lot tougher saying, as I will below, that Gomez's undisciplined approach to the plate and the field are hurting both his own development and his team's chances of winning. Today, however, that triple is just one of three Gomez hits through the first week of the 2009 season, and the walk is the only walk he's drawn, while Span has six singles and six walks en route to an over-.400 on-base percentage, showing that he's extremely well-suited to serve as the Twins current leadoff man.

It wasn't that long about that it was Denard Span, not Carlos Gomez, who was the young minor-league player that Twins bloggers would get all ga-ga over. Span was the Twins' first-round pick in 2002, and considered the fastest player in the draft, and projections (and overestimations) of his potential were rampant. Unfortunately, Span's rise through the minors wasn't quite as meteoric as some would have anticipated for a 'can't miss' prospect, and much of the luster was off of Span's star by early 2006. Then, the 2007 trade of Johan Santana to the Mets brought in Gomez, who immediately took over as the guy 'picked to click' by Twins bloggers.

Maybe it was the lack of pressure Span faced after Gomez became the center of the spotlight that let him polish his game. Nobody really knows. But the second half of 2008 was a very solid period for Denard Span, and thus far in 2009, he hasn't shown any signs of slowing down. The only thing really hurting Span, at this point, is that the Twins management still seems to want to push Gomez as the centerfielder of the future, meaning Span is an outstanding player without a real position.

It helped Twins management in 2008 that Michael Cuddyer was hurt for much of the season, allowing the club to play both Gomez and Span regularly in the field, Gomez in center and Span in right. But as Span settled in and adjusted, Gomez just kept on doing the same things he'd done in the early season, which were the same things he'd done as a regular-by-necessity in New York: swing as hard as he could at any pitch he thought he could hit, run as hard as he could after every ball, throw as hard as he could to whatever base he thought to throw to. Many fans fond Gomez's exertion inspiring and worthy of praise and cheer; however, other, more polished observers could see that, unless Gomez started learning how to play baseball rather than just trying to use his athletic gifts on the field, he'd never get full value for his talent.

I'm not the first person ever to notice this, either:

I will never understand why baseball fans admire a player who runs into walls. Running into walls is a stupid waste of talent. Playing hard in baseball is so much admired that people make up lists of players who play hard, with the implication that this is a good to be sought after in its own right.

The problem is that eighty percent of the people on those lists are dyed-in-the-doubleknit losers, and the ones who aren't losers are players like Brett and Molitor who spend a third of the season on the disabled list.

James was talking about Butch Hobson, a beloved Boston Red Sox player who nevertheless was never really a good player in his career, because he was so busy giving 110% on every play that he never bothered to figure out why he was doing what he was doing, and if perhaps there was a better way to do it.

When Denard Span hit a wall in the minor leagues, he adjusted, and now he's on a roll. If Span hits another wall, there's every reason to think that, since he's made the necessary adjustments once, he can do so again. People gave up on him, simply because many players who hit that wall don't figure out how to make the necessary adjustment -- but Span seems to have figured it out by taking a step back, then moving forward again.

Until Carlos Gomez shows he can make similar adjustments, rather than just go balls-out every play of every game, he won't even be the player that Span is, much less good enough to eclipse the upsides of players like Mauer and Young.

As Bad as it Was - It's Just One Game

2009-04-07T05:51:00.000-07:00

Okay, Cliff Lee looked like crap, the offense did nothing off a former Indian, and as usual, the sky is falling after one loss. Settle down folks. Indians fans should be use to losing the first game of the season, it's happened 7 of the last 11 seasons. Deal with it.

The bigger question has to be Lee, who is being counted along to anchor a pitching staff that right now is questionable at best. He wasn't very good in the spring, and carried that over to Opening Day vs a Rangers team that can hit, but at the same time can be beat.

Maybe hindsight being what it is, Eric Wedge should have pulled Lee after he got hit on the forearm, or maybe after he got hit for four runs in the second inning. To his credit, Lee got into a groove in innings three and four until Hank Blalock hit a three-run no doubter in the fifth to put the game away.

But again, it's just one game, so relax. After all, you could be the Yankees, who just gave C.C. Sabathia a 7-year, $161 million dollar deal to go out and allow six runs, eight hits and five walks over 4 1/3 innings. In other words, it could be worse.

Interlude: Another Openin'

2009-04-06T18:37:00.001-07:00

Another openin', another show,
In Philly, Boston, or Baltimo'
A change for stage folks to say 'hello'
Another openin' of another show

- Cole Porter, "Another Openin', Another Show" from Kiss Me Kate

In the theater world, opening night is a big deal, but it's sometimes hard to understand why.

After all, it's not as though you're still riding the wave of simply being in the show at all -- the exhilaration you feel when you find your name on the callback sheet and then the cast list is in many cases much more intense than the opening night jitters. It's not your first time in front of an audience, either -- you've had your fellow performers as an audience, for the most part, and even the most amateur of theaters tends to put on dress rehearsals (or 'preview' shows) for an audience prior to opening. Heck, though I've never performed in a place that did so, some higher-class theaters actually charge admission for their preview performances, so it's not as though you can even say it's the first performance for paying customers in every case. (Not to mention that I've had plenty of performances in shows that didn't charge admission at all, and thus the concept of a 'paid house' bringing extra anxiety simply wasn't sensible.)

So what's the magic of opening night?

As an actor, I can say a big part of the excitement was that opening night was the time at which you really got to say you owned the show -- the director would still watch and give notes, the designer would be around to tweak minor problems, but for the most part, opening night was the night that the show really belonged to you as a performer. Suddenly it was your baby, not the playwright's pet project or the producer's potential windfall.

So what does that have to do with baseball?

Another job that you hope, at last,
Will make your future forget your past,
Another pain where the ulcers grow,
Another openin' of another show

Baseball players are like actors in one sense: they've prepared in the off-season, polishing their craft, they've spent a month in dress rehearsals, they've competed to see their name on the final cast list, and now, opening night arrives. It's disingenuous, though, to say that a baseball player 'owns' the season the way an actor 'owns' a play -- the manager is still around and calling the shots in the dugout; the GM upstairs can trade you or cut you; the season is long and many things can happen, most of them out of your control.

Four weeks, you rehearse and rehearse,
Three weeks and it couldn't be worse,
One week, will it ever be right?
Then out o' the hat, it's that big first night!

Most players and fans, though, are looking for something like redemption, and they all find it on opening night. It's a cliché to say that every team is tied for first on Opening Day, but there's truth in it, too. A Yankee fan is excited to see how the expensive new arrivals perform; a Royals fan is hoping for fireworks, surprises, and a reason to keep hoping. A player who slumped looks for a rebound; a player who did well looks to do better. It's a tiny taste of innocence, that lasts through the umpire shouting 'Play Ball!' until the wear and grind of the season brings grim reality back to the forefront.

But for one night, anyway, everybody thinks he's got a shot, and that his team can go all the way.

Of course, as I write this, the Twins trail the Seattle Mariners 2-0 in the fifth. Some fans and teams get a longer honeymoon than others.

Your 2009 Shadow Twins - Left Field

2009-03-31T18:53:00.001-07:00

With Opening Day approaching like a freight train, it's time to put this series into high gear. This week, the outfield, and then just in time for opening day, the DH.

Left Field - Carl Yastrzemski (961)

Alert to skeptics -- this is not a fluke. Yaz is Delmon Young's #1 age 22 comp, while Young is Yaz's #3 of-age comp at 22, tied with Clint Hurdle and Greg Luzinski. Of course, this doesn't mean that Young is destined to be a Hall of Famer -- others among Yaz's of-age comps didn't make the Hall, though pretty much all of them turned out to be solid players.

Some of you are probably not convinced, so let's go through the objections point-by-point:

Yaz was a Hall-of-Famer in part for the length and quality of his career. Just because Young is comparable to him at 22 doesn't mean he'll still be comparable at 42, or even still in the league.

This is true; any number of lurking disasters could await Young in his future, any of which would either end his career outright or lower his effectiveness as a ballplayer to the point where his career will be shortened. Nobody is promised a Hall-of-Fame career (though I sincerely hope those of you making this point were similarly skeptical of Johan Santana's chances at a Hall of Fame career back in 2006).

At the same time, barring some reason that disaster would be more likely to strike Young than some other Twin, say Mauer or Morneau, there's no reason that the knowledge that nobody is assured a Hall-of-Fame career means that we should discount that Young's start is similar to some very solid players, including some Hall-of-Famers. When measuring his upside, the Hall is a very real possibility. After all, nobody is discounting Mauer's potential based on the thought that he could shatter his hip sliding into second in any given game and be out of baseball forever.

But Young's been so slow to pick up the skills he needs to be a superstar; at this point, shouldn't the assumption be that he'll never pick up those skills?

This complaint comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of something Bill James wrote over 20 years ago. In the 1987 Bill James Baseball Abstract, James published a number of studies dealing with rookie players which came to a number of conclusions. One of those conclusions came from a study that compared rookies at varying ages and came to the conclusion that younger rookies tend to have longer, more productive careers than older rookies. James remarked (and here I'm paraphrasing) that the younger a player was when he established himself as a major-league player, the longer and more successful his career was likely to be. While this obviously isn't true in all cases (compare any 22-year old rookie phenom who eventually went bust to Edgar Martinez, for instance), it's true significantly more often than not.

The misunderstanding comes from what James meant by 'major-league player'. Some seem to have interpreted this to mean 'major-league star', which is pretty clearly not the case. In James's own studies, he showed that only about one in three Rookies of the Year went on to have Hall of Fame careers; about the same rate as RoYs went bust or had disappointing careers. The point that James was making is more that, if a 22-year old shows he can be a contributing member of a ballclub, his future is brighter than a 25-year old in the same circumstance. James himself suggested that this was because there were certain things about big-league baseball that one could only learn by playing in the big-leagues, but that hypothesis couldn't be proved given James's data set.

If you want to see a list of solid-to-great players who started their careers, not as stars, but as contributing players, you could do a lot worse than look at Yaz and his career comp list.

- Yaz himself hit .296/832 as a 22-year old for a Boston club that finished just below .500. (The club would continue to struggle, despite Yaz, until a critical mass of talent was assembled and manager Dick Williams was brought in to manage it in 1967.)

- Yaz's #1 career comp, Dave Winfield, hit .265/756 as a 22-year old for a San Diego club that lost 100 games. Though Winfield's OPS doesn't look great, keep in mind that the NL average OPS in '74 was 698, which meant that Winfield's adjusted OPS+ rated at 115.

- Yaz's #2 career comp, Eddie Murray, hit .283/803 with an OPS+ of 123, winning the Rookie of the Year award for the Orioles as a 21-year old in 1977, in the midst of arguably the Orioles' best period as a franchise in their AL history.

Yaz's comp list also includes players like Rafael Palmiero (.307/785 as a 23-year old Cub in 1988; he wouldn't hit more than 20 HR in a season until he was 26), Harold Baines (.271/790 as a 23-year old member of the White Sox in 1982, tying his second-highest season homer total of 25), and George Brett (.308/809 as a 22-year old with the Royals in 1975; he hit 11 HRs and only made it to 30 once in his career). Of course, Yaz's career comp list also contains players who were stars at an early age (Stan Musial, who won his first MVP at age 22; Al Kaline, who never won an MVP, but was second in the vote in 1955 as a 20-year old then finished third the next season at age 21; Frank Robinson, who hit 38 HRs as a rookie, winning the RoY and finishing seventh in the MVP voting that year). But the presence of young stars on Yaz's comp list doesn't invalidate the idea that you can still have an outstanding, even Hall-worthy career without being a young star, again as Yaz's own career shows.

Well, Yaz was also a great defensive player, while Young is basically crap.

Are you certain of that?

Yaz was considered a good defender and won his first (of many) Gold Gloves at age 23, but he was also patrolling probably the easiest left field in all of baseball. Young, meanwhile, was playing what arguably is the most difficult left field in all of baseball in the Metrodome.

Begin with the observable characteristics: a roof which is notorious for losing fly balls in (though the MSFC has installed colored lights to shine on the roof to make the background contrast a bit better, going to the Dome for a day game will demonstrate that the lights only do so much in those circumstances). Also, if you've ever sat in the lower-deck left field bleachers, you may have noticed a particular bank of lights hanging almost directly over the plate from the dead-left field perspective, making yet another way in which a player can lose the ball off the bat. Folks who made reports of Young's defense live lamented his seemingly slow first step off the crack of the bat, and his tentativeness when approaching balls in the outfield. Both of these seem explainable as park factors, not player problems.

Can I back this up? Not conclusively, but there is some evidence based on the last few players to play left regularly for the Twins:

- When Shannon Stewart was acquired by the Twins in 2003, he didn't have a bad defensive reputation (it wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, either); though Fangraphs only tracks Stewart's UZR and UZR/150 from 2002, his range stats and FP were as good or better in his earlier seasons than they were in 2002, when he scored a UZR/150 of 9.9 in left at Rogers Centre. The year he moved to Minnesota, he scored a combined UZR/150 for both Toronto and Minnesota of just 2.9, and in his next two full seasons in left in the Metrodome in 2004-2005 (he got nearly 200 starts), he managed a UZR/150 of -7.8 in 2004 and -10.7 in 2005. Though he performed nearly equally poorly in the cavernous left field at the Oakland Colliseum in 2007 (UZR/150 of -6.4), a return to the familiar and comfortable confines of Rogers Centre in 2008 bounced his UZR/150 back up to 16.1, albeit in limited play.

- Jacque Jones began his Twins career as the regular left fielder, avoiding the logjam in right between Michael Cuddyer, Michael Restovich, Bobby Kielty, and Dustan Mohr. The first year in which there's a UZR/150 for him was his last full season in left, 2002, prior to the acquisition of Stewart; though he assembled a 12.1 rating, it should be noted that his range factor was significantly higher in 2002 (2.4) than it was in 2001 (2.1) or 2000 (2.0). Moved to right after the Stewart acquisition, Jones had a solid defensive rep in right despite having less-than-stellar UZR/150 ratings there (-4.4 in 2004, -5.5 in 2005, and -0.2 in 2006). Leaving in 2007 to become a free agent with the Cubs and returning to his natural position of center, Jones was outstanding on D (UZR/150 of 16.1 in 645 defensive innings) but disappointing at the plate.

And let's not forget Young himself; as a regular right-fielder for the Rays in 2007, Young amassed a decent UZR/150 of 5.2 in over 1100 defensive innings. (Both his excellent RF rating in 2006 -- 16.7 -- and his execrable CF rating in 2007 -- -41.2 -- are probably small sample-size artifacts, given that both were achieved in about 250 defensive innings.)

My guess is that Young's defensive woes in 2008 were largely due to lack of familiarity with the Metrodome, and that not only should he be better in 2009 with more exposure to the environment, but should also gain a lot in his defensive rep with the move outdoors in 2010.

OK, but what about his attitude?

Attitude is an intangible, extremely difficult to quantify. Having an attitude isn't even necessarily a bad thing, as Yaz's comp list can also make plain -- while nobody ever had a bad thing to say about Stan Musial in his career, guys like George Brett, Dave Winfield, and even Cal Ripken were tagged with the 'attitude' label during their careers, accused of being more interested in their personal numbers than their team's success. These days, when the difference between a star and an average player is as small as its ever been (and where even average players, like Josh Hamilton, can become stars in the right circumstances), having a bit of attitude to help you get over the hump is probably on balance more of a benefit than a hindrance.

When most people ask about Young's 'attitude', though, they're asking a coded question -- will Delmon Young ever do the things he needs to do to become a great player? Young himself has been asked this question probably more times than he can count, and is rightly sick of it. Not to be fazed, reporters have moved on to ask his managers, his teammates, even his older brother (despite the fact that most of his managers, teammates, and definitely his older brother have never themselves been considered 'great' ballplayers). The question spins so thick around Young that it obscures how good a player he is already. Consider the following:


Young - .290/741, 102, 14/12
Gomez - .258/656, 79, 13/12

The number compare Minnesota's regular left-fielder with their most regular center-fielder last season, listing BA/OPS, OPS+, and WS/WSBench. (WSBench is the number of Win Shares a 'typical' player with the playing time of the actual player 'should' get.) Gomez was lauded as being a potentially tremendous all-around player, while Young was a profound disappointment, despite the fact that the two men overall were nearly identical, with Young actually being a step ahead.

Though admittedly, Young is older than Gomez -- about three months older (Gomez's birthdate is listed as December 4, 1985, while Young's is September 14, 1985).

We'll cover this more in our essay on the Shadow Twins' center-fielder, but just to complete the point here regarding Young: there is no sane universe in which Carlos Gomez has more upside than does Delmon Young. Period.

Six-word scouting report: Better than Gomez, now and forever.

Your 2009 Shadow Twins - Shortstop

2009-03-25T19:34:00.001-07:00

Shortstop - ??

The purpose of the Shadow Twins in general is to provide some insight into who the current crop of Twins most resemble by way of similarity scores. Sometimes, however, you run into problems with this approach. The most common problem is with a very young, very new player who hasn't put enough numbers into the books to have definable comps. The only potential regular in that category for 2009 is Denard Span, which we'll cover when we discuss center field.

The other significant problem is if you have a list of comps for a player, but none of them are recognizable or even current. Usually I'd simply pick out one player among the group who amuses me for some reason, but in Nick Punto's case, there's something to be gained by not choosing an individual comp, but rather using the group of comps to illustrate something.

Nick Punto has been called a lot of things during his Twins tenure, from "tiny superhero" to things far less complimentary. A word I've seldom heard used to describe Punto is "throwback", but Punto's of-age comp list suggests that the description might be extremely apt.

Of the ten men on Punto's of-age comp list, only one actually played professional ball within the past 30 years, and just two began their careers after World War II. Seven of Punto's of-age comps played during the Dead Ball era, with careers spanning from 1902 through the very edge of the lively ball era in the late 1920s.

This is significant. Remember back at the start of this process that we noted that similarity scores don't make adjustments for league, park, or era. So what does it mean that Punto's career numbers match up extremely well (nine of the ten comps score between 965 and 970 to Punto) with a bunch of players from the Dead Ball era? It means that, as bad as you may have come to think of Punto's offensive skill (or lack of same), his ability is probably worse than you think. Case in point: Over an eight year career spanning over 2000 plate appearances, Punto has a total of 11 home runs, 19 triples, and just over 100 extra-base hits (108, to be precise). Those are dead-ball era rates of power hitting, yet Punto's career begins in 2001 during the most prolific era for offense in baseball's history.

Even more to the point, Punto's offense has been wildly inconsistent. I pointed out elsewhere that Punto has had only one season where his batting average has been within ten points of his current career batting average. If anything, that overstates his consistency, because heading into that 2004 season where he'd hit .253, his career batting average at that time was a mere .223, and his .253 average was seen by some as a sign that he'd improved with regular play. Of course, in 2005 he hit .239 leading some (including me) to suggest that 2005 had been a fluke, then in 2006 exploded with a career-best .290 average which again brought out the chorus of 'Nick Punto has finally arrived' folk. Then, given the most game and plate appearances of his entire career in 2007, Punto responded with arguably the worst season of his pro career, combining a laughable .210 batting average with an egregious .562 OPS (he had a smaller OPS in 2003 as a Phillie, but in just a whisker under 100 PAs rather than in a career-high 536). Then, as if to defy all the odds, he had his best season as a pro in 2008 (at least among seasons with more than 5 plate appearances), hitting .284/726 and nearly reaching a league-average OPS.

Punto's defenders would be quick to point out that, while Punto's offense has often been putrid in his career, his defense has been consistently good, even excellent, and they do have a point. After all, Punto has committed less than 50 errors in over 4300 defensive innings while playing many different positions (he's logged innings at every defensive position save catcher and first base in his career), and has an above league average range factor at every position where he's gotten more than 10 starts. Still, it can be argued that Punto's glove isn't solid enough to sustain his bat -- Fangraphs has Punto's as contributing 49 runs to his teams with his glove over his career (most of that as a Twin), but also costing his teams nearly 58 runs with his bat (again, mostly as a Twin). Such a player may not be entirely valueless, but it does provoke the question as to why this guy is being seen as the default starter without even apparently considering alternatives.

One player whose career 'arc' would seem to be a good fit for Punto's would be Jose Oquendo, a young utility infielder in the mid-1980s who began his career in New York, was traded by the Mets to the Cardinals for a more established player, then played his way into a position as a regular by impressing manager Whitey Herzog with his attitude and defensive prowess as a super-sub. The difference is that Oquendo was doing consistently what Punto has done just two of the past three years, which is hit -- Oquendo's batting average was about the same as Punto's but with significantly more walks (79 in 650 PAs in 1989 alone) in an era with less overall offense, Oquendo's OPS+ stood far higher, finishing over 100 in three of his first five seasons as a Cardinal regular.

Punto could prove to be a useful player in 2009, if he either hits as well as he did in 2008 or if Ron Gardenhire were to use him consistently as a #9 hitter, where the AL average OPS+ in 2008 was a mere 80; his offense would be costly, but no more costly than any other low-order hitter, and his defense would help. There's some possibility of the latter; Punto was written into the starting lineup 89 times in 2008 by baseball-reference.com's count, and of those 61 were either as the #8 or #9 hitter. While one might argue Punto's tenure in the low order was only due to Gardy's desire to lead off Carlos Gomez, the tendency can be traced back to 2007 as well, when 73 of Punto's 135 starts came in the #9 slot alone, and another 20 came batting #8. Gardy's not as dumb as his detractors make him out to be.

On the flip side, the odds that Punto will maintain his hot hitting from 2008 have to be considered remote, given his history. The most probable results, based on that, would seem to be either .270+ with an OPS near 700, or .230 or below with an OPS below 600. Which Nick Punto will show up is entirely a matter of opinion, for right now at least.

Six-word scouting report: Most inconsistent major league hitter, ever.

Your 2009 Shadow Twins - Third Base

2009-03-19T20:55:00.001-07:00

Before we go over today's comparison, let me send a shout of congratulations to Twins Geek, whose GameDay scorecard will now be the official scorecard of the Minnesota Twins, and whose goal of one day inviting a major league baseball player home for steak and beers is now one step closer to fruition.

Ready?

Third Baseman - Ty Wigginton (951)

Hold onto your hats, folks, because this one's going to be fun.

In December of 2008, the Houston Astros rendered a non-tender to third-baseman Ty Wigginton, and though many in the Twins blogosphere were cautious about getting too excited by Wigginton's availability (including most of the folks at TwinkieTown, still one of the best Twins group blogs out there), a few folks gushed at the idea of overpaying for a guy who'd hit just 23 home runs while playing over a half-season in a bandbox park.

Part of the reason the rational part of the blogosphere was so cautious about Wigginton's fit with the team was that we largely believed Joe Christiansen's report that the Twins felt Wigginton was looking for a more lucrative deal than the nearly $6 million per year deal that Los Angeles gave to former Cleveland third baseman (and Twin farmhand*) Casey Blake.

* - the local papers still enjoy calling Blake a 'former Twin', but Blake's a former Twin in about the same manner that Harry Connick Jr is a graduate of Tulane; Blake spent his three peak seasons by age with the Twins and averaged barely over 20 plate appearances per year as a major-leaguer before going off and putting up solid seasons in Cleveland once the Twins could no longer justify paying him the league minimum

The worm turned, however, after Wigginton signed with the Orioles for two years at $3 million per year. At this price, Wigginton seemed like a much better gamble, though a few die-hard contrarians still objected (see the comments to this thread, for instance -- one commenter even went so far as to say the money would be better spent on free agent Joe Crede).

Crede, meanwhile, remained on the free agent market until very late, when the Twins finally signed him to a one-year deal at a base salary of $2.5 million, but with up to an additional $4.5 million available in incentives based on playing time. Considering that the two men are the same age, that Wigginton is Crede's #1 of-age comp, and that Crede is Wigginton's #2 of-age comp (the only player more similar to Wigginton at age 30 is former Cincinnati (and Yankee) third-baseman Aaron Boone), the obvious question is, did the Twins make the right choice?

That question, unfortunately, is unanswerable with the information we have at present. We can certainly hazard a guess (and will), but we could always end up wrong depending on how the ball bounces. Meanwhile, a question we can answer is, was this a predictable choice? The answer to that question, pretty clearly, is 'yes'.

The Crede signing was predictable for the same reasons we discussed in our essay where we asked if the Twins would consider Manny Ramirez worth the risk to sign. From the Twins perspective, the answer to that question was 'no', because the Twins weren't looking to spend money to rise significantly above a level they believe they're already at -- instead, they needed to know that they weren't overspending to reach their target win number.

From a statistical perspective, it's easy to make the case that Crede has more upside than Wigginton -- the two men, after all, have had very similar career stats despite Wigginton having spent the past year and a half in one of the best hitter's parks in baseball, while Crede was struggling with back problems during the same time frame. In other words, prior to 2007, Crede seemed better than Wigginton offensively, and it can be argued, defensively as well. (By Fangraphs, Crede has never had a negative UZR/150 at third, while Wigginton had never has a positive one.)

Even though Crede can be argued to have bigger upside, that's no guarantee that Crede will actually out-perform Wigginton in 2009, but the Twins have covered themselves there, too. After all, if Crede sucks, the argument is that he'll have a hard time getting at-bats even from Ron Gardenhire, who supposedly fetishizes veteran leadership, and thus won't cost the Twins much if anything more than his $2.5 million base salary, after which the Twins can simply refuse to re-sign him. If Wigginton sucks in 2009, conversely, the Orioles still have to pay him $3 million in 2010 for the privilege.

Looking at things a bit more closely, though, it becomes clear that the Twins are only protected on the downside -- the upside actually looks terrible from a Twins business perspective. After all, let's say Crede does bounce back to his pre-injury 2006 form, where he hit 30 homers with solid defense in the field. On the one hand, the Twins would certainly feel good about paying $7 million for that production (especially given that the combination of power and defense is about what they're likely to get from Justin Morneau, and they're paying him over $10 million). On the other, Crede would be perfectly justified in seeking the long-term deal he was denied in 2009, the Twins would be in a position where it would be hard to turn him down (since they'd not only have an expected windfall from their new ballpark, but also have no heir apparent in the wings), and, worst of all, they could easily find themselves in a bidding war they don't want to be in with clubs willing to spend more cash. They could easily find themselves over-paying for an aging player just at the cusp of his sharpest decline; a fate as bad as death for a self-selected 'small market' franchise. On the other hand, if Wigginton has a great year for the Orioles, they can bring him back next year to see if he can prove it wasn't a fluke before shelling out more than an extra $3 million.

Previously, I agreed with (if only half-heartedly defended) a hypothetical Twins decision to pass on Manny Ramirez based on the idea that the franchise had a plan to get to a given win total and didn't need to overspend to overshoot that goal. The Crede signing (and to a lesser extent, the club's wild overestimation of Wigginton's demands) brings up the flip side of that strategy -- that it's not so much a strategy for winning as it is a strategy to avoid losing, which is part of why it's so frustrating for fans.

After all, Crede has a chance to be more effective than a platoon of Buscher and Harris at third, and if he isn't, the club isn't out much -- they still have Buscher and Harris, and are down less money than Baltimore is paying Wigginton just this season. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, and if Crede does justify his bonuses but the Twins still fail to win the division because of the weaknesses they chose not to address, what does the club do for 2010?

The structure and the nature of the Crede signing (including the decision by new primary owner Jim Pohlad to cheerlead for the move) both suggest to me a franchise that's lost its long-term vision.

Addendum: It's been suggested that a hidden factor in the decision of Crede over Wigginton is that Wigginton, with his regular play for Houston last year, would have cost the Twins a draft pick to sign, while Crede, with his injuries woes, would not. Sadly, the reality is exactly the opposite -- Wigginton did not qualify as either a type A or type B free agent in the National League, while Crede qualified as a type B free agent for the White Sox, which could mean that the Twins also give up a draft pick to Chicago as an additional cost.

The closer I look, the less I am impressed with this signing.

Your 2009 Shadow Twins - Second Base

2009-03-14T22:22:00.001-07:00

Two guys to look at today -- one who's expected to begin the year as the starter, and another who'll finish it if the first guy doesn't pan out. First, the expected starter:

Second Baseman - Mark Lewis (981)

What a difference expectations and timing make.

Mark Lewis was taken by the Cleveland Indians with the second overall pick in the 1988 amateur draft. Now 1988 wasn't 2008 in terms of the attention paid to draft picks in general, but even in those days, hard-core fans generally knew who the highest picks were, and thus who was expected to perform at a high level to justify that pick.

Unfortunately, while Lewis was still making his way through the Cleveland minor league organization, the club's front office decided to enter rebuilding mode and traded away their biggest star -- Joe Carter -- for a trio of younger players including catcher Sandy Alomar and...second baseman Carlos Baerga. By the time Lewis got to spend an entire year on the Cleveland roster, they'd devolved fully into rebuilding mode (losing over 105 games in 1991), and Lewis himself was stuck behind the best-hitting player on the roster. The Indians experimented with trying to move Lewis to another position, but after two years of struggle, they finally gave up and shipped him to the National League for a utilityman who'd have less than 150 plate apperances in his entire big-league career.

Lewis, by now no longer strictly young by prospect standards and struggling with the 'bust prospect' label that haunts highly-drafted players who don't pan out, began the journeyman phase of his career, bouncing from club to club and sometimes from league to league. He finished his career where he started it, in Cleveland, amassing just 13 at-bats in his age-31 season.

Alexi Casilla, by contrast, was picked up by the Twins in what many fans consider a throw-away trade -- the deal that sent JC Romero to the Angels. Casilla was not drafted by the Angels -- he was signed as a minor-league free agent out of the Dominican Repubic, and his minor league career didn't hint at all of potential greatness. However, the Twins second-base position fell open in 2007 after the club traded away veteran Luis Castillo at the deadline, and though he struggled in 2007, so did everyone else to play the position. Casilla didn't start the 2008 season as the expected starter, but played his way into the position and performed well (amassing a .281/707 hitting line with an OBP of .333 in about half a season's work).

Because Casilla doesn't have the expectations that Lewis had associated with him, he'll get more of a chance to show what he can do for the Twins. Oddly enough, that could be significant.

- Casilla is an excellent bunter.

Though modern sabermetrics may argue the value of the stat, Casilla led the AL and finished tied for fourth in all of baseball with 13 sacrifice hits -- despite only having 437 official plate appearances on the year.

- Casilla has the potential to display excellent strike-zone judgement.

Traditionally, hitters from the Dominican have been extremely aggressive in pursuing contact at the plate; the long-time mantra is summed up as, "You don't walk off the island." Yet Casilla has shown an outstanding strikeout-to-walk ratio in the minors, as well as a potentially solid on-base percentage. Casilla's overall OBP in the minors, both in the Twins and Angels organizations, is .369, which is legitimately outstanding. (To contrast, Shannon Stewart's OBP as a Twin in 2003 when he helped rally the club's offense to a defense of their division title was .384, while Luis Castillo's OBP during the club's 2006 title run was .358.) In addition, Casilla's minor-league K/W ratio is 160/179 -- including a 24/14 ratio (yes, more walks than strikeouts) as a 19-year old rookie-league player.

With the Twins in 2007, Casilla was almost certainly asked to be aggressive at the plate -- it's one of Gardenhire's mantras, after all -- and it may have contributed to Casilla's offensive struggles. Casilla had a 9/29 BB/K ratio in 2007 in about 200 PAs, but with more regular play and less individual pressure improved that to 31/45 BB/K in over 400 2008 PAs.

As long as the Twins don't have a hitter on the roster who can displace Joe Mauer from the #3 spot in the batting order, finding an effective #2 hitter is key -- and Casilla may well end up being just that player.

Defensively, Casilla can currently be described as 'adequate'; his range factor and fielding percentage both fall just below league average (if you consider RF/9 rather than raw RF), and his UZR rating has him at -2.0, which while it isn't great, isn't horrible, either. At just 24 this year, Casilla has room to grow yet.

Of course, if Casilla does take a step back, there is an option to replace him ready to come off the bench:

Reserve Second Baseman - Terry Steinbach (971)

Brendan Harris is something of a peer to Terry Steinbach - Steinbach didn't play regularly in the bigs until age 25, while Harris had nothing but extended cups of coffee until 2007 with the Rays at age 26. The odd thing is, though, that Harris's comparability with Steinbach isn't just a fluke -- Harris's of-age comp list also contains catchers Ed Ott, Mike Macfarlane, Birdie Tebbetts, and 19th century part-time catcher Charlie Bennett. His #4 career comp is Seattle catcher Kenji Johjima.

Harris's biggest claim to fame prior to his 2007 season was that he was frequently included in trades involving more impressive players. For instance, he was one of the players involved in the massive deadline trade that sent Nomar Garciaparra from the Red Sox to the Cubs (and Doug Mientkiewicz from the Twins to the Red Sox); Harris was one of the players who ended up in Montreal. Two years later, after les Expos became the Washington Nationals, he was included in a deal involving Austin Kearns becoming a Nat. Finally, he was part of the post-2007-season trade that sent Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett to Tampa and brought Delmon Young to the Twins.

At this point, though, Harris is just expected to provide a solid bench bat and utility presence to the 2009 Twins; it might not hurt if he were to take a more active role in the Twins offense in 2009, but defensively, it wouldn't look all that good. Harris is a cut below Casilla defensively, which is saying something, yet even Harris is not a complete disaster in the field. (In fact, in limited play at shortstop in 2008, Harris acquitted himself well, amassing above-average range factors and fielding percentages at the position. Nobody expects that to happen routinely, though.)

Casilla six-word scouting report: Underrated? On this team? That's something.

Harris six-word scouting report: A catcher's bat, but no glove

Your 2009 Shadow Twins - First Base

2009-03-08T21:30:00.001-07:00

Given the hullabaloo that surrounded the Twins inactivity in the free agent market during the 2008-2009 offseason, and the somewhat tempered relief that ensued when the front office finally brought in former Chicago White Sox third-baseman Joe Crede, it's ironic that, by similarity scores, the Twins have had another member of the Sox orgnanization on their payroll for the past couple of years.

First Baseman - Paul Konerko (958)

Konerko is not a Johnny-come-lately to Morneau's comp list -- he was Morneau's seventh-best of-age comp at age 25, and his fifth-best comp at age 26, when I last chose Konerko as Morneau's best comp.

Now Konerko is Morneau's best of-age comp.

Morneau's in a very strange area in terms of fan interest. Nationally, he's highly underrated, despite winning the 2006 AL MVP (which most observers now say was a mistake) and finishing second in the 2008 AL MVP balloting. Nationally, he seems to be viewed as a lumbering first-baseman in every sense of the word: his main value is in his power bat, and he's below average in nearly every other category of play. I'd argue this is wrong (and have argued so), because Morneau has worked very hard to bring himself up from terrible to solid defensively at first, plus despite not having great speed, he's an excellent baserunner. He's not nearly as bad overall as some in the national sporting commentariat seem to imagine.

Locally, however, he's highly overrated, largely because locals tend to give Morneau credit for things he's not -- he's not a Gold Glove-caliber defender at first, and though his offensive numbers with two out and runners in scoring position (.298/917) are somewhat better than his overall offensive numbers (.281/846), this doesn't make him a great 'clutch hitter', as his offensive numbers in 'close and late' situations attest (.248/754) -- in fact, compare his 2-out RISP production with his C&L production, and tell me if he seems clutch to you:

            PA     H     HR    RBI    SO
2outRISP   447    110    14    157    65
CloseLate  489    107    19     78   105

Granted, the difference in RBI may not mean much, given that every PA with RISP has runners on, and not every C&L plate appearance necessarily does. Still, it's pretty striking that, even in this small snapshot of numbers, it's easy to see that Morneau presses, perhaps too hard, in late inning situations.

The other irony in Morneau's best comp being Konerko harkens back to our previous Shadow Twins post, specifically using Kent Hrbek as our example: Hrbek isn't on Morneau's comp list, but he is on Konerko's -- in fact, Hrbek is Konerko's top of-age comp at age 32, and when Will Clark stopped being Hrbek's top comp as his age increased and his athleticism declined, Paul Konerko took over as Hrbek's top of-age comp as well. In fact, let's compare Hrbek, Konerko, and Morneau, all as of age 27:

Career through age 27 --
Hrbek: .289/856, 151 HR, 564 RBI, OPS+ 129
Morneau: .281/846, 133 HR, 523 RBI, OPS+ 121
Konerko: .279/812, 129 HR, 475 RBI, OPS+ 108

So while it's possible to argue, based on these numbers, that Morneau is a better offensive player than Konerko, the same numbers argue that Morneau isn't as good an offensive player as Kent Hrbek was at the same age.

Let me be clear about something here: none of this is meant to suggest that Morneau isn't a good player. He's a very good player, as was Hrbek, and as was (and likely still is) Konerko. Hrbek was good enough to be a major contributor to two World Series champions, and Konerko was a major contributor on one. Every one of these guys have spent significant portions of their careers batting cleanup. None of these guys are deadwood -- it's just that none of these guys is a Hall-of-Famer, either, and there's no reason to think, barring a major explosion on Morneau's behalf, that he'll ever become one.

Six-word scouting report: Not even best player on team

Your 2009 Shadow Twins - Catcher

2009-03-07T01:08:00.001-08:00

A few years back, John Bonnes (aka Twins Geek) was blogging for the Minneapolis Star/Tribune and posted a look-ahead to a season where a number of Twins from the 2002-2004 pennant era would likely end up changing. Inspired, I responded with my first-ever list of Shadow Twins -- a roster list derived from taking each expected regular and replacing him with a highly similar or better (sim score 900+) player at the same age from that player's baseball-reference.com page. Part of the reason I did this was to give people a chance to evaluate the roster in terms of players who were, at least in theory, better known than the players the Twins were about to go with. This, I hoped, would provide some insight as to how to expect that Twins roster to perform.

The Shadow Twins have become something of an annual tradition now, and though many of the folks on the roster are much better-known quantities these days, I still find occasional surprises while working through the comparison process; who a player is comparable to can tell you a lot about who he is.

Now I'm not claiming that similarity scores (originally developed by Bill James and refined slightly for baseball-reference's use) are the best way to predict how a player will perform in a given season -- just because Carlos Gomez's top of-age comp is Paul 'Motormouth' Blair doesn't mean that Gomez will finish his age-23 season hitting .293/799 with 12 triples and 11 homers as Blair did in 1967. But in my years of doing this analysis, it does appear to be true that, once a player establishes a given level of big-league production, he tends to remain in a certain 'cluster' of comparable players season after season, which provides valuable information about his relative worth as an offensive player.

Let's take Kent Hrbek as an example. Hrbek, the Twins first-baseman during their 1987-1991 championship era, came up with the ballclub for a September cup of coffee, then exploded onto the scene in 1982, finishing second in the Rookie of the Year award voting behind Cal Ripken. As a young player, Hrbek hit well, and by the end of his second full season in the major leagues, contemporary first-baseman Will Clark was one of his top comps: Clark was Hrbek's third-bese of-age comp at age 23, moved up to second at ages 24 and 25, and was Hrbek's best comp from ages 26 through 29, the prime of Hrbek's career. Hrbek began to decline after he turned 30, but even so Clark was Hrbek's fourth-best comp at ages 31 and 32 (with a score above 900 both seasons), before finally falling to eighth at age 33 and dropping off Hrbek's list entirely after Hrbek's final season at age 34.

Now it's possible to read too much into this as well. While Hrbek's raw offensive numbers were extremely similar to those of Will Clark in their primes, it also needs to be noted that similarity scores don't make any adjustments for era, league, or park. In this case, there's no need to make an era adjustment, since Hrbek and Clark were contemporaries, but Hrbek was hitting in a more favorable league for offense as well as in a significantly more favorable ballpark, and this can be seen in their relative adjusted OPS+ numbers compared to their raw numbers:

Career through age 29 --
Hrbek: .290/864, 201 HR, 724 RBI, OPS+ 132
Clark: .299/872, 176 HR, 709 RBI, OPS+ 145

Had Will Clark played for the Twins while Kent Hrbek played for the San Francisco Giants, the two men's hitting numbers wouldn't look nearly as similar as they do. Clearly, Clark was the better hitter, but this shouldn't distract us from recognizing that for Hrbek to even be in Clark's ZIP code in his prime, even with help from the Metrodome, meant that Hrbek was himself a heck of a hitter -- his OPS+ over this era is far closer to contemporaries John Olerud (135) and Jack Clark (136), who werw also known as outstanding hitters.

So while similarity scores don't give you a sense of how a player will perform in any given year (that's what systems like PECOTA and the Marcels are for), they can give us a ballpark estimation of the company a player is keeping with respect to his talent level; it's in this way that the Shadow Twins exercise is valuable, in my mind.

One last aside before we begin: I've been taken with Stick & Ball Guy's 'six word scouting reports' of late, so I've provided my own such reports for each of the players I list as a Shadow Twin. If you're not familiar with the concept, let me demonstrate using a six-word version of my previous essay about Kirby Puckett:

Worst writer-elected Hall-of-Famer

So, without any further ado, let's get started!

Catcher - Jason Kendall (945)

Kendall isn't Joe Mauer's closest comp -- that would be lively-ball era catcher Shanty Hogan, who spend most of his career playing for various New York ballclubs. Nor is Kendall Mauer's best modern-day comp -- that would be Yankee second-baseman Robinson Cano. I pick Kendall over Hogan based on era, and Kendall over Cano based on position and movement between seasons -- Mauer and Cano were much more similar when both were younger, but that similarity has been slowly declining (just as Kent Hrbek's early similarity to Jim Rice slowly declined). Also, if the Twins keep Mauer behind the plate, and there's no reason at this point to think they won't, his career will likely have a shape much more like fellow catcher Kendall's rather than second-baseman Cano's.

(Aside: All you need to know about the difference between the Twins offense, fundamentally, and that of the Yankees is that Mauer spent pretty much the season [after April, at least] hitting third in the Twins lineup, while Cano spent nearly the whole season hitting anywhere from 6th to 8th in the Yankee lineup.)

The striking thing in looking at Kendall's future, is that Kendall never did learn to hit for power, though based on his minor-league career, that shouldn't have been surprising: Kendall hit just 16 homers in over 1300 minor league at-bats, and has never hit more than 14 in a season in the majors. Expect Mauer's quick bat to slow down as he spends more and more time behind the plate, so that by age 30, his power will actually likely decline as he surrenders power to maintain contact with the ball, just as is evident in Kendall's numbers from age 29 onward. If you don't believe me, then consider that Kendall's minor league home run total and rate are both superior to Mauer's (9 HR in over 1000 ABs).

Six-word scouting report: Excellent hitter, but not for power

Bad Steroid Arguments Make Baby Jesus Cry

2009-02-15T16:56:00.001-08:00

I'd been doing my best to bury my head in the sand over the whole steroid brouhaha when Howard Sinker recapped the past week in steroid madness on his Section 220 blog. Sinker's approach, as many folks' have been, was largely to shake his head over the seeming insanity of the parties involved and hope it all faded away very soon.

For some reason, though, Sinker's essay struck me very differently than other steroid madness rants have of late; I'm guessing it's a juxtaposition of arguments over steroids in baseball with arguments over the economic stimulus package just finishing its path through Congress. I've finally come to realize that the steroid debate in baseball isn't a medical debate or even a debate about sports -- it's a political debate. And like many political debates, the people involved who seek to take advantage of the situation for their own political gain are using really shoddy arguments to back up their position. If there's anything we've learned from the new Obama administration lately, it's that the only good way to defeat shoddy arguments is to get out there and push your own better arguments, so here's my attempt to do this on the steroid issue:

- Bud Selig claims he's considering reinstating Hank Aaron as all-time home run leader.

This is stupid, but not precisely the way Sinker says it is. Sinker is right when he says that "baseball fans and others" decide how to interpret the raw statistics of baseball (and 'others' probably refers primarily to the members of the BBWAA who vote on Hall of Fame inductions), but the statistics themselves can be shaped by MLB to some degree -- take the most famous case prior to this one, Roger Maris's 1961 season. Maris's 1961 season has been described as having an 'asterisk' in the record books, but that's not strictly true -- what is true is that for years the record books looked like this:

Most home runs, single season, 154 games: Babe Ruth (60)
Most home runs, single season, 162 games: Roger Maris (61)

Who was your 'home run king'? It all depended on how you wanted to look at it. Interpreting the stats, as Sinker notes, is a fan's and writer's game.

Based on this example, though, it's hard to understand how Selig expects to be able to put Aaron back on the top of the career home run list:

Most home runs, career, non-steroid user: Henry Aaron
Most home runs, career, steroid user: Barry Bonds (soon to be Alex Rodriguez, et al)

Not only is this not really a baseball distinction, it's a distinction that ultimately can't be ended -- at what point do we decide that baseball players aren't using steroids anymore and thus can be legitimately considered for statistical enshrinement? First, go hit 750 homers, then piss in this cup?

The more likely way in which Selig would attempt to reinstate Aaron as the 'official' home run king is to put Bonds, A-Rod, et al on some kind of permanent ineligible list, a la Pete Rose (which of course begs the question -- if the Commissioner has the authority to strike ineligible players' statistics from the baseball record, why is Pete Rose still baseball's all-time hits leader?) This, too, is a really stupid idea, and can be illustrated with a simple TwinsGeek-like 'player A/player B'

A - .346/915; 101 HR, 1599 R, 1464 RBI, 455 SB over 16 seasons
B - .356/940; 54 HR, 873 R, 785 RBI, 202 SB over 13 seasons

Though player B was a slightly better hitter by BA/OPS, and the difference in their playing time was a bit larger than the 16/13 seasons comparison would suggest (player A had approximately 8300 plate appearances in his career, while player B had approximately 5630), that seems to me to speak to player B's tendency toward injury rather than any knock on player A. In addition, player A hit over .400 three times in his career, led his league in hitting once, led his league in slugging five times (though they didn't keep track of that in his day), and led his league in home runs twice. Player B hit over .400 just once, never led his league in batting average, never led his league in home runs, and led his league in slugging just once. Player A is in the Hall of Fame, Player B is not.

Yet few baseball fans would likely recognize Player A as Ed Delahanty, who was elected by the Veterans Committee in 1945. His plaque notes that he went six-for-six twice in his career and hit four homers in a game once. Even once you know his name, you probably don't know much about him.

You might not recognize Player B by his numbers, but you'll recognize his name: Joe Jackson, placed on baseball's 'permanently ineligible' list by then-Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis in 1920.

Selig doesn't have the power to remove Bonds's or Rodriguez's statistics from baseball's record, any more than Landis could remove Jackson's statistics or Bart Giamatti could remove Rose's statistics. Because of this, I'd expect that any attempt to restrict 'official' sanction for Bonds and Rodriguez (and others) will have exactly the opposite effect that Selig wants -- Bonds and Rodriguez and whomever else is held off the top of the career homers list will, for at least some portion of baseball's fandom, become the most popular players of all time, just as currently there are groups agitating for the removal of Rose and Jackson from the banned list.

- The 'cheating' argument.

Sinker quotes Roy Oswalt in an unfortunate rant about how Rodriguez's stats shouldn't count, because Oswalt himself has never taken Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs), and Rodriguez's 'cheating' could have cost Oswalt wins and thus money in his contract.

Well, for starters I can see why Oswalt is pissed: a check of baseballreference.com's Play Index shows that Rodriguez is a career 3-for-7 against Oswalt, with all three hits being for extra bases (two doubles and a homer) and three RBI. On the other hand, that's less than 10 plate appearances, and if 10 plate appearances can cost a pitcher millions of dollars on his contract, then baseball is a far more exacting game than I was ever aware of, economically at least. I might be a bit more sympathetic if Oswalt were bitching about Pedro Feliz (.452/1275 with 2 HR and 8 RBI in 32 career PAs vs Oswalt) or even Neifi Perez (.407/851 in 28 career PAs), but I find it hard to get my dander up over 9 plate appearances in an entire big-league career.

More to the point, I don't believe Oswalt when he says he's never used PEDs. Has he never had a cortisone shot? As Will Leitch points out in his book "God Save The Fan", cortisone is an injectable steroid just like the bad-boys use. And back in 2004, Oswalt admitted that he took at least three cortisone shots to deal with an injury in his rib cage that otherwise would have prevented him from pitching. The essay in Leitch's book talks about Scott Rolen, who got a cortisone shot prior to the 2006 World Series against the Tigers and helped the Cardinals win. But was there an outcry from Tiger fans over Rolen's 'cheating' costing them the World Series? Nope.

The argument seems to go like this: cortisone is OK because it doesn't let you do anything you wouldn't otherwise have been able to do when you were healthy, whereas HGH, the cream, and such gives you abilities you didn't previously have.

That sounds good, but there's not a lot of empirical evidence to back up that assertion, from either end.

Sure, we have anecdotal evidence relating to Ken Caminiti's shocking MVP season, Bonds's single-season HR record year, and Mark McGwire's 1998 run at Maris's record. But by those standards, anybody could be a steroid user -- I have a friend who makes a compelling argument that Kirby Puckett took steroids from 1986-1987, at just about the time that Jose Canseco was singing their praises while a youngster with the Oakland A's. After all, Puckett had hit just 13 homers in over 200 minor league ballgames, then hit four in his first two full seasons with the Twins before hitting 31 in 1986 and 28 in 1987. Then, at an age where players' power tends to slowly increase, Puckett's seemed to vanish, as he dropped to 24 homers in 1988 and just 9 in 1989, despite having nearly identical numbers of plate appearances in those three seasons: Puckett had 668 PAs in 1987, 691 in 1988, and 684 in 1989. Only then did Puckett's home run totals begin to increase again, at a seemingly age-appropriate rate that led to a new career norm of about 20 homers per year. Unless we're willing to kick Kirby Puckett out of the Hall of Fame, we clearly can't rely on just anecdotal evidence.

Problem is, we don't have a lot of empirical evidence linking steroids and actual baseball performance, and what evidence we do have tends to say that the impact of steroids in baseball is far less than the alarmists claim. Thomas Boswell writes that it's suspicious that Rodriguez's home runs leapt by 12 or so per year after moving from Seattle to Texas, even though Texas is a notoriously easier park in which to hit homers. Boswell ignores that Rodriguez moved to Texas for his age 25 season, and played there through his age 27 season, which tend to be the peak seasons of a player's career. Taking the development factor into account, JC Bradbury looks at the numbers and claims that steroids were worth about one extra homer per year in the seasons in which Rodriguez says he was taking them. (And harkening back to the Kirby Puckett example: Puckett's 1986 home run breakout occurred in his age 26 season.)

What we do have is a lot of empirical evidence showing that steroids can increase muscle mass, and then a leap of faith that says that players with bigger muscles must be able to hit the ball harder, ergo more homers. While I have little doubt that this is probably true in the aggregate -- the more players taking steroids, the more homers will be hit -- and that this hypothesis does fit the 'home run era' of turn-of-the-century baseball, I have a hard time reconciling that with the evidence we have of the people who were actually suspended for steroid use during that time.

For instance, when MLB announced ten players who'd violated the new steroid policy back in 2005, the only one of those players with any significant major-league success was Twins set-up reliever Juan Rincon. (Rincon's reward for his allegedly steroid-fueled 2004? A two-year contract worth about $1 million, or less than half of what the Twins have reportedly offered Luis Ayala.) About half of the players on the list didn't even have any major league service time, which immediately suggests that, if steroids are this magic potion that makes you a superstar, why these guys were still languishing in AA and AAA?

Or look at the famous Mitchell Report. There are a number of high-profile names on the list, not just Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, but reading through the actual report makes it seem as though the high-profile players on the list weren't looking at steroids as a way to make them greater, but to hang onto big-league jobs they already had. In that sense, most players' apparent image of steroids matches the experience that Mark McGwire had taking androstenedione in 1998 -- prior to 1998, McGwire had a few seasons that seemed to suggest that he could hit 60+ homers if he was able to play a full season (in 1995, he hit 39 homers in 422 plate appearances, while in 1996, he hit 52 in 548 plate appearances). If he could simply stay in the lineup for 650 plate appearances or so, the home run title would be all but locked up. Well, in 1997 he hit 58 homers in 657 plate apparances, but the impact was masked because he split his production between leagues -- two-thirds of the season in Oakland and a third in St. Louis. Then in 1998, McGwire famously hit 70 homers -- and did it in 681 plate appearances. Given his move from Oakland to St. Louis, much of that increase in rate could be attributed simply to a change in ballparks (in his 1997 split-season, McGwire hit 34 homers in 433 PAs in Oakland, just about his career rate to that point, but pounded 24 in 224 PAs in St. Louis, slightly better than the rate he had in all of 1998). What 'andro' did for McGwire is basically what cortisone did for Scott Rolen and Roy Oswalt -- allowed them to continue playing at a high level of performance when their physical condition would normally either prevent them from playing at all or would at least degrade their level of performance. If that's a PED, then it's a PED for McGwire and Rolen...and Oswalt, who really shouldn't be throwing stones from the porch of his glass house.

If you combine 'home runs are going up because of steroids' with 'nobody really good is being busted for steroid use', you get a result that absolutely cries out for a conspiracy theory. And while we do know that it's true that high-tech steroid designers are deliberately engineering their steroids to evade current testing technology, it's also true that these steroids are being taken by way more than just baseball players -- it's actually hard to argue that baseball is the driving force behind these 'designer steroids' when baseball is so late to the party on steroid enforcement -- the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency are way ahead of baseball both on enforcement and testing of athletes for PEDs, and not just artificial PEDs, either.

But where there are conspiracy-minded people, all it takes is one bit of evidence to get the engines whirling.

- The 'anonymous testing' brouhaha

The first official steroid test in MLB occurred during the 2003 season, thanks to an addendum added to the Basic Agreement between the league and the player's union in late 2002. An awful amount of misinformation about MLB's steroid testing regime could be clarified by referencing the publically available document: (the joint drug testing program is listed as Attachment 18)

Myth: The player's union was responsible for running the anonymous 2003 testing program.

Fact: According to the agreement, administration of the entire program, from 2003 and beyond, was placed in the hands of a Health Policy Advisory Committee (HPAC), consisting of four people: two doctors, one named by MLB and the other by the union, and two lawyers, one named by MLB and the other by the union. In the event of a deadlock, the two doctors were given authority to name a fifth member of the committee solely for the purpose of breaking the deadlock.

Myth: The union failed to destroy the anonymous test samples as they should, and MLB was thus able to get ahold of the samples and identify the players who failed tests.

Fact: First, the union wasn't in charge of the testing process, HPAC was. There's some evidence that HPAC turned the records over to the union for destruction once their own work was done, but as noted by Gene Orza, lead attorney for the player's union, the destruction was delayed by the receipt of a federal subpoena. MLB hasn't released the names of the players involved in the positive tests, and still cannot because of the agreement between MLB and the union (see below).

Second, because of possible issues with legal over-the-counter supplements creating 'false positives' for the test, the testing process had a unique requirement -- all players (not just those who failed the initial test) would be tested twice; the second test would occur at least five but not more than seven days after the first test. At the first test, players would be told that they should stop taking OTC supplements until after taking the second test. If more than 10% of the positive tests in the first batch showed up negative in the second, HPAC would be responsible for advising the Commissioner's Office and the union on how to adjust the testing program to ensure that players taking legal supplements were not unfairly punished by failing drug tests. This would help explain why, even though the testing occurred during the 2003 season, the actual records and results were not turned over to the union for destruction until November.

Myth: The anonymous testing was a gimmick that MLB had to agree to in order to get the union to agree to testing at all.

Fact: The agreement between MLB and the union (on page 167 to be precise) says this:

The confidentiality of the Player’s participation in the Program is essential to the Program’s success. Except as provided in Section 8, the Office of the Commissioner, the Association, HPAC, Club personnel, and all of their members, affiliates, agents, consultants and employees, are prohibited from publicly disclosing information about the Player’s test results, Initial Evaluation, diagnosis, Treatment Program (including whether a Player is on either the Clinical or Administrative Track), prognosis or compliance with the Program.

The problem is that the federal government seized the 104 positive tests from 2003 as potential evidence in the federal investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO). The reason should be pretty obvious -- BALCO was being investigated for selling Schedule III controlled substances illicitly (that is, directly to users without a doctor's prescription). A record of a sale of a steroid to a user without a prescription, then a record that the user failed a steroid test, would make very convincing evidence that BALCO was violating the U.S. Controlled Substances Act.

That prosecution is still banging through the court system today, however, partly because of federal screw-ups. For instance, the search warrant used by the Feds to seize the test results only named the ten players being investigated for their connections to BALCO, meaning that the government really only had authority to take those ten players' tests. It hasn't yet been explained why the government got all the failed tests.

It's also true that the union has been fighting a lot harder than the Commissioner's Office has to try to keep the names of the players who failed the tests out of the public record; that's why you're seeing Don Fehr and Gene Orza making these announcements and not Bud Selig or any of his lieutenants.

Myth: The union delayed testing in 2004 so that they could warn players of the upcoming tests.

Orza has been accused of this twice by unnamed sources in the Commissioner's Office -- he's denied the allegations both times. That in and of itself doesn't mean the allegations are untrue, but Orza's point is a good one: if these allegations were true, one would expect there to be evidence, and thus far none has appeared.

Penalty-based testing was delayed in 2004 at the request of the union, but the union asked for the delay in order to alert the 104 members whose tests were seized by the government. MLB agreed to the delay.

In short, if more people would actually read the primary sources involved in this news, there'd be a lot less misinformation out there. Another example of misinformation is Sinker's own suggestion that MLB could do something similar to what they did in 1986 with seven players who were being suspended for using illegal drugs. The problem with this alternative is that MLB and the union, when renegotiating the 2003 agreement into the current agreement, spelled out the allowable penalties for players who fail penalty-based testing, and Sinker's suggestion isn't included. (That's not to say that Sinker's suggestion is a bad one, just that it's not something in the existing agreement. Frankly, I have no confidence in Bud Selig's judgment over what's legal or moral, so I'd prefer to leave all of that in the hands of collective bargaining anyway.)

One last point for those who think this aggressive, 'zero-tolerance' policy on steroids is a good thing; there's reason to believe that the steroid policy may have directly influenced the Twins competitiveness in 2005.

Recall that first-baseman Justin Morneau had just earned the starting job in mid-season of 2004 and Twins fans were looking forward to seeing what a full season of Morneau as the first-baseman would look like offensively. Then during the off-season, Morneau suffered a bout of pleurisy. Despite the old-timey name, pleurisy is still a reasonably common condition, often occurring as a complication to rib injury or to bacterial or viral respiratory infection; it's an inflammation of the membranes that surround the lungs, and can be dry (without fluid buildup) or wet (with fluid buildup). Treatment for pleurisy generally consists of treating the primary condition, then treating the inflammation with anti-inflammatory drugs.

Well, there are basically two types of anti-inflammatory drugs: non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as aspirin and ibuprofen, and corticosteroids. Corticosteroids are significantly stronger than ibuprofen -- if you've ever spent time around an asthma patient, the inhaler they use when they feel an attack coming on contains a fast-acting corticosteroid. However, it's possible (though certainly not a given), because the high pitch of anti-steroid fever following the 2004 season, Morneau may have chosen to treat his pleurisy with non-steroidal pain relievers/anti-inflammatory drugs, extending his recovery time and keeping him at less than 100% effectiveness throughout the 2005 season (still by far Morneau's worst as a professional). And of course, given the reaction to Rincon's failed drug test during that season, it's hard to say that Morneau's decision was the wrong one -- sure, we all want to see our favorite players back on the field and 'playing through pain', but how many non-Twins fans would have given Morneau the benefit of the doubt when he says he was taking the steroid for pleurisy rather than to mask a PED?

Looks like the steroid discussion just got more complicated.

Three Hundred Words About Luis Ayala (and Twins Geek)

2009-02-11T20:33:00.001-08:00

The signing will please contrarians immensely, because that 2008 ERA is such a deliciously large target, and the truth is that he wasn't better than that. He was exactly that.

That comes from TwinsGeek, the grandfather of Twins bloggers, and a more obvious call-out I haven't seen in a long time. (The name of my blog when I wrote for the Geek on his TwinsTerritory.com site was "Contrarian Bias".)

I wouldn't say I'm pleased with the signing necessarily, though -- I'm a bit more contrarian even than that. For starters, both the Geek and Gleeman seem to think that the Ayala signing guarantees him a spot in the bullpen, but I don't think that's a given: for starters, the link from Gleeman's analysis to the Strib story discussing the signing doesn't quote anybody in the Twins organization saying what they expect Ayala's role to be. (The only comment from a Twins exec is Bill Smith saying, in effect, "No comment.") The quote about Ayala competing for the setup job is from Ayala's agent, who of course believes that's what his client is doing to do, because that's why he convinced his client to sign the contract (even though, as far as we can tell, he hasn't actually...y'know...signed a contract yet. See below.)

Yes, Ron Gardenhire has a tendency to favor veterans over young players, but he's got a stronger tendency to favor players who've produced for him to players he doesn't know well who struggle, regardless of age (see how quickly Gardy dropped Phil Nevin from the lineup in 2006, or Bret Boone in 2005).

Also, the Twins have been known to sign veterans in the off-season, invite them to spring training, and then release them before the season:

2005: Andy Fox, Eric Munson, C.J. Nitkowski
2006: Darrell May, Ryan Glynn
2007: Randy Choate
2008: Randy Kiesler

Of course, you probably don't remember many if any of these guys -- I sure didn't, until I looked them up on baseball-reference.com.

Oddest of all, there doesn't seem to be any indication that Ayala has actually been signed: the most bizarre of the stories out there was posted to MLB.com and penned by Doug Miller with the headline "Twins add Ayala to relief corp", which begins with the following sentence:

The Twins made a move toward shoring up their bullpen Friday, signing right-hander Luis Ayala to a one-year, $1.3 million contract, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

And ending with this sentence:

Twins GM Bill Smith declined comment, keeping with team policy of not discussing negotiations.

Huh? If the player signed a contract, aren't you done negotiating with him? (By the way, the Strib story referenced by Miller? That's the Christiansen story linked to by Gleeman, which says only that the Twins and Ayala have reached an agreement.

So much for sports journalism.)

The Geek seems to think Ayala's troubles in 2008 are a mystery, since he still struck out plenty. Gleeman seems to think Ayala was unlucky, which is normally an argument I'd agree with -- in this case, though, even Ayala's fielding-independent ERA for 2008 posts at 4.47, which isn't a mark that most Twins fans will feel comfortable with from a set-up reliever.

I'll agree with Gleeman that Ayala's numbers make him look to be about the fifth man deep in a good AL bullpen, and not a setup-guy at all; what I'll disagree with is Gleeman's assertion that Ayala's very presence in spring training will make it hard for Phil Humber or Bobby Korecky to make the opening day roster. I think if Ayala has an outstanding spring he'll be on the roster and might even be the Twins first set-up man of the season, but if his spring goes poorly (and he's starting it out with a stint in the World Baseball Classic, pitching for his native Mexico), I think the Twins brass, Gardenhire included, would find it a lot easier to cut a $1.3 million veteran with no history with the franchise than a guy who's been in the organization since 2003 (Korecky was the PTBNL in the Eric Milton trade back in 2003 in which the Twins also acquired Carlos Silva and Nick Punto), or a guy who was in a package of players for arguably the best starting pitcher in Twins history (Humber).

Oh well, I guess this is actually a lot closer to a thousand words than three hundred. Just goes to show you how you can get carried away about even the smallest things in life. Perhaps I'd have been better off simply showing a picture.

Dreaming Big, Living Small

2009-02-03T19:40:00.001-08:00

Reader Marv makes a very reasoned point in the last post regarding Jason Kubel:

It seems to me that the obvious question is, "What would Adam Dunn have cost?". If Kubel's SLG % goes up then he was probably the right choice...Difficult to assess at this point whether this was a good signing or a missed opportunity.

Marv's point is dead-on; it's going to be really hard to tell before the start of the 2011 season whether the Kubel deal was a good one or a bad one on its own merits. Plus, it's not very easy to actually measure the opportunity costs involved in signing Kubel over signing or trading for an alternative, especially when the Twins have seemingly larger needs than replacing their league-average outfielder-DH.

But there's another way to look at the signing, and since we've still got about a week left in Hot Stove League action, let's go ahead and dream big:

Instead of signing Jason Kubel to a 3-year, $12 million contract, what if the Twins had signed Manny Ramirez to a 3-year, $62 million contract?

OK, I know, for starters the Twins would never offer this kind of contract. The closest they've ever come to offering this kind of contract was the five-year, $100 million contract they reportedly offered Johan Santana -- and that Santana reportedly turned down. And Santana was still young with the potential of being effective at the end of the five year deal -- Ramirez is about to turn 37, which means by the time the Twins would be able to wriggle out of the deal, Ramirez would be pushing 40 and might not even be an active player anymore. The deal would be a humongous risk for a franchise for which the phrase 'risk-averse' is an absurd understatement.

Even if they offered it, Ramirez might not accept it: Ramirez has already rejected a deal from the Dodgers reportedly structured similarly to the Kubel deal, but worth $45 million over two years rather than $7 million, with a third team option year. There's evidence that Ramirez isn't so hung up over the lack of a guaranteed third year as he is the lack of a guaranteed fourth year, which to a club like the Twins looks absolutely insane.

Those aren't the points. The point is, if the Twins spent an extra $50 million on Manny Ramirez over Jason Kubel for the next three seasons, would it be worth it?

Begin with the obvious:

- Jason Kubel's best season in the major leagues was 2008, when he hit .272/806 with a park-adjusted OPS+ of 118.
- Manny Ramirez's worst season, among 15 seasons with at least 60 plate appearances, was when he hit .269/878 with a park-adjusted OPS+ of 124 as a 22-year old rookie. His next-worst season was in 2007, when he hit .296/881 with a park-adjusted OPS+ of 126 as an allegedly disaffected 35-year old with the Red Sox, in a season where the Sox won the World Series.

It's not impossible to imagine that Kubel could finish 2009, or the entire 2009-2011 period, with better offensive numbers than Manny Ramirez, but nothing in either player's history suggests that it's likely. Ramirez's career average hitting line is .314/1004, and he hit better than that when adding in both his Boston and LA stats in 2008 (.332/1031). Kubel would need to have the best seasons of his career at the same time that Ramirez is having the worst seasons of his. Again, not impossible, but if you tried to set up a betting line in Vegas, you'd have to shut it down for lack of interest in Kubel.

I pointed out in the previous post that Fangraphs posts numbers that suggest that Kubel was worth about $2 million to the Twins in 2008; the same measures suggest that Ramirez was worth a combined $28.3 million to his teams in 2008.

Let's move on to the not-so-obvious:

- Manny Ramirez, from 2005-2007, was among the worst regular left-fielders in baseball defensively, amassing UZR/150 ratings of -23.7, -26.4, and -25.0 in each of those three seasons. His career UZR/150 in left is a very poor -12.7.
- Kubel, in 2008, had a UZR/150 in left field of -46.6, and has a career UZR/150 in left that's even worse than Ramirez's: -16.3.

So sure, Kubel DH's two-thirds of the time and Ramirez famously doesn't want to DH -- but putting Ramirez's glove in left would actually be arguably better than putting Kubel's out there.

- Kubel, in 2008, collected a Win Probability Added rating of .94, meaning he added about one win to the Twins performance over what someone of 'typical' performance might have done in his shoes. His .94 WPA in 2008 comprises his entire career WPA of .91 and slightly more.

- Ramirez, in 2008, collected a Win Probability Added rating of 7.57 split between his two ballclubs, meaning he added between seven and eight wins to his clubs' performance over a 'typical' performer. Though this total was the highest of his career, his career WPA of 52.16 still dwarfs even his top season.

Hard to add anything to that comparison.

- The most optimistic projection of Kubel's 2009 season comes from the Bill James Baseball Handbook published by Baseball Info Solutions; it projects Kubel as hitting .282/837 next season with 22 HR in 569 PAs.

- The most pessimistic projection of Ramirez's 2009 season comes from Sean Smith's CHONE system; it projects Ramirez as hitting .290/941 with 32 HR in 565 PAs.

The difference between these two projections -- the most optimistic Kubel projection and the most pessimistic Ramirez projection -- still has Ramirez ahead by 30 runs created -- and thus approximately three wins -- in a nearly identical number of at-bats. That's the best-case comparison in Kubel's favor that's still within reason and predictable; unreasonable would involve either Kubel or Ramirez hitting 60+ HRs and thus having a fluke season, unpredictable would involve either Kubel or Ramirez suffering a season-ending injury in May.

The last point here begins to hint at the real issue underlying this analysis: what is a win worth, and how much should you pay for it? There are basically three ways to look at the situation:

1. The Academic View

Those who've studied the issue of what's called marginal win cost generally come to three conclusions: first, winning the first 50 games is cheap, since any team can bring up a bunch of league-minimum AAA players and expect to win 50+ games during the regular year; second, winning the last 50 games is ridiculously if prohibitively expensive, since so few teams have actually won 112+ games it stands to reason that factors beyond mere payroll are responsible for teams that perform that well; third, that within the 62 games in the middle of this analysis, some teams do better than others in how much they pay for these 'marginal wins'.

It's assumed in this view that you do best by paying the lowest marginal win cost, though it's difficult to translate that into a concrete 'how-to'; marginal win studies can do a great job of pointing out how efficient the Twins and A's are at turning cash into wins, but the closest they get on how to accomplish the feat is to say 'find young players who can play and get them onto your roster while you don't have to pay them anything'. Easier said than done, of course.

2. The Fan's View

Those who follow the game often seem to fall into a mode of thinking where no amount of money is too much to pay for a championship; Yankee fans in particular seem especially guilty of subscribing to this view, aided and abetted by their longtime GM, George Steinbrenner.

Unfortunately, the 'how to' in this situation also seems muddled, in the sense that most fans seem eager to spend money on 'big name' players, using the theory that the more famous a player is, the better he is and thus the more likely your team will win as a result. Ask a Yankee fan if the big-name acquisitions the club made from 2002-2006 really helped their ballclub, then ask why they think the 2009 acquisitions will be any better. (Be prepared to duck.)

3. The Team's View

There's ample evidence to suggest that actual major league teams, particularly the successful ones at buying marginal wins, don't look at the situation as one where they try to maximize the number of wins they buy for a given payroll, but rather where they try to meet a target number of wins for the least amount of payroll. (This precise sort of analysis is the focus of a chapter in Michael Lewis's "Moneyball", specifically "The Science of Winning an Unfair Game".) Nearly any press release of the Terry Ryan-Bill Smith Twins will show you the same kind of thinking at work; the team isn't trying to maximize their win total as much as they're trying to reach a specific win goal while leaving their options open financially.

Ramirez over Kubel would be a clear win in the eyes of paradigm #2; if the Twins did sign Ramirez to a free-agent contract, those local writers who didn't immediately pan the signing as coddling to a huge ego would likely argue that the Twins should not only be the favorites to win the AL Central, but the World Series as well -- after all, the club has won a lot of games with players like Michael Cuddyer and Nick Punto; how many more wins can they get now that they have a 'real' hitter?

Paradigm #1 wouldn't tell us anything that we couldn't predict ourselves; the Twins would be increasing both their win total as well as their marginal win cost. The Twins would merely go from being one of the most efficient teams at turning money into wins to being middle-of-the-pack, still ahead of clubs like Seattle, Baltimore, and Texas who continue to have huge payrolls and disappointing on-field performance.

Paradigm #3 though, would win the day -- if the front office really believes that their current roster can win 90 games in 2009, and they think that 90 wins should win or at least contend for the division title and/or the Wild Card, what incentive do they have to spend an extra $50 million over three years to up that total to 93 or more? Why dump the big money and take a big risk on Manny Ramirez, with all the baggage that implies, when you can spend a reasonable amount of money on a guy who fits into your system, never complains, and can still help you get to where you want to go? Just like a game of baseball counts the same whether you win by one run or ten, the playoffs still largely look the same if you win your division by two games or by fifteen. What are the extra wins really getting you, except more risk?

It's killing for a fan to realize this -- the ballclub isn't going to roll the dice on a big-name acquisition because they simply don't see the need to take that kind of risk. But that's ultimately why Jason Kubel, warts and all, is a better player for the Twins than Manny Ramirez. They know him, he knows them, and they both have a good idea where they're headed.

So yes, the failure to go out and get an Adam Dunn or a Garrett Atkins or even a Manny Ramirez is a wasted opportunity; it's just not an opportunity worth paying for, in the long run.

The Kubel Question

2009-01-30T20:38:00.001-08:00

It's been a very quiet off-season for the Minnesota Twins. Though they were rumored to be involved in a number of free-agent and trade discussions, ultimately the only deals they swung to this point were to re-sign some of their own players to multi-year contracts. The most recent such deal, the signing of Jason Kubel to a three-year contract (two years guaranteed, one team option year) has produced the closest thing to controversy that the Twins blogosphere has seen.

The immediate reaction was positive; Twins bloggers like Kubel and seemed pleased that he'd gotten a deal that would pay him something like what they perceive him to be worth while also providing the Twins with payroll certainty over Kubel's last two years of arbitration and possible first year of free agency.

Then the cognitive dissonance began to set in, as outside observers critiqued the very deal Twins bloggers were applauding. First it was Dave Cameron of USS Mariner, posting on Fangraphs and using devastating comments like this:

"In what world is Jason Kubel a significnatly better player than Eric Hinske?

"Given everyday playing time at DH, we can estimate he (Kubel)’ll be worth between 0.5 and 1.0 wins for 2009."

"I know, I know, it’s only $7 million over two years. But it’s a needless use of resources. The Twins budget isn’t that of the Yankees or Red Sox, so to contend, they need to maximize the return on all the dollars they spend. Especially in this economic climate, where good players can’t find contract offers, giving a multiyear deal to Jason Kubel doesn’t maximize the return."

It's actually a fairly reasonable argument -- given the downturn in baseball economics (MLB teams aren't yet earning less money, but they're seeing the writing on the wall so many are tightening up payroll), plenty of players with demonstrated performance as good or better than Kubel's over the past two years are signing for much less money. So why Kubel?

The plot thickened when ESPN's Rob Neyer weighed in on his blog:

"If Jason Kubel were a free agent, it's not likely that the Twins would have thrown $7 million (or $12 million) his way. But Kubel's been a Twin for nearly nine years, and after nearly nine years (and a knee surgery or two) it's not easy to cut a guy loose. Especially a fairly productive guy. Even when the numbers say that's exactly what you should do."

Neyer supported his analysis with Fangraph charts showing that, based on sabermetric measures of value, Hinske was worth about $9 million playing for the Rays in 2008 while Kubel, even given that it was the best-hitting season of his big-league career, was only worth about $2 million for the Twins. The main difference? Hinske can play the outfield reasonably well and first base solidly, while Kubel has basically zero defensive value.

The blogosphere has started its response to Cameron, in Nick Nelson's essay on the eponymous Nick & Nick's:

"First of all, five years of age and 1,800 at-bats of big-league experience are not inconsequential. We know what Hinske is by this point, but the fact that Kubel was a minor-league stud who missed a year of crucial development time due to a devastating knee injury and has been steadily improving ever since makes it much harder to judge what he’s capable of. In Kubel, I see a player who is inching closer and closer to the monster hitter he was in the minors. In Hinske, I see a washout whose utility doesn’t stretch beyond left-handed pinch hitter."

Nelson's not alone -- even Aaron Gleeman goes to bat for Kubel yet again, even going so far as to point out that he "still hasn't had 500 at-bats in a season" (despite having had more plate appearances than any other Twins from 2007-2008 save for Mauer and Morneau, and more starts than any other Twins except Morneau alone; he's been in the starting lineup and at the plate more often than Gardy whipping-boy Nick Punto).

And while it isn't impossible for Kubel to finally have that 'breakout' season at age 27, the reality is that Kubel's had about a season-and-a-half of regular play since his 2006 'rehab year', and hasn't really impressed -- a hitting line of .272/796 looks impressive when compared to other Twins, but far less impressive when compared to the AL average for "offensive positions" as defined by baseball-reference.com (.270/785).

"As for Cameron’s suggested plan of using Hinske this year, then finding his “clone” next winter and continuing that path to keep the DH spot filled... it's fine in theory, but it's also something the Twins have shown absolutely no ability to do historically.

That comment seems to be inspired by ubelmann's list of Twins DH OPS's by year, which while interesting, has two major flaws:

1) It follows along with the apparently straight-faced suggestion that Kubel might actually manage to improve his OPS by another 70 points over his major-league career high (an improvement which, while not impossible, can't be considered a reasonable projection for any player), and

2) It suggests that a team without a good-hitting DH can't compete, which is ludicrous in comparison to the Twins record since 2002 (one game shy of six division titles in eight seasons), as well as the records of teams that have actually played well in the AL over those seasons. Example: The Twins DH OPS in 2008 was 782; the Tampa Bay Ray's DH OPS in 2008 was 751. If only the Twins had a better DH!

Finally, the biggest chuckler of the essay:

"As for the supposed risk associated with the contract, the Twins are paying Kubel about a million more than Hinske will make this year (inconsequential considering their budget surplus) and they’re on the hook for $4.1 million in 2010, which they can pretty easily afford."

Ah, yes, the infamous 'why aren't the Twins spending as much money as we think they should' argument.

The point, of course, is not to spend $90 million on payroll and have a mediocre ballclub -- the Orioles and Rangers have that niche pretty much filled, so if you're looking for that kind of team to root for, go ahead and feel free.

Though the Twins may be under their 'projected' payroll based on some factors, the point of having that extra money, to the degree that any amount of money is 'extra' money in sports, is to spend it on improving the ballclub. Mock the signing of Livan Hernandez in 2008 all you want, but he was the Twins best pitcher in April and helped keep the club close enough so that their mid-season rally made for a meaningful year instead of a year where they roared back from the cellar to .500 (as Cleveland did). And for every Sidney Ponson and Tony Batista, the Twins have signed a Kenny Rogers and Pat Borders, players who helped keep the club in contention and even win in years where they might not have been expected to.

Personally I'll be more interested what happens to Kubel after 2010, when the Twins have the option of picking up a $5 million+ contract or letting a player go who still hasn't fulfilled his potential. Maybe if Kubel were Hispanic the blogosphere would have an easier time cutting him loose...

Top Five Myths of the Twins 2008 Season - pt 5

2009-01-05T20:52:00.001-08:00

One of the things that you realize when you start a series like this is that there are a whole lot more potential topics to discuss than there are slots to discuss them in. For instance, either of the following would make a viable Myth #5:

- Jason Kubel is a talented young player who just needs more playing time to blossom into a quality major-league hitter.

As of the end of 2008, the Twins have now invested over 300 starts and nearly 1300 career plate appearances in a soon-to-be 27 year old with a career OPS+ of 105, and whose last two seasons have been remarkably consistent:

      2007     2008
Avg.  .273     .272
OBP   .335     .335
RC/G   5.4      5.4

With all the talk about how disappointing Delmon Young's season was, it should be pointed out that not only did Young have about the same OBP as Kubel (Young actually had a .336 OBP in 2008), Young also had better defensive numbers in left field (Young had a .973 fielding percentage and a 1.94 range factor, while Kubel had a .926 fielding percentage and a 1.39 range factor in left).

- Ron Gardenhire's ideosyncracies as a manager cost the Twins a division title in 2008.

Most of the people who seem to complain about Gardenhire's alleged incompetence as a manager can't seem to actually point to anything he does that's actually unusual about him: a willingness to use one-run strategies in the late innings of a close game makes him pretty typical among major league managers, and a preference for established veterans, even of relatively modest success, over largely unknown young players makes him pretty run-of-the-mill for a captain in almost any major professional sport.

In addition, Gardenhire nay-sayers also have the uncanny ability to ignore evidence that contradicts their favorite talking-points: they'll lambaste Gardenhire for being fairly cautious with Kubel in 2006 in his first season back from catastrophic knee surgery, without recognizing that Kubel's 269 appearances for the Twins in 2007 and 2008 ranks second on the team behind only Justin Morneau, and his 234 starts puts him third behind Morneau and Joe Mauer. (Nick Punto, the poster-child for Gardenhire's preference for ineffective glove-men over potent hitters, has just 249 appearances and 224 starts.) The nay-sayers will poke fun at Gardenhire for how long it took him to promote Johan Santana to the starting rotation full-time, but give him no credit for handing the closer job to a 29-year old mediocre starter (12-6, 4.71 ERA in 1999-2000) turned solid middle reliever (12-4, 2.96 ERA, 1.063 WHIP, but just 9 GF and 0 saves in 73 appearances in 2003). It doesn't even cover Gardenhire's handling of Morneau, who became the starter in 2004 over the complaints of the struggling incumbent and one of the team leaders from the successful Twins clubs of 2002-2003, and who remained the primary starter (126 starts) through a horrible 2005 campaign that saw him finish with a .239/741 hitting line that gave some serious doubts as to whether Morneau was really big-league material.

But the topic I want to focus on is one touched on in an otherwise excellent three-part series by Dan Wade at TwinsFix.com:

Because it is almost impossible to get the production necessary out a player to make a massive free-agent deal or the load of prospects required to make a blockbuster trade, seem like a good investment, the Twins have been able to field a high value team at relatively low cost.

Wade's conclusion is perhaps the biggest myth, not just of the 2008 season, but of the Twins as a whole during the 21st century, so I'll use his words to frame it:

Myth #5: The Twins development strategy "does, however, leave holes, and unlike the teams who do play the free agent market, the Twins have a lot of trouble filing (sic) them."

I want to repeat that I very much enjoyed Wade's essays and thought he made interesting points, because by criticizing some of the underlying logic behind his essays, I'm going to suggest that he's relatively ignorant of history and unwilling to follow the logic of his own arguments, not traits I'd otherwise recommend in an analyst of any stripe.

For starters, the Twins strategy actually leaves fewer holes than a strategy of playing the free agent market regularly. Consider some of the most regular participants in the annual free agent sweepstakes: the Yankees and Dodgers, the arguably biggest spenders in each league (though the Red Sox in the AL and the Braves in the NL have payrolls which rival those of the Big Two).

Since 2001, the Twins have had three different regular starters at catcher (and one of those, Henry Blanco, was a fill-in for injured Joe Mauer), two at first base, and two in center field (with Carlos Gomez stepping in just this year). From 2001-2004 the club had one starter at second (Rivas), one at short (Guzman), one at third (Koskie), and two in left (Jones and Stewart, after Jones moved from left to right); the least stable positions in the Twins organization have been those positions where they've most relied on free agent solutions, mainly at DH, where Jose Offerman, Rondell White, and Jeff Cirillo were all free-agent acquisitions who spent much time (and not a whole lot of memorable time) being the designated hitter.

The Yankees, meanwhile, have had that degree of stability at only a few positions -- catcher and shortstop, certainly, and arguably second base and center field as well. They've had five different regular starters at first, two of which were recycled from previous stints. They've had three different third basemen (though the current guy is actually pretty good), four different leftfielders, and five different rightfielders.

The Dodgers have been even more chaotic, with nobody in the organization holding his position for more than four straight seasons, counting from 2001; the closest they get is Adrian Beltre, whom they had at third from 1998-2004 before losing him as a free agent to Seattle. In the past eight seasons, the Dodgers have had three different catchers, four different shortstops, five different rightfielders, six different firstbasemen, and seven different leftfielders.

Bill James (yes, him again) once made the point that being a major-league GM was kind of like being a janitor in a large institution. Investing in your minor-league organization and seeking out long-term solutions to your positional needs was like buying long-life bulbs for your building, while investing in quick-fix free agents was like buying cheaper, low-life bulbs. When your entire building is filled with long-life bulbs, you don't spend much time worrying about them, and it's not a horrible thing to bring in the occasional cheap bulb to tide you over. But the more you end up replacing long-term bulbs with cheaper bulbs, the more frequently you have to replace them, until eventually your entire job is just walking around looking for light bulbs that have burned out.

The astonishing thing about the Twins during the Gardenhire era isn't the holes they've had to fill, but the holes they haven't had to fill. While the more recent Twins don't look quite as good as their 2001-2004 predecessors in this respect, they're still way ahead of the Dodgers:

2006: Twins bring in Luis Castillo to play second, move Michael Cuddyer to right to replace Jacque Jones, and try Rondell White at DH, opening a 'hole' at third, which the Twins try to fill with Nick Punto.

2006: Dodgers bring in Russell Martin to replace Jason Phllips (who himself replaced Paul LoDuca the year before), bring in Nomar Garciaparra as a free agent from the Cubs, acquire Wilson Betemit from the Braves at mid-season to play third, bring in Rafael Furcal as a free agent to play short, trade Milton Bradley (who'd been signed two years earlier to be the answer in center) for Andre Ethier to play left, and bring in Kenny Lofton as a free agent to play center. This opens a 'hole' in right, which the Dodgers try to fill with J.D. Drew.

Of the Twins players given chances in 2006, Castillo and White are the only departures. Meanwhile, Garciaparra, Betemit, Furcal, Lofton, and Drew are all departed from the Dodgers, as is Luis Gonzalez, acquired as a free agent prior to the 2007 season.

The Dodgers are learning, though -- in 2008 they promoted youngsters Blake DeWitt and Matt Kemp, both highly-touted prospects who may lock down their respective positions for years to come and give the Dodgers time to find better fixes at their other positions where they are aging or otherwise deficient.

That's really the successful plan, after all. I wrote an essay earlier in 2008 about consistency, the point being that consistency for its own sake wasn't as good an indicator of quality as consistency as a side-effect of planning and good organization. The more good decisions the Twins make at first, catcher, etc., the fewer the holes they need to address in any given year, and the better the fix they can expect to look for to fill those holes and still remain competitive in the meantime.

After all, the history of patient franchises is a pretty good one:

- The benchmark of patient franchises, to a James fan, is the '70s-'80s Royals, who started with Amos Otis in 1970, then added John Mayberry in 1972, Hal McRae in 1973 (and won 88 games that year), George Brett in 1974, and Frank White in 1976 to form the nucleus of a team that would go to the World Series in 1980 and 1985, winning the latter, and be competitive for nearly two decades. Meanwhile, the club was also adding pitching -- Paul Splitorff became a regular starter in 1971, Dennis Leonard was added in 1974, Dan Quisenberry was a setup man in 1979, and finally Bret Saberhagen was a bullpen pitcher in 1984 and won the Cy Young in 1985. Charlie Leibrandt developed into a solid starter, and Danny Jackson and Mark Gubicza were young starters who seemed to have potential as well.

Starting in 1985, though, the Royals organization shifted from a strategy of bringing up talent to trying to shore up their perceived talent via free agency. It worked in '85, as Jim Sundberg and Lonnie Smith were acquired to help 'fill holes', but time went on and more holes developed, with the club looking for the quick fix instead of the sure fix: Jamie Quirk as catcher in 1987, Ted Power acquired in trade in 1988, Bob Boone brought in to shore up catcher again in 1989. This isn't to say that the Royals entirely gave up on youth -- they promoted Kevin Seitzer, Danny Tartabull, Kurt Stillwell, and Kevin Appier during this timeframe, but the longer the club went without winning, the less confident they felt in young talent. Jim Eisenreich came from the Twins in 1990, as did Pete Filson; the Royals more famously signed both Storm and Mark Davis as free agents that year. In '91 they brought in Bill Pecota and Kirk Gibson as well as pitcher Mike Boddicker. Wally Joyner and Kevin McReynolds joined up in '92, and they held on for a last gasp over the strike with the help of Gary Gaetti, Greg Gagne, and David Cone. They slipped below .500 after the strike, though, and though they've had good young players since (Johnny Damon in 1996, Jermaine Dye in 1997, Mike Sweeney in 1998, Carlos Beltran in 1999), they've been too reluctant to hold onto those players and too eager to go with veteran mediocrities (Chad Kreuter, a 37-year old Terry Pendleton, a 37-year old Chili Davis, a 35-year old Tim Belcher) to make those investments in youth pay off in wins.

- The New York Yankees have one of the most storied winning traditions in baseball history, and the start of the free agency era was seen as the chance for them to put their indelible mark on baseball's new era. Yet the Yankees, who improved enough immediately at the start of free agency to win a couple of World Series titles with rent-a-stars like Reggie Jackson and Catfish Hunter pirated from other champions, still had home-grown talent in Ron Guidry (3rd round pick, 1971) and Thurmon Munson (4th overall pick, 1968). But their need to stay 'on top' led them to make silly acquisitions, like 38-year old Luis Tiant, 40-year old Jim Kaat, and 41-year old Gaylord Perry on the pitching staff, while adding 34-year old Bob Watson, 33-year old John Mayberry (from the Royals), and 34-year old Don Baylor to the offense. They, like the Royals, weren't entirely without home-grown talent -- Don Mattingly came up in 1983, and Dave Righetti, acquired from Texas as a minor-league throw-in with four other players in 1978, debuted as Rookie of the Year in 1981, but their '81 AL pennant would be their last until the mid-90s, when they rediscovered the power of home grown talent. Oddly, that particular team had a lot of older free agents, including Tony Fernandez, Wade Boggs, Jack McDowell, and David Cone, but the keys were the developing Bernie Williams, Andy Pettite, and Mariano Rivera, joined by Rookie of the Year Derek Jeter the year after. Salting these home-grown stars with just enough free agents (Chuck Knoblauch, David Wells, Tino Martinez, Mike Mussina) helped the Yankees become a dynasty again; over-reliance on free-agents to patch holes (Kevin Brown, Randy Johnson, Doug Mientkiewicz?) led eventually to the decline of that dynasty and its current state.

Which needs a bit of addressing in and of itself. The Yankees have outdone themselves this year, exchanging huge payrolls for huge payrolls and acquiring players who seem to have magically put the Yankees right back into championship contention, on paper anyway. On one hand, it's hard to imagine how CC Sebathia, Mark Teixeira, and AJ Burnett don't help the Yankees, but in another sense, it's easy to see how those deals might not actually help the Yanks, either. It has to do with the real difference between the Twins strategy and that of the 'big market' clubs: their treatment of risk.

Banks hire dull people and train them to be even more dull. If they look conservative, it's only because their loans go bust on rare, very rare occasions. But (...)bankers are not conservative at all. They are just phenomenally skilled at self-deception by burying the possibility of a large, devastating loss under the rug.
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable"

What do you think the odds are that a given player will suffer an injury so severe as to impact his performance in a given season? That is, an injury that will cause him to perform below his established career norms. One in a thousand?

Well, what does 'one in a thousand' actually mean here? Does it mean that, for each inning a player plays, he's got a one in a thousand chance of getting seriously hurt? Probably not, given that most regulars play about a thousand innings or more in a given season, which would suggest that every regular should be noticeably injured much of the time. Still, the odds are probably better than you expect, and the risk you take by putting all your eggs in one basket increases with the size of the basket.

Now add in the odds that another player will simply slump in a given year. Then that a third will have a personal problem, say a divorce or drug problem, that impacts his play. Vanishingly small, right?

Except that teams are collections of players, and interact statistically in ways that are not really well understood.

Case in point: if you pick two people at random, the odds that they'll have been born on the same day (say, February 7, for example) is very small -- 1 in 133,225, not counting the possibility of leap days. That's pretty rare. So how many people do you need to put into a room before you have a 50-50 chance of finding two people with the same birthday?

About twenty-three. Yes, that's all.

Each person you add creates an exponentially larger number of possible birthday matches, thus increasing the odds of a match. Get up to 60 people, and your odds are nearly certain of finding a match, even considering leap days. And of course the real probability-expander in this problem is that you don't need your two people to match a given birthday -- you only need them to match any possible birthday.

So what are the odds of a player getting hurt badly enough to affect his performance, develop a problem that interferes with his play, get into an argument with a teammate that ruins clubhouse morale, or what have you? Did you know that in 2007, the Yankees used nearly 50 different players in game situations? If you accept that the players who play more are more likely to suffer problems, then it's obvious that the more players you have, the more likely you are to have problems, and the more 'great' players you have, the harder it will be to replace them when they do go down.

The strength of the Twins strategy is, to some degree, its resilience. If you spend $35 million to bring in a free agent and he doesn't perform, you probably can't replace that production. If, however, you have a $4 million super-sub (like Nick Punto) who goes down, you can almost certainly find somebody, with enough experimentation, to do nearly as well. And sometimes you even get lucky, as the Twins did last year when replacing the injured Michael Cuddyer with Denard Span. Odds are that Span won't do as well as he did in 2008, but if Cuddyer bounces back to where he was in 2006, what's the real difference?

Now keep in mind here that I'm not arguing that you should play a team full of 'replacement-level players', whatever that's supposed to mean. Such a team would be so uncompetitive that it wouldn't be worth watching. But a team of solid players, long-term solutions, backed up by more long-term solutions waiting in the wings, is going to do better in the long haul than a team that has to constantly re-invent itself from season to season. After all, how many World Series have the Dodgers won lately?

Top Five Myths of the Twins 2008 Season - pt 4

2008-12-27T15:34:00.001-08:00

The Twins did pretty well in 2008, falling just one game shy of the AL Central Division title. There's been a lot of talk about how the team can improve for 2009, though, and that talk tends to follow one of two threads:

Myth #4: The Twins need to keep their young 5-man rotation intact and allow them to develop.

Or, alternately...

Myth #4a: If the Twins do need to give up on one of their starters to acquire an offensive player, deal Nick Blackburn.

Let me start out by saying that the idea of keeping the rotation fairly intact isn't, in and of itself, a horrible idea. Most fans who propose this line of thinking are probably, consciously or not, comparing the current Twins to the Atlanta Braves circa 1991.

The Braves had just bounced from worst-to-first, making the World Series for the first time since they were the Milwaukee Braves back in 1958. Even then, the strength of their team was in their starting pitching, and it was put together in a way that'll look very familiar to current Twins fans: one veteran starter serving as staff ace (Charlie Leibrandt) and five other pitchers, all of whom were under 26 years of age. By the start of the 1993 season, the Braves had replaced Leibrandt with former Cub Greg Maddux, and their reign over the American League East was locked-in; starting from 1991, the Braves won fourteen straight division titles, though just a single World Series title in all that time.

So let's go back to 1991. The best hitter on your team is probably 30-year old third baseman Terry Pendleton, though your best home run hitter is centerfielder Ron Gant. However, you do have a few holes in your offense: catcher Greg Olson, first-baseman Sid Bream, and shortstop Rafael Belliard are all among the worst offensive performers for their positions, though Bream has the reputation of being one of the top defensive players at his position. You can already tell that your experiment with Deion Sanders isn't going to work out particularly well, and you're looking for a long-term upgrade at one of those three positions, but in order to do that, you're going to probably have to give up one of those five young starters. Of those five starters, only three really have any trade value, and they rack up like this:

A - 25 yrs old - 20-11, 2.55 ERA in 1991, 33-41, 4.29 ERA in 105 career starts prior to 1991
B - 24 yrs old - 14-13, 3.80 ERA in 1991, 28-29, 3.68 ERA in 75 career starts prior to 1991
C - 21 yrs old - 18-8, 3.38 ERA in 1991, 3-11, 5.64 ERA in 20 career starts prior to 1991

As additional information, pitcher A was a late 2nd round draft pick who'd compiled a 7-17, mid-4 ERA at AAA prior to first being called up, while striking out 103 and walking 83 in 190 innings. Pitcher B was a minor-league acquisition from another franchise, having been taken in the 22nd round, but who put together a combined 10-6, near-3 ERA pitching for the same AAA team pitcher A pitched for, while striking out 120 and walking 48 in 151 innings. Pitcher 3 was a #3 overall pick who didn't reach AAA until the other two pitchers were throwing in the majors, and compiled a 5-5, 3.39 ERA mark in 13 AAA starts, striking out 69 and walking 21 in 82 innings.

Pitcher A had struggled for years, but put together a breakout season and won the Cy Young in 1991 (that alone should be a dead giveaway as to his identity), while pitcher C finished sixth in the same vote. Who do you deal? The breakout pitcher, on the theory that his value will never be higher? The youngster, on the theory that he doesn't have as great a track record and might slow down? Or the man in the middle -- solid enough to contribute but not someone who looks like a potential star?

Pitcher C is Steve Avery, who put together another couple of good years before injury troubles began haunting him and eventually drove him out of baseball after a decent but unspectacular 11 year career (96-83, career park-adjusted ERA+ of 100).

Pitcher B is John Smoltz, who had only one breakout season of his own (in 1996, when he went 24-8 and won his only Cy Young award), but who was probably the best #3 starter in baseball for a decade until finally converting to closer after an injury rehab and nearly winning another Cy in that role. If Smoltz is done after just 28 innings of work in 2008, he departs with a decidedly above-average 20-year career (210-147 with 154 saves and a career park-adjusted ERA+ of 127).

Pitcher A is Tom Glavine, who would go on to become one of the top starters of his era (though eclipsed by his teammate Greg Maddux), and retires with a Hall-of-Fame caliber career (305 wins, 2607 strikeouts, two Cy Youngs and two other times finishing second in the voting, and a career ERA of 3.54).

This isn't to suggest that Nick Blackburn will become the next Tom Glavine -- the point, though, is that it's really difficult to tell at such a young age how a player will develop and what peaks and valleys he'll hit during the course of his career.

The other point in comparing the 2008 Twins to the 1991 Braves is that, of those five young starters, some of them faded from view, never to be noticed again. The other two starters not named above were 25-year old Armando Reynoso, who'd put together a decent 12-11 4.00 ERA in Coors Field in 1993 to start a peripatetic 10 year period as a semi-regular starter, and 25-year old Pete Smith, who'd hurled for the team when it was horrible (combined record of 30-48 with Atlanta) and who was quickly forgotten after being traded to the Mets for Dave Gallagher after the 1993 season.

The Braves during this era always had a strong rotation, but seldom had great #5 starters and often didn't have a particularly impressive #4 starter. The year the Braves won the Series, Avery was 7-13 with a 4.67 ERA and was pitching in pain, while Kent Mercker was the #5 starter who went 7-8 with a 4.15 ERA. The next year, when the Braves lost the Series to the Yankees, they tried to fill the #5 slot with Jason Schmidt (3-4, 6.75) and Denny Neagle (2-3, 5.59). Neagle went on to win 20 for the Braves in 1997, but the back of the rotation was a revolving door featuring stints by Terrell Wade (2-3, 5.36), Chris Brock (0-0, 5.58), and finally Kevin Millwood (5-3, 4.03). In 1998 both Neagle and Millwood helped give the Braves a true five-man powerhouse rotation, but they were knocked out of the post-season by the Padres anyway. Neagle was gone in 1999, though, and the Braves tried to replace him with Odalis Perez (4-6, 6.00), Terry Mulholland (4-2, 2.98), and Bruce Chen (2-2, 5.47). The Braves always seemed to have a Big Three, and often had a Big Fourth to join them, but very seldom did they have a true Big Five, which seems to be what most Twins fans are looking for from the current rotation.

Not to mention that the Twins have plenty of alternatives if any of their current Big Five can't answer the bell -- Boof Bonser was a solid starter for the Twins a couple of years ago and could be again given the opportunity, while Phil Humber is frequently projected as a middle-of-the-order starter, someone who might just thrive developing in the low-pressure #5 slot. And those are just two guys off the top of my head in a Twins organization that is very pitching-deep these days.

My feeling is that there's too little to distinguish the records of the Twins pitchers thus far to really know which of them has the best shot to develop into an All-Star or even a Hall-of-Famer, so in effect from the club's perspective, they all have the same value until one of them demonstrates otherwise. On the other hand, given that some of these pitchers have a higher perceived value to other franchises based on their age, draft position, etc., I think we could get a lot more back in trade by dangling, say, a Kevin Slowey than we could by dangling a Boof Bonser or a Nick Blackburn.

I think if the club can find a deal that will bring in an offensive player who will definitely improve the ballclub, they should do so. If that deal involves giving up a pitcher like a Kevin Slowey, I don't see that Slowey's 'potential' should dissuade them from making the deal.

All stats courtesy of baseball-reference.com and thebaseballcube.com.

Interlude #2 - Told Ya

2008-12-17T21:39:00.001-08:00

Note to self: Stop writing these interlude pieces and finish the danged myths series already!

Back in 2001, former Minnesota Twins outfielder Kirby Puckett was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot by the Baseball Writers Association of America. At the time, I thought it was a bad move, and have occasionally repeated that sentiment online, usually to much razzing and ado from Twins partisans.

Then I stopped by Joe Posnanski's blog today.

Posnanski is discussing the Hall of Fame, and making the argument that there are three routes, for an non-pitcher, to getting in via the BBWAA vote: hit a milestone (Posnanski uses 3000 hits and 500 HR, though those specific milestones may be in danger, especially the last one), be an excellent defensive player with some offense at catcher, shortstop, second, or occasionally third, or bring intangibles.

He lists Kirby Puckett as one of the six players let in under the 'intangibles' rubric, but also notes:

3. Kirby Puckett
Comment: This was not an especially controversial pick at the time — but it is now.

Posnanski attributes Puckett's popularity in the BBWAA vote to having a decent case to begin with, then getting a huge emotional boost from both Puckett's own popularity as a player as well as the perceived tragedy of Puckett's retirement due to glaucoma (though the official plaque in the HoF doesn't use the simple term 'glaucoma', preferring to use the more medically accurate and wordier 'irreversable retina damage in his right eye'; why this is true could spawn conspiracy theories, I'm sure). I agree with this analysis. The part I don't completely agree with is his followup:

In retrospect, Puckett will probably be viewed as one of the poorer choices by the BBWAA....

I'm not sure it's necessary to say 'in retrospect', here, because for some of us (ahem), it was pretty danged clear from the opening bell that Puckett wasn't as great a HoFer as he seemed in 2001.

A bit of clarification: I'm not, and never have, claimed that Puckett is one of the weakest Hall of Famers ever enshrined -- there are pretty clearly players already in the Hall on the day Puckett entered who weren't nearly as good as he was. The issue is that, if you list the players you think of as the weakest Hall of Famers, you'll find that they're almost all Veteran's Committee picks. Let me crib from Bill James's own list of the Hall of Famers with the fewest Hall of Fame standards as defined in his book "Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?":

C - Ray Schalk (A good catcher, but enshrined more for his presence as one of the few members of the 1919 White Sox who stayed honest.)
1B - George Kelly/Frank Chance (Kelly was an outstanding defensive first baseman by reputation who also allegedly was a great clutch hitter -- John McGraw said that Kelly had more important hits than any other player he'd managed; though they didn't track OPS+ in those days, Kelly had just two seasons with a better than 120 rating, meaning he was, in that way, his era's Doug Mientkiewicz -- Chance, of course, was part of the famous trio from the poem)
2B - Johnny Evers
SS - Joe Tinker
3B - Jimmy Collins (a turn-of-the-century player who jumped to the nascent American League when it formed in 1901, credited with player-managing the World Series champion Boston club in 1904; what defensive numbers survive suggest he was a solid defensive third-baseman for his era but not overwhelmingly good, and his offensive contributions were solid as well, though his 1904 season was one of his poorest as a player during the AL portion of his career)
LF - Chick Hafey (His Hall plaque specifically mentions his .317 career batting average, but doesn't note that the league average was .291 during his career, which coincided with the start of the lively-ball era; he was a very good offensive player, with a peak OPS+ of about 150 and a career OPS of nearly .900, but he only played 13 seasons, and his career was basically over after his age 31 season)
CF - Lloyd Waner (before I looked it up, I'd have guessed Elmer Flick or Slidin' Billy Hamilton was the least-impressive centerfield HoFer, but the numbers show Waner was a high-average, no power, no walks hitter in an era where people were walking and hitting for power all over the place; for example, in 1931, Waner led the NL in hits with 214, batted .314 against a league average of .284, but had an OBP of just .352 against a league average of .343 and slugged .407 against a league average of .401. He set the major league record for singles in a season until Ichiro broke it, but his career OPS+ was just 99.)
RF - Tommy McCarthy (known as one of the 'Heavenly Twins', McCarthy played his entire career in the 19th century, and as such might not be an entirely fair target as least-impressive right-field HoFer. On the other hand, McCarthy also played just 13 seasons and finished with a career OPS+ of 102, meaning he was just about an average performer statistically for his era)

Every one of these players was elected by the Veteran's Committee, not by the BBWAA.

The least-credentialed non-pitcher elected by the BBWAA may well be Ralph Kiner, who qualifies as only having earned 34% of Hall of Fame standards according to baseball-reference.com. Kiner played just 10 seasons, and was elected in his final year of BBWAA eligibility in 1975 with only one vote to spare -- had only 271 rather than 273 writers placed Kiner on the ballot, he would not have been elected. In other words, you can probably make Kiner your definition of a borderline Hall of Famer.

Puckett met 39% of Hall of Fame standards, significantly ahead of Kiner, but not so far ahead that he ranks among the 'typical' Hall of Famer. Puckett ranks even with Joe Torre and Juan Gonzalez on the career list of Hall of Fame standards, and even falls a bit behind Jim Edmonds, Al Oliver, Nomar Garciaparra, and Ellis Burks, none of whom were or are likely to be elected to the Hall based on their playing careers (Torre has a solid shot when his managerial career is considered as well). Lou Whitaker met 41% of Hall of Fame standards, and was dropped from the first ballot he ever appeared on.

The real embarrassment, though, is not that Puckett is in the Hall and better, more accomplished players are not -- if that were the case, then half of the members of the Hall of Fame would be considered embarrassments. No, the real embarrassment is that Puckett was named on the first ballot; only one player with fewer Hall of Fame standards was ever inducted on the first ballot, and Jackie Robinson's intangibles pretty much trump Puckett's all the way around.

In his New Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James ranked Puckett as the #8 centerfielder in baseball history and suggested his early exit from baseball shouldn't harm his chances of making the Hall of Fame. Considering that Puckett's career Win Shares are nearly identical to those of Jim Rice (and Win Shares does compensate for park effects and defensive contibutions), and that Rice is only a possible Hall of Famer this season in his final year of BBWAA eligibility, and that Puckett actually has fewer Win Shares than Royal outfielder Amos Otis, who received exactly zero votes for the Hall in his only year of eligibility, perhaps even James might re-examine Puckett's candidacy for the Hall of Fame.

Interlude: That was quick...

2008-12-11T23:22:00.001-08:00

Taking a short break from the 'five myths' series to comment on a strange shift in the weather in the Twins blogosphere over the past few weeks: the degree to which Twins bloggers are turning on Delmon Young.

Young is a former #1 overall pick by the Tampa Bay Rays (back when they were still the Devil Rays), who was eventually perceived by that organization to be a bit less stellar than advertised. Perhaps it makes sense that the team that drafted you #1 overall would be disappointed that you didn't take the majors completely by storm, especially when you make a big show out of signing a significant contract before even playing a single minor-league ballgame.

Why would Twins bloggers turn on Young? It's a bit of a mystery. Let's start with Stick & Ball Guy's article, 'Looking Back At The Delmon Debacle'.

Right off the bat I have a problem -- sure, SBG is an internet guy and reaches for the hyperbole a bit more often than would be warranted by a more sober analyst, but to describe a season where Young served as the primary Twins left-fielder and helped the club to force a 163rd game to determine the outcome of the AL Central division title as a 'debacle' is a bit beyond the pale. What would SBG have said if Young's season had been as bad as that of Carlos Gomez?

Wait, he says that Gomez had a better year than Young? How's that again?

Oh, he does it by cherry-picking metrics, and then misinterpreting them. For starters, SBG claims that Young was overall below replacement level in value because of his -18.4 runs as measured by UZR. Of course, UZR runs aren't measured from the replacement level, but from the league average. Since SBG doesn't note whether he's using STATS UZR (which doesn't weight for handedness or ground/flyball pitcher tendencies, park effects, or even the estimated difficulty of the batted ball) or Mitchel Lichtman's more advanced UZR (which does adjust for these factors), I can't speak to how accurate the metric might be. I will point out that the Hardball Times Win Shares analysis has Young earning more defensive Win Shares in left field than Denard Span earned in right for the Twins in 2008, so the idea that Young was costing the Twins ballgames with his glove isn't necessarily a hard, undeniable fact -- even in Young's infamously bad defensive game against the Royals, the Twins eventually rallied and won. Of course, with Young trailing all major-league left-fielders in Dewan plus/minus in 2008, it seems that his reputation is assured, at least, despite nearly all of that minus total having been put up in 2008 -- the three-year plus/minus totals have Young comfortably ahead of true defensive butchers like Pat Burrell and Manny Ramirez.

For the record, that Hardball Times link above shows that Young and Gomez had roughly equivalent seasons in terms of Win Shares, with Young slightly ahead. So no, it's not obvious that Gomez had a better year.

SBG also complains that Young "supposedly had this crazy high ceiling" when he was acquired by the Twins, though the reason why is pretty clear to see if you look at it -- certainly his ceiling is far higher than that of Carlos Gomez:

- Young and Gomez are nearly the same age; Young (born September 14, 1985) is actually less than three months older than Gomez (born December 4, 1985). For baseball purposes, they are the same age, so any potential development available to Gomez is, in theory, exactly as available to Young.

- Young has had better production in the minor leagues than Gomez; Gomez batted .278 with 18 home runs in 1291 minor league at-bats, primarily at A and AA. Young has hit .318 with 59 home runs (more in each of two different seasons than Gomez has hit in his entire minor league career) in 1413 minor league at-bats, mainly at AA and AAA.

- Young has put up those superior numbers while playing against tougher competition at the same age. When Gomez was 18, he spent the entire season playing for the Mets' two rookie-league teams; Young spent his age-18 season in A-ball for the Rays. At 19, Gomez spent the whole year in A-ball; Young split time between AA and AAA. Gomez got a fairly good-sized cup of coffee with the Mets due to outfield injuries in his age-21 season; Young spent his entire age-21 seasaon on the Ray's big-league roster and finished 2nd in the Rookie of the Year vote that season.

Anybody who claims that Gomez has a higher ceiling than Young doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Though similarity scores are notoriously sketchy for players with such few actual big-league appearances, it's still telling that Young's of-age comps include Hall of Famers Roberto Clemente and Carl Yastrzemski (Yaz is actually Young's #1 of-age comp), while Gomez's of-age comps include Milt Cuyler and Lee Mazzilli. Young could continue to disappoint and still end up with a career not far from Larry Hisle's, while Gomez would have to gain about thirty points of batting average just to be the next Ted Uhlaender.

Okay, now I'm engaging in a bit of hyperbole, but just a bit. Right now, people are complaining because Jason Bartlett is getting way more credit than he deserves for the Rays run to the World Series last year, and Matt Garza hasn't yet proven himself a head-case with his new ballclub. Had the Twins won game 163 and advanced to the Series themselves, I doubt there would be nearly as much Delmon Young hatred on teh interwebs as I've seen of late.

If the Twins can get a good deal for Young, I won't complain, but the final nail in SBG's coffin comes when he talks about how much better not just Carlos Gomez is than Delmon Young, but how great it would be if the Twins acquired journeyman Gabe Gross, traded to the Rays for a minor leaguer during the 2008 season. Now Gross is far from a worthless player -- he'll take a walk and occasionally surprise you with some pop in his bat, and he's a solid if unspectacular defensive outfielder. But let's put it this way -- Gabe Gross's career, to this point, has been nearly identical (similarity score 960) to that of Dustan Mohr through his age 28 season. Mohr started falling off the planet at age 29, and didn't get even a single big-league at-bat in 2008. Gross would have been a great acquisition back in 2005, when he could have filled Mohr's role on the club after the latter's departure from the Twins; picking Gross up now would be like taking a flyer on Rickey Henderson. Long-term plan, this ain't.

All indications are that Young had real problems adjusting to the Metrodome defensively, and word from sources indicates that Young has something to prove this season, possibly his last before arbitration. Given how close the Twins were to the playoffs last year, and how much room Young has in his upside, I think the Twins would be crazy not to at least give Young a chance to show the club what he can do.

Of course, Ron Gardenhire is thinking of starting Nick Punto at short and Carlos Gomez in the outfield, so it might well be a long, long summer.

Top Five Myths of the Twins 2008 Season - pt 3

2008-12-07T19:48:00.001-08:00

There was a fair amount of interest in the Twins offense over the past month as the club's brain trust heads to Las Vegas for baseball's winter meetings. It's a good thing, too, because otherwise the third myth will bite the club right on the tuckus in 2009:

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.

Top Five Myths of the Twins 2008 Season - pt 2

2008-11-11T23:14:00.001-08:00

I had a different myth in mind to be the second one of the series, but given the timeliness of the news that Pat Neshek will undergo Tommy John surgery and miss all of the 2009 season, and some of the reaction to that news in blog comments and posts, I thought I'd bump this myth up:

Myth #2: The Twins bullpen sucked in 2008 and needs to improve if the team is going to contend.

Twins fans have largely been spoiled during the Gardenhire years, as the Twins bullpen has consistently performed among the AL's best. And while it's true that the Twins bullpen has been very solid for almost the entire decade of the 2000's, the 2008 bullpen was actually a lot more solid that most folks realize.

For starters, some background:

The Twins bullpen first burst onto the scene as part of the club's 2002 division championship -- the 'pen had been laughable during the late Tom Kelly years, and even in 2001 the Twins 'pen had the third-highest ERA among AL bullpens. In 2002, that changed, as the club improved to fourth-best in the AL in reliever ERA. Though the components of that ERA were not quite as impressive (the bullpen allowed a .253/712 enemy hitting line, which while above the league average of .256/740 was actually behind a couple of clubs that trailed Minnesota in bullpen ERA), the bullpen was pretty clearly better-than-average in 2002, a trend that would continue in later years:


Season     ERA(Rank)     BA/OPS(Rank)
2002       3.68 (4)      .253/712 (6)
2003       3.84 (5)      .249/704 (3)
2004       3.97 (5)      .248/691 (2)
2005       3.24 (3)      .235/664 (1)
2006       2.91 (1)      .248/660 (1)
2007       3.87 (5)      .255/728 (8)
2008       3.91 (6)      .257/732 (9)

While there was some grumbling about individual relievers in 2007, when the Twins weren't in contention for a title, there wasn't any real argument that the Twins bullpen as a whole sucked -- after all, they had Joe Nathan anchoring it, which all by itself pretty much guarantees that your bullpen will be at least near league-average. In effect, if the 2007 bullpen was adequate to the task, then the 2008 bullpen should have been considered the same.

Two reasons why most folks seem to think otherwise:

1. Pretty much every season in which the Twins did well involved the club identifying a 'dominant' eighth-inning pitcher to pair up with Nathan. In 2007, as the season wound to a close, it seemed as though Pat Neshek had inherited that role, after seeming struggles by other pitchers to nail down the role (particularly Jesse Crain). In 2008, with Neshek missing nearly the entire season, the club drifted from eighth-inning guy to eighth-inning guy, never really committing to one until the season was nearly over and rookie Jose Mijares seemed effective in the role. (Of course, Juan Rincon had seemed effective in 2004 and 2005, Crain in 2006, and Neshek in 2007, and none of them were setting up Nathan down the stretch in 2008.)

2. It seemed as though the bullpen lost a lot more games than they typically did in season's past. The bullpen was charged with 27 losses in 2008, against just 18 in 2007 and 10 in 2006. Of course, the bullpen was hit with 24 losing decisions in 2005, but most folks' memories don't seem to go back that far, or even to 2004 where the same 24 bullpen losses didn't prevent the Twins from winning the division going away.

In fact, the bullpen's 27 losses in 2008, I'd argue, were less a knock on the quality of the bullpen and more an indication of how balanced the Twins starting staff became in 2008: in seasons past, the Twins had a definite 'tier' in their starting staff, usually involving Johan Santana and perhaps another hot-throwing pitcher (Francisco Liriano in 2006, Carlos Silva in 2004, etc.) before dropping to a 'second tier' where the Twins generally wouldn't need to tap their top bullpen pitchers. In 2008, though, for the first time in the franchise's history in Minnesota, the Twins had five different pitchers who started at least one game and amassed double-digits in wins; middle relievers who'd normally be tested just once or twice in a series were getting overworked early on by the Twins starting pitching balance (Matt Guerrier had appeared in 26 games through the end of May, while Dennys Reyes had appeared in 27). In other words, the bullpen blew more games in 2008, not because they were significantly worse than they'd been in 2007, but because they were given more opportunities to blow games in 2008 than they had been in past seasons. (That one's hard to quantify, as it's difficult to find a record of team save opportunities, particularly broken down by run margin -- then again, take a look at the three teams that led the AL with the fewest bullpen losses in 2008: the Rays, the White Sox, and the Royals (?!). Though the Royals 'pen was improved in 2008 thanks to the pitching of Joachim Soria, they also amassed the fewest bullpen decisions in the AL (37), which is much more a testament to how ineffective their starting pitching was. The Twins 51 bullpen decisions, meanwhile, while not league-leading, was definitely above average -- only four other teams had more bullpen decisions, and all finished with more bullpen losses than the Twins did.)

Would it be nice if the Twins could get their bullpen back to where it was in 2005 and 2006? Absolutely, and I'd say that's a goal worth pursuing. Is it an absolute necessity? Not particularly -- the next two myths will discuss why in greater detail, but suffice it to say for now that:

a) the Twins starting staff is as deep as it's ever been (and might even be too deep for the club's own good), and
b) there are going to be more pressing needs for the ballclub that, if they don't become obvious in spring training to even the least observant fan, will shock me greatly.

Top Five Myths of the Twins 2008 Season - pt 1 of 5

2008-11-09T20:15:00.001-08:00

One of my favorite non-sports related writers on the Web is San Francisco's Daniel Eran Dilger, who writes for the online RoughlyDrafted Magazine. His main 'schtick' is myth-busting, specifically with respect to technology and most frequently where there's speculation regarding something related to Apple Computer.

Reading through various post-mortems and looking-ahead posts in the Twins blogosphere, I was struck at how many myths about the Twins have gone largely unchallenged, so I thought I'd steal a page from Mr. Dilger's playbook and present my thoughts on the five largest internet myths regarding the 2008 Twins:

Myth #1: Justin Morneau was the MVP.

As the 2008 season wound down, it seemed that most observers were handicapping the 2008 AL MVP race as being between two men: Boston second baseman Dustin Pedroia and Twins first baseman Justin Morneau. The Twins blogosphere was, almost unanimously, rooting for Morneau to win what would be his second league MVP award in his young career, and understandably so. Still, I wasn't convinced, and I remained unconvinced even after the season when the Twins named Morneau their team MVP -- not quite as egregious a call as Tampa Bay naming Jason Bartlett their team MVP, but still somewhat off-the-mark, in my view. After all, to be the league MVP, or even your team's MVP, you should pretty much by definition be the best player on your team, which seemed pretty clearly to be Joe Mauer, not Justin Morneau.

Fortunately, a couple of heavy-hitters in the Twins blogosphere stepped up to provide some statistical evidence in favor of Mauer over Morneau as Twins MVP: Twins beat writer Joe Christiansen and general man-about-the-Web Aaron Gleeman**.

I don't have a whole lot to add to that kind of analysis, but I will point out one thing for people who are fixated on Morneau's RBI total as evidence that he should be the MVP. According to baseball-reference.com, Morneau batted with 558 runners on base in front of him, whereas the average major-league hitter with 712 plate appearances would have 449 runners on base. (Morneau's total led the AL, by the way.) Joe Mauer, meanwhile, batted with 407 runners on base, just a few more than the major-league average of 399 for a batter with 633 plate appearances. Mauer was second in the AL with an on-base percentage of .412, while Morneau, no slouch at .374, was significantly above average, but not close to the leaderboard.

What if Mauer and Morneau had switched places for some reason? After all, Hall-of-Fame second baseman Ryne Sandberg used to hit second for the Cubs ahead of light-hitting first baseman Mark Grace; what if the Twins had done that?

Well, for starters, Morneau would have lost nearly 100 RBI opportunities, based solely on comparing his ratio of opportunities to the league average versus Mauer's. Mauer's number of opportunities would likely have increased, since Morneau's own OBP was above-average. So if Morneau would have lost between 15-20% of his RBI opportunities, and he converted the same percentage of RBI opportunities that he actually did, he'd have finished with somewhere in the neighborhood of 111 RBI, not 129. Mauer, meanwhile, would have finished closer to, but likely not quite at, 100 RBI, significantly narrowing the margin between them.

And don't worry that the Twins would have scored fewer runs with that lineup: the RBI's lost by Morneau that weren't gained by Mauer likely would have been picked up by one of the Twins' parade of #5 hitters -- Michael Cuddyer and Jason Kubel each had over 200 PAs in the five-spot, while Delmon Young batted there nearly 150 times; each of them would likely have added some RBI to their total having the near-league leader in OBP hitting immediately in front of them, rather than having Morneau hitting between them.

So Justin Morneau had a really good year -- that much can't be argued. He just wasn't the MVP.

** OK, I've been holding off as long as I can on the Gleeman-bashing, but this really tickles me: on repeated occasions throughout 2008, Gleeman has referred to his 'MinnPost colleague' David Brauer. Now, Gleeman's not doing at all bad for himself -- he's parlayed his blogging into a few nice paying online gigs and he appears fairly regularly as a guest on local sports talk radio. He also founded the Hardball Times, which has become a very nice group sports blog, especially since his departure. Brauer has been a political reporter for over 30 years, regularly contributes to Minnesota Public Radio's All Things Considered, is a frequent guest on local political radio and TV shows, and still manages to find time to contribute to online forums like e-democracy.org. Brauer also managed to pull off two other feats Gleeman never managed -- Brauer actually had a student job writing for the Minnesota Daily (Gleeman says he 'couldn't even get a job covering women's gymnastics'), and he graduated with a degree from the University of Minnesota. By these criteria, I could refer to actor Steve Zahn as 'my former co-star', based on a high-school production of "The Dining Room" in which we shared the stage for a few scenes.

On the flip side of the coin, Gleeman does have his own entry on Wikipedia, while Brauer has to be content with being listed as a 'staff writer' on MinnPost's Wikipedia page. So he's got that going for him.

One More Game

2008-09-29T19:37:00.001-07:00

"Now it is down to you, and now it is down to me."
- Vizzini, from "The Princess Bride"

All the maneuverings of the season, all the strategies, all the trials, tribulations, and troubles of a 162-game season now come down to one game. Releasing Livan Hernandez. Signing Ken Griffey, Jr. Carlos Gomez. Jim Thome. It all comes down to one game.

It ain't baseball, not really, but it sure is fun.

Now Let's Just Hold On A Second

2008-09-26T16:12:00.001-07:00

Heading into this week's three-game series against the Chicago White Sox, the Minnesota Twins trailed by 2.5 games in the AL Central Division. Twins fans and members of the Twins blogosphere were optimistic, even if that optimism was heavily guarded and in some cases almost indistinguishable from gallows humor.

And there was good reason to guard the optimism; the Twins hadn't played all that well of late, having fallen from a season-high 20 games over .500 in late August to just 12 games over .500 heading into the Chicago series. If the poor play had continued, not only might the Twins have fallen out of the race, but the White Sox might have even celebrated clinching the division on the floor of the Metrodome.

The best outcome for Twins fans, of course, was also the seemingly least likely option -- a three game Twins sweep. This would actually push the Twins back into first place in the division, just .5 game ahead of Chicago, but with only three to play, putting the Sox into a very difficult position.

And, if you've been following the race, you know that's exactly what happened.

You'd think, at this point, that all the pressure would turn to fall on Chicago -- they're now in a position where they can't afford to lose even a single game, because if the Twins win out, one Chicago loss clinches the division.

There's only one problem with that view -- despite the Twins' current lead in the division, they're not the only team in the race that controls their own destiny.

'Controlling your own destiny' is a phrase used when a team is in a position where, if they win every game, they can't be stopped from winning the division. The team in that position, right now, is the White Sox:

- If the Twins win their three-game series with the Royals, while the White Sox win their three-game series with the Indians, the Twins will remain .5 game ahead in the divisional race.

- This would require the Sox to make up their rained-out game from earlier this month at home against the Detroit Tigers. If the Sox win this game, they'd force a tie for the division.

- This tie would be resolved with a one-game playoff in Chicago between the Twins and White Sox, winner take all.

So if the Twins win every game they play from here on out, they win the division. Clearly they control their own destiny. But the White Sox, too, are in the position where, if they win every game, they win the division.

Sure, it might seem odd, but each team controls its own destiny.

Now, it could be argued that the White Sox's road is a bit tougher than that of the Twins: after all, the Sox may have to win as many as five games, while the Twins only are required to win four. Plus, on paper at least, the Indians are a tougher opponent than the Royals, having won seven of their last ten to briefly push over .500.

Then again, the Indians are back under .500 after losing three straight to Boston, while the Royals have won their last three straight to move ahead of the Tigers and out of the AL Central cellar. The Royals have won 9 of their last 11, including wins over Chicago and Cleveland, and their offense is averaging over six runs a game during that stretch. And the Royals have been in the position of title-spoilers before -- no Twins fan can forget that it was a Royals sweep of the Tigers that helped the Twins win the Central in 2006, after all.

In other words, it wasn't a given that the Twins would win enough to put themselves in this position in the first place -- it's clearly not a given that they'll continue to win now.