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Thursday, October 09, 2008
Twins Notes: Bunts, Walks, Johan, and ThomaEarly on Gomez was on pace to shatter Brett Butler's single-season record for bunt hits, but ended up finishing a dozen shy of the mark and will have to settle for becoming just the fifth player since 1959 to bunt for at least 30 hits in a year. Along with the league-leading totals from Gomez and Casilla, the Twins also got at least one bunt hit from each of Nick Punto (7), Denard Span (4), Joe Mauer (4), Matt Tolbert (4), Matt Macri (2), and Mike Lamb (1).  Bunting for a hit is a great skill to have for someone with Gomez's speed and he successfully reached on 45 percent of the bunts he put in play. However, that means Gomez hit just .232 when not laying one down, which isn't a good sign for his actual hitting ability. By comparison, Casilla hit .265 on non-bunts. Gomez totaled 149 hits and 48 of them (32 percent) failed to leave the infield, which tied Ichiro Suzuki for the MLB lead. As a team, the Twins had 178 of their 1,572 hits (11 percent) stay in the infield:IFH HIT IFH%Every guy on the team with more than 20 plate appearances got at least one infield hit and not shown above is that Livan Hernandez's lone hit was of the infield variety. Delmon Young had zero bunt hits, yet still managed to rank third on the Twins with 17 infield hits. That may seem odd at first glance, but Young runs relatively well and had the third-highest ground-ball rate in the league at 55 percent. He put a total of 262 balls in play on the ground, so it makes sense that he'd beat out a fair number of them. Of course, while Young hitting the ball on the ground 55 percent of the time helped him pile up infield singles, it's also why he remains a poor bet to develop into the power threat that he was misguidedly hyped as when the Twins acquired him. Young hit 262 ground balls and struck out 105 times, which means that he had zero chance of homering in 64 percent of his at-bats. At 22 years old he's certainly still young enough to develop more power, but it simply won't happen without a change in approach. YEAR BB RNKAnderson deserves plenty of praise for annually coaching an entire staff of strike-throwing machines, but limiting walks was already a Twins staple when he arrived. Under former pitching coach Dick Such the Twins issued the AL's fewest walks in both 1997 and 1998, and haven't ranked worse than third in walks allowed since 1995. An amazing run for sure, although it's frustrating that they do such a great job developing pitchers who limit walks without seeing the same value in their hitters drawing walks: YEAR BB RNKWhat's amazing about the Twins drawing just the 10th-most walks in the league this year is that Mauer and Justin Morneau ranked among the AL's top dozen in individual free passes and Span had the AL's 15th-best walk rate among hitters with 400-plus plate appearances. That trio combined for 210 walks in 1,755 PA while the rest of the team managed just 319 walks in 4,576 PA. Or put another way: Mauer, Morneau, and Span drew 40 percent of the team's walks in 27 percent of the team's trips to the plate. Early in the season, when the Mets' lineup wasn't providing him with much run support and the Mets' bullpen was consistently coughing up late-inning leads, far too many people made far too big a deal about Santana's supposed "struggles." When the dust settled he had a spectacular first year in New York, leading the NL in innings (234) and ERA (2.53) while ranking second in strikeouts (206). He was just seventh in wins with 16, but that's due to the bullpen blowing seven potential victories for him. Give Santana some decent bullpen support and he wins 20 games, the Mets make the playoffs while his late-season heroics become legendary, and he receives a ton of first-place votes for the Cy Young award. Instead, thanks to factors largely beyond his control Santana will probably finish no higher than fourth in the voting while becoming the first NL pitcher to ever lead the league in both innings and ERA without winning the Cy Young. Once you're done here, check out my latest "Daily Dose" column over at Rotoworld.     
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
AG.com Live Chat Today at NoonJoin me this afternoon for the first AG.com "live chat" of the offseason. As always, any and all questions are welcome, Twins-related or otherwise. My plan is to open the doors 10-15 minutes before noon and stick around until whenever the questions stop rolling in, so clear your schedule and stop by. Once you're done here, check out my latest "Daily Dose" column over at Rotoworld.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Twins Notes: Mauer, Lohse, Cabrera, Bartlett, and MediaOPS+ PAYogi Berra, Bill Dickey, and Mickey Cochrane are in the Hall of Fame, and Thurman Munson was an MVP winner and seven-time All-Star before dying in a plane crash midway through his age-32 season. None of them can match Mauer's production through the age of 25, which ranks as the best in league history for a catcher with at least 1,500 plate appearances. On a slightly less historic note, Mauer also broke his own single-season records for most RBIs and runs scored by a Twins catcher: RBI YEAR RUN YEARAlong with his oddly overlooked hitting exploits, Mauer also tied for second in the AL by throwing out 36 percent of steal attempts and was one of just four MLB catchers to log 1,200 innings behind the plate. Not bad for a guy who gets criticized constantly for what he doesn't do. As always, most people fail to realize how difficult it is for catchers to consistently post great numbers offensively, but Mauer is in truly rarefied air for his position through the age of 25 even if some critics can't get past his lack of homers. However, Silva somehow managed to get a four-year, $48 million deal from the Mariners, while Lohse had to settle for a one-year, $4.25 million contract from the Cardinals. Fast forward to a year later. Silva went 4-15 with a 6.46 ERA for the Mariners, who likely regretted signing him shortly after the ink dried. Lohse went 15-6 with a 3.78 ERA for the Cardinals, who got great value out of a low-risk, one-year deal and then decided to follow in the Mariners' footsteps by signing him to a four-year, $41 million contract. While examining the Twins' payroll situation for next season, Twins Geek recently noted that the team's current five-man starting rotation of Francisco Liriano, Scott Baker, Kevin Slowey, Glen Perkins, and Nick Blackburn will make a combined $2 million in 2009 while Silva and Lohse combine to make right around $20 million. As always developing and then trusting young, cheap talent is incredibly important, but so is letting those same players leave when they aren't so young or cheap any more. Lohse has thrived when equipped with pitching coach Dave Duncan's game plans. Lohse embraced the Cardinals' culture and a strong working relationship with manager Tony La Russa and Duncan. After butting heads with manager Ron Gardenhire while with the Minnesota Twins, Lohse placed high value on this year's relative tranquility.When asked about Lohse's new contract, the door to Ron Gardenhire's office had no comment. Cabrera is 34 years old and hasn't had an above average Revised Zone Rating in five seasons. Plus, even if you're willing to assume that he's still a solid defender, Cabrera hit .281/.334/.371 this season, batted .288/.338/.390 over the past three years, and has a .274/.322/.399 career mark. MLB shortstops as a whole batted .272/.327/.391 this season, so if everything goes well in terms of staying healthy and avoiding a dropoff in his mid-30s, Cabrera has a chance to be an average all-around shortstop. Not only isn't that the type of player the Twins should be looking to pay anywhere close to $10 million per year, odds are that Cabrera will decline both offensively and defensively over the next few seasons. If he was young and cheap Cabrera would absolutely be worth targeting, but at 34 and the likely cost of around $10 million per season for multiple years he shouldn't even be on the Twins' radar. And if you're not yet convinced, take a look at this comparison of 2008 numbers: PA AVG OBP SLG OPS RZRPlayer X is none other than Nick Punto, another impending free agent who along with edging Cabrera this season in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and Revised Zone Rating is also three years younger. Shortstop is absolutely a big area of need for the Twins and they should be looking to upgrade over Punto this winter, but paying an aging, overrated Cabrera five times as much for similar production isn't the way to go. 2006-2008 PA AVG OBP SLG OPS RZRConsidering how most Twins fans slagged Bartlett during his underrated time in Minnesota, my guess is that not many of them would be too keen about paying his 34-year-old clone $10 million per season. Speaking of Bartlett, he was recently voted the Rays' most valuable player by the Tampa Bay chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America, which is amazing given that his first season with the Rays was essentially identical to his last season with the Twins: PA AVG OBP SLG OPS RZRPrior to that BBWAA vote this blog had been home to some of the most pro-Bartlett talk anywhere, but the notion of him as MVP of a 97-win team featuring Evan Longoria, Scott Kazmir, B.J. Upton, James Shields, Carlos Pena, Matt Garza, Grant Balfour, Dioner Navarro, and J.P. Howell is absurd. In fact, Bartlett had the lowest Win Probability Added on the team. He's a nice, solid player who was never fully appreciated in Minnesota, but the perception pendulum has now swung too far in the other direction. Third baseman Mark Reynolds committed his 33rd error of season and struck out twice, giving him 198, one short of Ryan Howard's major-league record established last season. Reynolds leads the league in both categories, something only seven players in baseball history have done before. He would be the first to do so since Minnesota's Zoilo Versalles in 1965. Versalles, who had 122 strikeouts and 39 errors at shortstop, won the American League MVP that season.For more on Zoilo Versalles and his MVP-winning 1965 season, check out my write-up ranking him the 22nd-best player in Twins history. Triple-A hitting coach Gary Gaetti was sitting home in Houston on Thursday, watching Evan Longoria homer in his first two career postseason at-bats, when the memories flooded back. "I think Evan and I are the only two people that have ever done that," he told his wife, Donna.For more on Gary Gaetti and his postseason heroics, check out my write-up ranking him the 21st-best player in Twins history.  Having met some of the people pictured I'm able to identify at least three and possibly as many as five of the media members surrounding Punto--seriously, look at them swarm around Nick Punto!--but I'll shut up and give everyone else a chance to guess. Here's one hint: Sid Hartman is not pictured, most likely because when the interviewing started he was either still finishing off his free soup in the press box or cleaning his tie after spilling the aforementioned free soup in the press box. And ... go!Once you're done here, check out my latest "Daily Dose" column over at Rotoworld.
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