This article originally appeared on the now-defunct BaseballInsiders.com. As it is not currently posted anywhere else online, I decided to post it here for any potential feedback.

Kent Hrbek is known by the casual baseball fan for two things: his grand slam against the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 6 of the 1987 World Series, and the infamous play at first base in the 1991 World Series where it appeared as though Hrbek pulled Ron Gant of the Atlanta Braves off of first base. Don Mattingly, however, is a household name, due to his six All-Star selections and nine Gold Glove awards, not to mention multiple appearances on The Simpsons….and playing for the Yankees.

While I promise you that this isn’t sour grapes from an unabashed Twins fan against the big, bad Yankees of New York, it is a rational, legitimate argument that Kent Hrbek was Don Mattingly’s offensive equal as one of the best first basemen in baseball from the early 1980s and into the mid-1990s.

Continue reading this post »

My approach is to make the team more athletic, while still maintaining the power threat that the lineup has added in 2009 and 2010. Many models for the Twins’ offseason include spending gobs of money on the bullpen, but I would rather acknowledge that the front office has been able to find bullpen help each of the past two years, and if the cheaper bullpen that I propose falters, Bill Smith can work his magic again. There are always plenty of arms available in July and August, and I would rather focus on the rotation, the lineup, and the defense.

As a quick aside, I just want to point out how awful the $12.5 million due to Joe Nathan and the $10.5 million for Michael Cuddyer hurt more than words can describe at this point. If I could, I’d shed Cuddyer’s salary, but nobody is dumb enough to take on that monstrosity (Kansas City? What? Oh sorry Dayton Moore, I thought I heard you volunteering). Would you rather spend that money ($23 million!!!!) on Nathan/Cuddyer, or Young/Hardy/Thome/Crain and still have about $4 million left over? Ouch. Anyways, here is my blueprint:

1)      Let Hudson, Punto, Fuentes, Guerrier, Mahay, Flores, Repko, and Thome walk as free agents. Offer Repko a minor league deal if he is still on the market in spring.

2)      Tender contracts to Delmon Young ($5 million), Kevin Slowey ($2.5m), Alexi Casilla ($800k), and Matt Capps ($7m).

3)      Tender a contract to Pat Neshek OR Glen Perkins for $800k and let the other one walk. I keep going back and forth, although I realize this is one of the first decisions that has to be made. I am not Bill Smith, however, so I can waffle.

4)      Offer J.J. Hardy a two-year, $13 million deal and Francisco Liriano a 4-year, $40 million contract. This will avoid arbitration with both players.

5)      Sign Jesse Crain to a two-year, $7 million contract and Matt Tolbert to a one-year, $500k contract.

6)      Sign Derrek Lee to a one-year, $7 million contract.

7)      This is where it gets tricky, but regardless of which option manifests itself, the Twins will end up with Coco Crisp. Crisp has a $5.5 million team option with Oakland. EDIT: Crisp's option was picked up (Thanks to Fenam for the link). This changes the scenario's quite a bit, but

More after the jump...

Continue reading this post »

When the Twins picked up Michael Cuddyer's 2011 team option on November 8, 2009, there was a decidedly mixed response. I had not yet joined TT, but the response here was overwhelmingly positive. I was not alone in my doubts, especially given his ho-hum 2007 campaign (.276/.356/.433), which was followed by his atrocious, injury-plagued 2008 season (.249/.330/.369). Yes, he performed phenomenally down the stretch in 2009, and along with Delmon Young, carried the Morneau-less Twins into the postseason.

The unfortunate thing about his amazing play was that it forced the hand of the front office in three ways. First, declining to pick-up Cuddyer's 2011 option would be a PR disaster. Cuddyer not only had a great 2009, but had been a fan favorite for years. Secondly, Cuddyer was insurance at first base in case Justin Morneau's back did not fully recover over the off-season (although the team traded away Carlos Gomez at roughly the same time, therefore dropping the team's extra outfielder). Lastly,this would have provided an awkward way to enter the 2010 season with Cuddyer; a situation that brings everything full circle, back to the PR disaster that could have been. If it had not been for the goofy clause that forced a decision to be made a year in advance, the Twins could have saved themselves a huge hassle.

Imagine that Michael Cuddyer's option decision didn't have to be made until after the 2010 season: pay him $10.5 million for 2011, or $1 million to walk. Or look at it this way: Jason Kubel for $5.25 million, or Cuddyer for exactly twice that amount. Yes, Cuddyer is more versatile, not to mention the rare right-handed bat with some power in the Twins lineup. But Kubel is four years younger, has more consistent power, and left-handed bats are generally coveted more around the league. I think the majority of us would choose buy him out at $1 million, although that's not to say that the front office of the Twins would make that decision, even with where we stand today.

Now imagine Cuddyer is gone, and we have an extra $9.25 million to play with. The options are endless, but I would certainly start by shoring up the outfield defense, and at nearly half the cost. How about his thought: if the Oakland Athletics buyout Coco Crisp at $575k (rather than opting in at $5.75 million), why not pick him up? He could be had for somewhere between $5-6 million, although the Athletics could very well be interested in bringing him back at that price. He made $5 million last season, and played very well in the almost-half-season that he was a part of (.279/.342/.438). His walk rate has improved steadily throughout his career:

Year    Team    BB%

2003    CLE      5.2%

2004    CLE      6.7%

2005    CLE      6.7%

2006    BOS      6.9%

2007    BOS      8.5%

2008    BOS      8.6%

2009    KC        13.5% (only 215 PA)

2010    OAK      9.2% (only 328 PA)

By comparison, Denard Span's BB% has dropped (12.2% in 2008, 10.4% in 2009, and 8.5% in 2010). Another area that Crisp could help offensively is on the basepaths. Here are Crisp's stolen base numbers:

Year    Team    SB      CS      SB%

2003    CLE      15       9        63%

2004    CLE      20      13       61%

2005    CLE      15       6        71%

2006    BOS      22       4        85%

2007    BOS      28       6        82%

2008    BOS      20       7        74%

2009    KC        13        2        87%

2010    OAK     32        3        91%

The above chart shows steady improvement once again from Crisp. His incredible success percentage from 2010 is even more astonishing considering Billy Beane's formerly intense hatred of the stolen base, with his "Moneyball" teams always finishing near the bottom of the league in stolen bases (only 46 team steals in 2002, 48 in 2003). The A's have taken a curious about-face in that department, however, and have been one of the top teams in the major leagues in terms of stealing bases in recent years. I think the majority of TT has heard the rant about how great a risk stealing bases is, and how it is rarely statisically responsible. The two counters to that are a) Crisp has become deadly efficient in stealing bases and b) getting picked off is even worse. Crisp has only been picked off 25 times in his career, spanning parts of nine seasons, or once for every 60.56 times he has been on first or second base with the next base open (1.7%). By comparison, Denard Span has already been picked off 20 times over parts of three seasons, or once every 38.2 of the same opportunities (2.6%).

This brings us to the most important thing that Coco Crisp would add to the Twins: outfield defense. Crisp is not on the level of a Franklin Gutierrez or even Carlos Gomez, but he's closer than Denard Span. While his arm is comparable to Span in its weakness, but his range is clearly superior. For his career, Crisp has been worth a Total Zone Runs Saved of 57, while Span has logged a -11 in the same statistic. Much of Crisp's positive runs saved came when he was playing left field in Cleveland, but the only thing keeping Span's number from dropping even further was his time spent playing left and right field over his first two seasons.

By taking Cuddyer (-11 Total Zone Runs Saved career in RF) out of the equation and moving Span to a corner spot (+20 career in LF/RF) and adding Crisp (+19 career in CF), you have improved your outfield defense dramatically. Ideally, Span and his weak arm are in left field, and Delmon Young slides over to right field, where he played during much of his tenure with Tampa Bay. His anti-range and arm would play much better there, although Gardenhire has previously stated that he will not play Delmon in right. The previous excuse was that he would need to learn to play the ball off of the baggy, and of course right field in Target Field would be also be too much of an adventure for Delmon, especially considering he never quite figured out how to navigate his own personal minefield in left this season.

I will not speculate on the rest of the offseason moves (since Cuddyer will be here, unless another team really wants a career .270/.342/.450 right fielder for $10.5 million, and this entire post is, sadly, useless), but here is what our lineup would look like:

Span LF

Crisp CF

Mauer C

Morneau 1B

Young RF

Kubel/Thome DH

Valencia 3B

Hardy SS

Casilla 2B

We would also be set up for a nice platoon-like rotation between Kubel, Young, and Thome, not to mention that we could afford to sit Span for a day and play Crisp, Kubel, Young, and Thome at the same time (and no Jason Repko!). The team would be faster, more athletic, better defensively, and only lose a small bit of power. Not only that, one would think that a healthy Hardy and a full season of Valencia with big league experience under his belt would help to balance that out. I realize that one of the counterpoints to this argument will be the lack of insurance for Morneau, but it isn't terribly hard to find a servicable first baseman to fill-in (hello, Jose Morales). Not to mention having a back-up first baseman as a bench bat would help as well (hello again, Jose Morales).

I know I'm playing revisionist history here, but what do you all think? I would take Crisp at $5.75 million over Cuddyer at $10.5 million in a heartbeat. What say you?

Statistics provided by www.baseball-reference.com

I am not a big Jim Souhan fan, and I think many here at TT share that sentiment. His recent article, "Here are 6 things the Twins need to do to retool" is extremely hit-and-miss, with half of his points off-base, and the others mostly correct. I will go point by point, including key quotes from each section. Follow the link above for the text in its entirety.

Continue reading this post »

I don't remember who posted this way back in February, but there was a TT predictions group for the 2010 MLB season. As it turns out, I did fairly well, so I just thought I'd pat myself on the back a bit in a way so that others can also enjoy my accurate predictions.

AL Central        Actual        My Prediction

Minnesota         94-68           96-66

Chicago            88-74           87-75

Detroit              81-81           82-80

Cleveland         69-93            70-92

Kansas City      67-95           65-97

I was terrible on the rest of my predictions, picking the Mariners, Cardinals, and Dodgers to win their respective divisions, and having the Rays in third place. I correctly picked the Phillies to win their division.

As far as the player statistics that I predicted, let's just say I predicted every single Twins position player to finish the year with more home runs than they actually did. The one notable exception was how eerily accurate my Delmon Young prediction was.

Prediction: .301/.331, 21 HR, 20 BB, 88 K

Actual:      .298/.333, 21 HR, 28 BB, 81 K

I not-so-accurately predicted him to hit 28 doubles, when he actually finished with 46 two-baggers. I was overly optomistic on most of the rest of the lineup, although I was within .009 for the batting average of Cuddyer, Hudson, and Hardy.

Does anyone else have positive (or negative) results to share from their predictions? Here is the link to my predictions, and there is a time/date stamp on there as proof. I'm assuming it can be viewed without logging in to the site.

http://www.fan-exchange.com/mlb/teamhittingpredictions.asp?userid=285&franchid=MIN&yearid=2010