SB Nation User Blog: dwintheiser

The New Mr. October?

dwintheiser — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 07:04:11 -0000

Time for a player A/player B:

A - 95 PA, 29 H, 5 2B, 2 HR, 11 RBI, .330/823

B - 104 PA, 32 H, 7 2B, 1 3B, 4 HR, 18 RBI, .344/869

Player B is Delmon Young in games in September and October of this season.

Player A is...Delmon Young in games in September and October of 2008.

By comparison, Reggie Jackson's career regular-season Sept./Oct. numbers, on a per 100 PA rate:

100 PA, 23 H, 4 2B, 5 HR, 16 RBI, .254/821

(Update: Edited to include Games 161 & 162)

Dialing back the Leverage Index

dwintheiser — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 18:02:25 -0000

We're living in an age of baseball analysis where new measures and ways of looking at the numbers of the game seem to reveal fresh insights as to how the game should be played. In some cases, though, we should really take a closer look at how we're interpreting that new knowledge, because it's not always as impressive as we think it is

Case in point, the 'leverage index'.

The 'leverage index' is a way to calculate the value of innings pitched based on the likelihood of victory resulting from success in those innings. It's largely been used as a way of justifying the large salaries that closers get, because closers pitch in the highest leverage situations of all -- late innings, small leads. If the club gives up the lead in that situation, they'll have little to no opportunity to get it back, and thus having a solid closer is seen as a requirement for any team that wants to compete, let alone contend.

By itself, I have no problem with that conclusion. The problem I have comes when people move from that conclusion to others, without putting enough thought into the implications of what their new conclusions are. Case in point (and it pains me to call out the Geek on this one) was a Twitter sent out by John Bonnes about a week ago:

"Awesome. I've said it before, I'll say it again - we're wrong about the value of IPs. Dominant late-inning RPs are as valuable as most SPs."

I understand the motivation behind the comment -- he'd just finished watching a game in which the Twins, trailing the Orioles heading into the bottom of the 6th, rallied to tie, then held on until they pushed across the game-winner in the bottom of the ninth. Obvious, right? The guys who pitched the 7th through the 9th were the MVPs of the game.

Sure. I'll give you that one. Sadly, though, that's just one game, and it takes far more than one game to win a pennant. If you're going to talk 'value', then you have to be talking about the ability to win more than just one game.

Let's take a gander at some example of what I'm talking about, using a tool that we should all know about, but probably don't -- the team scoring summary at baseball-reference.com.

The KC Royals in 2003 put together an impressive spring and tenacious summer, had a share of the division lead as late as August 29, and hung in the pennant race until mid-September. Here's some numbers for you to consider:

When leading after 1: 32-14 (.696)
When leading after 6: 72-12 (.857)
When leading after 8: 75-6 (.926)

Of the 83 games the Royals won in 2003, 72 of them were games in which the Royals were leading after 6. Now the Royals had solid if unspectacular seasons from closer Mike McDougal and setup-man Jeremy Affeldt in 2003, but the rest of their bullpen could hardly be described as 'dominant'; D.J. Carrasco, Jason Grimsley, Kris Wilson, and Sean Lowe were all guys with average-to-below average ERAs and sub-par WHIP values. The best relievers in the pen, Curt Leskanic and Alan Levine, were both mid-season pickups, and worked while the Royals as a club fell from leading the division to struggling to stay in it, to finally falling out of it; in other words, Leskanic and Levine don't get credit for the Royals's good start, and oddly, despite supposedly replacing inferior relievers, didn't seem to have much of an impact during the disappointing finish. Is that value?

Now let's compare that Royal club to another, less successful Royal club:

When leading after 1: 17-18 (.486)
When leading after 6: 48-17 (.738)
When leading after 8: 52-7 (.881)

This is the 2006 Royal club that lost 100 games, with no appreciable strength anywhere in the pitching staff. The club was over 200 points worse in winning percentage when leading after 1, largely because they had just about nobody on the club who could help hold a lead. But when leading after 6, they were less than 120 points worse than the '03 club, and when leading after 8, were a mere 45 points worse. And 'less than 120 points' and '45 points' overstates the case, because the '06 Royals lost only one more game when leading after 8 than the '03 Royals did, and just five more when leading after 6, despite losing more than thirty more overall.

Could five games make a difference in a pennant chase? Sure, for a team that isn't on track to lose 100 games already. But can a team even in the fringes of a pennant race lose that many more (or fewer) games in that situation to make a difference? Let's shift gears and look at a team with the same overall record as the '03 Royals -- the 2005 Twins:

When leading after 1: 22-7 (.759)
When leading after 6: 55-8 (.873)
When leading after 8: 62-1 (.984)

The 2005 Twins clearly had a far superior bullpen to the 2003 Royals; Joe Nathan was among the top closers in the league, and the only other relievers on the entire staff with above league-average ERAs were guys who pitched less than 10 innings, plus Francisco Liriano. And you can see the difference in the record after eight -- the Twins lost just one game where they went into the ninth with a lead all year, five better than the 2003 Royals.

But take another look at that record after six: at first glance, you might think that the Twins were four games better than the Royals in this mark as well, but you'd be missing an important point -- if the Twins lost eight games when leading after 6, then they have to have given up that lead in the 7th, 8th, or 9th. We've established that the Twins gave up only one lead that cost them a win in the 9th all season, which leaves 7 games that the Twins lost in some other late inning. Compare that to the 2003 Royals -- which by that reckoning only had 6 games in which they lost a top-of-7th lead in some inning other than the 9th. The Twins may have had a better bullpen statistically, but you wouldn't have been able to tell from the won-lost record.

Last but not least, the baseball-reference report lets you aggregate all teams in baseball into a single massive set of numbers, which shows something interesting: if you believe in Win Probability Added, then it's clear which inning of the game is the most important to have a lead in:

When leading after 1: (2008) 815-376 (.684); (2007) 859-395 (.685); (2006) 837-401 (.676)
When leading after 6: (2008) 1827-306 (.857); (2007) 1865-300 (.861); (2006) 1840-308 (.857)
When leading after 8: (2008) 2087-91 (.958); (2007) 2108-102 (.954); (2006) 2100-118 (.947)

In fact, if you look at a number of seasons and aggregate them, looking for the relative points where they line up, you can see that the following progression of winning percentage holds remarkably steady for about as far back as you care to look:

Start of game: .500
Leading after 1: +.180 (total .680)
Leading after 2: +.035
Leading after 3: +.035
Leading after 4: +.035
Leading after 5: +.035
Leading after 6: +.040 (total .860)
Leading after 7: +.040
Leading after 8: +.050
Leading after 9: +.050 (total 1.000)

The first inning is clearly the most important inning to have a lead after, by far. After that, the 8th and 9th innings are slightly more important than the rest, and there's no real difference between the 7th and the 2nd as far as value toward winning a game is concerned.

So if you're asking the question, 'is it better to have a starter or reliever on in the 7th', I'd argue that, if each pitcher is likely to be equally effective, there's no difference -- there's likely a small advantage toward leaving in the starter in this case, since you're not turning to arguably your 8th best pitcher to get to your setup man.

If on the other hand, you're asking 'is it better to have a gassed starter or a fresh reliever in the 7th', then clearly it's better to have the reliever in the game, but that has nothing to do with the relative value of a starter's innings versus a 'dominant' reliever's innings, and everything to do with having an effective pitcher in the game when he's needed.

Gaaaaah!

dwintheiser — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:40:26 -0000

Guys, I don't think I can handle it anymore -- the undeserved love for Carlos Gomez, and the undeserved hate for Delmon Young.

Nothing personal against cmath, but his recap of last night's Yankee game pretty much served as the straw that broke my back. Gomez was listed as a 'stud' for:

- robbing Alex Rodriguez of a grand slam that prevented the Twins from losing 14-2, because that would have been so much more psychologically damaging than the 10-2 loss they actually suffered,

- almost preventing a ball from getting past him for a triple, and

- going 0-for-3 while seeing fewer pitches from CC Sebathia than any other Twins starter (see
http://scores.espn.go.com/mlb/boxscore?gameId=290707109)

Meanwhile, Delmon Young gets tagged as a 'dud' for:

- being one of four Twin hitters to actually get a hit off of Sebathia,

- seeing more of Sebathia's pitches than Mauer or Morneau, and in fact more per at-bat than any other Twin in the lineup (see the score link above)

Here's a couple of numbers to ponder: .270 and .276. The latter number is Carlos Gomez's on-base percentage. The former is Delmon Young's batting average. I realize that in this enlightened age we're supposed to discount batting average as a poor tool, but when your batting average is within single digits of someone else's on-base percentage, I think that's significant.

Here's a classic TwinsGeek Player A/Player B:

A - .316/912, 6 XBH (4 2B, 2 HR), 6 RBI

B - .270/714, 3 XBH (2 2B, 1 HR), 4 RBI

Player B is Joe Mauer, in 74 plate appearances dating back to June 17. Player A is Delmon Young, in 39 plate appearances dating back to June 17.

Small sample size? Sure. Has Delmon been sucking lately? Not on your life. Heck, if Jason Kubel had been hitting that well since June 17 (he's hitting .264/775 with 5 RBI and 7 XBH in 58 PAs), we'd be seeing a return of the 'Free Jason Kubel' booster club, I have no doubt.

I mean, come on, guys -- does nobody else see that Carlos Gomez is the poorest fundamental player that's ever taken up a spot on a Ron Gardenhire roster? His throws home that go halfway up the line allowing the batter to advance an extra base, his swinging for the fences any time the guy in front of him manages an extra-base hit?

Anybody?

Sympathy for the Wild Card

dwintheiser — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 04:19:01 -0000

Sympathy for the Wild Card

Written after game one of the Twins-A's series; an attempt to argue that the Twins would have been better off with the Sox winning more games.

More importantly, it hurts baseball's feelings when you treat it like football.

This one's got the makin's

dwintheiser — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:17:54 -0000

This one's got the makin's

Hey guys -- shamelessly promoting my presence on another website here.

Sure, if you're a Twins fan, you'd rather have seen the club blow past all opposition and wrap up the division title a month ago. But if you're a baseball fan, you've got to love these past two months.

New blog with old, tired writer

dwintheiser — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:07:47 -0000

New blog with old, tired writer

Hey, guys -- I've been asked to uphold the honor of the Twins in a new AL Central group blog, and the first post is up.

I'll try to swing by for comments and criticism, and to chime in on the occasional game thread, but obviously I'm going to try to put a good effort in over on the other blog as well, so you might not see as much of me here. (And that's not necessarily going to be seen as bad news by everybody, I'm sure. *grin*)

Feel free to drop in, leave some comments, and tell me I'm full of crap, especially when I try to do things like defend Ron Gardenhire as a good manager...

St. Louis Cardinals' Kelvin Jimenez regroups as Pittsburgh Pirates' Luis Rivas circles the bases...

dwintheiser — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 06:29:20 -0000

St. Louis Cardinals' Kelvin Jimenez regroups as Pittsburgh Pirates' Luis Rivas circles the bases after hitting a grand slam in the third inning of a MLB baseball game Saturday, May 31, 2008 in St. Louis.(Photo/Tom Gannam)

Better Than Expected, or Just Better?

dwintheiser — Sat, 31 May 2008 20:11:06 -0000

We're one-third of the way through the 2008 regular season, and the Twins are still performing better than expected. At what point does 'better than expected' turn into 'better'?

I was tempted to start off this essay by writing that the Twins have shown themselves to be a better team than I expected at the start of the season. After all, it's getting close to mathematically impossible that I'll actually be able to collect my beer from cmath on the 20th, given that the Twins would have to go 3-13 over their next 16 games to reach the 'eight games below .500' mark I predicted for them on June 16. The more I think about it, though, the more I wonder how confident we can say that the Twins are really better -- there are more than a few people (including Howard Sinker and John Bonnes) who would certainly argue that they are, but I still can't shake the feeling that something's not right. After all, very few pre-season projections gave the Twins much if any shot of winning the AL Central or, honestly, even being an average ballclub, in the sense that one can call a .500 ballclub 'average'. Should we really abandon our pre-season projections based on just one-third of the games played in the year?

I'm going to ask and try to answer a few basic questions about the Twins in the hopes that I'll clarify my own thinking and either be able to join the bandwagon with a clear conscience, or conversely be able to stick to my guns that the ballclub will not effectively compete for a 2008 playoff spot.

1. Is the Twins offense really this good?

As of the start of play on May 31, the Twins are scoring 4.63 runs per game -- that's the fourth-best scoring offense in the AL, and an improvement of about half a run per game from their scoring rate at the end of April, when they were among the AL's worst offenses. Yet the Twins still are among the worst in the AL in doubles, home runs, and walks. It's possible to argue that the Twins scoring totals don't really reflect their actual offensive ability.

A simple comparison will help demonstrate why:

		 Runs	   Avg	  OBP	  SLG	 OPS

Minn	   	 250	 .267	 .324	 .380	 .704

Toronto	        233	.263	.339	.379	.718

The Jays are hitting just about as well as the Twins, yet have scored seventeen fewer runs, which makes Toronto the fourth-worst offense in the AL while the Twins currently sit at fourth-best. There's no obvious reason, just looking at these raw numbers, why the Twins should have so many more runs.

The biggest reason, of course, is situational hitting: the Twins are hitting .311/845 with runners in scoring position, which is far and away the highest average and OPS in the league in those situations. The Jays, meanwhile, are hitting just .244/647 in those same situations, which is the lowest OPS (but not lowest average) in the AL in those situations. I'd guess nearly all of this difference is luck, for two reasons:

- The Twins batting average on balls in play (BABIP) in RISP situations is .338, also far and away the highest total in the AL, while the Jays BABIP in RISP situations is .274, second-lowest in the AL; differences from the mean in BABIP are usually attributed to random chance.

- If players had the ability to improve their hitting in RISP situations, why wouldn't they try to find a way to use that to improve their hitting in all situations? We're talking about players who've taken steroids, stimulants, and any other swallowable that might enhance their performance; hitters sometimes try to sneak a bat filled with cork or super-balls into the box with them, while pitchers sometimes try to sneak a tack, piece of sandpaper, or slug of Vaseline on their person when they head to the mound. If a batter knew that he could make an adjustment with a runner on second that helped him hit 80 points higher, why wouldn't he try to do it all the time?

And before you say 'well, maybe they do', keep in mind that taken as a whole, players do hit slightly better in RISP situations than they do overall, but not by all that much:

2007 - overall = .271/761; RISP = .275/780
2006 - overall = .275/776; RISP = .276/792
2005 - overall = .268/755; RISP = .273/780
2004 - overall = .270/771; RISP = .272/790

While I'd prefer to see a formal study before drawing conclusions as to why this is true, my guess would be that there are two factors involved, neither of which has anything to do with the batter 'trying harder'. First, pitchers throw from the stretch with runners on, which likely makes them slightly less effective. Second, defenses often position themselves so as to attempt to prevent the runner from scoring as much as to prevent the batter from getting a hit. Given those two situations, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find a typical batter gaining about 20-30 points of OPS in RISP situations.

1a. So if the offense isn't really this good, how much worse should we expect it to get?

Well, let's get one thing straight right off the top -- I think the Twins overall numbers in terms of batting average and OPS are actually sustainable. Morneau's hitting really well right now, but he was better in 2006, as was Mauer. Everybody else who's playing regularly is either right around where his career average predicts, or is actually significantly below his career average (Everett, Cuddyer). About the only player I'd suggest is playing over his head is Carlos Gomez, yet a .286/738 hitting line isn't that outrageous for a talented youngster -- Lew Ford hit significantly better than that in his first full season with the Twins in 2004 (.299/827), and Ford was never considered a top prospect.

What is likely to happen is that you'll notice the Twins are stranding more baserunners instead of pressing the rallies the way they have been thus far. While it would be a fallacy to expect the club to fall equally below the mean in June and July as they've been above it in April and May (the gambler's fallacy, to be precise), it would not be at all a fallacy to suggest that the Twins are more likely to end June having hit closer to the league-average .266/760 RISP performance in that month than they are to match their current RISP performance -- this is called 'regression to the mean', and while it's not guaranteed, it's where to put the smart money. And if they do that, they'll finish June scoring closer to the 4.0 runs per game that Toronto is currently scoring than the 4.6 runs per game they're scoring now.

2. Is the defense really this good?

Let's get another thing straight -- the defense isn't really very good at all. The pitching staff has been reasonable thus far; they're middle-of-the-pack with a 4.32 ERA, though it should be noted that the Metrodome has been a pitcher's park since 2006 and thus this ERA is lower than it would otherwise be. Add in the effects of defense, however, and the Twins are allowing 4.83 runs per game, better only than Detroit, Seattle, and Texas. They're dead last in hits allowed per game, allowing a full hit per game more than the Angels and Royals are (and they're tied for 10th place allowing 9.0 hits per game), and just one strikeout ahead of dead last in the AL, which wouldn't be so bad if it didn't mean that the Twins are relying less on their pitchers and more on their defense to record outs than nearly any other team in the AL, which for a team with the second-lowest defensive efficiency, second-most errors, and second-largest number of unearned runs in the league can't be all that good. Then consider that the Twins pitching staff has allowed more home runs than any other staff in the AL -- it's true: the Twins have allowed 57 homers, while the Royals have allowed 55, the Orioles 53, and the Yankees and Red Sox 52 apiece.

The only saving grace is that the Twins pitching staff has allowed far and away the fewest walks in the AL, more than twenty fewer than the Royals, A's, and White Sox. Even so, they're allowing so many more hits that even the small walk rate still leaves the staff among the AL's worst at baserunners per nine innings.

A lot has been made of Boof Bonser's slow start, but the truth is that the Twins starting staff as a whole isn't as good as it looks: Glen Perkins is 2-2 with a league-average ERA. Scott Baker is 2-0, but his 4.09 ERA is actually higher than the league average, and has been helped an awful lot by the Metrodome:

Baker at home: 16.2 IP, 13 H, 2.16 ERA
Baker on the road: 16.1 IP, 18 H, 6.06 ERA

Yes, it's a small sample size, but it's only unrepresentative in the size of the home/road split:

Twins pitchers at home: 268 IP, 1.35 WHIP, 3.66 ERA
Twins pitchers on the road: 217.2 IP, 1.49 WHIP, 5.13 ERA

And yes, that difference in innings is also a harbinger -- the Twins have pitched much better at home than on the road thus far this season, but they've also played an extra four home games (and will play two more before the current series is up); as the season goes on and the club makes up those road games, odds are the pitching won't perform so well.

So I've reached my conclusion: though I'm unlikely to enjoy a free beer on the 20th, I'll be a lot less disappointed than those fans who've decided that a hot start to the season is reason enough to climb onto the bandwagon, just before the axle starts getting wobbly.

And one last observation: if, despite all this, the Twins do still manage somehow to steal the AL Central without making a signficant free agent move? Then Ron Gardenhire is the best manager in the AL, period. There would be no other explanation.

Buster Olney strikes again

dwintheiser — Sat, 24 May 2008 21:47:35 -0000

Joe Christiansen passes along a tidbit from Buster Olney's ESPN blog, where Olney wonders if Johan Santana, at age 29, is already past his prime.

Personally, I've never been much of a fan of Olney, despite his very high standing in the baseball writing community. Even so, I can't take much offense at his conclusion, as passed along by Christiansen:

This question remains: Will he be worth to the Mets what they will pay him over the duration of the contract? We’ll see.

Well, for starters, I can't really take much offense because there isn't much here to take offense to -- Olney doesn't even have the confidence in his analysis to make a definite statement that Santana either will or won't be worth his contract at the end of his seven year deal. The strange thing is, though, if Olney did say that Santana wouldn't be worth his contract at the end, I couldn't really argue with him: while we're able to project careers better than we have at any other time in baseball history, and we're in an era where ballplayers are playing effectively much longer into their careers than they normally have, it's impossible to say with any confidence precisely how Santana will be pitching six years from now, which is the main reason why the Twins were so reluctant to sign him to the long-term deal he wanted. It doesn't matter who'd make that argument, be it Olney, Aaron Gleeman, or Stephen A. Smith -- if you have to choose 'will he or won't he be worth the money at the end', the odds are he probably won't.

The problem I have with Olney isn't so much his writing, or even his conclusions -- it's that he sometimes tries to be a newer-model sportswriter, aware of and even able to use statistical and sabermetric analysis in his work, yet he almost always ends up botching the analysis because Olney tends to use statistics, to borrow a phrase, the way a drunk uses a lamppost -- for support, not illumination. (For example, consider Olney's season-and-a-half long quest to get Productive Outs accepted in the baseball and sabermetric communities, despite almost universal disdain for the stat in the latter community.)

Olney provides two pieces of information -- one traditional, one sabermetric -- to back up his assertion that Santana ain't what he used to be. The traditional information is that Santana's fastball is slipping in velocity; an observation that Olney notes has been confirmed by other major league scouts who have written him since he first published that Santana was losing zip on his fastball. I can't argue with that observation; I'm not a big-league scout and I don't have access to a radar gun (unless you count the one on Gameday webcasts that seems to be ridiculously out of calibration at times).

The other piece of information Olney supplies is a comparison of Santana's numbers from this season as compared to previous seasons, and that's something I can make an argument against. Olney shows the following numbers...

With that said, here are the primary indicators:

Opponents’ OPS over the past six seasons: .607, .642, .564, .594, .616, .678. This year: .723.

His ratio of strikeouts per nine innings over the past six seasons has been 11.38, 9.61, 10.46, 9.25, 9.44, 9.66. This year: 7.79.

His strikeout-to-walk ratio over the past six seasons: 2.80, 3.60, 4.91, 5.29, 5.21, 4.52. This year: 3.87

...and clearly wants you to believe that they are conclusive. They certainly look damning, to say the least. Of course, if you're a Twins fan who's watched Santana over the past few years, you may have a tickling little doubt at the back of your brain, as I did: hasn't Santana historically been less than himself in April and May, and wouldn't quoting this season's numbers be just quoting numbers from April and May and comparing them to full seasons' worth of numbers where we know Santana has pitched better?

Yes. Yes it would be. In Santana's career prior to 2008, he's been 25-19 with an ERA of just over 4.00 from the start of the season through May 31; from June 1 to the end of the season, he's 73-28 with an overall ERA of less than 3.00.

So how do Santana's numbers so far this year compare to his overall numbers in his career, looking just at April and May?

Opponent's OPS:
This season - .723
Overall April/May, not counting 2008 - .747

Santana's K/9I:
This season - 7.79
Overall April/May, not counting 2008 - 9.4

Santana's K/BB:
This season - 3.87
Overall April/May, not counting 2008 - 3.59

So, this season's OPS is actually better than his career average for this time of year, while his K/BB ratio is better than his career average. The K/9I ratio is clearly down, which might be related to the observational drop in Santana's velocity; on the other hand, the overall numbers include all of Santana's relief appearances, where a pitcher's K/9I ratio tends to be higher. (In the interest of fairness, it would take a lot of work that I'm just not up to right now to separate all of Santana's relief appearances from the overall numbers, and removing every season where Santana made no more than one start in a month actually causes his career K/9I ratio to go up, not down.)

So Olney's watered-down conclusion is impossible to argue with, but would be hard to argue with even if he took the obvious stance, and his observation that Santana's velocity is down does seem to be validated by his K/9I numbers compared to his career numbers during the same period of the season. On the other hand, Olney's statistical argument that this means Santana may be in decline at age 29? Much less credible. After all, Santana's ERA in 2008 is also lower than his career average in March through May (though ideally you'd adjust both sets of numbers for park effects and league effects and possibly even use a defense-independent ERA measure, it's still clear that Santana isn't pitching significantly worse by an ERA measure).

It seems much more credible that each of the following is true:

- As an East Coast writer, Olney never really paid much attention to Santana until it was clear that Santana was in the Cy Young race, and thus either never noticed his tendency to start slowly or never made much of it.

- Olney looked at the numbers, found a few that supported his argument,
and simply stopped looking.

Have I ever made an argument, looked for a few numbers to support my position, and stopped looking? Sure -- I'd guess we all have. Then again, most of us aren't being paid to write credible opinions, nor are we likely to be quoted by Joe Christiansen even if we do.

Then again, it is his blog, not an essay for the Journal of the Society for American Baseball Research, so maybe I should cut him some slack.

A Trip to the What-If Ball

dwintheiser — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:01:22 -0000

Howard Sinker passes along a comment from Seth Stohs, proprietor of SethSpeaks.net:

Has Carlos Gomez already helped the Twins to more wins than Johan would have been able to? I would argue that when Gomez is in the lineup, the Twins have done better and in several cases, he has had a very direct effect on the Twins wins.

Questions like this fall under the unofficial category of trips to the 'What-If Ball'; unsolvable hypothetical questions about what might have been if history had been different. They're fun questions, and can occasionally be illustrative questions as well, but it helps when the questioner actually goes all the way to the ball.

First, let's restate Seth's premise, paraphrasing Seth himself, to get a more complete picture of his hypothesis:

Had the Twins not traded Santana to the Mets, they would not have had Carlos Gomez to play center field and would instead have gone with Denard Span, a much less exciting player. In addition, the Twins would likely not have started the season with Nick Blackburn in the rotation, who has turned out to be arguably the Twins best starting pitcher thus far in 2008. If you undo the trade, and incorporate the other factors resulting from undoing the trade, the Twins don't look to be any better in the win column than they are now.

On the surface, that seems a fairly compelling argument. Looking a little more closely, however, shows that a few of the premises in this argument can be legitimately questioned.

First (and I won't take credit for this one, since a commenter on Howard's Strib blog noted it first), while it's true that Gomez has directly contributed to a number of Twins wins (Opening Night at the very minimum, plus some others depending on how you measure such things), it's also true that a regular player not only gets more opportunities to contribute to a win, but also gets more chances to contribute to a loss. While I'm not a fan of Win Probability Added as a measure of player value, I do think WPA has something to contribute to this specific argument -- has a player contributed more to winning than he has to losing over a given period of time? And Gomez's current WPA, according to fangraphs.com, is a -0.19; Gomez's errors, struggles at the plate, and other young player woes have basically combined to negate the good things he's done in Twins wins, resulting in an effective net balance in the negative (and a balance that's the second worst such balance among AL outfielders, behind only Emil Brown of the Athletics). It's impossible to say if Denard Span or Jason Pridie would have been as electric in Twins wins as Gomez has been this year, but it's reasonable to assume that neither Pridie nor Span would likely have been much worse overall.

Second, and I will take credit for this one, it's actually possible that Blackburn would still have started the season with the Twins in the rotation even if the Twins had held onto Santana; had the Twins actually signed Santana to an extension, guaranteeing that he wouldn't just leave as a free agent after 2008, it's very likely that the Twins would not have worried about signing Livan Hernandez to fill the top of the rotation slot -- though whether that would be because they didn't feel the need for another innings-eater or because they wouldn't have wanted to spend the extra cash after committing so much to Santana is debatable. If we assume that Santana thus would have started the games that Hernandez has actually started in 2008, it would be Santana, not Hernandez, who would be the beneficiary of the best run support in the AL, and it would be hard to imagine that Santana, given that kind of run support, would be anything but unbeaten at this point.

So the simpler premise, that Gomez has helped the Twins to the same won-loss record they'd have had if they'd retained Santana, doesn't look quite so defensible given these thoughts: Gomez hasn't contributed anything in a win-loss sense that any other outfielder in the AL couldn't have done, at least according to WPA, and Santana arguably would have won at least one if not both of the games Hernandez has been charged with losing in his ten starts thus far.

On the flip side of the coin, the larger issue likely stands: the Twins might well have been better off, but they wouldn't have been hugely better off -- they'd most likely be a game or two above their current record, if that much -- and given the size of Santana's contract, they'd likely be in a much less flexibie position to adapt to team needs to pick up necessary pieces to continue to contend while Santana remained a Twin.

Just because I disagree with Seth's specific premise here doesn't mean I think the trade won't end up working out long-term.