Hello,  I thought I'd give a quick review of what the recent arbitration announcements mean to our offseason.  This will be nothing new to most of you, but thought it would be helpful for some.

1) Pavano being offered arbitration.  He will most likely decline and look for a multiyear deal.  If he signs elsewhere, we get a sandwich pick (picked between the first and second rounds).

2) Orlando Hudson and Placido Polanco NOT being offered arbitration.  These were the two Type A's that were on the Twins radar.  Because they weren't offered arbitration, they will not cost a draft pick.  They may still price out of the Twins range, but it at least widens the pool of free agents the Twins could sign. 

As far as free agent infielders and starting pitchers go, the ONLY ones that would cost a draft pick to sign are Chone Figgins, Marco Scutaro, and John Lackey.  These aren't guys we were expecting to pursue anyway, so draft picks shouldn't get in the way of any negotiations this year.

For most of the season, I've heard it time and time again.  I've heard it from Dick Bremer, I've heard it from various ESPN analysts, and I've heard it from Twinkie Town commenters.  "The AL Central is the worst division in baseball."  "The Twins might be able to pull out of the weak AL Central." 

The AL Central is not a great division.  The AL Central win percentage, 47%, ranks last in all 6 divisions.  The top team in the divison, Detroit, is only 9 games above .500.  How could I argue that this isn't the worst division in baseball?

Continue reading this post »

I all ready posted these numbers in the comments of another thread, but it generated enough discussion that I thought I should make a full post out of it.  I'll give a quick description of each of these stats, but for more info, you can go to The Hardball Times.

ERA - You all know this one.  Over the course of a year, this is a fairly good indication of how a pitcher has pitched.  For small sample sizes (like 5 starts!) luck and other things can skew this number and make pitchers who have been throwing well look poor and vise versa.

FIP - "Fielding Independent Pitching"  This is the expected ERA of a pitcher based on three things - Strikeouts, Walks, and Homeruns.  Besides being "Fielding independent", it is also very luck independent.  It assumes that all balls in play will become hits at a league average rate, and that you will pitch the same with runners on base as without.

xFIP - "expected Fielding Independent Pitching" This takes the idea of FIP a step further.  It uses the idea that most pitchers will usually give up a certain number of homeruns per fly ball given up.  Essentially it takes the strikeouts, walks, and flyball rate and gives you the expected ERA based on these stats alone.

For small sample sizes, FIP and especially xFIP will give you a better indication of how a pitcher has thrown thus far, because the factors not used in their formulas (Batting average on Balls in Play, Rate of stranding runners, and HR per flyball given up) will tend to regress to the league mean as the season progresses.  These statistics aren't perfect, but they give a better prediction of future play than ERA does.

Here is a breakdown of our 5 starting pitchers based on these three statistics.

We're all pretty familiar with the ERAs.  Perkins hasn't given up many runs, Baker has given up a ton.  But look at the FIPs.  Perkins still looks great, Blackburn very good, and Baker still way up there.  The xFIPs are what looks strange.  All 5 pitchers come out to roughly the same place.  Slowey at about league average, Blackburn about half a run higher, and the rest in between.

Why is this?  It comes down to the fact that Perkins and Blackburn have each yielded just one homerun thus far.  This will not continue.  Pitchers just do not keep the ball in the ballpark while giving up as many homeruns as Perkins.  Perkins' xFIP is almost exactly where it was last year, so expect a repeat of 2008 from him as the year progresses.

Blackburn has somehow limited runs this year with an absolutely abysmal strikeout rate - 3.45 strikeouts per 9 innings.  For reference, Livan Hernandez's was 3.3 with the Twins last year.  I'm sure we all remember how he was able to get hitters out for a while, and then completely fell apart and ended up with a 5.48 ERA before departing.  He will not continue this success unless he finds a way to strike out more batters.

The most interesting case is Scott Baker.  He has allowed 3.4(!) homeruns per start this year.  This will not continue.  He has been, and will always be homer prone as long as he gives up as many flyballs as he does, but a rate like that is just not sustainable, and will regress hard toward's the league mean.  He hasn't pitched as well as last year, but it hasn't been nearly as bad as his ERA suggests.  Expect Baker's ERA to drop rapidly over the next month.

Overall, I'm not sure if I'm more or less optimistic after looking at these numbers.  While it looks like Baker will rebound, this will be counteracted by Blackburn and Perkins going the other direction.  Overall, our pitchers need to start striking people out or we're in for a long season.

As we all know, Joe Mauer is in Fort Myers on a rehab assignment.  Thinking about Joe playing games for our minor league affilliate, I couldn't help but wonder why he couldn't "rehab" with the Twins.  Here are the Pros and Cons that I can think of of this scenario.

Pros

1. Obvious.  We go from an adequate but unspectacular backup catcher to the best catcher in the league.  We're struggling pretty bad right now, but they don't call him Baby Jesus for nothing.

2.  The quick to jump off the bandwagon fans will have something to get excited about and jump back on.  Hopefully there aren't too many fans that upset over 15 poor games, but you never know.

Cons

1.  I think this is the main one.  Joe would feel more pressure to compete and to play at a high level, instead of relaxing and focusing on how his back feels.

2.  Bringing Joe up would mean sending someone back down.  The obvious choice would be Morales, but I think the better choice would have been to just leave Mijares in the minors for a while until we were sure Joe was 100%.  That way, if Joe needed to only play every other day, or needed to come out of a game, we wouldn't be holding our breath whenever Redmond got hit in the groin with a baseball.

3.  The afformentioned bandwagon jumpers would be more than a little upset if he came up then had a setback and had to go back on the DL. Even for the rest of us, it would be a lot easier to see him get a setback in Fort Myers and push his arrival back then to see him for a few days then have to wait again.

4.  That's not the way teams usually handle these matters, and I wouldn't look to the Twins to start a trend.  (I'm at least partially kidding about this one)

Looking at it, it does seem like letting him rehab in Fort Myers is the right choice, if just to keep away all the "Move him to another position" posts off the message boards if he had to go back on the DL.  In a perfect world*, Joe would be able to "rehab" while helping the team out, because 75% of Joe Mauer is still better than most catchers in the league.

*Yes, I realize that "in a perfect world" not only would Joe not be injured, he would be playing 8 of the 9 positions in the field, including pitcher.  Nick Punto would obviously still be the starting shortstop, and would slot nicely in the two hole.

If you are like me, then you have heard lots about Twitter, but had no idea what it was.  But now it looks like I have a reason to join.  Fangraphs will update you with the score, situation, and win probability for the twins or any other team of your choosing.  This can be on your computer, or on your phone.  I work late most nights, so this will take the burden off of my brother to update me while working.  We'll have to wait and see how well it works.

34 at bats, 12 innings pitched.... these aren't samples worth taking away too much relevant information.  This is especially true if you are looking at batting averages ERAs or any stats like that.  There are a few things that I noticed when looking at our stats thus far that I found interesting.  Whether any of this is meaningful or not remains to be seen.

Delmon and Carlos

Our two swing first, think later youngsters are both off to hot starts. 

The thing that sticks out right away is the power.  Neither of these two showed a ton of power last year, and 5 and 6 extra base hits in 34 and 33 at bats is a very encouraging sign. 

There is one other thing that sticks out, and that is the walks.  Delmon hasn't taken a walk yet in 34 at bats.  With all of his changes he's made to his approach, it doesn't look like patience was one of them.  Carlos, on the other hand, has taken 4 walks in 33 at bats.  For comparison, he took 25 walks in 577 at bats last year.  If he kept at his spring training rate for 577 at bats, he'd have 70 walks.  Now, a sample of 33 at bats doesn't equal a complete change in approach, but it does show that he has taken his criticisms to heart and is working on these things in spring training.

Scott Baker has given up 8 homeruns in 12 innings.

What does this mean?  Probably not too much.  Small sample size and bad luck combined with the fact that he's a flyball pitcher are probably to blame.  His 9 ks and 2 walks are more important to me.  It sure is astounding to see on a stat sheet though. 

The pitcher I'd be concerned about, and the one I was concerned about coming in, is Glen Perkins.  He has a nice 3.00 ERA, but has only struck out 6 batters, and walked 4, in 15 innings.  Not good.  Kevin Slowey has 10 ks and 1 BB in 9 innings.  Encouraging, but really not a huge suprise.  Liriano also has a nice 14/6 k/bb ratio, and he also has a nice 2.36 GB/FB ratio.  To put this number in context, it was 2.19 in his dominating 2006 campaign, and last year it was 0.92. 

Gomez showing power and patience is very encouraging.  Liriano regaining his groundball tendencies could make him a dominant force once again.  Perkins continuing to not strike people out could catch up with him this year.  At this point, these stats don't have much predicative power, but it will be interesting to watch them as the spring continues. 

Yes, that is a rediculous statement.  But it was made by a very intelligent writer over at FanGraphs, Dave Cameron.  .

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/organizational-rankings-18

Now, before we get too upset, we need to understand that he takes into account ownership, and that this is going forward, so we don't get credit for Terry Ryan.  But still, The Orioles, the White Sox, and Rangers all ranked ahead of us.

I expect a lot of us to comment over there, but remember that this is a stats first website, so be prepared to back up any statements you make.  Lets show Dave that he is wrong, but also that the Twins fans are smart and objective.