SB Nation User Blog: lookatthosetwins

Worst Division in Baseball?

lookatthosetwins — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:02:37 -0000

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?

The answer is simple... you have to account for the difference between leagues. I'll start by doing a very simplified version, based on interleague records, and also show you a very complex version, done by someone much smarter than me. Below are the interleague records for the last 5 years.

Year	AL Wins	NL Wins
2005	136	116
2006	154	98
2007	137	115
2008	149	102
2009	137	114
Totals	713	545

As you can see, and as you probably all ready know, the American League has dominated the National League. The AL win percentage has been 56.7% over the last 5 years. Not an insignificant amount. I've heard people say that the DH rule is the main reason for the difference. Thinking that the difference in rule accounts for any significant portion of the AL's domination is really silly - it's only one person, most NL teams have a pinch hitter that can be used, the AL doesn't get to use the DH in half the games! Us as Twins fans know how much of a boost we've gotten from interleague play, and this is the first year we've had a DH to talk about. To be safe, I'd be willing to drop it down to 55%, so a 5% boost. Below is the table of winning percentages for each division over the course of the season this year. I then added 5% to each division in the AL, and took away 5% from each division in the NL.

DIV.	Win %	Lg adj.	new Win %
AL East	52.7%	5.0%	57.7%
AL West	52.8%	5.0%	57.8%
AL Central	47.0%	5.0%	52.0%
NL West	51.5%	-5.0%	46.5%
NL East	48.5%	-5.0%	43.5%
NL Central	53.9%	-5.0%	48.9%

As you can see, the AL Central now has a healthy lead on any division in the NL. You might say that this isn't the proper way to do things, just adding the 5% to the AL and taking it away from the NL, and you'd be partially right. It isn't the greatest way to do things; you aren't taking into account the fact that some of the games being counted were interleague games. But adding just 3%. less than half of the actual advantage the AL has over the NL, the ALC still comes out just behind the NL Central and ahead of the other two NL divisions.

Yes, that was an overly simplistic way of doing things, but that doesn't mean my conclusions are wrong. I primarily did that because I feel that some people are going to ignore the more complex statistical method shown below. Like I said above, I will show another method, this using numbers from someone much smarter than me. Beyond the Box Score is an extremely useful website, showing a primarily statistical view on baseball analysis. Each week, they do their power rankings. These power ranking are similar to Baseball Prospectus' third order wins, which use wOBA, tRA, and other statistics to calculate an expected winning percentage, instead of just using actual winning percentage and adjusting for strength of schedule. They also use a league adjustment, but this one is much better than the crude one I used. It is calculated by using interleague records, players that have switched leagues, and other information. The expected win% column is a measure of how many wins a given team would expect to win if all teams were in one big league and played eachother equally.

I took an average rank, and an average expected win % for each division, and my results are below.

DIV.	Avg. rank	BTB's eW%
AL East	7	57.0%
AL West	11.25	51.9%
AL Central	14	50.3%
NL West	15.2	49.4%
NL East	21	45.5%
NL Central	21.86	44.4%

As you can see, the AL Central edges out all 3 NL divisions once again. Because it is adjusting for strength of schedule, the AL East gets a big boost, and the NL Central takes a big hit. The others stay about the same, only with a small % change for league adjustment.

I hope that one of the two methods shown has gotten through and that people will start to understand that while we aren't in an elite division, it is still an average or slightly better than average division. If we manage to shake off this last horrible loss and come back to win the division, we should be proud. We may have gotten to play the Royals quite a bit, but noone in the NL has to play teams as good as the Red Sox, Rays, and Yankees.

Twins starters by ERA, FIP, and xFIP

lookatthosetwins — Tue, 05 May 2009 22:32:55 -0000

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.

Name	ERA	FIP	xFIP
Perkins	3.34	2.91	5.00
Blackburn	4.02	3.49	5.44
Slowey	5.17	3.97	4.86
Liriano	6.04	4.51	5.38
Baker	9.15	7.38	5.35

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.

Where should Joe Mauer's Rehab assignment be?

lookatthosetwins — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 05:53:17 -0000

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.

Fangraphs on Twitter

lookatthosetwins — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 02:08:48 -0000

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.

Some small sample size observations

lookatthosetwins — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:02:58 -0000

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.

	AB	Hits	2b	3b	HR	BB	OBP	Slg	Avg.
Delmon Young	34	13	3	0	2	0	0.417	0.647	0.382
Carlos Gomez	33	9	2	1	3	4	0.351	0.667	0.273

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.

The Minnesota Twins - The 18th best organization in the MLB

lookatthosetwins — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:46:41 -0000

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.

Mauer to have Exam

lookatthosetwins — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:48:12 -0000

Mauer to have Exam

"Twins catcher Joe Mauer on Tuesday will have a magnetic resonance arthrogram to try to get to the bottom of why he’s still having discomfort in his back nearly three months after surgery to remove a kidney obstruction."

Crede!

lookatthosetwins — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:39:35 -0000

Crede!

Not a done deal yet, but Heyman says they are closing in on a deal. And since it's Heyman, and Crede's a Boras client, I think we can put this one in the books.

Twin's Best in League at "Non-Stolen Base Baserunning"

lookatthosetwins — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:51:10 -0000

Twin's Best in League at "Non-Stolen Base Baserunning"

Sky from BtBS analyzes the BPro Baserunning numbers and finds that the twins are about 15 runs, or 1.5 wins above average in baserunning, not counting stolen and not stolen bases.

Joe Mauer is also 10th in the league in this category, something that confirms what a lot of people think.

Twins Interested in..... Kawakami?

lookatthosetwins — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 05:53:55 -0000

According to MLB Trade Rumors, the twins may be interested in Kenshin Kawakami. This is surprising to say the least, and probably won't amount to anything. If you are wondering who the heck Kawakami is, well, you aren't alone. Here's what I could find out.

Kawakami is a 33 year old pitcher who pitches in the central league in Japan. Here are the numbers for his last 3 seasons.

	Starts	k/9	BB/9	Hr/9	ERA
2006	22	8.1	1.6	0.9	2.51
2007	26	7.8	1.2	1.0	3.55
2008	16	8.8	2.0	0.9	2.30
*Career*	214	7.3	1.9	0.9	3.22

So he looks like a very good pitcher, although pretty inconsistent. Also I think he was hurt some of last year, which would explain his 16 starts.

He apparantly doesn't have overpowering stuff, but has good control and changes speeds very well. Sounds like someone the twins would target. He also doesn't have as deceptive of windup as some other Japanese players.

So he seems like a good enough pitcher. But why exactly would the Twins be targeting him? Tim says we could be adding depth in order to make a trade. This makes sense, possibly allowing us to trade away a starter for Beltre?

This is just a rumor from one guy, and there are plenty of other suitors, so the chances of us picking him up seem pretty slim. It's good to know that they're checking all available options out there though.