Minnesota Twins Encyclicus

I Tried

2009-04-25T01:42:00.001-05:00

Please look for baseball related content on my homepage or on the Bleacher Report.

Crede Fans?

2009-04-21T01:41:00.004-05:00

Not to make too much out of such a small sample size, but:

Brian Buscher OPS: 883
Brendan Harris OPS: 985
Joe Crede OPS: 608

I'll wait until later in the year (mid-May?) before I come to any conclusions about the Joe Crede signing.

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The Evil Genius' 40-Man Roster

2009-04-20T01:13:00.003-05:00

Mystery Man

His identity is shrouded in secrecy. Some say he's a demon. Others say he is from a small town in Siberia. Still others suggest he's just a marketing intern. Whatever he is, it's kept secret. The Mystery Man is not seen in public. He's never played, anywhere, that anyone knows of. There are no stats, no pictures, and his identification is unknown even to the FBI. When signing his baseball contract there was simply a smiley face where his signature should have been. And when the baseball world least expects it, he'll make his appearance in The Show.

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Twins Notes

2009-04-17T22:53:00.004-05:00

Have to give kudos to Jason Kubel; hitting for the cycle by winning the game with a grand slam home run after the opposing team intentionally walked the guy in front of him is something awesome. Angels manager Mike Scioscia gets an assist by failing to bring in his closer when the game was on the line (see Gleeman, Gardy isn't the only one). Twins fans needed this win to stay interested. Offense=good.

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The Value of Dickey

2009-04-14T01:46:00.003-05:00

-Dickey's value goes beyond the numbers.
-Dickey can pitch a lot, make starts, work on short rest and eat innings.
-Tim Wakefield did this for the Red Sox in their 1st World Series win since Ruth was on the roster, eating up some dead innings and working on short rest.
-Dickey did the same on at the Metrodome earlier this month, against Blue Jays for 4 outs and 23 pitches after he had made a start three days before where he threw 104 pitches.
-Knuckleballers have no platoon effect, so Dickey takes over the spot of a mediocre left handed reliever.
-Dickey should allow an 11 man pitching staff which gives the team more hitting options.

Mark Fidrych, RIP

2009-04-14T01:33:00.004-05:00

I was truly saddened to hear about the passing of Mark Fidrych today in an apparent accident. He was a great TTM signer whose career after baseball showed a stoic humility few men could muster.

-Another great TTM signer also passed away recently, George Kell.

They will be missed and their devotion to baseball fans should serve as a model to all other sports figures.

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2009 1st Quarter TTM Results

2009-04-09T11:37:00.003-05:00

Sent 157 requests, got 94 requests returned with a total of 222 autographs including 3 email requests honored. This was almost exactly a 60% return, which was good as I sent to a lot of active baseball players in spring training. Scott Baker, Boof Bonser, Michael Cuddyer and Paul Molitor (seriously) are among those I recieved autographs from during the Twins spring training. Retired players from the 50's were the bulk of my requests, and the willingness of those guys to sign a lot of autgraphs very fast is great and helped buoy the number of autographs above 2 per return.

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Required Reading: The Physics of Baseball

2009-04-07T15:38:00.004-05:00

A new addition to my slowly growing list of books for the Sabermetricians Canon:

Duensing or Dickey?

2009-04-03T00:20:00.005-05:00

I vote Dickey and here's my rational:

With Duensing you get a replacement level left handed reliever who can provide a lot of innings but would be best used mostly against lefties. Duensing is a low SO, low BB, high WHIP pitcher who doesn't give up a lot of HRs.

Dickey, being a knuckleballer, will also be a high WHIP. But he'll be high SO and knuckleballers don't have meaningful platoon splits so there's no need to worry about handedness. Plus, Dickey has already been a replacement level pitcher last year, it's my guess he could be better than replacement this year as he becomes more comfortable with the Knuckleball, which he has learned relatively recently. The one downside is he'll give up more homeruns than Duensing but can probably pitch more innings.

But it might be a moot point, with Baker hurt they might bring them both.

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Women in baseball

2009-03-28T00:48:00.008-05:00

I've been saying this for years, if you learn to throw the knuckleball early in life, you can be a professional baseball player no matter who you are:

OSAKA, Japan (AP)—Japan’s first female professional baseball player made her debut Friday, striking out one batter in the ninth inning.

Eri Yoshida, a 17-year-old who throws a sidearm knuckleball, took the mound during Kobe 9 Cruise’s 5-0 season-opening win over the Osaka Gold Villicanes in the newly formed Kansai Independent League.

The 5-foot, 114-pounder walked the first batter leading off the inning on four pitches and allowed a stolen base before striking out the next batter swinging at Osaka Dome. She was then replaced after facing two batters.

The catch of course is Yoshida plays indy ball in Japan.

But a pro's a pro.

The theory behind the knuckleball is easy: throw a ball with no spin (+or- a half rotation) at about 60 MPH sixty feet.

It's just really hard to do.

Which is why it should be learned at a young age. Will it be effective in little league? No, it won't be fast enough. But it can act like a change up in games, or you can just keep it for practice sessions. Whatever.

Anyone can throw a baseball 60 MPH with practice and training. If you spend 10 years (age 12 to age 22) throwing the pitch regularly, you should be able to master it (assuming you don't suddenly realize your real calling is as an engineer).

Does this mean there will be scores of women playing in the Majors? No. But it does give hope to thousands of people looking to play baseball at the indy/college/minors/international levels.

Something else I wonder, could someone use Dr. Mike Marshall's pitching motion to throw a knuckleball (he doesn't teach it because he thinks the odds of success are too low, but not necessarily because it can't be done with his motion). Such a pitcher could conceivably throw almost unlimited innings.

Update:

Rob Neyer says:

Hmmm, let's see … five feet and 114 pounds … what happens when the enemy hitters start dropping bunts into that tricky area between the pitcher's mound and the third-base line? Will Yoshida have the quickness and the arm strength to throw anyone out at first base?

Yeah Rob, that's why she throws a knuckleball. It's really hard to accurately place a bunt with a pitch that flutters. Besides, a well placed bunt is a threat for any pitcher.

He goes on:

And speaking of arm strength, what happens when the count is three balls and no strikes? Or what happens when there's a grounder to the first baseman and she has to cover first base and gets run over by some burly first baseman?

Well, according to the Bushido Baseball Warrior Code, when a big player from the other team picks on one of your players you either let your big burly first baseman play a game of knuckles or you throw at the guy the next time around.

you can't play if you don't have the requisite physical tools

Fair enough, but Neyer comes to his conclusions based only on the woman's weight and gender, not on any actual viewing of her abilities.

Do I think Yoshida is some sort of All Star? Of course not. I haven't seen her play either. It might be just a publicity stunt. She might also be just another in a long long of semi-talented indy ball players who never catch on elsewhere. But ease up on the preliminary judgment, eh?

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UZR correlated to Runs Allowed

2009-03-22T23:43:00.000-05:00

Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) is a statistic which purports to accurately measure fielding ability. In fact, there's little reason to doubt it. But how useful is UZR? While it's not completely fair, running a correlation between UZR and the number of runs allowed (RA) should give us an idea as to the utility of the stat (indeed, if it does measure fielding ability nearly perfectly, it should give us an idea of what impact fielding actually has on the outcome of a game).

Equation: Runs Allowed=-1.1(UZR)+752
R=-.48

Looks like a pretty good stat. Even with a small sample size (To get any kind of statistical significance I'd need a lot more data) everything comes out nicely. Even a -.48 correlation between UZR and RA is high considering pitching has a lot to do with RA too.

I didn't want to pull the data on pitching myself (though I'll doubtless get around to it) but I did find somebody who correlated "pure pitching" (defense independent pitching stats--DIPS) to runs per nine innings (not exactly comparing apples to apples I know) and got a correlation of .81.

Regression Statistics
Multiple R 0.809312344
R Square 0.65498647
Adjusted R Square 0.642951114
Standard Error 0.355148372
Observations 90

Correlation isn't causation, but if UZR really is the "ultimate" fielding stat which captures every concievable variable which goes into a player's fielding ability, we then know the real impact fielding has on the outcome of a game.

Unfortunately UZR isn't too predictive:

A simple little test. I simply looked at matched pairs of a player at a position, year one to year two. I wanted to see how well UZR (in this case, UZR/150) from year one agreed with year two.

I used two simple tests: average absolute error and correlation. No minimum cutoffs; instead I weighted each player by the smaller number of defensive games between the two seasons.

And here's the results:

AAE Correl.
OF 13.2 0.27
IF 10.1 0.25
Total 11.3 0.26

Curiously, outfield UZR is better correlated with year two performance; and yet infield UZR has a lower average error year-to-year. I'll be honest - I can't explain it, although my feeling is that AAE is more useful than correlation in this case.

I shouldn't have to tell you that a 10-run error band, given that UZR/150 should generally range from about -15/15 for a full-time player at a postion, is pretty big. That said, this includes all players, including a lot of part-timers. (If I cut it down to only players with > 90 DG, the AAE drops to about 8.)

So here's the biggest caution I can give you with defensive (or ANY sample) data: use more than one season! Regress to the mean! Doing these two things will save you much grief later on.

I left that last paragraph as it pertains to my stuff too.

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Spring Training Stats, Useless?

2009-03-21T16:48:00.003-05:00

Maybe not:

A few years ago we discovered that there is a way to use spring training stats to predict future performance. We took all spring training hitters and found that, as expected, about half of them do better than their career norms in the upcoming season, and about half of them do worse than their career norms. However, when we chose only those players doing exceptionally well in spring training, we found that about three-fourths of them performed better than their career average during the upcoming season.

Our definition of "exceptionally well" was slugging 100 points higher in spring training than their previous career slugging percentage.

Casilla, Gomez, Young, Cuddyer, Gomez, Buscher and (almost) Kubel are the regulars enjoying a slugging spring.

The season can't start soon enough.

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The Evil Genius' 40-Man Roster

2009-03-16T16:52:00.005-05:00

You

Maybe not you exactly, but someone from some recreational wood bat league, or some batting cage slugger, or a random person from the street. Whatever. It doesn't matter. Someone must survive to tell the tale; whether it is the ship captain (Frankenstein), Ishmael clinging to a coffin (Moby Dick) or Gaius Baltar. See, if people closely associated with the Evil Genius are the only people to report the extraordinary circumstances and events of the past, no one will believe them. But every guy? Joe Plumber? Oh yeah, people will believe it. So don't be surprised, next time you're plugging away on the "fast pitch" batting cages, if an old man with crazy hair signs you as an undrafted free agent.

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Joe Crede UZR/150 Graph

2009-03-15T20:16:00.003-05:00

Just to show I'm not overly reliant on RF and RZR. While not as smooth as the RZR/RF graphs, I think this chart still shows Crede to be trending down defensively.

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Anyone Want to Order some Offense?

2009-03-15T01:56:00.003-05:00

Nick Punto, Alexi Casilla and Carlos Gomez.

Three of our starters. Three players who will accrue huge amounts of service time (barring injury) for the Twins in 2009. And, according to Phil Mackey, project to be among the 15 worst hitters in the majors next year. Add in Joe Crede (who I think will have a bad offensive season, if we're lucky) and we have four bats which will produce little offense at all.

I'm slowly coming around to the current defensive fad. High quality defensive players who were replacement level hitters had almost no value in the baseball meat market; savvy low cost teams were able to use this fact and the fact high offense players, regardless of fielding ability, were overvalued and overpriced to their team's advantage. It was a market inefficiency, I got it. A run prevented is just about as good as a run scored. Theoretically they should be equal.

However, you must score runs in order to win. You can't dismantle an offense completely and hope to win.

A team of all replacement level players would theoretically hit .235/.300/.356 and enjoy a winning percentage of .217 (source). Since this matches closely a real world team ('62 Mets; ibid) I can use them as an example. Based on the '62 team's stats, they would score 586 runs at the replacement level (Using Bill James' old AB*OBP*SLG equation to find runs scored). In fact, the 62 Mets scored 617 runs (their team had a slightly higher OPS than a replacement team).

Based on my own number crunching, there's a decently strong correlation between runs allowed and RZR (from THT) and about the best defense can get their runs allowed to somewhere around 600. In 2008 Toronto allowed just 610 runs and are a pretty solid example.

So, a good fielding team (assuming a great deal of help from their pitching staff) can get their runs allowed down to about 600 runs. And they can score 590-620 with the usual fudge factor caveats. These small differences result in a Pythagorean W/L expectation of about .500 (+or- 6 games of "coin flip" error).

I don't know if this is the result the Twins are shooting for year in and year out, but it appears to be the one they're looking for now. Personally, I'd prefer more offense on this Twins team. A really good indicator for a "legitimate playoff team" is a RS-RA difference of 100 or more (yes there are exceptions, I know, some divisions are weak and the playoff crap shoot allows those teams to get hot and win in the postseason) and this type of team (good defense, replacement offense) is just not going to have a good chance at making the playoffs ever.

Maybe Justin Morneau, Joe Mauer, Denard Span and Jason Kubel will be enough to keep the Twins scoring enough runs to avoid this outcome. Still, I wouldn't cry if Punto, Crede or Casilla had a sudden case of boneitis.

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The Evil Genius' 40-Man Roster

2009-03-14T20:10:00.002-05:00

The Killer

They don't call them "Evil Geniuses" for nothing; when allowed to think for extended periods of time, inevitably something sinister pops up. Having someone on the roster who has actually snuffed out the life of another human being (be it in war, in self defense, an altercation south of the border or simply because a baseball is hard to see in the setting sun) sets the tone for any competitive baseball game. That tone? You may die tonight. Try hitting a 1-2 slider when you have that going through your mind.

(Pictured Carl Mays)

The Evil Genius' 40-Man Roster

2009-03-12T20:02:00.003-05:00

The Third String Catcher

What, did you think The Evil Genius was stupid or something? Of course there'd be a third string catcher on his 40-man roster. Catchers have a high attrition rate and it's always important to have a few extras lying around the stadium. So, maybe his third string catcher has a hump and does his bidding...who cares? Maybe the third string catcher spends his time visiting cemeteries during road trips and nobody wants to room with him, what's the big deal? All that matters is when the call comes, there's someone to jog down to the bullpen and play catch with the knuckleballer.

(Pictured right: Bernie Hungling)

Crede Injuries

2009-03-11T13:35:00.002-05:00

Either I don't like the Joe Crede signing, or I really like making graphs.

THT's RZR corr RA

2009-03-10T22:23:00.003-05:00

Got bored, decided to play with some numbers. I took The Hardball Times Revised Zone Rating (team stat) and compared it to Runs Allowed:

Equation: RA= -6568.9(RZR)+6186.9
R=-.73

Usual caveats, small sample size, large error, AL only, 2008 only. Also, a team's RZR will depend on the types of hits it has to deal with (LD vs GB).

Random Awesome Player

2009-03-10T01:37:00.003-05:00

Steve Dalkowski

More on Dalkowski

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The Evil Genius' 40-Man Roster

2009-03-10T01:10:00.004-05:00

Flamethrower

When it comes to pitching, speed isn't always necessary or effective. Professional hitters can generally hit a fastball if they know it's coming no matter how fast it's moving. A good pitcher needs to learn to fool a batter. Except the flamethrower. See, not only is the flamethrower really fast, he normally has no clue where his fastball is going. Backstops, chin music, opposing team's dugouts, camera dudes, innocent fans, Nebraska. Anything could get hit when the flamethrower unleashes a salvo. Keep your head down and wear a helmet. The Mad Scientist knows a team can't win if it won't leave the dugout.

Twins Column

2009-03-04T01:17:00.002-06:00

Over at the Bleacher Report I wrote up a short column summing up my thoughts on the Joe Crede signing.

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Random Awesome Player

2009-03-03T00:35:00.003-06:00

Pat Venditte

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The Evil Genius' 40-Man Roster

2009-03-02T00:28:00.006-06:00

The All Rounder

Certainly a big criticism of a list like this has to be the lack of depth. With all the weirdos, freaks and swing voters on the roster, what happens when the manager actually needs someone to play 2nd base for a couple of innings and bat in the 7-hole? Fortunately, the Mad Scientist knows this and has an answer, the All Rounder. Need a right handed pitcher? The All Rounder is there. A LOOGY? All Rounder. Shortstop? Call the All Rounder. Ambidextrous with a good glove, switch-hitter and can manage the game from behind the plate, the All Rounder fills every hole. Jack of all trades, master of none (and probably genetically engineered in some Chinese lab), the All Rounder can always find a job with the Evil Genius.

(Pictured: Alan Davidson)

Third Baseman Fielding Age Curve

2009-02-27T14:14:00.005-06:00

From CamdenDepot:

The above curve matches nicely with Joe Crede's RZR numbers:

It should be noted, if you extend the curve into this year, Crede is still going to be a good glove at 3rd base (minus a few OOZ plays).

I've softened my disgust with the Crede signing a bit, and always admitted the most positive aspect of Crede's signing is his glove (an "average" glove at third is hardly average at all, it's actually a very valuable tool). The success or failure of the Crede signing will be based on his bat (he's got to keep his OPS above .700 or else it doesn't matter how good his glovework is at third) and his health.