Bleacher Report - Articles by Dan Wade

A Log For The Hot Stove: Felipe Lopez

Dan Wade — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:08:14 -0500

The announcements of players offered arbitration made Twins fans happy last weekend as three names being bandied about—Placido Polanco, Orlando Hudson, and Felipe Lopez—were all set free by their respective teams. This was particularly important for Hudson and Polanco, since due to their Type-A status they would have cost a first-round pick to sign. In the past, the Twins have been reticent to sign players and give up their pick, so this was indeed a prime development.

All in all, these decisions expanded the pool of players that might fit the Twins' needs. Adrian Beltre, Marco Scutaro, Chone Figgins, Polanco, Lopez, and Hudson have all been named in connection with the Twins, and each of them makes a certain amount of sense given the team's needs.

However, as soon as that pool open, it got significantly shallower. Scutaro, Figgins, and Polanco lasted less than a week before Boston, Seattle, and Philly snapped them up. While this may be seen as a bad thing for the Twins, it's actually quite good. Of the three players signed, only Polanco was a serious target for the Twins, and, as many people have noted, his three-year deal will take him into his age-37 season. To say that by that point he'll likely be in the decline phase of his career is a gross understatement.

Not only were the players signed not Twins targets, the teams that signed them were those notorious for disrupting the market for the other players. Had the Red Sox decided to pursue Orlando Hudson, for example, they could have offered more in terms of both money and years than the Twins were likely to offer, making signing him extremely difficult. With the Mariners, Phillies, and Sawx now sated, the Twins will be dueling teams more in the tax bracket for the services of the rest of their trade targets.

With a level playing field, the Twins now have a chance to go after the player they think will best help their team, which makes correctly identifying their weaknesses that much more critical. If you can have what you want, you'd better be sure of your choice.

As I noted previously, the Twins were a poor defensive team and a pretty adept offensive one. They were the fifth best offensive team in baseball in terms of runs scored per game, but average or worse depending on your choice of defensive metrics. While the addition of JJ Hardy will help, they could use another sure glove. Another consideration is the extremely poor performance the Twins got out of the no. 2 spot in their order. Orlando Cabrera's .314 OBP ahead of Joe Mauer was a great improvement over what the Twins had gotten before his arrival, but still brought the team line up to just .262/.306/.394, and even that was inflated by Mauer's 123 ABs at a .398/.451/.707 clip.

While J.J. Hardy could be slotted into the second spot, which would leave the Twins looking for someone to hit 6th or 7th, his .218/.281/.323 line last year would have been part of the problem, not a solution. His career line as a second hitter is certainly hopeful enough, .272/.322/.467, but there are serious concerns to be had about Hardy producing that line in a harder league, especially when he failed to do so last year.

This brings us to a player I feel is the best fit for the Twins: Felipe Lopez.

2009 was very, very kind to Lopez, as he had his best season as a professional. His 2005 season in Cincinnati was a little better offensively, but his defense was much better in 2009. Still, his .310/.383/.427 line was well above average, as evidenced by his OPS+ of 111 and his EqA of .286. His move away from Arizona, paradoxically, improved his offensive output as he hit much better in the second half, .301/.364/.412 vs. .320/.407/.448. Having that kind of player ahead of Joe Mauer would create a many more run scoring opportunities for the offense. So it's an open-and-shut case, right? Lock him up!

Well, not quite.

Much like Adrian Beltre circa 2004, Lopez had an uncharacteristically good year just in time to hit the free agent market. His career line isn't much to crow about:.269/.338/.400, better than Brendan Harris', but not necessarily the line you want to add for 7-8 million a year, especially when you factor in a career strikeout percentage of nearly 19%. His defense, too, hasn't been the stuff of legends. His career UZR at short (where he played from 2001-2007) is a reprehensible -42.3, he's never posted a positive figure at the position in his career.

But the Twins aren't buying his career, they're buying his future, and while career numbers are useful for sniffing out one-year wonders, players can and do improve over time and Lopez is one of those players.

He broke into the bigs at age 21 with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2001, but didn't play a full season until he was traded to the Reds in 2005. Since that point, he's hit .280/.349/.407, which is close to the line he posted this season, and which makes it look much less like an aberration. If he posts that type of season ahead of Mauer and a healthy Justin Morneau, he'll provide a very similar offensive boost to what Orlando Cabrera gave the Twins at the end of 2009.

But, if you've been tracking with me, you'll notice that I've made two defensive notes so far. First, the Twins need to improve it, and second Lopez is bad at it. Only that's not quite right. Lopez is bad at shortstop, true, but he no longer plays there, nor would the Twins want him to. Lopez was moved to second base for 1/3rd of his games in 2007, and was clearly much better there than he was at short. His full time debut was less inspiring in 2008, back to 5.3 runs below average, but he rebounded in 2009 to 7.8 runs above average.

If his entire career had been played there, I'd be worried this was unusual, but as far as second base is concerned, he's spent more time above average than below it. He was the fifth best defender at second base in 2009, while he may regress, I don't think he'll all of a sudden become a defensive ditch.

I understand the reasons for being wary of Lopez, but if he puts together a season like the one that seems within his grasp, 2009 won't look like an aberration, and whoever signs him will get a tremendous return on what seems like it will be a fair investment.

Has Soccer Really Gained a Foothold in The United States?

Dan Wade — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 11:48:47 -0500

Yesterday was one of the most exciting days in recent memory for fans of international football. The World Cup Draw, in and of itself little more than the picking of names out of a bucket, has been elevated to the realm of spectacle with fans of each of the 32 nations tuned in to see who they'll be pitted against in six months time.

That's right, we were on the edge of our seats for something that won't be relevant for half a year.

Personally, I was tapped into ESPN's live feed, as well as the BBC's live text, to catch news from every possible angle as the draw took place, as well as my twitter feed (@Dwade) to see what friends were saying.

Seconds after the US and England were drawn together, people were going nuts. ESPN's international studio crew, with former members of the US, English, and Nigerian national team got into the fray immediately. Alexi Lalas boasted the US would take an easy three points from the Brits before everyone laughed and began to dissect how fortunate both countries were to avoid the Group of Death.

Draw completed, I went to check the Trending Topics on twitter—the list of phrases getting mentioned most often.

Not only did England and United States break the list, normally dominated by Tiger Woods, New Moon, and Justin Bieber (who I would not recognize if he came up and punched me the mouth), the entirety of Group C was listed among the ten hottest words. Maybe people got really interested in Slovenia for a completely different reason, but I sort of doubt it.

Granted, these are worldwide searches, but the US still boasts two-thirds of all users, meaning it is fair to assume that the US was driving Group C up the board.

Part of me wasn't surprised. The Confed Cup wins over Egypt and Spain, as well as the close loss to Brazil did a lot to push soccer into the sporting landscape of the United States, as has ESPN's agreement to show Premier League games. However, I was quite pleased to see that it seemed to have expanded beyond simply sports fans and was becoming mainstream.

Later that evening, CNN ran a poll asking viewers if they planned on watching at least one World Cup game. Not being one to be overly optimistic, I guessed that around 55% of viewers would catch at least one game.

68% of respondents said they had no plans to view even one game.

The draw could not have been better for the US. Their first game is one worth the six months of build up it will receive and the remaining two are winnable, meaning the US should advance into the knockout stages (likely against Germany, if everything goes according to seed). Even with everything in their favor, viewers in the states simply aren't planning on tuning in.

This all has left me wondering where soccer is in the United States. It's been the fastest growing youth sport for a generation or more, yet when a new marquee sport was added to the pantheon, it was MMA, not soccer.

No doubt, a deep run next June and July will turn heads, as it always does. My question is why those heads weren't watching in the first place.

Dan Uggla: A Log For The Hot Stove

Dan Wade — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:33:06 -0500

The free-agent market officially opened last week, ushered in by a flurry of important signings that could truly change the game. Or a general malaise, one of the two, I forget which.

Anyone who studies market trends in baseball can tell you that a high volume of deals get done as the windows are closing, not opening.

Deals will get done between now and well into spring training as teams try to patch holes without creating new ones and without taking on ungodly salaries. The same is true with the trade deadline; sure, players get moved early in the season, but the last week of July is lousy with players flying from one team to the other.

Perhaps if the windows were smaller there would be more action. GMs bidding like floor traders, elbowing each other out of the way to talk to key agents, eventually a huge fight breaks out in the lobby of the Indianapolis Omni hotel with the winner getting the rights to sign Jason Bay for too much money.

As much as I’d like to see the Minnesota Twins go after a pitcher next, the rumblings I’ve heard are that they are still interested in an infielder. I certainly can’t blame them, as there are questions aplenty in there, so with one of the seasons’ hot trade targets already in the fold, let’s check out the other.

Dan Uggla may best remembered for his 2008 All-Star Game appearance in which he committed three errors and went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts and a GIDP, but that’s certainly a far cry from his usual performance.

A career .243/.344/.482 hitter, the soon-to-be 30-year-old second baseman has been largely overshadowed by his double-play mate, one Hanley Ramirez.

Still, Uggla has been an above-average hitter in each of the last four seasons, hitting more than 25 home runs every season he’s been in the majors and never posting an OPS below .800. His EqA—a measure of his total offensive contribution, prorated by league difficulty, home park, and opposing pitching—has never dipped below the league average mark of .260, meaning he’s always been an offensive asset irrespective of position. When positional factors are taken into account, he’s worth about the same number of wins as Orlando Hudson, Nelson Cruz, and Aramis Ramirez, not at all a bad company to be in.

Last season, Uggla’s numbers fell off a little bit, dropping from .260/.360/.514 to 243/.354/.459 due in no small part to a regression in his batting average on balls in play–from .320 in 2008 to .274 last year. That figure was never going to stay that high, so a drop in batting average should have been expected.

One thing that bodes well for Uggla is that he kept his on-base percentage at almost the same level even with the drop in BA. His strikeouts were down both in relative (27.6% to 22.5%) and absolute terms (171 to 150) and his walk rate jumped from 12.4% to 13.8%.

One major concern I have about Uggla is his home/road split. His home park is a bit of a launching pad, one of the most hitter friendly in the majors in fact, and Uggla is a bit of a product of that. His home line—.251/.386/.513—is good for an OPS+ 21 points above average, or loosely as good as Matt Kemp and Denard Span were over the full season.

His away numbers—.235/.321/.408—turned him into Pedro Feliz or Miguel Cairo, 20 points below average. Over his career, the same split exists, though it’s narrower—just 10 points.

I would be more concerned about that split if it were lower across the board, that is, if his away line was .200/.291/.360, I’d be prepared to pass no matter the price.

As it stands, even if his away line becomes his overall stats, he’d still be better than any of the hitters the Twins had batting second last season. Additionally, with the addition of JJ Hardy (who has batted second in the order for almost his entire career), Uggla will probably bat seventh or eighth in the order. His power is legitimate wherever he’s playing: he hit 13 no-doubt home runs this season, good for 3rd in the NL.

If the Twins aren’t really in need of a marquee hitter, which since the next hitter they acquire will be their 6th hitter at best, then they need to be looking at defense as much as offense. Uggla’s is…enigmatic.

According to UZR, Uggla’s four full seasons have produced lines of 6.9, -9.3, 1.6, and -10.1; Baseball Prospectus’ FRAA (Fielding Runs Above Average) is a little more stable: 5, -19,-2,-1, at least stable enough to draw conclusions from. Uggla is well above replacement level, but below average overall. While he isn’t the guy who made three errors in the All-Star Game, he’s not making anyone forget Joe Morgan. He was close to Alexi Casilla’s level this year, but he is clearly a much better hitter, and thus has a much higher overall value.

If the Twins do bring in Uggla, it will be with the knowledge that he’s a passable defender at second, but hoping that he hits well enough to justify being in there (and having Nick Punto at third base, another consequence of adding a player at second.)

So what we have is a great offensive player whose production will decline because of a switch to the AL and may decline even more if his home/road splits hold up, and whose defense isn’t going to be there to help cushion the fall. Does that mean the Twins shouldn’t look at Uggla?

Not necessarily, but they need to understand that they won’t be getting the player who hit .243/.354/.482, and while he may not fall off precipitously, it’s much more likely that he’ll stay on the low side of his career numbers rather than rebound. This is why the increase in walk rate is so critical—plate discipline isn’t something that varies by league.

If he were a free agent, looking only for money and a place to play, I’d be a lot more eager to acquire him. However, not only will Florida be looking for a good return for their two-time All-Star, Uggla will also be looking for a raise during arbitration. He made $5.35 million in his first year of arbitration and will almost certainly make $1-2 million more this season, which would put the Twins to around $80 Million (assuming, perhaps unfairly, that Uggla is acquired and no one from the 25 man roster heads the other way).

I can’t imagine payroll going too much higher than that, and, as I’ve noted before, the Twins need to address their rotation.

If they feel they can get Carl Pavano back for $2-3 million plus incentives (unlikely), perhaps they could add both he and Uggla.

But if they want to pursue Rich Harden, Ben Sheets, or even (heaven forbid it) Jarrod Washburn, they probably will not have the flexibility to accommodate Uggla’s arbitration raise. As previously mentioned, removing one or more members from the 25-man roster would change these numbers a bit, but if, say Glen Perkins and Casilla, were to head to South Florida, the money saved wouldn’t even cover the raise Uggla was due, let alone his entire contract.

I’m not opposed to Uggla as a player, and for a team like the Cubs, he could make a lot of sense. However, given that Uggla’s arrival would signal not only a jettisoning of a possibly useful player or two in a trade, but also an inability to bring in a high quality pitcher or third baseman, I just don’t see it being the best move for the Twins right now.

Should a pitcher join Uggla on his trip north, however, that would change the calculus of this deal substantially.

Joe Mauer Wins American League Most Valuable Player in Landslide

Dan Wade — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:04:50 -0500

For years, the BBWAA picks for the Cy Young Awards and MVP were the subject of incredible scorn, especially among the sabermetric community.

The 2005 AL Cy Young, for example, saw Bartolo Colon, armed with a 21-8 record, beat Johan Santana despite being subordinate to him in every category besides wins—three wins worse according to Baseball Prospectus’ Wins Above Replacement Player. Every team has their example, every year seems to bring new controversy, but 2009 seems to have been a big step in the right direction.

Zack Greinke netted the AL Cy Young, despite winning just 16 games, the lowest win totals for a Cy Young winner since 1994. There was some controversy over the NL award, but that was a choice among three deserving candidates, someone had to lose.

The BBWAA’s strong year continued Monday with the selection of Joe Mauer as the American League’s Most Valuable Player. Mauer garnered 27 of the 28 first-place votes, making him a nearly unanimous winner.

When I wrote about Mauer’s candidacy in mid-August , the primary argument against Mauer was that he didn’t play for a winning team. Had the season ended there, there would have been a big argument over whether Mauer’s superior numbers for a team that finished below .500 and in third place in a comparatively weaker division would be enough to propel him ahead of Mark Teixeira or Derek Jeter, who played a key role on a superior squad.

Fortunately for the Twins, that argument was done in by two months of solid play led by Mauer’s strong close to the season. With friend and fellow All-Star Justin Morneau on the pine, Mauer closed the season with a .391/.449/.652 line in August and .354/.471/.487 in September and a few games in October, simultaneously making the Twins a winning team and showing himself to be a clutch performer.

Philosophical arguments aside, Mauer was nothing short of dominant. He won the slash stat triple crown, boasting the highest batting average (.365), on-base percentage (.444), and slugging percentage (.587) in the AL, with only Albert Pujols’ and Prince Fielder’s slugging percentage preventing him from the major league mark.

In the last 70 years, this has only been done nine times. Of those nine, seven were achieved by a first baseman, a left fielder, or a right fielder (hat tip to Ken Funck at Baseball Prospectus ). Just twice coming into the season had an up-the-middle player hit anything approaching this well. Add in his 28 home runs, best among catchers, and 19.2 percent OBI percent (percentage of runners on-base ahead of him that he successfully drove in), and it’s easy to see just how big a role he played in the Twins’ success.

But traditional stats can paint false pictures, perhaps advanced metrics will reveal Mauer’s flaw.

It looks as though Ben Zobrist won FanGraphs’ Wins Above Replacement crown at first blush, except that Joe Mauer gets no credit for his defense, since the defensive component of WAR (Ultimate Zone Rating or UZR) doesn’t categorize catchers. Giving Mauer credit for even average defense would push him over the top there.

Baseball Prospectus’ Value over Replacement Player has Mauer just a tick behind Albert Pujols and well ahead of the rest of the field, 20 runs ahead of Jeter and close to double Teixeira’s contribution. Tex chipped in a few more Equivalent Runs, but Mauer’s Equivalent Average was much, much higher.

Among position players, Mauer ran away with the AL WARP-1 crown, though he did finish behind Zack Greinke. (To be honest, there’s a debate to be had as to whether Mauer or Greinke was more valuable to his team, a question that just isn’t salient when the players are Mauer and…any other player in the AL.)

When positional considerations are included, Mauer blows away the rest of the field. His contributions in terms of controlling a young pitching staff and adjusting to an uncharacteristically unsettled rotation are just two of the things that make catching uniquely difficult. The fact that other positions don’t have to deal with these issues shouldn’t take away from players like Jeter and Teixeira, but it is something that makes Mauer that much more valuable to his team.

I would love to tell you that this was a close vote, or that there are a lot of things that make this a difficult decision, and if the voters would actually vote for pitchers, it might have been. Between Mauer and Greinke, I’m inclined to say that Mauer is still the MVP, but I’m certainly willing to hear arguments to the contrary. Irrespective, the voters have made it abundantly clear that a pitcher’s place is not in the MVP voting. In a battle between Joe Mauer and the rest of the position players in the American League, it just isn’t close.

The voters got this one right, continuing their strong showing in 2009, Joe Mauer truly is the American League’s Most Valuable Player.

A Log for the Hot Stove: Stay Away from Jarrod Washburn

Dan Wade — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:56:21 -0500

If it feels like we’ve been in this bunker before, we have. Almost every year for the last three or four years, either Jarrod Washburn, his agent, or the Twins’ front office makes some noise about the LaCrosse native playing closer to home, and fans are forced to duck and cover.

You can forgive fans for being a little gun-shy here, as Washburn has almost never been both a) available and b) a good idea. He’s certainly been one or the other at various points in his career, but the Angels had him locked down for the best years of his career, and he’s been fairly available since his long decline began.

Perhaps you can forgive the front office for thinking that these two states have aligned for the first time ever, making Washburn a great pitcher to add and a free agent with ties to the area, but color me skeptical.

2009 was a tale of two seasons for Washburn, his first four months with Seattle and his nightmare eight starts with the Tigers. In Seattle, Washburn was solid. He went 8-6 with a 2.64 ERA and a 1.07 WHIP—both extremely good numbers. He was boasting a career-best K/BB and a career-low HR/9. Not only were his hits allowed down, the balls that did fall in weren’t hit particularly hard; his slugging against was a career-low .334.

As a flyball pitcher who is home run prone, Washburn’s batting average allowed on balls in play has always been below average, but in 2009, it was low even for him—.245 where league average is between .280 and .300. Of the 20 starts he made for the Mariners, 15 of them were quality starts.

Seattle knew he’d be a free agent and traded him at his peak value. July was Washburn’s best month, going 4-1, allowing just seven runs, three home runs, striking out 19 and walking just eight. He was AL pitcher of the month, and Detroit snapped him up.

His time in with the Tigers was so bad, you’d think the Mariners dressed up Carlos Silva in Washburn’s uni and tricked the Tigers into taking him. He gave up 11 runs in his first 11 innings, and things hardly improved from there. In his eight starts with the Tigers, Washburn went 1-3 with a 7.33 ERA and a 1.56 WHIP, his K/BB dropped to a career low and his HR/9 climbed to 2.5. His hits per nine jumped to 10.7 and hitters weren’t getting soft contact, they garnered an OPS of .940 against Washburn.

Put another way, he turned every hitter he faced into Miguel Cabrera or Ryan Braun. The Tigers thought Washburn was going to be the guy who propelled them into the playoffs, instead, he became an anchor they were unable to overcome.

Without question, some of this has to do with a knee injury he suffered in his first start with the Tigers. It became so painful for him that he was unable to put full weight on his landing leg, according to a Joe Christensen report, which is bad for anyone, but is devastating for a flyballer like Washburn. Pitches that are supposed to dive out of the zone and induce weak contact are going to hang up and become essentially cannon fodder. Now that the knee has been fixed, Washburn should be back to normal, right?

Not so fast cowboy, there’s two other major pieces in play here: outfield defense and park factor.

As noted, Washburn is a flyball pitcher and always has been. Seattle boasted two of the top 11 outfielders in all of baseball in Franklin Gutierrez and Ichiro Suzuki and boasted the highest team UZR (ultimate zone rating) in baseball for all fielders and for outfielders. They turned 71 percent of balls in play into outs and boasted the third best park adjusted defensive efficiency in baseball. That park plays a role, too, as Safeco Field ranked 21st in park factor, a clear sign of a pitchers park; it was even lower in home runs allowed.

So, more of Washburn’s flyballs were staying in the park and the defense behind them was turning those balls into outs at a rate better than any team in the majors.

Contrast that with the Tigers’ defense and park and you can see why this would be an issue. The Tigers weren’t bad on defense, eighth best in terms of outfield defense and fifth best in team defense overall. They were 10th best in park adjusted defensive efficiency and turned just a tic under 70 percent of balls in play into outs.

They were the best unit in the AL Central, but still a far cry from the M’s. Comerica park was a fairly even park, 13th in baseball in park factor and 18th in home runs, so hardly a launching pad, but once again, less favorable to a flyballer like Washburn than Seattle was.

So it was a bad move for the Tigers; it would be an abominable move for the Twins.

The Twins were the third worst defensive team in baseball last year, and carried the worst OF in baseball because of Michael Cuddyer’s declining range and Delmon Young’s...everything. That was before they traded away 2008’s best outfield defender Carlos Gomez, take his UZR out of the mix, and the Twins were almost a win worse than the second worst team in outfield defense. They aren’t going to be better this year, and they may well be worse.

If Washburn was coming to the Dome, which played as a launching pad this year–eighth best to hit home runs in–I’d be picketing this move outside the Twins offices. We’ve no idea how Target field will play, though I can tell you that home runs will be hard to come by before May and will be abundant from May to September based on the effects of temperature on ball-flight.

However, wind flow and how the dimensions of the park contribute to deep flies becoming home runs and vice-versa remain to be seen. Unless it becomes the new PetCo, however, it isn’t going to remotely make up for the poor defense behind him.

This is the type of deal the Twins old guard used to make. A veteran player, from the area no less, wants to play for the Twins in the twilight of his career, if this were 2006, he’d already be in uniform.

Bill Smith has shown himself to be savvier than that, and it would behoove him greatly to avoid this deal, no matter how enticing it may seem. In keeping the Tigers from making the playoffs last year, Washburn helped the Twins more than he ever could actually playing for the team.

A Log for the Hot Stove: The Enigma That Is Rich Harden

Dan Wade — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:38:17 -0500

A good portion of this piece will call back to point two of my Off-Season Plan , please refer back if you missed it!

With the Twins limping along behind the Tigers and the White Sox hot on their heels, with the Sept. 1 deadline for playoff rosters bearing down on them, news came that the Twins had claimed Rich Harden on waivers from the Cubs and were going to make a serious attempt to acquire him in hopes that he would bolster the rotation for a title run. Blogs fired up, the Twitter stream was all abuzz, and we waited with bated breath to hear if he of the glass arm would be heading to the Twin Cities.

In fact, Harden may never have been claimed by the Twins, many reports said an NL team had claimed him, meaning that his name never would have reached Bill Smith. True or not, the point was moot in the end, the Twins got fantastic production from Brian Duensing, a good turn or two from Jeff Manship, and better-than-expected work from Carl Pavano. Harden might have given the Twins a different look, but he wouldn't have been the difference between a playoff run and a long offseason; they did just fine without him.

I was fairly ambivalent about the trade when it was proposed, feeling that Harden wasn't the key missing piece and that the Twins could be tricked into giving up too much for him if they believed he was the difference between a deep run and October golf.

Now that Harden is a free agent, worries about exaggerated value can be allayed to a large extent; all that's at stake for the Twins now is money. This is not to say that throwing a bag o' cash at Harden is a risk-free proposition, but the Twins were likely to try to resign Harden had they acquired him earlier, meaning that those costs are pretty much fixed and the variable is who they would have had to give up to get Harden before season's end.

The book on Harden has been pretty well written despite the fact that he's just 28 years old. When he's healthy, he's electric. He's got three good pitches: A fastball that averages 92 MPH, a changeup around 84, and a splitter that mimics his change. He threw a slider during his days in Oakland, but the Cubs had him stop throwing it, as well as his wicked split, in an effort to reduce the strain on his elbow.

That's the rub with Harden you know, he's made of glass. He's never thrown 200 innings, heck, he's thrown 150 or more just once. Forget 20-game winner, whoever signs Harden will be hoping he makes 20 starts per season for them. The Cubs managed to hold onto him for 1.5 years, getting 38 starts out of him during that time. He went on the DL just once this season with a back strain, though a mechanical flaw necessitated an early end to his season, though with the Cubs well out of the race by September, it's hard to gauge how serious that injury was.

He's never had surgery, though he's had injuries to his back, oblique, UCL, and shoulder, the last of which kept him out of the WBC, but did not cause him to miss any time. So he's had a grab bag of injuries, which is both good and bad. On the one hand, it means a harder task for the training staff in terms of keeping everything from top to bottom in playing shape, but on the other, it means there isn't one nagging injury that's kept him out for all this time. That's always good news, but especially for pitchers. That Harden hasn't spent weeks and months on the DL with consistent elbow or shoulder trouble gives me hope that he can remain healthy over a longer period of time.

Additionally, any injury for Harden is going to be magnified because of his history. His 51 starts over the last two seasons is more than any Twins starter except for Nick Blackburn and Scott Baker, so it isn't as though he's been missing tons of time recently, it's more a case of the time he has missed being exaggerated due to his years of nine and four starts in 2006 and 2007 respectively.

This may seem like damning with faint praise ("he isn't THAT injury prone"), but if so, it's only because the upside is so obvious.

This video , taken against the Phillies in 2008, shows what Harden is capable of. Need I remind you, this is the same Phillies team that would go on to win the World Series, and Harden makes them look bad. Worse than bad. The Twins, as I have said before, need a guy who can miss bats and get hitters out on his own—Harden can do just that.

Even after the Cubs took away his out pitch, a decision the Twins can make for themselves, Harden struck out nearly 11 hitters per nine, though his walk rate did reach 4.28 per nine. Nevertheless, as he came to rely on the strikeout less and less, Harden lowered his LD percent, raised his GB percent, and raised his IFFB percent (pop-up rate, more or less). His Stuff rating of 30, provided by Baseball Prospectus, ranks him as the 10th best starter in the majors last season, three times better than league average. His QERA , the pound-for-pound best predictive pitching stat available right now, was 3.57, 15th best among pitchers who threw at least 130 innings.

But his more traditional metrics seem to tell a different story: 9-9, 4.09 ERA, 1.34 WHIP, and a Support Neutral Winning Percentage of .488 (what percentage of Harden's starts were winnable assuming normalized offensive production, bullpen support, and team defense) are all fine numbers but nothing to crow about. So what causes the breakdown from his great peripherals to very mediocre actual performance?

Two major factors lead him down the primrose path. First, his HR/FB rate was astronomically high, 15-percent, which lead to a HR/9 of 1.47. If that doesn't strike you as really high, think of it this way—for every six flyballs Harden gave up, one left the park and they were leaving once or twice a game. Some of that is park related, he gave up 1/3 more HR at Wrigley than he did on the road and was generally hit harder there, and some of it is luck. According to Hit Tracker Online, Harden gave up only three No Doubt home runs, meaning that he wasn't getting blasted so much as getting really unlucky. In any case, outside of the Friendly Confines his rates should normalize and that major Achilles' heel will be a significantly smaller issue. Second, his BABIP was 20 points over his career and league average (both about .280). BABIP is one of the quintessential luck based metrics, so expecting that to regress to around .280 isn't much of a leap of faith at all.

Two more factors will determine whether or not Harden becomes a Twin and how he would do if acquired.

Upon Harden's return to the AL, he'll be instantly under assault. As of 2007 , pitchers moving from the NL to the AL saw their ERA rise by about .75 runs, which would push Harden near 5.00 if he repeats last year's performance (as indicated above, I'm confident he'll be better). There will be a battle waged for Harden's stats as his skill-based metrics will rise due to overall league difficulty, but his luck-based metrics will regress back to their mean. Its enough to keep Harden in the NL, especially if he wants a short-term deal to rebuild some value.

That value piece is what may ultimately keep Harden from opening the season at Target Field. Speculation has Harden's value ranging from seven million per season for a one-year deal (while this was originally said in the context of an AL team, I have to believe Harden will remain in the NL if the idea is to raise his value for next off-season) to $10 Million per year. I'm reticent to recommend a deal on the upper range of that because, as much as I believe he'll be healthy going forward, there is a greater than normal chance that he won't be.

If the Twins are deciding between three years $30 million and four years $33 million, I'd take the second deal. At 28, Harden has a number of good years ahead of him before his stuff will begin to decline, so adding the extra year or two doesn't push the Twins into the "why in the world do we even have this guy on the roster" zone. He'd be 32 when a four year deal expired, hardly headed for Social Security checks. That four-year $33 million deal looks like a pretty fair one to me. I'd be willing to go a little higher, but the lack of good starting pitching in this market isn't a good reason to overpay to the extreme.

So Harden makes sense for someone, but why should it be the Twins.

Simply put, they can afford the risk. In a market where you can make the argument that Randy Wolf is the second best arm available, acquiring Harden and his inherent risks isn't that much different than bringing in one of the midlevel vets, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. The difference is that there's a really good chance that Harden actually reaches his expected value, whereas Daniel Cabrera and Rich Hill are pretty much locks NOT to reach their potential.

If they bring in Harden and he does well, their rotation shapes up thusly: Harden, Baker, Slowey, Blackburn, Perkins/Bonser/Liriano/Duensing. That's a good rotation, Slowey could be the best No. 3 in baseball in that case, and a playoff set of Harden/Baker/Slowey with Blackburn keeping anyone from short rest is formidable to be sure. If it doesn't work out, the Twins are left with: Baker, Slowey, Blackburn, Harden, (fifth pitcher du jour) and if he's injured, two of those arms come into play.

If the Twins don't sign Harden, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see them re-sign late season acquisition Carl Pavano, who I like fine, but who doesn't have the ceiling he used to. If Pavano is brought in, he's probably the Twins' third or fourth starter, depending on Nick Blackburn's performance, leaving the Twins with a rotation of Baker, Slowey, Pavano, Blackburn, Spare Arm No. 5 at best. Pavano is no iron man himself, so it's likely he'd find himself on the trainers table and miss a start or two, which, of course, is no different than if Harden or even Roy Halladay were there instead. While having to throw two of the Twins' chattel arms isn't ideal, those players are better than those most teams have in that position. A start or two from Glen Perkins never killed anyone, and the Twins are likely to have a better option available to them in Liriano or Swarzak.

Carl Pavano makes the Twins better by keeping Glen Perkins off the field, and that's no small improvement, but he is another guy who is going to put the ball in play a lot, get a small handful of strikeouts and generally be a decent but not great pitcher. Rich Harden is a strikeout arm who can improve the team being a really good pitcher AND keeping a bad pitcher off the field. Pavano isn't signing for no money, and given the talent discrepancy between the two, the Twins would be wise to spend the extra money and get themselves a pitcher who gives hitters a very different look from the one they saw the day before and the one they're likely to see the day after.

Harden is not a mortal lock for a Cy Young award, he's not a sure ace, he's not even a lock to make 20 starts. However, he is an incredibly talented pitcher when he's healthy and he's the type of arm the Twins sorely needed last year. You don't get many chances to add guys in free agency who were striking out more than a batter an inning who don't have some glaring question mark, and Harden's (his health) can be mitigated. Getting him away from the hitter's paradise that is Wrigley Field circa June and July will help keep his HR rates low and will allow him to be more aggressive, which should help him keep his walks in check.

Harden's talent is too good to pass up when the Twins sorely need someone with his skill set and have pieces available to mitigate his downside. He may not be the one piece standing between them and a parade down Hennepin Ave., but there is no doubt in my mind that he improves the team more than any other pitcher realistically available to the Twins.

A Log for the Hot Stove: Minnesota Twins Add J.J. Hardy

Dan Wade — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:21:45 -0500

In both my 2009 postmortem and my 2010 offseason plan, I laid out two key points.

First, the Twins need to accurately deduce what things actually hurt them this year and address them. Second, that thing they needed to address was infield defense.

Congratulations to Bill Smith for absolutely nailing this one.

J.J. Hardy was the player I most wanted the Twins to add. He's a plus defender, historically a decent hitter, and being traded at the absolute bottom of his value. Seriously, at no point could the Twins have gotten him for less than they did now.

It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that the Twins made an attempt to get Hardy, what surprises me is a) that they were able to do it before the Red Sox outbid them and b) they were able to acquire him without giving up pitching.

Speculation had Hardy's price set somewhere around the Kevin Slowey range, which turned out to be much more than the Brewers would receive.

My first inclination is that this was an outstanding deal. Upon reflection, I've tempered my opinion a little, but am still quite pleased with this move if only for this reason: Smith accurately gauged what the Twins needed and got the best player available who fits that need.

I see the deal pretty much in the Twins favor, but perhaps a little fairer than previously thought.

Received: J.J. Hardy

The 27-year old righty is one of the best defensive shortstops in major league baseball. Over the last three years he has posted the highest combined UZR at the position with a combination of excellent range and good decision-making leading to few errors.

That fact alone made this a smart addition for the Twins, but Hardy is no Adam Everett, he can swing the stick a little as well.

Hardy was an All-Star in 2007 when he hit .277/.323/.463 with 26 HR and 30 2B, but he was even better in 2008 when he hit .283/.343/.478 with 24 HR and 31 2B. If he had continued that production (3.1 and 5.9 wins, respectively), I promise you that no matter how good Alcides Escobar seemed to be, Hardy wouldn't have been moved for someone as enigmatic as Carlos Gomez, if he was moved at all. But 2009 was a down year, and by down I mean "demoted to AAA midseason" down.

Hardy will readily admit that 2009 was bad, and it was: .229/.302/.357 with 11 HR and 16 2B, a 3% increase in K-rate, and a decrease in Line Drive rate all contributed to a year that was extremely disappointing both for Hardy and for the Brewers.

Aside from the ups-and-downs that every player experiences, there is reason to believe that Hardy will rebound.

First, his BABIP (a good indicator of how lucky a hitter was) fell 42 points from an above average .306 to a well-below average .264. It should rise to or near his career rate of .280, which is about league average.

Second, his walk rate rose to a near career high meaning that while Hardy was hitting a lot less, he was still getting on base at a passable rate. If his BA recovers at all and he maintains this walk rate, his OBP will rise fairly quickly.

One thing that has remained constant is his power, his career ISO of .166 is well above what would get from any of the players currently on the roster at his position and isn't likely to be a mirage created by Miller Park.

Hardy hit a little better with home cooking, but not in such a way as to indicate that he'll suffer greatly from the switch. Add in that Miller Park was the fourth friendliest pitchers park and any worries there should be allayed.

If Hardy gets close to his 2007/2008 levels, the Twins will have stolen this deal. If he hits, as I suspect he will, something like .270/.320/.400 with around 20 HR and 20+ 2B while playing Gold Glove defense, that will still be a considerable upgrade over anything the Twins have had at that position in a long time.

Hardy may well be a long term answer, if the Twins are pleased with his 2010 contribution, a two or three year deal wouldn't surprise me one bit.

It's worth noting that he is due a raise during arbitration, but as John noted in the video, he isn't going to trot out his '09 numbers and expect to rake it in. You can't get something for nothing these days, so let's see what the Twins gave up.

Sent: Carlos Gomez

Well, Carlos Gomez's future potential, because the Brewers weren't buying his past or present. Gomez is an elite defender, that is an unassailable fact. He was more than a two win player this year based solely on his defense (literally, solely on his D, he was an offensive black hole), but for every moment he looked like he might have it together at the plate, there were three spent with head in hands.

He's the fastest player in the league but he got five bunt hits this year because defenses figured out that that was the only way he'd gotten on base in 2008.

He had nearly three times as many strikeouts as walks, and a net of seven steals (14 SB with 7 CS). For a player of his speed, that's downright awful.

What the Twins gave up and what the Brewers get may be two different things. Gomez did not look like he was getting better in the Twins organization and was well on the way toward getting the same reputation Delmon Young had for being difficult to coach, something that might change with a new coaching staff.

Gomez's OBP ought to rise if the Brewers bat him eighth, if for no other reason than he'll be batting ahead of some of the few hitters worse than he.

His opponents in the NL will almost certainly help to raise his OBP as well, though the pitchers he will face in the NL Central will be better than those he saw in the AL Central, so those factors may even out.

Gomez is an exciting player to watch, and from a fan's standpoint, I'm not thrilled that he won't be on the team any more. However, any type of logical analysis shows him to be a piece that needed to improve to be valuable.

The Twins traded him before another bad season depressed his value, and that appears to be a smart decision. He may well improve with the Brewers, but it's important to see that the Twins may not have ever had that player available to them.

Verdict: Fortuna Fortibus Favet* and Bill Smith certainly is bold.

*Fortune Favors the Bold

Smith went out and got exactly what the Twins needed while giving up a player who is one or two seasons at his current production from being a major disappointment.

This isn't cut and dried for the Twins, there's a chance that Hardy had another down year, in which case this because a swap of defense and decent power for defense and underutilized speed, which is probably a coin flip.

Nevertheless, Hardy was probably the best player available at the position and Smith didn't give up a King's ransom to get him, so there's a lot to be said for that.

Aftermath:

Point Four of my offseason plan now fulfilled, the Twins have a chance to really focus on how they want to construct their team next season. In all likelihood, Hardy will bat second based on his preferences and Gardy's tendencies, meaning that the Twins lineup currently has its top two-thirds set.

Denard Span - CF
J.J. Hardy - SS
Joe Mauer - C
Justin Morneau - 1B
Michael Cuddyer - RF
Jason Kubel - DH
------------------
Delmon Young or LF Du Jour (Martin? Tosoni?)
Nick Punto, Joe Crede, Danny Valencia, or other 3B
Alexi Casilla, Nick Punto, or other 2B

This leaves a fair amount of questions, but ones to which the answers seem to be internal. If the Twins go out and get someone like a Felipe Lopez or Mark DeRosa (both are type-B free agents), that improves the team, but isn't as critical as it was this time last year.

I think adding one more position player wouldn't be a bad idea, but adding a filler player is permissible at this point as long as they can get on base at a decent clip. Hardy may well provide some power, but if his numbers stay down, he'll look like a healthier Joe Crede.

Any players added now should be bottom of the order hitters who can get the lineup flipped around to Span, Hardy, Mauer, the way Pedro Feliz and Carlos Ruiz did for the Phillies in the NLCS.

What this should do is free up the brass to work on the pitching staff. There are choices to be made there not only in terms of who they can add, but in terms of who they want to keep.

With Boof Bonser and Pat Neshek coming back from injury, the Twins have a very full staff, some of whom are probably more valuable as trade fodder than as pitchable arms.

SP - Scott Baker
SP - Kevin Slowey
SP - Nick Blackburn
SP - Brian Duensing
SP - Francisco Liriano

RP - Glen Perkins
RP - Jon Rauch
RP - Joe Nathan
RP - Matt Guerrier
RP - Jose Mijares
RP - Jesse Crain
RP - Pat Neshek
RP - Boof Bonser

It's a decent staff, largely because the Twins have jettisoned the less desirable pieces—Bobby Keppel, Sean Henn, R.A. Dickey—that made the bully so suspect for part of the year.

There are other arms to make decisions about, including Jeff Manship, Jason Jones, and Juan Morillo, but none of them present a huge upgrade over the guys already penciled in. All this is to say that this is where the Twins' focus should be going forward.

As I've noted previous, I'd really like to see Rich Harden brought in for reasons I'll defend soon enough, but Carl Pavano could likely be had for much less and would improve the staff by giving them five starters about which there aren't serious outstanding issues.

Liriano may not be so far gone as to be unretrieveable, and I think he could be valuable in the long run, but I'm not thrilled with the idea of having to count on on him to deliver a fifth of the Twins' starts for the year.

Whatever the Twins decide to do in terms of non-tendering, outright releasing, trading and signing, it seems like most of it will happen on the run prevention side of things.

Aside from the talent added, that's the biggest upside to this move—the Twins added Hardy early enough in the offseason that Smith can go into the winter meetings and beyond knowing exactly what holes he needs to fill and with a good idea of how much money he has to play with.

Ultimately, I like this deal a lot and I think it makes the Twins a substantially better team going into next season. Exactly how much better they'll be depends on what else the Twins' FO does and how well Hardy produces, but they are certainly off to a great start.

A Log for the Hot Stove: Four Goals for the Minnesota Twins' Offseason

Dan Wade — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:26:24 -0500

I've never formally said it, but when Alex Rodriguez announced he was opting for free agency in the midst of the 2007 World Series, I was pretty much disgusted.

I hate it when players try to elevate themselves above the game, and that's exactly what Rodriguez did.

You want the spotlight on you? Get to the damn series yourself. (sidenote: and then he did, and everyone loved him. See how easy that was?)

This is why despite having about 15 articles sketched out for the Twins' offseason, I haven't even posted my idea of how the offseason should progress generally, let alone with any specificity.

But, as soon as Robbie Cano flipped the ball to Mark Teixeira for the final out of 2009, the offseason officially began.

So, with the 2009 season over, I'm ready to begin the offseason chatter. I laid out some groundwork earlier, disproving myths that could lead to signing the wrong player or players, so this guideline will essentially be action steps based on those issues previously raised.

Coming after this will be specific profiles of the players I'd like to see the Twins add, as well as those who may be in the conversation.

1) Re-sign Joe Mauer

Bill Smith told TwinsCentric that as long as they were confident Mauer wanted to stay in Minnesota, they were reasonably comfortable with the idea of going into the season without a deal actually in place.

I can understand where Smith is coming from both in a PR sense and in an actual practice sense.

From a PR standpoint, if you tell people you really want to get [specific thing X] done and it doesn't happen, people will start to question your ability to get things done.

In this case, if Smith had said that getting Mauer locked in was priority No. 1 and it didn't happen, the rumbling going into the season would not be so much rumbling as "that sound a tsunami makes just before making landfall".

From a practical standpoint, Smith has a lot to do this offseason, lots of players going to arbitration, a new field to open, trades to make, etc. The Mauer negotiations will be a protracted affair if for no other reason than it's going to involve a lot of money.

Mauer has said he doesn't care about being the next A-Rod, but the Twins aren't going to lock him in for the most productive years of his life with a bag of McDonald's and a shiny nickel. He's going to get paid.

And when a team like the Twins is pondering a contract upwards of $100 million, it's not going to be something they take lightly.

If they're pretty sure they aren't going to have to convince him to stay and that negotiations will be pretty amiable, saving them for a time when Smith is less swamped is a totally acceptable idea, which is why it doesn't bother me that he said that this was the plan.

It may not bother me that it looks like Mauer could go into the season without a deal, but it's not what I would do. If the Twins start off the season poorly for any length of time greater than about six weeks, the trade rumors are going to be flying.

The air will be so thick with them it will be like that town in Mexico where all the monarch butterflies spend the winter.

Even if the talk of paydays and deals doesn't entice Mauer to actually leave, it's going to be an in-season distraction the likes of which we've never seen.

You think the last few months of Johan Santana's tenure were bad? Mauer rumors:Santana rumors::The Black Death:The Common Cold.

Yes, locking Mauer in for the long haul this offseason, then having him blow out his knee during Spring Training would be awful, but that's part of the game of baseball. Get the business done before on-field matters start complicating off-field negotiations.

2) Add a power arm

Twins pitchers put a ton of balls in play due to their low strikeout rates and even lower walk rates, which puts a tremendous amount of strain on the defense. And while the easiest way to mitigate this is to improve the defense, having a pitcher on staff who is going to end his own hitters will help as well.

The reality of the game is that luck plays a big role in the outcomes; a median batting average on balls in play [BABIP] for a pitcher is somewhere between .280 and .300, meaning that of every pitch put into play (no walks, strikeouts, or home runs) a little less than one-third will fall for hits.

Pitchers with a high groundball rate can drop this number some (and their slugging allowed on balls in play even more), but even a pitcher with a 100 percent GB rate will have one-fifth or more of their groundballs sneak through.

A perfect example of this is Joe Saunders, the Angels' starter in Game Six of the ALCS. Saunders strikes out hitters at a rate of about five per nine innings, and generates groundballs at about a 1-1 rate with air outs (line drives or flyballs).

He lasted just 3.1 innings and took the loss, despite generating 11 groundballs. He hurt himself by walking five, but perhaps the bigger issue was his complete lack of strike outs.

Of the 22 batters he faced, he got two strike counts on six of them, of those six, two reached on walks and two singled, meaning he was putting hitters where he wanted them (two-strike counts), but not finishing them off, and it cost him the game and his team the series.

Closer to home, fans saw this issue played out in the person of Scott Baker. Of the five starters to finish the season, Scott Baker had the highest K/9 rate, though Francisco Liriano and Kevin Slowey both had higher marks before ineffectiveness and injury, respectively, removed them from the rotation.

Baker's 7.5 K/9 rate shows that he's still reliant on his defense, but he's not quite in the same class as Nick Blackburn or Glen Perkins, both of whom were notching fewer than five strikeouts a game.

When Baker was on, he was generating lots of two-strike counts and finishing hitters off either by the strikeout or by inducing weak contact on a defensive swing.

In his best start of the season, his complete game shutout of the Indians on Aug. 14, Baker needed just 94 pitches to get through nine innings.

Of the 30 batters he faced, he got two-strike counts on nearly half, 13 to be exact, giving up just one hit and no walks after putting hitters on the ropes.

He struck out just five, but according to the play-by-play database just two balls were even well struck. He generated 10 swing-and-miss strikes and just 14 foul balls in nine innings, a very impressive total.

Contrast that with his 115-pitch, six-inning start against the White Sox on July 28. Baker gave the Twins a quality start, but allowed a staggering 39 foul balls to the 22 batters he faced, or a staggering 1.77 per hitter!

Needless to say, this drove up his pitch count and took him out of a game in which he was otherwise effective.

This was indicative of many of Baker's starts. When he was giving up lots of foul balls and not finishing off hitters, it was easy to assume that the game would end in the hands of the bullpen.

If he was finishing off hitters, the Twins stood a good chance of winning. Of Baker's 10 starts in which he went seven or more innings, the Twins were 9-1, with the lone loss coming in Jesse Crain's last appearance before his demotion (the deuce he dropped against the Cubs).

Coming back around to the point, the Twins need another pitcher who is going to finish hitters off and this comes either by power or fantastic control.

Greg Maddux never blew anyone away, but hit the corners and edges of the strike zone so consistently, the Rolling Stones' song Paint it Black may as well have been about him.

Getting Kevin Slowey back will help. A lot. But there are guys out there who can help fill this void as well.

3) Make a formal decision about Danny Valencia and Alexi Casilla before the season starts

"Failing to plan is planning to fail" is the old adage that get parroted at every middle school student almost ad nauseum as parents and teachers try to instill the idea of not flying by the seat of your pants.

It's a lesson that the Twins' FO would do well to take to heart here. Available to them are five infielders under team control and two others who, while technically free agents, would likely come back even at a reduced rate.

Figuring that of those seven the team can probably cobble together a decent infield is, indeed, planning to fail.

Not that Valencia/Cabrera/Punto with Harris and Casilla coming off the bench is a bad idea, indeed it could be pretty ok, as we've seen the last few years, finding that right combination takes time and is incredibly frustrating.

There's nothing wrong with camp competition, but figuring that the situation will sort itself out in time isn't good planning.

Call Nick Punto an enabler here, because without him, the Twins would be forced to pick positions and stick with them.

However, Punto posted the third best UZR at third base in 2007, was a better second baseman than shortstop in equal time in 2009, but his best position career-wise is short.

The Twins can plausibly stick him anywhere and have a decent defender, which makes uncertainty around him that much easier to tolerate.

As I'll flesh out in the next section, I feel pretty strongly that the Twins should look to add one of the front line middle infielders that will be available this offseason, but which one they pursue will depend largely on where they feel the greatest need is.

Danny Valencia seems to be the 3B of the future, but if Kelly Theiser's mailbag is to be believed, he's still a long way from being handed the job, which means that there is a third base vacancy.

Unlike my colleague Andrew Kneeland , I'm eager to part ways with Joe Crede. As I outlined before Crede was officially signed last offseason, his back injury is the type of injury that isn't likely to recur, but once it does, it is likely to recur multiple times.

While it's worth noting that the back injury only popped up in mid-August, that he needs surgery to correct the issue is worrisome to me.

When he was healthy, the Twins got exactly what they should have expected from Crede: solid defense and a little bit of power at the expense of batting average.

While a time-share between the two may seem like a good idea, all it would do at this point is retard Valencia's development to prolong Crede's career. He says he wants to play 10 more years, it would shock me if he plays past 2011.

Alexi Casilla...boy, I do not envy the Twins' brass this decision. Casilla got off to a horrible start this year and really never seemed to rebound fully.

In 111 pre-All Star Game ABs, he went .180/.242/.225 with 21 strike outs to just eight walks.

He was demoted to AAA Rochester, but showed up almost a week late after opting to drive his car to New York instead of flying. His 117 post-ASB at-bats were better across the board: .222/.313/.291 with 14 walks to just 15 strikeouts.

In a way, this was a huge disappointment, Casilla had ended the 2008 season as the odds-on favorite to win the second base job heading into the season after he hit over .300 for three straight months before an injury nearly ended his season.

He came back, but wasn't 100% and his stats showed it. Still, he'd shown a ton of promise heading into 2009.

In another way, this was completely expected. Casilla has, for his entire career, been an enigmatic player due to an unholy even/odd year split reminiscent of Nick Punto's. Unlike a platoon split, there's really no good reason these should exist. Some speculate it has to do with comfort at the minor league level, others attribute it to a lack of focus, but whatever the reason, it's something Casilla needs to address if he's ever going to be more than a half-solution at best. In the short term, the Twins are left to wonder if once the calendar turns to 2010 if Casilla will turn back into a prince or if he'll stay a toad.

4) Acquire a marquee infielder

When a team has a long standing hole, it can be very easy to think that an acceptable stopgap solution is all that's necessary. Joe Crede was a solid signing last year, but there was no way that he could be considered a long-term solution.

Look at it this way, if third was the only hole the Twins had had last year, that Crede missed 50 games would have been a much bigger deal.

Instead, the bullpen and middle infield emerged as more pressing concerns and the hole at third base became just another place where production was less than ideal.

With players like J.J. Hardy, Dan Uggla, and possibly Yunel Escobar available for trade, the Twins have a chance to move one of those positions from "we need our annual cheap stopgap" to "invest in other positions, this one is set."

Acquiring a player like one of the three above would allow the Twins to shore up their defense in back of pitchers who put an extremely high number of balls in play, as well as present Ron Gardenhire with a player who could legitimately bat ahead of Joe Mauer.

Perhaps the best way to describe what I'm saying is to call back to Orlando Cabrera's tenure with the Twins.

For much of the time, Cabrera was hitting as well as he did all season. He hit for power in a way he hadn't in Oakland, and got on base at a solid clip ahead of Mauer, Kubel, and Cuddyer, producing an overall line of .289/.313/.430.

However, he was quite limited in the field and he showed that a few times, though nowhere near the weakness he had shown in Oakland.

In the end, he was worth a full win to the Twins because his offensive contribution was enough to outweigh below average defense.

Even in just 260 ABs, we saw the best and worst of O-Cab. Was he better than Casilla? Without question, he was.

Over the course of a full season would he be as valuable as he seemed to be in his late season cameo? I highly doubt it.

Put another way, while he was worth one full win to the Twins, Cabrera actually cost the A's .4 wins; he was below replacement level.

Adding another player like Cabrera or even someone like Akinori Iwamura (thoughts forthcoming) would seem to improve the team, but only since the other options are less than ideal.

There's still a chance that Alexi Casilla can hit .285/.320/.330 and if he does, how many of the decent veteran Free Agents are actually an improvement? Not many.

As I noted above, I'm pretty comfortable with the Twins making a move to fill either second or short.

Punto was a little better at second last year, and I suspect as he ages his range will diminish, so in that sense moving him to second and going after a shortstop would be my course of action, but I don't think it will be a critical difference in the short term.

Having this number of really good options available is rare and the Twins should take advantage of it.

If they prove to be too expensive, sure, adding Orlando Hudson is probably a step up, but he's just another player that will continue the cycle of needing to find free agent options to carry the load on a yearly or biyearly cycle.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but since the Twins don't have any major infield prospects coming in the next 3-4 years, going out and getting a young player who can bring it on both sides of the ball is going to be worth a reasonably high cost.

Obviously there is a limit to how much the Twins can and will add in terms of payroll, and much of that increase will be handed to Joe Mauer (which is completely fine, just a limiting factor).

Speculation has the Twins' 2010 payroll between $85 million-90 million and they've already got $62 million committed to players, plus arbitration raises to as many as nine players, so there won't be a ton of money floating around, but there should be enough to add at least one impact player (either a pitcher or an infielder) and then patch the other holes as needs arise.

This is a general outline of what the Twins should be looking to do, in order of importance. I'd really like to see them go after Rich Harden and a few other players, but I'll hold off on the specific names for the time being.

It's hard to lose baseball for a time, but the Hot Stove League has an allure all it's own. Be sure to bookmark TwinsMVB.com and check back often, as there will be plenty to talk about as we wait for pitchers and catchers to report.

Swing and A Miss: Minnesota Twins Lose Out on Tampa Bay Rays' Akinori Iwamura

Dan Wade — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:53:17 -0500

Well, there goes one article from the offseason que.

The Rays, finding themselves with a surfeit of infielders, seem to be on the verge of dealing second baseman Akinori Iwamura and another player to the Pirates for reliever Jesse Chavez. However, for much of the day, it looked like the Twins might have achieved an offseason before the season even officially ended.

Iwamura got off to a solid start, hitting .310/.377/.406 before tearing his ACL in May. One might think that such a line might earn him a shot at producing that well over a whole season, and had the Rays infield not performed so well without him, it might have.

Even missing as much time as he did, Iwamura was the Rays' sixth most productive offensive player, and he can play multiple infield positions, so how did he find himself as the Rays most expendable piece?

The simple answer is that of the five players above him in terms of VORP, three (Evan Longoria, Jason Bartlett, and Ben Zobrist) play the positions that Iwamura could play, and of those, Iwamura was the most expensive.

Did the Twins really miss the boat here?

Iwamura was certainly a player on my radar as one who could be a decent investment for the Twins if they decided to improve second base. However, his greatest asset was his comparatively lower price.

A league average defender by both UZR and FRAA, Iwamura was worth about two wins over the course of each of his first two full seasons. By comparison, Carlos Gomez was worth about two wins, though that was due almost exclusively to his being a superlative defender. Michael Cuddyer was worth a bit more, around 2.5 wins, but is also in the neighborhood.

Iwamura would have been a decent player to acquire, but I don't see him being a big difference maker for this team. Even the price may not have been as good as advertised. Sure, a midlevel reliever isn't much to give up in a trade, but Iwamura will make $4.25 next season, slightly more than Jason Kubel or Nick Punto will make. Rather than give up someone like Jose Mijares (likely who the Rays would have asked for) and then pay a reasonably large salary, the Twins are better off doing one or the other.

There are impact players available via trade and a fair number of midlevel talents that will be free agents, many of whom will be worth as much to the Twins as Iwamura would have been.

While missing out on Akinori Iwamura might be disappointing, it's far from a killer miss for the Twins. All that matters now is whom they actually acquire.

NFL in London: A Great Idea if the Right Steps Are Taken

Dan Wade — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:27:03 -0400

Since the NFL played its first game in London's Wembly Stadium in 2007, it would be hard to call the event anything but a rousing success.

85,000 fans packed the stadium to see the New England Patriots pummel the hapless Tampa Bay Buccaneers last Sunday, even more than the 83,000 who came to see the Chargers and Saints battle it out last year.

Speaking as one who was living in the city at the time, I can say without a doubt that I saw more Chargers swag in the days leading up to that game than I did in an entire week in San Diego proper. Saints fans were out in force as well.

The NFL's International Series has consistently had positive results.

One game at Estadio Azteca drew over 100,000 fans. All three games in London have been sold out with variations in attendance due to stadium configurations, and the Bills game in Toronto was predictably well received.

So you can forgive the NFL if they are a little high on the hog. They've got a virtual monopoly on the sport and they are successfully exporting it outside of the US. The only thing that can derail the juggernaut now would be a protracted strike or lockout once the current CBA expires.

Roger Goodell's nightmares aside, senior NFL officials have once again floated the idea of having an NFL franchise across the pond. With three years of data now in the books, there are some concrete steps that would seem prudent for the NFL to take before going full-bore into Jolly Old.

First, have a dedicated practice facility for visiting teams.

Home-field advantage is one thing, but when the opponent has to adjust to a six or seven hour time difference, that's quite another.

When asked about playing in the first match hosted in London, Michael Strahan noted that the jet lag was one of the things that made the game difficult, and it's quite easy to see why this would be the case. When only one team has to deal with it, that's quite another.

A way to combat this issue would be for teams to go over on Monday or Tuesday to get adjusted to the time. However, this leaves teams without a place to practice, and as bad as playing while jet-lagged might be, playing without practice would be much worse.

If the NFL invested in a state-of-the-art practice facility, teams could come over early and still have the benefit of film rooms, practice fields, and meeting facilities that they would have had they been back home.

Second, keep ticket prices reasonable

London is an expensive city; it's not quite as bad as Tokyo or Moscow, but it's not a cheap place to live or work. The ticket prices for the once a year events are within the range one might expect them to be: ￡100 ($150-$200, depending on exchange rates) for the best seats down to ￡45 for the nose bleeds.

However, if a home team is going to play eight games there, that pricing structure isn't likely to work. The NFL is still the new kid in town and will, I promise you, lose out to important soccer and rugby matches for ticket buyers.

Walking in with the idea that they can charge the rather bloated prices they do in the US, where they're already the most popular sport, will lead to half-full stadiums and bitter disappointment.

Suck it up, be the new guy, get fans into the seats and excited about the team. Three or four years on, jack up the price as need be, but don't expect to sell out eight games a year at ￡100 per seat right from day one.

In a related note, the NFL should be working with domestic teams to arrange packages for away fans. Especially if the economy picks up, plenty of fans would leap at the chance to follow their favorite team to Europe.

Away travel arranged by the club is something that has worked with relatively good success for soccer teams, and would be another way for the NFL to control their product. Add in a group discount for fans traveling through these arrangements and everyone wins.

Third, make provisions for the London team on the road

The NFL is rightly going to be concerned with hurting extant teams with a trip to London, and rightly so. They've already got a great product and jeopardizing that for a chance to expand into a market that may or may not be ready would be foolish at best. However, the senior brass has got to be cognizant of what it's going to be like for Club London to travel west.

Think Strahan had it bad playing the hapless Dolphins at night? At least his body felt like it was 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening. Imagine trying to play the Patriots or the Jets or the Eagles at a 3:00PM kick-off when your body thinks it's 9:00 or 10:00PM.

Worse yet, imagine if NBC flexed to their game for a Sunday Night game late in the season! Football is hard enough to play when you're healthy and well-prepared; playing it when your body really feels like it ought to be asleep is a recipe for disaster.

Generally speaking, teams don't like to play several away games in a row, but I've got a feeling this will be an exception.

Smart use of grouped away games, a well-placed bye week, and open communication with the TV affiliates will make this experiment all the more likely to work. Don't privilege one team over the rest, but don't punish them for being so far from home.

Last, be in constant communication with the players union regarding this move.

If MLB goes through with plans to put a team in the the Pacific Rim, they'll likely be able to stock with fully capable players from the area. Some of these players might be guys like Hediki Matsui or Daisuke Matsuzaka who have played in MLB, but are originally from Japan. Others could be players like Yu Darvish, a phenom in NPB that might want a different set of competition. Still others could just be single American guys who are willing to play anywhere as long as the money is good.

The point is, because of the international nature of baseball, they shouldn't have an issue finding people who want to play away from the continental United States.

Football doesn't have that luxury.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single British-born player currently in the NFL; that doesn't mean there aren't a few, but if there are, they escape me now. I'm sure there will be players willing to live and work in the UK, but don't just assume that. Be in communication with the players union about whether such a move would be welcome.

The NFL has plenty of players from outside the US, but almost to a man they played their college ball in the states. So, they've been here for a number of years, even if they were born and raised in Samoa or elsewhere.

Ultimately, if the players don't want to play there, the team's quality is going to suffer and put the whole operation in jeopardy.

A successful move to London could be a huge boon for the league, not only in terms of new revenue streams, but also in terms of gained prestige due to a greater international presence. Taking a few steps to make sure the move is successful could save a lot of heartache in the end, and help to ensure a successful transition to the rest of the world.

Minnesota Twins' Youth Corps: Venezuelan Winter League Edition

Dan Wade — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:34:59 -0400

Proving the theory that there is no off-season in baseball, the Arizona Fall, Venezuelan Winter, Mexican Winter, and Dominican Winter Leagues are already up and running, even before the World Series ends.

The Arizona Fall League, Major League Baseball's official off-season league, is structured in such a way that teams send all their players to one team. This is not the case with the other leagues, which have no formal affiliation with the American game.

Players from Mexico, Venezuela, or the Dominican Republic are frequently signed to play with local teams even before they play in the United States, and will return to those teams as often as they wish. Players without a home team, so to speak, can be assigned by their major league teams, though these arrangements tend to be less formal than those in the AFL.

With that in mind, most of the Twins' players play for the Tigres de Aragua, but there are a few others on other teams. Additionally, not every player will play for a full season, so guys like Deolis Guerra (those listed as having no line) may play later, but have not seen game action yet.

So, without further adieu, here's the Twins' Venezuelan contingent and how they've done so far.

Tigres de Aragua:

Wilson Ramos (.375/.434/.771, 4 HR, 15 RBI in 48 ABs)

An expanded discussion of Ramos’ success and what it could mean for his future will be up at TwinsMVB.com in the near future. As excellent a start as Ramos has had, he’ll need to continue to hit well for this to be a substantive result. Still, nothing wrong with 50 great ABs—it’s just a matter of what they’ll mean going forward.

Justin Huber (.357/.471/.429, 0 HR, 4 RBI in 28 ABs)

Hidden behind Ramos’ start is Huber’s start, which may not be as good, but certainly isn’t bad. The Australian earned a call-up after Justin Morneau went down, but ended up injured himself. It’s unclear what his role is with the team, but if he wants to stay at first base, he’ll need to start slugging the ball much more consistently.

Dustin Martin (.182/.231/.250, 1 HR, 4 RBI in 33 ABs)

The best is yet to come? Between typing up his line so far and writing this sentence, Martin hit a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the 10th inning after the game had been suspended on Saturday night. The Twins’ valuation of Martin may well determine how they deal with their outfield situation this off-season. More on this to come.

Jonathan Goncalves (.182/.182/.364, 0 HR, 2 RBI in 11 ABs)

Spent the year at E-town, so struggling in a league that ranks between AA and AAA is no indictment of his skills or future potential. Both of his hits are doubles, so he’s not getting cheated when he does make contact. More worrying than his .182 BA is a 4/0 K/BB ratio.

Edgar Ibarra (0-0, .1 IP, 0 ER, 6.00 WHIP)

Miguel Munoz (0-0, 1 IP, 2 ER, 4.00 WHIP)

Oswaldo Sosa (0-0, 1.2 IP, 1 ER, 1.80 WHIP)

A trio of young arms, the first two from Elizabethton and Sosa from Ft. Myers. The WHIPS are ugly, no question about it, but this is as easy a call as there is to make: too small a sample size. Check back on these guys when they’ve actually thrown some innings.

Jason Jones (0-0, 13.1 IP, 7 ER, 1.35 WHIP)

Jones is doing for the Tigres what the Twins hope he’ll be able to do for them: keep runners off the bases and get ground balls.

He’s gotten 1.58 ground outs for every air out he’s allowed and walked just two batters in three starts, both figures the Twins would like to see him continue to post. His first start was his best, so keep an eye on him to see if he can post a strong outing his next time out or if he’ll continue to deteriorate as hitters get more familiar with his stuff.

Frank Mata (2-0, 8.1 IP, 2 ER, 1.68 WHIP)

Mata’s been more effective than his line may indicate, as he’s allowed no runs in more outs than those in which he has allowed them. He’s still walking too many, so he’ll need to bring that rate down.

Jhon Garcia (no line)

Jose Mijares (no line)

Cardenales de Lara

Winston Marquez (0-0, 13 IP, 7 ER, 1.73 WHIP)

Like many of the other arms listed, Marquez is young for this league, and is going to have some growing pains. One thing to watch with Marquez is his platoon spilt—take a look, you’ve never seen anything like it.

He’s holding righties to a .194 BAA, but lefties are hitting .857 off of him. That’s batting average! If he can drop that anywhere close to average, he should be pretty effective; otherwise he may have a ceiling as a ROOGY.

Leones del Caracas

Alejandro Machado (no line)

For some players, playing at almost every level from Low-A to AAA means a rocket rise to future stardom. Machado is not one of those players. He's playing out the string on a AAA to AAAA career. It's sad, but nothing he does here will make his path to the majors any clearer.

Navigantes del Magallanes

Deolis Guerra (no line)

Truly one of the most enigmatic players in anyone's system. A strong winter league could help Guerra gain confidence he'll need going into a full year at AA New Britain. If he struggles...well, it's all a crap shoot with him anyway, isn't it?

Tiburones de la Guaira

Pedro Guerra (0-1, 5.1 IP, 6 ER, 2.44 WHIP)

The 19-year old went 7-0 as a starter for the DSL Twins (Dominican Summer League), but he’s pitched exclusively out of the ‘pen so far for the Tiburones. Not really enough time to make any substantive judgment, but he’ll be a name to watch as the winter leagues progress. A great few weeks could earn him a camp invite, but at this point, it’s all about reps and innings.

Know Thyself: Who the Minnesota Twins Really Are

Dan Wade — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:21:40 -0400

In honor of the recent birthday of one of the greatest men ever to be in any way affiliated with sports, John Wooden, it seems appropriate to use his words to start off a piece about myth and reality.

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

That’s good advice, for anyone at anytime, but especially for the Minnesota Twins this offseason.

You see, the Twins have a reputation based largely on three things: being light hitting, pitching well and playing good defense, and the abhorrent “doing the little things right”.

At times, these things have been true.

The 2001 and 2002 teams were fairly outstanding defensively, ranking third and fourth in Park Adjusted Defensive Efficiency respectively.

Perennial Cy Young candidate Johan Santana led a rotation of starters who could produce solid outings, but who were nowhere near as outstanding as their master.

Doing the little things has always been somewhat of a myth, usually encompassing things like baserunning, hitting with RISP, and, for some reason, bunting. The 2006 team, the side Ozzie Guillen named the Piranhas, was the king of the little things (never mind that was the year the Twins had three legitimate MVP candidates in Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau [the actual winner], and Johan Santana) and it pulled them into the playoffs.

Some of these aren’t far from reality, but others are no more true than the average middle school rumor.

Reputation: Light hitting

Character: Offensive Powerhouse

Sometimes you surprise yourself when researching pieces, and this is one of those times. Sure, I knew Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer had keyed an offense that was vastly improved from the days of Ron Coomer, offensive juggernaut. And I certainly knew that this year they were supported by Denard Span, Jason Kubel, and Michael Cuddyer.

What I didn’t know was that it all added up to 5.01 runs per game, good for fifth best in baseball. After years of struggling to get someone to hit 30 HR, the Twins had two this year (Cuddyer and Morneau) plus two more within shouting distance (Mauer had 28 and Kubel jacked 27).

As a team, the Twins ranked in the top five in batting average and on-base percentage, as well as in the top 10 for slugging percentage and OPS. They even ranked 10th in isolated power, ahead of such mashers as St. Louis and both Chicago clubs. Perhaps they aren’t as home run dependent as the White Sox clubs of early this decade (their Guillen Number is still below league average), but the days of needing to get five hits and a walk to key a big inning are long gone.

So, as much consternation as there was and still is over the fact that the Twins’ middle infield is...offensively suspect (to put it generously), the Twins seem to score runs just fine as is.

Can they improve? Easily.

Should they? Only after addressing other, more pressing issues.

Reputation: Good Pitching and Great Defense

Character: The pitching has been better, the defense has hardly been worse

In 2008, the Twins had just seven pitchers make a start for them all season. Given that five is really the minimum, that’s a staggeringly low number of starters, and a testament to how a healthy rotation can be critical to a team’s success.

Call 2009 a rather abrupt regression to the mean. 11 pitchers made at least one start due to injury (Scott Baker, Kevin Slowey, Francisco Liriano, Glen Perkins) or ineffectiveness (Perkins, Liriano, Anthony Swarzak, Armando Gabino, et c.) and it took months for the Twins to find a combination that was effective to even three places.

Since the departure of Johan Santana, the Twins have been looking for a true ace. Scott Baker has assumed the mantle, but isn’t the power arm that pitchers like Tim Lincecum, Justin Verlander, and emerging flamethrower Josh Johnson are. Baker still makes his fielders do plenty of work, striking out just a hair over seven hitters per nine innings.

Francisco Liriano clearly still has the talent to take over where Santana left off, but after a promising end to the 2008 season, he appears to have regressed. Some feel his arm isn’t fully back from his surgery, others feel it’s a mental or confidence issue.

Whatever it is, Liriano was wildly ineffective this season, save a few starts in which he seemed back to his dominant self. The Twins can’t plan on him being back to form any time soon, but that doesn’t mean they need to give up on him.

Even if Liriano takes two more years to figure himself out, he’ll be just 27 when he does, giving him plenty of time to make an impact, though it’s hard to imagine that he’d still be a Twin after two more years like 2009.

This is all to say that the Twins, from top to bottom, make their fielders work. They don’t strike out many and they walk even fewer, which means that most of their outs come from balls in play and most of their base runners come from the same. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Twins rank 23rd in K/9, but fifth in K/BB. The vast majority of opponents at bats end up with a ball in play.

In the past, this was a perfectly fine strategy. The 2001-2003 teams all turned better than 70% of balls in platy into outs (that is, they all had a defensive efficiency or DE of .7 or greater). Adjusting for park factor (PADE), those teams were among the best since the team moved to Minnesota, all ranking in the top 11 and all in the top six since the team moved to the Metrodome.

With a small exception in 2005, it has been a long slide downhill since then. The 2009 iteration of the Twins ranked 42nd out of 49 team seasons in PADE, turning just 69 percent of balls in play into outs. While that figure does place Twins at the midline for 2009 teams, it’s important to remember that the Twins are allowing a much greater rate of balls in play than most of the teams that ranked below them. 69 percent of 100 outs is an ok rate, but means that 21 of those hitters reached; 69 percent of 150 is the same rate, but every extra baserunner increases the likelihood of giving up a run or extending an inning that should have been closed down.

This is going to be a theme of much of my offseason work--improving the infield and pitching staff are important, but the Twins simply need to a) allow fewer balls in play or b) converting more of them into outs. The former requires the consent of the hitter, the latter does not, which ought to make it the Twins' focus.

Reputation: The Twins do all the little things right.

Character: No team does all the little things right and the Twins are no exception.

Too often small-market teams get lauded for "competing on their own terms" or "doing all the little things well" as though only teams with a payroll under $50,000,000 were allowed to attempt a suicide squeeze and only teams with payrolls over $100,000,000 were allowed to hit home runs. As noted above, the Twins nearly became the 13th team ever to have four players hit at least 30 HR, so if they were playing out of their payroll, someone should notify them.

In 2008, the Twins were incredible hitting with runners in scoring position (hereafter: RISP), producing a team line of .305/.380/.446. The Yankees, by contrast, hit .261/.346/.402 with RISP, which is on the low side of average, but fairly indicative of how most teams performed. This efficiency helped the Twins greatly as their run production hinged on taking advantage of these opportunities. This year's team did not hit as well. They drew more walks and kept slugging, but .278/.363/.435 is a reasonable drop off.

The worst perps were Joe Crede (.198/.269/.385) and Mike Redmond (.171/.256/.171), but sustaining such a high team rate was unlikely.

In the end, such a regression didn't really hurt the Twins; they scored 12 fewer runs, but that's well within the realm of year-to-year variance, especially considering they were without Mauer for a month and Morneau for the same. Had both been healthy, as they were in 2008, it's a good bet the Twins would have actually outscored last year's team.

All it really does is undercut this notion that the Twins scrap runs together better than the Yankees or Mets, simply because they're a comparatively less expensive franchise.

The second part of the little things is base running. After the Twins' well-publicized foibles in the ALDS, one might be given over to the idea that the Twins didn't run the bases well this season. I know the playoffs are supposed to be a showcase of what the team is capable of, but three games is, for better or for worse, still too small a sample to make anything resembling serious conclusions about.

The reality of the situation is that the Twins ran the bases really well this year, seventh best in the majors in 2009 and seventh best in their history. They did very well at advancing on balls in the air, going first to third or second to home on hits, and were second best in the majors at advancing on wild pitches/balks/passed balls. What kept them down were the more traditional base running skills: stealing bases and moving runners over on the ground.

The Twins lost six runs on stolen base attempts, far from the worst mark in their history, but for a team that boasts the speed of Denard Span, Carlos Gomez, Nick Punto, Alexi Casilla, and a few others that should be able to steal a base or two, that's a large indictment. Gomez alone should be driving up that total, but his 14 steals were good for only third best on the team and his net of seven is down right bad. Rickey Henderson needs a job, why not bring him in to school these youngsters?

Moving runners often comes down to situational hitting, something (inappropriately) synonymous with the Twins. They didn't move the runners nearly as well as they usually do, fourth worst in team history in fact, 20 places worse than last year. They were third worst in the majors in that category this year.

Still, base running is the totality of all of these things, and the Twins did well at it. Much like the 2007 Detroit Tigers extended PFP after making so many errors in the World Series, the Twins ought to show a little contrition and have everyone run the bags a few times for the cameras, but in terms of substantive work, they really only need to work on teaching their faster runners how to utilize their speed and how to ground out to first with a runner on second and fewer than two outs.

The final component of "the little things" tends to be bunting and sacrificing. Anyone with good knowledge of the expected runs matrix will tell you this is backwards thinking. In no case does giving up a hitter for a base yield an increase in expected runs.

That said, there are very specific situations where forcing one run across is more important than trying to maximize potential runs scored, but these situations are not nearly as common as people seem to think they are.

Irrespective, the Twins did it often and didn't do it well. They attempted 80 sacrifices, tied for the most in the AL, but their success rate of 64 percent was fourth worst among all teams and third worst among teams who had their manager for an entire season.

Perhaps the most memorable failure was Nick Punto's inability to get one down during a suicide squeeze attempt in the ninth inning of game one of the doubleheader against the Tigers. While it sundered that scoring chance, it ended up not costing the Twins, as they went on to win in extra innings. However, it isn't hard to concoct a situation in which that bunt double play proved to be a deciding factor in a close loss.

The Twins finished with a Pythagorean over/under of .4, which pretty much indicates that their record (87-76) accurately portrays how the team played.Was it good enough to win the division? Only after a one-game playoff. Would that have won any other division? Nope, nor the Wild Card in either league. While the team was hot in September and October, it's fairly clear that the Twins just weren't playing the same brand of baseball as the other seven playoff teams, none of which won fewer than 90 games.

Without question, this will be an interesting off-season for the Twins. Clearly, the pieces are in place for a very good team in the next few seasons, especially if Joe Mauer can be locked up long term. Once that money is committed, the Twins will have a much better idea of how much they can spend on new players (arbitration awards being the other major outflow).

If the Twins are going to improve themselves and make a real run at a world series, they'll need to fix the problems that they actually have, not the ones people seem to think they have.

Adding a bat like Adam Dunn or Jack Cust might have made sense a few years ago, but would be a rather large waste of money now. A power arm at the front of the rotation and a high-OBP middle infielder who can flash a little glove would go a long way towards a deep playoff run in 2010 and beyond.

To Trade Or Not To Trade Joe Nathan: The Value Of Consistency

Dan Wade — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:06:35 -0400

Anyone who spent more than 15 minutes on a college campus pretty quickly came to the realization that there are many things that seem like a good idea until you try them.

For some, it’s a case race or other manner of spontaneous intoxication. For others it was spending an entire day in the library to get a ton of work done (this seldom worked for me, as I still spent large swaths of time reading old political cartoons or the collected works of Bill Simmons).

These things are often tried on the advice of well-meaning (or perhaps not) friends. It worked for them, so it well might work for you. When an authority figure or peer-review text is the one passing on advice, it seems that much more reliable, but recall: phrenology was a mainstream science for a number of years and look where that got us.

The point here is that in life there are very few one-size-fits-all solutions, and baseball is no different.

Billy Beane helped popularize the idea of the overvaluing of closers by trading Billy Koch and Huston Street for large returns, the practice of which was a critical piece of the economic model popularized by Michael Lewis’ Moneyball.

(Seriously, this has to stop. Billy Beane was featured in Moneyball, but it was not BY him. Michael Lewis kills a puppy every time you forget who wrote his book.)

For teams that are in the rebuilding process, trading away a closer can be a great boon. Teams in the market tend to be win-now oriented and willing to give up future assets for a reliever that can consistently get outs late in the game.

Strictly speaking, “closers” aren’t that useful. The ninth inning may or may not be a nervy time, but it’s a virtual certainty that there will be a point in the game at which three outs and no runs is the order of the day.

Closer usage may be messed up, but the fact remains that a pitcher who can come in in pressure situations to consistently get outs is something that is hugely valuable to any team that is going to have late leads to protect.

Joe Nathan is among the elite closers in the game, a class that includes Mo Rivera, Heath Bell, and few others (Brian Wilson, perhaps). Why no J.J Putz, David Aardsma, Kerry Wood, Bobby Jenks, etc?

You might be able to guess the answer (hint: Italics), but it’s all about consistency. Rivera has been lights-out for years now, so much so that the Yankees basically play eight inning games at home.

It was a virtual certainty that when vintage Trevor Hoffman came into the game, it was over. AC/DC's "Hells Bells" meant that it was time to head for the car in San Diego.

Not so with David Aardsma, who had an outstanding year in Seattle in 2009. He’s been a serviceable reliever for many years, but until recently was hardly the guy you wanted your team to run out there in the late innings of a close game.

Plenty of guys have had one or two incredible seasons, then fallen off the map due to ineffectiveness or injury (Eric Gagne comes to mind).

The Twins should be keenly aware of this consideration as much as any team in baseball. The came into the 2009 season looking at a bullpen which had struggled in early 2008, but locked down opponents for much of the second half.

Craig Breslow, Matt Guerrier, and Jose Mijares were supposed to form the late-inning bridge to Joe Nathan and help the Twins keep any lead they managed to get.

Sean Henn, R.A. Dickey, and others were the front end of a ‘pen that should have been an asset to the team from Day One.

That’s not how it went.

The Twins struggled badly in 2009, eventually releasing Breslow, demoting Dickey, trading Henn, DFAing Philip Humber, putting Jesse Crain on the DL. They disposed of bodies in so many different ways, I wouldn’t be all that surprised to find Juan Morillo floating in the Mississippi.

Through all of this, Matt Guerrier, Jose Mijares, and Joe Nathan kept their end of the bargain. Through most of the season, if a lead got to these three, the Twins won the game. All three posted WXRL figures in the top-20 in baseball, making the Twins' bullpen statistically the best unit of any team that reached the playoffs.

Contrary to popular belief, the bullpen’s issues in the playoffs ought to serve to indicate why a top-flight corps is so important.

Had the Twins pitchers pitched at the level they showed for most of the season, Game Four would be a virtual certainty, and while the easy counter to that is “Yes, well, they didn’t”, they had as good a chance as anyone to execute, and their inability to do so shouldn’t be a reason to break up the band.

This all brings us to the idea of trading Joe Nathan.

Simply stated: this thinking is cracked. There are teams for whom trading their marquee closer is a really good idea. The Royals should be moving Joakim Soria for future rotation pieces, perhaps to the Cubs, who may still be in win-now mode, even with a new owner.

The Padres are actively shopping Heath Bell, an excellent idea for a team that has a lot of good, young talent (especially pitching talent), but doesn’t look ready to contend for another few years.

Move Bell, get a top-flight hitter back, and wait for another closer to emerge, they’ve got the time and the pieces for a great team in 2-3 years, but Bell likely won’t be part of it.

The Twins, on the other hand, already have most of the pieces in place for their next great team. Mauer, Morneau, Span, Cuddyer, and Kubel form as good a young core as any team in the majors can boast. All of them posted VORP figures above 30, meaning each was worth a minimum of three wins above a replacement player.

The Twins aren’t yet in win-now mode like the Cubs or Mets, as just one of the players mentioned is even 30 (Cuddyer), but they are certainly in win-soon mode.

Mauer’s desire to be on a winning team and the new stadium opening do put a certain premium on winning in the near future, but more than that, it’s hard to envision the Twins being leaps and bounds better in four or five years than they are now.

Joe Nathan is the keystone to an already shaky bullpen. Moving him without an adequate replacement in the wings would be suicidal. Remember how frustrating blowing those games to the Royals?

Now imagine a season where in any given game, that’s a possibility.

Is it a guaranteed failure? Nothing is certain, and Anthony Slama and Rob Delaney have closed in the minors.

However, BP’s Kevin Goldstein indicated that both have been overvalued by Twins fans and neither made his top 11 prospects; neither made Baseball America’s top prospect rankings either.

As with any player not in the Mauer/Pujols class, if the Twins got an offer—say Josh Johnson and Hanley Ramirez for Joe Nathan—that certainly improves the team in the absolute sense, even while weakening the ‘pen, and they should take such a deal as quickly as possible, lest it be revoked.

Back in reality, the Twins simply aren’t likely to get back enough major league-ready talent to offset the loss of their best, and most consistent, reliever.

The 2009 Minnesota Twins: An Autopsy of The Playoff Sweep

Dan Wade — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:50:13 -0400

With a slow grounder to to short, it was all over. The joy of game 163, the September magic, the 2009 season, baseball in the H.H.H. Metrodome, all of it.

It was a good run for the Minnesota Twins and in any evaluation of the season, that needs to be the foundation. The Twins beat their expected wins by six games and won a division in which they were projected to finish no better than third.

But, to borrow a line from the Bard, we come to bury the Twins, not to praise them.

The enduring image from this series, fairly or not, will be Nick Punto's prone form next to third base, his despair palpable to every member of the nearly 55,000 people in attendance.

It was a microcosm of the series—the Twins being so close to a stunning play, but falling just short because of a mistake.

Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus noted that while Game 163 was as entertaining a game as you could possibly ask for, it was not particularly well played. The teams made mistakes left and right and when the dust settled, the Twins had made one less.

And that was on display in this series.

The Twins made several critical mistakes, the umpiring crew made a few, and the Yankees made less than both, which makes it very easy to understand why they won this series.

Rather than go game-by-game through this one, I'll just make a few overarching notes.

Game One was probably the most lopsided game in recent memory, not in terms of the scoreline, but in terms of what it took to get there. The Twins had almost no shot in that game, but it's a credit to them that they threw the series' first punch and forced the Yankees to come back.

That said, it's a lot harder to hold a lead than to get one. To get a lead, one team's pitcher need only hang a curve ball and have the other team's hitter do what most professional hitters do with such pitches: hit them a very long way. 1-0.

Holding a lead involves playing good defense, pitching effectively, and making few mistakes. So you can see why the Twins managed to jump out to a lead in all three games, but were unable to hold them.

Those three things—defense, pitching, and making few mistakes—make a good way to look at the series, specifically the last two. The defense was pretty good overall. There were a few close plays that could have been made, but both teams faced that.

The Twins got excellent work from their starters in this series, and while there was certainly consternation over the lack of Scott Baker, it's hard to blame Gardy ex post facto.

Nick Blackburn has pitched in three of the biggest games the Twins have had in the last two seasons: Game 163 last year, the Saturday start v. Zack Greinke on short rest this year, and Game Two of this series.

In those three games, he has gone a combined 19 IP, 11 H, 4 ER, 5 BB, 11 K. When the leverage is high, Blackburn simply steps up. The Twins are 1-2 in those starts, but that's hardly Blackburn's fault.

Carl Pavano, Game Three's loser, was excellent. His nine strikeouts tied a season high and nearly reached his career mark (10) set against the Expos in 2003, so that hardly counts. He located the ball well, got ground balls when he needed them, and kept the Yankees from putting the game away while the offense struggled against Andy Pettitte.

I can understand wanting Baker in there. He is, after all, the Twins best pitcher. However, if Pavano told Gardy he wanted the ball to show his old team what he still had left, I can see how that would sway the manager.

Whether that's how you want a manager to decide who will pitch a critical game can be debated, but it's hard to second guess him too much, given how well Pavano locked down his old teammates.

The bullpen wasn't as good as the starters. As much as Joe Nathan will get skewered for giving up Game Two, he didn't completely bury the team in the way that Ryan Franklin and Jonathan Papelbon did.

Yes, he gave up a two run lead and the Twins lost the game, but at least he gave them a chance to steal a win again instead of giving up three and watching the Yankees walk-off.

That was Jose Mijares' job.

The lefty specialist wasn't all that special in this series. After recording a K/9 of nearly nine this season, Mijares got just one in the month of October. His season WHIP was a very solid 1.18, but his five appearances this month saw him post a WHIP of six. SIX!

Granted, that's what happens when you're called in to face one hitter and you give up a hit instead. Extrapolation can be a wicked thing, but it also reflects how ineffective Mijares was at his job. Get a lefty out, go back to the bench, and wonder what's on the postgame spread.

The rest of the 'pen was fairly unremarkable. Jon Rauch has clearly found himself in the manager's good graces, which is something to watch as the Twins decide whether or not to pursue another reliever this offseason.

All in all, what was supposed to be an area of strength for the Twins in this series turned into an Achilles' heal.

But if this series will be remembered for anything, it will be the mistakes the Twins made, specifically on the base paths.

Punto's mistake cost the Twins a tie in Game Three and Carlos Gomez's blunder cost them in Game Two. Gomez's mistake may look more costly, as the Twins went on to lose that game by just one run, but the magnitude of Punto's can't be overstated.

The crowd in Game Three was dying for something to get excited about. Every Pavano strikeout was met with a roar. Even Nick Swisher walking to first on ball three elicited a powerful cry from the nearly 55,000 fans in attendance.

When Joe Mauer singled home Denard Span to give the Twins their lead, my dB meter maxed out 120 decibels and that was probably on the low side.

That's louder than a jet engine and probably closer to a gunshot at close range.

As loud as the crowd was at that moment, it was that silent when Punto was tagged out at third. At the time I likened it to 55,000 people simultaneously watching small child fall down a staircase; it was that level of shock and horror.

Psyche broken, the Twins never had a chance to get back in the game. I've seen a lot of things happen at baseball games, but I'd never seen a game end in the eighth inning like it did on Sunday.

Whether these mistakes permanently dispel the notion that the Twins do all the little things right remains to be seen. Myths, once in place, are powerful beyond the ken of facts.

Irrespective, they are symptomatic of what cost the Twins this series.

Talent-wise, the Twins were good enough to win this series, but they needed to play mistake-free baseball and get contributions from not only the hitters who had produced all season (Mauer, Span, Jason Kubel, Orlando Cabrera, and Michael Cuddyer) but also from those who had hit well during the Twins' September run (Punto, Delmon Young, Matt Tolbert, and perhaps a resurrection from Jose Morales).

What they got was stellar production from Mauer (.417/.500/.500), Cuddyer (.429/.429/.429), and...Nick Punto? That's right, the goat of game three was the Twins' best offensive threat: .444/.583/.556.

On the other end of things, Orlando Cabrera and Delmon Young (.154/.267/.154 and .083/.214/.167, respectively) were unable to bring much to the Twins' attack, but perhaps no hitter looked more overmatched than Jason Kubel.

An absolutely critical part of the Twins' attack for all of the 2009 season, Jason Kubel was well and truly beaten by the Yankees pitchers. His line of .071/.071/.071 doesn't even fully portray his futility. His 1-for-14 series, among his worst 20 ABs of the season, included nine strikeouts.

I don't mean to take anything away from the Yankees, who played well enough to win each of the three games, but with the exception of Game One, they hardly dominated. The Twins beat themselves as much as the Yankees beat them.

And with that, I think enough dirt has been placed on the coffin of the 2009 Minnesota Twins. A more complete season recap will follow as will a lot of offseason player profiles.

Delmon Young Getting Hot at the Right Time for Minnesota Twins

Dan Wade — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 16:04:59 -0400

Before Brett Favre arrived in Minnesota, Delmon Young was the most controversial player to roam the Dome. Not controversial in the same way he was in Tampa, Young hasn't generated bad press for anything more than poor play, but controversial because he was traded for what is shaping up to be quite the King's ransom.

Without question, Young's stock dropped this year. After a disappointing 2008, many people looked to Delmon to rebound in 2009 and simply put, he didn't.

His season line at the All-Star break was an awful .266/.292/.344, for a guy who was supposed to be a speed/power OF, an OPS under .700 is unacceptable. Add in that he had as many CS as SB (two of each) while playing abysmal defense in left field and the consternation regarding his play is understandable.

But, in baseball, few things are as simple as they seem.

Part of the increased scrutiny of Delmon's play was due to his poor 2008, but a large part of it was the play of the men he was traded for. Matt Garza hasn't quite been the ace many predicted he would be, but a 1.26 WHIP and 3.95 ERA would have been more than welcome on the Twins staff the last two seasons.

Jason Bartlett's play dropped off substantially in the last few months, but for the first half of the season, he was as good as any player in the AL. He was an All-Star and was getting serious MVP chatter before declining as the season progressed.

Meanwhile, Brendan Harris was riding pine for the Twins, meaning the trade is shaping up to be Bartlett (the All-Star) and Garza (the LCS MVP) for Young (the .266 corner OF). Yikes. Is there any way this trade comes around and looks ok for the Twins?

I don't know if I'd go that far, but there is a piece in play here that hasn't garnered much press.

In April, Delmon was bad: .241/.276/.315

In May, he was worse: .236/.88/.236. Not a typo, his slugging and batting average were equal. Every one of his 13 hits was a single.

But something else happened in May, something that showed up in few box scores:

Young - DNP (Bereavement)

After fighting cancer for years, Delmon's mother finally succumbed to the disease, passing away on May 18.

Sympathies were expressed, Young's extended absence went duly unmentioned, but soon people were back to criticising the outfielder for his poor play.

In writing this piece, I wanted to be careful not to presume too much about how his mother's death affected Young's early season play, but then I read this quote from La Velle E. Nea l:

"When he [Young] was asked if his father, Larry, was at the game to see his grand slam and 5 RBI. 'Yeah, I wish my mom could have seen it, too,' Young said."

That play was almost certainly one of the five biggest in Young's career (He's never played for a playoff team) and one of his first thoughts is "man, I wish my mom had been here to see it".

Young isn't much older than I am, and I know that if my mom passed away, I'd be a mess. Beyond a wreck. Given Young's passionate nature (he himself admitted as much after the bat throwing incident), is it any wonder that the death of someone so close to him would cause him great pain?

I don't know to what level he's still carrying that grief with him, but I know that it's a long process. Neal notes in the linked article that some in the media have seen a greater level of engagement in Young as the season has gone on, and his numbers bear that out.

July: .313/.343/.500

August: .262/.279/.476 with 5 HR and 15 RBI (both season highs)

September: .309/.326/.444

October: .625/.667/1.000 (ok, ok, small sample size, but hey, these are critical games!)

Having Young's bat as an asset in the lineup rather than a blackhole has helped the bottom of the Twins' order become much more productive as the season has progressed. Chances are good that the Twins would have missed Justin Morneau a lot more if Young hadn't posted his season high in extra base hits in September.

He still has a long way to go, but Young has time to get there. The question is: Will he continue that journey with the Twins or has he worn out his welcome with the team?

Once the season concludes, hopefully not for a few more weeks, the Twins will face a difficult decision about who stays and who goes in their crowded outfield. Young seems likely to be the odd man out, but there's good reason to keep him around.

Irrespective of those issues, Young has done much to raise his profile over the last few weeks. His .296/.317/.476 line after the all-star break is downright serviceable, and something he can build on in 2010.

Those decisions will come, but for now, the Twins simply hope Young can continue his hot streak as they fight tooth and nail for the last available playoff spot.

Staying Alive: How The Twins Refused to Quit and Challenged The Tigers

Dan Wade — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:40:45 -0400

For months it has looked like the early part of this week would give baseball fans a series to remember, only for most of that time it appeared that the series would take place in Anaheim rather than Detroit.

The Rangers faded, the Twins surged, the Angels dominated, and the Tigers got sloppy. Put it all together and what do you have? The reality that baseball’s prime race moved east, from the oceanfront to the lakefront.

Credit the Twins for even getting this far.

Irrespective of the outcome, that this series is relevant beyond playoff seeding for the Tigers is remarkable. The Twins lost their second best hitter and major run producer, Justin Morneau, on 13 September, all they’ve done since is go 11-2 and scored an average of 6.2 runs per game, well above their season average of 4.94 R/G.

So, just how did the Twins not only withstand the loss of Morneau, but also overwhelm opponents with their bats, something they had rarely done when they had the entire lineup healthy?

Some of the answers are obvious; others, less so.

Joe Mauer has been so good all year, it’s easy to overlook him when talking about the September surge, but to forget his contribution would be criminal. All he’s done is hit .386/.485/.542 with an OPS of 1.027 this month. His power numbers are down from August, but he’s getting on base at an even better clip, which, given the emergence of some of the run producers lower in the order, has made him that much more valuable.

What more can you say about Mauer? Since missing all of April, the Twins have only played in three games that Mauer didn’t appear in. He’s had just three games this month in which he didn’t get a hit–one was a pinch hitting appearance and he drew five walks in the other two.

That he is the Twins’ MVP is set in stone. I’ve staked my claim that he is also the league MVP, but to repeat what I said about Zack Greinke, whether or not he is the actual AL MVP this season, he is the league’s best player.

The emergence of Michael Cuddyer has garnered him irrational amounts of praise. Yes, he has been integral to the Twins’ September rise, but he is not a serious MVP candidate as some may have suggested. Setting aside the irrational exuberance for a moment, Cuddyer really has been at his best this season.

His 2006 season is the only other season in his career that Cuddyer has been anywhere near this productive. It’s also the only year in which he played more than 150 games, which he ought to do this year (he’s at 145 currently and will almost certainly play in the seven remaining games). When Cuddyer is healthy, he’s been good. And while he’ll never be mentioned with Rich Harden in terms of players who are outstanding when healthy, but made of glass, he deserves at least a footnote.

As consistent as he’s been all year, he’s been even better in September, putting up a .290/.313/.602 line this month, good for an OPS of .915, while slugging eight of his career high 30 home runs this month.

Then come the guys that prove it’s not who you are, it’s how you play. Few, if any serious observers would be excited about a bottom of the order that features Nick Punto, Matt Tolbert, Jose Morales, and Delmon Young, yet all have batting averages above .300, and OPS above .770.

Punto has long been maligned as an offensive black hole and frequently it’s true, but this month he’s been a solid force at the bottom of the order. Think that’s an exaggeration? Punto’s line this month, .306/.427/.387 gives him the team’s fifth best batting average and second best OBP. If you were expecting Punto to slug like Mauer or Cuddyer, well, that one’s on you, captain irrational.

The point is, for much of the season the Twins fielded a lineup that was about four or five hitters deep: Mauer, Morneau, Kubel, Cuddyer, and Denard Span. They got occasional contributions from people like Joe Crede and Brendan Harris, but on any given day, the offense could be almost completely reliant on those five.

Now, the Twins are seeing production from nearly everyone.

Mauer, Cuddyer, Punto, Tolbert, Morales, and Young have been discussed already; Span has dropped off after an incredible August, but is still posting a .380 OBP from the lead-off spot; Orlando Cabrera hasn’t been the offensive panacea that the front office may have hoped he’d be, but his presence has kept Alexi Casilla firmly ensconced on the bench, and he has walloped three home runs this month, so there’s something to be said for that.

The outlier here is actually Jason Kubel, who had been outstanding for much of the year. Kubel’s September numbers are very pedestrian indeed: .244/.333/.423. However, over half of his 19 hits this month have gone for extra bases and he’s still a feared enough hitter that opposing pitchers can’t just walk Mauer in close situation with impunity. He hasn’t been his best this month, but he’s hardly been a negative presence in the lineup.

By getting contributions from everyone, top to bottom, the Twins have turned innings that looked like easy outs into crooked numbers.

Scoring runs is only half the game, and it’s actually been the half the Twins excelled at this season. Run prevention has been their bugaboo, from a rotation depleted by injury, to a bullpen plagued by ineffectiveness, to a team defense ranked fourth worst in baseball by UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating) and ninth worst by PADE (Park Adjusted Defensive Efficiency).

Over their last 13 games, the Twins have allowed a downright stingy 2.8 runs per game, down from their season average of 4.69 RA/G.

So, calling back the offensive number introduced previously, the Twins are scoring 6.2 runs per game and allowing just 2.8; is it any wonder they started winning games in bunches?

There is a danger in introducing Pythagorean expectations into a sample this small, namely that a few huge run outbursts would badly skew the sample. However, the Twins have broken into double digits just once in those games, and their median run output is seven, meaning the runs are fairly evenly distributed across the sample.

Their run prevention stems from replacing their worst starters with effective ones, which is about as fast a way to turn a team around as there is. They abandoned Glen Perkins, Anthony Swarzak, and Francisco Liriano, though the last has reemerged, in favor of Carl Pavano and Brian Duensing.

I’ve tackled Pavano previously, and Duensing is the more impressive of the two anyway.

Brian Duensing has come out of nowhere. Seriously, no one in the organization thought this was going to happen, so don’t feel bad if you missed it too. In 13 starts for AAA Rochester, Duensing was 4-6 with a 4.66 ERA and a 1.41 WHIP, none of which is bad per se, but it certainly qualifies as uninspiring. He limited his home runs and walks, which is a great foundation, but didn’t get a lot of groundballs or strikeouts.

In eight starts for the Twins, he’s gone 5-1 with a 2.06 ERA and a 1.16 WHIP while boasting two above average pitches in his fastball and slider. He’s improved in nearly every way possible from AAA to the majors, which happens on occasion, but is still a fairly remarkable feat.

The knock against him is that he seems to be doing the Nick Blackburn trick of putting runners on in bunches, then pitching around them, but his pitch quality and assortment is more akin to ace Scott Baker’s than to Blackburn’s. His walk rate should come down some, as it currently stands well above his career averages, and when it does, he’ll be that much better.

The back end of the bullpen has been amongst the best in the game between Joe Nathan (4.40 WXRL), Jose Mijares (3.7), and Matt Guerrier (3.4), but getting to them had been a serious issue. Bobby Keppel, R.A. Dickey, Sean Henn, and Jesse Crain all gagged away games between the starters and the dependable set of relievers. Only, one of those doesn't fit.

Since Aug. 22, a span of 15 innings and 15 appearances, Jesse Crain has given up 0 runs, just five hits, and four walks. Functioning as a bridge between the improved starting rotation and Joe Nathan, Crain has helped the Twins maintain leads they had previously surrendered, a critical skill in a playoff chase.

Another player helping to form that bridge is Jon Rauch. Acquired by the Twins just before the wavier deadline, Rauch has allowed runs in just one outing since coming to the team. Rauch will remain with the team into next season as his option has vested. Whether that's a good thing or not is up for some debate as Rauch has struggled in the AL at other points in his career. However, for the time being, he is certainly part of the reason the Twins are still alive in the AL Central.

Whether this will lead to a midwest version of Rocktober remains to be seen, and the Tigers certainly have designs of their own that would lead the Twins to the off-season rather than the postseason. One thing is sure: the Twins are finally clicking on all cylinders and it has made them a formidable force in the AL Central.

Minnesota Twins Look for Sweep; Zach Greinke Looks To Stop Them

Dan Wade — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 13:43:39 -0400

The Twins walked past Robinson Tejada in game one and battered Lenny DiNardo in game two of their three-game set with the Royals.

Game three, however, might not be so easy.

This was almost an irrelevant game; had the White Sox kept their five-run lead intact last night, the Twins would have been one game behind instead of two, meaning the worst case scenario has the Twins down two games heading into Detroit, a workable margin, since the Twins would only need to win three games instead of sweep to take the division lead.

But good teams don't let themselves get beat in the second inning.

The Tigers fought back, won their game, and put a reasonable amount of pressure on the Twins today. If they lose against the Sox this afternoon (Edwin Jackson v. Daniel Hudson), then the Twins will once again be in good position.

But, assuming their games last the same amount of time, the Twins will have all of five minutes to know whether or not they can afford to lose. Translation: they'd better plan on taking care of their own business.

Standing in their way is the best pitcher in the American League. Whether he wins the Cy Young award or not is fairly irrelevant at this point, Zack Greinke is simply the best.

It's hard to find a number to throw out that "proves" how great he's been. His ERA is just a tick over 2 (2.05), his WHIP is 1.05, his ERA+is a staggering 210 on a scale where 100 is average.

The only thing that might keep him from being the AL CY Young winner is his relatively low win total, an issue Twins fans certainly understand well. In 2005, Johan Santana was jobbed out of the award when Bartolo Colon and his 21 wins blinded voters to the fact that Colon had been good, while Santana had been nothing short of unhittable in the second half of the season.

Saying that having Greinke on the mound gives the Royals an advantage in this game is a horrible understatement. His 15 wins account for nearly 25 percent of the Royals' season total. If Grenkie wins today, it will be exactly 25 percent. If that's not value, I can't imagine what is.

Standing in the way of the seemingly undeterable freight train that is the Greinke campaign is...Francisco Liriano?

Liriano, booted from the rotation in favor of Jeff Manship earlier this season, has been fairly effective pitching out of the bullpen since his return from the DL. Manship seemed overwhelmed in his last start, so the more established Liriano will get the ball, but on a strict pitch count.

The 45-60 pitches Liriano has been promised means he'll probably get through three to four innings before turning the ball over to a bullpen which threw just 2.2 innings last night and just three innings the night before. While the 'pen might be well rested and ready to roll, if Liriano's pitches are effective and he doesn't seem to be fatiguing quickly, Gardy well might leave him out there for five or six.

The Twins do not have an off day the rest of the season, so pulling a starter after three innings, irrespective of effectiveness, isn't really good strategy.

So, the question is: What chance do the Twins have?

A lot depends on Liriano. The Boston Red Sox gave up five early runs against the Royals and Greinke was able to coast through his innings knowing he could be aggressive. If Liriano can keep the Twins close, it will make Greinke be more careful with how he pitches.

He's lost or received a no-decision nine times in games in which he allowed two or fewer runs, so it's certainly possible for Greinke to be at his best, but for the Royals to be unable to turn that into a win.

Liriano's slider and changeup are still above average pitches, so it may seem like an overstatement, but the Twins are truly banking on Liriano and his fastball.

If he can locate it like he wants to and use it effectively to set up his off-speed pitches, the Twins will have a much better chance at beating the Royals, even if they can't beat Greinke.

Twins/Royals Series Preview Part One

Dan Wade — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:31:19 -0400

First, an apology—I haven’t been writing much, due to a computer issue as well as the single worst repair job in history. What should have been a small three or four day fix turned into two weeks. There are pieces in the pipeline, but conducting research at work is a risky proposition, so most of them are half-finished.

Now that my screen is functional again, you shall have your analysis, such as it ever was.

Anyone who thinks the terms "critical late season matchup” and “Kansas City Royals” are incompatible hasn’t been paying attention to the AL Central’s recent history.

2008 saw the Twins drop two of three to the other team from Missouri, forcing the one game playoff they would go on to lose.

2007 was less competitive in the Central, but KC did their best to trip up Detroit in August when things were close, enroute to Cleveland’s most recent division win.

KC swept the Tigers in 2006 in the last three games of the season to allow the Twins to sneak past Detroit to steal the division crown. This wasn’t as big a deal as it may have seemed to be, both teams went to the playoffs, after all, and Detroit still made it to the playoffs.

Nevertheless, there is great precedent for Kansas City lying in wait for unsuspecting playoff hopefuls.

Already in 2009, KC has swept Detroit, helping what had appeared to be the Tigers’ September victory lap become one of the only competitive races left in baseball.

Now it’s the Twins turn to make a run through the viper’s den. They hold a small lead in the season series against the Royals, but have yet to face Zack Greinke, which seems almost impossible, given the teams have faced one another 12 times already.

Their luck runs out Sunday, when the prohibitive Cy Young favorite squares off against Francisco Liriano, who has to be considered among the most enigmatic pitchers in baseball today.

I’ve dissected a few of his starts in this space already, so I won’t rehash it too much, lest your eye wander elsewhere, but with Joe Mauer’s recent note that Liriano’s outing against the White Sox was the best he’d seen the ball come out of Liriano’s hand in a long time, it’s an interesting situation to ponder.

Lest we get ahead of ourselves, starting with today’s match would be prudent.

Friday: Carl Pavano v. Robinson Tejada

Every team still in the AL Central Race made a move at the deadline to bolster their chances, with the Twins and Sox making another move during the waiver period. Of the major players added: Jake Peavy, Alex Rios, Jarrod Washburn, Orlando Cabrera, and Carl Pavano, it would be hard to say that anyone has had a bigger impact on the race than Pavano has. Well, positive impact, Washburn has been bad since his arrival in the Motor City, which has certainly changed the character of the race.

In his nine starts as a Twin, Pavano has gone six or more innings in eight of them, taking pressure off of a bullpen which is rapidly approaching overworked status. Far from a Livan Hernandez-like turtle whose only utility is durability, Pavano has given the Twins seven quality starts, including six in a row. He’s just 3-3 with the team, but as any good sabermetrican will tell you, wins are one of the worst possible ways to measure a pitcher’s performance.

Robinson Tejada was converted from a reliever to a starter at the beginning of the month. All he’s done since then is go 3-0 with just two runs and nine hits allowed in 22.1 innings over four starts, good for a WHIP of .850 and an ERA of 0.89. His support neutral value above replacement (adjusted for quality of lineups faced), a stat which measures a starting pitcher’s value to his team outside of bullpen, offensive, or defensive performance is 1.4, equivalent to Armando Galarraga’s output and in 21 fewer starts.

He’s already beaten the Tigers twice, now he’ll turn his attention to the other AL Central contender.

Tejada’s only major limitation right now is the number of innings he throws. He’s yet to go more than six innings in a start and has two starts of fewer than six. Given that the Royals’ bullpen has been less than stellar, fifth worst in the majors over 433.2 innings*, the Twins may be best served by forcing Tejada to throw a ton of pitches and getting him out of the game as early as possible. They can certainly score enough runs off the bullpen as long as they don’t mind only having 3-4 innings to do it.

*In point of fact, this flatters the Royals bullpen, which has been downright terrible. They are actually posting a lower team WXRL than Joakim Soria is posting on his own. This means that the pitchers in the ‘pen not nicknamed ‘The Mexicutioner’ have been around two full wins below replacement level.

Pavano had his second worst start as a Twin against KC, but also through seven innings of two run ball the last time he faced them. If he can keep the Twins close while the bats wait out Tejada, the Twins will have a decent chance against the Royals ‘pen.

Saturday: Scott Baker v. Lenny DiNardo

On the surface, this would seem to be the Twins best shot at a win in this series. Baker has been their best pitcher all season by any metric, and DiNardo is the weakest of the three pitchers the Twins are slated to face.

DiNardo spent most of his season in the PCL where in 23 starts he posted a 10-5 record with an era of exactly pi (well, pi to three digits, 3.14) and a WHIP of 1.14. Those are certainly serviceable numbers, and if he was posting similar figures since his call-up, the Twins might be nervous.

However, since returning to KC, DiNardo has failed to deliver even a quality start. He’s yet to finish the sixth inning, and has a WHIP of 2.35. His last time out he was scorched for eight runs on 10 hits and an appalling six walks in just five innings of work against the Boston Red Sox. DiNardo’s role on the team seems to be best described as “lull the opposition into a false sense of security before Greinke pitches tomorrow.”

Baker, on the other hand, has been good as gold for the Twins. He’s delivered the Twins a winnable ball game in 52 percent of his outings, better than A.J Burnett, Carlos Zambrano, or Cole Hammels. He was beaten his last time out by the Tigers in his shortest outing since he had faced the Tigers on August 4th. After that game, Baker won his next three starts including a two-hit shutout of the Indians in his next start.

The Twins shouldn’t need him to be quite that good, though there’s certainly nothing wrong with that, assuming Pavano throws six or seven innings. If he can go seven innings with fewer than two runs, the Twins should be able to score more than that off of DiNardo.

There is virtue in having two strong arms leading off the series beyond the obvious. Since neither Baker nor Pavano is likely to need a massive bullpen intervention, there should be plenty of fresh arms for Sunday’s matinee between Liriano and Greinke.

I’d like a little more space than the last 1500 words of an already full article to discuss what Greinke has meant to the Royals, and whether the Twins have any chance of beating him, so rather than tack it on here, stop back this weekend for a full look at Sunday’s game.

Monday a Perfect Microcosm of the 2009 Minnesota Twins

Dan Wade — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:02:21 -0400

Things can hardly seem to go right for the Minnesota Twins lately. For every win over Roy Halladay, there’s a near sweep at the hands of the punchless A’s. Often, when things finally seem to be headed in the right direction, the Twins either find themselves no better for their effort because the Tigers, too, have improved, or soon find their good fortunes have faded away.

So it was on Monday.

The Twins made Indians lefty Jeremy Sowers look like Greg Maddux reborn as he held the team to just six hits and no runs in his seven innings of work. Perhaps the Twins were just playing rope-a-dope with them, or perhaps someone gave an impassioned dugout speech to inspire everyone to new levels of greatness, something like:

Joe Mauer: If we don’t win this game, I’m signing with the Cubs after the 2010 season.

Irrespective of reason, the Twins came out firing on all cylinders in the eighth, scoring six runs on four hits, a walk, and an error. Home runs by Jason Kubel and Michael Cuddyer brought the Twins from the edge of defeat to barely a save opportunity for Joe Nathan.

However, Detroit’s win on a walk-off error meant the Twins heroics served only to prevent them from falling further behind in AL Central’s nearly annual “Race To the Bottom”.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the Twins got a double punch of bad news on the medical front.

The story that gained the most attention was Justin Morneau pronouncing himself done for the season. A stress fracture in his L5 vertebra was simply too painful to play through anymore and it was affecting his play.

Indeed, Morneau indicated that he’d been feeling the effects of the injury for three to four weeks; over that time he hit just .122 with two home runs, which is pretty clear indication that something wasn’t right.

The healing time for an injury of this nature is three to four months, meaning Morneau will likely be a little rusty when he comes to camp, but not nearly as bad as Joe Mauer post-kidney surgery.

This isn’t a back injury like Joe Crede’s, it isn’t likely to recur, which makes me disappointed that Morneau is hurt, but not terribly concerned about it's long lasting effects.

The Twins' other piece of injury news is much more worrisome to me.

Pitcher Kevin Slowey, out since early July with a chip fracture in his wrist, underwent a second surgery on the site, this time to implant two metal screws into the area. The surgery was, as it always seems to be, a success, so that’s good news. However, that he needed a second surgery at all makes me a little skittish. Slowey won’t begin throwing until November, which puts him well behind the previous timetable for his return.

Still, this isn’t elbow or shoulder surgery, and Slowey should return in time for the regular season, albeit about one percent more metallic than he was last season.

The concern he is why he needed a second surgery two months after the previous one. Injuries to pitchers, even ones that don’t affect the kinetic chain, can alter their motion and lead to different injuries or wholesale ineffectiveness.

Slowey will have enough time and guidance for his rehab that I think he should be ok, but he’s a big part of the Twins’ future and if he can’t be effective next year, it puts the Twins in an even tougher situation.

What should be taken away from both of these injuries, as well as Crede finally giving up his ghost, is that the Twins focus right now should be on next season. They aren’t the first team to have their dreams of postseason glory shattered by a rash of injuries, and I think the Mets are hosting this year’s iteration of that pity party, so they can’t even take solace in that.

Yes, they still have a mathematical shot at the playoffs, but in all honesty, I think it could be counterproductive in the long run for them to make it, but that’s another article entirely.

In the end, Monday was a pretty good microcosm of the season to date. Yes, the Twins scored a great comeback win and it was really fun to watch. But reality sets in quickly and between injuries and another miracle Tigers win, it all seems to be one step forward, two steps back.

Snap Judgments: Wavier Options for the Anxious Owner

Dan Wade — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:26:05 -0400

With the extended edition of week one nearly in the books, plenty of fantasy owners checked their position heading into tonight’s Patriots/Bills and Raiders/Chargers matches, only to nearly pass out from the fright.

Plenty of top picks disappointed with their week one performance, while plenty of late-round picks and unheralded players dominated the day.

One week, of course, isn’t nearly enough of a sample to make a judgment, but that’s never stopped some owners (real or fantasy) from making early moves. He who hesitates is lost after all.

My advice, take a more stayed approach; get a cup of coffee, read Doonesbury, and laugh off week one as more of an extended preseason game than an indication of future results.

But, if you’re already ready to cut bait on your high picks in favor of whoever you can get from the waiver wire, here are some guys available in most* leagues worth taking a look at.

Most is defined as x> 50 percent of ESPN.com leagues.

So you drafted: Jay Cutler

Waiver Savior: Joe Flacco

The parallels between Cutler and Rex Grossman were eerie last night, as the Bears QB threw four picks, including one to Al Harris to ice the game. Talk about a fall from grace, in week one of the 2008 season, Cutler threw for 300 yards and two scores with nary a turnover to his name.

This time around, not so good.

Flacco is owned in 56 percent of leagues, so it’s a coinflip as to whether he’s an option for you or not. Matt Ryan was the rookie QB that turned heads last year, and rightly so, but Flacco is no slouch himself, as his performance on Sunday showed.

His 307 yards and three scores is certainly a serviceable mark and with just one pick and one sack to mar his day, Flacco looks to have picked up where he left off last year. His 43 attempts were the second most of any QB so far, just one off of pass happy Kurt Warner’s 44.

Two things make me nervous about recommending Flacco to anyone actually looking for a QB.

First, the KC defense isn’t exactly our modern equivalent of the Iron Curtain. Flacco did well against a team he should have done well against, and while that’s more than can be said for a number of other players, it isn’t a ringing endorsement.

Second, while he did put up a ton of yards, he did so on a ton of passes, completing 60 percent of his tosses. Against the stouter defenses of the AFC East, Flacco may not get 43 attempts, which will make it more difficult for him to put up similar totals.

Still, unless you’re sitting pretty with Drew Brees, Flacco may be worth keeping an eye on, as he doesn’t look set for a sophomore slump.

So You Drafted: Steve Slaton

Waiver Savior: Correll Buckhalter

Donovan McNabb, Percy Harvin, Brady Quinn.

If you answered “Players with more rushing yards than Steve Slaton” You’re our big winner!

In all seriousness, unless you drafted Adrian Peterson, you were probably disappointed with the production you got out of your RBs. Just five players went over the 100 yard mark, just two scored more than one touchdown, and fewer than 20 scored at all.

The easy answer would be Mike Bell, who touched the Lions for 143 yards on the ground.

Two things keep me from making this a recommendation at all.

First, as soon as Lance Moore is back, Mike Bell drops to the No. 2 back in a system that barely uses one. The Saints are pass-first to the extreme, just look at Drew Brees’ day if you’re at all unsure of that fact.

Second, the gashed opponent was the Lions. Yes, I know they have a defensive mindset this year, and I know they added Larry Foote to prove it, but in the words of my dear brother: “You can’t improve what you never had”.

The Lions allowed opposing runners an average of 172 yards per game last year, and while they may have improved from that mark, they are still closer to that team than to one that can actually stop the run.

Instead, I’m going to tip Correll Buckhalter as the pick here.

Forty-six yards isn’t much to write home about, but he received the same number of carries as Knowshon Moreno and did more with them than the rookie did. His 5.8 average should be enough to keep him in the rotation and maybe see a bit more of the ball.

He's owned is under 20 percent of leagues, so unless you're in a tremendously deep league, he's probably an option for you.

In reality, the field is thin here, no one has emerged as a threat yet among the players readily available. If you’ve given up on your backs already, I’d recommend streaming whoever’s running backs are playing the Lions, even if it means taking a back up instead of a starter.

So you drafted: Steve Smith (CAR)

Waiver Savior: Steve Smith (NYG)

These twins (ok, not really) are more or less photo negatives of one another. The Panthers' Smith is an incredibly talented receiver who will be held back more by the man throwing him then ball than the defenses trying to prevent him from catching it. The Giants' iteration of Steve has a solid QB throwing the ball downfield, but may not be proficient enough to take advantage of it.

What we know is this: The Giants have to throw the ball sometimes and, lacking an obvious star receiver, Smith is bound to get his number called.

Smith lead the Giants in yards and targets against the Redskins, and perhaps most importantly, he turned six of those eight targets into receptions. That's the kind of thing that brings one's stock up in the QB's progressions.

The Giants receivers are young and fairly unproven across the board. Eli Manning showed some confidence in Domenik Hixon last year, but this isn't the same type of connection that, say, Aaron Rogers and Greg Jennings have.

A few solid games could easily move Smith ahead of Hixon on the depth chart, which would make him that much more valuable.

Sunday's game was a good start to this end, but it may take two or three more games like this to cement his status as a trusted receiver. Irrespective of mental processes, Smith clearly has something to offer and is available in 75.2 percent of leagues.

Like I said at the opening, I wouldn't make any of these moves right now. One week does not a season make, no matter how much you hate losing in week one.

That said, Smith and Flacco are definitely worth watching next week and may be worth picking up at the expense of your back up TE or fifth WR. Be thankful that injuries stayed away from most, if not all, first round picks, but that isn't going to last.

If you find yourself in need of offensive help, these are good places to start.

Win and You're In: The Reality of the Minnesota Twins' Current Position

Dan Wade — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 01:34:22 -0400

The playoff calculus can get a little strange this time of year. Get too far out of both the division and the wild card standings, and you might find yourself rooting for both teams in a late game out west to be crushed by a meteor.

Or for one team to win two games of the series and their opponent to win game three so as to keep one team from getting any momentum.

Or perhaps for a player to get injured, not bad enough to damage his career, but long enough to keep him out of a key series with your team.

If you start pulling for draws, then you know you’ve gone too far.

For the Minnesota Twins, however, the math is very simple. Win and you’re in.

Oh yes, sports fans, the Twins still control their own destiny as September begins, which is odd considering they stand barely above .500: 67 up and 66 down. An 11-4 stretch has rekindled hope that the Twins might sneak into the playoffs, despite months of play that can charitably be described as “inconsistent."

Nevertheless, with seven games remaining against their primary competition (the Tigers) and three left against their closest follower (das Sox), the Twins need not worry about the comings and goings of their rivals, save where it concerns them.

Sure, it would be nice to have some leeway going into the Sept. 18 to 20 series with the Tigers, but the truth is, unless the Twins win those games, they’re letting the Tigers back in.

No doubt, the Twins need to stay close, but the difference between a two-game lead and trailing by two is inexpressibly small. In either situation, those are must win games, and any perceived difference is just that: more perception than reality.

To this end, it would have been nice for the Twins to add Rich Harden (thoughts on this non-deal forthcoming), but almost more for the assumption that they will catch the Tigers and make the playoffs than for the stretch run.

The Twins need consistently good starts from whoever they are throwing out there, from Brian Duensing to Jeff Manship, and while adding Harden would have meant one more settled rotation spot, it hardly ensured the Twins would be headed to October baseball.

Every quality start put together by Manship and Duensing makes Harden that much less important. If they fall apart, it will look like a mistake not to have brought the former A into the fold. If they string together starts like their last two, Harden will look like a luxury the Twins were wise to avoid.

I don't want to dwell much on what happened at the end of the Sox series for two reasons.

First, it was all I could do to keep from vomiting at my desk when it happened, and that's not a feeling I care to relive.

Second, there's almost no way to avoid hyperbole when talking about it.

Instead, let us co-opt a phrase our cousins in the UK adore—call the loss simply gutting and move on.

As noted above, as long as the Twins are within shouting distance of the Tigers when the teams meet head-to-head, the comings and goings of the next few days are largely irrelevant.

However, that doesn't mean that the Twins can afford even the slightest stumble against the Indians. The last two times these teams met, the Tribe handled the Twins to the tune of back-to-back series wins.

The Tigers have one of their toughest series remaining this weekend as they take on the Rays, who are on the brink of elimination after a poor showing against the wild card-leading Red Sox in Tampa. The Tigers have played so well over the last few days, it's hard to forecast them dropping more than a game no matter how desperate the Rays might be.

That said, the Twins' task is much easier than the Tigers', and if Tampa proves to be stiff competition, the Twins must be prepared to maximize the ground regained.

The next few games will be a test of the mental strength of this club. Can they bounce back from a rough loss, or will Joe Nathan's breakdown prove to be the defining moment in the season?

Ron Gardenhire raves about veteran leadership and how important guys like Nick Punto, Mike Redmond, and Michael Cuddyer are to a young team like this one. If ever there was a time for that leadership to come out, it's now.

Where the Twins are after this weekend will tell us a lot about what their real chances are, both in terms of their own play and in terms of how tough Detroit will be to catch. The Twins currently have a 19 percent chance of making the postseason, and if they go too much lower than that, the number will move to zero very quickly.

It is worth noting that in 2006, when the Twins won the division on the last day of the season, they were exactly five games out, just like they are now. I'm not drawing an equivalency between these two iterations of the same club so much as saying that it's possible, and that one bad loss didn't change that fact all that much.

Does Joe Mauer's Uniqueness Hurt His MVP Chances?

Dan Wade — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 04:28:02 -0400

Albert Pujols is a machine: See ball, hit ball.

That he's also the best player in the NL is pretty much a given. His name is often the one mentioned in terms of "Possible Triple Crown Winners" and "Players I'll Tell My Kids About," so there's almost no noise made when Pujols' name is already getting etched on the MVP plaque for the second year in a row and the third time in his career; he is, after all, The Machine.

Albert's march to MVP status lacks nothing: He's in the top five in the National League for all three slash stat categories—batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage—while also leading in HR and ranking second in RBI.

Stepping out of the realm of the traditional stats, he also boasts the highest Value over Replacement Player, the best Equivalent Average, and (among position players) the most Wins above Replacement Player in all of baseball. No one bests Fat Albert, no matter what the metric.

Add in that he plays Gold Glove defense for a team that is headed for the postseason and you've got a basically bulletproof case for the 2009 NL MVP.

Joe Mauer is a machine: See ball, hit ball.

Like Pujols, he's mentioned as potential achiever of the rare accomplishment (Mauer's would be hitting .400) and being a player whose legacy will live on well past his playing days.

Where Pujols is a top five NL player for the slash stats, Mauer is in the top two for the whole of baseball for all three categories, the same is true for the expanded stats used above. While I'm not about to say that I'd rather have Joe Mauer on my team than Albert Pujols, you can make that case and find good backing for it.

In fact, the only substantive difference in terms of their resume is that little tailing phrase "for a team that is headed for the postseason."

But if you listen to the rhetoric, it sounds like the two players are worlds apart. You never hear, for example, "Assuming the Cardinals continue their hot play and win the NL Central, Albert Pujols will win the MVP award."

Similarly, while you might hear that line about Joe Mauer, it's usually phrased as "If the Twins were a serious contender in the AL Central, the MVP would probably go Joe Mauer."

That key word probably indicates that, even if Mauer had what seems to be the missing piece to his resume, he still wouldn't have the certainty of winning the award that Pujols does, and that's odd.

Is it because the quality of competition in the AL is better?

Far from it, in fact.

Pujols and Mauer are 1-2 in the VORP rankings at 75.1 and 72.6 respectively. Four of the next five players come from the NL with Jason Bartlett's 52.4 mark the only fly in the NL's ointment.

Add in defense and the AL improves a bit, but the story stays largely the same. Pujols and Mauer secure the top, then two NL players a tick behind, followed by two AL members almost a full run behind them.

Pujols is being chased by a pack of extremely top-shelf players. He's almost a win better than his closest competitor, Hanley Ramirez, in terms of VORP, 8.1 points to be exact. By contrast, Joe Mauer leads Jason Bartlett, his closest pursuer and former teammate, by 20.2 points, a full two wins with a little left over.

By all rights, there should be a discussion about the NL MVP race that just isn't occuring. I don't at all mean to say that he shouldn't win it, he clearly should, but Han-Ram and others deserve at least a cursory glance for the seasons they've put in.

Meanwhile, the man who ought to be clearing space on his mantle is actually fading from the lead, despite hitting .483/.545/.931 over the last week, a critical stretch for his team. Simply remarkable.

The question itself is interesting enough, and I hope to hear alternate theories in the comments, but I've got an answer of my own.

Simply put: Joe Mauer is a paradigm shift the average fan doesn't fully comprehend.

First base, in either division, is a stocked position; the NL is almost unfair.

Albert Pujols, Lance Berkman, Derek Lee, Prince Fielder, Adrian Gonzalez, Ryan Howard, and others form a formidable barrier to any player who wants to be considered great at the position. The top five NL first basemen in terms of VORP are: Pujols (75.1), Fielder (54.3), Gonzalez (45.5), Berkman (30.7), and Lee (30.6).

Two things stand out right away: first, the central division is stocked at first base. Second, none of those guys is bad. Every one of them is making a positive impact for their team, yet Pujols is the best of the bunch and it isn't really all that close.

Having a background like that provides a really useful piece of context. Most fans (and writers) watch one team a lot more than the other 29 teams in Major League Baseball. They've got a sense of how good their favorite players are and can use that as a scale to better understand how good players they see less often really are.

Imagine if you were a Padres fan. You'd have a pretty clear idea of what Adrian Gonzalez means to your team; now imagine if he was almost twice that good. That's Pujols. If someone then told you that he was the best player in the NL, you wouldn't argue too much.

Hence, Albert Pujols is a runaway MVP train. Undeterable. Undeniable.

That context is exactly what Joe Mauer lacks.

Doing the same exercise, here are Mauer's peers (and I use the term loosely).

Top 5 AL Catchers: Joe Mauer (72.6), Mike Napoli (28.7), A.J. Pierzynski (24.6), Victor Martinez (22.3), and Jorge Posada (18.7). Remember, VORP is a measure of total offensive contribution and is weighted by position making it possible to compare players across positions.

Asking a fan of the Padres to imagine a player that was almost twice as good as Adrian Gonzalez is useful, it can be done and it yields a pretty clear result. Asking a Yankees to imagine a player four times better than Posada isn't nearly so useful. It's hard to come up with exactly what that kind of improvement would do to your team; you'd be better off imagining what would happen if Posada has wings and could breath fire.

The Red Sox could roll together the third, fourth, and fifth best catchers in the AL this season and still not have a player of Mauer's capability.

If context is the key to understanding how good Joe Mauer is, maybe the only real way to do it is to start duplicating positional players and imposing them on the catcher position.

Tigers fans, imagine if Miguel Cabrera was catching in addition to playing first. How much better would your team be?

Brewer backers: Wouldn't it be sweet to have Ryan Bruan behind the dish?

Rays supporters: You know how Evan Longoria is already really good? Imagine if he caught, called games, and was offensively AND defensively improved.

There isn't even a good historical player for Mauer to look good in comparison to.

Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA system is built around the idea that players tend to follow similar career paths as those who came before them. How similar a player is to a group of his predecessors is called his Similarity Index. A score of 50 or higher means that the player is common in the sense of having a loosely predictable career path, players with a score under 20 are considered historically uncommon.

It's important to note, similarity doesn't mean good or bad. Mark Teixeira, plenty good in his own right, has an SI of 53. Dan Uggla's 58 makes him even more historically common.

Even a physical freak like Tim Lincecum has a score of 23; getting into rare territory, but still comparable.

Albert Pujols will end his career as one of the greatest hitters of all time; His SI: 13. Incredibly low.

Joe Mauer has an SI of 6. It's a very lonely group photo at the annual "Players who are similar to Joe Mauer" picnic. Very Lonely.

Unless you have the privilege of watching Mauer play on a consistent basis, it's probably hard to understand what it means to have a catcher this good. If he manned a corner, his numbers would be the same (or better, honestly, due to fewer physical demands), but he'd fit the paradigm. He'd be extraordinary in a place fans have come to expect extraordinary things from.

As a catcher, hitting around .380, getting on base in 45 percent of his PAs, hitting more home runs than any DH this season, it just doesn't make sense. That's not how being a Gold Glove catcher works.

Given that the Twins are slowly bleeding their way out of playoff contention, I can abide the idea that some voters will look at contenders for their MVP choice. Mongrels. What simply baffles me is the idea that even if the Twins make a late season surge, Mauer could be passed over.

The best explanation I can find is that voters simply lack the proper perspective.

Twins Earn a Split in Texas, But Are Running Out of Time.

Dan Wade — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:50:54 -0400

It's difficult to dog the Twins too much for going into Texas and coming out with a split.

The Rangers are one of the hottest teams in baseball; they fought well against the Red Sox for the Wild Card, which was a feat that was almost unthinkable at season's start. Given the Twins' struggles on the road, the Ranger's recent performance, and the fact that 3/5's of the Twins' ideal rotation is currently is on the DL, a split isn't half bad.

How the Twins got there is even more impressive; they overcame deficits of five and four runs to eek out wins, before getting blown out in the series finale. Joe Mauer led the charge, even as Justin Morneau became the second Twin to miss time due to an inner ear infection.

I'll grant you that the Twins' preponderance of ear issues is preferable to, say, the Rangers' team-wide breakout of Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. But no injury is a good one. When that injury occurs to your second best player, during the same game in which the team's third best player also goes down with an injury, well, it makes winning just a lot more difficult.

So, hey, two wins out of four, given the circumstances, is not a bad outcome at all.

What this series showed is not that the Twins are ill-prepared for a playoff chase, indeed they are not, but even a team playing well could have produced a similar outcome. Rather, what this series puts into sharp focus is how critical the prior two series were.

Coming down the stretch, the Twins will play both the Sox (six games) and the Tigers (seven times) to swing the division race. However, if they don't start beating Cleveland (six games) and KC (six games), then those games against their peer competitors become irrelevant matches for nothing more than pride.

Think of it this way: the Twins sit 6.5 games out of first place and four games behind the White Sox. If they had won their last two series, one each with KC and Cleveland, they'd instead be just 4.5 and two back, respectively.

A massive difference? No, but the Twins lost the division by one game last year. Had they been even 1/2 game ahead when the regular season ended, they'd have been in the playoffs. The difference need not be big to be meaningful.

I really expected the Sox to rise up and take the division by force (indeed, I bet the Twins MVB a guest strip on it). Instead, they've played just one game better than the Twins have over their last 10, and dead even with the Tigers.

No team in the Central has a winning record over their last 10, which is just about all that's giving the Twins a lifeline.

What this all means is that the Twins are simply running out of time. They aren't being pushed out of the race; they aren't even taking themselves out of it. The line is just coming too quickly for them to pass the Sox and Tigers.

As great as it would have been for Anthony Swarzak to give the Twins a quality start, and for the offense to give him the runs he needed, it won't be this series that the Twins will look back and rue their missed chances. It will be the games against the weaker competition they just couldn't win.

Dear AL East Fans: Don't Kid Yourselves, Joe Mauer Is The AL MVP

Dan Wade — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 23:54:35 -0400

Don't get me wrong, Ben Zobrist is having a great year, Mark Teixiera has proved his worth after a rough start, and anyone who says they don't want Kevin Youkilis on their team is lying.

But if I have to read another piece about how anyone not named Joe Mauer is going to win the MVP, I'm going to lose my mind.

Yes, I am a Twins fan and will readily admit that bias, but I hope that the preponderance of stats to follow will prove the proposition beyond reasonable doubt.

I want to start with the most subjective thing that makes Mauer valuable: positional considerations.

The rule of thumb here is that players who play up the middle are expected to contribute more defensively than offensively. Hence why players like Chase Utley and Ian Kinsler are so valuable; they provide a substantial offensive contribution, while manning a defensively difficult position.

Mauer's defense is very solid, though a good metric to measure a catcher's defensive contribution has yet to come along. You'll note that UZR doesn't even exist for catchers. He's 19 runs above replacement in the field, which is worth about two wins so far this season.

However, there is one thing a catcher does that simply can't be quantified: calling games.

Rather than make a protracted argument about what Mauer does, I'll simply note that when Scott Baker was struggling during spring training (when Joe Mauer was out with his inflamed SI joint), that part of the problem was that Mauer simply calls entire games. What he calls, the pitcher throws.

This set up is not too different from the understanding Jason Varitek has with the Red Sox staff; the major difference is that while Varitek is 37-years old, Mauer is just 26.

What sets Joe Mauer apart from, well, everyone, is his offense.

Mauer currently leads the AL in BA by 17, OBP by 20 points, SLG by 41 points, and OPS by 77 points. What's even more impressive is the fact that he's a catcher. He did this after missing the entire offseason due to kidney surgery. Not to mention he missed spring training and a month of the season due to an inflamed SI joint.

Mauer's 21 HR tie him for 18th in the AL along with Paul Konerko, Jim Thome, and Alex Rodriguez. He has racked up 72 RBI, despite the fact that the hitters batting directly ahead of him in the order hit a combined .198.

So, to recap: No one's rate stats compare to his. While Mauer's counting stats fall behind those of Youkilis and Morneau, Mauer hasn't had nearly the same opportunity to put up the gaudy numbers that those two and the other league leaders have had.

This is where two stats, VORP and EqA, prove their worth. Both grade players on the totality of their offensive contribution. VORP is prorated for both position and home park, while EQA is weighed for league difficulty, pitching faced, and home park, but not for position.

Mauer leads all AL players with a VORP of 61.3, meaning Mauer alone is worth six wins offensively. Jason Bartlett is the next AL hitter on the list at 49.9, which is an excellent mark, but well behind Mauer.

Looking at EQA, which boasts a consistent average of .260, Mauer is once again the top of the heap. His .350 mark dwarfs that of Jason Bartlett and Kevin Youkilis, both of whom slot it at .325. In fact, the only player in the whole of baseball who out-performs Mauer is Albert Pujols, and there's no shame in that.

Finally, the question no stat can answer: Is the player in question really that valuable to his team?

It was this litmus test that had people crying foul in 2006 when Justin Morneau brought the hardware home. Most people felt he was the third most valuable player on his own team, behind Mauer and former-Twin Johan Santana.

Mauer doesn't have this barrier. Even though teammates Justin Morneau and Jason Kubel have had good seasons of their own, neither can rank with the catcher from St. Paul.

Perhaps the only thing that could keep someone from voting for Joe Mauer would be their belief that the MVP should come from a winner. While the Twins aren't sunk yet, manning the lifeboats would be a worthwhile endeavor.

To this argument, I would respond that the Twins have been in the hunt all season. And while I strongly feel like they'll fall short at the end, they won't be truly out of it until mid-September. Without Joe Mauer, it is hard to fathom that they would even be contenders at this point, and that shows how valuable he is.

Like I said to open this article, I'd love to have Youk, Bartlett, Zobrist or Kinsler on my favorite team. However, there's no one in the AL I'd rather build my team around than one of the best catchers of all time.

Fantasy Anchors: Three Players Who Could Be Holding Your Team Back

Dan Wade — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:06:59 -0400

One of the hardest things to do in fantasy sports is to cut bait on an established star. Everyone has tough stretches, but even the best players will occasionally have seasons that make them not worth their roster spot.

This process gets even harder when the player in question was a high draft pick. I would not have said that selling on Jose Reyes in June would be a good idea, but in hindsight, that guy in your league who traded him for Randy Wells ended up making a pretty good deal.

Guys like David Ortiz have wrecked havoc with owners and wire-watchers all season with good months hidden within bad seasons. I sympathise with that position, so here are three guys owned in about 50% of ESPN.com leagues or more (which is a fairly representative sample of servers) that should not be anywhere near your team.

(The number in parenthesis for the suggested replacements is their availability)

B.J. Ryan (Owned: 63.7 percent)

Ryan is done for this season. After a rough start to the year, Ryan was removed from the Jays plans, despite holding a massive contract. Rather than hope that he was on the cusp of returning to form, as one poor soul in approximately 64 percent of leagues hopes he will, the Jays just ditched him, staying on the hook for his salary.

Release isn't the end of the line for all players, but it was for Ryan. He was claimed by the Cubs, pitched ok in the minors, but then asked for his release, and here's the key part, because he didn't feel like he could contribute to the big league team this season.

When a player says he doesn't have it, its a good bet that he's right.

Replacements: C.J. Wilson (20.6 percent) or J.P. Howell (52.3 percent)

Corey Hart (Owned: 82.9 percent)

The league has largely figured out Hart, whose 2006 and 2007 seasons were intriguing, but who has been disappointing since. His line this season, .264/.335/.433, is pretty similar to his 2008 line of .268/.300/.459, so this type of season shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

The drop in power is what has really sapped Hart's fantasy potential. He's swinging at around seven percent fewer pitches than he did last year and it has lead to a subsequent upswing in walks, which has helped him reclaim some of that loss, but not enough. He's still a power OF, who isn't flashing much power.

Of course the real reason to dump Hart is his recent appendectomy. Hart hit the DL on August 2 after his surgery, but can be expected to miss two weeks at the very minimum. Recovery times can go as long as a month, which would push Hart into September before he even begins his rehab.

If you decide to keep him, you'll be glad to know there isn't a minor leaguer champing at the bit to replace Hart, so he should see time whenever he returns. However, given that he hasn't been producing even when healthy, you'd be better off finding someone else for the stretch run.

Replacements: Travis Snider (7.6 percent) or Jason Kubel (70.3 percent)

Mike Aviles (Owned: 47.8 percent)

I know what you may be thinking: Why get upset about a guy owned in a shade under 50 percent of leagues?

The answer is simple: He should be owned in zero percent of leagues!

No matter how deep your league or how many keepers you deal with, Mike Aviles is a dead end. Like Hart, whatever value he had was wiped out by an injury. His .183/.208/.250 line, while intriguing, is as worthless now as Ben Sheets' 2008 record.

Aviles hasn't played a game since he went 0-3 on May 23, and had Tommy John surgery on July 8, ending not only this season, but a good part of next season as well. That's why, unlike the other two, he doesn't even stand a chance of redeeming his value next season.

If you really want him, you can wait and pick him up when he begins his rehab in the minors next...let's call it May to be safe.

Replacements: Clint Barmes (31.4 percent) or Adam Kennedy (14.1 percent)

If you've got any of these guys and fancy yourself a playoff contender, I'd jettison them right away; they won't help your cause now. No matter how deep your league, there are players better able to help you than these three.

Oh, and if someone in your league has B.J Ryan still hanging around, let me know. I've got some prime Florida real estate to sell!

Breaking News: Minnesota Twins Acquire Carl Pavano

Dan Wade — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:53:35 -0400

Say what you will about the Minnesota Twins' front office and their normal reticence in making moves, but the 2009 season has yielded its second notable deal, as the Twins added veteran pitcher Carl Pavano in exchange for a player to be named later.

Its not a sexy move, but at this time of year, very few waiver moves are. It's a low-risk move with the possibility to give the Twins the boost they've been seeking.

The 33-year-old right hander has rebounded a little bit this season in Cleveland after a profoundly disappointing stint with the New York Yankees, posting a 9-8 record this season.

Much like Glen Perkins, Pavano has seemingly alternated between great and vile starts. He's given up two runs or fewer nine times so far this season, but has allowed six or more in five outings.

His last time out, he held the Tigers to just one run in eight strong innings. The outings prior to that he gave up six runs in six innings to the Angels and seven to the Blue Jays in just 4.2 innings. Over the two games, he offered up eight gopher balls, four in each start. To put that in perspective, Pavano hasn't allowed more than four home runs in any month this season.

Pavano works from a three-pitch arsenal, a low 90s fastball, a low 80s slider and a changeup that borders on eephus pitch levels. He'll throw a ton of strikes, having walked just 23 in 125.2 innings of work and strike out a few each start.

His support-neutral line-up adjusted value over replacement player (SNLVAR is an indication of how many games above replacement level a pitcher has added, this version of the metric weights for the quality of batters faced) is 1.8, good for second best on the Indians, and a better mark than most felt Pavano could post this season.

Translated to his new team, Pavano's contribution would place him third, behind just Scott Baker and Nick Blackburn. Even though manager Ron Gardenhire said that Francisco Liriano would make his next start, one has to wonder if that's still the case. Pavano was fairly clearly brought in to sure up a rotation that has been floundering lately, and that probably means Liriano's demotion to the bullpen, as he's been the Twins worst starter on a consistent basis this season.

Pavano doesn't make the Twins a ton better, but he does address one of their two biggest needs right now, and came at a terrifically reduced price. He isn't going to be the Carl Pavano the Yankees thought they were getting a few seasons ago, but he's also not going to be the abomination they actually got.

Credit the Twins' front office for this one. They added a decent player who may be able to help solve a pressing problem without giving up anything that's likely to be missed.

I can't really say whether Pavano will be enough to give the Twins a fighting chance down the line, but I like the move in a vacuum; we'll just have to wait and see if he can give the Twins the stability they hope a veteran like Pavano can bring.

Minnesota Twins: This Is Your Season

Dan Wade — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:39:47 -0400

I'm not one for hyperbole, not in my writing anyway, so it normally bugs me when I hear about must-win games before, say, September.

This season, however, one series has already emerged as a critical point in the season: the White Sox series after the horrid west coast road trip. It wasn't critical in the sense that it propelled the Twins to greatness, but rather that they avoided collapse. A poor showing might have derailed the Twins' deadline plans and caused them to give up on this year.

Now, with the season seemingly on the edge of a knife once again, the Twins will play their second must win series of the season. Like the first, it isn't must-win because of what it will do for the Twins if they win, so much as what a series loss or sweep will do to them. Namely, it will make their path to the playoffs much, much more difficult.

It didn't have to be this way.

The Twins started off their series with the Indians about as well as one could hope they would. The offense was alive and well, Scott Baker looked as good as he's looked all season, even Jesse Crain seemed sharp.

Game two was a crisis unabated. Liriano looked bad, the offense bailed on him, and the defense kicked the ball around, all combining for a painful 8-1 loss.

1-1 going into the series finale might not have been what the Twins were hoping for, but a series win is good no matter how it comes.

Personally, I was most concerned about Nick Blackburn's performance. Three straight poor outings made me concerned that he was fading as the season wore on. He had been so sharp before the break, so perhaps he had overexerted himself?

I needn't have been so worried; Blackburn looked solid. It may not have been his best outing of the season, but it was more than good enough to beat a lowly Indians team that had jettisoned its best offensive players.

Only it wasn't.

The offense was gone. They managed just one run off of Fausto Carmona, which came without an RBI, and completely stabbed Blackburn in the back. The Twins actually outscored Cleveland in this series, 12-11, but when 10 of those come on one night, that doesn't leave much support for the other starters.

Justin Morneau went 2-for-12 over the three games, igniting concerns over a late-season swoon like he had last season. Morneau hit .267/.350/.481 after the break last season, and while he's sporting a healthy .282/.378/.620 right now, those worries aren't unfounded.

Many are willing to bury the Twins right now, but I'm not. They aren't passed out on the canvas yet, but a standing eight count may not be ill-timed.

If the Twins lose this series with the Tigers, they'll be no fewer than 5.5 games out of first and could be as far back as 7.5 games with about six weeks left in the season. It's an unpleasant thought, but teams have come back from larger deficits with less time to do so.

Don't think its possible?

On this very day, just three years ago, the Twins marched into Detroit a full 10.5 games behind the Tigers. The Twins lost the first game, but won the second and third in dramatic fashion to ignite one of the best pennant chases in AL Central history. It's more than possible for the Twins to turn around their season, but its going to take some doing.

A series win would get the Twins within either 3.5 games or 1.5 if they were to sweep the Tigers (assuming the White Sox don't slip into first in that case).

The pitching match-ups favor each team one night out of the first two. I'll take Anthony Swarzak over Armando Galarraga most nights, and Justin Verlander over Glen Perkins every night and twice on Sundays.

The third night, the game that could decide how serious the Twins plans for contention really are, pits their ace, Scott Baker, against the Tigers' newly acquired toy, Jarrod Washburn. Depending on what happens in the first game, this could be the difference between a knock-out blow and the Twins making a decent recovery, and limping back home alive, but woozy.

The Twins are 6-2 against the Tigers on the season, and chances are very good either the coaches or the veteran players on the team will hold a meeting to get the message across that these games are nothing short of critical.

Of course, all the rhetoric in the world won't matter if the starters don't pitch deep into games, the bats don't give the Twins leads, or if the bullpen can't hold them.

Realistically, I can't see either team sweeping this series. The Tigers will retain their division lead without putting much space between themselves and the White Sox, who look like the team to beat in the Central, and the Twins will live to fight another day, losing little but time.

If ever there was a time to play the best baseball they possibly can, this series is a pretty good place for the Twins to show it. If I'm right and the series falls 2-1 rather than a sweep, then there will be another "must-win series" coming later in the season.

However, if the Twins struggle mightily the way they did in games two and three in Cleveland, this series could be the swan song for the 2009 iteration of the Minnesota Twins.

Infernal Options for the Minnesota Twins: Rob Delaney

Dan Wade — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:02:04 -0400

Ok, so Juan Morillo may not be the Twins' best option, but he's also far from the only reliever in the system.

Going into this season, the Twins had two serious relief candidates in the minor leagues, Rob Delaney and Anthony Slama, and most observers expected one or both to begin the season at AAA with a call-up coming as soon as the Twins needed help.

Instead, Slama and Delaney both began the year splitting the closer role at AA New Britain, possibly the worst option the Twins could have come up with. Delaney got his (overdue) call-up in June and immediately rewarded the Twins' trust with...nine runs in 10 games.

However, since that rocky introduction, Delaney has gotten back to his old ways. He's given up just two runs in his last 12.1 innings, brought his WHIP down to just a tic above 1, and hasn't walked a batter since July 22.

He possesses excellent control with the ability to miss bats at a pretty good rate, given that he isn't a power arm in the way that someone like Morillo is.

Like many of the Twins pitchers, starters or relievers, Delaney is known as a strike thrower, which may lead to him getting hit harder in the majors. His MLE's (major league equivalents) show a WHIP of 1.29. If accurate, that would place Delaney as the Twins fourth best pitcher in terms of WHIP and their best reliever outside of Nathan and Guerrier.

I can understand the Twins' desire to let Delaney "season" a bit in AAA, and his numbers didn't remotely merit a call up in June, but his talent is undeniable (his control, efficiency, and k-rating all rank at 94 or better according to the baseball cube), and his rebound in July is indicative of someone who can succeed at any level, but may have an adjustment period.

That may be what keeps Delaney down on the farm this season, but I find it hard to believe that even if he wasn't at his best, that Rob Delaney couldn't outproduce R.A. Dickey and Bobby Keppel right now.

Infernal Options For The Minnesota Twins: Juan Morillo

Dan Wade — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:36:23 -0400

With the non-waiver trade deadline now far enough past that teams can no longer fudge the timing of their deals, the Minnesota Twins are going to have to be creative if they want to patch the holes on their team.

Guessing which players may or may not pass through waivers, or at least make it all the way to the Twins is a rather difficult process not only for outsiders to gage, but even for teams to navigate with any certainty. Naturally, they've got better info, but if there is any processing baseball prone to surprises, its the waiver-trade process.

So, while looking at the Twins' probable targets and whether or not they'd pass waivers is a process worth engaging in, the better bet is to look at the Twins' immediate options.

As you may have guessed from the title, I'm not exactly bullish on this proposition; there is no Pat Neshek circa 2006 or Craig Breslow and Jose Mijares circa 2008 waiting in the wings.

Last season, when it became apparent that Juan Rincon was no longer a player worth having, the Twins let him go and days later acquired Craig Breslow.

This season, when Breslow struggled early, the Twins moved away from him and picked up Juan Morillo, a flamethrower released by the Rockies for his lack of control.

Morillo took a tour with the Twins, giving up five runs in two innings over the course of three games, and was unsurprisingly shipped to Rochester to work on his control.

His numbers in Rochester are better—they could hardly be worse—but he's still the same pitcher he ever was: huge fastball (97+ MPH) and dodgy control (30 walks in 46.1 IP). His WHIP of 1.42 isn't awe-inspiring, nor is his 3.57 ERA, but those numbers are inflated by a few poor games coming out of the All-Star break.

A few things lead me to believe that Morillo might be an improvement over some of the pitchers currently flailing away in the major league bullpen.

First, his batting average on balls in play (things a pitcher can't really control) is unsustainably high. An average BABIP is about .290; Morillo's is .373. As that rate falls, Morillo should see fewer baserunners and give up fewer runs as a result.

Second, Morillo strikes out a lot of hitters. Bobby Keppel and R.A. Dickey, two of the primary architechts of the bullpen's collapse, rely heavily on getting hitters to hit their pitches into the dirt and hoping that they're hit at someone. Plenty of guys do this effectively, usually by a sinking two-seam fastball that hitters swing over.

The problem for those two is that when hitters don't swing over the ball, they are hit and hit hard.

Morillo isn't going to have that problem as he relies on hitters missing his pitches entirely. Yes, big league hitters are going to be better able to catch up to his fastball or track his mid-80s slider, but at some level, 99 MPH is 99 MPH and the hitters that can hit that consistently are few and far between at any level.

He's more effective against lefties than righties, but Jose Mijares has the LOOGY spot in the 'pen, pretty well locked down, but that doesn't mean Morillo wouldn't be effective in a similar role, especially as Ron Gardenhire has a knack for needing Mijares on back-to-back nights, but not really having him available.

Ultimately, Morillo can be what the Twins always hoped Jesse Crain would be, a power arm that can come on, get a strike out, and defuse a tough situation. The problem is that Morillo's lack of control leads to situations where he has to throw a strike and hitters are sitting dead red against him.

Hopes aside, Morillo can't and won't be Jesse Crain circa 2005; he is simply too inconsistent. Of course, even Jesse Crain can't be the Jesse Crain of 2005 or even of 2008, so perhaps the drop off isn't that bad.

No Relief in Sight: Why the Minnesota Twins Made the Wrong Move at the Deadline

Dan Wade — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 02:47:57 -0400

As much as it may seem like its heading in that direction, this is not an indictment of the Orlando Cabrera signing.

As much as I would have liked the Twins to go after someone else for that role, Cabrera is an upgrade and competently fixes a lot of small quirks in the Twins line-up, like the need for someone to bat second that is not named Joe Mauer.

No, this an indictment of the Twins' decision to go after a hitter at all when their greatest need was on the other side of the batter-pitcher equation.

There is no question in my mind that inertia greatly impacts how teams view themselves and their needs, and that inertia hurt the Twins badly this time around.

In the early days of the Twins' success, they won games by "doing all the little things", which usually means some combination of pitching well, playing good defense, taking extra bases and not hitting home runs. In terms of those things that actually help a team win games, pitching well is second to none.

The 2006 squad, the ones nicknamed 'The Piranhas' by Ozzie Guillen, was the epitome of this mentality. They boasted the second best bullpen in baseball, the best in the AL, having posted an expected wins above replacement level (WXRL) of 16.201.

Their rotation was good too, putting the Twins in a position to win something on the order of 51% of their games irrespective of run support (this is to say, they slotted in with a .509 SNWP). If the offense gave the team enough runs to win, the Twins usually won; it wasn't the bullpen or the starter that was usually to blame for a loss.

Since then, the Twins have lost Brad Radke and Johan Santana out of their rotation, seen Francisco Liriano and Boof Bonser lose entire seasons and battle ineffectiveness in others, and had their bullpen decimated by injury.

Jesse Crain and Pat Neshek were both supposed to be relievers of the future, but Crain hasn't been even remotely effective since his torn labrum and rotator cuff and Neshek hasn't seen the mound since 2007 because of his own injury struggles.

In 2007, their bullpen was ranked 11th in baseball with a WXRL of 11.278, and they missed the playoffs.

2008 saw Matt Guerrier grossly overused, the bottom fall out on Juan Rincon, and the under-use of the shockingly effective Craig Breslow; the team was 11th again and again spent October playing golf. Their WXRL fell once again to 8.628.

This season has been worse than either of the previous two, but you wouldn't know it from the numbers. Through July 31, the Twins are locked into 11th place, posting a WXRL of 6.001.

Here's why that's a very, very bad thing.

Matt Guerrier has returned to effectiveness and his WXRL shows it; his 3.410 figure is the seventh best in baseball. As good as Guerrier is, he'll always be second fiddle to Joe Nathan, the Twins' elite closer.

Nathan's mark of 3.500 is the sixth best in the game.

Add those two figures together and you get a WXRL of 6.910, .909 points higher than the team figure.

See the problem?

The only other reliever on this team that can get hitters out consistently is Jose Mijares, who is pitching primarily out of the LOOGY role, and while he's very good in that position, it limits his value.

That figure even flatters the Twins, who have been awful of late after their starter hangs up his glove for the night. Bobby Keppel is barely in the positive WXRL, but that's due to his strong start after his call-up. In his last six outings, totaling 6.1 innings, Keppel has given up 11 runs.

Yes, the Twins starters haven't been as good as billed either, their SNWP is below .500 and 10th worst in baseball right now, but the glaring problem right now has to be the bullpen.

GM Bill Smith and his staff acknowledged the need for a bullpen arm, but chose to invest their time in adding another bat, leading me to believe they didn't recognize how dire the situation really is. The Twins are known for having a good bullpen, and in the years they are successful, they usually do.

However, this is not one of those years and the problem needed to be addressed.

I will say this in defense of Smith and his staff: trading for relievers is probably the most difficult thing you can do as a GM. Good closers or high leverage pitchers are worth their weight in gold, and you will pay as though that were literally the case if you try to acquire an established reliever.

Finding the undervalued asset that will make the bullpen work is a difficult process to say the least, but it can often be the difference between being competitive and being frustrated.

This season's top fireman, David Aardsma, was DFA'd by Boston in January and signed a one-year contract with Seattle for just $419,000.

Last season was Brad Lidge's year (he's since fallen off the proverbial cliff) but players like J.P Howell, Brad Ziegler, and Ron Mahay were all top 11 bullpen arms. The year before that, it was J.J. Putz, Rafael Betancourt, and Takashi Saito topping the list.

Sure, players like Mo Rivera and Joe Nathan are always in or around the top five spots, but the rest of the players who fill out the top 10 and make their teams very happy fluctuate wildly from year to year.

Nevertheless, when your bullpen has two tiers, one for the elite (Nathan, Guerrier, and Miajres) and one for players who can barely post even replacement level numbers, upgrading isn't that difficult.

There is still hope that the Twins can add help. Players like Heath Bell (established and pricey) are probably out of the question for two reasons: their price and the difficulty in passing them through waivers.

However, guys like Jon Rauch or perhaps even Matt Lindstrom could be had at lower prices, may make it through waivers, and would be a substantial upgrade over Jesse Crain, R.A. Dickey, and Bobby Keppel.

At a later date, I'll look at the Twins' internal options, but suffice to say, looking from without may be the surer way of securing help.

However Smith and his minions choose to look at the problem, the last two games have made one thing painfully clear: without bullpen help, the Twins are going to languish behind the Tigers and White Sox in the AL Central.