Twins Batters starting to hit and other thoughts

by halfchest on May 21, 2008 3:50 AM EDT

I'm bored I work nights at Youth Correctional facility and have very little to do so I'll give some thoughts on the Twins maybe start a little discussion on a few things.

Twins batters starting to hit

I've noticed lately a decent amount of Twins hitters have really been turning things around after slow starts. One guy we've all been frustrated with Delmon Young is starting to hit better the last few weeks and that is very encouraging.

First "half"

.262 .287 .321 .608 3BB 14 K's in 84 AB's

Second "half"

.306 .366 .388 .754 7BB 13 K's in 85 AB's

150 point improvement in OPS is great and more than doubling his walk rate is great. His overall power is still pretty weak but If he can keep improving his patience I'll take that over a couple homers a month. I'd rather have a guy who can at least put it in play consistently then a guy who will pop one over the fence every once in awhile.

I won't bother to post Mike Lamb's statistics because no matter how you cut'em theirs not a whole lot of good in there. He's been a better defender than I thought he would be(going on games I've seen not defensive metrics) but I didn't expect a whole lot to be honest. He has dramatically improved in his second half of games but still only about .70 points of OPS. His slugging is about the same as it was the first half so he's improved his OBP decently, let's hope the power follows now that he's getting a little bit more comfortable.

Side note: what would it take to get Garrett Atkins, any ideas? He's arb. eligible the next two years and is playing for 4.38 million this year. If the Rockies continue to struggle would they be willing to part with him? If Lamb continues to struggle would the Twins go after Atkins? Even if the Twins decided to only keep him til after 2010 he would be a great upgrade until maybe Hughes or Valencia would be ready.

Justin Morneau has been hitting pretty well since slumping at the beginning of the season but if you split his season into two parts he has been absolutely raking while hitting less homeruns the second half.

1st half

.256 .330 .487 .817 9 BB's 14K's in 78 AB's

2nd half

.337 .406 .500 .906 9 BB's 14K's in 86 AB's

Great improvement in Average and OBP as a result of the better average. So hopefully he can continue these ways and start tagging a few more out of the park.

Carlos Gomez wowed us for a few days cooled off and frustrated us, took a day off and has been very good ever since. The day off just happened to be at about the midway point of the season for him.

1st half

.230 .247 .310 .557 2BB's 24K's in 87 AB's

2nd half

.324 .361 .515 .876 3BB's 19 K's 68 AB's

Maybe it's been luck but Gomez has almost doubled his walk rate (yah I know from 2 to 4 % roughly) and kept is K rate about the same. However his extra base power has improved dramatically and I think we're seeing the "power tool" earlier than any of us thought we would. Let's hope he can keep it up and stay healthy at the same time.

Joe Mauer has done great all year but still has had a massive improvement in his second half of games. The guy is a stalwart and a saint, baby Joe can do no wrong.

1st half

.301 .358 .384 .742 7BB's 6 K's in 73 AB's

2nd half

.338 .438 .412 .850 12 BB's 6K's in 68 AB's

Now there's the bad news Cuddyer has been awful, Harris has actually cooled off after a pretty good start. If he could play a solid 2B his hitting would be fine but given that he seems uncapable of that his best role with the Twins may be a utility guy who can be a serviceable pinch hitter. Given what we had heard about him before he came and what we've seen I don't see him improving much. However he seems a decent enough hitter that he could improve enough to be our stopgap 3B for a couple years if Lamb doesn't improve. Given the production from 3B the last few years he'd be an improvement over that if we weren't able to land a guy like Atkins.

Kubel has been a letdown so far. After getting regular playing time he just kind of dropped off the face of the earth. The good news is that after sparse play for a week he's been hitting well again and has been right back in there starting at DH so for now we can continue with our chants of FREE KUBEL, or more like THANKS FOR FREEING KUBEL EVEN AFTER HE STUNK IT UP FOR A MONTH!!!

As for Everett, HE IS WHO WE THOUGHT HE WAS ONLY WITH WIMPY ARM. I've been thoroughly unimpressed with Everett and want a refund. I guess we don't have a much better option right now unless Casilla can keep up what he's done the past few days. Doubtful but you never know maybe he can turn a corner up in the bigs.

Sorry this got way longer than I had originally planned and I'm sure incoherent in spots as I'm struggling to stay awake right now. More than anything I wanted to get some thoughts from everyone on the first 1/4 of the season. What do you think will change, who's been a disappointment, who can do better, who is playing over their heads.

I realize I didn't even mention pitchers, maybe I'll offer thoughts on that tomorrow while trying to get through the night.

halfchest

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Comments

I'd like to see the splits on Home vs Away

These guys are playing great at home, except for the Toronto series.

Like a lot of young teams, they are not doing it on the road, late in games. That’s always the measure between a good team and one that is just pretending.

by Old Twins Cap on May 21, 2008 9:41 AM EDT 0 recs

Not doing it on the road?

A bit of analysis shows that the Twins main hitters really are hitting with a lot less authority on the road; however, there’s a caveat:

Mauer-
Home: .372/899 (with a BAbip of .395)
Road: .271/697 (with a BAbip of .296)

Morneau-
Home: .340/939 (with a BAbip of .372)
Road: .254/768 (with a BAbip of .255)

Cuddyer-
Home: .243/602 (with a BAbip of .273)
Road: .189/601 (with a BAbip of .214)

Kubel-
Home: .276/808 (with a BAbip of .310)
Road: .228/579 (with a BAbip of .234)

In other words, the Twins lack of production on the road has a lot more to do with luck - specifically with balls in play not finding spots to land - then it does with any moral failure of our boys. Interestingly, the only Twin regular hitting significantly better on the road shows the same kind of split:

Young-
Home: .245/591 (with a BAbip of .282)
Road: .333/820 (with a BAbip of .410)

Once the sample sizes grow and most of these guys start seeing their BAbip numbers move more closely together across these splits, I think you’ll see the Twins doing better offensively on the road, but also worse offensively at home.

And though baseball-reference doesn’t give us a split of close-and-late on the road, the Twins are still hitting better in most clutch situations than they are overall as a team:

Overall = .265/697
Runners on = .271/730
RISP = .302/822
RISP, 2 out = .285/769
Tie game = .273/719
Close & Late = .268/664

So the only numbers that really look worse are the Twins Close & Late numbers, but it should also be pointed out that, since most C&L situations involve elite relief pitchers, the numbers for the AL as a whole don’ t look any better than that of the Twins specifically:

all AL teams
Overall = .259/725
Close & Late = .247/705

As for late inning ‘clutchiness’ being the difference between good teams and ‘pretending’ teams, well, I think that’s just silly—if players had the ability to elevate their games in the late innings to grab hold of a win, why wait until the late innings? Why not grab hold of the game in the sixth or the fourth inning, before the late innings arrive and give you a chance to lose the game on a bad bounce?

Look at it another way—the team leading at the end of the first inning went on to win that game 68.5% of the time in 2007; in other words, if you could have built a team that always had a lead at the end of the first inning, you’d have finished 2007 with a record of 111-51. Meanwhile, teams that trailed at the end of the sixth inning had a winning percentage of .139 in those games.

Good teams don’t win games with clutch hitting in the late innings; good teams win games by getting ahead in the early innings and staying ahead in the late innings, however they manage to accomplish the latter.

by dwintheiser on May 21, 2008 5:21 PM EDT up 0 recs

Yep

Good teams don’t win games with clutch hitting in the late innings; good teams win games by getting ahead in the early innings and staying ahead in the late innings, however they manage to accomplish the latter.

Indeed, and this is why the Pythagorean record tends to work so well – there’s not a whole lot of correlation between a team’s record in 1-run games and their record in other games, at least not as much as overall run differential. Good teams are on the right side of blowouts far more often than bad teams, avoiding the risks of a close game altogether.

"There are only two things that are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

by BeefMaster on May 21, 2008 5:57 PM EDT up 0 recs

I respectfully disagree

Sure, there will be about 40 games a year when your team runs up an early margin and claims a win, along with 40 games when the opposing team hands us our lunch by the fourth inning.

It’s the other 80 games that make a season. The ones where you go to extra innings. One run games. Games that are for the taking if only you can get that one clutch hit, like today’s loss to the Rangers.

That’s when you need a hitter who will step up and get it done. Baseball is about failure, so no one player will always come through. But, that’s when a good team will pick each other up. They will find a way to get it done, especially on the road, against a good team, late in the game.

That’s not silly. That’s what wins championships. Look it up.

by Old Twins Cap on May 22, 2008 11:28 PM EDT up 0 recs

Okay

I looked it up. Last year, the team that won the World Series had a losing record in 1-run games during the regular season, and they had only three 1-run games in the postseason – all wins, but none occurred in their only 7-game series. Far more thorough studies have shown that there is very little correlation between record in 1-run games and record in other games.

The problem with your analysis (40 wins, 40 losses, 80 close) is that for really good teams, they win more than 40 blowouts and lose less than 40 blowouts, so they don’t have to have as good a record in close games to keep overall record up.

"There are only two things that are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

by BeefMaster on May 23, 2008 10:40 AM EDT up 0 recs

Well, one run games is one measure

But with the bases loaded and two out, it doesn’t matter if the margin is one run or four if the batter gets a hit and that team goes on to win.

This is not something that lends itself to easy numerical analysis, but winning games comes down to scoring more runs than the other guys—and you do have to score runs to get that done.

And, while it is true a powerful team can run up a bunch of wins during the regular season, especially in a weak division, there will always come a time when they need to get it done against top competition late in the game.

There is a strong psychological component to this as well, knowing that when you are behind or in a close game, that your team has maximum confidence that they will come through. Playing with confidence instead of stress is one of the least discussed factors when it comes to understanding the numbers.

by Old Twins Cap on May 23, 2008 11:39 AM EDT up 0 recs

Power Hitting

Something interesting I noticed in Morneau’s numbers (and yes, I realize that these are pretty darned small sample sizes) – while he gained 80 points in BA (and his walk rate stayed about the same, leading to a big jump in OBP), his SLG didn’t even go up 30 points, meaning that he lost over 50 points in IsoP. Has he been taking the ball the other way quite a bit or something? I like that he’s getting on base more, but that is a fairly substantial drop in power, although I am aware that Morneau simply has power outages from time to time.

I agree that it’s good that Delmon is finally getting on base, but from what Twins fans were led to believe about his skills before the season, a sub-.400 SLG will be viewed as a failure, fair or not.

"There are only two things that are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

by BeefMaster on May 21, 2008 10:03 AM EDT 0 recs