Twins Struggling, According to Pythagorean Formulas
by Jesse on Apr 23, 2009 2:36 PM EDT
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Eleven games in, the Twins have been outscored 97 to 66, which by any measure is just sad. According to a standard pythagorean formula, with these runs we're coming up with a winning percentage of .317. After thirteen games, this would come out to about four wins. Over a 162-game season, a .317 winning percentage means you're a 51-win team.
Without Joe Mauer in the lineup, a middle of the road offense is already struggling. If the pitching can't get itself together, this will be a long summer.
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no question the Twins have been lucky
Two walk-off wins already, and a couple other close ones. This team could easily be 5-11 or 4-12 instead of 7-9.
Can’t score
Bad starting pitching
Zero reliable relievers in the bullpen except for the 9th inning guy
The only one of these things that didn’t seem likely a month ago is the bad starting pitching. I think Baker will turn the corner in the next couple of starts, and as long as Liriano isn’t hurt again, I think it is most likely that his struggles are mental. Having a great defensive catcher and game caller back behind the plate won’t hurt either.
Having Mauer back will also help pull the offense to, hopefully, somewhere close to average.
However, I don’t see any hope for this bullpen. You can’t trade for bullpen help in April or May, and the the front office pretty much just ignored the problem in the off-season. At this point I’m actually pining for Craig Breslow. I think they’ll be forced to call up Slama and others from AA before long, and I could see Humber coming back up too.
PS Morillo is not the answer.
http://noblingblings.blogspot.com/
Are you sure?
Morillo is not the answer.
Whatever gave you that idea? I mean, it’s not like he walked three straight guys or something, right?
Oh.
"There are only two things that are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
I don't know
Have you looked at the GameDay replay? He threw a lot of strikes that were called balls. In one at bat, the only strike that was called of the five pitches was the one out of the strike zone. Clearly the ump was freaked out by how hard he threw.
"You're thinking too much. Just have fun." -- Bennie "The Jet" Rodriguez in Sandlot
Ortiz, Youk, Bay
Definitely got the benefit of some calls. Combination of star hitters getting calls and a young pitcher with a reputation for big-time wildness not getting the calls, IMO.
I was also surprised by how much Redmond appeared to be setting up on the corners for Morillo. That may be a good idea for a Kevin Slowey, but with Morillo I’d set up right over the middle and let his lack of control put the ball on the corners.
Roughly the same way I play darts. I’m not good, not bad, but when I play cricket I will often start off going for bullseye, since I can have “productive misses” when I miss the bull for 10 turns in a row.
by Adam Peterson on Apr 24, 2009 12:09 PM EDT up reply actions
Mostly
Mostly, our piching has just really really sucked so far. It was supposed to be the best part of the team, if it doesn’t come around as expected, we’re toast.
Fortunately, it’s the mot LIKELY to come around.
And due to our bad bullpen, we’re likely to out perform our pythagrean this year since we can intentionally stick in our arsonists in games we’re already losing and let them start fires all over the place. It’ll drive up our RA, but it’s still only 1 L.
"You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all."
~ Earl Weaver
"In God we trust. All others must provide evidence."
~ Billy Beane
It's not just the pitching
The Twins are second-to-last in the league in runs per game, and they’re ahead of the A’s by less than a tenth of a run. They’re 2.5 R/G behind the league leaders (Texas), and they’re over a full R/G (about 20%) below league average. Yeah, the pitching has been terrible, but the offense has also been pretty rotten.
"There are only two things that are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
Mauer effect
So far this season, Jose Morales (.290 wOBA, 26 PA) and Mike Redmond (.255 wOBA, 31 PA) haven’t done squat offensively, combining for -2.9 runs above average.
Applying Mauer’s .378 wOBA over 48 of the 57 PA (account for rest) gives us +2.0 RAA for Mauer, about +1.85 RAA total. In other words, I would consider the Mauer outage to have cost us about 4.75 runs so far this year.
We’ve scored 66 runs in 16 games so far (4.125 per game). Last year, we scored 5.086 runs per game. Even adding Mauer to the lineup only brings us up to 4.42 runs, still well below 2008.
by Adam Peterson on Apr 24, 2009 12:38 PM EDT up reply actions
Bullpen and Pythag
I can’t remember who did it, but I believe someone has shown that there’s no significant correlation between a team’s bullpen ERA (good or bad) and W-L compared to Pythag. Intuitively, what you say makes perfect sense. Perhaps, on average, a bad bullpen blows so many close games late to end up centering around the Pythag anyway.
by Adam Peterson on Apr 24, 2009 12:15 PM EDT up reply actions
Pitching - Starters vs Bullpen
Starters: 5.59 ERA, 5.25 FIP
Relievers: 6.95 ERA, 4.63 FIP
Based on ERA, the starters have “outperformed” the relievers, but looking at FIP, it looks like both groups have been a bit unlucky, the bullpen very much so.
by Adam Peterson on Apr 24, 2009 12:20 PM EDT up reply actions
Unlucky?
Or victims of inefficient defense? Check out the early UZR numbers. Crede is the only plus in the infield. Span’s only plus position is left; he’s been terrible in center, and Delmon’s been predictably atrocious in left. I stated several times over the offseason that a Delmon-Span-Cuddyer outfield would be disgustingly bad, and, other than Cuddyer actually posting a positive result so far, it has been.
Some of these will get better (Punto will probably play better at short, Span almost has to improve some in center, and Morneau will probably get to around average), and then perhaps the results for the pitchers will improve. Some of them I have little hope for, however, like Delmon, and increasingly, Casilla, who might be the least valuable player on the team by a fair stretch.
by DK on Apr 24, 2009 5:27 PM EDT up reply actions
Entirely possible, UZR not looking good
and it can explain some of the ERA-FIP gaps. IMO, luck has more to do with it, especially considering the red hot teams we faced early who hit every mistake out of the park. However, I have no data to back this up…yet.
by Adam Peterson on Apr 26, 2009 9:24 AM EDT up reply actions
exactly
we never really get going until inter-league play
by thewild_viking_twins on Apr 23, 2009 4:15 PM EDT up reply actions
better hitting
Bad pitching aside, I feel the offense has the ability, even without Mauer, to produce some high numbers. Even though there’s a platoon in the outfield and playing time is limited, Young had 93 RBIs with the Rays two years ago and Cuddyer had 109 the year before that and 20 HRs. Gomez and Span are speed guys and need guys to hit while they’re on. With Kubel in the line up more often and the addition of Crede, not to mention Morneau, I’m not giving the Twins any excuses for not being able to carry the pitching for once.
You're a bit more optimistic on our upsides than I am.
But right now, Cuddyer’s big ’06 is the exception to his production, not the rule. And with Young in ’07, he hit 5th a vast majority of that year, behind good OBP guys like Crawford, Pena and Iwamura. He was always coming up with somebody on base, and that helped him a lot.
The biggest difference with our views of this offense is what they’re capable of doing and what they’re likely to do. I hope you’re right.
Pytho also suffers from small samples
Two things: We have had a lot of bullpen meltdowns, which tend to exaggerate the scoring differential. Also, three out of the five teams we have played were the hottest teams in baseball when we played them. So they hit every mistake hard and didn’t make any easy outs. That’ll even out over the course of the season.
"You're thinking too much. Just have fun." -- Bennie "The Jet" Rodriguez in Sandlot
The thing that we lose with Mauer...
…being out is that he is one guy who makes the opposing pitcher throw the ball somewhere near the strike zone…kinda like most of the players on the Red Sox, but that is something that is truly valuable.
"I don't think it's nice, you laughin'. See, my mule don't like people laughing. He gets the crazy idea you're laughing at him. Now if you apologize, like I know you're going to, I might convince him that you really didn't mean it . . ."
by Skippy tastes better than Jiff on Apr 24, 2009 6:26 AM EDT reply actions
and yet the Twins are only a couple of games out
I’ve seen this too many times to count them out at this point. We still have another week to go before we hit May 1st.
Skewed
The Twins have had a few blowout losses and not many blowout wins, so these numbers are a little skewed. Unless, of course, they continue to have blowout losses.
I’m very disappointed with how they have played so far because these are the same problems that surfaced at the middle of last season. These issues should have been addressed. It’s not a good sign that they were not.
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