My Questions Heading Into Spring Training

It seats less than half of what Target Field seats, and half the games of the Twins….

I am not saying that peple are all of a sudden going to fall off, but I think it is proven that just a new stadium in it of itself isn’t going to guarentee large attendance.

Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Kansas City (especially after the renovations), Baltimore, and Washington, have all pretty awesome stadiums, but rank in the bottom quartile in attendance. Granted, those teams are filled with players the casual fan has never heard of, but if I lived in those cities, especially with the affordable prices of a ticket, I’d go to a bunch of games.

 If Hardy could have hit more Hr or driven in more runs, he might not have been traded. He was batting deep in the order and having little effect in the offence. Delmon and Valencia both drove in runs from the back of the order. So lets get some speed in the #9 spot

By definition, anybody who can reach base, can score a run….. Runs scored are a function of a team’s success. There’s a guy who can reach base 40% of the time, and score less runs than a guy who reaches base 35% of the time.

Also, you will notice, a lot of power guys do score runs. Pujols and Teixeria scored more runs than anybody else. Why? Because they get on base often, and because the rest of the lineup drives them in.

I know they aren’t all going to be addressed right now… I meant more like “These are my concerns of the team, as of pre-spring training”…. Based on what we learn, I will re-evaluate at different points in the season.

These are a list of concerns I have, based on what I know now

I would have plussed more, except for the Cuddy issue. As for the Pavano deal, I agree 100%. 210 inning starters don’t grow on trees. I hear a ot of people slam him as a “back of the rotation innings eater”. 17 wins is not "back of the rotation, and with good health and the Twins’ defense, 15 to 17 is not unreasonable to expect, and that, IMO, is not “back of the rotaton”. And 210 innings at 8 mil per, is a great value, especially when compared to 120 relief innings for 9 million. I like the way things are shaping up so far. Do I want more? yes, Like any fan, I wish for my team to pull out all the stops, sign all the best free agents, develop more “superstar” players than anyone else, and win the WS a tleast once every 6 or 7 years. And I want a pony.

If RP is not that hard to get, why did the Twins spend $1.9 million on Fuentes for just a little over a month’s worth of work? We were desperate to find relief pitchers last year.

If all those guys were replaceable in the system, then why make moves for relief pitchers? Why not just call up guys?

Let’s do this by position:

C – best in baseball, but could have been better (room to improve)
1B – 1/2 a season of sick baseball, 1/2 of a hurt Cuddyer (room to improve)
2B – Nishioka could provide the speed Gardy apparently desires (wash)
SS – Casilla isn’t Hardy (decline)
3B – Less Tolbert/Punto (wash)
LF – Elmon or Demon? (wash)
CF – Span wasn’t all that great last year (room to improve)
RF – Cuddy beats Repko and Kubel is in a walk year (room to improve)

SP1 – Liriano was a beast, but not an ace (wash)
SP2 – Pavano will regress a bit, most likely (decline)
SP3 – Baker could still dominate, especially in Target Field (room to improve)
SP4 – Duensing was pretty solid (wash)
SP5 – Slowey and Blackburn are coming off of disappointing years (room to improve)

Bullpen
Nathan’s coming back and we have some good prospects. Plus, bullpens are crapshoots to begin with (slight decline)

That is one HELL of a lot of room for improvement, especially when considering our TOP THREE salaried players (Mauer, Morneau, Nathan) last year ALL has disappointing years. Ye of little faith. We can easily top 90 wins this year. If not, fire Gary!

By retaining Hardy, you are replacing Alexi Casilla with JJ Hardy (and Matt Tolbert with Casilla).
By signing Pavano, you are replacing Kevin Slowey with Pavano (and someone in the bullpen with Slowey).

I think the first upgrade is more valuable than the second one, although it’s certainly arguable.

Most of those games were with Plouffe or Punto at short. You’re right, it is a big step down from Hardy to those two. The question is, how much of a step down is it for Casilla. The way he played last year, I don’t think he’ll be a huge downgrade overall. We’ll see though.

You can’t just view each move in isolation. This team could only afford three out of these five: Pavano, Capps, Thome, Hardy and Hudson. They chose the three they needed most. Is that ideal? No. But, if I was in their position, I don’t think I would have done it differently, all things considered.

Here is the link.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/spande01.shtml

There are more things that factor into it than just some of these statistics…. At the same time, using these stats help support an argument. Otherwise, people arguing over which player is worth what is all subjective.

The game is part subjective and part objective, but for a bunch of guys/gals who just watch the games and know nothing that goes on behind the scenes, it’s all we got. It’s not perfect, but it’s something.

Baseball is the ultimate stats sport embedded in its culture. Marks like 300 wins, 500 HRs, etc., are ways people argue about HOF players, even old school guys…

It is just that now-a-days, there are better and more wholisitic ways to evaluate a player, that isn’t entirely team dependent….

So, we are arguing about the process of interpreting what happens on the field, which, is kind of like arguing about literary theory rather than reading a novel, understanding and appreciating its artistry.

Well… there are no games being played right now, so there’s not really any artistry to appreciate at the moment anyway. And I’d also point out that the presence of one doesn’t preclude the other – I can watch and enjoy the beauty a baseball game and still come here and talk about statistical analysis.

Frankly, I like it better this way – statistics are far more objective, and I think it’s much easier to have a productive discussion on objective topics than subjective ones.

I disagree. People always had arguments about statistics and what they meant. It’s just that worse statistics were used in the fights.

it took an interesting turn, but has been a lot of fun to read and discuss with people…Good discussion

But definitely a work in progress. I’d say they’re better than nothing. But you have to triangulate to get a more accurate picture. And there’s a wide margin for error. When you have a lot of margin for error, it is subject to the fallacy of drawing conclusions from small sample sizes.

The thing none of them do is measure the speed of batted balls. One guy could get a lot of lazy fly balls in his zone. Another guy could get a lot of hard liners in his zone. The second guy will have a tougher year no matter how good he is at getting jumps on the ball and closing the gap. This is why we see a lot of variability one year to the next for the same player.

It’s kind of like a hitter who sees his BABIP change from one year to the next, affecting his triple slash. He’s the same hitter, but he was just luckier one year than the other. But with hitters, we have LD% to help us determine whether that was mere luck or just making better contact one year to the next.

I suppose we could make a fielding stat that takes into account how many balls in one’s zone are liners or fly balls, as an interim step to measure the velo of balls in play. That would be more accurate. Measuring the velo wouldn’t be that hard, though. Just put RFID tags in balls and affix a network of sensors under the field to get velo. You’d need a powerful server to measure it in real time. But we don’t need real-time defensive stats.

I’d say “unreliable”, potentially “biased”, before I’d say “subjective”, but the fact that 1) they have subjective elements (ball trajectory and speed, which is observed) and 2) defensive impact is very difficult to quantify (how many runs did that diving catch actually save?) makes the stats, like cmath said, a work in progress.

Generally, when the defensive metrics agree, like with Adam Everett, I pretty much buy them. When they disagree, like with Span, I’m extremely skeptical of both the positive and negative ones.

cmath, I love your RFID idea (which Gregg Easterbrook’s “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” column has proposed for spotting the ball or detecting goal line plays in football, although detecting when a players is down would still have to be determined by people). A sufficiently complicated network of video cameras could do the trick, too (like with PitchFx, just covering far more area), although it’d probably be even more prohibitively expensive.