Twins Notes

• Michael Cuddyer found himself on the DL after a hard slide into the back of Royals' third baseman Alex Gordon's cleat. The injury will cost Cuddyer a 15-day stint on the DL and will also remove a potent bat against left-handed pitching. This creates a vacuum at the number 3 spot, one that Cuddyer had not satisfactory This season Cuddyer has come to the plate with runs in scoring position six times and only once did he manage to drive in a run (Gomez from third). In two of those instances, he struck out. Even though he had a slow start and lacked production at the beginning of the season, Cuddyer was still the logical choice to bat third over Delmon Young.

• Interestingly enough, the Twins opted to recall Denard Span over the hot-hitting Garrett Jones in response to losing their number 3 hitter. Jones, in his first three games at Rochester, compiled 12 at-bats and accumulated 6 hits (2 extra base hits) while driving in 4 runs and scoring 4 more himself. Span, meanwhile, in his two games has received 9 at-bats and has managed to assemble a bell curve-like batting line of .333/.400/.333. All of his hits have been singles but he added two stolen bases while scoring once and driving in one. A year ago, the organization might have been tempted to recall Jones strictly on his current hitting streak only to receive offensive futility and defensive liability at the major league level. While I believe that Jones could be a useful part on a team that needs a left-handed bat in a pinch, Span offers more defense and on-base abilities that have been lacking in the early part of this season. Because he is left-handed, it makes Span less of an ideal replacement. As was the case on Monday's game against the White Sox, Gardenhire had a lefty-dominated line-up of Span, Mauer and Morneau batting 3-4-5.

• The definition of a mutually beneficial relationship: Through 8 games, Carlos Gomez has scored five times and was driven in by Joe Mauer in all instances except one. The local pundits have often made a point of degrading Mauer's ability strictly because he finishes with a low rbi number for a typical three hitter. While I hold the philosophical praise of the RBI in contempt, I do believe that Mauer could eclipse the 100-rbi mark for the first time in his career if the duo continues this pace. In previous seasons, Mauer lacked the runner positioned on second base who could easily score on a single. Gomez completes that piece of the puzzle. It will be interesting to see how the revised Cuddyer-less line-up effects this dynamic what with Joey Jo-Jo shifting to the three hole and Span and occasionally Matt Tolbert shifted into the two spot.

• You got Blackburn'ed: The new term for when Nick Blackburn strikes you out. In his full seasons Blackburn's strike out rate was typically at 10-13% while in the minors. So far in 2008, he's dispatching batters at a 21% strike out rate -- this output is not likely to sustain but it still proves that he very much belongs in the rotation even when Liriano comes back. Blackburn has been the recipient of both silent bats and imploding bullpens otherwise the rookie might be staring down a 2-0 start to his career instead of the 0-1 he currently has. In his 2008 debut, Blackburn limited the formidable Angels to one run - on his wild pitch - and struck out Vlad Guerrero three times. He scattered five hits in his 7 innings of work, compilign a Game Score of 68. In that game Blackburn was able to get groundballs on 80% of the balls put in play. The unfortunate part for Blackburn is that the Angels starter Joe Saunders who held the Twins scoreless while pitching to what amounted to a Game Score of 77. Last night against the White Sox, Blackburn pitched 5 innings and accumulated 5 strikeouts. His results were not necessarily ideal as he proved by his Game Score of 48, but he did leave the game with a 3-2 lead before the bullpen turned it over. Although two starts is not a proper measurement of skill, Blackburn, who is known as a groundball pitcher, induced groundballs at a 67% rate in those games.

Royals Series Preview

Twins 1-3 (2.06 runs scored per game/4.25 runs surrendered per game) | Royals 3-0 (4.03 runs scored per game/1.66 runs surrendered per game)

Up until today, the last time the Twins faced a Royals team with a winning record was August 23rd, 2003. On that day, the Twins found themselves in third place, a half behind the surprising Royals. Johan Santana dominated a line-up that still contained Carlos Beltran, striking out 10 in six innings. The Twins won that game, the final of a three game series at the Dome, and continued a second-half climb that culmenated in the second of four division championships. While the Twins went 46-23 during that stretch on the way to a 90-72 record, the Royals failed to sustain the level of play at the beginning of the season, finishing 32-38 in the second half dropping back to third in the AL Central.

(Perhaps the reversal of fortune could be attributed to career back-up catcher Tom Prince. In 2003, the Twins used the 38-year-old catcher in the first-half of the season and were 44-49 at the all-star break and were 7.5 games behind the Royals. On July 13th, the Twins released the aging catcher and several days later the Royals signed him. Up to the break, the Royals were 51-41, when they picked up Prince, they finished a 32-38, 7 games behind the Twins. Then again, Prince only played 8 games for the Royals which was hardly enough opportunity to appropriately sabotage a baseball team.)

Nearly five years worth of games have been played against Kansas City and they have all been against a sub-.500 opponent. Now, the only players that remains on either roster now is Juan Rincon, Justin Morneau and Michael Cuddyer for the Twins and just David Dejesus for the Royals. Naturally, the season is only four games old, but these Royals have shown signs that they are not quite the doormat that everybody thought they would have been. Sweeping a three game series from the Tigers at Comerica would have been a daunting task on paper before the season started. Detroit was a bit of a shall, lacking Curtis Granderson and having Miguel Cabrera scratched during one game, but the starting pitching, not to mention the bullpen, helped the Royals start undefeated. Zack Greinke and Brian Bannister combined to limit the potentially most potent line-up to only one run in the past two games. Furthermore, the once worthless Royals bullpen that could be counted on to hand over a lead on a moment's notice threw 4 innings of scoreless ball and only walked one batter.

While Kansas city Star's Sam Mellinger outlined plenty of reasons not to get too caught up in this fast start, there seems to be just as many reasons to think that this could be sustainable. Though three games are difficult to mount total optimism, this squad does have the parts to be competitive. After all, players like Alex Gordon, Mark Teahen and Billy Butler are all dangerous hitters - that's not even mentioning what Jose Guillen could conceivably contribute. The bullpen with Joakim Soria and Leo Nunez has legitimate talent that was lacking the previous seasons.

Game #2: Boofda.

Twins 1, Angels 9 (Box Score)

• The critism will focus on his first inning of work where he was roughed up for two of three earned runs, but Boof Bonser threw marginally well throughout his 6 innings of work, good enough for a game score of 46. He gave up 3 earned runs - a 4th on an error - but he still kept his team within striking distance. He was failed both by his offense and in some respects his bullpen (albeit had the offense made it a one or two run game, Brian Bass would never had made an appearance). Revisiting the pitch f/x data, it appeared that Bonser may have been a bit "wound-up" in his 2008 debut. His fastball was cresting between 92-95 among those first twenty pitches, most likely causing the ball to level out instead of creating that tailing movement that induces groundballs (Bonser had a 45% groundball rate last year). As a result, Vlad Guerrero and Garret Anderson traded doubles on similar 95-mph fastballs. "I was all jittery and happy and just letting it ride," Bonser confirmed after the game, adding: "I was just happy to get the first one out of the way. I settled down afterwards and got going." The following inning, Bonser began to throw his fastball around 88 to 92 mph where he found more success. After the first inning and the nerves settled, his fastball was much improved which led to using the slider as the outpitch - 3 out of 4 strikeouts were on his slider.

• What also needs to be said is that his opponant on the hill, Jon Garland, bested him by tossing 8 innings and scattering 6 hits while walking one. Garland, whose game score was 61, induced groundball outs on 70% of the balls put in play (17 of 24). The Twins, to my recollection, seem offensively futile against groundball pitchers in the past several years. I should check the statistics to see if this supports my memory. Garland, who had a 39% groundball rate last season, is hardly your prototypical groundball pitcher as is the instance of Carlos Silva who had a 47% groundball rate, but Garland throws a good sinker.

• The Michael Cuddyer Ground-Into-Double-Play talley is at 1 in 2008.

Game #1: Livan

Twins 3, Angels 2 (Box Score)

Monday night was Livan Hernandez's 8th opening day start since his career began in 1996. Officially, he is now 4-3 in those starts with one no-decision. He subdued the Angels offensive just enough to allow for the Twins' bats to find a way to score Carlos Gomez. His 7 innings, 7 hits, 2 earned runs and 1 strike out was good enough for a game score of 56, his fourth best opening day performance.

In 1998 Hernandez was tapped to pitch the opener for the Florida Marlins against the Chicago Cubs. Matching up against Hernandez was former Twins Kevin Tapani. Livan threw 5.1 innings, giving up 5 earned runs with 2 strike outs and a walk which amounted to a game score of 32. Fortunately for Hernandez and the Marlins, Tapani threw even worse: the righty couldn't get an out in the 3rd innings and finished with 9 earned runs and a game score of 6. Needless to say, Hernandez was the recipient of offense and luck.

From 2000 to 2002, Hernandez was the opening day starter for the San Francisco Giants. In 2000, Hernandez lost to the Florida Marlins but he pitched marginally well. In 6 innings, Hernandez gave up 9 hits, 3 earned runs, a walk and 5 strike outs for a game score of 42. His Marlin counterpart, Alex Fernandez, nearly duplicated his stats by throwing 7 innings with 8 hits, 3 earned runs, a walk and 5 strike outs (a game score of 55). He was spurned from a no-decision when in the 5th inning both Rich Aurilia and Barry Bonds committed a error a piece scoring future Twin Mike Redmond and Alex Gonzalez, two unearned runs that ultimately made the difference.

The Giants opened up against state rival San Diego Padres and once again had Hernandez as the inaugural pitcher in the 2001 season. Hernandez held the Padres to just 2 earned runs in 7.1 innings with 3 walks and 6 strikeouts for the victory (a game score of 61). His game score could had been substantially better had Alan Embree, who was brought in to face Tony Gwynn with Mark Kotsay on second and Phil Nevin on first, not surrendered a single to the future Hall of Famer that allowed Kotsay to score from second.

The following season the Giants faced the other in-state rival, the Los Angeles Dodgers, where Hernandez was matched-up against Kevin Brown (of the $100 million dollar bust club). Hernandez, for his part, held the Dodgers to 2 runs over 8 innings while striking out 3 and walking 3 for a game score of 66. Brown, meanwhile, only finished 4 innings and surrendered 7 runs including a home run to Barry Bonds.

From 2004 to 2006, Hernandez was the opening day starter for the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals. In his first opening day appearance for the Les Boys in 2004, Hernandez battled phenom Josh Beckett and the Florida Marlins. For the most part, Hernandez traded innings with Beckett compiling very similar lines. Hernandez went 6 innings, giving up 5 hits, 2 earned runs, 1 walk and struck out 8 for a game score of 61. Beckett, meanwhile, went 7 innings, gave up 4 hits, 1 run and walked 3 while striking out 9, bettering Hernandez's game score with 71. Hop See Choi, the Marlin first baseman, hit a home run in the 2nd inning off of Livan to account for the difference. Though Hernandez was not factored in to the decision, the Expos still lost.

In 2005, relocated to the Nation's capital, Hernandez had the worst opening day start of his career, this time against NL East powerhouse Philadelphia Phillies. Normally an innings-eater, Hernandez did not reach the 5th and gave up 8 hits, 7 earned runs, 2 walks with 4 strike outs and a home run. This amounted to a punitive game score of 22 and Livan was credited for the loss.

His most recent opening day prior to Monday, Hernandez faced Tom Glavine and the New York Mets. While Hernandez was slightly below average (game score of 42), he did not pitch terribly and kept his team in the game by going 6 innings, scattering 8 hits while being tagged for 3 runs (one David Wright home run) with 4 strike outs and one walk. Nevertheless, Hernandez was the loser in the contest.

What this means is that this small microcosm of opening day starts paints the bigger picture for Hernandez on the whole as a pitcher. In those starts, he has accumulated a winning percentage of .571, better than his overall career winning percentage of .511. Over the course of his 8 opening day starts, Hernandez averaged 5.4 innings, his career average of 6.7 innings per game is obviously better, but he had the propensity to give up more runs in his first start (a 4.73 era opening day versus 4.25 era in his career). When you look at his game score in those starts - the best being 66, the worst being 22 - you will find that through out the season Hernandez will be right in that range. In half of his opening day starts, Hernandez pitched well enough to earn a victory by finishing with a game score over 50. In three of them, he was the winning pitcher with one no-decision. In the other half of his opening day starts, he was below 50, making it increasingly difficult for his team to keep offensive pace. He was fortunate enough to survive one of those games with a win despite a game score of 32. This means that Hernandez needs a good amount of offensive support to propel himself to an above .500 record.

It is no secret that I believe, statistically supported in this theory mind you, that Livan Hernandez will give up a considerable amount of runs for the Twins. Because his velocity is hardly of a major league caliber, he is reliant on both location and speed variations to guide him through his 6-plus innings. In some cases he's pitched well enough to not lose the ball game - often with game scores in the 50s - but others he has detonated the game by tossing games well below 40. Oddly enough, one of the most Homersota columnists in the state, Sid Hartman, also agree that the opener will also be an anomaly from Hernandez rather than the norm saying "You can't expect the kind of pitching every game that Livan Hernandez provided in giving up two runs in seven innings Monday night in a 3-2 victory over the Angels."

Twins Notes (Opening Day Eve)

• Joe C reports that Scott Baker tossed 6 innings of one run ball with 3 strikeouts in the minor league camp. Naturally this is huge considering Baker is expected to be one of the frontline starters and will expect to improve on his 2007 season numbers. The Bill James Gold Mine 2007 took a retrospective look at the Twins. One fact that James highlighted was that Baker rarely threw his slider in 2006 (3%) but in 2007 used it as his secondary pitch (25%) next to his fastball and consequently his ERA decreased by nearly two full runs. A closer examination of his pitches via pitch f/x reveals that his slider had the best WHIFF average of all of his four pitches - a .259 rating (making bats miss 25% of the time). One thing Baker should work on is getting his slider to dart out of the zone. Last season, his slider was thrown in the strike zone 73% of the time (2% better than his fastball). Former Twin Kyle Lohse threw his slider 22% of the time and was in the zone only 66% of the time but accumulated a .333 WHIFF average on his. If Baker is able to start his on the outer half of the plate and have it slide away from the right-handed batter I would assume that his WHIFF average would increase exponentially due to more empty swings.

• Last season the Twins had the most disappointing production from their 9th spot hitters according to the Gold Mine. Nick Punto (73 games), Jason Bartlett (45 games) and Alexi Casilla (20 games) combined to have the lowest OPS in the American League (.582) AND lower than the St Louis Cardinals in the National League that typically employed a pitcher in that spot. This season all indications are that Adam Everett with be the player asked to shore up the tail end of the line up. His 2007 injury-shortened campaign did not offer much improvement as Everett posted a .599 OPS. Those previous three hit .230/.293/.289 combined. Everett did worse when it came to acquiring a base, he hit .232/.281/.318, but was deficient in the on-base category. Everett, however, has a slightly better career average and is capable of saving many more runs with his glove than he creates with his bat.

• Jim Souhan's preview of the Twins 2008 line-up states that it is filled promise, especially with Cuddyer, Morneau and Young manning the heart of the order. Souhan has long been the target of being labeled as "shecky" with drawn out analogies comparing pitching rotations to Butterball Turkeys and the like. Recently, the Strib columnist has seemingly been attending SABR meetings, mixing in the occasionally reference to "on-base percentage" and his desire to move Mauer to the top of the order. This sort of writing I fully support, despite the fact that I think the notion of Mauer batting first is too "on-base percentage" centric. Mauer does not have the base-running prowess to obtain the run production success that is required of the lead-off spot. Souhan has been drawing the conclusion that people on base equals more opportunities to score runs and those with higher on-base percentages should be positioned at the top of the order where they are likelier to receive more at-bats and therefore produce more runs. This is the sort of systematic logic I prefer when presenting an argument for augmenting a line-up.

• On the other hand, Souhan still attempts to pass off baseless statements without so much as doing a simple check with Baseball-Reference. In the same article mentioned above, Souhan wrote "Morneau is the Twins' best clean-up hitter since Harmon Killebrew". While in the literary sense, comparing Morneau to Harmon Killebrew is acceptable - both known for their long home runs - and your tune-in, tune-out fans would appreciate the likening that allows for easy mental imagery of two fine sluggers, however it should be noted that a more appropriate comparison would have been "since Corey Koskie" or "since Kent Hrbek". Morneau, in his 943 plate appearances batting clean-up, has accumulated an OPS of .799 while Killebrew in his 4,880 plate appearance at clean-up in his career posted a .890 OPS, a seemingly insurmountable difference. Meanwhile, Hrbek in his 4,388 plate appearances at clean-up had an OPS of .864 a closer comparable but yet a wide margin of difference. Lastly, Corey Koskie had just several more 4th spot plate appearances (1,176) than Morneau at this juncture in his career but had amassed an OPS of .820. The hope since locking Morneau up to a long term contract, he would some day usurp both Hrbek and Koskie as the most productive clean-up hitter in the Twins history. Killebrew is a long shot.

• In another Twins preview Souhan began by saying that the 2002 Twins won the division in spite of Doug Mientkiewicz batting third, which is the partial truth. Again, Souie, a simple fact-check with Baseball-Reference would suffice. Koskie batted in the third hole in 66 games, Mientkiewicz did so in only 64 - a small discrepancy but a discrepancy nonetheless. The lefty tandem was also some what successful. Mientkiewicz, who posted a .757 OPS total that season, at a .722 OPS in 286 plate appearances in the third spot. Koskie, meanwhile, had a slightly better season batting third. His season OPS was .815 but he was only a .746 OPS hitter in 275 plate appearances batting third still more productive than Mientkiewicz.

• Unfortunately we will not be graced with a knuckleballer's presence at the Dome unless he is on the visiting team. La Velle reports that the Mariners have sent minor league catcher Jair Fernandez in return for the rights to R.A. Dickey, who had a solid spring in the Mariners camp. The 20-year-old Fernandez played in the Midwest League (A) last season for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers. In 169 plate appearances he hit .260/.337/.377 with 2 home runs and an isolated power average of .117.