What role should Duensing have in '11?

Assuming the Twins correctly decide to keep Francisco Liriano in a Twins uniform, the biggest story line this spring will be how the team opts to fill five rotation spots with six pitchers.

Liriano and Carl Pavano have earned themselves the number one and number two spots while the size of Scott Baker and Nick Blackburn’s contracts may have provided them even chance to blow a spot in the rotation this spring. Baker has the skill set to be a very good starting pitcher while Blackburn proved late in the year that he is still capable of being a groundball-oriented workhorse the team thought they had when they extended him. Barring injury, ineffectiveness or a trade, the final spot in the rotation comes down to either Kevin Slowey or Brian Duensing. By the virtues of his 7-2 record along with a 3.05 ERA as a starter, not to mention being anointed a playoff starter, many have begun to reserve a spot in next season’s rotation for Duensing.

From his perspective, Duensing told 1500ESPN’s Joe Anderson and Phil Mackey that he wanted to enter the spring preparing for that starter role:

 “Mentally, I’m heading in there as a starter. I feel like it would be easier for me to prepare to start and then get moved to the bullpen as opposed to get prepared to be in a relief role then happen to regroup and need to work longer innings.”

For his own sake, the Twins need to make a decision on what to do with Duensing. Last season, he was pushed-and-pulled around from the relief staff to the rotation, providing the Twins with outstanding numbers in both capacities. However, he appeared spent in his final few starts having amassed a higher pitch total than his body was ready for. Is he best suited to be a starter or do his skills match that of a reliever? What role would be better for him in 2011?

Without question, Duensing brandishes a fairly strong arsenal. In fact, his slider had some of the greatest success among all of the game’s best slider-throwers. Whereas Liriano paced the league in terms of pitch value – producing a slider that was 19.0 runs above average – Duensing wasn’t that far behind. His slide piece was valued at 14.3 runs above average, 10th-best in baseball.

Because of this pitch, Duensing absolutely dominated left-handed opponents. With a minimum of 500 pitches thrown, Duensing’s .162 batting average when facing lefties was the second-lowest among southpawed starters – trailing only Texas’s CJ Wilson (.144) in that split last year. Of course, while this pitch worked well against his sinister brethren, it didn’t have the same effect on his right-handed counterparts, nor did his overall repertoire:

	OPS	Chase%	Miss%	K%	xFIP
Vs. LHB	457	32%	28%	22%	3.25
Vs. RHB	751	27%	14%	12%	4.51

(via MyInsideEdge.com & Fangraphs.com)

Despite this discrepancy, and the fact that right-handed were responsible for 10 of his 11 home runs allowed, Duensing got decent results nonetheless. Part of his success was based inciting a high number of groundballs – off both left-handed and right-handed bats – while keeping hitters from teeing up line drives.

So Duensing is what appears to be the proverbial “pitcher” rather than “thrower”. On the surface, he appears to be the kind of hurler who hits his spots, mixes up velocity and gets hitters to hit less-than-choice pitches. It’s hard to argue with his past success but does this mean that he can sustain these results going forward?

To answer that, we must acknowledge that his 2010 was very fortuitous is a lot of respects too.

Although Duensing was able to increase the amount of groundballs – jumping from 45.5% in ’09 to 52.9% last year – he had the good fortune of having a high number of those rollers and bouncers hit at his fielders. Whereas the rest of the league’s pitchers averaged a .235 BABIP on grounders, Duensing had a very low .203 BABIP – which deviated significantly from his .287mark in his 2009 tour of duty. Even if he replicates the over 50% groundball rate in 2011, I suspect we will see more hits bleed through the infield.

Likewise, while the rest of the league’s pitchers typically maintain an average of 72% of the total base runners they keep from scoring, Duensing held an amazing 81.6% of base-runners at bay – the third-highest among those with a minimum of 120 innings pitched last season. This is a statistic that tends to fluctuate at various levels but ultimately regresses back to a player’s mean. Strikeout-oriented pitchers tend to have a higher strand rate in their career based on their ability to keep hitters from putting the ball into play thereby avoiding sacrifice flies or groundballs to advance runners home. Duensing is far from a strikeout artist – better at getting lefties to whiff versus righties – so it isn’t a stretch to suggest that a few more runners will cross the plate on him in 2011.  Also, given that this hefty 2010 feat pales his previous seasons’ rates dating back to 2006 it’s safe to say that Duensing will likely not be as blessed when it comes to stranding runners in the near future.

Then there is the concern of facing more right-handed hitters in 2011 if moved to the rotation. While as a reliever, Ron Gardenhire could cherry pick innings in which Duensing would be prone to facing a higher percentage of same-sided opponents. Upon converting to a starter, opposing managers were provided the opportunity to counter by loading their lineups with righties. Nowhere did this factor play a bigger role than in Game 3 during the ALDS. The Yankees filled their lineup to the brim with right-handers, leaving only Curtis Granderson and Brett Gardner as the lone lefties in the order. Duensing was cuffed around for four runs and was removed in the fourth inning, not having enticed one swing-and-miss in 58 pitches.

Lastly, Duensing’s difference from his ERA (2.62) to his FIP (3.85) was -1.23, the fourth-highest differential among those with a minimum of 120 innings pitched. Why is this important? ERA is like a measure to a pitcher like trying to find gold with a steam shovel is: you will find some of the important stuff but you will also drag along a lot of crap with it. Like good or bad defenses behind you. FIP on the other hand, is the equivalent to using a pan and sifting for gold, you get less of the other stuff that murky the findings. While not always 100% accurate, FIP provides us with a more predictive base using data that a pitcher can control (strikeout, walk rates, home runs). Admittedly, Duensing’s FIP was solid (more so than his xFIP) but still greatly exceeds his ERA suggesting that next season, his ERA will probably be more reflective of his FIP from this season.

Given these indications, it’s not difficult to reach the conclusion that Duensing is likely to experience regression in 2011; the real question is how much will his numbers slide?

Again, because he is able to keep hitters from lacing pitches across the yard and extremely tough on lefties, he might not be a candidate to regress as hard as some would suggest based on his ERA-FIP differential would lead us to believe. After all, there are some pitchers who simply out perform their FIP in spite of high contact rates. Even so, he’s clearly a regression case when you add in the other indicators.

In order to set him up for success, the Twins should use Duensing out of the bullpen. This would limit his match-ups against right-handed foes and allow him to lean more on his slider, a pitch that he has shown success with. 

More on the Twins' logic with Liriano

On Monday, Nick Nelson and I wrote two different stances on the Twins decision to continue forward with Francisco Liriano on a year-to-year basis. Nick expounded the virtues of striking a long-term deal now as the Twins are seemingly in a position to leverage Liriano into a team-friendly contract while I believed the Twins are vindicated in their decision to remain on a flexible year-to-year basis based on Liriano’s injury history and potential for more damage. To be frank, I feel that both arguments are valid ones as I would have endorse a decision for the Twins to be aggressive with Liriano future despite his injurious tendencies.

Regardless of what your perspective is on the issue, whether the Twins are in the right to go year-to-year based on his risk factor or if you feel they are foolish to pass on the opportunity to buy low on Liriano, here is some insight as to how the Twins approach these types of deals. Last spring, I had the pleasure of sitting down with the team’s assistant GM, Rob Antony, who discusses various aspects of the team’s interworking, including how they approach long-term contracts. When asked about the then recent Nick Blackburn signing, here is what Antony said:

“With Blackburn we looked at him and his body of work over two seasons. He averaged 200 innings, been a .500 pitcher both years and his ERA has been 4.02 or 4.05 or something like that. You look at him and then say okay, if he does that for the next three or four years, what would he make each year? Now it becomes a business decision of if you go year-to-year, what would he stand to make in arbitration next year and if he backed that up where would he go the next year? You start putting down the numbers and all the comps that he has and you base it off of if he just does what he has done.  You don’t project that he is getting better – although we believe there is more in there. Instead of being an 11-11 guy, we believe he could easily be a 15-9 guy.

Then you take the numbers part, compare him to other players and compare what they got in arbitration. You consider what your exposure would be if you did go year-to-year with this guy. That way you limit your risk of injury if you go year-to-year. Heck, you can non-tender him if he gets injured. We looked at it and we ended up signing him to a $14 million deal. We looked at it, his comps, and what he can do and realized he would get more than that.

The other part is that we have our own checklist. That includes durability, health, makeup, does he deserve it. How is he going to handle security? There are some players that you just don’t believe that are going to keep driving to get better. They just settle in.  Fortunately we haven’t had too many of those. So we’ve done a pretty good job of evaluating who the guys are.”

The Twins approach to Blackburn provides us with some understanding of why they reached the conclusion to go year-to-year with Liriano. For example, health seems to be a very big attribute for them. He listed both durability and health – neither of which Liriano has demonstrated throughout his career, majors or minors. This was the crux of my explanation for why the Twins are exercising caution with him rather than assuming the risk.

At the same time, Antony cites that determining to go year-to-year becomes a “business decision” which means they that Liriano’s earning potential in arbitration cannot be completely out of line as some people suggest it could grow to if he has a Cy Young-caliber season. However, Antony conceded that the Twins “don’t project that he is getting better”. This might be the biggest kink in the logic for going year-to-year. I think most agree that given his numbers from 2010, he’s very likely to either duplicate or surpass his conventional statistics provided a little bit more defense (he had a very high BABIP) and a bit more run support. If he performs above his 2010 level, which is extremely probable, the Twins’ estimates may wind up being skewed. The caveat, of course, is if he reinjures himself.

Then there is the vague reference to makeup. Truth be told, I am in no position to actually weigh in on Liriano’s makeup. I cannot say if his attitude in the clubhouse or among the brass is viewed favorably or unfavorably. What I do know is that he has done some things that may have irked some of the front office members. For instance, prior to deciding to undergo Tommy John surgery in November of 2006, Liriano was rehabbing in Fort Myers in October when he left unexpectedly and without notice of when he’ll return. Then there was the issue stemming from his agent’s insistence of filing a grievance against the Twins in mid-July 2009, suggesting that the team was intentionally holding him down in AAA to prolong his arbitration-eligibility (in hindsight, good tactic by the Twins). Of course, the Twins pardoned Liriano for his agent’s doings. Do these instances equal someone with bad makeup in the Twins’ eyes? I can’t say. All I know is that it happened.

Obviously, you can reach your own conclusions on what should have happened with Liriano this off-season. What we do know is the Twins opted to go on a year-by-year basis and I maintain the sentiment that they have valid reason to do so. 

Twins decision to go year-to-year with Liriano a prudent one

After last season’s performance, it seems that most have come to the consensus that Liriano has the stuff and potential to be a number one starter on almost every team in baseball. His velocity, slider and command were all refunded to him and he followed up an abysmal 2009 season, where he went 5-13 with a 4.87 FIP while allowing 21 home runs, with a year that earned him the Comeback Player of the Year, going14-10  with a 2.66 FIP and just nine home runs allowed.

Many analysts speculated and called for the Twins lock in this kind of young talent for several years to come. Signing him now would buy out his remaining arbitration years and be able to keep the cost of his first year or two of free agency down. Although this proposal makes complete fiscal sense, the front office, much to the chagrin of those analysts, decided it was best to remain flexible with Liriano – agreeing to a one-year, $4.3 million contract over the weekend.   

His standard numbers do not do his dominating 2010 performance justice. For example, his 12.4% swinging strike percentage was the highest in baseball, not only that, but hitters chased after 34.4% of all of his pitches out of the strike zone, the fourth-highest in baseball. Not surprising then was that his 9.44 strikeouts per nine innings pitched was the second highest in the AL. Meanwhile, contact was futile  exercise as Liriano’s 0.42 HR/9 was also the fourth-lowest in baseball – which would have been lower had he not had those two bad starts at the end of the year. I could continue prattling off the data but in the end all of it suggests that Liriano has the very real possibility of being one of the game’s best pitchers in 2011.

Of course, there is that very real possibility of another injury too. The injury data list is almost as equaling depressing as his above stats is impressive. While we grow enamored by the possibility of Liriano repeating or besting (considering his BABIP level in ’10) those results, there also exists the prospect that he finds himself in and out of doctors’ offices.

Back in the minor leagues, Liriano missed a significant amount of time due to shoulder injuries. In ’02 he made just 16 starts while making just five the following year. His health rebounded the following two years but then he encountered some more serious ailments. According to his chart found at BaseballInjuryTool.com, Liriano experienced “elbow soreness” in July 2006 that sidelined him for nine days. That begat what was described as “forearm soreness” in August that eventually led to his Tommy John surgery. Although his 2008 was injury-free, in 2009 he had “forearm swelling” that took him out of action for 11 days then was placed on the 15-day DL with “elbow fatigue” in August of that year, missing 22 days when he required a cortisone shot. This past season, Liriano reported “arm fatigue” in August and took a week off.

Over the years, Liriano’s mechanics have been dissected and often cited as a probable cause for his extensive injury history. As an outfielder converted to a pitcher in the Giants organization, Liriano’s motion always seemed to be more short-armed than most. Prior to his 2006 injury, he would raise his throwing arm above his shoulder level before coming home with the ball. During his rehab in the winter of ’07, the Twins followed his bullpen sessions and there was some discussion of altering his mechanics as La Velle E Neal reported:

“There has been talk of tinkering with Liriano's mechanics, but pitching coach Rick Anderson said it might be some minor things to eliminate Liriano's violent follow-through.”

When he returned to the mound in Minnesota, Liriano had indeed abandoned that higher arm raise for one that was below his shoulder level – whether or not this was an intentionally ironed-out kink by Rick Anderson or another Twins staffer or simply a byproduct of his surgically repaired elbow is unknown. Nevertheless, in 2008, Alex Eisenberg at Baseball-Intellect.com identified the major delivery difference:

(via Baseball-Intellect.com)

Then there is the question of what he’s throwing rather than how he’s throwing it.

In studying his mechanics back in 2008 Chris O’Leary, in his assessment of the adaptations Liriano made post-Tommy John, made this comment:

“I should mention that I think that a major cause of Francisco Liriano's elbow problems was his reliance on his hard slider. Combine the slider, which is probably the worst pitch for the elbow due to the forceful supination, with questionable pitching mechanics and you have a recipe for disaster.”

Although he maintained a high percentage of sliders in his first two years back (26.6% 2008-09) from Tommy John, he seriously dialed up the usage this past season. In his first year back with uninterrupted health, Liriano was one of the most prolific slider throwers in the game. In fact, 33% of his pitch selection in 2010 was sliders, the third-highest dosage among starting pitchers behind just Ervin Santana and Ryan Dempster.

There is an on-going debate on whether or not throwing sliders takes a bigger toll on a pitcher’s arm versus the other assortment of pitches. One study conducted by Dr. James Andrews and Dr Glenn Fleisig (among others) found that there was no conclusive evidence that showed that a slider was any more or less damaging to a pitcher’s arm than a fastball, but they conceded that the small sample size gave no real insight to whether or not this is true. What they did find is that slider tends to have greater “shoulder proximal force than curveballs”. This is noteworthy because if a pitcher demonstrates improper timing in their mechanics and increases their shoulder proximal force, according to Andrews’s book “The Athlete’s Shoulder”, additional pressure is put on the bicep tendon-complex which increasingly leads to a SLAP lesion.

Now, while it is just as likely that Liriano manages to navigate the entire 2011 without any instances of injuries cropping up, there is also plenty of medical history and mechanical questions that would make any organization contemplating a long-term investment to pause for a moment. Will it be more expensive to sign him if he repeats his 2010 campaign next year heading into his final year of arbitration? Almost certainly, however with an additional year before he becomes a free agent, the Twins were afforded the luxury of progressing with him on a one-year basis to ensure that he can withstand back-to-back seasons of clean health before extending him.

Will it be more expensive to sign him if he repeats his 2010 campaign next year heading into his final year of arbitration? Certainly, however, it behooves the Twins to fork over additional money later in order to gain some assurance that Liriano can handle the workload rather than lock him up this winter only to encounter issues mid-season next year – in the form of a torn labrum or more elbow problems. Because of that, the added piece of mind is almost certainly worth a few million dollars to the Twins.

Getting healthy a top priority for Scott Baker

Although his peripheral statistics do not really suggest there was much of a deviation from his 2008 or 2009 season, there were underlying issues that kept Scott Baker from pitching at the same level as he did in the second-half of 2009. Even though the elbow soreness wasn’t discussed as a factor until July, there are signs that it influenced his pitches dating back to the beginning of the season and throughout most of the past year.

Over at BaseballProspectus.com, Pitch f/x guru Mike Fast identified a handful of pitchers who had altered their release points – either horizontally or vertically. Fast noticed that Baker demonstrated a significant vertical drop comparative to his 2008 and 2009 seasons:

In his study, Fast did not offer a conclusion or a theory as to why he believed Baker had changed his delivery. A case could be made that Baker’s elbow pain started somewhere in the early part of the season and caused him to shift his delivery – often a mechanical alteration pitchers make to protect ailing components.   

What did this lowered arm angle mean for Baker?

After reporting some discomfort in July, which resulted in a cortisone shot, he was shut down for a spell in September. Of his condition Baker said:

"I can deal with the discomfort. But when it started to affect my pitches, I wasn't able to finish them and able to get the ball down.”

Truthfully, Baker has never been one to keep the ball down – even when healthy. He’s essentially Maverick and likes to fly in the Danger Zone, constantly elevating his pitches. Nevertheless, this method had provided him with a smattering of strikeouts as he enticed hitters to chase a high fastball. On the other hand, the constant flirtation up in the zone also meant that placement a fraction of an inch the wrong direction prompts plenty of hard contact - the kind that requires a cab ride to go fetch the ball.

What’s more is that there is a sizeable difference between deliberately going upstairs and accidentally meandering up there. There are times as a pitcher when you want to burn a letter high fastball by a hitter and other times when you want to stay down and away. By Baker’s testimony, it appears that his intentions and his actual results in 2010 were vastly different.

Below is a prime example of this. On June 27, Baker was behind in the count to the Mets’ Ike Davis two balls, one strike. Catcher Joe Mauer  sets up outside and calls for a fastball middle-away, hoping to shave the outer-half or coax weak contact off the end of Davis’s bat. Instead of reaching its intended destination, Baker’s pitch remains up in the zone and wanders over the fat part of the plate, allowing Davis to jerk it onto the Van Wyck Expressway: 

 The above clip was fairly indicative of Baker’s overall struggles with his fastball in general. In 2009 Baker was able to spot his fastball on the outer-half of the plate better and at avoiding the meaty portion of the zone. More recently, this has not been the case.

While his fastball’s velocity remained the same, Baker simply did not hit the same spots he did the previous season. Here you see in a heat map Baker’s location of his fastball against lefties. What is seen through the catcher’s perspective is that in 2009, Baker demonstrated a much greater propensity to hitting the corner of the zone away from the hitter. This past season, the majority of his fastballs resided within the zone in an easily accessible area for the hitter:

Like we saw in the Davis example, Baker may have wanted to place his pitch away like he did in 2009 but was unable to because of control issues stemming from the elbow injury.

Another aspect of his game that gave Baker fits was his slider. In 2009, according to Inside Edge, Baker allowed just 37% of his sliders to be put into play – which also happened to be the league average on sliders. In 2010, that rate increased to 46%, a noticeably jump for a pitch that is not supposed to garner a lot of contact. For the most part it is his secondary pitch. While not used nearly as much as his fastball in two-strike situations, Baker will occasionally turn to it for a strike out. Unfortunately for him, the slider wasn’t nearly as effective for him.  

On June 10^th, while facing Wilson Betemit and the Kansas City Royals, on a 2-2 count, Baker delivers a rather juicy hanging slider that Betemit uncorks on it: 

Watching Joe Mauer’s original target, you know that it was not premeditated to throw it jock-high out over the middle of the plate. Following Baker’s release point on the slider, you can see that he fails to stay on top of the ball, resulting in the pitch staying up in the zone.

Baker's elbow pain clearly had an adverse affect on his pitches. Perhaps Target Field's pitcher-friendly confines masked what could have been a disastrous season. After all, his 10.2% home runs-to-fly balls rate was his highest since his 2006 campaign. Had the Twins still been playing at the Metrodome, fans in the Home Run Porch may have been picking baseballs out of their teeth.

With less than two weeks remaining until pitchers and catchers report to Florida, two of the team’s presumed starting pitchers, Baker and Nick Blackburn, are in the process of recovering from their respective offseason elbow surgeries. While not yet testing out his slider, Baker says that he is feeling good about his progress:

"I've been fortunate. [My elbow] feels good. I've got all this newfound range of motion. We'll see what I can do with it."

The “newfound range of motion” is the key to getting back the Scott Baker who is capable of fronting a rotation.  

While it might not be the popular opinion among fans, when healthy and able to hit his spots, I believe Baker has elite-caliber stuff. Though it has not much of a spectacle to behold by radar gun standards, his fastball has been a successful pitch for him in the past. According to Fangraphs.com, in 2009 it was the third-highest valued fastball in the American League, topped only by Zack Greinke and Justin Verlander. Likewise, from 2007 to 2008, Baker possessed one of the best slider’s in baseball. If he can bounce back from the offseason surgery quickly, enabling him to return to his familiar mechanics, Baker is a prime candidate to be a number two pitcher in the Twins rotation.

Twins spreading misleading information?

With a winter filled with discontent over the dimensions of their new ballpark from the hitters in their lineup, the Twins front office appears to be in full PR mode in curtailing the public’s beliefs that attending a game will not mean you will automatically be denied a souvenir home run ball.  

Two weeks ago, during the Twins’ Winter Caravan stop in Mason City, Iowa, pitcher Glen Perkins addressed the crowd on his thoughts about Target Field. Said the left-hander:

“I would say it’s leaning toward a pitcher’s park, but you never know. Yankee Stadium the first year was a hitter’s park and then it swung the other way last year.”

Yesterday, during his lunchtime live chat at StarTribune.com beat writer Joe Christensen also alluded to this phenomenon in response to an inquisition regarding the team’s chances of hitting more home runs in 2011 at Target Field:

 “I have my doubts, but the Twins believe it's important to give it another year before going overboard with any changes. They correctly point to Yankee Stadium, which wasn't as much of a hitter's park in 2010 as it was in 2009.”

Christensen’s use of the word “they” suggests that members of the front office are the ones circulating that tidbit. After all, Perkins spent very little time at the major league level in 2010 and did not pitch a single inning in New York. He couldn’t have been privy to this first-hand. With all of the criticism emerging from the clubhouse, including calls for the walls to be moved in (ostensibly, an expensive task), the organization had to communicate something to the team. Regardless of the source or background, the fact is that the statement is almost patently false.

Superficially, there was some decline in the numbers at home in New York. For instance, in 2010 hitters posted an OPS of 783 at the new Yankee Stadium, the second-highest in baseball and the highest in the American League, but experienced a ten-point drop in OPS from the previous year (793) when it was regarded as an offensive Mecca. Yet, ten points is hardly a resounding affirmation of a transition from a hitter-friendly park to a pitcher-friendly one.   

Similarly, while the ballpark paced the majors in home runs hit in ’09 with 237, when the season ended this past year 14 fewer home runs had been hit. Still, that 223 in 2010 was the second-highest total in baseball.

Based on those two facts alone, I’d hardly be inclined to calling Yankee Stadium anything but a hitter’s paradise. What’s more is that according to ESPN.com’s Park Factors, despite the decrease in total bombs launched in its confines all things considered, Yankee Stadium actually became a place that was easier to hit home runs over the previous season. In 2009, the Bronx ballpark posted a HR Park Factor of 1.201, the highest in baseball. Although it lost the long ball title to USCellular Field and surpassed by Coors Field in Denver, the Yankees’ home field had a HR Park Factor of 1.420.

Likewise, in terms of total offense, Yankee Stadium’s 1.177 Runs Park Factor was far superior in comparison to ‘09’s 0.965 Runs Park Factor it listed after the stadium’s inaugural season. To summarize, it was found to be easier to score runs and hit home runs at Yankee Stadium in 2010 versus its first year.

Simply put, despite the Twins' claims to the contrary, Yankee Stadium did not revert towards a pitcher's park.

In the end, there is no need to repeat a misleading message in hopes of enticing players or fans to think of Target Field somehow emerging as a Yankee Stadium-like venue in 2011. Rather, focus on the number of home runs that aren’t leaving the park courtesy of the visiting team as opposed to the number of home runs you are missing out on. Target Field may not do anyone any favors in the home run department but it served the team extremely well in 2010 and some members of the offense should embrace that concept.