Post-Game (Exhibition Game 6 & 7)

Twinks 0, Rays 0 (PPD)

• They say the stats don't count even though the teams completed 4.5 innings. In the grand scheme of things this is spring training and none of the stats count, right? You can believe that the outings by Boof Bonser and Denard Span still mattered as they both made impressive performances. Nick Blackburn also managed to throw an inning of scoreless ball.
• Prior to this game, the MLB Press Pass for the Twins indicated that the team had already grounded into 10 double-plays. This is leading the majors in that category so far.
• Speaking of grounding into double-plays, MLB.com's Kelly Theiser answered a series of mailbag questions recently, one that dealt with the possibility of having Michael Cuddyer or Delmon Young in the number three bat slot in the lineup. The reader asked: "I the idea of having Delmon Young's potent bat after Justin Morneau in the lineup to stop any intentional walks. But I worry about Michael Cuddyer hitting into double plays and having unproductive at-bats in the three spot. Assuming that Joe Mauer bats second and Morneau hits cleanup, are the Twins better off with Cuddyer batting third and Young batting fifth or the other way around? -- Aaron W., Brooklyn Park, Minn." Thesier answered the question in a relatively straightforward manner, as I assume MLB reporters are instructed to do, while never really offering any in-depth analysis. What should have been made clear is that even though Michael Cuddyer has had a large amount of gidp's in 2007 (19), Delmon Young actually hit into more (23). In terms of having unproductive at-bats, Cuddyer clearly has the on-base percentage advantage .346 to Delmon's .319. Furthermore, Cuddyer has had 192 plate appearances batting 3rd where he is hitting .281/.396/.469 with 31 walks and 33 strikeouts. Delmon is still learning the nuances of major league pitching and will be a very successful hitter but for now Cuddyer should be the favorite for batting 3rd.

Twinks 7, Yankmes 5 (Box Score)

• Kevin Slowey had yet another tough outing, finishing 2.0 innings with 3 earned runs, 2 walks and 3 strikeouts while giving up 5 hits. With just under 26 days until the season begins for the Twins, Slowey has dug himself into quite a hole. His normal pinpoint control has disappeared and the fastball with movement has not helped him avoid giving up the big hits as opponants are slugging .850 off of him in 3.2 innings. In Slowey's defense he has had to work against to very formidable lineups in the Red Sox and Yankees. He worked particularly well against Jason Giambi in the 1st inning. Slowey moved ahead of Giambi 0-2 and then changed his eyeline but buzzing a 91 mph fastball above the letters only to set up a called third strike as he painted the low-outside corner. As pitch f/x data showed last year, Slowey does not make bats miss. His source of dominance is his control, proven by his battle with Giambi.

• Garrett Jones, the proud owner of the longest home run hit in Fenway Park last season (456 feet) off of Josh Beckett, connected off of another golden arm of last year, Joba Chamberlain. Jones, who has spent the past three seasons in Rochester, is clinging to a thread of hope for making the 2008 roster. His ability to play outfielder and displace Justin Morneau at first has kept him on the bubble, however, as his minor league record shows he is a freeswinger. In 3,268 plate appearances, Jones has struck out in 23.5% of them. His saving grace in his lowly .250/.304/.439 career numbers is his ability to generate power (he has a 40% xbh% on his career).

• Speed kills. Alexi Casilla, finishing the day 1 for 2 with an rbi, should recieve consideration for batting lead-off. In his 13 plate appearances, the switch-hitting Casilla has drawn three walks and is batting .300/.462/.300 with 3 stolen bases. Prior to today's game, the Twins had 9 stole bases tied for second with Tampa Bay who had 10. Casilla's speed, coupled with Carlos Gomez and Jason Pridie who also have 2 stolen bases each, would make the Twins one of the fastest teams in the majors.

• Delmon Young has been hitting the ball very well this spring, including his homer to center off of the Yankees' Ian Kennedy. His .500/.545/.800 spring line with 5 hits (including the aforementioned home run) has offered vindication for trading a potential frontline starter. Matt Garza, meanwhile, was touched up by the Detroit Tigers for 2 earned run in his 1.2 inning debut for the Rays. Garza gave up back-to-back hits to Carlos Guillen and Miguel Cabrera after walking Gary Sheffield in the first. He was unable to get out of the 2nd after Edgar Renteria led off with a single and then Curtis Granderson followed with an rbi double at which point Garza was yanked for another former Twin, Grant Balfour, who worked out of the jam.

• Delmon's brother Dmitri, fresh off of his comeback season and new contract, has annoyed Nationals officials by reporting to camp weighing in at a whopping 298 pounds. He has been having issues controlling his diabetes. I wrote a month ago how Young's contract with Washington was one of the best free agent acquisitions in 2007 however after he signed for 2-years at $5 million AAV, he could easily swing to the worst contracts list of 2008.

Post-Game (Exhibition Game 5)

Twinks 8, Reds 6 - 10 innings (Box Score)

• Carlos Gomez, now 2 for 8 this spring (.250), coaxed a lead-off walk from Jeremy Affeldt and stole third displaying his speed that even surprised the veteran lefty Affeldt. "I never came set in the first and still stole off me," Affeldt told the Cincinnati Enquirer. Second base candidate Alexi Casilla also added two stolen bases, his first off of Affeldt as well. As impressive as it is to swipe a base off of a left-hander underneath his nose, Affeldt does not have a pick-off recorded between 2004-2007 and in just 59 innings in 2007 he was ran on 7 times. Later, Casilla took 2nd again this time off of Scott Sauerbeck. All of the stolen bases were swindled from former Twin Javier Valentin, who threw out only 11% of potential base-stealers in 2007 down a significant amount from 47% in 2006.

• Defensively and on the basepaths, Gomez has certainly given himself the edge between he, Jason Pridie (.333) and Denard Span (.285) which may compensate for his offensive inadequacies. Of course, approximately 10 at-bats is too small of a microcosm to project to 450+ plate appearances. Therefore spring training you have to analyze the other details of a batter. In a previous blog, Joe Christensen noted that Gomez's swing in one game appeared "cartoonishly" big. Yesterday, Joe Vavra confirmed to Christensen that the Twins are also monitoring this: "You're thinking, 'How many swings can he make like that without breaking down?' " Vavra said. "Because he puts a tremendous amount of torque on his back, and if you do that too many times, boy. You try not to be so violent in your approach but try to be aggressive."

• In the past two games Twins second basemen have been victims of botched double-play balls. On Sunday, Nick Punto misplayed a Coco Crisp ball to allow Doug Mirabelli to advance to second. Monday, with one out and Norris Hopper on first, Casey Daigle induced a groundball out of Ken Griffey Jr however Brendan Harris had trouble making the transfer from his glove. Norris was able to advance to second leaving Harris's only play at first for Griffey Jr. Now with two outs the dangerous Adam Dunn came to the plate and knocked a base hit into center scoring Hopper from second with two outs. Admittedly, this is still spring but these kind of miscues will be detrimental to the team in the regular season.

• 29-year-old Randy Ruiz is putting together a decent spring hitting .375/.444/.750 with a home run and 6 total bases in 8 at-bats. Ruiz, for those unfamiliar with the ballplayer, is a modern day version of Crash Davis. It is hard to label him as a quadruple-A player considering he has only had 79 at-bats above double-A. Originally drafted by the Mets in 1996 with the 1068th pick overall, Ruiz opted to attend Bellevue Community College in Washington instead of signing (possibly because Ruiz is from the Bronx). In 1999 he signed as a nondrafted free agent with the Cincinnati Reds and played four years in their organization. Even though he hit .291/.371/.465 with 41 extra base hits (36.6% xbh%) split between A and high-A, the right-handed batting Ruiz never was promoted above high-A with the Reds and was released following that season. He was signed by the Orioles who sent him initially to class A Delmarva Shorebirds and then eventually to the high-A Fredrick Keys. Ruiz finished his 25-year-old season hitting .296/.395/.505 with 37 extra base hits (40.6% xbh%) yet Baltimore too released him. This musical teams continued on for Ruiz who, between 2004 and the end of 2007, was signed by seven teams in those four year. In the face of such adversity, lesser ballplayers might have been prone to calling it a career. In 2007 alone he was in the Pirates, Giants and Phillies organizations and finished hitting .293/.359/.511 with 55 extra base hits (39.5% xbh%). While with the Phillies last year, Ruiz was given his first taste of triple-A. The unfortunate part of Ruiz's career remains in the part that I quickly rushed over. In 2005 while in his first stint in the Phillies organization, Ruiz tested positive TWICE for performance enhancing drugs and was suspended for 45 games. Throughout that season, Ruiz had absolutely crushed the ball. In just 89 games, Ruiz hit 27 home runs (an ungodly 7.0% hr%) and batted .349/.405/.669. Furthermore, Ruiz could be considered the right-handed batting equivalent of Jack Cust - minus the obscene on-base percentage. Randy Ruiz's minor league career compares to that of Cust (in both performance enhancing accusations and statistics). Cust, who had his breakout season with Oakland last year at 29-years-old, hit .286/.428/.518 with 200 home runs (4.2% hr%) in 3,786 at-bats. Ruiz in his 3,228 minor league at-bats has hit .300/.370/.522 with 150 home runs (4.1%). If he remains clean (as he insists he was in 2005) and continues to punish the ball this spring, Ruiz could be another power-hitting right-handed bat the Twins will need at some point this season.

Post-Game (Exhibition Game 4)

Twinks 8, Red Snots 2 (Box Score)

• Livan's big Twins spring debut will be viewed as, for all intents and purposes, successful. Joe Christensen writes that in his 2 innings of work, Hernandez deployed his full arsenal in his 42 pitches. Unfortunately, this would have placed him at 125-pitches in the 6th inning if he continued this paced. In full disclosure, Boston is a lot better than more teams at working pitchers however a pitcher that is being brought in specifically for 200 innings might want to work on efficiency. Witnessing this on MLB.com, I can attest that it did appear that Hernandez was in command of the hitters, getting weak swings on his sweeping curveball. The ones that he failed to fool, David Ortiz and Mike Lowell, punished fastballs in the upper strike zone for a double and a home run, respectively. Lowell's home run came on a 3-2 belt high fastball.

• As Christensen indicated in his blog, his velocity on his 3-2 fastball to Lowell read 83-mph at the City of Palms Park which he calls "disturbing". This is nothing surprising considering he is a pitcher that throws for contact (his WHIFF rating average on his four pitches was .160). What pitch f/x research revealed was that in 2007, Hernandez was averaging 84-mph on his fastball (a good indication of why he surrendered 30+ home runs). Hernandez has been marginally successful with this high school velocity fastball for several reasons. First, while the majority of pitchers tend to throw the fastball more frequently around 65% of the time or higher Hernandez used his only 57% of the time. Secondly, he does not live in the strike zone with his fastball. In 2007, Hernandez's walk rate was the league average of 9%, this is a relatively low number in spite of having his fastball in the strike zone for only 55% of the time. Finally, Hernandez offsets this velocity with a slow curveball that he throws at 65 mph, a 15-mph difference, making the 84 mph fastball seem deceptively quick. Unfortunately, as Mike Lowell proved today, in circumstances in which batters can anticipate a fastball in the zone (as was the case on the 3-2 pitch), it can be absolutely crushed.

• Brian Buscher is putting together a very good spring. Though just 1 for 3 on the day, in his first at-bat in the bottom of the 2nd, following a Kubel's single off of Tim Wakefield, Buscher swatted a knuckleball that appeared to be a sure base hit that BoSox second baseman Dustin Pedroia made a diving snare on a hop fifteen feet away from right fielder JD Drew and threw out Buscher. Instead raising his average even further Buscher will have to settle for .400 so far on the spring. If he continues to hit well, there should be no excuse for the Twins not taking him north. As the old baseball adage goes: if you hit, we will find a spot on the field for you. Buscher's positional limitations would mean that his appearance in the line-up would come at the expense of Kubel or Lamb (dh or third).

• Dispatches from the Race for Second Base: In the bottom of the third with one out and Boston catcher Doug Mirabelli on first, a normally level-headed Nick Punto fielded a hard-hit chopper off of the bat of Coco Crisp. Instead of tossing to Adam Everett at second, Punto attempted in vein to tag a surprisingly agile Mirabelli out in the basepaths. After whiffing on the tag, Punto was left with only one play at first. This missed double-play was significant for two reasons because (1) rather than getting Matt Guerrier out of the inning with the double-play, the Red Sox were given an additional out and (2) the batter that was on the on-deck circle was David Ortiz, now with a runner in scoring position, a hitter very susceptible to trading places with Mirabelli. Fortunately, the situation was rendered moot when Guerrier coaxed an out from Ortiz but a team like the Twins cannot be soliciting more scoring opportunities. This is why I believe it is vital to record "double-play opportunity" as an on-going statistic in order to properly assess middle infield talent.

Post-Game (Exhibition Game 3)

Red Snots 7, Twinks 6 (Box Score)

• From the Boston Globe: "Sometimes it's hard not to be arrogant," Terry Francona joked after the game.

The starting left-handed pitching combo of Randy Keisler and Jon Lester was grossly ineffective. Keisler had little chance of making the squad without pitching flawlessly in spring training. His era - and hopes of seeing the Dome - was detonated today into the Glen Perkins stratosphere of 20.25. What seems to be the worst part for Keisler was not the three earned runs but rather, as John Gordon and Dan Gladden noted on KSTP-AM, the fact that the coaching staff reiterated prior to the game how important throwing strike was and allowing the defense to do the work. Instead of heeding the advice, Keisler walked three Red Sox in his 1.1 innings of work. (Of course it wasn't like that he intentionally walked three bats however when a coaching staff makes a conceited effort to point this out and you do the opposite, it is quite detrimental to your career.) Lester, meanwhile, was worse. He walked four and gave up five runs (4 earned). One came with a bases loaded walk to Casilla that brought in Mike Lamb from third (following his double). Needless to say for the remainder of his career I will be analyzing whether or not the Twins made the right decision to forgo trading Santana to Boston for Lester. Ditto for Ellsbury who went 0 for 3 with a run batted in.

• Carlos Gomez helped his cause by starting the game with a single off of Lester then stole second. Delmon Young knocked him in. Later in the game, Gomez got his first rbi in a Twins uniform. The other Twins centerfield candidate, Jason Pridie, also got his first (and only) hit as a Twins in 2 at-bats. Knowing that defense is critical, if these moments of offense persist, Gomez could be finding that he will be on the bus north although Joe Christensen noted that his giant swings-and-misses seemed almost "cartoonish". Point being that we have 30 more days until we figure out who will be in center come home opener, who ever lands the position will most likely come complete with some flaws be they offensive or defensive and then will have to learn on the job. The race for center might have tightened up along with Craig Monroe's calf muscle who is expected to miss a few days because of the strain.

• Meanwhile in Arizona, former Twin Torii Hunter went 2 for 2 with a home run (off of the rehabbing Kerry Wood), a double and four rbis. In the same game, Tim Lahey threw one inning of hitless and scoreless ball for the Cubs. Lahey's story is pretty interesting considering he was a converted catcher drafted by the Twins and then asked to take the mound. In recent years he has been closing games but does not have the lights-out stuff of your prototypical closer (16.1% k% in 2007 double-A), however he did induce groundballs on 65% of balls put in play. Scouts say that he throws a "heavy-ball" with an arm motion reminscent of Keith Foulke.

• Monitoring the "I wish we did sign" players: Mike Sweeney went 3 for 4 for Oakland with two runs, three rbis, and also stole second off of Barry Zito. Emil Brown, another Oakland shrewed offseason acquisition, finished 2 for 3 with two runs scored, two rbis and a walk. (Speaking of $100 million dollar pitcher freefalls, Zito couldn't even get out of the first inning against the A's as he was tagged for 8 earned runs on seven hits and two walks.) Kevin Mench, who signed a minor league contract, hit a solo home run for Texas against the Royals.

Post-Game (Exhibition Game 2)

Red Snots 8, Twinks 3 (Box Score)

• It is easy to dislike Boston sports teams these day. PiPress's Phil Miller characterized the sentiment appropriately when describing the arrival of the Red Sox team bus from across town (which may or may not have had a corporate sponsor).

• Yup, Boof lost weight. (Gleeman type poundage.) You can actually see cheekbones. To paraphrase a line from the movie Just Friends, he looks like that "retard from Subway." If two innings and seven batters is any early indication, it paid off for him too. Tasked with facing the bulk of the World Championship line-up, Bonser surrendered one hit to Ortiz but otherwise was nearly flawless. Two groundouts, three flyouts and a strikeout. The reduction in weight is suppose to allow him to maintain stamina to pitch longer into games. In 2007, Bonser had obvious problems laboring through the 5th and 6th innings of his starts. He completed seven innings in just eight of his 30 starts and managed to work into the 8th only once. Batters in the 5th inning hit .333/.421/.558 in 142 plate appearances against Boof in '07. Boof struggled to throw strikes (walking 11.9% of batters faced) and when he did find the plate, he was hit hard - he gave up 15 doubles in his 5th inning of work, a figure almost twice as much as his next closest inning (8 in the 1st). In the 6th inning, Bonser regain a bit of control but was pounded. Batters hit .333/.377/.694 in 77 plate appearances. In those 77 plate appearances, Bonser surrendered 7 home runs (a whopping 9.0% hr-rate) and half of the hits given up went for extra bases. His problem according to the coaching staff was the extra weight (somewhere in the 260 lbs range) he was carrying was wearing him out early. Now in 2008, 30 pounds lighter, Twins fans are hoping that Boof pitching in the 7th inning is the norm and not the exception.

• Last season in his major league debut against the Oakland A's on June 1st, I remembered an extremely lengthy at-bat. Looking back on the B-R gamelog, it may have been either the Dan Johnson 11-pitch at-bat in the bottom of the 1st where he walked the Minnesota native or epic 13-pitch at-bat with Eric Chavez in the bottom of the 3rd where he got Chavy to pop out to 3rd, but the point is, both were littered with foul balls. There was a moment of "uh-oh" while watching Slowey work. His statistics in the minors showed a pitcher who not only threw strikes but did so without being hit. In 2007 at triple-A, Slowey finished with 107k|18bb, a ridiculous amount of strikeouts to a ridiculously low number of walks. Not only that but in a 133.2 innings he only gave up 4 home runs, so he was doing something right. Now, obviously the A's are particularly adept at working counts as part of their overall philosophy or at least groomed to be in the minors, but it seemed to me that Slowey lacked that "out-pitch" - the one with bite that will get someone to chase (i.e. Radke's change, Liriano's slider, Santana's change). In a partial study* of Slowey's pitch f/x from last year the numbers showed that he indeed did have a tough time getting bats to miss. Stats, Inc developed a statistic called WHIFF which creates an average for inducing swings-and-misses. As a reference, Johan Santana's change-up had a WHIFF of .471 according to the partial database. To translate, when batters did swing at Santana's change up, they missed nearly 50% of the time. This is in the upper echelons of filthy. Of his three pitches, Santana maintains an average WHIFF rate of .327. Slowey's pitches fall well below Santana's threshold. Slowey's four-pitch average WHIFF was .142. His best "miss" pitch was his slider (.181) which he threw roughly 16% of the time. The pitch he leaned on most, his fastball, was in the strike-zone 71% of the time (one of the best in the study) but when contact was made with the fastball 6% of balls in play went for extra bases. Being consistently around the strike-zone and not having that "out-pitch" leads to 16 home runs in only 66.7 inning pitched (in fact, two of his home runs surrendered came on 0-2 counts). I am obviously not trying to compare Slowey with Santana. A more reasonable comparison, Carlos Silva, used his repertoire of pitches and maintained a WHIFF of .168. I do have confidence that Slowey will develop in to a top-tiered starter. Yesterday he showed some "movement" on his fastball which will hopefully led to more missed bats. His strikeouts of Ortiz and Manny inspired confidence only to turn the table once Lowell, Varitek and Youkilis and the bottom of the order came up. La Velle reports that Gardy said that Slowey was "over throwing the ball" which is probably accurate considering the two un-Slowey-like walks to Coco Crisp and Bobby Kielty. Once again, this is spring training so I am not putting too much stock into this but seeing as that 5th spot in the rotation is wide-open, Slowey might want to concentrate better in his next outing.

*I say "partial" because the pitch f/x database only accounts for 500+ pitches thrown while Slowey's season total pitches was 1,137 nevertheless it suffices for this illustration.

• Speaking of centerfield, our candidates went 1 for 6 (D-Span, Pridie and Gomez) while Coco Crisp went 2 for 2 with an rbi, a walk and stole a base on Slowey/Redmond. Rumors still persist that Crisp could be on the market for the right price. Personally, I think that shipping Santana to Boston in a trade that would have included Crisp would have been significantly worse then the package we obtained from the Mets (unless Epstein was loading it with additional prospects) but I wouldn't might bringing Crisp in to the mix either for some different players. If the alternative are Loften or Patterson, Crisp would be a better player while Gomez and Pridie take another season in the minors (or leaving one up at the bench player).

• Egad.

• Both Michael Cuddyer and Delmon Young knocked into double-plays in this game. I mention this because in addition to both being two of the top arms in right field last year, both we in the top five of grounding into double-plays for right fielders too. In 2007, Cuddyer managed to get doubled up 19 times (16th among all qualified batters) while Young was tied for the league-led at 23. If you look at the list of players leading the American League in gidp's it is a list that consists of some of the league's elite hitters: Maggilo Ordonez, Derek Jeter, Miguel Tejada, Aaron Hill, etc. Which is I do not put too much weight on this statistic. HOWEVER, on a team like the Twins that last year struggled to put guys on base and then score runs, a double-play can be very costly. That one run will be the difference of a win or a loss. Brendan Harris also hit into 19 double-plays in 2007.

• Brian Buscher hit a solo home run of Julien Tavarez in the 6th inning and, according to La Velle, made a fine play on a smash by Kevin Youkilis. Buscher cut short his winter ball and is looking to put himself back on the major league roster after his taste last year. I have stated that in an ideal world, Matt Macri would emerge as that third base candidate because of his right-handed bat, however, if Buscher continues to pound the ball, obviously the best player should be on the major league roster come March 31st.