OtB Twins Notes: 10.05.09

“Maybe we’ll have a whiteout on Tuesday.  Maybe it’ll look like winter in here. This place is a different animal when it comes playoff time.”  - Michael Cuddyer. Without a doubt, this needs implemented.  I don't know how these things start but word needs to be spread that Tuesday's game at the Dome is a whiteout.  White shirts.  White Homer Hankies.  Blind the Tigers with blaring nothingness.  Who is with me?

  

Charley Walters draws attention to a goofy clause in Michael Cuddyer's contract that states the Twins have five days after the conclusion of the 2009 World Series to decide if they want to pick up his 2011 option year worth $10.5M.  Cuddyer, who was hitting .286/.344/.571 with nine homers since September 1st coming into Sunday's game, has his 2009 season valuated at $9.5 million dollar according Fangraphs.com's metrics.  Considering this has been the best year of his career, the Twins will undoubtedly choose to pick up this option year.  However, what should be approached as an easy decision, the organization should anticipate some degeneration in his skills as he ages.  This late season surge notwithstanding, Cuddyer is easily an asset as he is a career 848 OPS hitter against LHP - a trait not shared by any current right-handed batting member of the team.     

 

After a huge month of August facing left-handers when Jason Kubel went 8-for-19 (.421), the left-handed DH has gone 11-for-43 (.256) since the start of September.  Subtracting August, Kubel is hitting .214 against same-sided pitching on the year.  Meanwhile, since moving into September, Cuddyer and Delmon Young are 28-for-79 (.354) with five homers.  Although it would be beneficial to insert Kubel into the DH slot day-in and day-out and he has improved against left-handed pitching (which is good when relievers come in), in 2010 if all the personnel remains the same, Cuddyer or Young should be the designated hitter when scheduled to face a lefty starter to take advantage of the platoon split.  Yup, I'm thinking that far ahead. 

 

Who are these guys?

    Player A: 45 games, 7 HR, 31 RBI, 28/4 K/BB ratio, .305/.324/.492 (816 OPS)

    Player B: 46 games, 6 HR, 25 RBI, 34/10 K/BB ratio, .291/.337/.442 (797 OPS)

Give up?  They are both Delmon Young.  The former is the current streak he is on (excluding Sunday's numbers) since August 1st, 2009.  The latter is his August 8th to the end of the season in 2008.  So as Sid Hartman tries to tell you that the Young-for-Garza trade is starting to look good, tell him we've seen this act before.   

 

Speaking of the future, I like Josh Johnson's optimism since the Miguel Sano signing.  2013 Twins baseball is going to be a thing of beauty to see...that is, if we are not all killed off by the toxins we breathe in emitting from the garbage incinerator adjacent to Target Field in the next several years. 

 

KFAN and Minnesota Poker Magazine's Phil Mackey eats crow. Hey PMac. What goes better with crow?  Red or white? 

 

Because Joe Mauer is probably going to get $18 million a year starting in 2011, look what kind of a team that would have bought you in 1988.

 

How about some good 'n random Metrodome quotes and memories to wrap this up so I can focus on Tuesday's game?

 

"It tore just like a bed sheet." Don Poss, executive director of the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission after 11 inches of snow tore huge gaps into the fabric in November, 1981.

 

"It was like hot air from the dome was just shooting up and fabric was going straight towards the sky." - Kevin Bjornson, December 1982. I don't know who Mr. Bjornson is either but he was apparently one of the residents near the Metrodome who was watching the lunar eclipse at 4 AM when he saw the Dome's roof tear for the second time in a little over a year.

 

"Some fans took off their shoes and waded through while others braved the puddle, shoes and all."  - At the home opener in 1982, sewage water poured out from the restrooms onto the concourse due to sand and debris obstructing the plumbing.  Apparently, when you gotta go, ya gotta go. 

 

"The ball jumps out better here than any park I've ever been in.  You know if you get the ball up here it's got a chance.  I'd like to have seen Harmon Killebrew and those guys here.  He would have hit a thousand." - New York Yankees third baseman Graig Nettles, May 1982, under headline "Yankes Just Love New Dome." 

 

"If Harmon Killebrew were active today, he'd hit 125 homers a season." - Oakland A's manager, Billy Martin, 1982.  

"The only time this has given me trouble is when the ball is against a background of a similar color." Twins outfielder, Dave Engle, echoing every visiting outfielder for years to come.  May 1982.

 

"This place is the big leagues.  I feel like I'm in the Guthrie Theater, like I have to give a performance, not play baseball." - Roy Smalley, Twins shortstop.  April 6th, 1982. 

  

"The only thing that can solve the Metrodome's problems is a nuclear bomb." - Then-Royals GM, John Schuerholz, in 1984.

 

"I don't think there are good uses for nuclear weapons, but this stadium might provide one." - Royals closer Dan Quisenberry in 1984.

 

"Playing indoors reminds me of when I was a kid and you had to go to your room and you couldn't go outside. It was like you were being punished." - George Brett, 1985.

 

"If I wanted my players to be Ping Pong players, I would send them to China to play the Chinese National Team."  A racially-sensitive New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner fumed after a particularly bad bounce loss to the Twins in 1985.

 

"It's a little league ballpark.  What a joke."  New York Yankees manager, Billy Martin, May 1985.

 

"It's like a magic trick.  I said I wasn't going to take my eye off of it. I didn't and it still disappeared on me." - Yankee shorstop Bobby Meachan, May 1985, lost two balls in the Dome's ceiling. 

 

"What takes place in the Metrodome is not a ball game, it is a circus." - Yankees owner George Steinbrenner in a prepared statement after New York filed a formal complaint to the American League that the Metrodome was a substandard baseball facility, May 1985. 

 
"Just as important, though, was the fact that the Angels were in Chicago."  -  on April 14th, 1985, the Twins postponed an indoor baseball game due to blizzard conditions.  The organization says it was because they were worried about the well-being of the fans on their travels to the Dome.  Nevermind the fact that the visiting California Angels were circling over the Minneapolis-St Paul Airport for over an hour and unable to land at 5 AM.  April 14th in 2010 will be the second game at Target Field against the visiting Red Sox (if they are able to land). 

"I can't understand how they designed this place with a white roof." - Lloyd Moseby, Toronto Blue Jays, April 1984.

 

"My suggestion is to get David Copperfield here to see how it happened.  He can have it in his next TV special." - Umpire Jim Evans.  The official that awarded Dave Kingman a ground-rule double on what would have been an infield pop-up that disappeared into the Dome's drainage hole in the roof.

"The ball just bounced over my head." - Chicago White Sox, Harold Baines, after Twins second baseman Tim Teufel's blooper bounded over the outfielders head leading to an inside-the-park-home run. 

 

"You are a great pitcher with a 6.00 ERA in this dome." - Oakland A's pitcher, Joaquin Andujar. 

OtB Quick Links (09.30.09)

We (John Bonnes, Nick Nelson, Seth Stohs and myself) are putting the finishing touches on the second TwinsCentric offering that should be available shortly after the season ends.  This will be a beast of a book, encompassing all the decisions and pratfalls of being in the Twins GM position this offseason.  As opposed to the first foray into the e-book market, the TwinsCentric Trade Deadline Primer, this publishing will be available in both tree-saving e-book form as well as an easily transportable hard-copy made only from evil trees.  Check in over at TwinsCentric website or the TwinsCentric Facebook page for further details on the forthcoming book.  Because of this project, content here has been sparse.  For now, gnaw on some links and tidbits until tonight's game three showdown:

Those of us watching at home would notice that the turnover at Comerica appeared a little light.  Detroit Free Press columnist Drew Sharp questioned Tigers' fans fortitude during this October-like baseball in September.   

ESPN's Jerry Cransick fawns all over Justin Verlander's 129-pitch outing last night.  Taking a look at his speed graph, you'll notice that Verlander was not only very good at altering his velocity, able to go from a low of 78 to a high of 99-mph:

I do believe in the use of flexible yet moderate pitch counts prevent injuries.  In the same way you wouldn't red-line your engine on a cross-country vacation, pitchers need the throttle taken up every so often.  Verlander has had three-straight starts with at least 126-pitches and a minimum of 120 in six of his last ten outings.  Yes, Jim Leyland likes to elude to Verlander's strong frame and conditioning however that does not necessarily shield from overuse and throwing when tired.  The Twins' manager was certainly in awe as well. "There were innings where we didn't have much of a chance," Ron Gardenhire said. "And, he was still winging it at 98 after 120-some pitches. That guy's a stud."  What is frequently mistaken as being studily, is known as a pitcher's "dead cat bounce".  The dead cat bounce is a finance term that means as something approaches a decline or recession, there will be a quick uptick before dropping back down.  If that doesn't help, imagine dropping a cat out of a skyscraper and then seeing the feline smash the ground, only to bounce back up a few feet before coming to rest in a bloody heap.  Got it?  Applying that theory to a pitcher, we find that around 100-pitches, a his velocity declines.  Likewise, at the 96-pitch mark, Verlander was no longer throwing as hard has he did from pitch number 50 forward.  Then around pitch number 120, he's rearing back and firing 98-mph peas.  Verlander was most likely fatigued.  His arm was no longer able to sustain an effortless fastball like he did from 50-100, but was now reaching back to gain that added velocity, working against his muscles natural instincts that say he should be finished.  It is under these circumstances that shoulder and arm injuries begin to occur.                

The debate between whether Ron Gardenhire is a legit candidate for Manager of the Year or the largest impediment to becoming the a post-season lock (personally, I believe it is the former rather than the latter) but Yahoo!Sports Jeff Passen undoubtedly believes that Gardy's command has been a central reason why the Twins are still in this race.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Dejan Kovacevic says that the Pirates can on a little strong in their efforts to sign Dominican super-prospect, 16-year-old shortstop Miguel Angel Sano, that Pittsburgh's aggressive courtship drove Sano right into the arms of the Minnesota Twins.  "I'm very thankful to get this chance to sign with the Twins," Sano said. "I'm going to work very hard to try to get to the majors in two years."  With the current lack of system depth at short, Sano does have the opportunity to make a meteoric rise, however, with $3.5 million invested, the Twins will handle him with care.  Nick Nelson takes an in-depth look at what the signing means to this organization.

During the Twins visit to Canada a few weeks ago, you may have noticed two Umpires sitting in the front row in Toronto emulating all of the motions of a real umpire on the FSN broadcast.  Baseball Digest Daily's Matt Sisson reports that the duo, Tim Williams and Joe Farrell, have had quite a bit of success with their bit.  As a day job, the pair work as traders on the Toronto Stock exchange but acquired the official umpire equipment after running into real umpires at a steakhouse.  Since then, they've been guests at Yankee Stadium, Dodger Stadium and now, Fenway.

Strib columnist Jim Souhan is right, the Twins are right back were we started from but with fewer games. 

At SI.com, Joe Posnanski looks at the Twins-Tigers series and declares "m'eh."

John Dewan releases his MVP winners based upon Total Runs.  (Spoiler: It's not Joe.)

Charley Walters informs us that Ron Coomer is potential yet another former Twins first baseman to own a pub-restaurant in the Target Field neighborhood.  

Starting with strikes big for Twins

This was not how the Twins rotation was supposed to look come September.

 

Back in April, the prevailing assumption among Twins fans was that a combination of Scott Baker, Francisco Liriano and Kevin Slowey would be headlining any sort of playoff push, acting as the key ingredients to the must-win series.  The year certainly has not played out as scripted.  Flash forward to the season’s final full month where one is post-operative (Slowey), one is battling to regain his rotation spot (Liriano) only because it became abundantly clear that a kid who started the year in AA was over his head and the other is Scott Baker, who has been as advertised.  Replacing Liriano and Slowey is Carl Pavano, who was left-for-dead in Cleveland (wasn’t he the one that - almost - no one in the Twin Cities wanted?), and the other, Brian Duensing, has made just eight starts in double-decker stadiums.

 

Yes, the threesome has gone 6-3 with a 2.92 ERA in 13 September starts but this is a month that is hard to gauge true performance.  A large swath of teams have checked out of the Hotel Pennant Race and provide innings for guys that were taking buses through Appalachia at the beginning of the summer.  The Cleveland Indians are one such club.  Since the beginning of the month, the last place Tribe has rotated in members of both the CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee trades.  Pitcher Carlos Carrasco, a member of the Phillies until this past trade deadline, had his fourth start which exemplifies this.  After making most of his previous two years of starts in Lehigh Valley and Reading, the wayward Indians allowed the 22-year-old to get some on-the-job training against the Detroit Tigers.  Predictably, after three decent innings, the Tigers eventually got to the youngster, denting him for four runs in five innings and walked away with a one-run victory and a full three game lead over the Twins.

 

Thanks to the division-heavy schedule, games against playoff-ready teams like New York, Los Angeles and Boston seemingly transacted eons ago, leaving the soft underbellies of Chicago, KC and Cleveland remaining.   The only challenge left is the tough, chewy meat of the Tigers sandwiched between two Wonder Bread weekends against the Royals.  To tame the Tigers, the Twins will unleash that trio of Duensing  (9/29), Pavano (9/30) and Baker (10/1) in Detroit for the final three games of the four-game series.   Again:  Perkins Nouveau, Sneery McSneerson and Big Spot Scott.

 

What Twins fans can cling to is the fact that these three have thrown strikes - especially that all-important FIRST STRIKE.  Yes, Bert Blyleven yammers on about the significance of that first-pitch strike during broadcasts but what does that actually do?  

 

Month of September	First  Pitch Strike %
Baker	69.7
Pavano	68.4
Duensing	60.3
League Average	58.2

 

For those that are unfamiliar, the difference between starting 0-1 and 1-0 is night-and-day.  Nah, that’s not even a good comparison.  It really should be two incomparable items, like night-and-pants.  For instance, when American League hitters fall behind in the count 0-1, they tend to hit .640 OPS.  That turns hitters essentially in Tigers’ offensively inept Gerald Laird (.637 OPS).  That is a manageable prospective.  Meanwhile, when the pitch flints outside the strike zone, hitters average a .863 OPS after the count starts with a ball.  This gives hitters the opportunity to hit like Jim Thome did for the Sox (.864 OPS). 

Baker, Pavano and Duensing have excelled in this arena, jumping on hitters and holding them to a .270 batting average this month thanks to their strike zone aggression.  Conversely, part of the reason Jeff Manship scuffled so much in his four September starts was his inability to get ahead of hitters (a 43.2 first-strike percent) and wound up posting a .950 OPS.  His most recent outing was brutal in that context.  This has left the door open for the return of Francisco Liriano, who since his August start in Texas, has struck out six in 5 2/3 innings.  Fear not, as Liriano, in his limited duties, is right behind Baker and Pavano in first pitch strikes in September (his 68 percent this month is far better than his year average of 55 percent).  If the lefty can maintain this control, he gives the Twins a fourth strong starter to enter the final week with. 

The Igniter.

When Michael Cuddyer shot John Danks’ first offering of the sixth inning over the right-center field wall in Chicago -- lifting Minnesota to a 6-to-2 lead -- the home run was the 12^th of such leadoff bombs for the Twins right fielder.  Just two innings earlier, the righty had tagged the White Sox’s southpaw for a double past the diving Scott Podsednik in center to open that inning, only to score moments later on Brendan Harris’s double play ball to short. 

 

While his early season struggles with runners-in-scoring-position have been exhaustively debated, Cuddyer produced well as the first Twin to bat in an inning for the duration of the season.  In 135 leadoff plate appearances, Cuddyer is hitting .328/.378/.720 with 12 HRs, 11 2Bs and 1 3B by far one of the best hitters on the team under this situation.  In addition being on base in 38 percent of those plate appearances and driving himself in 12 times, he has come around to score in 16 other occasions.  Understandably, leading off an inning presents less of an opportunity for scrutiny then folding under an RBI-condition but beginning a scoring drive should be no less celebrated then eventually scoring the run itself. 

 

What do we make of this in understanding Cuddyer’s contributions?  For the better-half of the season, Cuddyer had floundered when faced with an RBI situation (although he has improved threefold since the beginning of the month) but managed to sustain a rather torrid output when there were no runners on base (.962 OPS).  What’s more is that he did even better starting an inning (1.098 OPS).  Are we to believe that Cuddy folds under pressure?

 

Baseball happens in a series of vacuum situations that we like to analyze, evaluate and segment.  We do so even with the foreknowledge that these events happen in such a tiny statistical bubble that it is nearly impossible to properly label the results as anything other than a sample-size fluke.  For instance, Delmon Young has hit .268/.292/.385 for the balance of the season.  However, position a runner in scoring position for him (which has happened 97 times in 2009) and Young suddenly has turned into a .310/.333/.437 hitter.  How did that happen?  Does he thrive under pressure?  Did testosterone and endorphins overtake his body and helped him concentrate all that much more in order to plate that all-important ribbie?  Is there an aroma that Young could smell when a runner was on base, as Mike Redmond suggested in 2006, that alerted him to try more?  Or does Delmon Young just enjoy getting his name in the paper and therefore tries just a little bit harder when he can be the hero? 

 

Some of that could be true, I suppose.  I’ve never taken a whiff from the batter’s box at the Metrodome with Joe Mauer dancing off of third.  The reality is that the outcome of such small sample sizes fluctuates wildly from year-to-year and the element of luck is ever-present.  In The Book, the analysts concluded that it takes 600 plate appearances to appropriately conclude a trend to be true.   These 30-to-150 plate appearances a year with a runner in scoring position or leading off an inning does not provide an accurate depiction of the hitter.  Yes, better hitters might hold a better batting line with RISP but in the same vein, a bad hitter can dink-and-doink a handful of hits and become a .300 hitter in those circumstances as well.  That said it is far more probable that Delmon Young is a .677 OPS hitter overachieving by 100 points with RISP because of his plate appearance totals rather than the other way around.         

 

Going back to Cuddyer’s explosive performance as a leadoff hitter, his condition is much of the same as Young’s RISP numbers.  The right fielder is hitting a massive 243 OPS points higher when he begins an inning.  His real performance resides between his vacuum numbers – a roughly .900 OPS hitter.

The 'Neau Morneau Effect

 

It is hard to consider that the Twins would have a gnat’s ass chance of slipping past the Detroit Tigers without their All Star first baseman in the lineup.  The truth, however, is we have not had him in the lineup since mid-July.  Up until July 22^nd, Justin Morneau shot lasers and rainmakers around the nation’s ballparks, hitting .316/.398/.588 with 23 HRs and driving in 78 runs.  From the 22^nd on it was like a parasitic-likeness of Alexi Casilla on creatine inhibited his body, guiding him to eke out a .175/.281/.351 batting line with 7 HRs and 22 runs batted in.  This was not Justin Morneau.  This was Matt Tolbert interloping in the heart of the order. 

 

The question is how many games did this second-rate Morneau’s bat situated in the middle of the lineup cost the Twins?  Could it be worth three in the win column over the course of 48 games?  When the Grande Canadian was chugging on all cylinders, he was driving in runs with ease, hitting .354/.473/.659 with 12 extra base hits with runners in scoring position (RISP) from the beginning of the year until July 21^st.  In 45 at-bats with runners in scoring position from the 22^nd on, Morneau had hit .178/.283/.200 with just a solitary extra base hit.  Getting out 53 percent of the time versus 72 percent of the time is a significant difference – especially in the context of what should be your RBI man (and the guy who comes to the plate in RBI situations most frequently).  In that same span of games, the rest of the lineup hit .292/.360/.453 with runners in scoring position.  His continued presence undoubtedly hurt the kinetic efficiency of the lineup.* 

 

*Naturally, you can lump the stubborn insistence on using Orlando Cabrera at the two spot as well.  Since coming over to the Twins, Cabrera has hit .244/.275/.372 in the two hole.  So, the Twins had sandwiched the game’s best hitter in Joe Mauer – who is retired in a major league low of 56 percent of plate appearances – with two hitters that have been out in 73 and 72 percent of their plate appearances respectively. (blink, blink).  It would seem only a season-ending back injury will get Ron Gardenhire to reconsider the lineup structure…then again, as some in the game would say, baseball isn’t played on a calculator.

 

From July 22^nd until September 12^th, when he last played, the Twins went 17-25 the games Morneau was in and 5-1 the games he was out (either for the dizzies or a mental break).   In that 48 game stretch of substandard offense from their cleanup hitter, the Twins scored 4.66 runs per game, roughly 0.25 runs less than they would when he was healthy in the first 94 games.  Since his removal from the lineup, the squad has averaged 6.5 runs per game and has gone 3-0 (bringing the ‘Neau Morneau record to 8-1 since July 22^nd). 

 

This is not about Morneau per se, rather it about getting the most efficiency out of your lineup:  A healthy Morneau is a superior choice for cleanup (or third, for that matter) than just about everyone else on the roster (save for Kubel against a righty who favors fastballs).  The injured version was simply a detriment.  It is a shame that it took a season-ending injury for the manager to react.