Is Kevin Slowey Sandbagging Us?

In a recent profile, Twins starting pitcher Kevin Slowey made some rather candid comments.

When asked about his progress in rehabilitating his right wrist, Slowey remarked that the wrist – now equipped with two screws - feels different. While the procedure was a success and able to remove the bone particles that were floating in his pitching wrist, it has an entirely new sensation says the righty.

“You always project yourself to be where you want to be,” the Twins right-hander told David Dorsey of the Fort Myers News-Press. “I don’t know if I’m going to ever feel the same like I did before.”

The overall tone of the article was fairly pessimistic. KFAN’s Phil Mackey noted that Kevin Slowey is a “matter of fact” personality when providing quotes in the clubhouse. And his honest explanation of his recovery is probably typical of his character. It's possible that Slowey is trying to under-promise and over-deliver. Still, with the Twins putting a great deal of confidence in Slowey’s ability to rebound, you have to consider the subtext of this refreshing honesty.

In 2009, Slowey struggled to find anything particularly useful to compliment his precision-tuned fastball. As someone without glass-breaking velocity, Slowey was reliant on spotting his fastball, deception and changing speeds. Working off of his fastball, he mixed in a balance of sliders, changes and curveballs.

As noted in his Pitching Appraisal, Slowey improved his changeup in ‘09, inciting a heartier portion of misses:

Change	Pct Thrown	Vel	WHIFF Avg
2008	7.8	82.8	.190
2009	9.2	82.7	.270

With the exception of his fastball, which was stung around the field heavily, his biggest problem was his slider. While the pitch was an above-average offering in ’08, it was an increasingly more hittable pitch (at least in terms of contact). The ailing wrist probably led to the flattening out of the pitch – losing vertical drop and adding a sweeping motion:

Slider	hBreak	vBreak	WHIFF Avg
2008	1.8	6.1	.227
2009	3.0	4.3	.160

Slowey’s statement suggesting that he doesn’t feel the same as before leaves room to wonder what the long-term effects of the surgery are. While he may be able to return, without his slider, he might not be the same pitcher. Monitoring his slider this spring will give a good inclination as to what direction he is heading towards in ’10.  

Read His Lips: No New Pitches

After leading the league in foul ball strikes in 2009, Twins opening day starter Scott Baker shrugged off the need to develop another pitch to add to his repertoire. In Charley Walters’s recent column, the Pioneer Press’s sports columnist quoted the righty as saying “No new pitches. Try to sink the ball and cut the ball and throw some breaking balls for strikes.”

This past year 35% of his strikes came in the form of “dyslexic home runs” (those not fouled off with two-strikes). When he ran the count to two-strikes – a feat he did almost better than anybody, by the way - hitters were able to make just enough contact on 48.5% of their swings to stay alive in the plate appearance and increase his pitch count totals by one. This small inefficiency may be costing the righty small potatoes in terms of his pitch totals but the extra life was enough to give hitters another opportunity to inflict damage: Ten of his 28 home runs were allowed with two-strikes on a batter.

What was the cause for all of this partial contact? Fastball usage and location.

If you review the list of the top foul-strike leaders, you’ll notice that the list shares a lot of names in common with the top fastball users.  Baker not only favored his fastball heavily overall, he turned to it 66% of the time when he was in a kill count. Additionally, he went upstairs in the zone to subdue hitters. While this was lucrative for him, striking out 36.4% of hitters when throwing high gas, it also allowed for numerous nicks and ticks to stay alive.

Given this, should Baker consider adding another pitch? After all, Joe Nathan adds pitches like a celebrity hording “Friends” on Facebook and he only assumes 5% of a season’s total batter matchups.

In short: No.

Baker comes equipped with two very formidable weapons in his arsenal. Believe it or not, he has one of the most effective fastballs in the American League. According to fangraphs.com’s weighted runs scale, his 19.8 wFB on his heater ranked just behind Justin Verlander (24.3 wFB) and Zack Greinke (25.8 wFB) among league leaders. His fastball also induces higher-than-average swing-and-misses.  On top of that, his slider is no slouch either – missing more lumber than a clear-cut forest.

In all, it’s not necessary to add a pitch that has been suggested and should continue to refine his approach using what he’s got – which is solid. Tweaking his pitches slightly can have just as effective results as adding a completely new pitch. For example, Cliff Lee’s ’08 emergence coincided with the addition of a two-seam fastball. As Baker mentioned, it getting his current set of offerings to do slightly different things, particularly with two-strikes.

OtB Twins Notes (02.22.10)

I’ll admit it, even with all of my trepidation surrounding Jim Thome’s one-dimensional abilities and power decline potential, I’ve gone on record as saying this is a good move for the team. For a low-risk contract, the roster will have a powerful pinch hitting option late in the ballgames against a large corps of right-handed closers in the American League. Remember, they lost 20 one-run games in ’09. At the time it seemed curious. After all, the Twins had a plethora of left-handed hitters including a burgeoning righty-killer in Jason Kubel entrenched at DH, Thome’s only realistic everyday playing option. It turns out, according to Kelly Thesier, the Twins front office was not necessarily targeting Thome at the time: “Smith admits Thome wasn't the ideal fit for the club, as they were seeking a right-handed bat who could play the outfield -- far from what Thome will give them.” In truth, the market wasn’t very friendly to find a player that fits that profile which led the team to Thome. Nevertheless, there remain several options available in potential minor league deals including the often injured Rocco Baldelli and the hacktastic but potent Johnny Gomes.

Without an obvious right-handed bat to assume the designated hitting duties against tougher lefties (read Sabathia comma CC), Ron Gardenhire’s lineup might be a bit more creative. Neither Jim Thome or Jason Kubel have had much success in recent years facing southpaws. Kubel had shown a brief stretch in 2009 were he hit same-sided pitching well but still wound up hitting .243/.299/.345 in 164 plate appearances. Thome demonstrated a bit more pop last year (.409 slugging) so he might be the de facto candidate to DH unless the Twins acquire a right-handed platoon option in spring training.

Now that camp has officially starter, LaVelle E Neal has nine questions facing this year’s Twins team.

Twins opening day starter, Scott Baker, told the Shreveport Times that he was feeling strong heading into spring training. A year ago, Baker experienced some tweaks in his shoulder which resulted in him missing some time towards the end of spring training and the start of the regular season. This season is different. Said the Twins veteran pitcher: "I feel like I'm right where I need to be. The more years you have under your belt, the better you know what it takes to get prepared for spring training and the upcoming season. I don't necessarily think you work any harder than in previous offseasons. You just become smarter about it."

This time last year the Twins were concerned over the shape that Jose Mijares was in. After an early outing in spring training in which Mijares appeared fatigued and winded following an inning of work, manager Ron Gardenhire quipped “He came back in a shape” suggesting that that shape might be oval. This year, things haven’t changed much. Unable to get a visa to report to TwinsFest and skipping winter ball as well, the Twins are very interested to see what kind of condition their primary lefty out of the pen is in. Even with the off-season visa delays, LaValle E Neal was told by GM Bill Smith that the organization fully expects Mijares to be in camp on-time.

Over at Twinkie Town, Jesse Lund has a great Q&A with the Twins’ assistant GM, Rob Antony. Lund covers a little bit of everything with Antony but one topic that is particularly interesting is Anthony shedding light on the Jacque Jones/Charlton Jimerson acquisitions and what it could mean for the Minnesota and Rochester outfields.

The excitement over Francisco Liriano’s winter league performance has officially reached the mainland. Not that Ron Gardenhire is believing too much of the hype just yet. According to a story in USA Today, Gardenhire told reporters that "You just have to wait and see how he carries it up to here. It's one thing pitching down there and it's another thing pitching up here. But the reports are that he's really throwing the ball well. He could be one of those ace in the holes if he can come back and bounce back, keep his arm up and the ball down." His choice of using “arm up” is interested phrase because what this suggests is that it could mean that the manager (or more likely Rick Anderson) potentially endorses scap loading that Liriano practiced in ’06. Reviewing his dominating outing on ESPN360.com, you’ll notice that his throwing elbow is below his shoulder in the cocked position (as opposed to above it like he did in ’06). Andrew Kneeland of Twinstarget.com put together a nice video compilation of his form and I left a fairly exhaustive explanation behind this phenomenon in his comment section, but in short, Liriano keeping his arm below his shoulder is far more beneficial towards his health but it seems that he has adapted to throwing with this new motion – one that may have struggled with in ‘09.    

Now that the regular season is just around the corner, Joe Christensen documents some of Target Field’s obstructed views however, this was covered extensively by BallparkMagic.com back in November of this past year. As a matter of personal experience, the first year the Twins played the Brewers at their then-brand spankin’ new Miller Park, I grabbed tickets off of the Brewers website that were advertised as “obstructed view” in left field. How obstructed could the seats be, I thought? After all, it’s a brand-new stadium.  The correct answer was “very obstructed”. I got to my seat only to find that a foul pole – one that spanned shoulder-to-shoulder on me -- was positioned less than six inches from my face and the edge of the bleacher seat. Forced to relocate to standing room only if I wanted to actually watch any of the game, I was furious about paying full retail for the ticket that was the equivalent to slapping a burlaps sack on my head as I entered the gate. Hopefully the Twins do not have anything this extreme but if they do, here’s to hoping they have the common decency to not charge full price.

Finally: Welcome pitchers and catchers.

The Splits of Nick Punto

Prior to bleating out my Nick Punto Day post a week ago, I descended into his batted ball split numbers located at fangraphs.com to see if the contains the secret to the ebb and flow of his offensive output. In his five seasons in a Twins uniform he’s gone from slightly below average hitter to a super below average hitter and back again. A team that has numerous offensive contributors in the lineup can withstand a slightly below average supplier who can compensate for his offensive shortcomings on defense. When those numbers decline into the red zone of a super below average hitter no amount of glove love can makeup for the lack of production.

As a switch-hitter, Punto has demonstrated very little to indicate that he is more or less proficient from one side of the plate or the other. He’s inept at both. Aside from having a better sample-size from the left-handed batter’s box – an additional 1,000 plate appearances – he had a very balanced equilibrium:

Punto's Splits	Career PA	Slashes	OPS
vs RHP as LHB	1,739	.244/.324/.323	.647
vs LHP as RHB	788	.256/.318/.326	.644

To be sure, there’s nothing particularly attractive about anything he’s done from either side of the plate. Any way you slice it, it’s below average production.

With the reality of Punto starting the season as a regular at third base, we need to try to identify if he is capable of rebounding or if we will witness more abysmal production.

Turning our attention to the past four seasons of his hit distribution, we can see some trends emerge that separate his better years from his putrid years. I highlighted Punto’s better year of 2006 and 2008 in italics and marked the columns that standout to me in red:

Punto's LHB	Pull	BA	LD/GB/FB	Mid.	BA	LD/GB/FB	Opp.	BA	LD/GB/FB
2009	27.6	.182	14/61.4/24.6	38	.316	21.1/52.6/26.3	34.2	.328	28.6/22.2/48.2
2008	36	.323	21.5/60.0/18.5	36	.362	13.6/44.1/42.4	24.2	.350	25.6/28.2/46.2
2007	33.3	.214	6.3/81/12.7	34.5	.329	16.3/46.5/37.2	32.1	.333	18.1/30.6/51.4
2006	33.2	.310	22.9/66.3/10.8	28	.351	23.1/56.4/20.5	35.1	.321	31.3/12.5/56.3
Punto's RHB	Pull	BA	LD/GB/FB	Mid.	BA	LD/GB/FB	Opp.	BA	LD/GB/FB
2009	4.9	.300	15/55/30	27.5	.154	7.7/57.7/34.6	52	.356	19.5/48.8/31.7
2008	28.4	.424	22.6/48.4/29	42	.360	20.8/54.2/25	29.4	.229	22.6/16.1/61.3
2007	33	.244	18.2/56.8/25	33	.196	8.5/55.3/36.2	31.6	.156	23.3/27.9/44.8
2006	21.9	.364	18.8/68.8/12.5	45.8	.348	16.4/44.8/38.8	32.2	.383	26.2/38.1/35.7

Let’s focus in on his left-handed splits first as this was where he had the majority of his at-bats. In 2009 and 2007, otherwise known as The Punto-esque Years, Punto struggled when turning on pitches from the left-handed batter’s box. In 2007, he pulled 33.3 percent of his balls in play but hit an extremely high amount of groundballs (81%). Because he held a below average BABIP on grounders that year, we need to assume that a majority of those wormburners were scooped up by infielders thus the .214 batting average. This past season Punto elevated the ball a tad more (61% GB), but had an even lower BABIP in ’09 on groundballs (.204 versus .230 in ’07) so the assumption is that a greater total of those batted balls were converted to outs thus the .182 batting average when pulling the ball. In comparison to his better years where he hit above .300 while turning on the ball, Punto had above average line drives rates resulting in a few more hits.

One thing that should jump out at you about the progression of his right-handed splits is how he went from a balanced spray-type hitter with up-the-middle tendencies to an extreme opposite field hitter. After successive years of pulling over 20 percent of his pitches, he yanked fewer than 5 percent. There are two logical conclusions that I can draw, (1) he was intentionally slashing pitches the opposite way because he was putting better wood on the ball and getting better results or (2) slowing down physically. Likewise, in his better seasons, Punto drove more line drives back up the middle whereas in his down years, his total amount through the box and on a line both dropped considerable.

There are tons of moving parts to consider when evaluating Nick Punto and projecting his future performance based on his batted ball track record. Overall, he is a groundball hitter that had disproportionately bad and good batted ball averages in the past four years. Maintaining a decent line drive rate and above average walk rate to boot, you would expect his suppressed groundball BABIP to revert back to average (.240) and thus a markedly improved season this coming year. From the left side of the dish, his numbers to center and to left field are consistent. The only discrepancy has been his ability to pull effectively. Because this was contingent on groundballs pushing into the outfield, I suspect that he will post better numbers from that side of the plate as his groundball BABIP equalizes. On the other hand, looking at the direction of some of his hit distributions, I’m inclined to believe that something else is amiss, particularly from the right-side of the plate (maybe injury or age-related decline). This is a minor concern considering that the presence of Brendan Harris on the roster gives Ron Gardenhire a good option to replace Punto against left-handed pitchers.

OtB Twins Notes (02.15.10)

I knew that the payroll had been cresting uncharted levels with each acquisition and arbitration avoidance but when I read that the Twins could have a total payroll higher than that of the Los Angeles Dodgers, I got light-headed.  Of course, this turned out to be somewhat misleading. As Joe Christensen noted in his blog following the Orlando Hudson signing, the Twins were projected to enter 2010 with a payroll near $96 million. However, Jon Weisman at Dodgers Thoughts has estimated the Dodgers’ payroll to be closer to $98 million but a substantial portion of that ($17.9 million) is to cover players that no longer play for Los Angeles. If you subtract that from their existing payroll, the Dodgers are paying their uniformed employees approximately $80.2 million – about $16 million dollars short of that of the Twins. Since USA Today started tracking organization’s payrolls in 1988, Minnesota has not outspent Los Angeles yet, and when those $17.9 million dollars worth of obligations are removed from the McCourt’s ledger, anticipate that the financial pendulum will swing back in favor of the Dodgers.

Star Tribune’s Jim Souhan tweeted that Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson told him that Scott Baker will be the team’s opening day starter this season. Baker very much deserves of this role and with the exception of a 2006 Liriano, the most qualified as well. As I noted in the pitching assessments last October, Baker was one of the game’s elite starting pitchers but whose 4.37 ERA distracts from his actual ability to dominate. In addition to possessing the second-best fastball in the American League by weighted runs standards (behind Cy Young winner Zack Grienke), Baker’s WHIP and K/BB were both seventh best in their respective categories while finishing the year 13-3 with a 3.67 ERA in his final 24 starts.

With a glove-slap to Joe Christensen, Pat Neshek checked in and provided an update to his rehab.  While Christensen chose to focus on his reported velocity (which according to Neshek was around 88-90-mph, about his career average fastball velocity) one area that is more relevant to his Tommy John recovery is the location of his pitches.  Neshek relayed that: “The hitters also said that my fastball was pretty straight when I left it up in the zone (duh) but when it was down it was very hard to see and was a great pitch for me.  After hearing this I knew I had to concentrate now on hitting my spots and keeping the ball low.” What we don’t know is if Neshek was leaving a majority of his fastballs up in the zone as opposed to low, which if he has troubles keeping the ball down might result in some ugly (albeit meaningless) spring numbers. One thing that I keep repeating is that studies have found that control is the last thing to return for TJ pitchers so monitoring where his pitches wind up in spring training rather than how quickly they get there will be more vital to his recovery.  

Fox Sports Net announced that they will be carrying four of the Twins’ spring training games, including the March 13^th meeting with the defending National League champion Philadelphia Phillies. As baseball has been gone too long and winter seems to be unending in this state, TwinsCentric has scheduled a TwinsCentric Viewing Party at Major’s Sports Café in Apple Valley. This will give local Twins fans the opportunity to congregate under one roof to watch and discuss preseason baseball with some of the collaborators of the Maple Street Press Twins Annual 2010. In addition to watching the game and basking in the glow of fellow Twins fans, TwinsCentric patrons will receive $2 pints and two-for-one appetizers as well as the opportunity to win copies of the Maple Street Press Twins Annual, Sethspeaks.net 2010 Minnesota Twins Prospect Handbook, Major’s Sports Cafe gift cards and many more Twins-related products. For more information and updates on this event as we grow closer to that March 13^th date, following TwinsCentric’s twitter feeds or friend us on Facebook.