Bank on a better second-half for Liriano

The Twins starting pitching staff sputtered into the All-Star Break abused and confused in the month of July. The initial start by Kevin Slowey on the other side of the Midsummer Classic did little to reassure the team that things were going to turn around quickly either. In yet another abbreviated start, Slowey allowed five earned runs on nine hits in just three innings. This performance aided in increasing the starting staff’s ERA to a ghastly 6.71 for the month – the second-worst in baseball, ahead of only the Toronto Blue Jays – while sinking the team to a 3-8 record over the past 11 games and distancing themselves from view of the division-pacing White Sox.

 

Now, once again, the Twins turn to Francisco Liriano to see if the southpaw can stop the bleeding.

 

In the TwinsCentric Trade Deadline Primer, I stated that “Liriano might be one of the AL’s better starters in the first-half.” While some might disagree with that assessment, especially after his most recent start, the facts show that Liriano clearly possesses ace-like qualities:

 

• He has the third-highest strikeouts per nine innings in the American League (9.81) behind only Toronto’s Brandon Morrow (9.99) and Los Angeles’s Jared Weaver (10.19).
• His groundball rate (50.9%) is the 12^th best in the American League.
• His 0.17 home runs per nine innings is the lowest average in baseball. In fact, Liriano’s two home runs allowed are the fewest among pitchers that have thrown 100 innings to date.
• His 12% swinging strike rate is the also the best in baseball, putting him ahead of such reputable arms like Tim Lincecum, Josh Johnson, Jared Weaver and Clayton Kershaw. This is the indications of some seriously filthy stuff. 

Because of his high volume of strikeouts, ability to keep the ball in the ballpark and regularly inducing ground balls, Liriano’s turned in the best performance by an American League pitcher when using the xFIP statistic (2.97). Nevertheless, in spite of this high-caliber performance, the lefty has been shackled to 6-7 record and higher ERA (3.87) than xFIP would expect.

 

If he’s so dominating, why is he the owner of a losing record and a steadily rising ERA?

 

There are two factors impeding him from achieving those superior numbers. The first of which is that amount of balls skirting past defenders. Liriano’s carrying around the league’s most top-heavy batting average on balls in play (.361). Depending on your religious beliefs, this is a strong indicator that either his defense is not supporting him or the baseball gods are directing more balls into vacant real estate. As a groundball-oriented pitcher, Liriano should have a significantly lower BABIP than the one he currently owns.

What we see from his splits below, regardless of the method they are directed into play, Liriano’s averages are much higher than the norm:

 

BABIP	Liriano 2010	League Average
Line Drive	.786	.722
Ground Ball	.245	.225
Fly Ball	.244	.142
Overall	.361	.294

 

Instead of finding leather, the dinks, doinks, gorks and quails have nestled into areas of the field not patrolled by the Twins defense. Per usual, these numbers have a tendency to regress back towards the average. The back-half of the schedule should correct some of the defense’s (or baseball gods’) malfeasances, particularly with a healthy J.J. Hardy rounding out the infield.

 

The second factor, equally responsible for his misfortunes in the record department, is his lack of offensive support. The Twins have scored two runs or less in six of his 17 starts. Presently, Liriano’s 3.8 runs per game qualifies as the 10^th-lowest amount of help in the AL. For a team that typically scores 4.6 runs per game, the Twins should provide Liriano with extra runs in the second-half of the year that they failed to supply in the first-half.

 

Despite the perception of him wilting under big-game pressure, Liriano retains many of the traits of a rotational ace. His stuff this year has proven to be overwhelming as he’s dispatching opponents at a torrid pace while avoiding hard contact. With improvements in these two areas, coupled with his continued dominance at the plate, Liriano should easily outperform his first-half numbers.

Joe Mauer's pull power?

For the second day in a row, Star Tribune columnist Jim Souhan has taken aim at Minnesota’s All-Star catcher, this time taking an opportunity to highlight what he believes are the reasons behind Joe Mauer’s decline in productivity. Souhan indicates several factors contributing to this drop-off, noting “the ballpark effect”, “the scouting effect”, “the position effect” and “the contract effect”.

Although some of the scribe’s offerings have some merit (for example, teams have shifted the shortstop almost on top of second base when Mauer is batting to cut down the hits up the middle and this plays a role in his batting average), others are more speculative (the contract effect is less likely to do with the “pressures of a contract” but rather the team that signed him did so when he was overachieving and thus likely to have a regression the following season). Still, there is one declaration that Souhan made that caught my attention which fell under “the scouting effect”:

“When Mauer was at his best last season, he was capable of pulling the ball with power; he has not shown an ability to do so this season.”

At best, this statement is shoddy reporting and at worst it is patently false. Either way, it was lazy.

While Mauer demonstrated a decent ability to hit the ball to all fields well, he did not necessarily pull the ball with power. Everybody who has reviewed his numbers last year would agree that Mauer’s power was generated when driving the ball to left field, not pulling the ball. In fact, just eight of his 59 extra base hits (14%) were pulled into right field.

According to Baseball-Reference.com’s split breakdown, Mauer’s power numbers were well above the league average when driving the ball to the opposite field but well beneath the norm when yanking the ball to the right:

Slugging Percentage	Pulled	Opposite
Mauer 2009	.553	.912
Mauer 2010	.500	.558
League LHB	.766	.473

Obviously his power was most prevalent when going away and has suffered the most from ’09 to ‘10. After all, 16 of his 28 home runs were opposite field shots helping to bolster that slugging percentage. Additionally, Mauer’s power results when pulling the ball this year are almost as good as his previous season, if not better. While his slugging percentage is down to an even .500, he’s knocked seven of his 29 extra base hits to right (25%). So suggesting that he is not pulling the ball for power this year is misleading.

What’s more is that by the virtue of the manner in which he was putting the ball into play, Mauer has demonstrated little that he has a tendency to hit the ball for much power when pulling in the first place.

For his career, Mauer’s hit a groundball to the right side 70% of the time when making contact in play. During the season in which he was supposedly “pulling the ball with power”, the Twins catcher bounced the ball 77.6% of the time in that direction. Last year, left-handed batters as a whole hit the ball on the ground 59% of the time. It’s hard to accumulate desirable power numbers when the ball is kicking up dirt. Nevertheless, as you can see, there is little evidence separating what he did last year in his MVP year when turning on a pitch from this year:

Batted Balls - Pulled	Line Drive%	Groundball%	Fly ball%
2009	14.5%	77.6%	7.9%
2010	16.2%	76.5%	7.4%
Career	15.9%	76.5%	7.6%

Without question, the fan base, front office and coaching staff are all seeking answers to the team’s most well-paid hitter’s offensive doldrums; however, those numbers didn’t drop-off because he has stopped hitting the ball for power when pulling it as the popular columnist noted. Ironically, if Mauer would like to beat the defensive maneuvering that has quieted his riot thus far in 2010, hitting for power to right field could led to alterations in the opposing team’s approach and thereby opening up the middle of the infield for him more often.

Then again, simply continuing to hit the ball hard all over the field will undoubtedly lead to more hits. 

Available: The 2010 TwinsCentric Trade Deadline Primer

As it stands, in addition to the current division leaders, twelve teams are within five games of first-place creating a market in which 16 teams could potentially be buyers in the next two weeks as the non-waiver trade deadline rapidly approaches. In the next fortnight, there will be a deluge of rumors, hypothetical scenarios and actual trades that inundate all mediums. To be sure, it is a dizzying time of year to be a baseball fan.

For example, last Friday the day began with Cliff Lee in a Seattle Mariners uniform but ended with him relocating to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Somewhere in the middle of all that, there was a point in which the baseball world was convinced the Yankees would land the southpaw in exchange for catching prospect Jesus Montero. Some of baseball’s most prominent reporters all but confirmed this transaction.

But before you could finish your Jimmy John’s sandwich, that all changed.

Suddenly, the Mariners were no longer interested in the catching prospect and were broadcasted to be discussing terms with yet another team. Undoubtedly, every fan following this action unfold quickly did a mental inventory of their team’s farm system and tried to determine if there was enough prospect in stock to land the coveted ace. Twins fans held their collective breaths hoping that Wilson Ramos’s slump did not deter the Mariners from wanted the best trading chip in the organization. Was he enough? Who could have better chips on the table? Ultimately, the Rangers won the auction, landing Lee with a cache of prospects that included the switch-hitter first baseman Justin Smoak, and have changed the dynamic of the franchises both presently and in the future.

So unless you are nerdy enough to have Jimmy John’s delivered so you don’t have to miss a tweet as the transaction was constructed, you probably don’t have the time to dig through all 32 teams and figure you their needs, their commodities and their ability to absorb a budget. With that in mind, we at TwinsCentric enlisted some of the internet’s best writers to help condense all of this into an easily digestible and accessible 160-page PDF document: The 2010 Trade Deadline Primer.  

These intelligent writers and wonks have provided us with an exclusive firsthand account of their respective team’s needs, trading chips and their specific targets. In additional to the individual teams, we’ve isolated all the potential trade targets league-wide and provided a cliff’s notes scouting report and analysis on the player. Likewise, we also have done the same with baseball’s top prospects as these are often the unknown pawns that wind up emerging as frontline contributors in no time. As names are bandied around on Twitter or MLBTradeRumors.com, you can quickly review these sections to see what the experts think about his ability.    

Naturally, we did not farm out the writing for the hometown team. We’ve got all the information you want on the Minnesota Twins including a team summary by the always level-headed Nick Nelson, prospects covered by the minor league maven Seth Stohs, and a sharply-penned essay on the team’s future payroll (absolutely vital in shaping the available trade targets) by the entertaining and educational John Bonnes. Finally, I’ve contributed the team’s report card grades along with a first-half write-up on the roster’s individuals, attempting to explain their performances and what we may expect in the back-half of the year. Between the four of us and the stable of writers, we spoon feed you all the background you need to know to help you formulate a well-informed opinion on all trades, rumored or otherwise.

Lastly, ESPN.com’s Rob Neyer, whose resume includes working with Bill James, STATS, Inc as well as authoring numerous books on his own, lends his writing chops to the Primer in the foreword. His contribution to the publication added flavor from a professional individual that shares the same passion for the game and the intricacies of team-building that is enjoyed by the rest of us that do this more or less for free.

So as the activity intensifies in the coming weeks, be a proactive fan: Purchase the 2010 Trade Deadline Primer.

Trading Kevin Slowey?

In the midst of speculations involving Seattle’s Cliff Lee, one major league source has cited the Mariners’ interest in Kevin Slowey as a key piece of a potential deal. As the Mariners compile their due diligence, hoping to leverage the trade deadline’s best trading chip for the highest possible return, those that are in the “Acquire Cliff Lee Now” camp should hope that Seattle’s scouts were not paying attention to the Twins starter the past several weeks: In his last five starts, Slowey has been tagged for 35 hits in 24.2 innings of work leading to 24 runs scored.

While Lee would improve a rotation that is down on its luck at the moment, the long-term sustainability of the organization has to be considered when measuring any trade. Slowey is still young, affordable and has compiled an impressive minor league track record that would suggest this is a hiccup. Then again, with the recent surgically repaired wrist less than a year ago, Slowey may be experiencing difficulties adjusting to what he described in the spring as a new sensation and wondered aloud if he would “ever feel the same like I did before.”

The obvious reality is that his stuff just isn’t quite there in 2010. While he is still master of the strike zone’s domain - throwing strikes regularly and working ahead of hitters - the opposition is raking line drives and deep fly balls all over league. As a point of order, Slowey has always been near the bottom of the league in inducing worm-burners, but this season his groundball rate has sunk to a new low of 27% - the lowest in baseball by a wide margin.

The added elevation off of opponents' bats correlates with the loss of movement in his breaking pitches. Although his fastball remains a very effective pitch in his repertoire, his secondary pitches, the curveball and slider, has not had the same results from prior seasons:

Slowey’s Curve/Sliders	Pct Thrown	Chase%	Miss%	Groundball%
2010	14%	16%	11%	28%
2009	21%	30%	19%	41%
2008	23%	36%	25%	40%

(via MyInsideEdge.com)

Essentially, hitters have strayed after fewer out-of-zone pitches and missed less frequently. In short, he’s not fooling anybody with the breaking action.

Reviewing his pitch f/x virtualization charts - which are the average path that a pitcher’s pitches take from the release point to the catcher’s mitt, as shown from a bird’s-eye view – reveals that his arsenal is not producing the same movement as it had in the past. Give additional attention to the green diamond, his slider:

Slowey - 2008

 

             

Slowey - 2009

            

      

Slowey - 2010

   

As you can derive from those graphs, on average, Slowey’s non-fastball offerings are flat and catching far too much of the strike zone. As a result, hitters have been able to cause damage by posting a 1.095 OPS on his curve/slider (versus a .609 league-average OPS on those types of pitches). Losing confidence in a pitch (or pitches) for a control-orient pitcher can have nasty consequences. As Jesse Lund at TwinkieTown.com pointed out, Slowey basically eliminated throwing any semblance of a breaking pitch in his most recent start in Toronto, throwing 87 fastballs out of 98 pitches. This pitch selection led to two home runs and nine hits in 6.1 innings in Canada.

The real question then is if this is a temporary setback or if it is indeed the reprecussions of his wrist surgery that may have long-lasting effects. Basically, would trading Slowey now be a "sell-low" maneuver for the Twins, allowing the Mariners benefit from his continuing production when he fully recovers, or would it be an unloading of a commodity that is slightly damaged and may never live up to expectation? The answer to that is the difference between a bad trade and a good one.

Running themselves out of first place?

The Twins have developed a reputation for being a team that hustles all over the base paths, implementing an aggressive approach, and taking an extra 90 feet or more when the opportunity presents itself. More than that, they’ve often been lauded as doing so intelligently. According to an audit of the team’s baserunning on BillJamesOnline.net, the Twins’ results on the bases have radically changed from the prior two seasons.  

In 2009, the Twins scampered around the bases fairly liberally. Through their efforts, the team netted 42 additional bases going first to third, second to home and first to home while avoiding outs. Factoring in the 72% success rate of their stolen bases and the 2009 team gained approximately 63 bases above average. The year prior to that, the Twins netted 49 additional bases through hustle and another 18 by way of theft. This gave the Twins a positive 67 bases. This was good enough for sixth and third in the American League in those consecutive seasons. This season, the Twins have posted a -20 mark, the second-lowest total in the AL and their worst since the disappointing 2005 season.

Minnesota Twins

1st to 3rd   2nd to Home 1st to Home DP Bases BR BR SB Net Year Adv Opp Adv Opp Adv Opp Opp GIDP Taken Outs Gain Gain Gain 2002 72 222 105 186 25 68 1148 121 175 21 +33 -45 -12 2003 81 238 128 208 25 59 1273 139 186 28 +31 +6 +37 2004 63 218 105 172 25 65 1157 130 168 44 -6 +24 +18 2005 59 243 109 195 18 62 1089 154 153 46 -65 +14 -51 2006 87 275 131 218 24 58 1193 163 186 47 -10 +17 +7 2007 89 240 119 198 26 64 1159 148 154 60 -55 +52 -3 2008 82 245 139 233 28 66 1254 144 211 47 +49 +18 +67 2009 94 328 130 208 33 72 1265 146 197 41 +42 +21 +63 2010 48 161 68 113 20 49 625 95 90 26 -32 +12 -20 Totals 675 2170 1034 1731 224 563 10163 1240 1520 360 -13 +119 +106 31% 60% 40% 12%

    (via billjamesonline.net)

What’s more is that this drop in production on the bases could correlate with the depressed scoring totals overall. Consider this, in 2008 and 2009, the Twins plated more than 5 runs per game. This year, the scoring total has dropped to roughly league average at 4.6 runs per game. If you look over the past several years, a pattern emerges:

Twins on the Bases:	Net Gain on Bases	Runs Scored Per Game
2004	+18	4.8
2005	-51	4.3
2006	+7	4.9
2007	-3	4.4
2008	+67	5.1
2009	+63	5.0
2010	-20	4.6

The explanation for such a downturn in the 2010 Twins’ Net Gain involves the higher volume of Twin-killings. While averaging a 12% double play rate from 2002 to 2010, the team is currently posting a 15% rate this season. These two-for-ones have erased numerous runners and muted potential rallies. The simple solution to this problem is to actually get more aggressive, such as starting runners when groundball-prone hitters like Joe Mauer are batting in double play situations.

Likewise, the Twins coaching staff have failed on several occasions to realize the limitations of their players. Jason Kubel leads the team with six outs on the bases, two of which were the results of Kubel getting burned at home plate. 

While aggressiveness on the bases is still very much a part of this year’s team’s DNA, the outs on the bases has adversely affected the scoring. Part of the blame goes towards not altering their approach in double play situations and not understanding their personnel’s limitations (a few of Kubel’s six outs on the bases is due because of poor decisions to send him). Once again, it goes back to being intelligent on the bases. Improving the efficiency by avoiding outs would greatly assist in bolstering the bottom-line.