Nick Blackburn has it figured out.

While the list of second-half heroes for the Twins is expansive and growing with each series, another late addition to that catalog deserves recognition.

Nick Blackburn started the year signing a four-year extension and demonstrated his appreciation by getting lit up in the season’s first month. A reassuring May was followed by an equally disappointing June and by July, the financially-secure Blackburn was suddenly a candidate for a demotion.

Reports emerged that Blackburn was not following his pitching coach’s instructions and not changing speeds adequately. As you can see from the velocity chart below, Blackburn’s velocity range was muted in comparison to his two previous seasons in a Twins uniform:

Hitters jumped all over his stuff in July and were waxing the ball all over the field. Without his groundballs abilities, Blackburn was like a hiker without a compass – he was lost. In all, the right-hander tossed 104 innings, allowing 19 home runs coupled with a pitiful 35-to-27 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

After being shuttled to Rochester in late July with explicit instructions to “figure it out”, Blackburn has shown that he has definite solved his problems. Since his return, Blackburn has worked 31.2 innings, allowed just six earned runs (1.71 ERA) and has posted a 20-to-7 strikeout-to-walk ratio. His results since his recall have been that much more impressive considering the injuries to Scott Baker and Kevin Slowey could have placed the team in peril during the playoff push.

What had made this all possible is that the groundball pitcher rediscovered how to incite groundballs again: 

The catalyst behind this scorched earth increase is basic – Blackburn is showing hitters a variety of speeds rather than inundate them with the fastball.

Nick Blackburn’s repertoire:
	Groundball%	Fastball%	Changeup%	Slugging
April-July	49.6%	67.3%	12.0%	.561
August-Present	55.8%	60.9%	20.9%	.259

Because he is opting to throw more off-speed pitches, opponents are no longer squaring up on his two-seam fastball. Instead, they often find themselves out-front on a swing and wind up beating the ball into the ground rather than elevating the pitch as they did when Blackburn was extremely transparent in the first half of the season.  

In addition to the groundballs, this approach has also led to a greater influx of swinging strikes. In the first half, Blackburn’s failure to get any hitters to miss his pitches was puzzling. While he was never a swing-and-miss type pitcher, in the past Blackburn managed to keep his swinging strike rate near the league average (10% career rate heading into 2010). By the end of July, Blackburn had inspired only 3% of total swings to miss, well below the 15% norm. Since the return, the righty has prompted 8% swinging strikes – leading to a respectable 5.8 K/9 ratio in that time.

While the Twins look to reduce that Magic Number, Blackburn will take the rubber again tonight against Oakland - a team that had throttled him for five runs on 10 hits in 2.2 innings in June. Clearly, this is not the same Blackburn that faced the A’s at the beginning of the summer and because of his swift turnaround, Blackburn has undoubtedly earned the consideration for a postseason starter.

Why did Flores favor his fastball?

In the bottom of the 11^th on Saturday night’s tryst with Cleveland, Ron Gardenhire summoned left-handed specialist, Randy Flores, out of the pen and deployed him to dispose of the Indians’ two high-profile lefties in Shin-Soo Choo and Travis Hafner. Only Flores, the pitcher claimed off the Rockies roster in August to specifically retire left-handed opponents, failed to meet his job description. 

Favoring his fastball, Flores allowed back-to-back singles by Choo and Hafner and quickly put the Twins in jeopardy of potentially losing two consecutive games to the lowly Indians. Only a well-concocted and executed defensive play combined with Matt Guerrier’s pitching saved Flores from being responsible for allowing what would have been the winning run to reach base.

According to La Velle E Neal, the manager took exception to Flores’s decision to throw fastballs to the left-handed pair rather than his slider. “If I wanted a fastball thrown I would have put a right-hander in,” commented Gardenhire. La Valle continued by saying:

A White Sox scout here said [on Sunday] that all the scouts in the stands were wondering the same thing. Twins catcher Joe Mauer was calling for breaking balls but Flores was shaking him off. Flores told Gardy that he had been giving up hits off his breaking balls lately.

When thrown effectively, sliders will break out of the zone down-and-away from opponents and incite either empty swings or weak contact on out-of-zone balls. By not having the confidence in his slider to throw it to Choo or Hafner, Flores made the admission that his ability to retire hitters has greatly diminished. Since his acquisition he’s only been asked to take care of 13 batters, eight of which were left-handed. Of the eight, he has now only successfully retired one.

What was Flores's reasoning behind not throwing a slider (or curve for that matter) under those circumstances to Choo and Hafner?

"We talked about it,'' Gardenhire said. "He told me he was being really stubborn because he's given up a couple hits on breaking balls. So he went out there and was stubborn."

Admittedly, Flores does have an acute self-awareness as his last three sliders that have been put into play have resulted in hits. Left-handed opponents are slugging .615 against his slider this year as well – the second-highest mark among southpawed relievers – so his decision to shake off Joe Mauer has merit. Meanwhile, same-sided opponents have slugged just .333 off of his fastball. Then again, even with that sort of logic, this behavior does not appease the manager:

"That's really overthinking," Gardenhire said. "He really wants to be part of this and do his job but you can't overthink these things."

When the Twins picked up Mahay from the Royals late last year, the first thing they did was convince him to throw his slider more frequently. Mahay went from dishing out his slider just 19% of the time while in Kansas City to chucking it 32% of the time in Minnesota. Not surprising, his batting average allowed dropped from .321 to .216. Unlike Mahay, whom the Twins were successful at persuading him to throw his slider regularly, Flores does appear completely onboard with this policy.

Of course, not throwing this pitch would make him an outsider among the bullpen ranks as the Twins relievers serve up more sliders than your standard White Castle. Among the 32 teams, Minnesota’s bullpen tosses sliders 28.2% of the time – the second most in baseball behind the Chicago Cubs. Dating back to 2005, the Twins have been at the top of the league in amount of sliders thrown. Clearly, this is a philosophical decision to have relievers that favor this type of pitch. Which is presumably why Gardenhire was upset over Flores's decision to shake off Mauer: The Twins have a gameplan and would like their pitchers to execute said gameplan.

What’s more is that it works for them. Using Fangraphs.com’s Pitch Value total (more information on that statistic here), the Twins’ relievers are 35.8 runs above average when throwing their sliders which is the best in baseball. This is an outstanding figure, meaning that the Twins are retiring a lot of their opponents when using this pitch. But for his part Flores has been a detriment when throwing his, contributing -1.2 runs to the total when throwing his slider since coming over to the Twins.

Needless to say, this appearance and the ensuing response from the manager may have a seriously negative effect on the 34-year-old lefty. With left-handers Jose Mijares and Brian Fuentes both returning from injuries and both being better options to retire lefties, Flores’s window opportunity to demonstrate that he can be useful component on the team’s playoff roster may have closed on Saturday night.

Hardy will be back next year

In last night’s 10-3 routing over the wayward Kansas City Royals, the Twins had limelight contributions from key players like Delmon Young and yet (another) epic blast by Jim Thome. Perhaps overshadowed by the two sluggers were the three RBIs provided off the bat of shortstop J.J. Hardy.

To be frank, Hardy’s first season as a Twin has been one that has been all kinds of enigmatic.

When the Twins received Hardy, they acquired a downgraded product. Hardy’s swing was a hot mess and he was shipped to AAA in the Brewers organization to work on his approach in 2009. Convinced they could attend to Hardy’s mechanical needs, the Twins were willing to take on the challenge of rebuilding what was once an elite shortstop. The implemented changes are very apparent but the actual results have been very much connected to his health in what has been a segmented season.

In his first segment, from the beginning of the season until May 4, Hardy demonstrating little in the way of on-base abilities but managed to drop a few bombs and collect several doubles on his way to a .250/.299/.400 start. A bruised hand, gained when Hardy was sliding into third in Detroit, sidelined the shortstop of a portion of time in the early going and potentially stymied his progress with the new mechanics.

After the breather, Hardy came back at the end of May only to figure out that his wrist was still not yet 100%. In those 40 plate appearances, Hardy recorded just five hits and one extra base hit (a double). Concerns over the wrist landed him on the disabled list for the second time in the season.

Unlike his initial stint on the DL, Hardy was given the opportunity to heal (along with a refreshing cortisone shot), and his return during the Fourth of July weekend proved to be the jumpstart he needed to make everything click at the plate. Since his July 3 return, Hardy has batted .303/.353/.428 with a pair of home runs and 11 doubles in 172 plate appearances.

Hardy’s truncated season can be viewed in a myriad of ways. If you are looking at the sum, obviously the numbers are disappointing. His overall .262/.312/.383 batting line is a far cry from the anticipated return to his pre-2009 form. At the same time, when you consider the advancements the 27-year-old has made adapting to refurbished mechanics as well as battling through injuries, Hardy’s season is much more reassuring that he can be an above average offensive contributor out of a historically defensive-oriented position.

J.J. Hardy’s Split Season
	BA	OBP	SLG	WPA
First Half	.226	.268	.340	-.548
Second Half	.305	.362	.435	.118

Above all, Hardy’s first-half of the season presumably lowers his earnings potential that he could have achieved had he posted numbers similar to his second-half throughout the duration of the season. While he might make upwards of $6 million in 2011, it may prove to be a solid value. No doubt, the Twins will have J.J. Hardy at short again next season, even with the opportunity to non-tender him and skim some off the future payroll.

How about that Jim Thome fella?

Now that the season’s almost done, I can finally bring myself to admit it.

I was wrong about Jim Thome.

Back in January, I took a cautionary stance on the signing of the designated hitter. While he still had the same eagle-eyed approach at the plate, the biggest reason I urged people to exercise caution on the Thome acquisition was that his ability to pull the ball last year had completely evaporated. To me, this suggested age and injuries had taken a toll on the big slugger’s body and that it was just a matter of time before he would become just bench-filler.

In 2009, just a handful of Thome home runs left the yard on the right side of the field, his lowest mark of his career. At 38 years old and a track record of back injuries piling up, it was easy to associate this with an overall decline. Needless to say, Thome’s symbolic shot off the flag pole deep in right field on Monday afternoon sent a clear message: Jimmer’s is just fine.

This season, the now 40 year old Thome has been able to generate power once again to the right field portion of the ballpark, launching seven home runs in that direction as well as producing a .769 slugging percentage:

Jim Thome’s Pull Power
Season	Pulled HR%	Pulled SLG%
2008	41%	.685
2009	17%	.520
2010	33%	.769

Not long ago, in a recent Sunday Night Baseball broadcast, commentator Joe Morgan also echoed this sentiment about Thome’s inability to pull the ball. Morgan said that he noted last season that Thome’s bat speed was slowed and thus was unable to turn on an inside pitch. In Morgan’s view, Thome was in the twilight of his career when playing with the Dodgers.

In a rare occurrence of a blind squirrel finding a nut, it appears that Morgan was right. According to Inside Edge’s database, Thome had not handled anything thrown inside particularly well the previous two seasons, posting well-hit averages below the league’s average.

Of course, like almost everything else Morgan usually says, it was proven to be false. Thome is absolutely destroying anything that flies within that inner-half of the plate:

Jim Thome and the Inside Pitch
Season	Well-Hit Average (Inside)
2008	.056
2009	.052
2010	.133
MLB Average	.078

Overall, Thome’s power has had a remarkable rebound. Research showed that his power was slowly decreasing as his isolated power (slugging minus batting average) numbers had fallen from .287 in ’07 to .258 in ’08 to .232 in ’09. This was yet another indication that Thome was potentially slowing down. Clearly, Thome has proven the critics (and, without a doubt, me) wrong there. In just a shade under 300 plate appearances, Thome has produced a .346 isolated power – his highest since 2002 when he was still in a Cleveland Indians uniform.

Whatever the reason might be behind this resurgence – health, exercise regiment, coaching – Thome’s been able to rediscover the approach that has made him feared by opposing pitchers. He's been a blessing to this lineup and the Twins should consider themselves fortunate he fell to them this past offseason. 

Blackburn changes things up

In the middle of July, mired in a five-game stint in which he had allowed 28 earned runs in 22.2 innings pitched, Nick Blackburn was desperately in need of some re-tooling. The problem was fairly evident: he simply was not changing speeds enough. 

This was something that pitching coach Rick Anderson encouraged as far back into the season as June. At that time, opponents were slaughtering his fastball. Even with the mounting evidence and direction from his coaching staff, Blackburn stuck to his two-seam fastball that continued to be belted across the universe.

Now, after Saturday’s 1-0 victory over Seattle, Blackburn has made two consecutive quality starts. In those outings, the righty has worked 15.2 innings, allowing 10 hits while striking out 11 and walking two. This resurgence, notes La Velle E Neal, stems from Blackburn rekindling his relationship with the changeup, “tinkering” with the pitch in his starts in Rochester.

Looking back at his pitch usage, the data confirms that he has used the changeup more frequently since his recall:

Blackburn’s Assortment:	Fastball	Changeup	Curve
8/28 @SEA	58	28	11
8/23 @TEX	61	20	9
7/28 @BAL	20	6	7
7/18 vs CWS	50	11	10
7/10 @ DET	53	4	5

(via MyInsideEdge.com)

                     

Said Blackburn after this past weekend’s near complete-game, shutout against Seattle: 

"Joe [Mauer] and I had these guys off balance, and they just weren't putting good swings on the ball. I was throwing pitches down the middle and they were looking for something else, and it was good. It was fun.''

Essentially, this was the byproduct of changing speeds better. As I stated back in July: 

“If you miss your spots, as Blackburn has done so routinely recently, the damage may be minimized by messing with the hitters’ timing. If you are missing spots and throwing at the same speed constantly, professional hitters will hammer those pitches. While location remains supremely important, if there is a deviation in velocity or break, this may incite hitters to commit too early to a pitch they would otherwise drive, turning it over on the ground. When Blackburn was tearing through opponents in May, he rarely showed the same reliance on his fastball in succession.”

In order to continue this success into the fall, Blackburn needs to commit to varying his speeds consistently. Good start so far.