OtB Twins Notes: Casilla's mechanics, All Star Cuddyer & scouting changes

Heading into Sunday’s game, Alexi Casilla has hit .352/.420/.465 with six doubles and a triple in his past 83 plate appearances dating back to the Arizona series, and he attributes the current streak on some mechanical changes.

Pioneer Press’s columnist Tom Powers recently spoke to Alexi Casilla about his offensive outburst. The middle infielder told him that he and hitting coach Joe Vavra had been studying the tape of his swing and it inspired him to make some changes.

According to Powers, Casilla said that “he discovered that he was standing too straight in the batter's box and that he also was slowing his swing in an attempt to hit almost every pitch to the opposite field.”

Last week based on his conversations with 1500ESPN’s Phil Mackey whom Casilla also told that he was crouching more, I dissected his swing from the left-side. Looking over the footage, Casilla’s crouch did not standout. There may be some signs of him getting lower but, to me, the real change is his elimination of the pause in his stride. Now, thanks to Powers, we know that the reason behind implementing the stride pause was to hit more balls to the opposite field.

There is a longstanding Twins tradition of getting hitters to hit the ball to the other way. Some players have thrived, others, like the left-handed slugger David Ortiz, hated being forced to slash pitches to left field. Similar to the “pitch-to-contract” mantra that frustrates Twins fans, the “go the other way” offensive philosophy has also soured many people. Using the entire field is not a bad thing, however, when a player either intentionally changes his approach to fit that mold or is encouraged by staff to make the changes only to have his performance suffer, there may be a need to stop putting square pegs in round holes.

After a truly brutal start to the season, hitting .234/.300/.336 with just 5 runs batted in on May 13, Michael Cuddyer has flipped a switch at the plate. His recent production has made some within the club feel that he could be the team’s All Star representative this year writes Patrick Reusse.

Knowing Ron Gardenhire’s affinity towards the veteran, the statement certainly shouldn’t surprise anyone – it definitely shouldn’t qualify for KFAN’s Preposterous Statement award but it would be hard to justify Cuddyer over the crop of outfielders that the AL has.

Credit Gardy for trying to up-sell the utility angle given that there are plenty of better qualified outfielders in the league both offensively and defensively, but even teammate Denard Span, who can contribute defensively, on the bases and with the stick, has compiled a better season than Cuddyer. If Ron Washington, manager of this year’s AL team, is interested in putting together the best roster for hopes of home field advantage in the World Series, he’d likely want to go with someone like Span rather than Cuddyer.

At the same time, it’s the All Star Game. Who cares?

Nevertheless, let’s not gloss over the fact that Cuddyer is actually hitting the ball extremely well as of late. In his past 12 games, Cuddyer is hitting .318/.420/.618 with 8 of his 14 hits going for extra bases. Always been one to damage left-handed pitching, Cuddyer has posted a 1.142 OPS against southpaws so far this season, a total second in the AL to the manimal known as Jose Bautista. Part of the reason behind his gaudy numbers in recent games is due to the fact that the team has squared off against a good amount of left-handed starters.

As I wrote last month, Cuddyer is also coming off of several offseason ailments that were likely impeding his success at the plate. Combining more at-bats against lefties as well as being close to 100% again, it’s not a surprising to see Cuddyer surging. The Twins will see lefties in Chicago’s Mark Buerhle and Padres’ Clayton Richard over the next four games so it is possible that Cuddyer’s streak could continue for a while long.

Star Tribune’s Jim Souhan offered a pair of interesting Twins insider nuggets in his blog on Sunday.

In his talks with Dave St Peter, the Twins president hinted at “changes in their scouting operation”. Souhan also said the word around the clubhouse was that the players and staff are not interested in getting Joe Mauer back only to have him request to sit every other day.

It sounds like the talk regarding the changes in the scouting operation was driven from Trevor Plouffe’s defensive performance. Souhan says there were other instances but Plouffe has been the memorable. Plouffe, who has been in the Twins system since 2004, demonstrated that even after eight years of development, he still lacked the basic ability to complete accurate throws from short. Pushed along because of his bat and the team’s lack of depth at the shortstop position, Plouffe’s error totals never subsided as he advanced in the system. It is a good question to ask why Plouffe’s issue was never corrected.

In terms of Mauer’s return, it will be interesting to see how it may affect the fabric of the team now that the players seemingly have been building chemistry and winning ballgames without Mauer’s on-going dramas. In discussing his rehab assignment, Gardenhire told reporters that Mauer, who they wanted to send to Rochester for a handful of games prior to a potential return on Thursday, decided that he wanted to stay in Fort Myers – where he has a home.

Gardy provided some insight on the team’s logic to move him to Rochester:"He can count on one hand how many fastballs he's seen since he's been playing down there, and that's kind of one of those reasons you might want to send him to triple-A. He might see some fastballs there. There are some veteran guys who might know how to mix it up there. Those kids, they'll just be winging breaking balls all over the place."

Clearly, that makes sense. Before bringing a player back to the highest level, you’d like to get him some time facing off against the best competition so the transition back to the lineup is smooth.

Since the beginning of June, the Twins boast baseball’s best bullpen, allowing just three runs (1.01 ERA) in 26.2 innings of work.

If you dig inside those numbers, it’s not necessarily pretty. They have walked nine batters while hitting three more and striking out just 13.  Still, compared to the hot mess in April and May, it’s nice to see some progress. The ‘pen could get stronger soon too as according to LaVelle’s blog, Glen Perkins is close to returning this week replacing either Phil Dumatrait or Chuck James. I'd keep James over Dumatrait.

Danny Valencia and the Sophomore Slump Monster

Anyone who has spent time on the TwinsCentric space on Fridays knows that I often provide breakdowns of either what is influencing their poor numbers - such as the case of Justin Morneau or Delmon Young – or what changes might have helped elevate their game – like in the instance of Jason Kubel or Alexi Casilla. However, in attempts to quantify what is going wrong with Danny Valencia, I got nothing.

The simplest explanation behind Valencia’s decline is that the balls that he put into play last year became hits at a meaty 34.5% rate and has now dropped to a below-average 24.6% mark. In short, more of his balls in play are being hit at the defense.

Now, a good portion of the baseball analytical society would see this and reach the conclusion that where Valencia was the recipient of a very good amount of luck in 2010 but he has the misfortunate of being extremely unlucky in 2011. Part of my offseason prediction of Valencia having a sophomore slump was based somewhat on this idea. But, like Branch Rickey who said that luck is the residual of design, I don’t necessarily believe in “luck”, there usually is something tangible driving a player’s hot streak or a cold snap.  

For instance, in that case of Justin Morneau, he was clearly pulling out on his swing which left the outer-half of the plate exposed. Teams aggressively targeted this area of the zone when he was batting and the poor mechanics resulted in the sizeable drop-off in his totals. Meanwhile Young was not hitting inside pitches as well as he did the previous year which may be linked to a glitch in his hands/timing that is elongating his swing. Likewise, Casilla’s offensive outbreak came alongside a change in his mechanics from the left-side that allowed him to incorporate his legs more and led to more hits.

As with the cases of the three above, there usually are signs that help to reach a diagnosis. Morneau stopped hitting the ball to the opposite field. Young stopped pulling the ball. Casilla kept getting hits. Nevertheless, when checking out the indicators that might offer some enlightenment to why Valencia’s numbers are down, luck is the closest thing to an answer. After reviewing the video, comparing pitch distribution, pitch type, swing tendencies and so on, I’m stumped as to offer an explanation as to why Valencia is hitting so poorly.  

There is no sudden increase in the amount of pitches swung at outside the strike zone, no prolific jump in ground balls or infield flies, and no freakish decline in line drives, spikes in strike outs or dips in walks. Mechanically, he has not changed anything in his swing that would lead one to believe it is influencing the way he hitting the ball. Yes, he has a lot of pre-swing hand movement - which isn’t necessarily encouraged - but it is the same thing he did in 2010. Pitchers haven’t changed their approach either, essentially feeding him the same distribution of pitches and in very similar locations.

In fact, the only thing truly different between the two seasons is that he is now engaged. As far as I know no one has done any sort of comprehesive sabermetric study on how wedding planning could affect a player's ability to get hits.

As I said before, I hate to boil down Valencia’s performance as the result of good “luck” or bad “luck” but that seems to be the biggest difference between 2010 and 2011. Consider the outcomes of his line drives:

Valencia’s Line Drives
	Liner Pct.	Batting Average on Liners
2010	19%	.771
2011	20%	.568
League Average	18%	.713

(via Fangraphs.com)

As you can see, Valencia has not had much success at getting his line drives to find open spaces. Is that the influence of bad luck? Or is that the product of opposing teams figuring out how to position their defense against him better now that they have collected data on him? Perhaps it is a little of column A and a little of column B?

Either way, it is a good sign that Valencia continues to put the ball into play the right way – on a rope. History dictates that if a player continues to hit line drives, a hefty portion of those ultimately become hits. If the line drives persist, Valencia’s overall totals should improve in the near future.  

Can Alexi Casilla sustain this pace?

It has been quite a turnaround for Alexi Casilla.

The often lamented infielder had just 19% of his balls in play become hits in April – which resulted in a pathetic .167/.227/.200 triple-slash – only to break loose offensively since the beginning of May to have 37% of his balls in play turn into hits and posting a .317/.394/.439 slash in that duration. This outburst has put Casilla’s numbers on the brink of becoming better than average for an average middle infielder.

Now, statistically-inclined thinkers may ultimately question the sample size of the 95 plate appearances heading into Sunday’s game and caution everyone that Casilla’s newfound good fortune on balls in play is likely to revert back towards his career norm of 28%. What’s more is that even during this hot streak since May 1, he’s still hitting the ball on the ground over 60% of the time with even fewer recorded line drives. The laws of batted ball nature suggest that those should start finding infield leather. Plus, using his more recent track record, such as his .232/.300/.313 batting line from 2009 and 2010, no one would expect Casilla to continue this success, right? Right?

Well, I do, at least to some degree.

Certainly Casilla’s history inspires little confidence. As mentioned above, he’s a worm-burner of hitter and is also fairly weak from the right-side. At the same time, he has a very discriminating at the plate, rarely expands the zone for pitchers and exercises a high rate of contact. All he needed was to make better contact – which he is doing at this point – and there are some indications that he could keep that up.   

Last week, 1500ESPN’s Phil Mackey caught up with Casilla and the streaking infielder told him that he and hitting coach Joe Vavra had made some changes in the cage to his mechanics that he has taken on to the field with him. According to Casilla:

"I was one day in the cage, hitting against the machine, and my stance was kind of tall…I went a little bit lower, and I was hitting the ball very good. I said, 'I should bring this to the game now.' So I feel a lot better."

Digging through the video archives, I found no real confirmation that he was getting “lower” in his stance but what did standout was the fact that Casilla has resurrected a leg-kick/weight transfer that he had implemented during his 2008 season.

Because the majority of the switch-hitting Casilla’s success and his plate appearances have come from the left-side of the plate, I focused more of my attention to those at-bats. Here are shots of Casilla’s pre-May swing:

In all three cases (all against Tampa), we see Casilla stepping towards home plate, only to stop his momentum, then restart his swing when the ball is close. In general, this method is good for high-contact and bat control but in terms of being able to drive the ball, it diminishes the contributions of the lower-half of a hitter’s body. This approach is very similar to that of Denard Span’s swing. Why has this worked better for Span than it has Casilla? To speculate, Span has quicker wrists, with a shorter, more compact swing and therefore has provided better results.

These are the same mechanics that Casilla used in 2009 and 2010. Here you see Casilla in Cleveland in 2010 (a decent year for him statistically) using the same mechanics:

Compare those to the following two shots from post-May 1:

Here you see that the front leg step and the weight transfer are fluid and in unison. Casilla is able to engage his lower-half much better. Because of that, despite putting plenty of balls on the ground, we see the ball jump off his bat much better than it had at the beginning of the season. So, while grounders still become outs at high percentage of the time, putting them into play at a greater velocity is bound to turn into hitters more frequently than those  of the slow bouncer variety (someday, Hit F/X will confirm this for me).

As I said before, this approach is reminiscent of Casilla’s mechanics in 2008, the year in which many believed he had broken through the team’s solution at second base by hitting .281/.333/.374 with 9 home runs. Here you see that very swing which is almost identical to his current model:

Like the examples from post-May 1, Casilla is using his lower-half more in his mechanics, able to generate some power (as evident by his 9 home runs that season). What is also interesting is that while Casilla swing from 2009-2011 have a propensity to have better contact, his career-best contact rate came in 2008 when he had this approach.

It is easy to remain skeptical on whether this alteration will led to sustainable production out of Casilla. Even making the changes that he has, it is near impossible for him to continue to hit safely on almost 40% of balls put into play. At some point, because Casilla has been receiving a very high portion of fastballs, opponents may alter their game plan – throwing more off-speed and breaking balls - in order to disrupt Casilla’s new approach. Or perhaps managers will decide to start using their left-handed relievers at Casilla’s spot in the lineup (which is now second) in order to turn him around and neutralize him by putting him to his inferior side.

That’s what baseball is. It is a series of adaptations from both sides. Hitters with consistent, solid mechanics and a keen understanding of the strike zone ultimately wind up sustaining their success over the course of a season. Right now, that description fits for Casilla. Had Casilla’s sudden streak come without the assistance of a change in his mechanics, I’d be more inclined to think that he would regress hard and soon. However realizing that there are some tangible, physical evidence driving this improvement I’m less prone to believe that he will experience that much of a downturn in the near future. 

Behind Delmon's mechanical malfunction

When Justin Morneau was sidelined with his season-ending concussion, the 2010 Twins could have been on the brink of folding.  With their leading hitter gone from the lineup, they could have easily slunk into the middle of the pack of the AL Central. Fortunately, players like Delmon Young were there to step up in his absence.

This season, with the world crumbing around them, Young wilted like the rest of the offense.

The expectations for Young heading into 2011 were lofty considering what was interpreted as his breakout season. However, instead of taking another step forward, Young regressed heavily at the plate. Prior to Thursday night’s game his .504 OPS is the second-lowest among outfielders with a minimum of 120 plate appearances. Clearly something is not right.

Fox Sports North analyst Roy Smalley believes he knows exactly where Young has gone astray. Recently Smalley told columnist Jim Souhan that:

“Young has too much weight on his front foot, leaving him to hit with only his hands, like a hacker with a reverse-pivot golf swing.”

Smalley might be the best person to offer an assessment of Young’s problems. After all, night in and night out at Target Field Smalley has the perfect vantage point of Young’s swing from the first base camera well. Let’s take a look at a pair of clips from Smalley’s angle:

If you look at his 2010 swing (the above clip from a home run Young hit against the Blue Jays in the Rogers Centre) you see very succinct mechanics from his upper body and his lower half. He loads his hands slightly but brings them forward extremely quick through the hitting zone and in sync with his hip rotation.

In contrast to that sweet swing, his 2011 swing (the below clip from his lone home run of the 2011 season in Arizona) you see a timing differential between his hip rotation and his hands. The back hip start turning and then you see his hands follow. Part of this is due to the fact that you can see him drop his bat slightly before bringing it forward, leading to a longer loop in his swing and giving him drag in his mechanics.

The effect that this has is that it (A) decreases his power and (B) significantly slows his bat speed down.

The decrease in power is pretty evident when you peruse his statistics. Across the board, his power numbers (slugging, isolated power, etc) have declined sharply. Meanwhile, the signs of a slower bat are apparent when you consider his struggles against fastballs this year. Last year, according to Inside Edge’s data, Young held a .334 well-hit average against fastballs. Before that he had a .324 well-hit average in ’09 and a .302 well-hit average in ’08. This season his well-hit average on fastballs has fallen to a paltry .217.

What’s more is that Young continually seems late on fastballs. His batted ball spray chart on fastballs confirms this notion that he is not able to drive the hard stuff up the middle or to left field as well as he did in 2010:

Attempting to identify the root cause is nothing but pure speculation from here on out but the issue could possibly be attributed to his oblique injury that sidelined him for a spell  or it could be the results of his off-season efforts to pull the ball more and bulk up on his upper body. As LaVelle Neal wrote during spring training:

“Looks like Young has decided to pull the ball more this year. He's stronger from the waist up and look[s] very confident after a good season in 2010. He's a little bit of a Albert Belle look to him this year. That means baseballs could be in trouble.”

Rather than using the well-timed mechanics he had in 2011 he may be trying to muscle the ball more and, as Smalley pointed out, has disengaged from his lower-half.

Young has taken plenty of flak for his mechanics in the past yet he is rumored to be pretty reluctant to talk about them. A year ago, Souhan spoke with Ron Gardenhire during Young’s hot streak. Naturally the columnist asked the manager if there were any adjustments that Young made to account for this power stroke. Gardenhire replied:

"I think it was his approach. You have to make adjustments in your approach sometimes. There were a few mechanical things he's had to work on. He'll tell you, 'No,' but we all know different."

As Nick Nelson stated recently at TwinsCentric, Young’s act may be wearing thin with the club. Meanwhile, ESPN.com’s Buster Olney reported that some baseball executives think that Young is very likely on the trade block.  But in order for the Twins to get anything in return Young needs to turn things around. The question is how do you fix a guy that doesn’t think he is doing anything wrong?

___

Reminder: Tonight the TwinsCentric group and FSN/KFAN’s Lindsey Guentzal are hosting a Twins Viewing Party at Smalley’s 87 Club. Festivities will start before the 7 PM game including food/drink specials and prizes (Twins tickets, DiamondCentric shirts, etc). The event will support the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Minnesota so please come out, have a few beers and know you are contributing to a good cause.  

Also, Game Six shirts have been printed and are now available at DiamondCentric for $17 through the weekend. Get yours today!

Twins send Liriano to the DL

Following what has become a common sight – the Twins bullpen blowing a 5-run lead against the Angels on Friday night - the Twins issued a statement saying that Francisco Liriano would be skipped in what would have been his normally scheduled start on Saturday due to a sore shoulder.

Before Monday’s game Joe Christensen relayed some grim information regarding Liriano’s progress saying:

“Liriano said his left shoulder did not feel well when he played catch before [Monday]'s game against the Tigers, so he will likely miss one more start, at least…Toward the end of batting practice today, Liriano was shagging balls in center field and having teammates throw the balls back toward the infield for him.”

So, after showing some improvement in his more recent starts against Seattle and Arizona, Liriano exits May on the 15-day disabled list. The underlying tone of this move is that it should not signify anything more than a need to give Liriano the required rest and provide Gardenhire with another option out in the ‘pen. Rather than move forward with an already depleted bullpen since Anthony Swarzak has been tapped to fill Liriano’s void for the time being, the Twins summoned reliever Anthony Slama from Rochester to take Swarzak’s place. The Liriano transaction is retroactive to May 23 so he could be ready to start again on June 6, essentially bypassing his second consecutive start. He needed another start skipped and the Twins needed an arm. Simple as that.

Of course, while I say it shouldn’t signify much of anything, there is plenty of evidence to make people wonder if there is something more substantial happening with Liriano’s arm.

Liriano entered the season not in condition to withstand the rigors of spring training. He matched that by being unable to neither work ahead of hitters nor locate the strike zone on a regular basis with his fastball when the regular season started.  As I outlined at the end of April, there were some indications that he was releasing the ball differently than his previous season which may have had some big influential factors on his overall command. On top of that, he showed some decay in his velocity as well. Given those factors, it wasn’t too hard to fathom some eventual visit to the disabled list for Liriano.

Back in February, when the Twins made it clear they were not going to pursue a long-term contract with Liriano, I was one of a handful of Twins bloggers that sided with the club on their decision. To be sure, the stance went against the grain of all that I had upheld as a statistically-oriented and data-driven individual, especially given the fact that the team would have been able to get a team-friendly deal at that point, but my research and video scouting led me to the same conclusion that the Twins reached.

One of the biggest aspects of my findings that stood out to me in terms of Liriano was this section:

“There is an on-going debate on whether or not throwing sliders takes a bigger toll on a pitcher’s arm versus the other assortment of pitches. One study conducted by Dr. James Andrews and Dr Glenn Fleisig (among others) found that there was no conclusive evidence that showed that a slider was any more or less damaging to a pitcher’s arm than a fastball, but they conceded that the small sample size gave no real insight to whether or not this is true. What they did find is that slider tends to have greater “shoulder proximal force than curveballs”. This is noteworthy because if a pitcher demonstrates improper timing in their mechanics and increases their shoulder proximal force, according to Andrews’s book “The Athlete’s Shoulder”, additional pressure is put on the bicep tendon-complex which increasingly leads to a SLAP lesion.”

So here we are two months into the season and Liriano who, time and again, has been accused of funky mechanics is now sidelined with a sore shoulder. Fortunately, the Twins did perform an MRI which did not reveal any SLAP lesions. Their analysis came back showing just slight inflammation with signs of tendinitis. Now it is completely possible that this is a blip on the radar - which he has general soreness and developed some tendinitis and the rest will heal him – but even tendinitis, which is common, has a funny way of lingering and disrupting performances. For instance, Glen Perkins had been diagnosed with tendinitis in July of 2009 and – despite coming back in 2010 - he never really recovered his stuff until the 2011 season.

With their position in the division, the Twins may have wanted Liriano to string together a few more starts like the ones in Seattle or Arizona in order to increase his trade value by the deadline. This injury combined with his lackluster performance could dampers those plans.  Certainly the hope is that with the rest and some anti-inflammatory treatment he’ll be ready in a week’s time, however, given the red flags throughout this season, there is a part of me that wouldn’t be surprised if Liriano’s injury does not wind up more extensive time on the DL before the year's end.