Nishioka makes strides from left side

Through the first 20 games in his short career, some pundits were already labeling Tsuyoshi Nishioka a “bust” and a “mistake” by the Twins front office. There were little indications that he would be someone who could handle playing at the highest level of professional baseball. Defensively, he played like with the jitteriness of someone on 27 cups of caffeinate crack while offensively, major league pitchers – particularly those of the right-handed variety – were chewing him up and spitting him out.

Perhaps because of JJ Hardy’s thunderous performance with his new team or Trevor Plouffe’s continued decimation of International League pitching, scrutiny over Nishioka’s lack of offensive contributions has taken center stage. While his numbers are still depressing, there is evidence that he might be capable for turning things around.

In the beginning of the season, Nishioka’s one-foot-out-of-the-box style of hitting from the left-side was easily defused by a steady stream of pitches on the outer-half of the plate. Scouts clearly saw this flaw in his game and opponents went to work exploiting this weakness:

Tsuyoshi Nishioka’s Pitch Location (Left)
Inside	Middle	Away
22	51	139
14%	23%	63%

(data from joelefkowitz.com)

With his momentum taking his body towards first, the switch-hitting infielder could do little but dribble and doink the deluge of fastballs and off-speed pitches with minimum oomph. Below is a prime example of this in action. The Giants’ Ryan Vogelsong runs a fastball down and away which Nishioka – whose weight is already moving towards first base when contact is made – bounces it innocuously enough to short:

 

After several weeks of watching this transpire, at the end of June, manager Ron Gardenhire had enough of Nishioka’s left-handed approach:

"He drifted off the ball again tonight. He's got to stay there. He can't drift off like that."

Helpless at the plate, with the language barrier - in addition to a technology barrier – the Twins seemed to have their own internal issues attempting to communicate with the scuffling rookie. Despite all of the obstacles, it appears that the team has found a way to get the message through to Nishioka. Not long after that, Nishioka appears to have made two changes that have provided the team with some reassuring signs of progress.

Posted in Joe Christensen’s Around the Majors blog, Amelia Rayno and Alex Prewitt wrote that Twins hitting coach, Joe Vavra, had provided the shortstop with some psychological and mechanical tips – the latter of which Nishioka did not care to divulge. In spite of the secrecy, after watching him since the Rays series and from consulting the recent clips of his swing compared to earlier cuts, we find that from the left-side of the dish, Nishioka has made an alteration that should help improve his overall coverage.

Here is a clip from April:

 

Compare that to last night’s swing:

 

In the first clip at Yankee Stadium, you see Nishioka swinging his front leg open more, planting the right foot towards the first base line. This motion already sets him up for struggles when being pitched away – and that is before the problems piled on when the rest of his body begins to drift off toward that direction in mid-swing. The second clip of Nishioka’s single back up the middle last night shows him striding and planting his lead foot towards the pitcher, keeping his front-side in more. This gives him the capacity to cover the entire plate. After all, look how much closer he ends up at the plate in comparison to the above clip in San Francisco.

The second change in what is a giant step forward for the rookie is his drastic reduction in the amount of pitches chased on the outer-half. While pitchers are still trying to work him away, Nishioka has begun to lay off those extremely tough pitches just off the plate.

The charts below show the location of the pitches Nishioka has swung at (viewed from a catcher’s perspective). What we see is that from April through June (top chart), Nishioka offered at plenty of the pitches on the far side of the zone. While those pitches are within the strike zone, they are very difficult pitches to hit well – a “pitcher’s pitch” as Bert would say. Since the beginning of July (bottom chart), he has refrained from swinging at those pitches.

 

In essence, Nishioka has made improvements twofold. The first being the mechanical adjustment that allows him to cover the zone better. As noted above, he is driving toward the pitcher more with his weight and has effectively increased his plate coverage. The second is that he is simply recognizing which pitches he can and cannot handle. So while he may be able to put that fastball on the black into play, the results are not likely going to be favorable. Taking that pitch is a much better decision.

This could be a significant turning point in Nishioka’s development in his first season stateside.  He still has a long ways to go in order to become one of the “better shortstops in the American League” as his former Chiba Lotte executive predicted, but Nishioka is at least back on the right path.

 

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• Now available at DiamondCentric for a pre-sale price of $15.99: 

• The National Parkinson Foundation of Minnesota has a great offer for Twins fans that can help the foundation. Bert Blyleven’s favorite foundation is offering tickets to an upcoming Twins/Royals game on July 16^th.  It also happens to be the day his number “28” gets retired. For $24, fans get a seat in section 329 with the proceeds going to support Parkinson’s research. You can find more information on the organization and purchase your ticket here.

Hitters elevating Capps' fastball

After yet another incomplete save opportunity, Matt Capps is once again under the microscope.

Pitching coach Rick Anderson told reporters that he is going to review the video to see if his current struggles are sourced to a mechanical issue. In May, I pointed out that Capps was trekking back and forth on the rubber, something that he had not done in the past. Shortly after that, he quit doing so and rattled off a decent string of outings. Unfortunately, since the beginning of the month, everything he throws up is hit hard back at him.

I’m interested to see if their archives show anything out of the ordinary in Capps’s motion. After doing a quick jaunt through the MLB.com archives and a few clips saved on the DVR, I am not seeing anything overtly different. Pitch F/X does not offer any insight either. This does not mean he isn’t deviating from his normal mechanics, it just simply means the handful of clips at the two available angles is not revealing anything.

For Capps, his struggles seem to boil down to two key items:

(1) He throws a ton of fastballs. Capps comes with his fastball 82.6% of the time, making that the fifth-highest usage among relievers. (2) His fastball isn’t all that good. The velocity, while solid, isn’t spectacular. Likewise, the movement on his fastball isn’t something that drops or runs making it more difficult to square up. On top of that, in addition to being thrown over the plate, it’s often up in the zone.

So far this season, the results have been wildly different from those of last year:

Matt Capps’s Fastball (2009-2011)
	GB%	Well-Hit Avg	Chase%	Thrown%
2009	42%	.285	21%	69%
2010	51%	.214	30%	72%
2011	31%	.264	17%	82%
MLB AVG	44%	.241	20%	62%

(via MyInsideEdge)

As we have learned, Capps does not come equipped with the often prerequisite filthy pitch that many of the game’s elite closers possess. He does not have a dominating cutter like Mariano Rivera nor a wafting change-up like Trevor Hoffman. He doesn’t have an overpowering fastball like Pittsburgh’s Joel Hanrahan nor doesn’t have a biting slider like vintage Joe Nathan. He works with his fastball.

The problem is that it isn’t necessarily overpowering. His average fastball velocity is at 92.8-mph, down from 94-mph last year. This could be because he is using a two-seam fastball more (as pitch f/x says) or potentially because of shoulder issues (shoulder injuries effect velocity).

Exacerbating the problem is that he has been using it far too often - allowing hitters to sit on it as BJ Upton did last night (Corretion: Upon further review, Capps hung a slider to Upton, overall point still stands). Now in his second tour of American League opponents, scouting reports have emerged that Capps is incapable of spinning any other pitch. Not surprising, his overall swing-and-miss rate has dropped from an above average 9% miss rate to a below average 7% miss rate.

Because of his reluctance to twirl his slider and the decrease in velocity, not to mention the fact that his fastball is up in the zone more, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of something health-wise affecting his arm. If he has a clean bill of health, Capps needs to work in his slider more often to keep hitters from sitting dead-red on his fastball. 

Michael Cuddyer is the Twins All-Star Representative

Baseball announced their All Star rosters and – without much surprise – the Twins delegate to the game in Arizona is Michael Cuddyer.

Cuddyer’s numbers have been solid, if unspectacular, while the rest of the Minnesota cast has been hurt for a portion of the season, allowing an opening for the veteran. His versatility and power against southpaws will give the AL team some flexibility. Of course, as it stands right now, the NL has only three left-handed pitchers on their roster (Kershaw, Lee and Hamels) which means Cuddyer will probably not see a favorable match-up when he is inserted into the late innings of the game.

Personally, I would have selected Scott Baker over Michael Cuddyer, but likely based on Baker’s pedestrian win-loss record despite outstanding peripherals, the committee passed him by. What’s more is the deep list of AL pitchers who have performed well enough to merit inclusion on the roster. If CC Sabathia was not deemed worthy, Baker had no chance.

Nevertheless, a hearty congratulations is due to Cuddyer. After a season in which plenty of questions were raised about his power that had disappeared after a big drop in 2010, he has rebounded well in 2011. 

Scott Baker is this good. Believe it.

On Wednesday, in an apparent showing of solidarity for the state employees who will be laid off during the government shutdown, the Minnesota Twins’ bats also stopped working.

Fortunately for the team, Scott Baker was on the mound.

Baker, with the help of the bullpen, stifled the Dodger lineup, shutting them out and walking away from the game with a 1-0 victory. With those scoreless 7.1 innings of work, he is now the owner of a sterling 3.15 ERA, a very good 3.44 xFIP and 101 strikeouts on the season. And, with numbers like those, Baker has emerged as the most reliable member of the rotation.

There isn’t anything special behind Baker’s return to success. There is no new cutter, pumped up velocity or an increased reliance on an off-speed pitch. It boils down to his health which has led to better command. Baker has always exercised an impressively small walk rate but his struggles in 2010 were not because he wasn’t throwing strikes – it was that he was consistently missing his spots within the zone. In short, his potentially dominating stuff had found inopportune times to lapse.

Far too often it seemed we witnessed Baker attempting to drill the catcher’s target on the outer-half of the plate only to have his pitch wander back over the dish and become an empty rawhide shell with a screaming ball of yarn headed towards the right field bleachers. If it wasn’t that it was fastballs that were called for down in the zone which wound up rising like a hot air balloon (and, given the 23 home runs in170 innings in 2010, it may have been what opponents saw headed their direction). Rather than the crisp sliders, we saw too many cement mixers that just spun at belt level.

Nevertheless, buried beneath cloak of constant cookies was the fact that – as John Bonnes correctly pointed out – Baker had the makings of a top of the rotation starter. His high strikeout/low walk numbers were overshadowed by his opponents’ slugging percentage.

Of course, the source of his wayward command stemmed from the chips in his elbow that plague him throughout the season. As Baker told reporters following his start against the Dodgers:

“I had a couple of cortisone injections last year. Those make you feel pretty good for a little while, but those are obviously just temporary fixes, just treating the symptoms instead of the problem.”

With a full recovery from the offseason surgery to remove the bone chips, Baker has since demonstrated over and over again that he can locate his pitches with improved precision.

Now, instead of this…

 

…we see more of this:

The overall results have been fantastic.

One contributing factor to this outstanding performance is that Baker has experienced a significant revival of his fastball. According to Fangraphs.com’s Pitch Value warehouse, Baker’s 2010 fastball was “worth” -8.9 runs above average making it one of the least valuable pitches in the American League last year. Much of that was derived from offerings like the one in the first clip. This season it is the sixth-best contributor at 14.7 runs above average.

Scott Baker’s Fastball
	Opponent Avg.	K%	In Play%
2010	.307	17%	35%
2011	.217	26%	29%
League Averages:	.273	14%	44%

(via MyInsideEdge.com)

Baker has shaved off nearly a hundred points off his opponent batting average, increased his ability to get a strike out and limited the amount of fastballs put into play. In fact, among those qualified, Baker’s 29% in play rate is the lowest in the majors. Those are all a product of being able to spot the pitch much better.

Restoration of his breaking pitches has also been key to his resurgence. Similar to the plight of Nick Blackburn who did not throw his slider at all in 2010 due to his elbow pain, Baker continued to spin downgraded versions of his slider and curve. He was able to dismantle the Dodgers by keeping them off-balanced with a plethora of breaking stuff. Deploying low-finishing breaking pitches enhance the high fastballs by changing the hitter’s eye-level.

Armed with a good repertoire of pitches, mechanics that help hide the ball from hitters and now a clean bill of health, Scott Baker has rebounded in a major way. Make no mistake - this is not an aberration - Baker is actually this good.  

Catching heat.

Because of one pitch, questions regarding Joe Mauer’s defensive abilities have surfaced.

Following Friday’s Jose Mijares versus Mauer incident, columnist Jim Souhan blogged on the StarTribune.com stating that:

“I've always been told by Twins people that Mauer is not an exceptional pitch-caller.”

Then, after Liriano’s rough outing on Saturday, Souhan relayed more rumblings from the clubhouse on his blog:

“Liriano mentioned after the game that he didn't think the pitch he threw to Gomez was the right choice. Another shot at Mauer's pitch-calling?”

In terms of Souhan’s “Twins people”, it’s hard to tell if that is in reference to pitchers, coaches or front office members. Maybe it’s just people surrounding him in the press box. Or possibly all of the above. It should be noted that in my conversations with Rob Antony last spring, the team’s assistant GM offered nothing but a glowing endorsement of Mauer’s handling of the pitchers. 

Based on the current comments, it is hard to ignore what appears to be an growing sentiment that the pitching staff is growing frustrated with Mauer’s pitch-calling. Of course, this is not new nor is it the first instance of pitcher’s expressing displeasure in Mauer’s selections. In 2008, Nick Blackburn, Glen Perkins and Slowey were all cited as regular shake-off offenders. Reportedly, field management was not happy with Kevin Slowey shaking off the highly paid catcher as recently as last year. This year, Liriano has been fingered as a pitcher lacking confidence in his catcher choices.

For Liriano, the results seem to speak for themselves when it comes to his pairing with Mauer on the mound this year:

F. Liriano by Catcher 2011
	PA	BB%	K%	OPS	Runs/G
Butera	115	16.5	11.3	.742	3.20
Rivera	128	7.8	28.9	.497	1.60
Mauer	66	15.5	16.6	.956	4.00

(via Baseball-Reference.com)

Within this small sampling you can see that Liriano has not worked well with Mauer at all. Yes, those numbers are influenced by Liriano’s shaky start at the season’s onset when the bulk of his time with Mauer was but it just makes me wonder if Mauer’s approach when handling Liriano differs radically in comparison with Rivera, who Liriano has been magnificent with.

In fact, it appears that Rivera is the favorite receiver among the Twins pitching staff. At least by the numbers:

Twins Pitching Staff by Catcher 2011
	PA	BB%	K%	OPS	Runs/G
Butera	1348	8.3	13.5	.779	4.27
Rivera	739	7.5	18.5	.637	2.60
Mauer	548	8.2	16.4	.729	4.33

(via Baseball-Reference.com)

Needless to say, actually digging into what differentiates the catchers requires much more extensive studies in pitch f/x for pitch selection. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple so I will not be exploring that aspect of the trio’s game-calling abilities today. Skimming the data from his starts against Texas and San Diego compared to his most recent one in Milwaukee, there does not appear to be any substantial difference in what was being called, just a disparity in where his pitches were being thrown.

Nick Blackburn credited Rivera has helping him rebound this season. According to ESPN.com’s Buster Olney, Blackburn’s renaissance came in a chat with Rivera before last month’s start against Chicago:

“The White Sox are aggressive and free-swinging at the plate, and Blackburn and Rivera decided before that May 4 start that they would work inside with fastballs. And this, in turn, would open up the outer half of the plate for Blackburn's offspeed pitches. The Minnesota right-hander allowed one run in 6.2 innings that day, results that reinforced something for Blackburn: If he pitched inside, aggressively, he would create more space for himself in another part of the strike zone. What this meant, too, was that Blackburn didn't have to be quite as precise with his command, because his margin for error with the strike zone would be larger.”

So, wait. Did Mauer or Butera not have Blackburn throwing inside prior to that start? Once again, that’s best answered through an extensive pitch f/x study.

Perhaps it extends beyond simply pitch-calling.

Watching Rivera work behind the plate, you can see why he might be able to coax more out of his pitchers. He’s very visual and moves around the zone, giving directions constantly. In his start against the Padres, Rivera pounded the dirt to make sure Liriano knew to get his slider down against the right-hander Ryan Ludwick. He did the same with Blackburn with Alexi Ramirez at the plate. That’s how you avoid any confusion on where you wanted that pitch and make sure you are on the same page as a pitcher.

Mauer isn’t nearly that mobile behind the plate. He doesn’t thrust his leg out to ensure he gets as low in the zone as possible. He doesn’t do the fake-out hop inside then jump to the outer-half of the zone that Rivera does at times. Does Liriano, who has been all over the board as a pitcher this season, need that kind of guidance that Rivera provides when he is behind the plate? Do the others, like Blackburn, respond better to this style of catching?

Because of Justin Morneau’s injury, Mauer may be moved from out behind the plate to first base on occasion, giving Rivera a chance to prove that his ability to handle the pitching staff isn’t just a success due to a small sample size.