Why The Twins Should Go Into The Post Season

I guess it takes two full regular seasons plus one game each just to even have a chance to make the postseason these days. This is happening to the Twins.

So why should they be in the postseason? Well check out the winning percentage during the past two seasons in the AL.

*I took out that lone playoff game from last season to keep it at a 162 game data set.

Only four teams has had a better winning percentage in 2008 and 2009. Only two are repeats, Red Sox and Angels, and the other two have switch spots as AL East Champs, the Rays and Yankees.

So where does this leave the Twins? Ahead of Chicago who were last year’s AL Central Champs and this year’s potential leader in Detroit. Only six teams in the Majors had at least 86 wins in both 2008 and 2009. Four made the postseason in both years and only the Twins had not the post season this season. That is, if they don’t win on Tuesday.

The A-Rod And Tex Show

Don’t know if this has any siginificant meaning by posting their OPS numbers by date, but it is easier than to chart or give some boring paragraphs about it. And yes, A-Rod made Texy go boom-boom with the bat.

For reference, A-Rod has an OPS of .927 and Tex a .952 OPS.

Stats from BB-Ref

Offense And Defense Value Graphed For Your Viewing Pleasure (Offense Rules)

I am pretty sure someone already did something like this for the same exact values. But I haven’t seen one somewhere recently so there is no foul for an update. Using FanGraphs, I got the data for all qualified position players and graphed their batting and fielding values in simple x-y graph. This should give us four quadrants for four different types of players. I also labeled some players for some “outliers”.

Note for fielding that catchers and designated hitters have no fielding values and this weren’t charted.

Albert Pujols is the best player on Earth right now. Adam Dunn can hit but fielding hates him and he hates it (DH bound eventually). Nyjer Morgan can field, hitting is respectable. Ben Zobrist can do it all. Randy Winn is a great hitter but UZR thinks he sucks in the outfield. And finally Yuniesky Bentacourt. Don’t need to explain more on him.

For most of the qualified players, their offense has kept them in the Majors even if they can’t field exceptionally.

The average batting value (including catchers and DHs) is 11.6 and for fielding it averages at negative .4. Like the above statement, fielding can be ignored if the hitter can produce.

Taking out the top five hitters, the average drops to 10.3 and for fielding it goes to -1. Taking out both the top and last five in both categories the averages is 11.3 batting, and -.3 for fielding.

Maybe taking both numbers and dividing them by plate appearances or balls in zone might prove more useful data for comparison. But I am just guessing.

Jon Garland=Inning’s Eater. Worth It?

I have been pondering on this a bit. Is Jon Garland good? Well I won’t answer that since I don’t know myself and I would be just guessing. It would be nice if someone actually did look into Garland’s career numbers and come up with something. I guess pitching to “bad” contact is his goal when he toes up with the rubber.

But what I did find from the “average” throwing righty is that he has put up consistent innings, ERA, and saber-ERA numbers in his eight seasons as a full time starter with four teams (4 in the past 3 years).

A couple of graphs and tables to demonstrate:

Uber consistent with the ERA and FIP with the exception of his best season in 2005 where he went 18-10 and helped the White Sox to a World Series title.

Now for the inning totals.
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	IP	IP/GS
2002	192.67	5.8
2003	191.67	6
2004	217	6.6
2005	221	6.9
2006	211.33	6.6
2007	208.33	6.5
2008	196.67	6.1
2009	186.67	6.2

Not going as deep as he used but he could give you close to 200 innings with enough starts.

At 28 years old, 29 in a week and a half, does giving him contract that hovers around $10 million worth it? His WAR might not suggest it. He does have great, fluid mechanics that should make his arm and body last in pitching condition for awhile. Which is likely why he hasn’t been on the DL in his Major League career and makes his arm seemingly guaranteed to last the whole season.

Whoever nabs him for 2010, is likely to have a pitcher who will be “what you see is what you get”. Yet his service time and experience will dictate that he should garner a salary of around $10 million dollars. He might even be the most expensive #4 or #5 starter if a high salary team is willing to pay for him.

Stats from Baseball Reference and FanGraphs

Charting Mauer’s Power

After watching Joe Mauer blast another HR last night, I thought it would be fun to see the location and distance of his dingers.

The most amazing thing, is that Mauer rarely pulls the ball out of the ballpark. In fact, only 3 of his homers (before last night) were pulled.

Chart from hittrackeronline.com

Graph of the Day at BtB: Zach Style

Toying around with Pitch F/x is really fun, so I was doing work with Flight Paths after reading a Beyond the Boxscore tutorial. 

Sky Kalkman, BtB’s Manager, prompted me to try to fancy up the graph, so I did. The guys liked it so much, they used it as their Graph of the Day.

Awesomeness.

Fun with Graphs: Maddux vs Glavine vs Smoltz

As always, you can click on the graph for an enlarged view. This is a graph of Maddux, Smoltz, and Glavine’s WAR from their careers. The black part of Smoltz’s graph is when he was in the bullpen. 

The big thing here, is that Maddux was on top for most of the years, until Smoltz returned to the rotation in 2005.

Data taken from Baseball Projection’s WAR database.

WAR: A-Rod, Jeter, Nomar

Remember back in the day when everyone argued over who the best shortstop was? It came down to Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Nomar Garciaparra. Here is there historical WAR data for all of them, provided by Sean’s Historical WAR database.

Graph Time: Old lefty SP K/BB

• Damn, that Randy Johnson is still good.
• Glavine is still consistent, and should be a bit better next season.
• Moyer seems to have settled in the 2.0 range.