The Twins, in contrast to several recent off-seasons, have emerged as one of the most active teams in the early off-season in less than a week since the wrap of the post-season they have made two moves that quickly answered possible questions about how the Twins will build their lineup for 2010 as well as what players they prioritized keeping most.

Unsurprisingly they picked Michael Cuddyer's club option for the 2011 season as they were both under a time-crunch to make a decision about that year since they had to make up their minds on the 2011 option year within 5 days of the end of this year's World Series and they retain for a relatively competitive price a player who will be 32 in 2011 who is coming off a very productive and cost-effective year. Their choice boiled down to letting him walk as a free agent after next year after having paid him $24 million for the three years from 2008-2010 or pick up the option and pay him another $10.5 million for the final year when he will be 32. For the $8 million annualized salary they paid him in 2009 they got what was likely an outlier of a season, but for $8 million getting 32 HR, 73 XBH and 94 RBI is an extremely high return on their investment. While his career totals suggest that his SLG of .520 in 2009 is likely about .050 higher than what the Twins can expect out of him in 2010 and 2011 this move was a no-brainer from both a public relations standpoint and team building standpoint. Making the choice to not commit beyond 2010, for a relatively affordable price, to the player who is the the only right-handed power bat on the team and who is coming off a stellar, 30+ HR season would show little commitment to building on this year's success in 2010 and beyond. As the Twins move into their new largely publicly funded stadium, showing that the increased revenues from higher ticket prices, team-controlled luxury suites, et cetera, will be used to prevent teams from poaching our best players who are allowed to hit free agency thus keeping us in constant semi-rebuilding mode will be an important PR goal. While Cuddyer is a nice start obviously the real litmus test here will be if Joe Mauer can be resigned. More important than the PR relevane of the move, though, at 32 Cuddyer's production will likely not be significantly worse than his career mean, and with inflation between now and 2011 $10.5 million for a dependable, above average right-handed power bat will at least be justifiable if not somewhat of a bargain, especially considering the need to insert a rightie into the lineup whose most talented hitters are all left-handed--Mauer, Morneau and Kubel. The Twins thus keep an important role-player and a guy who while far from a gold-glove fielder has both an above average arm in right and some defensive versatility that he displayed by doing a competent job filling in for Morneau at first base at the end of this last season.

Much less predictable and a much less typical move for the Twins to make, especially so early in the off-season, was a somewhat unusual deal where the Twins sent a young but still very far from developed outfield prospect in Carlos Gomez to the Brewers for a former All-Star shortstop J.J. Hardy who has struggled mightily his last two seasons after appearing in 2008 to be part of a core of young talent around which the Brewers would build their team. While neither player seems like particularly attractive trade bait (Hardy is coming off an abysmal year and Gomez has not blossomed into a productive hitter since being acquired in the Santana deal) the trade does actually make a fair amount of sense for both clubs who may both benefit, and in my opinion, particularly the Twins could have pulled off a real coup here even if the likely outcome is marginal improvement. I believe this trade has more inherent risk for the Brewers since Hardy's abilities have been borne out by real world experience and him performing at a high level would be returning to a previous level of performance as opposed to having a breakout season, but either team could in retrospect appear very foolish if one of these players surprises and plays especially well. However, I think it is more likely that a year from now this trade may have improved both teams in a measurable but not profound way and will not be seen as mistake (at least not a major mistake) for either front office.

While Gomez was the most prominent player acquired in the Santana trade and the only player from that deal to see significant MLB playing time, he was in practice a 4th outfielder and with usual DH Jason Kubel's ability to play a passable if mediocre right-field if needed due to an injury to an outfielder, he was really one of 5 viable options in the outfield, of which he was by far the weakest at the plate. While his fielding was so stellar as to make up in large part for his lack of production at the plate and in my opinion justified his playing time over Delmon Young when the latter was struggling offensively, Gomez will likely never be more than a defensive specialist center fielder on a team that lacks a more offensively productive player at that position unless he significantly improves his plate discipline. While Gomez exuded sheer athleticism and at times was an extremely exciting offensive player (for instance, hitting for the cycle in 2008 and often taking an extra base on sheer speed) at the plate in just over 1000 big league at bats he's had rather mediocre numbers, unable to translate his athletic gifts into MLB production, batting just .248, getting on base less than 3 of 10 trips to the plate at .292 and OPSing a mere .638. As he will only be 24 next season and he already has been playing in the bigs for 3 seasons, it might be the case he has suffered from overly fast promotion, and that he may develop a better ability to translate muscles and speed into power, on base percentage, and base-stealing prowess, but so far he has not shown signs of being on the cusp of being an important MLB talent.

In Hardy the Twins acquire a player who has proven that he has the ability to put together a productive full season at the plate while playing at an above average level at the crucial defensive position of short-stop. He played nearly all of 2007 and 2008 (playing 151 and 146 games respectively) and putting up a total line of .280/.340/.470 averaged over those two full seasons, hitting 26 and 24 HR and making the All-Star team in 2008. In those two seasons his fielding was at least above average, 10th best in MLB at SS at +7 for 2007 based on The Fielding Bible's +/- system, and even at an outstanding level, +19 in 2008 and 4th in MLB. Even if his 2009 struggles at the plate were more than a fluke (his line at the MLB level last year was a disappointing .229/.302/.357 that earned him a demotion to AAA 2 days before he would accrued enough playing time to have qualified for Free Agency after 2010 instead of after 2011) he nets the Twins at least a possible medium-term solution at short-stop, a position that aside from Orlando Cabrera's brief tenure there in this year's pennant race has been a constant source of instability and has featured a revolving door of players, none of whom were particular talented hitters, since Jason Bartlett was dealt along with Matt Garza for Delmon Young and Brendan Harris. A note on Hardy's demotion last year: as mentioned in passing, while going from being an All-Star to earning a demotion to AAA in a year doesn't generally make them more attractive trade fodder, Hardy's demotion could have been strategic on Milwaukee's part, as Alcides Escobar's breakout year allowed the Brewers the flexibility to demote Hardy which resulted in the Brewers or now the Twins maintaining control over Hardy for two years instead of one, surely a huge factor in this trade.

This trade does not look unbalanced for either team from the outset, as both teams traded from positions of relative strength: the Brewers gave up a player who would have become a possibly divisive clubhouse presence as well as likely ending up a relatively expensive back-up shortstop for the youngster Escobar (Hardy is set to make $4.65 million in 2010 and has another arbitration year in 2011.) The Twins will retain control of Hardy for two years at least and will get a full two seasons to see if 2009 was flukishly bad and even if he can't repeat the .821 OPS of his 2008 season if a .750ish OPS-hitting, above average fielding SS could be part of their long-term plans.

In exchange for this buy-low addition for the Twins, they give up 4 years of control of an athletically gifted prospect who once was projected to have a very high ceiling, but who has had a lot of that promise fade now after about 2 full seasons worth of at bats over 3 years at the MLB level where his production has never surpassed mediocre for any extended period of time. On the other hand, while the Brewers are not exactly lacking for an outfield Mike Cameron is getting older and having Gomez on the bench gives the Brewers a number of advantageous ways to use Gomez's speed, stellar defense and skill at bunting for hits (bizarrely accompanied by an unacceptable lack of skill at executing a sacrifice bunt) all mean he could find a niche as a bench player in Milwaukee, potentially being used as a pinch runner, late game defensive replacement and perhaps as a pinch hitter in certain situations with less than two outs where the Brewers want to put pressure on a team's infield. He also gives the Brewers outfield depth they were lacking by providing top-tier defense and at least intermittent offensive production as a potential replacement for an injured player. Gomez's speed and ability to read the ball off the bat have lead him to rack up in full-time play in 2008 and part-time play in 2009 +/- numbers of +29, easily #1 in MLB in 2008, and +17, #4 in MLB in 2009 while only playing about 2/3 of a season's worth of innings. While not making up for his below-average plate performance, as an overall player the number of runs he takes away from other teams relative to the average CF's performance are significantly above average and partially compensate for a lack of consistent output at the plate thus far in his young career; all in all even if he doesn't break out and develop significantly he gives the Brewers a very solid and versatile bench player and a serviceable backup if they have injuries in the outfield.

After the Garza/Bartlett for Young/Harris debacle, this is really the second major trade of the Bill Smith era that is a talent-for-talent deal where both teams could have walked away but in the end thought they they each will benefit; the Santana trade certainly might have played out better but the strategic disadvantage of being unable to resign Santana forced Smith to strike some deal sending away his ace pitcher. While the talent involved in this deal is not as valuable or high-profile as the Tampa Bay deal, in this case the Twins are on the right side of a trade where a proven but somewhat inconsistent MLB talent is dealt for a young, unproven outfield prospect who has shown promise but not real production in the show. In the near-term the Twins gain two years of a cost-controlled player who could easily shore up or at the outer edge of probability provide above average play at short-stop, a position that has been a consistent liability for the Twins. If Hardy can prove that 2009 was in fact merely a fluke year and Smith can extend him he may come away from this deal looking very smart indeed. If Hardy's struggles prove more permanent then the Twins are basically where they were before since both players on the left side of their infield (1 year rentals in Orlando Cabrera and Joe Crede) are almost certainly not going to be resigned as free agents. In exchange for this low-risk, high-reward potential Smith dealt a nice player in Gomez, but a player who, even with injuries in the outfield, was hard to find playing time for due to the glut of more talented outfielders the Twins carry; while Gomez's defense was stellar, unless he can make a drastic improvement at the plate, hit for more power, better average, and draw more walks, he will never be the type of valuable everyday CF that the Twins already have in Denard Span. While the Twins outfield defense with both Span and Gomez patrolling seemed that nearly any fly ball that was not a homer would be caught, the Twins will go forward with a more productive offensive outfield and a center-fielder who is no defensive slouch in Denard Span, accompanied by Young and Cuddyer in left and right with Kubel able to fill in if there is an injury.

So while both teams seem like they will be improved by this deal as they trade from areas of redundancy for areas of want, the Brewers seem to be at much greater risk of looking foolish a few years from now. Hardy was an All-Star the year before last, is a very talented fielder, and if he proves that 2007 and 2008 are better reflections of his actual skill level than a lost year in 2009, the Twins could come away from the deal with a very talented everyday player at a difficult to fill position. If Hardy does not pan out the Twins will only come away looking like losers in this trade if Gomez dramatically improves his offensive performance which would involve improving such basic skills as learning how to better identify strikes, take more pitches and work counts, predict what pitch is likely coming, protect the plate with two strikes, and develop power to boot. It's a tall order, but time is on Gomez's side: he's still only 23. However, the chance that a 28 year old former All-Star will play at a reasonably high level after one off year seems much greater than the chances that an offensive work in progress will turn raw athleticism into consistent production. It's sad to see Go-go go (my one very nice Twins jersey is a Gomez jersey, ironically enough) I'm very excited that Smith pulled off a seeming coup in getting a player with the upside and proven record of Hardy for a guy who has not shown any real reason to expect development into a team-changing producer. While I loved Gomez's defense, hustle and occasionally very exciting play, he has never shown an ability to cope with MLB pitching in 1000+ at bats over three seasons; he still does not see enough pitches, looks confused or simply over-matched throughout at bats, and frequently winds up striking out after 3 or 4 pitches hacking wildly at strike three or conversely being frozen by a pitch far too close to take.

With the shortstop situation in Milwaukee along with the Brewer's keen decision to keep control of Hardy through 2011 it is obvious that they had an eye on trading him this off-season, however, for Smith to work out a deal for a former All-Star SS for a redundant and purely speculative talent whose entire hitting approach is seriously flawed is something of a coup, if a small one, as it would seem that Hardy's 2007 and 2008 production, despite his recent struggles, would be enough to net at the very least a single, younger blue chip prospect or a group of prospects. That the deal was worked out without sending away any young pitching is a pleasant surprise. It could turn out that this deal is forgettable if Hardy turns out to be an average or below average SS for two years and Gomez is a passable bench player or fill-in in Milwaukee, but the likely upside seems to be all on the Twins side. Smith's second decision to pull the trigger on a major trade, in short, seems to have been informed by the backward risk-reward picture embodied in the Garza trade, as this time we are highly unlikely to be the team regretting this trade in a year.

Labels: baseball, twins

Congratulations to White Sox pitcher Mark Buerhle who by retiring the last hitter of his outing 11 days ago, then throwing a perfect game, and then throwing a perfect 5 2/3 innings to start a game at the Dome tonight set the Major League record--all-time, like, Cy Young, Walter Johnson, Christy Matthewson, Babe Ruth, Don Drysdale, Whitey Ford, Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Greg Maddux, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson... none of them ever did this.

In his post-game comments, Buerhle, who gave up a walk to the number 9 hitting Alexei Casilla who is hitting about .165 right now to end his streak, and who after retiring 45 straight failed to retire 7 of 9 in order to finish with a line of 5 2/3 IP, 5 ER, L, thought that the Twins fans were cheering that a Twin had finally reached base. As the cheering continued, however, and the almost packed Metrodome stood in near total unison to give Buerhle a standing ovation for his historic acheivement, which I believed was displayed on the scoreboard at the Dome, he realized that they were cheering for him.

It was a nice moment and Buehrle was classy in his reaction of not wanting to show up the fans by tipping his cap to what he thought might have been a cheer for the home team (the Twins were losing 1-0 at the time) but also wanting to display his gratitude to the fans for celebrating the achievement of the best starter on our most hated rival for an historic accomplishment, even while he was besting us in a pitcher's duel. Of course, it's easy to be magnanimous after the Twins wound up winning 5-3, tying the White Sox for second place and slipping only 2 back of the Tigers who lost for a second straight night against the Rangers.

I wonder what would have been the reactions of the douchebag White Sox fans had a Twins pitcher--or any visiting pitcher--completed such a feat while beating them 1-0 and I also wonder what their even more godawful broadcasters DJ & the Hawk would have said, if they would have, like Dick and Bert did tonight, expressed a pure love of the game and awe at having seen such an incredible record set. Now I dispute my friend Dave's contention that it's "arguably the greatest baseball acheivement"--I'd say it was more good pitching combined with good luck--especially considering that he clearly hit a wall after walking Casilla by failing to retire 7 of the next 9--but it was certainly a moment for recognition of a tremendous individual achievement which I'm proud to say Dick and Bert gave its due amount of respect and admiration. Bert, especially, as a former pitcher, was effusive in his praise for Buerhle throughout the night even after he was knocked out of the game in his discussion of how incredibly difficult retiring 45 straight batters is to do.

Labels: musings, twins

I know what it feels like to live and die with a sports team. While hockey is a sport that I enjoy, particularly college hockey where Princeton has a illustrious history and recently it has had some success, and where the Gophers have been perennially dominant, I feel like I will need to learn to love the Wild, and NHL hockey more generally, since I'm moving to Minnesota.

But while I've been to my share of Devils' games, they are not one of my teams the same way that the Twins or Vikings or Princeton or Minnesota Basketball, Football, Hockey and Lax are. I enjoyed seeing the Devils win the Cup all three times they did it, and went to two of the games in '03 against Anaheim, but while I like seeing them win, with the Twins and Vikings, I am euphoric when they win, and apoplectic when the lose.

After the Devils were beating the Canes in game 7 of the playoffs tonight 3-2 with 4 minutes left, and then 3 minutes left, and then 2 minutes left, a pretty bad gut punch came; a backdoor pass to allow the tying goal with 90 seconds. I was trying to think of comparably bad gut punches I'd experienced; it's a bit different than my frame of reference since I just haven't watched that much hockey and lax, which are the closest in terms of how instantaneously game-play can change. Also, goals are pretty rare in hockey, so my equating it with game 2 of the ALDS between the Twins and Yankees where the Twins took the lead in game 2 and were one half inning away from taking a 2-0 lead back to Minnesota in a best of 5 and lost that game by 2 wasn't really apt, since it was an immediate loss and then it was not an elimination game.

I thought of the 2004 or 2005 Princeton Yale game where on a gut-wrenching final play Princeton lost when Yale scored a touchdown to win on the last play of the game that would have given us our first bonfire in over a decade. We got pretty sweet revenge my Senior year though and stormed the Yale Bowl and got our bonfire, so uhh, I dunno, it just wasn't the same.

But then, almost unimaginably with 30 seconds left, 60 seconds after a bad gt punch, came an epic, digusting, inconceivably, Christ-almighty-there-is-God gut punch. Against the greatest goalie of all time... there were two goals... in 60 seconds... that lost the team the series that they had in the bag with nothing but "Wait til next year."

The closest thing I can think of is when the Tigers came back against their perennial rivals the Syracuse Orangemen in the 2002 NCAA Finals when after scoring 4 goals in a row to tie it, they lost on a game-winning Syracuse goal. But Syracuse had been winning, we didn't have the game in the bag, and at that time I wasn't so committed to Pton; my sister went there but I didn't make the decision to commit there for probably another couple months after that game. He just experienced literally the worst sports' gut punch of any friend I've ever had--well, the Yankees losing the 2001 World Series was probably worse, but I'm not really friends with Yankees fans-- so... my sympathies, Dave.

As I mentioned to him, if a similar level of gut-punch happens to me at home (he was at work, you know, working for NHL.com) where, say, the Twins take a one run lead into the bottom of the 9th on the road in Game 7 of the Worl Series and then get two outs and then instead of having a rally build just give up... two... solo... home-runs... to a couple of light-hitting douche-bags then uhh, you know, I might end up with a broken TV, a lot of broken glass, and a hammer in my hand before my heart exploded.

Labels: baseball, musings, sports, twins

Some bizarre facts that I don't know whether they bode well or not:

--The Twins won their first game of the season this year where they did not at some point trail. And with the win they moved to 8-9 and will be .5 game behind Chicago when their game finishes up and 1.5 games behind Division Leader KC. That means that they trailed at some point in all of the first 16 games and yet won 7 of them. As far as a percentage for winning games in which you trail at one point, 7 of 16 or about .438 seems pretty good; on the other hand, trailing at some point for 16 consecutive games to start the year is not a good sign, and doesn't bode well for a team's long-term success.

--The Twins have played a bunch of games against teams that were surprisingly good; mainly their 8 games hosting Seattle and at Toronto. Those two teams have the best records in baseball at this point. What year is this, 1994? So having gone 3-5 in nearly half their games against two of the hottest teams to open the season, along with 2 against Boston, which means they've played 10 of their first 16 games against very strong opponents.

--A bunch of Twins pitchers who you really can't conceive of all having awful years have yet to get it together. Liriano has only had one very good start, and it wound up being a loss, but beyond that he just hasn't gotten through a start well yet. Tonight's game was Blackburn's first good start, holding the Indians to 1 run over 7 IP. Slowey leads the team in wins with 2, despite the fact that his ERA is nearly 6. Glen Perkins, a guy who many wanted to trade for a sack of balls has had 3 dominant starts, going 8 innings in each of 3 starts and posting a 1.50 ERA and earning a loss, a win and a ND. You've got to expect that Liriano will get things together, as will Slowey and Baker (who after coming off the DL has been awful.) Perkins I predict will win a Cy Young award.

--There have been some pleasant surprises on the offense, such as Denard Span showing, thus far, no signs of a sophomore slump, as of this writing having an OBP of .408 with a BA of .323; i.e. he's drawing a ton of walks and hitting for average well, again. Morneau is being like Morneau except more Morneauy, putting up what would could be the front end of another MVP season if he keeps hitting like this; 4 HR, 13 RBI, .324/.356/.574 for a .930 OPS after 17 games... yowza. He could finally put up a really massive number of HR, not just general XBH if he can continue at that pace...right now he's on pace for about 38 HR/124 RBI 10% of the way through the year. Even a more pleasant surprise has been Kubel looking like he was always supposed to, OPSing an insane .926 with 13 RBI, almost the same as Morneau on OPS and the same number of RBI (now, he did just have a game where he hit for the cycle, including a grand slam home run to cap it off.) But if he could actually prove to be he Morneau like slugger that he was expected to be before knee injuries and a couple less encouraging years took all the shine off his penny and Mauer gets healthy and the starters start pitching better (as they have, to some extent) and the bullpen gets better as the roster move to bring up Mijares after Crain got hurt makes him stick there and they end up punting Dickey or Breslow or Morillo or Guerrier when Crain gets healthy, look for the Twins to have one of the best May records in baseball.

--Speaking of Jose Mijares, he pitched well allowing one hit and no runs in his return to a big league game after getting called up when Crain got hurt; after how he pitched last fall and this April at Rochester, I think we'll be seeing him a lot more now that the current bullpen has proved a very treacherous bridge to Nathan, and since basically it was due to a lack of conditioning that he had gained 5 pounds on his gut and lost 5 MPH on his fastball and that it took him an extra couple weeks to get tha worked out that had kept him off the 25 man roster. Look for him to not make that mistake again.

--Speaking of the Twins' possible breakout in May first of all it's good that the division is, as some astute pundits predicted, a total dogfight, with no clear favorite at all at this point in the season, since while the Twins might be one of he better playing teams in baseball, they're gunna have to hope some good teams that started cool or lukewarm stay that way while some teams that started hot cool down? Why? Their next 7 non-AL Central series (not counting a 2 gamer against Baltimore)? Hosting Vs. TB, Vs. Sea, @NYY, vs. Milwaukee, vs. Boston, @TB, @Sea. If the Rays aren't the 2008 Rays that's not so bad, but if they are, then that's 20+ games against some pretty damn hot/talented teams.

--Now that all the games involving AL central teams have gone final, KC is 6-4 over their last 10, the other 4 teams in the division are 5-5. Talk about a friggin' dog-fight.

--Despite being an ML worst -27 runs scored the Twins are 1 game under .500. Does that mean they've bee getting lucky or have a knack for winning tight games (see their near .500 WP in games where they trailed at some point) You think of the addage that there's 50 or so games you'll win, 50 or so games you'll lose, and that it's how you play the middle 62 that are tossups that is what counts... well, it seems like the Twins have been playing a bunch of those tossups and a bunch of games that they just were gunna lose (9-0 and 12-2 and 6-1 blowouts against ace pitchers like Doc Halladay etc.) Tonight's 5-1 easy win over Cleveland was the first game that felt like one of the 50 "wins." Of course, that adage is true in the sense that almost every team will lose at least 50 games and that often time 50 wins will be relatively uneven and squared away well before the final inning or two, but I think back to last year and there were so many damn games that you'd put into that "50 losses" column that were winnable as far as the pitching matchup and were lost due to early errors that put the pitchers in tough spots and then the Twins were basically in an insurmountable hole early that shouldn't just be written off as "losses." And of course when you lose the division like they did there were also quite a few games you can think of where one bonehead play lead to a loss; get rid of that one play and we're the 2008 Division Champs. So early in the season I'm kind of cognizant of that and hoping that we can start winning a lot of easy games while still winning a lot of the close ones.

--In totally unrelated to the Twins news, it's nice to see the Pirates at 9-6 after 15 and threatening to take the lead in a tie game @ San Diego. I wonder what the last time they finished April with 10 wins, let alone a winning record, was? Of course, neither one of those is a done deal, but they've got the go-ahead run on third base late in this game and one would hope that if they win this game they wouldn't go 0-5 in their remaining 5 April tilts, as would be necessary for them to end the month with a losing record. If they drop this one, they'll need to go 2-3. Could they finally be a legit enough team and in a mediocre enough division to post a winning record for the first time since the early years of Clinton's first term? I hope so, but I think not.

Labels: baseball, twins

I DVRed the Twins home opener since I'm getting the free preview of the MLB Extra innings package and I'm not watching it live so I can't "live blog it" but I can look at what time things happened and comment on them. I'll put things in Central Daylight Time (since that's the local time where the game is going on and I'm in a Minneapolis state of mind. So away we go... went... er...)

19:30 There's an old superstition that the first hitter of the season is an omen that determines the rest of the season. Well, Denard Span getting a walk is exactly what I want to see happen if it means that the young guys will continue to play at the level they were at last year or improve (since Span's huge contribution was having a huge OBP in the leadoff hole. Casilla keeps the great portent coming by following Span's walk (which as a leadoff man is just as good as a single... that's why you put high OBP guys who draw a lot of walks in the #1 and #2 hole) by hitting a line drive single which would be a great sign that he can hack it as an offensive player in MLB.

19:31 The Mariners' broadcast team (which I don't love but which isn't awful) says that there's a rumor that Mauer's back injury might sideline him for six months (i.e. the whole season.) While Twins' doctors are saying he could be back soonish (maybe 2 weeks, maybe a month) which wouldn't be bad, but when the joint between your spine and pelvis is messed up... who the hell knows when the hell you're coming back. Mauer's lower back is hurting him a lot and some guys who aren't lanky MLB catchers coming off 4 years of frequent squatting have years of back pain where they can't find any relief. Cuddyer got totally tooled by Felix Hernandez, who while he is a dominant pitcher, would not have done the same to Mauer. We really, really need Mauer and I'm afraid if we don't have him for the whole season or even a large fraction of it we're in a lot of trouble.

19:36 Morneau is called out after he rips a grounder up the middle, it deflects of Hernandez's glove and then the second baseman gets it, hurls it top speed to first, and Morneau is called out when the replay proved he was clearly safe. Twins' screwed on a call for the first time in 2009. At this rate (.2 innings into one of 162 games) they should expect the total for the year be 2187 blown calls. This sounds about right if they're going to reach last year's mark.

19:46 On cue, after the Twins get hosed out of a run, a Beltre lead-off double leads to a Mariner's run on a sac-fly. Sigh. Other than the Beltre double though Liriano looks like he's gotten off to a pretty solid start, with a couple K's.

19:56 Gomez takes away his first double of the season and a hard-hit ball by Kenji Johjima. It's interesting to see him pull a ball deep to the gap when in the WBC he seemed like such a dedicated slap hitter. Casilla follows it up with a nice play. I'm excited about the defense on this team from what I've seen so far. Punto is much bemoaned, but he, Span and Crede being in the field every day along with average, not mediocre, fielders like Redmond and Morneau with the only really bad fielder being Cuddyer makes me hopeful that Twins' pitchers' ERA's this year will be below what their peripherals would suggest. Mauer is a fantastic defender and thus again, the fate of his back injury looms large over the Twins' prospects for the season.

20:03 Punto works a walk in his first AB of the season which is as good as a single since he's leading off the bottom of the third. He's thought of as a defense only guy, and while he had the horrible year where nearly was under .200 for the season in BA in '07, in '06 and '08 he hit around .290. He's not an awful hitter. Span nearly beats out the throw on a sac-bunt. First sighting of scrappy Twins' small ball, and the team "playing the game right," which they almost certainly did not do. Beltre robs Casilla of a hit with a Gold Glove play. If the new Mariners' GM hadn't asked for a king's ransom for him it would have been nice to obtain him. He is the difference in this game so far between the Twins leading 1-0 and losing 1-0.

20:06 Since Ken Griffey Jr. is back as a Mariner they show him cutting down Cuddyer in the one game playoff from last year. This is painful to watch. Punto almost gets thrown out creeping down the third base line with two ous. Why? Cuddyer follows it up with a backwards K, the fourth by King Felix. Looks like we're infor a pitcher's duel. We'll see how the Twins' bullpen looks.

20:11 Casilla continues to flash some impressive leather.

20:15 If Liriano didn't make a lucky fielding play Beltre would have gotten another hit, this time a grounder ripped right up the box.

20:20 Kubel flashes a sign that perhaps the outrageous numbers he was putting up in Spring Training were legit and he's finally ready to be the player many thought he'd be in '04 by getting a good pitch to hit and ripping it to left field on a rope with one out in the 4th.

20:27Sigh. Ken Griffey Jr. fucks us for the second consecutive game w/ a HR.

20:38 After Cuddyer hits a single with the bases loaded to make it 2-1. Morneau then hits into a tailor-made GIDP. Sigh.

20:45 Gutierrez pops a 2 run HR. Bad luck for Liriano, but it was after Casilla, one of several fielders on both teams who've been fooled on ground balls by the lights in the dome. That's strange, and makes me think they changed something about the dome, since I'd never seen that happen before it happened multiple times to both teams.

20:58 I'm assuming that Liriano is done after 7; he pitched well enough, and one of the runs (the missed ball by Casilla shouldn't count as an earnie even though it will. 7 IP is good news from any starter though, and he certainly kept the Twins in the game; a sac-fly would have tied this game and a single would have given them the lead when they had Morneau up with 1 out and the bases loaded, score 2-1. The mistakes to Gutierrez and Griffey were really the two low points that look like they're going to overshadow a pretty good looking start. Fortunately Liriano won't be facing King Felix most starts but the lack of timely hitting tonight is an unfortunate reminder that the Twins' near record BA w/ RISP was a fluke last year. We'll see if the Twins can put on their rally cap here in the bottom of the 7th. Right as it type that Redmond bounces into a routine ground ball out. Hopefully Hernandez will be pulled after this inning and hopwefully we can get at their week bullpen in the 8th since there's two down now.

21:06 Ayala gets his first licks in as a Twin. I'm afraid that he's the default 8th inning man... hard to tell since we haven't had a lead all game, so this could be him being used a situational rightie since the lead-off is a RHer in Johjima. He leads off w/ a single. Followed up by a slick little DP from Casilla who fielded a tough belt-high hop and flipped to Punto onto Morneau. Hopefully we'll see a lot of those. Ayala retires former teammate Endy Chavez without incident. Against Johjima, Betancourt and Endy he did fine, but you know, they were losing and he'll face sterner challenges should they use him as the eighth inning man.

21:16 King Felix closes out the 8th with his 9th consecutive out, the last one being of Morneau. I'm not too worried about the lack of offense in this game since they are not going to be facing a dominant rising star like this night in, night out. But damn, they got taken to school, especially as he finished out the 8th inning looking like he was just as fresh as in the first.

21:26 Crain is in for the 9th. Lead off the inning with a walk after falling way behind. Terrific. Span gets to a ball that drops against another team without two of the fastest best fielding OFers in left and center and saves Crain some trouble after Beltre rips one into the gap with a man on. Two outs... can we please get to the bottom of the ninth...

21:29 Terrific. Breslow throws four pitches and departs. (They were all balls.)

Final 6-1. Not a bad start from Liriano and tip your cap to King Felix who made a great opening day start unlike Liriano who on three days rest was just good. We'll see how the Mauer saga plays itself out. Fortunately we've got 161 games left to make up for this loss, unlike our previous one.

Labels: baseball, twins

Yea, yea, the Phillies lost to the Braves tonight.

Terrific.

But today is finally, finally, finally a day on which the Twins will play a regular season baseball game after the travesty of the White Sox beating them 1-0 in Chicago after the Twins won the season series after going 2-7 in Chicago and 8-1 at home.

With Joe Mauer and Scott Baker on the DL to start the season with some kind of sketchy injuries that may or may not be short little issues of inflammation and soreness, if those injuries linger the Twins could be in trouble.

If the Twins can avoid getting bit by the injury big anymore and Baker and Mauer are only on the DL for a short stint as the Twins are saying is definitely possible (they are saying Baker could miss as little as one start, and that Mauer could be back within a matter of weeks) then I think the Twins are the best team on paper in the division. But with the Indians having revamped their ailing bullpen and having a bunch of guys who have had at least one great year like Carmona, Lee, Hafner, Martinez and of course Sizemore they could be formidable, and if the White Sox can get some consistent starting pitching (unlikely) they could be in the mix. The Tigers have offensive all-stars but I just don't think they've got the pitching and I'll have to see a Royals team that's competitive for the division before I believe it.

But with all the question marks, it begins!

Labels: baseball, twins

Ahh, yes...

It's finally coming together.

The reason I originally registered this rather cumbersome domain name was because most advanced baseball modeling systems that I was interested in use Markov Chains. A Markov Chain is basically a special case of a graph (a mathematical graph, not a graph as you typically think of it.) A graph is simply a representation of states (nodes) connected by transitions between those states (lines or edges.)


A Markov Chain is basically a graph that has the special property of only having its edges go one way. In the case of baseball as a Markov Chain the basic unit of modeling that you are performing is the outcome of one half inning. There are 24 (plus one special case) nodes that can occur in a half inning that in the most general sense describe what's going on in the half inning... there are either no runners on base plus a runner on first and none on third; you can think of this as "0" "1" "12" "123" "13" "2" "23" "3". There are 8 total states regarding the baserunners. And then any of those can occur with zero, one or two outs, plus you can think of a special state with nobody on and three outs that triggers the end of a half-inning.

You can think of these individual states as having an overall probability of transferring to any of the other possible states that can result from a plate appearance (this is why the edges are directed; you can't go from having 2 outs to 1 out, for instance.) And certain transitions (e.g. from "123,0" to "0,0") are associated with a certain number of runs scoring (the only way to go from bases loaded nobody out to bases empty nobody out in one plate appearance would be a grand slam, so 4 runs score.) So if you eventually look at enough empirical data you can generate a generic Markov table that shows you things like... the expected number of runs to score in an inning from one state to another; the value, in runs, of a plate appearance, which is simply is equal to PlateAppearanceValue = expectedValue(newState) - expectedValue(oldState);

And while you can generate from very basic tables based on predictions of these states (versus empirical observation) like so...

And if you're interested in doing some really detailed analyzes along that line, you can read about them in Tommy Tango's The Book. It describes things like where the best place to put a hitter in the lineup is to how valuable a certain play is at certain states in an inning (and which are more likely to come up with a certain player at bat) for instance, as you probably would realize without computing it, it's much more valuable for your #1 or #2 hitter to be able to draw a walk (since it's equivalent to a single for these players a lot more often) as opposed to the #4 or #5 hitters (who usually come up with players on and who when they walk often don't change what is needed to score a run and they advance to a new state with a weaker hitter at the plate.) You know that stuff intuitively, but if you wanted to know how big those effects are, well, buy The Book. It also goes into details about stuff like fielding, platoon effects, and tons of other stuff that while it could theoretically be incorporated into a Markov model turns out to effect at most a few games worth of wins per year (of course, if you have a manager who makes optimal decisions at every juncture all year that can add up to a lot of games) are analyzed separately.

I also wanted to have my own web domain so I could have a non-lame free-hosted web-page and one that wouldn't change when I switched educational institutions... Princeton gave me a nice free web page even with access to cgi-scripting, etc., but which then expired a few months after I graduated. I work at NYU Medical Center so they don't offer the web services they would to a student, and I assume I'll have a page at the University of Minnesota (which will be pretty permanent since I'll be there for 5 years) but you know... it's probably best to keep the stuff on that web page related to my Ph.D. work. Not you know, massively intricate web applications involving Markov Chains, Twins' player statistics, and how well the Twins will do this year.

I don't know how detailed it's going to be right now, but thus far I have an HTML spreadsheet showing the Twins' players' Markov properties (i.e. given a random state, how likely is, say, Carlos Gomez to hit a triple? Or, when there's a double play possibility, how likely is Nick Punto to hit into one?) to generate an average run scored per inning.

I've also wanted to re-sharpen my skills on things like perl scripting, as well as learn new web stuff that I haven't done such as work on PHP and Ajax javascripting to allow users to tailor their predictions to work out a model of how many games you'll think the Twins will win. For instance, right now, I just have the Twins' likely opening day starters, and in the most simple scenario, I could have an Ajax script that has a slider that's equivalent to "to what degree will this player overperform or underperform his career line" that would lead to a prediction of runs scored per game which can crudely lead to a Won-Loss projection.

Of course the model could get much more detailed, with Twins' pitchers having their own Markov models, how much playing time you estimate a pitcher will get, what order the Twins hitters will be in, if a spot will be shared (as it invariably will) what degree that spot will be split, and how much those splits will lead to correct-handed match-ups, etc. Basically, you could take your prior assumptions about the Twins and build an intricate enough Ajax template, a Markov model built with PHP and perl on the backend and lead yourself to a very, very detailed model of how many games the Twins will win.

So that's the goal (not sure that I'm going to implement all those features...) having just our starting lineup and rotation and your prediction about over/under perfomance would be prety good, but I think that's where I'm gunna try to take the site. Of course, the original Java based model that was going to be totally console based crashed and burned (I think the code-base is somewhere on the site) since it was too hard, but you know, hope springs internal.

Labels: baseball, markov chain, site, twins