My favorite thing to peruse during the baseball season is the mlb.com overall standings board. I would get into Baseball Prospectus but I already have enough black-hole-time-absorption machines in operation. The regular standings have just enough to keep me occupied for about 5 minutes, and then I can move on, satisfied.
Today's contemplation: Runs Scored and Runs Scored Againts. Now, the teams I root for: MN Twins (Land of My Heritage) in the AL and LA Dodgers (Land of My Birth) in the NL are a giving me very different feelings in my tummy.
The Dodgers have been on a tear. Everything is right. Manny Ramirez is "being Manny" to the tune of beating the living crud out of the ball (Boston, we thank thee). The young starters are doing things that make me giddy. And is all of the exuberance something we can continue to count on or should we trap our happiness in a jar and look at it longingly in July? Apparently, contrary to this man's existence, plan on repeated euphoria Dodgertown: our Runs Scored: 119; Runs Allowed: 82; Expected Win-Loss Record: 14-7. Actual Win-Loss Record: 14-7.
On the other hand, the Minnesota Twins. Now, the Twins have been having a lot of problems. Their All Star, 2X Batting Champ Catcher has been out, coming back Friday against the Royals {anticipatory giggling}. The rotation, also young, has been garbage except for the #5 pitcher; this can be expected to get better. So, we have accumulated these numbers: RS: 85; RA: 113 which should give us the diametric opposite of Dodger-lation: an 8-13 record. What have we actually managed to do? 10-11, with a chance at .500 against Scott Kazmir tonight (not likely, I know, but why can't the good times roll?). The culprit? Being 4-0 in 1-run games. {guilty chuckle}. The Twins hereby thank the world for allowing them to miraculously and inexplicably not trash their season already, and hope you will not mind when we go on another ridiculous run in August-September to steal the division from some much more "expected" (i.e., deserving) winner.
Showing posts with label Twins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Twins. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Let the Record Show
... that Jim Caple's attempt at prescience is the only one that would not result in a November stoning were we to apply Old Testament prophecy standards to 2009 Major League Baseball Pre-Season predictions.
Therein: 13 out of 21 "experts" (variously defined) have the MN Twins getting to the playoffs; only 2 predict the Tigers to assert themselves (though the Tigers did snag the "Dark Horse" pick from Rob Neyer and Jason Stark, who are more "expert" than most). In fairness will I have to spot the Burglar some good odds this year?
On the eve of the real beginning of baseball: may injuries not be the bane of destiny!
Therein: 13 out of 21 "experts" (variously defined) have the MN Twins getting to the playoffs; only 2 predict the Tigers to assert themselves (though the Tigers did snag the "Dark Horse" pick from Rob Neyer and Jason Stark, who are more "expert" than most). In fairness will I have to spot the Burglar some good odds this year?
On the eve of the real beginning of baseball: may injuries not be the bane of destiny!
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Stat Challenge
Did everyone notice? Baseball started. Now I can finally procrastinate again.
In memory of losing FireJoeMorgan over the winter, here's a baseball-announcing puzzle.
Sunday, March 1st, bottom of the ninth, Twins-RedSox, two out, two on, Twins down by one. One Dustin Martin steps up to the plate. Since it's Spring Training and there are often whole games where I hardly know who anyone is, I wait with great anticipation for that ever helpful stat box to pop up. Here's what it said:
1-1; AVG: .750; RBI: 1; OBP: .667.
Is there any scenario in which this is possible? Ready ... go!
Oh, and lest our favorite label meet its end, the aptly surnamed Red Sox closer of the day, Hunter Jones, was slinging a textbook Classic Jones.
In memory of losing FireJoeMorgan over the winter, here's a baseball-announcing puzzle.
Sunday, March 1st, bottom of the ninth, Twins-RedSox, two out, two on, Twins down by one. One Dustin Martin steps up to the plate. Since it's Spring Training and there are often whole games where I hardly know who anyone is, I wait with great anticipation for that ever helpful stat box to pop up. Here's what it said:
1-1; AVG: .750; RBI: 1; OBP: .667.
Is there any scenario in which this is possible? Ready ... go!
Oh, and lest our favorite label meet its end, the aptly surnamed Red Sox closer of the day, Hunter Jones, was slinging a textbook Classic Jones.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Big Talk
In the previous post, I brashly claimed that the Tigers would sweep the Twins in the upcoming series. Well, so far I don't have to eat my words. Tigers take the first game 5-4. What's better: Jones did not make a relief (sic) appearance. Zumaya pitched in the eighth and ninth innings. That saved me a couple antacid tablets.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Small Market Baseball
I believe the Tigers actually had the biggest trade of the offseason in acquiring Miguel Cabrera (3B) and Dontrelle Willis (SP) from the Florida Marlins during Baseball's Winter Meetings, but the Minnesota Twins certainely generated the most sustained press while all of baseball fandom speculated where Johan Santana (the active pitcher with the most consistently astounding flame throwing excellence) would be traded. Red Sox, Yankees, and Mets were the frequently cited destinations.
Long (and it was long) story short: Johan finally went to the New York .... Mets -- the fact that he did not go to either the Red Sox or Yankees being the current best argument for the existence of God. A number of Twins-supporting media types have taken the opportunity to bemoan the fact of this impending deal (see here or here): why do "small market" teams like Minnesota always have to lose people like that? Why can't those owners open those deep pockets (the Twins owners, the Pohlad family, are the richest sole owners in all of baseball) and buy out a superstar or two? Just once, pretty pretty please.
I, for one, am actually glad they didn't. Yes, that's right, for the price he was asking, I'd rather see the perennial Cy Young favorite walk in exchange for a handful of blue chip prospects than guarantee him $20+ million for six years. My reasons:
1) No matter how good a ball player one is, there is no one who can predict the trajectory of a major league career. Some incredible players have bottomed out when they hit 30. There are a million things that can go wrong for a pitcher -- even if we are talking about Cy Young himself, do you really want to bet 10-20% of the payroll on everything going right for half a decade?
2) Prospects are really fun to watch. Not a whole team of them, mind you (see Royals, Kansas City or Devil Rays, Tampa Bay) but having a team with 2-4 (depending on position) truly promising rookie players is great fun. Is there more true joy when someone hits their first major league home run or their 756th? Watching a rookie sprint around the bases and forgetting to touch second because he is so thrilled out of his mind (yes I have seen that) is worth the price of admission ten times over.
3) It's always more fun to be the underdog.
3a) How often does your team need to win a championship for you to feel there is some hope in rooting for them? (I apologize to Cubs fans throughout the world.) The Twins won it all in '87 and '91. That was a pretty exciting stretch that I was lucky enough to be aware of my innate Twins-fandom for. The 1991 World Series often won (until ALCS 2004) and is still always in the top three of best-playoff-series-ever votes. We got to the playoffs (though were often crushed) a lot in the last five years. That is pretty fun. There are a lot of fans of a lot of teams who have been nowhere near that in the last twenty years. I could see the Twins miss the playoffs for the next three years (no jinx, please!) and still be a very happy and hopeful fan.
3b) It is NOT fun to be the favorite, and it is even less fun to be a 'dynasty'. Why? Do you know any Patriots fans? The primary emotion going into the game-which-everyone-already-expects-you-to-win is nervousness; you are not allowed to "just be happy to be there"; you can't really just go out and play really hard and possibly be a little too crazy but that often seems to work out anyway; and the smile at the end (if you win) is relief, not surprised joy: it all feels pre-programmed and stale, and like a "really historic statistic". Basically: boring. (An aside: wouldn't the best thing for Red Sox baseball fandom right now be if they didn't win a World Series for 10-12 years and then ripped off another one? or two? With this core group of players, every additional World Series now starts to feel ... dare I say it? ... Yankee-ish).
In short, I think it all amounts to keeping the real ability to hope as the dominant feature of rooting for a sports team. We have a chance, it might happen, it very well could not, but there's a real chance. And that is really, really fun. If the Twins have to see people like Torii Hunter and Johan Santana leave after five to eight years of young stardom in order to keep that alive, so be it; and I'm perfectly happy for Mr. Pohlad to keep on being the richest owner in baseball. I just hope he has something to hope for too.
Long (and it was long) story short: Johan finally went to the New York .... Mets -- the fact that he did not go to either the Red Sox or Yankees being the current best argument for the existence of God. A number of Twins-supporting media types have taken the opportunity to bemoan the fact of this impending deal (see here or here): why do "small market" teams like Minnesota always have to lose people like that? Why can't those owners open those deep pockets (the Twins owners, the Pohlad family, are the richest sole owners in all of baseball) and buy out a superstar or two? Just once, pretty pretty please.
I, for one, am actually glad they didn't. Yes, that's right, for the price he was asking, I'd rather see the perennial Cy Young favorite walk in exchange for a handful of blue chip prospects than guarantee him $20+ million for six years. My reasons:
1) No matter how good a ball player one is, there is no one who can predict the trajectory of a major league career. Some incredible players have bottomed out when they hit 30. There are a million things that can go wrong for a pitcher -- even if we are talking about Cy Young himself, do you really want to bet 10-20% of the payroll on everything going right for half a decade?
2) Prospects are really fun to watch. Not a whole team of them, mind you (see Royals, Kansas City or Devil Rays, Tampa Bay) but having a team with 2-4 (depending on position) truly promising rookie players is great fun. Is there more true joy when someone hits their first major league home run or their 756th? Watching a rookie sprint around the bases and forgetting to touch second because he is so thrilled out of his mind (yes I have seen that) is worth the price of admission ten times over.
3) It's always more fun to be the underdog.
3a) How often does your team need to win a championship for you to feel there is some hope in rooting for them? (I apologize to Cubs fans throughout the world.) The Twins won it all in '87 and '91. That was a pretty exciting stretch that I was lucky enough to be aware of my innate Twins-fandom for. The 1991 World Series often won (until ALCS 2004) and is still always in the top three of best-playoff-series-ever votes. We got to the playoffs (though were often crushed) a lot in the last five years. That is pretty fun. There are a lot of fans of a lot of teams who have been nowhere near that in the last twenty years. I could see the Twins miss the playoffs for the next three years (no jinx, please!) and still be a very happy and hopeful fan.
3b) It is NOT fun to be the favorite, and it is even less fun to be a 'dynasty'. Why? Do you know any Patriots fans? The primary emotion going into the game-which-everyone-already-expects-you-to-win is nervousness; you are not allowed to "just be happy to be there"; you can't really just go out and play really hard and possibly be a little too crazy but that often seems to work out anyway; and the smile at the end (if you win) is relief, not surprised joy: it all feels pre-programmed and stale, and like a "really historic statistic". Basically: boring. (An aside: wouldn't the best thing for Red Sox baseball fandom right now be if they didn't win a World Series for 10-12 years and then ripped off another one? or two? With this core group of players, every additional World Series now starts to feel ... dare I say it? ... Yankee-ish).
In short, I think it all amounts to keeping the real ability to hope as the dominant feature of rooting for a sports team. We have a chance, it might happen, it very well could not, but there's a real chance. And that is really, really fun. If the Twins have to see people like Torii Hunter and Johan Santana leave after five to eight years of young stardom in order to keep that alive, so be it; and I'm perfectly happy for Mr. Pohlad to keep on being the richest owner in baseball. I just hope he has something to hope for too.
Monday, September 03, 2007
Sign of the Times
August. That month in which the baseballwheat is separated from the baseballchaff, leaving a few interesting teams that could-just-get-it-together-in-time (see: Tigers, Detroit).
The Other Favorite AL Central Team of the Bourgeois Burglars (see: Twins, Minnesota) has both less hope to pull it together (at 69-68), and less to pull together anyway. This is, in general, ok with yours truly. The Twins have made it to the playoffs four of the last six years (counting this one), and though they always seem to get derailed by America's Favorite Team (The Yankees), the Kansas City Royals are a good reminder of how sweet it is to root for a perennial competitor.
On the other hand, it is hard to let go of that playoff rush, once experienced. You know its truly over when your team's website offers video highlights titled, not: "Stunning late inning comeback lifts Twins over reeling Yankees" or "Santana dominates Angels, striking out 15" but rather: "The Twins use small ball to get a run home Sunday Afternoon." Note, that we were playing the Kansas City Royals.
A couple weeks after the all star break, ESPN.com's resident stathead, Rob Neyer, commented on how high he had ranked the Twins and how lowly they have performed (can't find the link) saying: "I did not conceive of how poorly their lineup would be managed." This was not Neyer coping out, it is something that Twins fans have been whining about increasingly all season long. The banner player for this phenomenon has been Nick Punto, the banner incident his multiple pop-up bunt attempts.
For documentary evidence of how pathetic a season Mr. Punto has had (and I wish him no ill, he is by all reports a fine, well-liked, hard working fellow ... just not a good major league infielder) the statistically WORST SEASON of all major league batters. The best measure of his performance is the new-fangled (not really) stat VORP (Value Over Replacement Player). The very basic definition of VORP explains that this is a calculation of "the number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player at the same position would contribute if given the same percentage of team plate appearances. VORP scores do not consider the quality of a player's defense." Alex Rodriquez leads all major league batters with something ridiculous like an 82. Tori Hunter leads all Twins with a very respectable 39.2.
Mr. Punto, with his 128 games played and 467 plate appearances, leads all major leaguers with the line of -26.3. That means that Mr. Punto has taken away over 26 runs on the season that an absolutely league-average replacement level guy would not (see Jose Valentin, 2b, NY Mets). Punto is famed for his defense (which is, admittedly, very good and sometimes incredibly spectacular), but despite what Kelly Theiser argues in this article, even if you are Ozzie Smith you can't make up that many offensive miscues and bat .199. Seriously. Mr. Gardenhire, please stop putting Mr. Punto in the lineup.
In short, see you next season. Over the next month, Twins fans will enjoy previews of the incredible pitching rotation that is shaping up for next year, wring their hands at the idea of who will replace Hunter in CF now that he seems to be planning on hitting the big time free agent market, and hope God drops a decent Third Baseman into our laps.
Oh, and Go Tigers (Do you want to borrow a closer? We apparently have two, again, despite what this says).
The Other Favorite AL Central Team of the Bourgeois Burglars (see: Twins, Minnesota) has both less hope to pull it together (at 69-68), and less to pull together anyway. This is, in general, ok with yours truly. The Twins have made it to the playoffs four of the last six years (counting this one), and though they always seem to get derailed by America's Favorite Team (The Yankees), the Kansas City Royals are a good reminder of how sweet it is to root for a perennial competitor.
On the other hand, it is hard to let go of that playoff rush, once experienced. You know its truly over when your team's website offers video highlights titled, not: "Stunning late inning comeback lifts Twins over reeling Yankees" or "Santana dominates Angels, striking out 15" but rather: "The Twins use small ball to get a run home Sunday Afternoon." Note, that we were playing the Kansas City Royals.
A couple weeks after the all star break, ESPN.com's resident stathead, Rob Neyer, commented on how high he had ranked the Twins and how lowly they have performed (can't find the link) saying: "I did not conceive of how poorly their lineup would be managed." This was not Neyer coping out, it is something that Twins fans have been whining about increasingly all season long. The banner player for this phenomenon has been Nick Punto, the banner incident his multiple pop-up bunt attempts.
For documentary evidence of how pathetic a season Mr. Punto has had (and I wish him no ill, he is by all reports a fine, well-liked, hard working fellow ... just not a good major league infielder) the statistically WORST SEASON of all major league batters. The best measure of his performance is the new-fangled (not really) stat VORP (Value Over Replacement Player). The very basic definition of VORP explains that this is a calculation of "the number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player at the same position would contribute if given the same percentage of team plate appearances. VORP scores do not consider the quality of a player's defense." Alex Rodriquez leads all major league batters with something ridiculous like an 82. Tori Hunter leads all Twins with a very respectable 39.2.
Mr. Punto, with his 128 games played and 467 plate appearances, leads all major leaguers with the line of -26.3. That means that Mr. Punto has taken away over 26 runs on the season that an absolutely league-average replacement level guy would not (see Jose Valentin, 2b, NY Mets). Punto is famed for his defense (which is, admittedly, very good and sometimes incredibly spectacular), but despite what Kelly Theiser argues in this article, even if you are Ozzie Smith you can't make up that many offensive miscues and bat .199. Seriously. Mr. Gardenhire, please stop putting Mr. Punto in the lineup.
In short, see you next season. Over the next month, Twins fans will enjoy previews of the incredible pitching rotation that is shaping up for next year, wring their hands at the idea of who will replace Hunter in CF now that he seems to be planning on hitting the big time free agent market, and hope God drops a decent Third Baseman into our laps.
Oh, and Go Tigers (Do you want to borrow a closer? We apparently have two, again, despite what this says).
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