Fire Gardy

It wasn’t too long ago that we were getting excited about the possibility of a more patient offense, one that wouldn’t swing at everything it sees, one that forces the pitchers to work, one that gets us to the bullpen, one that draws walks, one that scores runs.

Within days of Gardy’s first (and thus far, only) team meeting about this very issue, the Twins scored 12 runs while seeing 176 pitches. Things were looking up for the offense. Of course, things quickly turned south for the new offense, and the Twins reverted to their old free-swinging ways.

This culminated in Tuesday night’s game against the White Sox. Everyone on the team not named Joe Mauer went 0-26 with exactly 1 walk. Mauer drew a pair of walks, but perhaps most importantly, got the team’s sole hit with one out in the 9th to break up Gavin Floyd’s no hit bid.

The Twins were just 2 outs away from the amusing oddity of scoring a run despite getting 0 hits (earlier in the game: Mauer walked, advanced to 2nd on an error, advanced to 3rd on Cuddyer’s sac fly, scored on Kubel’s sac fly). But (fortunately) it didn’t happen, and all the players seemed to be thrilled not to be on the wrong end of a no hitter. Perhaps they shouldn’t be so thrilled about it — instead, learn to hit and avoid being anywhere near that situation.

Today, Gleeman brought up a new stat called Outside Swing Percentage. Basically, it measures the percentage of a player’s swings that are on balls outside the strike zone. Plate discipline is usually measured in walks, but this stat takes a look at another aspect of plate discipline: not swinging at bad pitches.

It seems like it should be really obvious, but if you avoid swinging at bad pitches (ie, pitches out of the strike zone), then not only will you draw more walks, but you’ll get more hits (because the pitches you’re swinging at are easier to hit) and your hits are more likely to be solid (because the pitches you’re swinging at are easier to hit — and you don’t have to reach for them). Apparently, this logic is lost on the Twins.

The only Twins players better than league average are Mauer, Kubel, Tolbert, and Punto. Kubel, Tolbert, and Punto haven’t got enough at bats to qualify for the batting title, so only Mauer qualifies as above average for our team.

On the other hand, Carlos Gomez (38.3%) and Delmon Young (36.2%) have the third and fourth worst Outside Swing Percentages in baseball (only Vladimir Guerrero and AJ Pierzynski are worse).

This is pathetic, and must be remedied as soon as possible. And it all came to a head in last night’s game.

The umpire had a small strike zone throughout (and it was consistent, so it’s not like the Twins were screwed). In the first inning, I sent a text message: “The small strike zone is going to hurt us tonight.”

The strike zone may have been consistent for both teams, but the Twins react terribly to it, and have for years. First, it hurts the pitcher because the corners aren’t called for strikes — meaning he’s giving up more walks and more hard hit balls than he’s used to. That isn’t consistent for both teams, however, because of the Outside Swing Percentage problems the Twins have: namely, they swing at everything that moves and won’t draw any walks regardless of how friendly the strike zone is.

For the Twins, a small strike zone means they’ll give up a lot of runs and struggle to get any baserunners. This isn’t new — Tuesday’s game was just an ugly reminder of the team’s (and, in fact, organization’s) woes.