Fire Gardy

Apparently all this talk of a Mauer contract has got Bill Smith’s negotiative juices flowing.

According to a tweet from Joe C:

The #Twins have signed Nick Blackburn to a four-year, $14 million contract. The deal includes an $8 mil club option for 2014.

At the moment, that’s all the details I have on his deal. But let’s take a look at it, shall we?

He has two years of service time, which means he’s currently entering his third and final pre-arbitration year. Thus, this 4-year deal buys him out through all three arbitration years, plus an option for his first year in free agency.

Normally, arbitration salaries are set at 40%/60%/80% of your free agent value in each year. Blackburn produced 2.5 WAR in 2008, and 3.0 WAR in 2009 (and is currently projected for 2.5 WAR in 2010). If we set his true talent level at 2.5 WAR, this four year contract should look something like this:

1. $1M (typical value for final pre-arbitration year, this could go up or down by a few hundred K)
2. $3.5M (2.5 WAR x 40% == 1 WAR … free agent salaries are $3.5M/win this winter)
3. $5.25M (2.5 WAR x 60% == 1.5 WAR at $3.5M/win)
4. $7M (2.5 WAR x 80% == 2 WAR at $3.5M/win)
5. $8M team option (2.5 WAR at $3.5M/win is $8.75M)

As you probably noticed, these values add up to more than $14M. Normally, players give a discount for the security of a long-term contract. This deal is about 83% of what Blackburn could have expected if he’d gone year-to-year (and performed as well as he has the last two years every single time). That seems like a larger-than-normal discount, which means the Twins did a good job at the negotiating table (even the option is discounted from his expected value).

It’s possible that the Twins have managed to value wins at an even lower rate than this discounted winter shows … the value of this contract makes sense at about $3.2M/win.

So the Twins negotiated themselves a good, team-friendly contract here. Maybe all that practice trying to deal with Mauer has been good for them. But is the value of the contract really the most important consideration here?

For starters, they’ve now locked up perhaps their most consistent starting pitcher for four seasons; Blackburn has also shown himself capable of stepping up in big games (which can’t be measured, but teams and teammates and managers and fans all love those guys). Blackburn is the team’s only groundball pitcher, during an offseason in which they’ve re-upped on infield defense with the addition of Hardy & Hudson. If they expect to make a commitment to Hardy, it makes sense to lock up Blackburn. Plus, this will lend some consistency to the starting rotation. They’ve got a solid, consistent starter for his age 28-31 seasons, which are often a pitcher’s best.

Of course, there are downsides — Blackburn could get hurt or be ineffective. He hasn’t shown much risk of injury, but that could happen at any time for a pitcher. Plus, it blocks the pipeline of pitching talent. With both Baker and Blackburn signed to long-term deals, the space in the rotation for younger (perhaps more talented) pitchers is pretty thin; especially until Baker and Blackburn are considered “veteran presences,” thus removing the need to sign a guy like Pavano (or Livan Hernandez, or Ramon Ortiz, or whatever other guy they feel will give them a 5.95 ERA every 5 days).

I think you can’t be too worried about injuries in this situation. They could happen, but if you go by that logic you’d never sign anyone. And if a group of young pitchers starts knocking hard on the door and Blackburn seems like he should be the odd man out, plenty of teams are looking for consistent workhorses who are groundball machines, excel in big moments, and are signed to team-friendly deals — it shouldn’t be hard to find a taker in a trade and get something back for Blackburn. Especially if he pitches well, besting his 2.5 WAR valuation.

I didn’t really expect to like a long-term deal for Nick Blackburn, but I do. This was a good move for the Twins, and hopefully is an indication of the kind of successful negotiations they can execute, when it comes to the Mauer deal.

Harmon Killebrew has remained interested and somewhat active with the Twins over the years,* and recently John Shipley asked him about young power hitters in baseball.

* And that seems to be increasing in recent years, though part of that could just be due to more reporting during the winter and spring thanks in large part to the internet, and also to the ever-increasing demand for Twins-related information by the team’s excellent fanbase.

He showed his age, I think, by bringing up Michael Cuddyer — who’s not young — but his thoughts were interesting.

“Now,” Killebrew continued, “the real secret in this game, with hitting, is to be consistent. Can you come back and have a better year than you did the year before? That’s the tough part of the game. I hope Michael is still healthy. I know he can. Physically, he’s capable of hitting a lot more than he did last year.”

As everybody knows, Cuddyer put together a great season in 2009, putting up a career high 32 home runs. If anything, Cuddyer has seemingly shown himself not to be particularly consistent, as the perception is that he put together a pair of disappointing seasons in between his two great ones,* but Killebrew’s theory that Cuddyer is “capable” of hitting a lot more homers than he did last year warrants further investigation.

* He broke out in 2006 with a 3.1 WAR season, and 2009 was highly regarded but worth just 2.0 WAR. His 2007 was actually better, worth 2.1 WAR, though a big part of that was probably positional; in 2009, he filled in for Morneau at 1B for a month, which brought down his positional adjustment and counteracted some of the awesome work he did with the bat. He produced a career high 23.2 batting runs in 2009, vs 22.6 in 2006 and 10.5 in 2007. His 2008 was mostly a throwaway year, lost to injury.

Of Cuddyer’s 32 homers in 2009, 13 of them were “no doubt,” according to Hit Tracker — tied for 3th in the AL, behind Mark Teixeira, Miguel Cabrera, and Carlos Pena. And that was my impression as well: when Cuddyer connected with a ball, it went a mile. 11 of his homers were “plenty,” which means he got enough of them to get it out of basically any park; these are the standard home runs. Just 8 of his homers were “just enough,”* or balls that barely cleared the fence.

* Compare that to Mauer, whose 11 “just enough” shots were good for 5th in the AL.

But hitting “just enough” homers is not a criticism — you basically need to hit a bunch of them in order to rack up a big HR total. Prince Fielder had 16 of them, Albert Pujols and Mark Reynolds had 14, Kevin Youkilis had 13, Kendry Morales had 12, Alex Rodriguez had 11 … these are all pretty big home run hitters.

What Cuddyer needs to do is put more balls in the air, to give himself a better chance of a handful or two of them carrying just over the fence. If he can do that, while continuing to make the good solid contact he made in 2009, Killebrew could very well be right about his ability to hit more homers. I just don’t know what he means by “a lot more.” It could be similar to what he means by “young,” which apparently includes guys who are 31 years old.

Plus, with the addition of Jim Thome and JJ Hardy to the lineup as well as the potential for an emergence by Delmon Young, Cuddyer could see even more protection than he’s been accustomed to. That can only help.

One final note

in his first time in the cage, Cuddyer laid his bunts down, then immediately drilled a hard liner to center. Thome, with 564 homers in a 19-year major league career, looked up and said, “How do you do that?”

Dear Jim Thome: you don’t care! If Gardy’s plan for you as a pinch hitter involves any bunting whatsoever, that’s his fault. Not yours. Just focus on what’s made you a potential (probable?) hall of famer: smashing the crap out of the ball.

In the comments on yesterday’s post about Liriano, we had a pretty good discussion that’s worth reading through. There were a couple posts, by semi-frequent commenter Ragstoriches, that stuck out from the flow of the conversation and raise an issue that I don’t think I can do justice to in a comment. So I’m promoting it to a full-blown post, is what I’m doing.

He opened with this:

Liriano’s stuff may be better this winter, but Frankie’s biggest problem of late isn’t his stuff, it’s that he’s a friggin head case. He absolutely cannot deal with adversity – he can throw 6 innings of no-hit ball but a walk and a blooper later he’s in complete meltdown mode, and before you can blink he’s given up 5 or 6 runs.

And after the rest of the conversation had taken place, he closed with this:

So you don’t think Frankie had a tough time getting out of jams last year? Even your stats would prove that. Why did ‘09 Frankie fail to resemble even the 2nd half of ‘08 Frankie – he had another year to recover from surgery, right?

I’m sure games like that happened, but that happens to a lot of pitchers; also, I’ve found that memory is a funny thing, and that it sometimes plays tricks on you. So, without further ado, it’s time to peel back some layers of Liriano’s statistical onion and see just how quickly it can make us cry.

Ready? I sure am.

First, a baseline “this is not a jam” situation (leading off an inning). The first batter of the game had an .863 OPS with a .389 BABIP; the first batter of the inning overall had an .897 OPS with a .337 BABIP. So … not good, but also very unlucky.

His performance was worse than that in every base/out situation except “men on first and second” (when he had a .773 OPS with a .308 BABIP), and “a man on third and 2 outs” (when he had an .830 OPS and a .429 BABIP).

Some notable “in a jam” situations:

• RISP: .922 OPS, .347 BABIP
• Men on: .945 OPS, .369 BABIP
• Man on third: 1.117 OPS, .455 BABIP
• First & third: .908 OPS, .286 BABIP
• 2nd & 3rd: 1.198 OPS, .500 BABIP
• 3rd, under 2 outs: 1.221 OPS, .370 BABIP
• 3rd, 2 outs: .830 OPS, .429 BABIP

Look at those BABIP numbers, please. For the most part, those are ludicrously high, unsustainable for any pitcher. Furthermore, in only three cases are his BABIP numbers in a “reasonable” or “predictive” range; .288 with the bases empty, .286 with men on first and third, and .308 with men on first and second. Meanwhile, in all other cases, his BABIP ranged from .321 up to an absurd .500.

Okay, so base/out situations give us one window into Liriano’s failure when he got into a jam, but there’s more to this story.

Let’s take a look at his “clutch stats,” to see if those shed any more light on what’s going on here.

• 2 outs, RISP: .892 OPS, .359 BABIP
• Late & Close: 1.277 OPS, .545 BABIP
• Tie game: .800 OPS, .303 BABIP
• Within 1 R: .879 OPS, .324 BABIP
• Within 2 R: .866 OPS, .329 BABIP
• Within 3 R: .875 OPS, .333 BABIP
• Within 4 R: .856 OPS, .328 BABIP
• > 4 R: .474 OPS, .259 BABIP

Or we could just break it down by the leverage index, and see how he did in situations of various “game-on-the-line”-itude.

• High leverage: .893 OPS, .371 BABIP
• Medium leverage: 1.009 OPS, .367 BABIP
• Low leverage: .567 OPS, .243 BABIP

Alright. Enough. I think we’re painting a pretty clear picture here.

Liriano had bad basic numbers overall in 2009, but these numbers show that for the most part what happened was that when he was “in a jam” or the game was “on the line,” he got ridiculously unlucky; when it didn’t matter, his luck reversed and he “mowed down the opposition” (ie, the ball found the defenders’ gloves).

Much has been made of Liriano’s strikeouts and walks, of his command of his fastball, of his confidence and his emotional state, of how he seemed to get tired after just a few innings, or that he couldn’t adjust to the adjustments the hitters made the second and third time through the order. A lot of these things are true; especially the ones about his command, and his K/BB ratio.

Check out his peripheral stats:

• 2006: 10.7 K/9, 2.4 BB/9, 6.6 H/9, 0.7 HR/9, 4.5 K/BB
• 2008: 7.9 K/9, 3.8 BB/9, 8.8 H/9, 0.8 HR/9, 2.09 K/BB
• 2009: 8.0 K/9, 4.3 BB/9, 9.7 H/9, 1.4 HR/9, 1.88 K/BB

Obviously, every single one of those stats is trending in the wrong direction (and that’s why his ERA+ has gone from 207 to 107 to 75).

It stands to reason that eventually, his luck will change and his BABIP will drop back to normal levels; his H/9 should drop back down, perhaps not all the way to 6.6, but perhaps to the 7-8 range. A 1.4 HR/9 is totally unsustainable, and that’ll go back down to 1.0 or so (especially given Liriano’s propensity to generate ground balls).

So even if Liriano’s stuff hasn’t improved, and his K/9 and BB/9 rates stay the same, and the only thing that changes is that he’s not one of the unluckiest pitchers in the game, well, his numbers are going to improve quite a bit. If he doesn’t get better, just less-unlucky, Liriano is an above-average pitcher.

And if the reports about his improved command, velocity, and movement prove true? Well, if you combine that with improved luck, he’s still not back to 2006 but he’s getting close.* And close, really, is good enough.

* I closed yesterday’s post by saying that perhaps I was being wildly optimistic. After seeing just how bad his luck was in 2009, I think that was an overstatement. I’m optimistic, but there’s nothing “wild” about predicting that his BABIP will decrease from its cosmic heights and bring his numbers back into line with his talent.

So no, I don’t think the numbers show that Liriano had an especially tough time getting out of jams last year. I think the numbers show that he was unlucky, that any time someone made contact, the ball found a hole. I think that bad luck may, over time, have gotten into his head; have you ever gotten into a rut where you think that everything’s going to go wrong for you? I have, and when it happens your confidence is destroyed; you alternate between not trying enough and trying too hard, and neither is any good. Recovering from this is hard, and a lot of it is just taking some time off and rebuilding your confidence before you get back to it. It must be nice to have an offseason.

That’s why I put so much stock into quotes like this:

“[It was like], this is me,” Liriano said of the way he was throwing. “That’s the way I know how to pitch. Not worry about anything or any hitter. Just go out there and try to throw first pitch strikes and locate my fastball. I feel like I did in ‘06, I have my confidence back. My arm feels great. Physically and mentally I’m ready to go.”

and this:

“I’ve got my confidence back,” Liriano said. “This winter is the best I’ve felt.”

I don’t see Liriano as being any sort of spin-master, with the ability to concoct an elaborate web of lies for our benefit. I see him more as a simple man, perhaps not fully mature, who hadn’t had to face much hardship until after he’d been thrust into the public eye; and now he’s stuck having to grow up in front of our eyes.

Perhaps it’s naivete, but I trust that he can do it.

The internet, my friends, is all atwitter with excitement after Mark Rosen of WCCO broke the news that the Twins are close to a 10 year deal with Mauer.

Meanwhile, Buster Olney is reporting that the report of a preliminary agreement is not accurate, and both Jon Heyman* and Joe Christensen agree.

* What, you think he has no place reporting on the negotiations of a non-Boras client? Well, you’re probably right.

“Dan Cook,” whoever that is, points out that Rosen is talking to Mauer’s people, while Olney and the rest are talking to Twins officials. We may not be quite as close as we all want to hope (though I’d take Cook’s report with a big, rock-shaped grain of salt given his lack of reporting history).

All that said, I think it’s about time to look at the Mauer situation in a little more depth, couched in what we know about free agency this offseason and the rumored frameworks of this deal.

With contracts of this length, it’s practically impossible to say whether it’s going to work out. It’s just so much time, and anything can happen. Mauer is 26 now, but he’ll be 37 when this contract ends. Will he be the best player in the game at age 37? Will he even be a catcher by then? It’s literally impossible to know the answer to these questions (but it’s not that difficult to guess that the answers go something like: “No,” and “Maybe”).

But let’s just try and project what Mauer would be worth over this time period.

According to FanGraphs, since his first full season (2005), Mauer has been worth* 3.5, 6.1, 3.0, 5.8, and 8.2 WAR; in dollars: $12M, $22.4M, $12.2M, $26.2M, $36.8M.

* Remember, FanGraphs WAR takes into account that he’s a catcher, but does not take into account how good he is at being a catcher. In fact, their glossary page says this about measuring catcher defense:

If you think Joe Mauer’s catching abilities and leadership are worth one win, just add one win to what we display as his win value here. Quantifying catching defense is something that we just haven’t figured out yet, and so we’re not pretending that we have. Consider it an opportunity to fill in the blanks.

And yes, I do think it’s telling that they specifically mention Mauer as being more valuable than their WAR values state. For the purposes of this column, however, I am not going to inflate Mauer’s value beyond what is stated on the FanGraphs page.

The problem is … those WAR numbers don’t actually tell us all that much. Is he a 3 win player like he was in 2005 and 2007? Or a 6 win player like 2006 and 2008? Or is he a legitimate superstar, 8+ win player like 2009? All these numbers come before his prime; great players tend to peak around 27-29, and the truly great players’ skills diminish slowly through their early thirties. (Plus, you can’t plan for good seasons and bad seasons throughout a contract; you have to value a player at his “true talent level,” pay for that, and then basically hope he meets or exceeds that level in as many years of the contract as possible.)

If we put Mauer’s “true talent level” at around 7 WAR, and assume that he maintains that talent through age 30 at which point he will start to decline at 0.5 WAR per season, his value would look like this over the next ten years:

7 7 7 7 6.5 6 5.5 5 4.5 4

for a total of 59.5 WAR over the life of the contract.

To translate that into dollars, though, there are a few things to consider. First is that for the last several years, 1 win above replacement has been right around $4.5M on the free agent market … but this winter that has plummeted to the point that teams are only paying $3-3.5M per win on the open market.

Additionally, Mauer is not currently on the open market; the Twins can expect to get a (small) discount for extending him a year early, a year during which he could very well get injured and lose a shit-ton of money (this is standard procedure for all contracts). Beyond that, players on long-term contracts like this sacrifice about 10% of their fair market value in return for the security of the guaranteed contract. And both of those adjustments come before the possibility of a hometown discount — I don’t expect there’ll be much of one, but it’s possible.

So if we’re paying $4.5M per win like teams have been doing for years, that 59.5 WAR over 10 years will cost $267.75M, minus the 10% for security and fudging downwards a bit for extending early … around $230M, making Mauer one of the highest paid players in the league and giving him the third largest contract in baseball history (after ARod and ARod).

On the other hand, if the Twins are using the 2009-2010 offseason as an opportunity to spend less per win on Mauer’s contract, say $3.5M per win, then the deal would cost just $208.25M, and adjusting downward for security and moving early, it’d get down to the $180-190M range.* If the Twins used the current free agent climate to negotiate this lower price, it’d be a remarkably savvy move from a front office that hasn’t been known for that for some time. (And has never been known for shrewd contracts as much as player acquisition.)

* It’s worth pointing out that there will presumably be deferred money in this deal, which further reduces the total value in “today’s dollars.” I don’t know enough about baseball economics to estimate how much of the contract will be deferred and how much it will effect the real value of the contract. So I’m ignoring it here. Just know that deferred money generally means that the contract is worth less than the number of dollars on the bottom line, so you should watch out for the word “deferred” anywhere in reports about his contract.

Of course, these are just the rumored details. Other reports insist that the Twins aren’t going as far as 10 years on a deal. If, as some reports say, it’s just a 7 year contract, we’re looking at just 46 WAR,* putting it in the range of $140-190M range (depending on whether we’re valuing wins at $3.5M or $4.5M).

* I lopped off the final three years on the above projection of Mauer’s value.

On one level, I want Mauer in a Twins uniform until his career ends. On another level, I felt the same way about Torii Hunter and Johan Santana and other players before them; those feelings went away shortly after they signed contracts that the Twins clearly couldn’t afford, which will be paying them top-dollar even after they’ve declined to the point where they’re not even close to worth the money any more. I certainly don’t want to be paying Joe Mauer $20M+ to be a 36 year old former-catcher with bad knees and a balky back.

Long contracts always carry a ton of risk for the team. In Mauer’s case, the Twins are essentially backed into a corner where they must take the risk; that dynamic did not exist in the Hunter & Santana negotiations. Mauer is the hometown hero, the Golden Child, the Baby Jesus of baseball in Minnesota. He, personally, is a big reason the Twins even have a new stadium to move into; if he’s not on the team in 2011, the fans are going to be furious enough that they may well stop coming to the stadium, and the team knows it.

And frankly, the fact that it’s Mauer’s people that are leaking the information about the contract tells me that the Twins just may have done enough this offseason to convince Mauer that they’re dedicated to building a team around him. Both Morneau and Nathan have recently come out and raved about the roster, saying they’ve never seen anything like this in their time with the Twins. Undoubtedly, Mauer has seen the same things.

Maybe I’m just getting swept up in the giddiness of tracking a rumor as it lives and breathes on the internet, but I’m getting more and more confident that we’ll see a deal before Spring Training, and we can all rest a little easier.

After the news that Boof has been traded to the Red Sox for a PTBNL or cash, we also learned that the Twins have been actively trying to trade Perkins, and that Casilla is also available. That raised a question in the comments around here, based loosely around this premise:

** If the Twins are unloading backups like this, why would Casilla be “available,” why not try to trade Punto, who is a better player than Casilla, in an attempt to get more in return?**

First, a quick check into their values:

• Casilla peaked in 2008 with +1.2 WAR, but in 2007 & 2009 he was worth -0.9 and -1.4 WAR, respectively. In his career, he’s been worth a total of -1.0 WAR.
• Punto peaked in 2006 with +3.1 WAR, and also had +2.6 in 2008. He was +1.3 WAR in 2009. He’s never been below replacement level with the Twins (he did produce -0.1 and -0.2 in 2002-2003 in extremely limited time with the Phillies). In his career, he’s been worth a total of +8.7 WAR.

In addition Punto is at least capable of offering a steady hand at any infield position; Casilla has offered no more than a flashy but subpar glove at second base. It seems to me that there’s little doubt that Punto is the more valuable baseball player. So the Twins would have better luck trying to trade Punto, rather than Casilla, right?

Well, no. Not really.

The first thing to look at is their respective ages: Casilla is 25, while Punto is 32. Casilla could possibly improve and become a useful player at his peak in a year or two. Punto is almost certainly past his peak. Teams will definitely consider that kind of thing.

But the second, and arguably more important, thing: surplus value.

Punto will probably produce somewhere between +1 and +2 WAR this year; it’s possible he has a 2006/2008-esque great year, and it’s also possible he falls off a cliff and reverts to pre-2006 shit-Punto, but neither are particularly likely. At the same time, Punto will be paid $4M, which is right around what a team would expect to pay for 1 win worth of production on the free agent market.

This is important: if a team wanted a player who would provide as much value as Punto does, they could sign someone on the market for the same amount that Punto is making.

Similarly, if the Twins were to trade him, that team would then be paying Punto the same amount that he’s worth. So what kind of prospects can the Twins expect in return? Virtually nothing. Punto’s contract has exactly zero surplus value.

But Casilla is making considerably less. He’s before his prime. You can’t sign athletic 25 year old infielders on the free agent market. It’s feasible to guess that Casilla could be a useful player in a year or two, possibly with more time in the minors. If a team wanted to take a mild risk, they could acquire Casilla and hope to get some good value out of him.

The Twins could probably trade Casilla for a Boof-like haul, ie close to nothing. That represents his value on the trade market right now — but even though he’s a worse player than Punto, he’s worth more in trade.

Something to think about when you’re hoping for a trade or analyzing who your team is getting/receiving. You’re not just looking at the players involved — you’re also looking at their contracts.

My AL MVP ballot goes like this:

1. Mauer
2. Zobrist
3. Jeter
4. Greinke
5. Longoria
6. Pedroia
7. Verlander
8. Figgins
9. Teixeira
10. Youkilis

And that’s what it is right now. Frankly, if you ask me again in an hour, it’ll probably be different. (Ask me again in five minutes. It might be different then, too.) While I was trying to come up with this list, I had two conflicting wishes:

1. That there were only 4 spots on an MVP ballot, as I feel there’s a huge gap in MVP-caliber-ness between Greinke and the next guy
2. That there were 15-20 spots on an MVP ballot, because the gap between #5 and #15 is barely discernable, and the order you put these guys in really just falls down to your predetermined biases

Joe Mauer, obviously, takes the top spot (really, the only important one). Everyone’s rehashed this argument a thousand times. Suffice it to say that I think if you’re the best defensive catcher in the league and the best hitter of any position in the league, then you are the MVP of the league. It seems to me that it’d take a pretty convoluted (and “interesting”) definition of the word “valuable” to think otherwise.

After that, I thought Zobrist, Jeter, and Greinke were pretty close to each other. I leaned toward Zobrist because the defensive metrics say he was tremendous this year and I wasn’t about to just ignore that; the same metrics said that Jeter was pretty good in the field, but not great. At the same time, Zobrist was a few runs better offensively than Jeter; given those two things, I don’t see how you can make a case that Jeter was better without saying things like “But Jeter won the World Series in 2009!” or “But Jeter won the World Series in 1998!”* or some such non-individual things.

* People always complain that Jeter’s never won an MVP, therefore he should win the MVP this time around. It’s a cute thought, of course; it’s also one that would never be thought about anyone other than The Great Captain Derek Dreamy Eyes Jeter. You want to know the reason Jeter’s never won the MVP? Here’s a hint: it’s not because sportswriters went out of their way to screw him. It’s because he was never the most valuable player in the league. So … I don’t get the logic that says he should get an undeserved MVP trophy now because he never got an undeserved MVP trophy in the past. The “lifetime achievement award” is called the Hall of Fame, and he’ll get that later.

Anyway, I don’t really feel like arguing about the rest of these guys. Teixeira had a bunch of RBI, but it was only because people were on base in front of him. His actual numbers are basically indistinguishable from other good first basemen: Kevin Youkilis, Miguel Cabrera, Kendry Morales, Justin Morneau (sans fractured spine). Put any one of those guys in the #3 spot in the Yankee lineup, and they’ll get just as many RBI (give or take random fluctuation).

My only worry is that I’m penalizing Teixeira for the quality of this teammates, in an effort simply not to reward him. I don’t think I am. It was something I thought about a lot. And wanting to avoid penalizing him while also including Youkilis (which emphasizes that they’re basically the same) is the reason I didn’t get to put Franklin Gutierrez on my ballot, which I really wanted to be able to do.

Oh well. We’ll see how this thing goes.

Joe Christensen just brought us an update from the GM meetings in Chicago,* noting that we’ve lost Armando Gabino to the Orioles on waivers, that we’ve placed Juan Morillo on the 40 man roster, and that Justin Huber cleared waivers and is on his way back to Rochester.

* Before I say anything about these moves, I just want to point out that I really would have liked to try to crash these meetings, and was hoping I could figure out where they were happening and maybe sneak in. Could have been fun. Except, as it turns out, they’re holding the meetings at O’Hare airport, which is absurdly far out of my way and is very, very inconvenient. Couldn’t they have gotten a hotel downtown? Is the economy really that bad? Oh well, I guess I’ll just be reporting on the GM meetings from afar, as usual.

First, the Gabino news. He was a mid-level prospect for us the last few years, posting acceptable strikeout rates (consistently around 6.5 K/9 throughout the minors) and low walk rates (2.8 BB/9 in the minors). Basically, he’s exactly the sort of strike throwing machine who can’t strike very many people out that the Twins ostensibly value highly. His problem, though, within the organization is that he’ll be entering his age-26 year, and thus is no longer really a prospect with a huge amount of upside; compound that with the fact that he’s the same age as (or older than) the other pitchers in our rotation — who happen to be the same type of pitcher but more talented than Gabino — and it’s pretty clear he has no place in the future of the organization.

Add to that the fact that Gardy apparently hates his guts, and it’s really no surprise he’s gone. He was called up this year because the team was woefully short of pitchers — and Gardy let him into one game as a reliever and one game as a spot starter, before letting him rot in the bullpen for the rest of the season, refusing to call on him regardless of how badly Keppel and the others were ruining the game. And if there’s one thing we know about the Twins, it’s that if Gardenhire doesn’t like you, you’re going to ride the bench until you’re off the team.

Gabino is not a big loss.

Morillo, of course, continues to be interesting. He posted an excellent 11.7 K/9 this year at AAA, but still can’t harness his blazing fastball as he also posted an abysmal 6.9 BB/9. Apparently the Twins still think they can do something with him, because they’ve decided to protect him from the Rule 5 draft by putting him on the 40-man roster. Either that, or they’re simply astounded by the speed of his fastball, the likes of which the Twins have probably never seen before.

If Morillo winds up playing a significant role in the Twins’ bullpen this year without demonstrating increased command in the minors, it means the Twins are in trouble.

Huber was another guy who Gardy simply didn’t care for; despite posting a reasonably impressive .273/.356/.482 line in AAA, with 22 HR, 22 2B, and an 84/51 K/BB ratio in 506 PA, Gardy apparently couldn’t find more than two plate appearances for the 2B/3B in over a month of service time. I will point out, of course, that Gardy found plenty of work for Matt Tolbert at both of those positions. Once again, September call-ups just meant that Gardy’s doghouse gets bigger.

Normally I’d be a little bit surprised that nobody decided to take a flier on Huber, but this isn’t a normal time. We haven’t seen what to expect from the free agent market this year — it’s possible that prices will be severely dampened by the effects of the economy on baseball teams (most of whose owners simply have no money beyond the massive loans that allow them to call themselves wealthy), and by the glut of free agents on the market. This situation could well be exacerbated by Buster Olney’s prediction that up to dozens of talented arbitration-eligible players will simply be non-tendered rather than offered a contract, further increasing supply in a demand-starved market.

As a result, teams probably wanted to see what happens, as there will presumably be plenty of available players who are simply better than Huber. Perhaps the Twins will be watching, waiting for such an option to pounce on.

Is it just me, or are the offdays getting more frequent as the season winds its way closer to the bitter end? Maybe it’s just that I desperately want to get the foul taste of yesterday’s lost out of my mouth, and thus today’s lack of a game seems unforgivable. That said, I bet the Twins need it. Losing like that is tough for the fans, but I can only imagine it’s tougher on the players,* and they could probably use a day off.

* Is anyone else glad that Redmond insisted on calling for Nathan’s breaking balls on a full count to two consecutive hitters? Because the radio guys said it looked like Nathan really didn’t want to throw those, and wanted to go with his fastball. He spun up a couple of hangers, and there you go. Can someone tell me why Mike Redmond is still on our team? And can someone also tell me why catchers seem to get worse at calling a game as they get older? Posada has gotten worse at calling games, Pudge Rodriguez has got worse at calling games, even Varitek has gotten worse at it. And I don’t remember Redmond actively doing shit he knows the pitcher doesn’t have confidence in before this season. This asshole has got to go.

Anyway, there’s been a lot of talk lately about Nathan, in the context of the old “is Joe Nathan okay?” conversation that we have every season around this time. Actually we usually have it a little bit earlier in the season, I think … but I contend that this phase of his season is based on innings pitched or appearances or something, not the calendar, and since we haven’t had as many leads this year as we normally do, we haven’t used Nathan as much. Usually the conversation bounces between the extremes of “we’re paying this old man too much money and he sucks!” and “he must be injured, he needs rest” and “he’s fine, just keep rolling him out there.” It’s easy to go to extremes when you’re talking about a closer: all his moments are in high leverage situations, and if he has a bad day, you lose, simple as that. So if he stuggles for a little bit, the team has a lot of trouble winning games.

But have we seen this before from Nathan? (Obviously, I had to pick where his struggles started and ended. Some years it’s more pronounced than others, and I had to just pick the best dates I could. You can disagree about the specifics, I suppose, but I think this ought to give you a general idea.) Let’s take a look at the numbers.

2004 opening phase, 4/15-8/18: 49 G, 51 IP, 0.35 ERA, 2 ER, 62 K, 15 BB, opponents: .160/.234/.211
2004 struggle, 8/19-8/24: 3 G, 2.1 IP, 23.14 ERA, 6 ER, 3 K, 2 BB, opponents: .600/.647/.867
2004 finish, 8/25-10/2: 17 G, 15.1 IP, 1.17 ERA, 2 ER, 20 K, 3 BB, opponents: .115/.164/.135

2005 opening phase, 4/5-8/30: 57 G, 58.1 IP, 2.31 ERA, 15 ER, 74 K, 21 BB, opponents: .177/.251/.263
2005 struggle, 9/3-9/6: 3 G, 3 IP, 6 ER, 18.00 ERA, 5 K, 0 BB, opponents: .462/.429/1.000
2005 finish, 9/7-10/2: 9 G, 8.2 IP, 0 ER, 0.00 ERA, 15 K, 1 BB, opponents: .103/.133/.138

2006 opening phase, 4/6-8/13: 46 G, 50 IP, 1.44 ERA, 8 ER, 71 K, 9 BB, opponents: .173/.216/.263
2006 struggle, 8/15-9/11: 9 G, 9.1 IP, 3.86 ERA, 4 ER, 11 K, 4 BB, opponents: .129/.222/.226
2006 finish, 9/12-10/1: 9 G, 9 IP, 0.00 ERA, 0 ER, 13 K, 3 BB, opponents: .100/.182/.133

2007 opening phase, 4/2-9/1: 56 G, 58.1 IP, 1.70 ERA, 11 ER, 60 K, 11 BB, opponents: .210/.250/.286
2007 struggle, 9/4-9/17: 6 G, 7 IP, 5.14 ERA, 4 ER, 7 K, 1 BB, opponents: .231/.259/.577
2007 finish, 9/18-9/30: 6 G, 6.1 IP, 0.00 ERA, 0 ER, 10 K, 7 BB, opponents: .182/.379/.227

2008 opening phase, 3/31-8/21: 55 G, 55 IP, 0.98 ERA, 6 ER, 61 K, 13 BB, opponents: .185/.239/.277
2008 struggle, 8/25-9/16: 7 G, 6.1 IP, 5.68 ERA, 4 ER, 6 K, 4 BB, opponents: .240/.367/.480
2008 finish, 9/18-9/30: 6 G, 6.1 IP, 0.00 ERA, 0 ER, 7 K, 1 BB, opponents: .050/.095/.050

2009 opening phase, 4/8-8/19: 49 G, 46.2 IP, 1.54 ERA, 8 ER, 61 K, 11 BB, opponents: .160/.217/.245
2009 struggle, 8/21-?: 6 G, 6.2 IP, 8.10 ERA, 6 ER, 9 K, 6 BB, opponents: .300/.417/.700

So my personal feeling about Nathan’s struggles is mostly correct: that he does, in fact, struggle every year, and it always happens at roughly the same time. He always gets through about 46-58 innings before he enters a sort of a dead-arm period and becomes hittable — in some cases quite a bit worse than hittable: he can put up some pretty ugly numbers during the struggle period.

Be the struggle period usually doesn’t last very long. In his first couple yars, it lasted just 3 games; his longest struggle was in 2006, which also happened to be his least struggly struggle period (his opponents OPS stayed below .500). In the other years, it lasted between 6 and 7 innings.

One thing that stands out for me is that his 2009 struggle period showed up in the smallest amount of innings in his career, though not (quite) the smallest amount of appearances. In severity, it’s middle of the road; his 8.10 ERA is 3rd out of 6, and his 1.117 OPS is also 3rd of 6. And we’re getting close to the end of it. It’s likely that it’s over now, and at most we can anticipate 3 more games during his struggle. While the Twins are at a point of the season where they can’t afford a struggling Nathan for three more games, it’s not really Nathan’s fault that he reached this level of usage this late in the season. He either should have gotten more save opportunities (blame the offense, or the starting pitching, or the bullpen), or should have gotten more non-save appearances (blame Gardy’s “old” fashioned closed-mindedness).

And the reason not to fear using him more often, given his dead-arm period? Look at his post-struggle numbers. In 45.2 IP, he’s given up 2 ER, for an absurdly awesome 0.39 ERA. Once his struggles end, Nathan dominates through the end of the season.

While it obviously hurts when we lose because of Nathan, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. We’ve seen this before from him, and he’s always gotten out of it. We just have to hope he gets out of it soon and that the rest of the team can give him enough opportunities that his late-season dominance makes a difference.

This year that the All Star game, Tim McCarver brought up a theory about how difficult it is for a catcher to win a batting title; his point was that what Mauer has done in his career, and is doing again this year, is truly remarkable. He pointed out that a catcher’s body gets beat up so badly during a game and over the course of the season, that it’s practically impossible for catchers to hit in their last couple at bats, and by the end of the season their bodies are done for. Well, in typical McCarver fashion, he said something that everyone’s heard a million times before — it’s a good thing he’s a highly paid analyst, otherwise we might hear something during a broadcast that we’ve never heard before. And it makes sense, too. Catcher is a very difficult position, and everyone’s heard those horror stories about guys who used to be catchers and now their knees are shot and their hand is all mangled up, and it’s pretty easy to imagine that while they were developing those long-term injuries, well, they might have been in a little bit of pain.

Baseball Prospectus doesn’t usually take things like that at face value, though. Tim Kniker opens the issue:

This seemed an interesting little theory from an ex-catcher that begged for some numbers to back it up. This comment also got me thinking about a potentially even larger issue: Does the wear and tear of playing at certain defensive positions on the field lead to reduced offensive production? Does this happens during the course of the game, and/or throughout the season?

I encourage you to click through and see the stats, as they’re pretty interesting. I’m not going to re-post BP’s stats here, since that’s basically their lifeblood and I don’t want to steal it. But I will talk about their conclusions.

Kniker broke it down thusly: He separated all the players out into their respective positions, and measured their batting averages* in each at bat of the game (ie, the 1st-3rd at bats, the 4th at bat, the 5th-plus at bats). Then he looks at what positions got better and worse in their progressive at bats.

* I was originally surprised he went with measuring batting average, but then realized that we’re talking about winning batting titles. So I guess batting average is the stat that makes sense in this discussion. Though I’d be interesting in seeing the research re-done using OPS or something. I feel like that would be more interesting and telling.

And as it turns out, catchers tend to improve as the game goes on more than almost any other position. Outfielders actually improve the least (and CF has it the worst). So the conventional wisdom doesn’t have it exactly right, it seems.

So what does this say about the original point, about Joe Mauer? Is he even better at staying at his level throughout the game, and is that is leading to the batting titles? It is interesting to note that his batting average was pretty consistent in his first three times up year-to-year, but in the one year he didn’t win the batting title, he had a very low batting average in his late-game plate appearances. One thing to point out is that every in year, he typically performed worse in late-game plate appearances than he did in his early-game plate appearances, as compared to other catchers.

In 2007, when Mauer failed to win the batting title, his late-game plate appearances were pretty poor (.243 in 2007 vs .351 in 2006 and .333 in 2008), but perhaps more interesting is that while most catchers improve a lot in each successive plate apperance throughout the game, Mauer does not (as much, anyway).

When looking at the course of a whole season, Kniker found that in 2008, catchers dipped -.024 points of batting average in their 301+ PAs vs their first 300, but that 2008 was an outlier and normally catchers don’t fall by that much in the second half. Really, the position as a whole is right in line with all the other positions. It appears that McCarver’s conventional wisdom about catchers getting beat up and it affecting their hitting just doesn’t hold up with reality.

Kniker concludes:

When we see the three years in perspective, the data suggest that there isn’t really a significant impact on catcher performance in terms of batting average during the latter portion of the long regular season. Perhaps the likely cause is that any fatigue that might occur with any one position’s performance at the plate is likely to be equaled by pitcher fatigue, such that it all evens out in the end.

I don’t know why he didn’t bring it back around to Mauer, but I’m going to go ahead and do that myself.

I’ve been thinking for a while about why Mauer’s able to hold up over the long season and seems to be able to hit like a DH despite playing C, and that maybe he’s just such a physical freak of nature that he’s able to withstand the beatings more effectively than most catchers. Apparently, however, that’s not the case at all. First of all, most catchers are not actually adversely effected by the physical beating they take, either in the game or over the course of the season. Secondly, Mauer is one of the few catchers who is adversely effected, and his hitting does suffer slightly (by “suffer,” I mean “improve less than others”). It’s just that Mauer’s talent level is so astronomical, and his numbers start so high, that he just hits better than anyone else anyway.

Calcaterra is absolutely right that the Twins need to sign Mauer to a long term contract, and they need to do it soon:

The smart money still has Mauer staying in his hometown, but if it gets to be spring training and nothing is done, the odds will begin to drop. The Twins don’t need the hassle, the bad P.R. or the spectre of the Red Sox or someone driving up the price. They need to get a long term deal done for Mauer this winter.

He’s the best player in the AL, and he shows you why just about every game. I’d enjoy it while you can, because Bill Smith doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who can do anything right.

I haven’t been around here in a while, so I figured now would be a good time to toss out a nice little blog post. Oh, and in case anyone’s paying attention, that sweep of the Royals just jumped us to 4.5 games behind Detroit, and we basically got ourselves right back into the picture. Quite satisfying, thank you.

As you all probably recall, I was pretty down on Torii Hunter when he left, and I didn’t like the attitude* he was showing towards the team and towards his teammates, and I didn’t think he’d age that well, and I thought his contract with the Angels would quickly turn into an albatross. That might still happen, but so far he’s been more than worth what the Angels are paying him. Of course, Gleeman still takes an opportunity to point out that he’s been right all along about Torii’s big tough-guy talk being a big load:

Torii Hunter’s tough-guy act took another hit recently, as he spent six weeks on the disabled list with a groin injury and then delayed his return thanks to “flu-like symptoms” after dining at the Olive Garden. Seriously. Hunter spent his final season in Minnesota publicly criticizing Mauer for not possessing the toughness to play through injuries, yet has missed 56 of a possible 284 games since signing with the Angels and has been in the lineup just eight more times than Mauer during the past five years.

I guess Torii shouldn’t have gone with the never ending pasta bowl. That’s something that seems like it sounds a lot better than it actually is. And yes, I basically just posted that quote to point out, once again, how ridiculously awesome Mauer is.

* Although my dad pointed out something interesting about Torii’s “attitude” in his last couple years with the team. He’d come up with a different generation of prospects, and all his friends were gone. The new core was already forming, and the team was clearly built around Mauer and Morneau. It’s got to be kind of tough for a guy, the face of the franchise, to sit there and watch as he’s slowly ousted from his perch in the center of the fans’ collective heart. And why would he listen to the new silent lead-by-example leadership of Mauer and Morneau when he’s several years older than they are and has been a vocal leader for years? Everything about how he wanted out makes sense to me, and I just can’t be annoyed with him for it.

And speaking of players who left, check out these two stat lines:

Player A: 3.78 FIP, 7.88 K/9, 2.48 BB/9, 1.08 HR/9, 1.21 WHIP, .296 BABIP Player B: 4.06 FIP, 7.40 K/9, 1.79 BB/9, 1.36 HR/9, 1.17 WHIP, .291 BABIP

Those aren’t that different, and if Player B could just keep the ball in the park a little bit more his FIP would probably drop down and be right in line with Player A’s. They’re remarkably close to the being the same pitcher. So … which one would you rather have? Let’s look at some more numbers:

Player A: 30 years old, $20M in 2009, $118M owed after 2009 Player B: 27 years old, $750K in 2009, $23.75M owed after 2009

Yeah, you probably know now who the players are. But which one would you rather have at this point? Is 0.28 points of FIP really worth $21.25M?

Just so we’re clear, Player A is Johan Santana. Player B is Scott Baker.

Does that change your answer?

For as bad as Baker has been, and for how discouraging that has been, just imagine if he had the big name like Johan, and we were paying him 25% of our payroll, and he was doing the same thing. You’d feel worse, wouldn’t you?