Fire Gardy

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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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Remember all that talk a while back about Cuddyer’s contract? I talked about it back in March; while Tim Dierkes rated his deal as one of the worst current contracts in baseball, I pointed out that “it’s not out of the question that he returns to his 2007 form this year in 400-450 PA or so.” And that basically, while 2008 was a throwaway year,* if 2009 and 2010 are reasonably good years the contract won’t have been that bad.

* If you want an easy way to look at disastrous contracts, look for everyone who gets injured and then make fun of the GM. You can try to price in some injury risk, but if you demand a “30% catastrophic injury discount,” any agent worth being an agent will laugh in your face and walk out of the room. This risk is part of doing business, and I think it’s cheap to retroactively decide that the GM made a bad move based on injuries that sap a player’s ability for a year.

So … how’s that contract looking at the moment, with Cuddyer hitting .277/.358/.523 with 14 HR, 18 2B, 46 R, and 46 RBI? So far this season, Cuddyer has been worth $7M, which means if he just stopped playing today, he’d be worth more than he’s getting paid this season.

Of course, Fangraphs is less than optimistic about his ability to keep this pace up, but have adjusted their projections upwards, and have him finishing just 1 run below his value from 2006 (and 10 runs better than his 2007, which is what I was hoping for this year). And if he keeps up his current pace, he’ll be worth considerably more than he was in 2006.

I know I was pretty hard on Cuddyer early in the year, but at this point it’s really looking like his offseason eye surgery did in fact kick in, right around the beginning of May* — his OPS jumped above .700 on May 2, and has been going steadily upwards ever since.

* Perhaps you recall when I wrote about Denard’s eye surgery a while back, and pointed out that he didn’t really start hitting until May of last year. See a pattern here?

So Cuddyer’s contract is looking considerably better than it did four months ago, and I imagine that next year when Dierkes looks at this again next year he might not be so quick to shit on Cuddyer.

And I really don’t mean to go back to talking about eye surgery again, but it is a little bit striking,* isn’t it?

* In April, Cuddyer hit .224/.318/.316, with 15 K and 1 HR in 88 PA. Since then, he’s hit .297/.373/.598 with 44 K and 13 HR in 236 PA. Talk about turning a corner!

At the end of the day, though, it’s good to see Cuddyer hitting — and well — for an extended period of time. Let’s hope he can keep it up and make everyone remember why we’re paying him like we are.

(Naturally, now that I’ve said this, he’ll either get injured or start sucking, probably starting tonight. The universe has a funny way of doing that. Sorry about that everybody.)

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Rob Neyer, famous AL Central hater, has an interestingly optimistic take on Liriano’s struggles:

Francisco Liriano’s ERA this season (5.91) is exactly two runs higher than it was last season. He’s been instructed to junk one of his two sliders. But fundamentally the only difference between this season and last season is a few more home runs. He’s still got a fine strikeout rate and he’s still walking more batters than he’d like. If he gives up seven homers — as he did last season — rather than 12, his ERA would look quite a bit better. So, this is no time to panic.

Frankly, I’m a little surprised that Neyer’s not saying Liriano’s career is over.* But part of it might just be that he’s looking at this in a surprisingly simplistic way. (Just looking at the number of home runs, really?)

* My guess is that it’s because the Red Sox have a lot of pitching depth at the moment. If they needed a pitcher, he’d be calling for the Twins to release Liriano. You know, like he did about Jason Kubel right before the season started and Kubel started raking.

I guess Neyer hasn’t seen Liriano’s numbers with men on base:

2008 Nobody on base: .250/.318/.406 Men on base: .260/.338/.374

2009 Nobody on base: .243/.314/.399 Men on base: .325/.413/.595

That’s pretty bad.

I guess he also hasn’t taken a look at Liriano’s struggles the second time through the order, which I’ve talked about in the past:

The first time through the lineup, opponents hit just .163/.253/.263 against him, with a 26/8 K/BB ratio and just 5 runs in 91 batters. The second time: .325/.400/.575 with a 12/9 K/BB and 13 runs in 90 batters. The third time? .396/.460/.717 with a 9/8 K/BB and 21 R in 64 batters.

I guess he also hasn’t looked at thrylos98’s analysis of Liriano’s release point:

As you can see, not only the successful Liriano release points are tighter, they are closer to his body. When he throws further away from his body, bad things happen.

These are a bunch of bad things. Liriano and Anderson have both claimed that they’ve found the problem, and it’s the crappier slider Liriano’s been throwing. If that pitch is the reason his delivery is out of whack, and is the reason he’s throwing fewer changeups, then yeah, maybe that’s the problem. And given that his sharp, biting slider is obviously a better pitch, he should probably just focus on that one.

Still, his mechanics are a major issue, and one that I haven’t seen any indication that he’s resolved. Also, perhaps a bigger issue is his inability to adjust to what hitters are doing to him — this (along with arm fatigue, from conditioning and/or mechanics) is probably the reason he gets lit up the third time through the order.

Obviously, I don’t share Neyer’s optimism. I wish I did. We’ll see how he throws tonight.

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