Should the Twins sign Bonds?

The Hardball Times has a good review of the Twins season up. At the end the Author, Josh Kalk, makes the case that the Twins should sign Barry Bonds to DH, move Jason Kubel to LF and Delmon Young to Center, benching Carlos Gomez. The article is worth reading but I disagree with him on one point:

"Give the front office credit for dumping Hernandez when they did as well. It takes some guts to dump your opening day starter, who also was leading the team in victories. The move was clearly the right choice, but sometimes the right choice is clouded by potential media/fan backlash."

Practically everyone who knows anything about the Minnesota Twins wanted them to dump Hernandez and bring up Liriano about two weeks before the Twins actually made the move. There would have been certain media/fan backlash if they would have kept Hernandez in the rotation and Liriano in AAA.

Series preview - New York

Note: The stats next to the pitchers are as follows (IP,SO/BB,WHIP,VORP)

Game 1

Monday August 11th @ 7:10pm (FSN)

G. Pekins (102.7, 52/26. 1.47, 12.0)
vs
S. Ponson (95.7, 42/22, 1.56, 3.9)

Sidney Ponson hasn't been horrible this year. He hasn't been good either. Since arriving in New York he's walked as many as he's struck out and he's allowing more than one hit per inning.

After shutting out the Texas Rangers through six innings in his first start after the All-Star game Perkins has had three rocky starts in a row, the first coming in New York. Two of those games were late inning meltdowns, so we'll see if the hook comes quicker as a result.

Game 2

Tuesday August 12th @ 7:10pm (FSN)

N. Blackburn (140, 71/21, 1.27, 21.1)
vs
M. Mussina (140.3, 96/20, 1.20, 26.3)

Mike Mussina is having a typical Mike Mussina year, which seems to happen less frequent nowadays, but are good years when they do happen.

Nick Blackburn didn't have a great outing last time through against Seattle, but it wasn't that bad either. He's putting together a very nice first season and has even been a little unlucky in doing so; he's got a BABIP of .306 on the year.

Game 3

Wednesday August 13th @ 12:10pm (FSN)

K. Slowey (108.3, 78/16, 1.10, 19.2)
vs
D. Rasner (87, 54/28, 1.55, 0.7)

Darrell Rasner hasn't been any great shakes this year, although his last decent game came against the Twins. His .7 VORP in 87 innings gives you an idea of his contribution to the team.

Slowey can look dominating in one game and average in the next. His last outing against Kansas City, he only allowed one run, but also seven hits in 5 and 2/3 while only striking out two. He had the least bad start of the Twins pitchers in the last series against the Yankees.

Casilla could be back soon

Alexi Casilla, out since July 29th, could be back in the lineup sooner than first expected.

"He said it looks good," Gardenhire said. "He seems to think he'll be able to start activity next week and go from there. He'll be in a splint for another week and start working out with us and start taking batting practice next week. Right now, everything is good."

Cuddyer injures foot

UPDATE: It looks like Cuddyer will be out for at least 4-6 weeks, and possibly the rest of the season.

*

A line drive fractured Michael Cuddyer's second metatarsal in his left foot last night while playing with AAA Rochester. No word yet on what this means for his return to the lineup, which was expected on Monday. In four games with the Red Wings, Cuddyer went three for ten, with two doubles, three walks and three strikeouts

Series preview - @ Kansas City

Note: The stats next to the pitchers are as follows (IP,SO/BB,WHIP,VORP)

Game 1

Friday August 8th @ 7:10pm (FSN)

K. Slowey (102.7, 76/16, 1.10, 16.3)
vs
K. Davies (63.3, 32/24, 1.56, 6.9)

At 24 years old Davies is having his best year as a pro. His BB/9 and HR/9 have gotten better, but his K/9 has regressed. His average GmSc on the year is 50 and his ERA+ is 100, meaning he's almost exactly a league average pitcher.

Slowey has been inconsistent as of late, recording game scores of 89, 46, 18, 43, 79, and 47 in his last six starts. In his last start he struck out seven and didn't walk any, but gave up five runs on six hits including two HR.

Game 2

Saturday August 9th @ 7:10pm (FSN)

F. Liriano (16.3, 12/16, 2.08, -2.7)
vs
Z. Greinke (146.7, 131/42, 1.31, 27.1)

Zach Greinke is putting up almost exactly the same numbers this year as last, when he split time between the starting rotation and the bullpen and they're pretty good numbers.

In Liriano's first start back in the majors, against Cleveland, he went six scoreless innings, giving up three hits and three walks with five strikeouts. It was not a dominating performance, he often fell behind batters, but it was six innings of zero's in his first big league start since April, so you can't nitpick too much.

Game 3

Sunday August 10th @ 12:10pm (WFTC29)

S. Baker (107.3, 93/23, 1.17, 20.8)
vs
G. Meche (146.7, 115/51, 1.31, 22.6)

With Greinke and Meche the Royals have two quality pitchers they can throw at you back to back, which, for the Royals, is something. Meche has been on fire since the All-Star break, recording his lowest GmSc, a 60, in his last outing against Boston. A 60 GmSc is still pretty good.

Baker on the other hand has been scuffling and his last outing against Seattle was his worst of the year, he gave up six runs in five and a third. The Royals are the kind of team it's easy to bounce back against.

Injury Update

Michael Cuddyer, left index finger

Cuddyer played in his first rehab game last night with AAA Rochester, going 1-3 with a BB and a SO. Provided all goes well he's expected to be back with the Twins on August 10th.

The return of Cuddyer presents the Twins with a dilemma, four outfielders and three positions. Young, Span and Gomez are playing well right now so it will be interesting to see how Gardenhire juggles the playing time.

Alexi Casilla, 15-day DL, right thumb

Casilla is resting in the hopes that he can get well enough to come back in September. He's wearing a splint and doing rehab but Gardenhire made sure to point out that if there is a chance he will do further damage than he'll be shelved.

Casilla has the promise of being the Twins regular 2B for a while so they won't take any chances with his long term health, and they have a decent amount of infield depth, so it's not the end of the world if he misses the rest of the year.

Pat Neshek, 60-day DL, right elbow

Neshek has been playing catch down in Fort Myers and he has reported no problems so far, but Gardenhire cautioned that "it's still very early in the process."

Neshek would be a big boost to an overworked bullpen down the stretch and add more value to the team than either of the two players above where the Twins have depth, but his return by the end of the year is probably less than 50-50.

Twins defense is not that good

Last week The Baseball Analysts published an excel spreadsheet that compiles fielding performance based on a system devised by Justin Inaz using freely available fielding stats from The Hardball Times. Using the posted spreadsheet I compiled a Minnesota Twins version with tabs for; all players, individual performance at each position and overall position performance.

The system Justin devised is a Range metric, giving an indication of a fielders range, not arm strength, ability to turn a double play or pick a bad throw out of the dirt. In other words this metric looks at a fielders ability to field balls hit in their general direction relative to league average and convert those chances into outs.

Here are a few terms to be aware of before we begin:

• BIZ - Balls hit into a fielder's zone that are converted to outs
  
• OOZ - Balls hit out of a fielders zone that are converted to outs
  
• Plays - combination of BIZ and OOZ
  
• Runs - an adjustment to try and determine the amount of runs saved or lost
  

We're not looking at a full season's data, so any analysis will be incomplete, but what these numbers show is that the Twins are one of the worst fielding teams in the majors as far as range is concerned. Only the Royals are worse. How come the Twins are so bad? It comes down to the play of two players really, the infield corners, Justin Morneau and Mike Lamb. Here's a position by position breakdown:

Pos	BIZ+/-	OOZ+/-	Plays+/-	Runs+/-
1B	-6.14	-6.99	-13.13	-10.48
2B	-3.12	-2.88	-6.00	-4.52
3B	-13.90	-7.21	-20.40	-16.32
SS	-1.08	-11.95	-13.03	-9.81
LF	-2.38	-2.12	-4.50	-3.98
CF	2.99	1.86	4.85	4.85
RF	-0.40	-9.34	-9.74	-8.21

The Twins are giving away runs at almost every position, the lone exception being CF, where, using this method, Carlos Gomez rates as one of the five best CF's in MLB. All of the good work he has done is offset by other people playing center and Delmon Young playing LF though. Overall the outfield has been dragged down by the play of Jason Kubel and he's primarily the DH now, as it's currently configured Gomez, Young and Span is actually above average, with Span offsetting Young and Gomez anchoring the unit.

The biggest hole for the Twins has been the infield and in particular the left side of the infield. To this point Mike Lamb has played the most innings at 3B, and he's been terrible, bad at fielding balls hit in his zone and outside his zone. The shortstop position has been primarily split between three players; Everett, Punto and Harris. Everett and Punto were both better than average at fielding balls hit in their zone and below average on balls out of their zone which made both of them about average or slightly below. Unfortunately, Harris has been bad at balls in his zone and out of it.

Looking at the numbers above the shortstops have overall have been about average at fielding balls hit in their zone, the problem is they don't have any range beyond their zone. This combination of poor 3B and SS play has cost the Twins about 26 runs combined, the same amount lost by the entire Texas Rangers team.

The upside to all of this is that two of the Twins worst fielders, Lamb and Kubel are not playing in the field much anymore and their replacements are both above average. That should help a lot and probably already has, the Twins recent success correlates with Span taking over RF and Buscher taking over 3B.

While this metric leaves out some important parts of team defense, it gives a pretty good indication of a fielder's ability to field balls and make outs, which the Twins haven't been very good at that this year. It's surprising than that their young pitching has done as well as it has in front of such a limited group of fielders.

Player Spotlight: Justin Morneau

Justin Morneau just wrapped up an amazing month at the plate in July, hitting .360/.473/.708 with more than twice as many walks as strikeouts. His OPS was 1.181 for the month. That's a video game number.

When you compare July to what he did in June you see he had less plate appearances and less hits, but twice as many doubles, three times as many home runs, more than twice the walks and half the strikeouts. He hit almost as many doubles in July (13) as he had in the three months previous (14). In 110 plate appearances he struck out just eight times. His OPS+ for the month was 207, meaning he was 107% better than the average 1B.

Looking at his numbers there are two big differences between July and the first three months, his doubles and his strikeout to walk ratio. The 13 doubles he hit lead MLB and his BB/SO ratio was by far and away the best for players with at least 100 plate appearances, as was his OBP and OPS. If he can keep that up, hitting more doubles and walking more than striking out, he should be able to actually compete with Josh Hamilton for MVP votes.

Series preview - @ Seattle

Note: The stats next to the pitchers are as follows (IP,SO/BB,WHIP,VORP)

Game 1

Monday August 4th @ 9:10pm (FSN)

G. Perkins (96.3, 50/25, 1.43, 12.6)
vs
M. Batista (91, 57/59, 1.89, -19.7)

Miguel Batista has been really awful this year coming out of the bullpen, now he's in the starting rotation. This kind of inspired roster manipulation exemplifies the 2008 Seattle Mariners and has helped make them, against all expectations, one of the worst teams in MLB. To be fair, Batista has been good since moving into the rotation, but it's only been two starts so far.

Perkins, on the other hand, has gotten banged around a little in his last two starts. He's thrown almost 120 innings combined (major and minor) this year, the most he threw in a minor league year was 134 back in 2005. He could be hitting a wall, or he could have just had two not-so-good starts back-to-back, either way he shouldn't have too much trouble with an anemic Mariners offense.

Game 2

Tuesday August 5th @ 9:10pm (FSN)

S. Baker (102, 89/21, 1.12, 23.1)
vs
R.A. Dickey (81.7, 45/36, 1.51, 9.4)

Dickey is a knuckleballer and as such you never really know if he's going to be 'on' or not. His last start was good, the two before that, not so much. Regardless, even when he has a good game it's not that good, he doesn't strike out many and walks more than he should.

Baker's last two games haven't been great, but they haven't been bad either, he's only really had one bad start all year. But he walked three batters in each of the last two games, before that the most he'd walked in a game all year was two. On the surface July looks like it was a good month for Baker, but he posted a .238 BABIP, which is bound to regress.

Game 3

Wednesday August 6th @ 3:40pm (FSN)

N. Blackburn (134, 70/20, 1.26, 19.6)
vs
J. Washburn (122.7, 69/38, 1.48, 6.2)

The subject of all sorts of trade rumors leading up to the deadline, Jarrod Washburn ended up staying put. He's having worse of a year than what has become a pretty typical Jarrod Washburn year, which is average. His last great year was his contract year, a phenomenon the Mariners have some experience with.

Nick Blackburn had two almost identical starts in a row against Jeremy Sowers of the Indians, both times going seven innings allowing one run and issuing one walk. Five out of his last six starts have been quality starts; the other was against the Yankees. Like Baker though his BABIP dropped off a cliff in July, lower than Bakers at .228.

Twins drop the F-bomb

Francisco Liriano makes his long awaited return to the major leagues today against the Indians, with the Twins a half game back of the White Sox for the division lead. Instead of making a deadline deal, the Twins called up Liriano, who is a significant upgrade over the guy he's replacing, Livan Hernandez. Whereas the Chicago White Sox brought in a guy, Ken Griffey Jr., who doesn't provide an upgrade over what they have now and if they continue to play him at CF might end up costing them more runs than he creates. All of that assumes he can even stay on the field though, he had to leave yesterdays game with leg cramps, not a good sign for their hopes of playing him in CF.

The Twins now have a starting rotation without any liabilities and a solid bullpen with a great backend. They could use an infield bat and a return to productivity from Michael Cuddyer, but I think the team that wins the division will be the team who's starting pitching holds up down the stretch. That could be a challenge for both teams, the Twins pitching is young and the Sox rotation is peppered with injuries and question marks.

Liriano could be the difference for the Twins like he was in 2006. He has the potential to be the Ace that the staff lacks right now, a left-handed flamethrower who can dominate a game and anchor a rotation. Today will be his first step in that direction.

The 30 year old virgin

If you're a 30 year old, career minor leaguer, getting called up to the big league team has to be a pretty good feeling. Since 1999 in the Reds system Randy Ruiz has been in the minors, 975 games played for 16 different teams and nine different organizations. He didn't make it to AAA until last year while in the Phillies system. This year in Rochester, his first full season in AAA, he has been one of the best hitters in the International league, putting up a .320/.366/.536 with 17 HR and 33 2B. His most glaring weakness is his .20 BB/SO ratio, but the Twins aren't looking for him to get on base as much as drive runners in against lefties.

That's not what happened last night though. Ruiz got a two out single in the bottom of the seventh for his first major league hit. Than Brendan Harris hit a double down the line and Ruiz was off and running. Watching him chug around the bases sort of reminded me of Kirby. While rounding second Indians left fielder Franklin Gutierrez had trouble with the ball and Ruiz was waved home. The 235 pound, 30 year old rookie got to run flat out from first to home, and after he crossed the plate it looked as though he might need a parachute to stop his momentum. I was waiting for him to grab an oxygen mask, like a defensive lineman who returns a fumble for a touchdown would.

He probably won't be around after Cuddyer comes back, but who knows when that will be, and until than the 30 year old rookie will get to live his dream, playing on a major league ballclub.

Liriano finally called up

The Twins made the move today that everyone knew they were going to make, calling up Francisco Liriano from AAA Rochester. They also called up career minor leaguer Randy Ruiz and optioned Craig Monroe and Livan Hernandez, neither of whom has played up to the Twins modest expectations.

Series preview - Cleveland

Note: The stats next to the pitchers are as follows (IP,SO/BB,WHIP,VORP)

Game 1

Friday August 1st @ 7:10pm (FSN)

N. Blackburn (127, 68/19, 1.30, 16.3)
vs
J. Sowers (58.3, 34/23, 1.64, -9.4)

A rematch of Sunday's contest that saw Sowers throw his best game of the year, his only start with a GmSc above 50 in fact. I don't imagine that will continue.

Blackburn had a strong outing in that game as well, recovering nicely from his debacle at Yankee stadium. July was a good month for Blackburn, his three slash numbers were down to .217/.240/.304, while his K/BB ratio held steady.

Looking closer at the numbers we see that his improvement was largely due to a BABIP of .331 from April -June that went down to .227 in July. He was unlucky early in the year, but got lucky in July, which made it look like he was throwing better than he was, his K/BB ratio didn't change after all. Overall his BABIP is .306 which is a little above league average but not out of line.

Game 2

Saturday August 2nd @ 6:10pm (FSN)

K. Slowey(96.7, 69/16, 1.10, 17.2)
vs
P. Byrd (115, 53/22, 1.3, 3.3)

Paul Byrd had a good outing his last time on the mound, holding the Tigers to four hits and no runs over 7 2/3 innings, but he walked three. His K/BB ratio is 2.41 for the year, but just 1.84 over the last five games. He's striking people out at roughly the same rate; he's just giving up more walks than he had been.

Slowey had a complete game shutout in his last outing, the first game of the Chicago series, and his second shutout in his last five starts. Even with that July was a tough month for Slowey though, his walks and hits allowed per inning were up while his K's per inning were down. More than likely it was a rough patch and he'll bounce back in August.

Game 3

Sunday August 3rd @ 1:10pm (WFTC29)

F. Liriano (10, 7/13, 2.71, -6.5)
vs
M. Ginter (15, 9/1, 1.40, -2.0)

Matt Ginter has been all over the last five years. A first round pick for the White Sox in 1999, he never really caught on with them and in 2004 was traded to the Mets. He signed with Detroit in 2005 and didn't pitch in the majors again until this year. He's only thrown 15 innings, but hasn't been terrible, hovering right around replacement level.

Liriano was terrible in three starts in April, but has been lights out for the last month down in AAA. Over his last six starts he's sporting an 8.5 K/BB ratio and has allowed only five runs in 41 innings, four of those coming in one game. He's ready to go and gets to make his return on Sunday in front of a home crowd who'll be happy to see him.