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.