Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Twins or Tigers (Twins Edition)?
Well, we finally know who the Yankees will be seeing in the ALDS this year after one of the best baseball games you'll ever see. The Twins beat the Tigers 6-5 in 12 innings in a game that saw both teams fail to capitalize on numerous scoring chances in extra innings. Anyway, following the format from this post about the Tigers that turned out to be unnecessary, here's a similar look at the Twins as presently constituted.The same idea here, it's lazy to just use 2009 numbers and pretend that you're doing trenchant analysis of a team. For example, yes, Joe Mauer's very good, but he's probably not a .364 hitter.
So here's a look at the Twins' position players and their updated CAIRO projections based on the 35% 2009, 65% 2006-2008 split I am using right now.
| Lineup | Pos | PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | pwOBA | 09wOBA | Diff | BR | Outs | dRS |
| denard span | cf | 23 | .305 | .365 | .397 | .327 | .357 | .030 | 3 | 15 | -2 |
| orlando cabrera | ss | 22 | .277 | .324 | .382 | .312 | .314 | .002 | 2 | 15 | 0 |
| joe mauer | c | 22 | .333 | .417 | .503 | .402 | .440 | .039 | 4 | 13 | 8 |
| jason kubel | rf | 21 | .278 | .344 | .487 | .357 | .386 | .029 | 3 | 14 | -7 |
| michael cuddyer | 1b | 21 | .269 | .343 | .469 | .352 | .367 | .015 | 3 | 14 | -2 |
| delmon young | lf | 20 | .285 | .318 | .417 | .320 | .317 | -.003 | 2 | 14 | -11 |
| brendan harris | dh | 19 | .263 | .318 | .389 | .311 | .296 | -.015 | 2 | 13 | 0 |
| matt tolbert | 3b | 19 | .245 | .301 | .343 | .286 | .265 | -.022 | 2 | 13 | -6 |
| nick punto | ss | 15 | .245 | .321 | .320 | .291 | .284 | -.007 | 1 | 10 | 6 |
| jose morales | c | 4 | .268 | .317 | .354 | .300 | .344 | .044 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| carlos gomez | cf | 3 | .241 | .289 | .345 | .281 | .272 | -.010 | 0 | 2 | 13 |
| brian buscher | 3b | 0 | .256 | .327 | .372 | .312 | .318 | .005 | 0 | 0 | -9 |
| mike redmond | c | 0 | .275 | .320 | .341 | .297 | .271 | -.026 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| joe crede | 3b | 0 | .243 | .300 | .425 | .313 | .304 | -.010 | 0 | 0 | 13 |
| total | 189 | .278 | .339 | .412 | .329 | .339 | .009 | 23 | 125 | 0 |
PA: Estimated plate appearances for the series, assuming it goes the distance.
pwOBA: projected weighted on-base average, a rate version of linear weights
09wOBA: 2009 actual wOBA
Diff: 09wOBA minus pwOBA. As a rough rule of thumb, a difference of .010 in wOBA is worth about five runs over 600 PAs.
BR: Estimated batting runs for the series using linear weights for estimated PA
Outs: Estimated outs for the series based on revised projection and estimated PA
dRS: Defensive projection over 150 games using an average of zone rating and UZR for non-catchers, and for 120 games using a system similar to the one described here for catchers.
Denard Span has a career line of .305/.391/.423 in the majors, so why the mediocre projection? It's because he hit .287/.357/.358 in his minor league career. He's young enough to have tangibly improved from where he's projected, so take that projection with a grain of salt. . Interesting fact, his first name is NOT Denard. It's Keiunta.
Orlando Cabrera came over at the trade deadline in a trade with Oakland, and helped them by getting Alexi Casilla out of the lineup. He hit .292/.316/.424 as a Twin after hitting just .280/.318/.365 for the A's, and at this point in his career he's probably about an average defender.
Obviously, the key to the Twins offense is Joe Mauer. He's by far their best offensive player, and his projection may be underrating him.
Losing Morneau is a big blow to the Twins on paper, but the Twins have averaged 6.35 runs per game since September 13 which was the day after Morneau was lost for the season. While that is very impressive, it's worth noting that it came primarily against Cleveland, Detroit and Kansas City. Jason Kubel has replaced Morneau in the cleanup spot, and Michael Cuddyer has replaced him at first base. Incidentally, Cuddyer's hit .333/ .402/.679 since Morneau has been out.
Delmon Young was once one of the top prospects in baseball, but as you can see his projection and his overall 2009 line is rather unimpressive, and his glove looks like a negative. He's another player who's been tearing it up since Morneau went down, hitting .382/.402/.632. Small sample size blip, or has something finally clicked? It's only 82 PAs, so we probably need to assume it's the former.
I don't know who's going to get the bulk of the DH at bats, so I gave them to Brendan Harris since he had the best offensive projection of the remaining players who weren't penciled into a starting spot. Matt Tolbert and Nick Punto aren't much of an offensive threat on paper.
If you look up and down the 'Diff' column, you can see that several Twins have performed better in 2009 than we'd have expected, but using the distribution of playing time in the table above it would work out to around a .010 difference in collective wOBA between their actual 2009 performance and their revised projections. Over a full season, that's a difference of around 50 runs.
The Twins looked to have a good defense on paper heading into the season, but for whatever reason their team UZR has been really bad at -36. That's 20 runs worse than the Yankees, who aren't exactly the 1985 St. Louis Cardinals. Zone rating likes their defense better than UZR, showing them as +4, but that includes a +6 by Justin Morneau who's no longer part of the equation. Their revised defensive projections have them as a little below average overall, but better than the Yankees by a hair. Over 162 games using the same allocation of playing time, this version of the Twins would project to score around 771 runs and be about 15 runs below average defensively. That's basically an average offensive team.
The Twins have already said Brian Duensing will pitch Game 1 tomorrow. Game 2 would be on Friday and Nick Blackburn would be able to pitch on normal rest so I'm assuming he gets the call there. Scott Baker can pitch game 3 on Sunday on normal rest, then they would probably use Carl Pavano in game 4 on Monday if necessary. If a game 5 (Wednesday) is necessary,
| Pitcher | Role | IP | H | HR | BB | K | pRA | pERA | pFIP | 09ERA | 09FIP | sIP | sR |
| brian duensing | SP1 | 128 | 158 | 18 | 27 | 62 | 5.36 | 5.03 | 4.43 | 3.64 | 4.13 | 6 | 3.6 |
| nick blackburn | SP2 | 180 | 217 | 22 | 37 | 83 | 4.86 | 4.40 | 4.46 | 4.03 | 4.43 | 12 | 6.5 |
| scott baker | SP3 | 184 | 191 | 24 | 42 | 137 | 3.73 | 3.62 | 4.09 | 4.36 | 4.07 | 6 | 2.5 |
| carl pavano | SP4 | 81 | 97 | 12 | 18 | 52 | 5.28 | 4.88 | 4.31 | 5.37 | 4.31 | 5 | 2.9 |
| joe nathan | CL | 69 | 46 | 6 | 19 | 80 | 2.26 | 2.13 | 2.76 | 2.15 | 2.95 | 3 | 0.8 |
| matt guerrier | SU | 78 | 73 | 10 | 22 | 52 | 3.65 | 3.37 | 4.30 | 2.26 | 4.06 | 3 | 1.2 |
| jose mijares | SU | 57 | 49 | 7 | 23 | 52 | 3.64 | 3.46 | 3.68 | 2.33 | 4.01 | 3 | 1.2 |
| jon rauch | MR | 56 | 54 | 7 | 16 | 48 | 3.97 | 3.71 | 3.60 | 1.80 | 3.40 | 3 | 1.3 |
| jesse crain | MR | 55 | 53 | 5 | 21 | 40 | 4.64 | 4.16 | 4.05 | 4.65 | 3.96 | 2 | 1.0 |
| jeff manship | MR | 89 | 109 | 11 | 16 | 48 | 5.93 | 5.56 | 4.20 | 5.68 | 4.94 | 1 | 0.7 |
| luis ayala | MR | 55 | 61 | 6 | 15 | 35 | 5.20 | 4.68 | 4.22 | 4.18 | 4.25 | 1 | 0.6 |
| bobby keppel | LR | 108 | 143 | 15 | 27 | 43 | 7.21 | 6.83 | 4.98 | 4.95 | 4.09 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Total | 45 | 49 | 6 | 11 | 30 | 4.45 | 4.13 | 4.24 | 22.2 |
pRA: Projected runs allowed per nine innings
pERA: Projected earned runs allowed per nine innings
pFIP: Projected Fielding independent pitching
sIP: Estimated innings in the series
sR: Estimated runs allowed in the series based on revised projection and sIP
The Twins rotation doesn't have a Justin Verlander type who really scares you, but they have some pretty nice balance in the rotation. CAIRO thinks Scott Baker is their best starter, but unless they're willing to go with him on short rest he'll probably only be able to start once if the series goes 5 games. Brian Duensing had a very good year, although based on his prior track record he projects to be worse than he was in 2009. Nick Blackburn is a solid pitcher who projects to be better than league average and is probably the most likely candidate to get two starts, and while Carl Pavano didn't have a good ERA in 2009, he actually had decent peripherals and a very respectable 4.31 FIP.
As far as the pen, the Twins have a closer as good as any closer in the game, and they have quality arms in front of him in Matt Guerrier, Jose Mijares, Jon Rauch and Jesse Crain. Not sure how the back end of the pen will shake out, but it's doubtful that whomever they take will have a ton of impact in this series.
The one thing that pops out at me in these numbers is the control of the Twins pitchers, particularly the starters. Out of the eight playoff teams, the Twins team has the best BB/9 rate using my best guess at postseason rosters and innings allocation at 2.25 per 9. Here's how I have all the teams ranked.
| Team | BB/9 |
| Twins | 2.25 |
| Cardinals | 2.59 |
| Yankees | 2.84 |
| Angels | 2.87 |
| Phillies | 2.97 |
| Red Sox | 3.19 |
| Rockies | 3.23 |
| Dodgers | 3.61 |
The bad news for Twins fans is they have the worst K rate out of those same eight teams.
| Team | K/9 |
| Red Sox | 8.05 |
| Yankees | 7.96 |
| Dodgers | 7.80 |
| Phillies | 7.31 |
| Angels | 6.92 |
| Rockies | 6.69 |
| Cardinals | 6.67 |
| Twins | 6.25 |
More bad news for the Twins.
| Team | HR/9 |
| Cardinals | 0.78 |
| Dodgers | 0.82 |
| Yankees | 0.83 |
| Red Sox | 0.92 |
| Rockies | 0.96 |
| Angels | 0.98 |
| Phillies | 1.04 |
| Twins | 1.13 |
Anyway, if we combine the offense, defense and pitching using these projections and playing time estimates, here's how the Twins look on paper.
| #games | 5 |
| home games | 2 |
| #outs | 125 |
| offense | 23.5 |
| pitching | 22.2 |
| defense | -0.4 |
| wpct | .512 |
| 162 gm equiv | 83-79 |
If the Twins had home field advantage they'd look about two wins better, but they don't, so they don't. That doesn't mean they don't have a fighting chance to beat the Yankees, because they most definitely do.
How much of a chance? I'll tell you tomorrow.
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