Category: General Blogging

This is a general blogging category.

Twins hitters best seasons by position

Although WAR is not always the best answer on how good a player is/was, I find it useful in doing player comparisons. The B-R tool regards a WAR of 2+ as a starter, 5+ an All-Star and 8+ as MVP worthy. Remember too what I am doing here covers position players only, we will leave the pitchers for another day.

Rod Carew

First Base – Having watched the Minnesota Twins for many a year I was pretty sure what Twins player had the best season in team history and when I put Play Index to work, sure enough it verified for me that Hall of Famer Rod Carew and his 1977 season in which he made a run at hitting .400 at the age of 31 stood at the top. If you missed seeing Carew play ball in Minnesota I feel bad for you because you missed out on seeing one of the best baseball players ever. There have been eleven seasons by Twins players when someone had a WAR of 7.0 or greater, Carew had four of them. 

Continue reading Twins hitters best seasons by position

Twins laying the groundwork for what’s to come

A lot of Minnesota Twins fans are frustrated that the Twins front office isn’t doing more to improve the Twins team. With Joe Mauer retired and his $23 million salary no longer on the books many fans figured the Twins would spend some money, and they have, but not much of it. If the 2019 season started tomorrow, the Twins payroll would sit at about $98 million after spending around $131 million in 2018. 

But Derek Falvey and Thad Levine have told us they are busy laying ground work for rebuilding the Minnesota Twins organization from the ground up and it will take some time.

It wasn’t until I stopped by the CenturyLink Sports Complex this afternoon that I fully understood what they meant. At the rate it is going it will take some time, here is what I found when I got there.

I didn’t get close enough to tell for sure but I think that is Falvey in the red shirt and Levine with the green shirt.

Here I think we have Mr. Pohlad himself on the Bobcat leveling the playing field. 

 

And he goes down swinging!

Harmon Killebrew

We all know that strikeout rates are up all across baseball for the last few years but today we will look at Minnesota Twins batters and their strikeout rates going back to 1961. We used B-R’s amazing Play Index to find what we were looking for.

The top two all time Twins leader in strikeouts are Harmon Killebrew with 1,314 and Joe Mauer with 1,034. Mauer? What the heck? Longevity can do strange things to numbers and the devil is in the details.

Continue reading And he goes down swinging!

The Minnesota Twins first center fielder – Lenny Green passes away on his birthday

Lenny Green

Leonard Charles Green (born January 6, 1933, in Detroit) was the middle of three sons born to Eugene and Anna Green and passed away on his 86th birthday on January 6, 2019 in Detroit, Michigan.

After graduating from Pershing High School, Lenny Green was signed as an amateur free agent by the St. Louis Browns late in 1952 to play for York of the Class B Inter-State League. But before he ever put on a York uniform or a Browns uniform for that matter the Army called and he spent 1953-1954 in the service of his country during the Korean War. Green was stationed stateside and ended up playing on a baseball team with and against players like Willie Mays, Don Newcombe, Billy Martin and Zach Monroe. After being discharged from the Army as a corporal, Green was free to resume his pro baseball career but thing had changed and Green experienced his first MLB franchise shift as the Browns became the Baltimore Orioles.

Continue reading The Minnesota Twins first center fielder – Lenny Green passes away on his birthday

Former Twins players that passed away in 2018

As we start a new year in 2019 I wanted to share a list of former Minnesota Twins players that passed away in 2018. We lost some great ones.

Johnny Ard – Twins first round pick in 1988 but was traded and never played for Minnesota.
Bill Fischer
Hal Haydel
Frank Quilici
Lee Stange

 

RIP gentlemen and thank you for the great memories, you are a part of Minnesota Twins history forever.

A complete list of deceased former Minnesota Twins players can be found on our “Deceased Twins” page.

Quality Starts and the Minnesota Twins

Regardless if you believe in Quality Starts (QS) or not, the term is used now days in MLB. A QS is defined as pitching six innings or more while allowing three or fewer earned runs. I would be happier if a QS was seven innings and two or fewer earned runs but that is just my age showing. The new “opener” strategy could put a kink in QS but I don’t think the opener strategy is a fit for most teams and will not be a big deal down the line.

Today we are taking a look at consecutive QS for Minnesota Twins starters and we have one pitcher that stands head and shoulders above the rest of the Twins pitchers in QS and that is Johan Santana who had 21 QS in a row in 2004. Impressive or not? You bet your bippy it is, no American League pitcher between 1961-2018 has thrown that many QS in a row. In the National league only four pitchers have thrown that many QS in a row since 1961, Bob Gibson leads with 26 in 1967, Jacob deGrom (2018) and Jake Arrieta (2015) have 24 and Chris Carpenter has 22 in 2005.

The closest to Santana’s streak of 21 in Minnesota is Bert Blyleven who had 12 in 1972 and Jim Merritt who also had 12 in 1967. The biggest surprise on this list to me is Rick Aguilera with 10 QS in 1989. I certainly remember Aggie starting for Minnesota when they first traded for him but I don’t remember him as pitching that well, maybe it was the fact that his record was only 3-4 during the streak.

Johan Santana
Results
Rk Name Strk Start End Games W L GS CG SHO IP H ER BB SO ERA
1 Johan Santana 2004-06-09 2004-09-24 21 18 2 21 1 1 154.1 77 23 30 199 1.34
2 Bert Blyleven 1972-08-19 1973-04-06 12 8 3 12 7 1 99.0 82 19 24 87 1.73
3 Jim Merritt 1967-06-25 1967-08-18 12 5 3 12 4 1 101.1 77 18 8 64 1.60
4 Frank Viola 1987-06-26 1987-08-16 11 8 2 11 4 1 87.0 69 19 21 70 1.97
5 Dick Woodson 1972-07-11 1972-08-28 11 6 4 11 7 2 90.1 61 14 26 43 1.39
6 Eric Milton 2000-09-23 2001-05-13 10 5 3 10 1 1 68.1 67 20 16 45 2.63
7 Scott Erickson 1990-09-23 1991-05-17 10 8 2 10 3 2 77.1 53 10 28 36 1.16
8 Rick Aguilera 1989-08-08 1989-09-26 10 3 4 10 3 0 71.2 61 22 16 55 2.76
9 Roger Erickson 1980-08-01 1980-09-17 10 3 4 10 4 0 80.0 71 18 16 42 2.03
10 Lee Stange 1963-08-06 1963-09-15 10 7 2 10 5 1 83.0 65 16 19 55 1.73
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 12/31/2018.

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The Minnesota Twins longest streak of QS as a team is 13 QS in a row in 1969. The pitchers in that streak were Dean Chance, Dave Boswell, Jim Perry, Dick Woodson, Tommy Hall and Jim Kaat.

This decade has been tough for Twins fans

Target Field on March 23, 2010 and baseball is just around the corner

The Minnesota Twins opened the decade in a new ballpark over at Target Field in 2010 and everyone was excited about Twins baseball. Why not? The Twins had won 87 games in 2009, drawn 2.4 million fans in their last season calling the Metrodome as home and advanced to the playoffs and now the team would finally play outside for the first time since the 1981 season at Met Stadium allowing fans to get to enjoy the sunshine and oh yes, the rain, snow and cold too.

Continue reading This decade has been tough for Twins fans

Swing and a miss……..

Willians Astudillo swung and missed only 8.3% of the time in 2018.

Putting the ball in play is important but it seems like it is less important in today’s version of baseball than it was in the past. As I watched Twins batters flail away the last few years I realized how much I valued players that could put wood on the ball versus those that struck out a high percentage of the time. A home run is nice now and then but for me there is a lot more to baseball than just the home run.

The other day I ran across a tweet that stated that Micheal Brantley saw 1,008 pitched and swung and missed 92 times. So naturally that got me to think about the how Twins hitters did. It this case I looked at Twins hitters that saw at least 100 pitches during the 2018 season and here are the results from Statcast Search. Any surprises here?

 

2018 Twins info.pdf

Opener Strategy Not an Open or Close Case

You don’t need a fancy new opener when the tried and proven old one will work

The Tampa Bay Rays were the first team to experiment with an Opener during the 2018 season when they had reliever Sergio Romo start the game on May 19. Romo pitched in the role again on May 20, 25 and 27. In those four “Opener roles” he pitched a total of 3.1 innings going 1 inning, 1.1 innings, .2 innings and .1 innings giving up no runs in starts one and two and one run in his third start and 3 runs in his final start. Seven of the 10 outs he recorded were by strikeouts. During his time as an opener Romo did not pitch in any other games between May 19 and May 27.

The Dodgers, Twins, Athletics, and Rangers also used the opener strategy at different points during the 2018 season. 

Continue reading Opener Strategy Not an Open or Close Case

Is Bryce Harper the biggest Scott Boras flimflam ever?

Scott Boras and Bryce Harper – Credit Getty Images

 

I know this won’t be popular but I will say it anyway, Bryce Harper is not worth $350 to $400 million and any team that signs him for that amount will pay dearly and not only from a financial perspective.

I grant you that Harper is just 26 years old and baseball wisdom says that his best years are ahead of him. However; you would be a fool to ignore history, Harper has played for Washington for seven seasons and he has averaged 132 games a year, (81% of the schedule) he has exceeded 150 games twice. His 2015 MVP season was his one great season and Harper has hit 30+ home runs just twice, has 100 RBI once and he has a .279 career average. If you look at 2015 as an outlier season in which his WAR was 10.0, his other six seasons average out to a WAR of 2.9. 

Harper is an above average player but he has not shown that he is the super-star that the experts predicted so why pay him like he is a player like no one before him? Harper’s work ethic has also been questioned in the past. Harper is player that plays for Harper and the team is secondary, the Washington Nationals will be a better team without him and they won’t be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars to boot. A win-win situation for the Nationals and their fans.

Scott Boras will find a way to make Bryce Harper a richer man, he always does, because there is a sucker born every minute, but this might be the best hustle ever by today’s version of P.T. Barnum.