Small sample size theater

"Small sample size theater." That's a phrase I heard Monday afternoon on MLB Network in discussing Shohei Ohtani. I like it, amd I'm stealing it.

Scene I

A regular reader of these posts dislikes the Twins decision to play Eduardo Escobar at shortstop during the suspension of Jorge Polanco. Shortstop, he opines, should prioritze defense, and Escobar is not as good with the the glove as Ehire Adrianza.

I agree with the second point, but think the first is something of a sliding scale. You can sacrifice some defense at any position to get more offense. (See the second half career of Jeter, Derek.)

And then there's this:

Which defenses are doing the best job of turning ground balls & bunts into outs?

1. Indians 84%
2. Twins 78%
3. Mets 78%
4. Giants 77%
5. Rockies 77%

Worst
30. Rangers 69%
29. Yankees 70%
28 Pirates 70%
27. Marlins 70%
26 Tigers 70%

— Sports Info Solutions (@SportsInfo_SIS) April 16, 2018

Small sample size theater, yes. But so far, Escobar isn't killing the Twins infield defense.

Scene II

I watched Justin Verlander and Bartolo Colon duel on "Sunday Night Baseball" the other night. Wow. Verlander allowed one hit -- a homer -- in seven innings, and Colon threw seven PERFECT innings before cracking in the eighth. 

The game went 10 innings, and the Texas Rangers eventually won, 3-1 in 10, so neither starter got a decision. (I thought this during the recent Astros-Twins series and tweeted it Sunday night: If the Astros have a weakness, it's their bullpen.)

Colon, who finished 2017 filling out the Twins rotation, has started twice and relieved twice for the Rangers this year. He has a 1.45 ERA in 18.2 innings. Still throwing almost nothing but fastballs, still surviving on location.

Scene III

The Twins have played 11 games so far this season, the fewest in the majors, and will have another off day Thursday after the Puerto Rico series. They're going to pay, eventually, for such sporadic play.

From the Handbook: Starting pitcher rankings

Another new item in the Handbook this winter (and it suddenly feels like winter in southern Minnesota) is a system of ranking starting pitchers.

By their methodology -- complex enough that the book refers readers to the subscription Bill James Online site for a complete explaination -- Ervin Santana is currently the 14th best starter in baseball. (The Top 5: Corey Kluber, Max Scherzer, Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale and Justin Verlander, a perfectly acceptable quintent and ranking.)

Santana is squeezed between Jose Quintana and Robbie Ray, two lefties considerably younger than Santana.

Kyle Gibson is 63rd (the system heavily favor the most recent starts, and he had a very strong September). Jose Berrios is 88th and Bartolo Colon is 99th. Aldaberto Mejia comes in at 129.

Those would be the five-most used starters of the 2017 Twins. I'm confident that most of us would rank Berrios higher than Gibson, and I would put Mejia above Colon but we're anticipating the future when we do that.

Contemplating Bartolo Colon

Whether because Bartolo Colon was ill (the official explanation) or ineffective (mine), "Big Sexy" got just three outs Tuesday.

Colon has now made 14 starts for the Twins. He has worked 73.2 innings and allowed 45 earned runs, a 5.50 ERA. More alarmingly, he has allowed 18 runs in his last 12 innings, spread over four starts.

Maybe he will start the season finale; with the magic number to clinch the second wildcard spot now at 1, that game doesn't figure to matter. But I can't imagine that anybody has much confidence in Colon right now.

At the start of the month, Colon figured to be the Twins third starter should they get that deep into the playoffs, and it was entirely plausible that the Twins would bring him back for 2018. Today it seems more likely that he just made his final appearance on a major league mound.

If so, it was one impressive career.

Adalberto Mejia vs. Bartolo Colon

A left-hand toast to Adalberto Mejia who gave the Twins a great start.  Their wildcard lead is now 2 1/2 games with 9 to play.

— Dick Bremer (@dbremer_pxp) September 22, 2017

"Great start"? When did 4.2 innings become a great start?

Mejia's line score is pretty good other than just getting 14 outs. But he committed a balk and got the hook after -- yet again -- not getting to first base in time on a ground ball.

I have never seen a major league pitcher have as much difficulty covering first base as Mejia, and I don't think it's simply a chronic brain cramp. He's big and slow, and he falls off the mound toward third base after delivering a pitch, and he just doesn't get to first base. That might seem like a minor detail, but it comes up start after start -- and if it means one extra hit a game, that matters.

Let's assume that the Twins not only land the second wild card game but advance to the ALDS. Who do you want as the fourth starter in the playoff rotation? We can expect Ervin Santana, Jose Berrios and Kyle Gibson are 1-2-3. But I don't see the Twins trying to go with just three starters, if only to protect Berrios, who has already hit a career high in innings pitched.

Do you go with Bartolo Colon? He's had his moments since joining the Twins, but he has a 5.33 ERA in 13 starts with Minnesota, and 16 homers in 72.2 innings is a really bad ratio.

Or Mejia? The hefty lefty (you knew that was coming, didn't you) a markedly better ERA than Colon but has a walk rate twice as high -- and his fielding should be a concern. A playoff team that doesn't make him get off the mound and make some plays isn't really trying.

Some questions don't have a wrong answer. This one doesn't have a right answer.

In the world of Big Sexy

Twins Twitter, always in need of a distraction, got caught up Wednesday in the revelation that Joe Mauer, given the opportunity to put a nickname on the back of his jersey for a weekend, went with "Mauer."

There are a handful of guys on every team who decided not to play along. It's easy for me to imagine Mauer saying to himself when given the paperwork: What name do I want on the back of my jersey? My name. 

In truth, if MLB's marketers could unilaterally assign a nickname to a member of the Twins -- and the whole Players Weekend thing is about selling jerseys -- it wouldn't be Mauer. It would be Bartolo Colon, who will have "Morales" on his Players Weekend jersey rather than the far more lucrative "Big Sexy."

Colon threw seven scoreless innings Wednesday night at Milwaukee, which is pretty lucrative itself. I didn't give this Colon experiment any real chance of success; I was wrong. Five starts into his Twins tenure, the 44-year-old has a 4.02 ERA in 31.1 innings. He's pitching deeper into games on average than Adalberto Mejia, and with a lower ERA.

Meanwhile, the roster games continue. The injured Mejia -- no structural damage found in his MRI, so he'll likely be back in September if not sooner -- was replaced on the roster Wednesday not by Hector Santiago, as I expected, but by Kennys Vargas. And immediately after the game Vargas was returned to Rochester for Dietrich Enns, one of the pitchers acquired from the Yankees last month when the Twins flipped Jaime Garcia.

Enns is to start today against the Brewers, which will make him Twins pitcher No. 31 on the season. Will he stick? My track record at roster prediction this year is pretty poor, but my guess is one-and-done. He'll shuffle back to Rochester after making his major league debut for a fresh arm.

Which won't be Santiago. He started Tuesday for the Redwings and walked six men in 4.1 innings, which isn't going to make the Twins hasten to bring him off his rehab assignment. (It expires in two weeks anyway.)

More parallels with the 1987 Twins

A few weeks ago I milked a Monday print column out of the notion that there are parallels between this year's Twins team and the World Series champs of 30 years ago.

As the survivors of the 1987 Twins were feted at Target Field last weekend I thought of a few more pitching parallels. Realizing that we can take this comparison too far:

Adalberto Mejia is this year's Les Straker, only left-handed. Rookie who emerged as the team's third-best starter, not enough innings to qualify for the ERA title (Straker threw 154 in '87, Mejia is one out shy of 75 innings right now). Straker posted an ERA+ of 104 in '87; Mejia's is currently 109.

Kyle Gibson equates to Mike Smithson. Tall right-hander who relies on a sinking fastball. Gibson led the 2015 Twins, who were in the playoff chase until the final weekend, in innings pitched, and Smithson threw more than 250 innings for the 1984 Twins, who were in the playoff chase until the final weekend. Smithson opened the '87 season as the third starter but was in and out of the rotation; the same has been true of Gibson this year.

Bartolo Colon is ... well, there are actually two realistic possibilities. Joe Niekro was, in 1987, a 42-year-old one-pitch pitcher in his 21st year in the majors; the Twins, his seventh club, acquired him in June. Niekro won 221 games in his career, five of them for Minnesota (four in '87, one in '1988). Colon is a 44-year-old one-pitch guy on his 10th club in 20 years and is credited with 235 wins.

The other possible comp is Steve Carlton, more for his status as a legend. Carlton was in 1987 already a 300-game winner. Like Niekro, he was 42; the Twins were his sixth team. Like Colon, he arrived in Minnesota in July. He didn't pitch a lot.

Carlton was a no-doubter Hall of Famer; Niekro, despite a distinguished career, never had a shot at the Hall. Colon is somewhere in the middle, and Niekro is the better 1987 comp if Colon remains in the rotation for the rest of the year, or even through August.

Lots of moves, lots of criticism

The Jaime Garcia trade finally went down Monday. The trade itself is OK, with one curious aspect. The roster ramifications of adding the veteran lefty starter have, in my opinion, been mishandled.

I discussed in the Monday print column why such a trade was a logical move. Two (to three) months of Garcia will cost the Twins Huascar Ynoa, a 19-year-old Dominican signed in 2015 for a $800,000 bonus. He has to this point put up a 5.26 ERA at Elizabethton (25.2 innings), not that Appy League stats matter. Ynoa is a strong armed project who might make it and might not, a genuine lottery ticket. The major league team has a chance at a playoff spot and it desperately needs competence in the back of the rotation. Giving up Ynoa for Garcia is sensible.

Plus it probably saves me from having to learn to spell Huascar Ynoa.

Less obvious is the addition of "Quadruple A" catcher Anthony Recker. He's 33, he has accumulated 630 major league plate appearances over seven seasons, he landed on the 40-man roster via the trade and I don't really see the point. I would not only rather have Chris Gimenez than Recker, I'd rather have Mitch Garver. (At this point, I might rather have Garver than Gimenez, but that's another matter.) The Twins now have five catchers on their 40-man roster, which seems excessive (Jason Castro, Gimenez, Garver, Recker and John Ryan Murphy).

The Twins, as noted in Monday's post, pushed Craig Breslow off both the active roster and the 40-man roster after Sunday's game. I had expected that they would fill the 25-man spot by bringing back Rule 5 pick Justin Haley from the disabled list. Instead they recalled Alan Busenitz and returned Haley to Boston. Nothing against Busenitz, but I don't care for abandoning the Haley project at this point, even though they almost certainly would have to carry his Rule 5 restrictions over to next season.

Dumping Haley does open a second 40-man roster spot, and they needed that to accommodate the addition of Recker -- assuming that they needed to add Recker. Meanwhile, it's worth noting that last winter the Twins exposed catcher Stuart Turner to the Rule 5 draft and lost him to Cincinnati; in a very real sense, this series of roster moves amounted to trading Turner for Recker. Turner hasn't done much for the Reds, but he's still there, and he's about eight years younger than Recker.

Recker, at least for now, is assigned to Rochester. Garcia, obviously, needs to be on the 25-man roster. And the Twins got there by optioning Kyle Gibson to Rochester for the second time this season. They're going to stick with Bartolo Colon in the rotation.

I've little good to say about Gibson's pitching this season. He remains a highly frustrating pitcher. But if it's a binary choice -- I have to start either Gibson or Colon -- I'd go with the guy with the 6.08 ERA on the season (94 innings) over the guy with the 8.00 ERA (72 innings).

Pedro Martinez, who knows more about pitching than I ever will, backs his countryman Colon:

I saw Bartolo's stuff, and I think he is getting back on track. He can use this start to build up for the next.

— Pedro Martinez (@45PedroMartinez) July 25, 2017

I will say this for Colon: He made his first two starts against some stiff lineups, the Yankees and the Dodgers. Those were not cupcake assignments. Gibson's seven shutout innings in his most recent start came against a much softer lineup (Detroit).

I would go with Gibson over Colon, which is not claiming that either is an optimal choice.

Gee, Colon? Part 3 (and Hughes and Breslow)

Well, at least he threw strikes.

For four innings, the Bartolo Colon Experiment worked, He carved up the Yankee lineup with mediocre velocity coupled with location and movement, and with some good fielding plays behind him.

Then came the fifth, in which he got no outs, and in which Ryan Pressly did what Ryan Pressly has done pretty consistently all season: give up a homer. The 3-1 lead turned to a 6-3 deficit, and both bullpens put up zeros after that.

Yeah, the Twins had plenty of opportunities to score more runs, but you shouldn't hang your hat on allowing six runs.

Four earned runs in four innings won't do much for Big Sexy's already bloated ERA, but he'll get another start after throwing 53 strikes in 82 pitches. That will come against the Dodgers, who are doing unto the National League what the Astros are doing unto the American. He's not drawing cupcake assignments.

---

Despite the report Monday that Dillon Gee has been waived, he remains on the 40-man roster as of early this morning. The 40-man (and 25-man) roster spot for Colon came from putting Phil Hughes on the 60-day disabled list. He's done for the season with a recurrence of his thoracic outlet syndrome with another round of surgery in his near future. This is a discouraging development for Hughes personally, but doesn't really damage the team's outlook for the rest of the season, as he hasn't been very effective as a reliever.

Kennys Vargas was indeed optioned out, and Craig Breslow was returned to the 25-man roster from the disabled list. He got one out on Tuesday. Replacing Hughes in the 'pen with Breslow doesn't do much for me.

The roster maneuvers left the Twins roster in this condition: The game ended with Chris Gimenez on-deck waiting to pinch-hit for Eddie Rosario against Aroldis Chapman. I'm not really sure what the point of that move would have been ... yeah, Gimenez would have the platoon advantage, but I would too. I'd rather have Rosario against Chapman.

Gee, Colon? Part Two (plus Vargas)

Monday morning's post questioned the logic of giving tonight's start to Bartolo Colon over Dillon Gee.

The Twins doubled down on that decision, right or wrong, after Monday's game:

Source w/direct knowledge confirms Dillon Gee was placed on outright waivers to make room for Colon on 40-man roster.

— Mike Berardino (@MikeBerardino) July 18, 2017

Cutting Gee fits the timing of his opt-out. The Twins clearly decided he wasn't a solution. Presumably the opt-out forced this resolution to his status.

That gets Colon on the 40-man roster. To get him on the 25-man active roster required another move:

Twins option 1B Kennys Vargas to AAA Rochester to make room for RHP Bartolo Colon. Oldest starter in Twins history faces Yankees Tuesday.

— Phil Miller (@MillerStrib) July 18, 2017

This is the second time in two weeks they've optioned Vargas out. The first try ended early when Joe Mauer went on the DL. But Mauer returned Friday, and on Sunday Vargas's defensive frailities -- or at least one of them -- showed when the Astros twice ran on him.

Normally the quality of a first baseman's arm is immaterial. Steve Garvey, to name one prominent example, couldn't throw and wouldn't throw if he could possibly avoid it, but he was an outstanding defensive first baseman. I don't know that I've ever seen a first baseman's arm disregarded so throughly as was Vargas' on Sunday.

The interesting thing is that Vargas shows up pretty well in the publicly available defensive metrics. Both versions of runs saved shown on Baseball Reference have him, on a per-inning basis, as outperforming Joe Mauer.

Small sample size, to be sure. Vargas is NOT better with the glove than Mauer. And that Paul Molitor chose to pinch-hit Eduardo Escobar for him Monday night should say something about how his bat is playing.

Gee, Colon? A tale of two Mets refugees

The Twins signed Dillon Gee to a minor league deal with an opt-out on June 22. They brought him to the majors two days later and had him sit in the bullpen waiting for a long relief outing that never came, then optioned him to Rochester. The major league stint did not wipe out the opt-out.

Gee, who has made 125 major league starts, most of them with the Mets, has made three starts for Rochester, 15 innings in which he has not allowed a run. While an ERA of 0.00 is obviously impressive, his K/9 -- 4.8 -- is not. His opt-out window has arrived, but there is no indication that he has exercised it. He started Saturday for Rochester; his turn would come up Thursday.

While Gee has been in Rochester, the Twins signed the well-traveled Bartolo Colon to a minor-league deal. Gee's ex-Mets rotation mate made one start for Rochester in which he didn't get through the fourth inning.

Colon will nevertheless start Tuesday for the major league team. (The corresponding moves, to get Colon on the 40-man roster and onto the 25-man roster, have not been announced and probably won't be until Tuesday.)

Now ... I am obviously guilty here of scouting the stat line. I haven't seen either man pitch, and I haven't access to the spin-rate data and other metrics the front office has. There may well be reason for them to prefer Colon to Gee in their search for a fifth starter.

That reason is not apparent.

Notes, quotes and comment

Bartolo Colon made what was presumably his sole minor-league tune-up start Thursday night for Rochester, the Twins' Triple A affiliate. His stat line was not particularly encouraging: 3.2 innings, 4 hits, 4 runs, 2 walks, 5 strikeouts. He threw 76 pitches.

Those determined to find a reason to believe can latch onto the strikeouts. I'm inclined to pay more attention to the walks, because Colon's success in recent years was based largely on the fact that he almost never walked anybody. His command was impeccable until this season. This year it has been emphatically peccable.

Still, the Twins roster lacks a fifth starter, and somebody's going to get called up to start Tuesday against the Yankees. Colon is lined up for that assignment. I expect him to get that start, and I expect him to get shelled.

I would also expect Felix Jorge to get shelled if he gets the start. It's not like the Twins are sitting on Clayton Kershaw. They have no good answers available.

---

The Chicago White Sox picked up another prospect haul Thursday by trading lefty-starter Jose Quintana to their North Side neighbors. The Sox got four minor leaguers, including current Baseball America coverboy Eloy Jimenez and pitcher Dylan Cease.

Quintana is a quality pitcher, and he's under team control for several more seasons; that's the kind of asset any organization would value, and I'm sure the Twins would have loved to land him. But they do not have any prospects as highly regarded as Jimenez, a power-hitting outfielder, and their best pitching prospects are roughly comparable to Cease. 

The Sox farm system is getting pretty stocked up with the returns of the Adam Eaton, Chris Sale and Quintana trades. If their player development system gets this right, they figure to be mighty tough around 2020.

---

Baseball's back today from the All-Star break, and hooray for that.

Notes, quotes and comment

Friday was quite the busy day in Twinsdom. Let's get chronologic:

* Joe Mauer went on the disabled list with Kennys Vargas recalled. The Twins demoted Vargas on Monday to reactivate Ehire Adrianza. Mauer injured his back on Tuesday, and the Twins dawdled a couple of days before pulling the trigger, presumably (as I noted Thursday) because Vargas hasn't given them a lot of reason to get excited about playing him.

So naturally Vargas went 3-for-4 with a double and a couple RBIs.

*Brandon Kintzler was one of a handful of replacement All-Stars named Friday, and good for him. That gives the Twins three members of the AL squad: Miguel Sano, Ervin Santana and Kintzler.

Kintzler currently leads the American League in saves, which

• is meaningless as an evaluative stat and
• made his selection almost inevitable.

* The Twins signed Bartolo Colon to a minor league deal.

Colon became an unlikely cult hero in his three years with the Mets; he's old (44), fat (listed at 285 pounds) and amusingly inept at the plate. But the Braves released him after he put up an 8.18 ERA in 13 starts.

colon will start at triple-a rochester with twins. but plan is to get him up asap

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) July 8, 2017

I'm not optimistic about Colon. But I'm not optimistic about the rotation "fixes" on hand either. Derek Falvey told the press corps during the game that Colon thinks he can correct himself and pitch beyond this season, and noted (accurately) that Colon has reinvented himself as a pitcher a few times. So we'll see; the Twins have a minimal investment in "Big Sexy," so all they have to lose are a couple of games.

* Felix Jorge started, got shelled, got demoted (that last, as least, as predicted here).

Roy Smalley drew a Johan Santana comp to Jorge early in the game on FSN, which is ridiculous. Santana is left-handed and threw harder than Jorge. A more realistic comp, at least in terms of what kind of pitcher Jorge might become, is Brad Radke -- a fastball that sits around 90, a good change-up, top-notch command of both pitches.

And, hey, if Jorge becomes Radke, that's marvelous. He's not there yet. He has no chance of becoming Santana. And the signing of Colon, plus the presence in Rochester of Dillon Gee (opt-out date July 15), plus Friday's failed outing  -- that all adds up to he's not getting another shot at the majors anytime soon. Jorge is returning to Chattanooga, and I would expect to see him back in September but not before.

* Outfielder Zack Granite was recalled. He's hitting .360 in Rochester, which is good. He's drawn about as many walks in Rochester as Eddie Rosario has in Minnesota, which is less good, and has far less power.

The gaudy batting average not withstanding, Granite is a fringe prospect, a protoypical fourth outfielder -- left-handed contact hitter, fast enough to play center, not enough pop to be a regular. And as a lefty bat, he's not a particularly good fit as a backup in an outfield with Rosario and Max Kepler among the regulars.

Granite is, at best, Ben Revere with a better arm.

My prediction: He won't be up long.

*Byron Buxton scored from first base on a single to center. Wowzers.

Anybody who thinks Granite should get Buck's playing time is deluded. Baseball Reference, at this writing, has Buxton as the third-most valuable player on the 2017 Twins with 1.8 WAR, behind Ervin Santana and Kepler and fractionally ahead of Sano.

Pic of the week

Picked off without a throw: Bartolo Colon tags out
A/J. Pierzynski.

This play came in the top of the sixth inning Thursday. A.J. Pierzynski singled with one out for Atlanta. He was still on first base one out later when Bartolo Colon executed a spin move and caught him too far off the base. Colon ran at him and tagged him out without a throw.

The play was scored as a caught stealing, pitcher unassisted. Now, I've watched a lot of baseball over the past 45 or so years, and I've never seen a pitcher actually chase down a baserunner from the mound. I do remember Pasqual Perez used to bluff such a pick-off several times a game, but he seldom got completely onto the infield grass.

That it would be a pudgy, 41-year-old Colon who pulled it off is amazing. And even though Pierzynski is himself a 38-year-old catcher and thus almost by definition immobile, getting chased down by Colon (listed as 5-11, 285 pounds) adds to the embarrassment. But Pierzynski doesn't embarrass easy.