Notes, quotes and comment

Frank Viola during the 1987 World
Series. "Sweet Music" was the MVP
of that memorable Series,

The Twins sold Vance Worley to Pittsburgh on Tuesday.

It's no surprise that they moved him out of the organization; as I've written a few times, he didn't fit in the Triple A rotation. Even if, as it now appears, Kyle Gibson isn't going to be optioned out again, Rochester has Alex Meyer, Trevor May, Sean Gilmartin, Kris Johnson and Logan Darnell, all of whom figured to be ahead of Worley.

The Twins didn't get much from Worley, but that doesn't mean the Ben Revere trade was a disaster. May remains, and he was always the higher ceiling piece of the deal. And Revere remains what he was when the Twins traded him, a player of extreme strengths and weaknesses. He should be a usable major leaguer for years; I don't expect him to become a star.

Certainly the Twins expected more than they got from Worley, and certainly the trade would look better had they gotten some decent pitching from him. I don't think his failure means the Twins should regret the trade.

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Frank Viola, one of my faves from the the 1980s Twins, needs heart surgery. It will come next week, and it will keep the 1988 Cy Young Award winner from serving as the pitching coach for the Mets' Triple A affiliate in Las Vegas. Good luck to him.

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I found this fascinating: Joey Votto, the Cincinnati Reds star, says he swings at too many strikes. He wants to be more like Joe Mauer:

... when he says that he’ll swing less in the strike zone this year, he’s talking about really swinging at the pitches he wants to make contact on. In other words, he’d like to be “more in that (Joe) Mauer category, really efficient, swinging at a really low rate inside the strike zone, and outside the strike zone, very rarely swinging.” Nobody swings less than Joe Mauer.

Votto, like Mauer, takes a lot of heat from the local radio ignoramuses who confuse RBIs with productivity.

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Matt Guerrier did re-up with the Twins. While he lost out on his retention bonus, he did get an earlier opt-out date, so he got something out of it.

The Twins and the circle change

A digression from Monday's print column:

The Twins have had no shortage of success with pitchers relying on the circle change (seen above).

Frank Viola won the World Series MVP in 1987 and the Cy Young in 1988 with the circle change as his out pitch. Johan Santana won two Cy Young awards, in 2004 and 2006, with the circle change as his out pitch. (Should have won the Cy in 2005 as well.) Brad Radke never got a Cy Young (nor did he deserve to), but his 148 career wins are third most for a Twins pitcher.

Combined, those three went 353-276 as Twins.

That kind of success breeds imitators. The Twins are known today for a pitching staff modeled on Radke: unimpressive fastballs, but good to great command of that pitch — and the willingness to change speeds on it. And the first change up the minor leaguers are taught is almost certainly the circle change.

It has certain advantages over other change ups. Perhaps most important, it has a reverse curve break. (As mentioned in the Monday print column, Warren Spahn's "screwball" was probably the circle change.) So it not only messes with the hitter's timing, it's moving on multiple planes as well.

Not that it works for everybody. Eddie Guardado, for example, uses a palmball, or four-finger change. It was a very good change up, strong enough to make a top-flight closer out of a guy with subpar fastball velocity.

Carlos Silva tried a number of different change ups and, by the end of his Twins career, appeared to have settled on a splitter/forkball.

Silva's pitch went through a variety of names. When he broke it out in training camp 2007, he was calling it a split-fingered fastball. Then it became a forkball, then simply a change. I suspect that was because the Twins organization frowns on the splitter, fearing elbow injuries, and didn't want minor league pitchers arguing Silva throws it, why can't I. (It's worth noting, too, that Silva, who had been quite durable with the Twins, has broken down physically each of the last two seasons since adding the splitter.)

Almost all change up grips start with the idea of holding the ball deeper in the hand. Fastballs and curves are gripped between the thumb and the first two fingers, with the ring and little fingers tucked out of the way. Whether the change is a circle change, a palmball, a forkball or some other variation, it's held deeper, and often brings a third or fourth finger into play.

There have been a number of legendary change-up artists — guys who threw almost nothing but change ups, guys known for changing speeds on their change ups. Jean Dubuc. Eddie Lopat. Stu Miller. Doug Jones. Allan Anderson, who won the AL ERA title with the Twins in 1988 and followed with a 17-10 season the next year. Jamie Moyer. I suspect a number of them mastered multiple change ups. A circle change here, a palmball there, maybe Paul Richards' "slip pitch" — a variation of the palmball — and suddenly one has an entire repertoire of pitches not thrown hard enough to bruise a peach.