Jim Kaat and the end of the four-man rotation

The Twins announced Thursday that Jim Kaat is the latest "special assistant" in the organization.

As I said last week about Justin Morneau, the role of special assistant is generally vague and undefined. Kaat's addition appears to raise to 10 the number of former Twins with that title. Some are doubtless involved in scouting and coaching, and others are more, let us say, ceremonial. Kaat is 80, and he pulled back on his broadcasting career sharply some years ago (although he still does occasional games on MLB Network). I'll assume that his role is ceremonial, although from a public relations perspective his nostalgic appeal is probably limited to the oldest of Twins fans. (He last pitched for the Twins in 1973.)

He remains, however, vocal and articulate about pitching, and I've no doubt that that appeals to Derek Falvey in particular.

Did you know ... Jim Kaat was Pete Rose's first pitching coach in Rose's short-lived managerial career? The two were teammates in Philadelphia in the early 80s and apparently agreed that if and when Rose got to manage, Kaat would be his pitching coach. Rose got the Cincinnati job in 1984 and immediately installed Kaat, who left the post after 1985 and went into broadcasting.

I have it in my head that the 1985 Reds were the last team to use a four-man rotation for a significant portion of the season. I expected to find a citation for that assertion within minutes this morning, but it wasn't where I expected to find it.

But the Reds pitching stats sure look like Rose and Kaat were trying to go four-man. Tom Browning (38 starts), Mario Soto (36) and Jay Tibbs (34) all got more starts than they would in a strict five-man rotation. Another 40 starts were split up fairly evenly among Andy McGaffigan, John Stuper and Ron Robinson. The later two split the season between starting and relief, but McGaffigan was strictly a starter, and more than half his starts came on three days rest, all of them in the second half of the season.

Digging into it a bit more, I see Stuper was strictly a starter until June, at which point he had an ERA of 5.65 and was shifted to the bullpen. He never got another start in his career. Robinson was in the pen until July, when he got six starts, then returned to relieving, then got six more starts in September. For all these guys, there are a lot of three-days-rest starts.

So yeah, Rose and Kaat were trying to go four-man, but they couldn't really settle on a fourth. And then Kaat left, and Soto -- who had been a very good starter for six years -- collapsed in '86 and was never really effective again. The '86 Reds' starts numbers look more like a five-man rotation (with a heavy lean on Browning). And if anybody has tried to go with a four-man rotation since 1985 for more than a month or so, I missed it.

How not to earn a Gold Glove

This has nothing to do with the 2015 Twins or spring training, but so be it.

I spent some time this past weekend with my Strat-O-Matic project, and got in the process a disillusioning lesson about Jim Kaat.

Part of Kaat's reputation is that he was a legendarily great fielding pitcher, a reputation buttressed by 16 Gold Glove Awards. But in the series I just played, Kaat lost a game in part because of his own error -- and I was stunned to see him graded with an e50 rating. That's not the worst pitcher's e rating I've seen in Strat (another pitcher in the 1969 set, Ray Culp of the Red Sox, has an e56), but it's close.

So I went spelunking into the records. Kaat and Culp, it turns out, tied for the AL lead in pitcher errors in 1969, eight apiece.

And eight errors, at least since the lively ball took most of the bunts out of the game, is a LOT for a pitcher. Since World War II, I count only seven seasons in which any American League pitchers committed that many errors.

I went through Kaat's game logs for 1969 on Baseball Reference. What I found:

• April 19: errant pickoff attempt at first base, with the runner advancing to third base.
• June 14: threw ball into center field trying for a force at second. Runner was thrown out trying to take third, but the error stands.
• July 17: three errors in one game, two on consecutive plays. It started with a throwing error on a squeeze bunt by Walt Williams. Kaat then booted a grounder by the next batter, Luis Aparicio. A couple innings later, Kaat committed a throwing error on a grounder. Kaat was the winning pitcher anyway.
• Sept. 6: booted a grounder
• Sept 9: errant pickoff throw, runner taking second.
• Oct. 2: throwing error on a ground ball.

Certainly there is more to fielding than the avoidance of errors. But that's a pretty lengthy litany of miscues. It's difficult for me to square eight errors with a Gold Glove.

I also noticed some ... interesting pitcher use.

Kaat, in his first start of the season (second game for the Twins), pitched 11 innings. Eleven innings! (He actually opened the 12th but allowed a leadoff walk and was pulled). I'll bet no pitcher goes nine innings in his first start this year, much less 11. (The Kansas City Royals won that 1969 game 4-3 in 17 innings, by the way.)

That Sept. 6 error came in a 9.1 inning relief stint (game went 18 innings). On Sept. 9 -- on just two days rest after the equivalent of a complete game-plus -- Kaat pitched five more innings (and committed another error). Billy Martin, death to pitchers arms.

Part of the legend of Martin's firing as Minnesota manager after a 97-win season is that Calvin Griffith wanted Kaat to pitch Game 3 of the playoffs against Baltimore. Martin started Bob Miller instead, Miller didn't get out of the second inning, the Twins were swept and Martin got fired.

But looking at Kaat's pitching log, it's no surprise Kaat didn't get the ball. Kaat made just two starts after August, giving up eight runs in 10 innings in those starts. (He had six relief outings in September.) His ERA after July was 5.09. Griffith may have wanted Kaat in Game 3; Martin certainly didn't.

Winter Meetings, Day One: Hall of Fame, Colabello

The Veterans Committee didn't come up with enough votes to put any of the 10 finalists from the "Golden Era" in the Hall of Fame. Tony Oliva (and Dick Allen) came one vote shy, Jim Kaat two,

I'm OK with this. I can make an argument for any of the 10, and I can make an argument against any of the 10. Well, maybe not against Minnie Minoso. He was at least twice the player Jim Rice was, and definitely the superior to at least a half-dozen other corner outfielders already enshrined.

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Joe Posnanski explains here why the Veterans Committee, at least in its current form, is doomed to failure.

The good news, I suppose (at least for "big Hall" supporters, those who want more inductees) is that the Hall keeps tinkering with the process. The bad news is, they've never really come up with a good process.

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Tony O. misses by one vote. Needed 12 of 16. God is dead.
— Patrick Reusse (@1500ESPN_Reusse) December 8, 2014

That is a popular opinion around the Twins, but it's based on emotion and proximity, not logic and analysis.

Worse sins are committed in Hall of Fame voting every winter by the writers -- Mr. Reusse among 'em. Oliva had a peak worthy of the Hall; he had done the heavy lifting. But there isn't enough there to make him more than a borderline selection. There are better choices for Cooperstown being bypassed every year by Reusse and his BBWAA colleagues.

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The Toronto Blue Jays claimed Chris Colabello on waivers Monday. This opens a spot on the Twins 40-man roster for either a free-agent signing or a Rule 5 pick later in the week.

Colabello is easy to root for, and I hope things go well for him. But there wasn't much of a role visible for him with Minnesota, with Joe Mauer and Kennys Vargas ahead of him at first base/DH and Josmil Pinto available to plug the DH job should somebody get hurt.

Tony-O, Kitty and El Tiante

Three players with Twins connections (albeit very loosely for one) are among the 10 Hall of Fame nominees announced last week for the Veterans Committee: Tony Oliva, Jim Kaat and Luis Tiant.

Oliva, if elected, would certainly go in wearing a Twins cap; he didn't play for anybody else.

Kaat probably would; he got 190 of his 283 lifetime wins as a Twin/Senator, and his stats for his other teams (White Sox, Phillies, Cardinals) don't suggest that he should be identified with any of them.

Tiant certainly wouldn't; he spent just one season with Minnesota (1970); he suffered an injury in May, which opened a rotation spot for a 19-year-old named Bert Blyleven.

The other nominees, alphabetically: Dick Allen, Ken Boyer, Gil Hodges, Bob Howsam, Minnie Minoso, Billy Pierce and Maury Wills. Howsam is the executive who built the 1970s Big Red Machine in Cincinnati. The rest were all players.

None of them are terrible nominees. Worse players at their respective positions than each have enshrined.

To be specific:

• Kaat and Pierce, left-handed pitchers, have better records than Rube Marquard and Lefty Gomez.
• Tiant, right-handed pitcher, was better than contemporary Catfish Hunter, and far better than Jesse Haines and Vic Willis.
• Oliva and Minoso, corner outfielders, were both superior to the likes of Ross Youngs, Harry Hooper and Sam Rice.
• Boyer, third baseman, was better than George Kell and Freddie Lindstrom.
• Allen and Hodges, first basemen, were superior to George "Highpockets" Kelly and Jake Beckley.
• Wills, shortstop, was better than Joe Sewell or Travis Jackson.

But that's basically taking some of the weakest Hall of Fame honorees and using them as a standard, and that's not a real good argument, The truth is, there are better players than any of these nine -- Craig Biggo, Tim Raines, Alan Trammell, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Mussina, Mike Piazza -- on the outside looking in because the BBWAA is doing a lousy job at the front end of the selection system.

Still, I expect at least one of these 10 finalists to be elected.

The committee meets Dec 8 at the Winter Meetings. The early speculation has Oliva and Hodges as the most likely choices. Rod Carew, Oliva's road roommate for years with the Twins, is on the committee, which is one reason to think Tony-O has a good shot.

Is he the best of this bunch? For my money, Minoso is. But none of them will demean the standards of the Hall as much as the selections of Andre Dawson, Jim Rice or Bruce Sutter did.

Tony-O, Kitty Kaat and the Hall of Fame

One of the myriad happenings next week at the Winter Meeting will be the balloting by the current version of the Veterans Committee.

The Hall of Fame's grand poo-baas keep tinkering with the Veterans Committee, trying to achieve a system that

• actually elects somebody
• without succumbing to the cronyism that has periodically infected the VC.

It's probably a hopeless mission. The biggest problem here is that the most obvious candidates get swept in by the writers and never reach the Veterans Committee, which winds up trying to split the hairs between Jim Kaat and Tommy John. There are plenty of HoF inductees I consider mistakes; almost all of them came courtesy of the VC.

The panel next week will be picking from a specific, prescreened, list of players and executives from a specific era of the game. Chris Jaffe at the Hardball Times website predicts that Ron Santo will get in, and thinks it likely that at least one of Tony Oliva and Kaat will as well, although Jaffe is quick to concede that it's difficult to make a good prediction on the VC when the rules keep changing.

Santo, Oliva, Kaat, Gil Hodges --- these are the most likely choices. My sense of it is that there are several worse players at their positions already inducted, I wouldn't whine much if these four remain out, and I won't complain at all if any get in.

Well, Santo ... I'm about 95 percent sure he should be in. Third base is rather unrepresented in the Hall, and there are only about five or six third basemen in history with better credentials. (Mike Schmidt, George Brett, Wade Boggs, Eddie Mathews ... Bill James puts Santo ahead of Brooks Robinson, but it's clear that their contemporaries thought Brooks was much the better player.)

My only issue with putting Santo in the Hall is that the Cubs of his era have Billy Williams at the top of his game, they have Ferguson Jenkins at the top of his game, they have a fading but still useful Ernie Banks, they have solid regulars in Glenn Beckert, Don Kessinger, Randy Hundley, Jim Hickman, Johnny Callison, they have Ken Holtzman, Milt Pappas and Bill Hands backing Jenkins in the rotation, they have a HofF manager in Leo Durocher -- and what did they win? Nothing. Not even a divisional title. How many legit Hall of Famers can you assemble without winning anything?

The Twins of Oliva and Kaat's era are a bit of a disappointment too, but they have a pennant and a pair of divisional titles to show. They had the misfortune to be up against an historically great Baltimore Orioles assembly.

I wrote a column long ago about Oliva and Kaat and the Hall. They symbolize a dual approach to HoF voting on the part of the electorate. The writers like career length from hitters and really high peaks from pitchers. Oliva had an eight-year span in which he was about as good a hitter as you'd find. The writers felt that wasn't enough. Kaat had a great season and a lot of good ones and lasted a long time. The writers felt that wasn't enough.

Kaat's candidacy is hurt a bit by the fact that in his prime years there was only one Cy Young awarded for the two leagues, and when he won 25 games in 1966 Sandy Koufax got the award. They started giving out two Cy Youngs the very next season. Put a Cy Young on Kitty's resume, and I think the writers would have given his candidacy more play.

Anticipating the Hall of Fame announcement

The results of the BBWAA voting on this year's Hall of Fame candidates are to be announced Wednesday.

Chris Jaffe — the guy who wrote the book on managers that was the basis of my Monday post — has his prediction of how the vote will go here.

This is a bit like reading a public opinion poll after the voting is over but before the vote is counted; we want to know the winner, but patience will bring the numbers that matter.

But Jaffe's put enough work into understanding how this particular electorate works that one of his points — that Jack Morris either goes in this year (unlikely) or in 2011 or not at all through the writers' vote — strikes me as particularly intriguing.

Morris is an exceptionally marginal candidate. There are worse pitchers in the Hall of Fame, and a number of superior pitchers who have been left out. I see no reason to put Morris in when Jim Kaat and Tommy John are out.

I've made this observation before, but I expect this to be my last chance to do so with these four names: Only four of the eligible pitchers in the modern era (since the formation of the American League in 1901) with at least 250 wins are not enshrined in Cooperstown: Bert Blyleven, Kaat, John and Morris.

Morris is really the odd duck in that group — he's at 254 lifetime wins. Blyleven, Kaat and John are all in the 280s. Morris barely makes that 250-win cutoff;  the other three are comfortably above it.

One other thing those four have in common: They've all been broadcasters for the Twins. It's a conspiracy, I tell you.