Defensive efficency is one of my favorite team-level stats: How often does this team turn batted balls in play into outs?
The Twins -- no real surprise -- are not faring particularly well at that this season. Baseball Reference has the Twins DE at .678. They rank 26th among the 30 major league teams.
Last season the Twins were 10th in the majors at .692. Flip them around, so to speak, and we find that their opponents (leaving out the homers and strikeouts) hit .308 last year, .322 this season.
There are a lot of differences between the 2017 and 2018 models of this team, of course, and one of the most significant is Byron Buxton. Defensive efficiency seems to coorelate significantly to outfield defense, and the absence of Buxton shows in that regard.
The "nothing falls but raindrops" motto of 2017 has not applied to 2018.
No, it certainly hasn’t! It’s occurred to me that some teams need to be careful about advertising slogans. “This is how we baseball,” has ended up being something of a mockery.
ReplyDelete