Ervin Santana's 2016 season is done. He put up a 3.38 ERA, tied for second lowest of his 12-year career, in 181.1 innings and 30 starts. He was on the disabled list for two weeks early in the year, and if I remember correctly had a couple of starts truncated or even washed out by rain, But all told, he averaged just over six innings per start, and started less than one-fifth of the team's games.
One-hundred eighty-one innings leads this team by a pretty substantial margin. It doesn't rank all that highly among American League starters -- Santana entered Thursday 20th in the league in innings, and I expect he'll be passed by some in the final days of the season.
I am, yet again, struck by the way the game has changed over my decades as a fan. As of Thursday, just seven American League starters had worked 200 innings -- seven pitchers on 15 clubs. Again, that number is likely to rise a bit in the final days of the campaign, but still ... My current Strat-O-Matic project involves the eight worst teams of 1969, and there are 11 200-plus inning pitchers on those teams. Pitchers in that era frequently started more often in a season, and they emphatically expected to average more than six innings a start.
The Twins have had just three 200-inning seasons since they moved to Target Field: Carl Pavano in 2010 and 2011 and Phil Hughes in 2013.
We sometimes scoff at the "innings-eater" label attached to less-than-stellar hurlers, but the ability to last a full season in a major league rotation and get consistently into the seventh inning is valuable. Santana has had a pretty good season, and he couldn't do either.
Friday, September 30, 2016
Thursday, September 29, 2016
102 losses
The 2016 Twins reached a negative milestone Wednesday night. It was their 102nd loss of the season, tying the 1982 Twins for the most losses in Minnesota history.
I have a bunch of co-workers who hadn't been born yet, so I probably have a lot of readers who didn't see that season. I'm old, though. I remember it well.
The '82 Twins are remembered today as laying the foundation for the World Series titles that came in 1987 and 1991. Kent Hrbek, Frank Viola, Gary Gaetti, Tim Laudner, Randy Bush -- they were all products of the farm system, all rookies in 1982. Then-owner Calvin Griffith traded whatever veterans of value he had (Roy Smalley, Butch Wynegar, Rob Wilfong and Doug Corbett) in three different April and May trades to acquire, among others, Tom Brunansky (who was also a rookie) and Greg Gagne (who was some time away from solving the shortstop problem.)
It's tempting to try to wedge this season into that template. But the Terry Ryan-Rob Antony front office expected better of this team and did a lot more roster shuffling than old Calvin did. The 1982 Twins used 39 players; this year's model has gone through 49 with four games to go (and is unlikely to add to that total) and shuffled those 49 far more aggressively. The '82 Twins traded their veterans early; the '16 Twins waited until July to trade Ricky Nolasco, Fernando Abad and Eduardo Nunez.
When Viola came up after eight Triple A starts in 1982, he put up a 5.21 ERA -- and didn't come out of the rotation, much less return to the minors. None of the core rookies got shipped back to the minors. They played. When Griffith decided rookie DH Randy Johnson wasn't going to get it done, he got demoted, Randy Bush was called up, and Johnson was never heard from again. (For what it's worth, the two had basically equivalent production in 1982, but Bush got the job and didn't relinquish it for a decade.) This year, Byron Buxton, Eddie Rosario, Tyler Duffey, Jose Berrios, Jorge Polanco -- they were all up and down.
Old Calvin embraced the suck. But he could do that; he wasn't going to fire himself.
I have a bunch of co-workers who hadn't been born yet, so I probably have a lot of readers who didn't see that season. I'm old, though. I remember it well.
The '82 Twins are remembered today as laying the foundation for the World Series titles that came in 1987 and 1991. Kent Hrbek, Frank Viola, Gary Gaetti, Tim Laudner, Randy Bush -- they were all products of the farm system, all rookies in 1982. Then-owner Calvin Griffith traded whatever veterans of value he had (Roy Smalley, Butch Wynegar, Rob Wilfong and Doug Corbett) in three different April and May trades to acquire, among others, Tom Brunansky (who was also a rookie) and Greg Gagne (who was some time away from solving the shortstop problem.)
It's tempting to try to wedge this season into that template. But the Terry Ryan-Rob Antony front office expected better of this team and did a lot more roster shuffling than old Calvin did. The 1982 Twins used 39 players; this year's model has gone through 49 with four games to go (and is unlikely to add to that total) and shuffled those 49 far more aggressively. The '82 Twins traded their veterans early; the '16 Twins waited until July to trade Ricky Nolasco, Fernando Abad and Eduardo Nunez.
When Viola came up after eight Triple A starts in 1982, he put up a 5.21 ERA -- and didn't come out of the rotation, much less return to the minors. None of the core rookies got shipped back to the minors. They played. When Griffith decided rookie DH Randy Johnson wasn't going to get it done, he got demoted, Randy Bush was called up, and Johnson was never heard from again. (For what it's worth, the two had basically equivalent production in 1982, but Bush got the job and didn't relinquish it for a decade.) This year, Byron Buxton, Eddie Rosario, Tyler Duffey, Jose Berrios, Jorge Polanco -- they were all up and down.
Old Calvin embraced the suck. But he could do that; he wasn't going to fire himself.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
The oft-injured Wilson Ramos
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| Bad timing: Wilson Ramos will not only miss the playoffs, he'll enter free agency in need of knee reconstruction. |
Ramos sustained a torn knee ligament Monday. He's out for the playoffs, another blow to the Washington Nationals' postseason ambitions. It's also really bad timing for Ramos personally; he's going into free agency not as, finally, the All-Star catcher he had been projected to become but with a knee in need of reconstruction.
Ramos has played six full seasons with the Nationals. This was only his second season with more than 400 at-bats, his third with more than 100 games. He has averaged 94 games a year since 2011. Durability has not been among his attributes, and that tendency showed during his minor league development as well.
The Twins traded him during the 2010 season for Matt Capps. The deal was widely criticized; Ramos was clearly the organization's top minor league prospect, and Capps, while a solid reliever at the time, was not touched with greatness.
But the trade was understandable. Bill Smith, then the Twins general manager, made the deal to win now, and Capps deepened the Minnesota bullpen and helped win the division title. It's not his fault that his teammates never got the bullpen a lead in the 2010 playoffs,
Capps got hurt the next year (almost everybody on the 2011 Twins did) and was never an effective major leaguer again. Joe Mauer, who in 2010 appeared to be years away for having to abandon catching, only had two more seasons behind the plate. And catcher has been a frequent problem, offense and defense, since concussion issues forced Mauer to first base.
All that is inarguably true. Also true: For most of the past six years, Ramos wouldn't have fixed the catcher problem.
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
Puffs of white smoke
Word on the interwebs Monday was that the Twins had settled on Derek Falvey, 32-year-old assistant general manager of the Cleveland Indians, as their new president of baseball operations.
The Twins haven't announced such a hire; they haven't even scheduled an announcement. One genuine possibility for delay is that Falvey's current team was in a pennant race. (The Tribe clinched the AL Central title last night.) Another may be that the Twins intend to announce other changes -- such as the new general manager -- at the same time.
Here's Cleveland.com, the online arm of the Plain Dealer, on Falvey's many-faceted role with the Indians. The importance of connecting the work of the analytics people with that of the manager, coaches and players was a major theme of "Big Data Baseball," the 2015 book on the Pittsburgh Pirates, and seems to be a major part of Falvey's duties with the Tribe.
---
Well, there's an interesting thing about the rise of the Cleveland Indians. In 2014, by the defensive metrics to be found on Baseball Reference, they were an awful defensive team. In 2015 they moved more or less to the middle of the pack, and this year they are at or near the top.
There are a lot of factors involved in that; the arrival of Francisco Lindor at shortstop certainly didn't hurt. But one of them was moving a third baseman, Lonnie Chisenhall, to right field. Another was undoing their own version of the Sano fiasco. in which they attempted to install Carlos Santana at third base. That 2014 experiment lasted about as long as Sano lasted in right field this year.
I won't pretend to know what Falvey's role was in any of those decisions. He probably wasn't an innocent bystander. But the notion that a front office exec coming out of the Cleveland Indians culture is going to be fervently anti-experimentation is simply silly. There may be no operation in the game more willing to try something different than Cleveland.
The Twins haven't announced such a hire; they haven't even scheduled an announcement. One genuine possibility for delay is that Falvey's current team was in a pennant race. (The Tribe clinched the AL Central title last night.) Another may be that the Twins intend to announce other changes -- such as the new general manager -- at the same time.
Here's Cleveland.com, the online arm of the Plain Dealer, on Falvey's many-faceted role with the Indians. The importance of connecting the work of the analytics people with that of the manager, coaches and players was a major theme of "Big Data Baseball," the 2015 book on the Pittsburgh Pirates, and seems to be a major part of Falvey's duties with the Tribe.
---
Derek Falvey's first meeting as new #Twins boss (I hope): "Ok, which one of you thought it would be a good idea to put Miguel Sano in RF?"— Cory Hepola (@CoryHepola) September 26, 2016
Well, there's an interesting thing about the rise of the Cleveland Indians. In 2014, by the defensive metrics to be found on Baseball Reference, they were an awful defensive team. In 2015 they moved more or less to the middle of the pack, and this year they are at or near the top.
There are a lot of factors involved in that; the arrival of Francisco Lindor at shortstop certainly didn't hurt. But one of them was moving a third baseman, Lonnie Chisenhall, to right field. Another was undoing their own version of the Sano fiasco. in which they attempted to install Carlos Santana at third base. That 2014 experiment lasted about as long as Sano lasted in right field this year.
I won't pretend to know what Falvey's role was in any of those decisions. He probably wasn't an innocent bystander. But the notion that a front office exec coming out of the Cleveland Indians culture is going to be fervently anti-experimentation is simply silly. There may be no operation in the game more willing to try something different than Cleveland.
Monday, September 26, 2016
Three losses
Sunday was a rough day for baseball, with three distinct losses felt in this corner of fandom.
The biggest loss, and the most surprising, was the death of Jose Fernandez, the brilliant young pitcher of the Miami Marlins, in a boating accident off Miami Beach.
I keep in my head a list of the great pitchers I've seen work in person. I'll never get to add Fernandez to that list. Obviously that's among the lesser aspects of this tragedy. He leaves behind, among other survivors, an as-yet-unborn daughter (he apparently announced his girlfriend's pregnancy just last week on social media),
Another loss was completely expected: Vin Scully called his final home game for the Los Angeles Dodgers. My experience with Scully's work is largely limited to his years of national work on baseball and football games, mostly in the 1970s and '80s. But I have long admired the transcription of his call of the ninth inning of Sandy Koufax's perfect game. Scully broadcast in complete sentences and paragraphs, and that ninth inning, obviously done without a script, reads like it had been crafted with multiple drafts.
The third loss matters mainly to Twins fans. Sunday marked the 100th loss of this far-below-expectations season for the Minnesota crew. The home portion of the Twins schedule is mercifully over, and the odds are quite strong that when the week and the season ends the record will be a new low for the Minnesota portion of the franchise's long if bedraggled history. (The Washington Senators twice lost at least 110 games in the early years of the American League.)
The biggest loss, and the most surprising, was the death of Jose Fernandez, the brilliant young pitcher of the Miami Marlins, in a boating accident off Miami Beach.
I keep in my head a list of the great pitchers I've seen work in person. I'll never get to add Fernandez to that list. Obviously that's among the lesser aspects of this tragedy. He leaves behind, among other survivors, an as-yet-unborn daughter (he apparently announced his girlfriend's pregnancy just last week on social media),
Another loss was completely expected: Vin Scully called his final home game for the Los Angeles Dodgers. My experience with Scully's work is largely limited to his years of national work on baseball and football games, mostly in the 1970s and '80s. But I have long admired the transcription of his call of the ninth inning of Sandy Koufax's perfect game. Scully broadcast in complete sentences and paragraphs, and that ninth inning, obviously done without a script, reads like it had been crafted with multiple drafts.
The third loss matters mainly to Twins fans. Sunday marked the 100th loss of this far-below-expectations season for the Minnesota crew. The home portion of the Twins schedule is mercifully over, and the odds are quite strong that when the week and the season ends the record will be a new low for the Minnesota portion of the franchise's long if bedraggled history. (The Washington Senators twice lost at least 110 games in the early years of the American League.)
Sunday, September 25, 2016
Pic of the Week
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| A member of the Target Field grounds crew wrestles with the tarp during the storm that washed out Wednesday's game. |
Among the many sour aspects of the 2016 season for the Twins -- and one that no general manager can have any control of -- was the weather.
Wednesday's was the 13th rain delay (or postponement) at Target Field this year. They had another Friday night. I'm not going to try to prove or disprove this assertion, but I doubt there were three homestands without at least one weather delay.
That's part of baseball. The weather matters, and it can (and does) disrupt a team's pitching plans. The Twins lost some good starts to the weather, and overall did not cope well with the disruptions.
Saturday, September 24, 2016
This is a lousy fielding team
The phrase "E-Twins" generally refers to the Twins' Appy League affiliate in Elizabethton, Tenn. This year, it more accurately refers to the fielding "prowess" of the big league team.
Robbie Grossman's double error in left field Friday night inspires me to update this repeated complaint.
Grossman has now been charged with eight errors in left field. According to Baseball Reference, he had, entering the game, cost the Twins 19 runs compared to an average left fielder -- and this as essentially a half-time player (71 games).
Which is how a guy with an on base percentage of .384 and a slugging percentage of .454 is almost a wash in WAR (wins above replacement) as calculated by BR. Grossman has been an absolute liability in the field.
The Twins entered Friday's game with 118 errors. This was the most in the American League, second in the majors to Milwaukee (125). The Twins lead the majors in outfield errors by a wide margin. Nobody's committed more errors in left field than Grossman, Nobody's committed more errors in right field than Max Kepler (who at least has some range.)
Errors are far from a perfect measurement of fielding. But the figure is hardly meaningless, especially at the extremes -- and the 2016 Twins are definitely an extremely sloppy fielding crew.
Meanwhile, they find new ways to embarrass themselves.
Robbie Grossman's double error in left field Friday night inspires me to update this repeated complaint.
Grossman has now been charged with eight errors in left field. According to Baseball Reference, he had, entering the game, cost the Twins 19 runs compared to an average left fielder -- and this as essentially a half-time player (71 games).
Which is how a guy with an on base percentage of .384 and a slugging percentage of .454 is almost a wash in WAR (wins above replacement) as calculated by BR. Grossman has been an absolute liability in the field.
The Twins entered Friday's game with 118 errors. This was the most in the American League, second in the majors to Milwaukee (125). The Twins lead the majors in outfield errors by a wide margin. Nobody's committed more errors in left field than Grossman, Nobody's committed more errors in right field than Max Kepler (who at least has some range.)
Errors are far from a perfect measurement of fielding. But the figure is hardly meaningless, especially at the extremes -- and the 2016 Twins are definitely an extremely sloppy fielding crew.
Meanwhile, they find new ways to embarrass themselves.
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