Point Blank – May 29
The Twins start the weekend in 1st Place…Another look at those Strasburg variations…
If this were a formal classroom setting, where all readers were visible, a great way to start this morning would be “Raise your hands if you expected the Minnesota Twins to be in first place after Memorial Day”. And if I saw any hands, I would probably call those that raised them a liar. This just was not supposed to happen, a team with below average talent sitting in a tie with Kansas City atop the AL Central, and ahead of superior Detroit. And this has absolutely not been a case of the rest of the division underperforming – that group is 20 games over .500 against outside competition, by far the best of any group in the Majors. Only the Astros and Cardinals sport better records than the Twins.
So next should follow how Minnesota has proven the betting markets to be wrong, producing a profit of $1590 for someone that would have wagered $100 per game on them. The hitting was better than expected. The pitching was better than expected. Paul Molitor is a managerial genius. It has to be something along those lines, right? Not necessarily. What if the markets have actually been correct all along in their evaluations?
Item: The Twins hitters have not been much
The Minnesota slash line is .257/.311/.389. Those numbers would place the offense #10, #20 and #17 across the three categories, a below average performance, and you could sum it up well with their .700 OPS, which rates #18. Yet where are they in runs scored? How about #9?
Perhaps they have been doing it with fundamentals, like making good contact and earning their way on base through patience? But that does not hold up either. They are #23 in K% and #25 in BB%, far below average in those areas. Do they run? How about #23 in stolen bases? The offense has produced far more runs than either their abilities, or baseball logic, would allow for.
Item: The Twins pitchers have not been much* (* except for Glen Perkins)
OK, so the offense has found a way to rate #9 in runs despite not actually producing a helluva lot. But #9 does not get you to 28-18, and it does not produce the third best record in the Majors, without help. So a pitching rotation that entered the season without anyone that would be considered a #1 on another staff, and only Phil Hughes even in consideration to be a #2 (he would be a #3 or #4 across some rotations), must be better than the markets think. Except that they have not been.
If FIP is used as the guide, and after 46 games and 271 innings it is a good one, the Minnesota starters are #15 at 4.12. Which means that the starters are merely average, keeping the team in games long enough for a brilliant bullpen to get the job done. That has to be the key! But it isn’t. While closer Glen Perkins has been superb, the collective bullpen has a 4.15 FIP, rating #25.
Combine the starters and the bullpen, and the Twins are #20 in FIP at 4.13. Yet they are #12 in runs allowed. And I know where most of you would be going next. Since FIP is literally “Fielding Independent Pitching”, you are ready to raise your hand and say – “It has to be the defense! That is the magic to all of this. Minnesota’s run allowance is so much better than the FIP because the defense has been brilliant!” But then…
Item: The Twins defense has not been much
Minnesota is #25 in PADE. The Twins have actually been one of the worst defensive teams in the Major Leagues. By the way, they were #25 last year, so that is a pretty good indication of the collective abilities.
So let’s set some perspective.
2014 2015
OPS .713 .700
FIP 3.97 4.13
Defense #25 #25
W/L 70-92 28-18
The Twins were terrible in 2014. Now this season their OPS has fallen, their FIP has gone up, and a bad defense has once again been a bad defense. Yet they have gone from terrible to having one of the best records in the Major Leagues. How do you account for it?
In a lot of individual player breakdowns early in the season, particularly for pitchers, there is the BBB tag of “Baseball Being Baseball”. Sometimes it just is, a particular geometry that can have bounces cluster a little too often in a given direction. And the word cluster was used because it ties in to a meaningful measure that you can find here - http://thepowerrank.com/cluster-luck/ (most sincere thanks to a follower for that). That is as close as you can come to defining the performance of this team to this point, a broad brush of randomness painting those pastoral playing fields an even darker shade of green.
If you scour the Sports Mediaverse you will find many examples of those trying to find some kind of positive baseball performance that explains the Minnesota turnaround. There really has not been one. That is a mediocre roster performing most of baseball’s tasks at a mediocre level. It is the sport itself has been rather kind. But the sport is a meticulously fair guardian over time; what is given is most often later taken away. The Twins are not built to maintain this W/L rate, and you should begin looking to position plays against them into your portfolio.
And now back to Stephen Strasburg
Strasburg has been a topic here on a number of occasions already, with his 2015 off to a shocking 3-5/6.50, and because of his high profile, there are attempts across the media spectrums to try to find an answer. One that I believe may genuinely be true is that his ankle injury in spring training impacted his delivery, throwing off his mechanics to create the early struggles, and leading to a back problem that shortened one outing. But even after he got a couple of extra days off between starts to alleviate the back pain, and claimed to be back on track through a positive bullpen session, he has only lasted 12 IP over his last three tries, working to an alarming 11.25. In two of those games he allowed more than twice as many hits as he had strikeouts. That has happened four times this season, and there was nearly a fifth, the Mets having nine hits vs. five Ks in the opener. Strasburg only had two games in all of 2014 in which hits doubled strikeouts.
Something is definitely wrong. You will read that some will say “no”, showcasing outlier stats of a .390 BABIP and a 57.8 LOB%, which are both far to the extreme. And it is good baseball science to call for those numbers to regress towards league norms over the course of the season. But when I use my “Big Four” early metrics, categories that are independent of geometry, there is a drop in each:
Career 2014 2015
K/9 10.3 10.1 9.1
BB/9 2.3 1.8 2.3
GB% 46.5 45.9 41.9
SwS% 11.0 11.4 7.2
In particular note the Swinging Strike rates, which have fallen off the table. Whether it is mechanics, confidence, or a combination of both, Strasburg is a long way from sporting the kind of stuff the marketplace expects from him (you would be -$493 in backing the Nationals through each of his starts). And there is a darker truth in play. I usually begin tracking DBF (Difficulty of Batters Faced) when a pitcher gets to 50 innings. If we drop that table down to 44 innings or more, which is the Strasburg count, there are 113 that qualify. On that list he is #111. Not only has he been performing poorly; he has been poor against a collectively weak group of hitters.
So what is the strategy? In early columns, and in post-column threads, it has been “Play Against or Pass” until he shows the breakthrough, instead of trying to anticipate the turn. The key is reading the markets – there are so many keeping his rating high that anticipation is not going to necessarily bring a “Buy Low” target point anyway. Tonight at Cincinnati is another good example – despite his poor form, he is posted as a road favorite, and the early Friday markets took the Total down to 7.5. You do not find pitchers with Strasburg’s numbers in that role at the GABF when summer has arrived, and the first pitch temperature will be near 80 degrees. There is nothing wrong with putting some of that Over in your pockets – even if Strasburg does begin to turn the corner, the Washington offense is capable of generating vs. Anthony DeSclafani, and that ABC Cincinnati bullpen (the “Anybody But Chapman” ERA stands at 5.30).
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