Phoning It In: The '69 Twins & Billy Martin

One regret I have about not publishing GameDay this last year was that we had a GREAT series of stories lined up about the 1969 Twins team by Will Young. The '69 Twins were coached by Billy Martin and included oddities like Rod Carew steal home seven times and Martin get into a fistfight with a member of his rotation.

Fortunately, Will shared his research on the team with Chris Jaffe, a talented writer for The Hardball Times, who is including it in his book Evaluating Baseball's Managers. You can find an excerpt here which is all about Martin and that '69 team. It's fantastic:

The ultimate Billyball moment came on May 18 when both [Cesar] Tovar and [Rod] Carew stole home plate in the same inning—in the same a- bat. Carew stole his way around the bases in that plate appearance. At the plate during this maniacal base running was Harmon Killebrew. Harmon Killebrew! It boggles the mind: With one of the greatest home run hitters of that or any other generation up Martin wanted his men running wild.

And later....

The man most comparable to Billy Martin was not Herzog, but Hernan Cortes, the Spanish conquistador who defeated the Aztecs. In 1519, he landed in Mexico to face the hemisphere’s mightiest warrior nation with only 600 men. Upon arrival, he burnt his boats, giving his men no way to leave. That move was pure Billy Martin. Safe to say, that in the military science version of sabermetrics a general would be poorly regarded for intentionally destroying his communication lines, supply routes and exit strategy. It was possibly even worse than having two men steal home with Killebrew batting.

Anyway, it's better than anything I'm going to write tonight, so click over and check it out. It's worth it.

On Craps Shoots and ERA

Pitching(1) is a craps shoot(2).

That's the primary reason I haven't written about pitching. Getting an additional reliable starting pitcher is the biggest remaining issue facing the Twins this offseason. And part of the reason I haven't written about that issue is that the rest of the remarkable Twins blogosphere(3) has it covered. As does, of course, the TwinsCentric Offseason GM Handbook.

But the bigger reason is that I have trouble being too opinionated about pitching. And that's because pitching is a craps shoot. My gut reaction is that the more passionate you are about predicting a pitcher's performance next year, the stupider you are. And I say this because I've been pretty passionate about predicting pitching in the past, and I've ended up feeling pretty stupid. Because all we really know is that pitching is a craps shoot.

And this is something you can show statistically, and I'll do so in my typical half-as ... er ... back-of-the-napkin way. Let's take a look at starting pitchers from 2008 and starting pitchers from 2009 and see which of their stats from 2008 could've best predicted their ERA in 2009.(4)

We'll do this by deriving something called a "correlation coefficient." Ooh, I lost a lot of you with those last two words, didn't I? Let's try again.

We'll do this by giving each statistic a rating between 0 and 100. Zero means the 2008 statistic had almost no relation at all to the player's ERA in 2009 - you couldn't have predicted it at all. 100 means it would have been in lock step with the ERA in 2009, so you could have predicted the ERA exactly. (5)

Here are the results:

2008 Stat	Rating
FIP	46
RAR	45
SO	45
K/9	40
ERA	38
RE24	36
WPA	36
HR/9	34
Strikes	32
LOB%	31
Pitches	31
IP	30
CG	28
Balls	26
K/BB	25
HR/FB	25
AVG	24
GS	22
W	21
BB	20
WHIP	20
LD%	20
HR	17
H	15
BABIP	15
L	2
BB/9	2
GB%	0
GB/FB	0

I could go on for awhile about this rating, and I still might, but let's talk about the top of the table a bit first.

The best predictor is FIP, which is a fairly new pitching metric that stands for Fielding Independent Pitching. It measure a pitcher's effectiveness with something that looks like ERA, but is based only on plays that do not involve fielders: home runs allowed, strikeouts, hit batters, walks, and, more recently, fly ball percentage, ground ball percentage, and (to a lesser extent) line drive percentage. It's worth a longer entry later.(6)

Anyway, FIP edges out a close race over RAR (Runs Above Replacement) and ... Strikeouts? Notice that it isn't strikeout rate. That's next on the list at 40. It's just plain strikeouts. I guess it's not shocking that for starting pitchers the total number of strikeouts is a better indicator of next year's ERA than a pitcher's strikeout rate, but I didn't anticipate that.

Anyway, fell free to fill up the comments sections with questions/observations about the values in this list. I would love to dissect these values more in a later entry.

But back to the craps shoot. What is most striking to me is that the highest number is just 46. Why? Because of this....

Let's say you were taking a look at a list of all batters last year but your list of stats was missing the RBI column. You wanted to figure out about how many RBI a player had based on the other stats they had. Could you come close using home runs? How about hits?

You probably could. HR would have a rating of 93 in predicting the number of RBI. And hits would have a rating of 94.

But you wouldn't expect to be able to predict it very well with triples, right? We don't associate guys who hit triples with guys who put up big RBI numbers. The Twins leaders in triples this year were Denard Span, Michael Cuddyer and Carlos Gomez. Needless to say they didn't drive in the most RBI.

Well, you would be right about that, too. Triples are a crappy indicator. They only have a rating of 51 in predicting the number of RBI. But that is five points higher than the best indicator we have for next year's ERA.

Which makes our indicator a little worse than crappy. Because pitching is a craps shoot.

(1) There's lots of reasons to write. Sometimes it's because you're inspired. Sometimes it's because you have a passion about something. Sometimes it's to stretch.

And sometimes it's just because you have a blockage. That's today. I don't know exactly where this will go, but I'm pretty sure it's been blocking all other writing for the last few days.

(2) And, by the way, that's how I'm going with "craps shoot." As opposed to "crapshoot" or, god forbid, "crap chute." I'm pretty sure the term is supposed to refer to throwing dice in a game of craps. If it is something closer to the latter spelling, please, don't tell me.

(3) And while we're interrupting this entry half a dozen times before it finds its legs, let's talk about that remarkable Twins blogosphere. Does everyone know about MNGameDay.com? Where you can find a feed of the latest entries from something like 50 Minnesota Twins blogs? No? That's because I don't think I've mentioned it here in something like two years. Because I'm an idiot.

(4) Some specifics are in order for those geeks playing along at home. I'm limiting the study to those pitchers with more than 15 starts in 2008 and in 2009. That gets me (by my computations) 94 pitchers, which isn't a huge sample size, but not half bad either.

(5) Again, for the geeks: I'm computing a correlation coefficient between the arrays, taking the absolute value of it (since I'm just as interested in negative correlations) and multiplying it by 100.

(6) Especially because Carl Pavano's FIP last year was just 4.00, compared to his ERA of 5.10.

Cabrera's Value

On the local SABR mail list there's been a discussion on what Orlando Cabrera is worth. We've seen a similar debate several places the last week. One side looks at his stats and points out that he topped out at "servicable" offensively and "suspect" defensively. The other side looks at the run the Twins made with him in the lineup and looks for impacts beyond the stats.

This debate gained a little momentum this weekend when Ron Gardenhire suggested that the Twins might still like Cabrera at second base as if this is a realistic possibility. It isn't. The Twins can find plenty of better free agents to play second base at a salary that is less expensive than Cabrera. And Cabrera can find a lot better offers that allow him to play shorstop. Sometime managers just want to say something nice about their ex-players. That's all this means.

But Cabrera's value takes a little twist when one looks at a neat statistic that's growing in popularity called Win Probability Added or WPA. To borrow from Denny Green, it is what is says it is: it adds (or subtracts) the affect a player had on the game by measuring how that player affected the probability of his team to win.

For instance, if player hits a single in four at-bats his WPA could vary significant depending on when he made those outs or got that hit. If he struck out three times while the bases were loaded and there was one out, his WPA for that game would likely be horrendous (and he would replace Punto as the voodoo doll of choice amongst Twins fans). If, on the other hand, he made three innocuous outs but got a key single in the bottom of the eighth that drove in the tying and winning runs, his WPA would be quite high (and he might be the player of the game.)

In other words, WPA goes beyond a player's overall statistics and beyond the myth that those hits are spread out more or less evenly. Some of those hits (or outs) are exceedingly more valuable than others, both positively and negatively. It often explains why fans who watch games thing a player had a better (or worse) year than his stats indicate.

It certainly could with Cabrera. His overall stats were mediocre, but in two months he posted a WPA of .527, which ranked fourth on the Twins hitters over all of 2009. Here's the list, by the way:

Name WPA
Joe Mauer 3.64
Jason Kubel 2.20
Justin Morneau 0.78
Orlando Cabrera 0.53
Michael Cuddyer 0.48
Matt Tolbert 0.30
Joe Crede 0.12
Jose Morales -0.12
Delmon Young -0.14
Denard Span -0.15
Brian Buscher -0.29
Mike Redmond -0.43
Alexi Casilla -0.61
Nick Punto -0.84
Brendan Harris -1.35
Carlos Gomez -1.97

Cabrera might not have had a great stint with the Twins statistically, but he absolutely made a difference in whether or not they won games in his two months here. Now that doesn't mean a thing for the future. It doesn't justify resigning him, and I'm far more excited about getting JJ Hardy here than I would have been if he returned.

But the love for Cabrera isn't just blind homerism. Indeed, it suggests a level of attention beyond overall stats, and an awareness of the situations in which those stats were compiled.

Coupla Notes
1. I haven't mentioned it much lately, but you can still download 1/3 of the TwinsCentric Offseason GM Handbook absolutely free at TwinsCentric.com. I have no idea why you wouldn't. What else are you doing today?

(You can also now by the hard copy, too!)

By the way - wanna guess who our very first trade target was? Yep - J. J. Hardy.

2. A couple of days ago I mentioned that Twins fans shouldn't discount the possibility that some top-notch Type A free agent second basemen might be available without needing to give up a draft pick. Recent news supports that.

First, we found out that the Tigers are desparate enough to cut payroll that they're willing to trade Curtis Granderson or Edwin Jackson. These guys are key cogs on their team, and they're both going to be WAY below market value next year. If they Tigers need to part with them, they certainly aren't going to offer Placido Polanco arbitration that could pay him at (or above) market rate next year.

And now we've found out that the relationship between Orlando Hudson and the Dodgers is icy, but the Dodgers have been talking to the Mets about Luis Castillo. It sure sounds like both sides are ready to move on, but the Dodgers have to realize that if they offer arbitration, Hudson will have to take it. I'll be surprised if they offer it. I'll be shocked if he doesn't accept it if they offer it.

Dumbass Blogger Joins a Podcast Late

No writing today, but I appeared on a Fanatic Jack's podcast last night and we talked a lot of Twins and Twins blogging.

Unfortunately, I appeared about 30 minutes later than I was supposed to because I lost track of time while paying bills, so I joined at about the halfway point. I haven't heard the first half of the podcast yet, but I sure hope they spent it ripping me a new one.

I will, however, listen to it today, and you can too by going to the link above, or by subscribing to their RSS feed. I'll hopefully be back tomorrow, provided I get these bills done.....

Twins Could Sign Type A Free Agents

Know how a pendulum works?

Me neither. It has something to do with gravity and Newton's Laws of Motion and the spin (or wobble?) of the earth. Any self-respecting geek should know this stuff, and I remember learning it at least three times, but I'll be darned if I can explain it now. I basically remember two things:

1) It goes back and then it goes back.
2) It repeats that pretty consistently forever.

Offseason markets can work like that, too. Things change. And then they change again. And that’s why the Twins might still be able to sign some Type A free agents.

Which would be nice, because these "Type A" free agents aren't exceptionally tense overacheivers who will die of a stroke before their daughter's wedding. They are some of the better free agents available, as decided by Elias Sports Bureau, based on a statistical formula. All free agents are categorized this way, with the best being “A”, the next being “B” and the rest getting no grade at all.

This is supposedly done so that teams that lose a free agent can get compensated with draft picks the following year. For instance, losing a Type B free agent gets a team an extra draft pick after the first round, as a gift from Major League Baseball for their pain and suffering. But losing a Type A free agent not only gets them the extra draft pick, they get another first or second round draft pick from the team that signed the Type A free agent.

Last offseason the pendulum swung and the market decided those draft picks were pretty valuable. As a result, Type A free agents got screwed. Some very good players who usually would have cashed in on multiple year contracts were forced to accept one-year, low-base salary contracts because no team wanted to sign them and give up their draft pick.

In part, it's those players (or their agents) fault, because there’s a catch for the teams that the players glossed over. In order to get the compensation picks, the team needs to give the player a chance to come back on a one-year basis at market price, which they do by offering him arbitration. If the player turns down the arbitration, he is a free agent and the team gets compensation when he signs with another team. But if the player accepts the arbitration, the player rejoins the team and they agree on a market level salary with the help of an arbitrator if necessary.

A really good example of a player who was screwed by this last year was the Twins own Orlando Cabrera. Cabrera had butted heads with White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen the year before in Chicago, so everyone knew he wanted to leave. When the White Sox offered him arbitration, he turned it down, since he was arguably the most sought after shortstop on the free agent market. But instead of getting a huge deal, his Type A status resulted in a one-year, $4 million contract with Oakland.

So last year, rejecting that arbitration offer was a major mistake. Had he accepted it, strained relationship or no, he likely would have made $10 million. If he had to do it over, you can be sure that his agent would have informed the White Sox that they would accept if Chicago offered him arbitration. Which likely would have meant that Chicago would NOT have offered him arbitration.

That summarizes the way the pendulum will swing back this year. Type A players are going to be a lot more willing to accept arbitration. Which means the pendulum might swing again, because then teams will likely be a lot less willing to offer it. And that means a lot of teams are going to be able to sign Type A players without having to give up any draft picks.

So how does it affect the Twins? Well, these two second baseman might just be available, despite their Type A status:

Placido Polanco – Like I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, if the Tigers offer Polanco arbitration, it’s a no-brainer for him – he accepts it. So there’s no guarantee he will be available. But if he is available, he’s not going to cost a draft pick. And given the Tigers already bloated payroll (and the fact that they're located in the most economically depressed city in major league baseball), one can afford to be optimistic he won't be offered arbitration.

Orlando Hudson – Hudson is the toughest arbitration call in this story, and he might be the toughest in the major leagues. He was hurt by this process last year when he rejected arbitration from the Diamondbacks. He didn't end up signing a contract until spring training, and it was a one-year, $4 million base contract with the Dodgers, though he made about $7.5 million with incentives. If the Dodgers offered arbitration this year, that experience should be fresh in his mind.

That's why I suspect he would accept arbitration, especially because the market is thick with free agent second baseman. So the Dodgers need to decide if they want to essentially offer Hudson a one-year contract worth $8-$10 million. That's not a bad value for them, but they also sat him towards the end of the year so he wouldn't make so much from his incentives. Financially, it seems like a risk they shouldn’t want to take. So like Polanco, Hudson could be available, and if he is, no draft picks will need to be given up.

But it's not all good news. There are some other guys that Twins fans might be dreaming of that probably won’t be options because the Twins would still need to give up a draft pick for them:

Chone Figgins – The speedy third baseman wasn’t a great option to begin with because he’s going to be expensive and want a multi-year deal. The Twins won’t want to block the route for third base prospects Danny Valencia or Luke Hughes. But Figgins will be offered arbitration, will reject it, and will sign someplace else for a lot of money and that team will need to give up a draft pick.

John Lackey and Randy Wolf – They’ll be two of the top starting pitchers on the market, and some team will give up the draft picks to sign them to a multi-year deal. It won't be the Twins, most likely.

So question the doomsayers who write-off Type A free agents. They're following where the pendulum was last year. And pendulums swing back and forth incessantly. This much I know.

Letting Go of Go-Go

See that picture on the right? That's how I think I'll always remember Carlos Gomez's tenure with the Twins. I loved the joy he played with, and was extremely optimistic about his potential. I constantly grumbled that the Twins were going to ruin the kid by not sending him to Rochester to play every day. The joy and athleticism he shows in that picture captures everything good about Gomez for me.

And I'm saying this because I've just reread the story that you're about to read and it sounds like I'm anti-Gomez. I'm not. I liked him.

But he wasn't any good.

---------------------

We bloggers and stats guys have enough to overcome. So how about we quit actively trying to look like morons?

In the joyous wake of the trade which sent Carlos Gomez to the Brewers for JJ Hardy, several otherwise sane and intelligent writers tried to point out that Gomez was undervalued because of his defense. Maybe that's true, and maybe it's not, but when it's carried it to the point where it's stated that Gomez had any present-value at all to a baseball team, it's officially gone too far.

Gomez is a very good, maybe even elite, center field defender. If you're looking for a statistic to try and measure it, Ultimate Zone Rating isn't a bad one, and his UZR states that he saves about 15 runs over an average center fielder every 150 games in his career.

But you can also measure offensive futility using stats, and OPS is a nice short-hand (and intuitive) way to do so. Here are the center fielders in the majors with 300 or more at-bats last year, sorted by OPS. See if you can find Gomez on the list. (Hint, scroll down):

PLAYER	TEAM	OPS
Carlos Beltran	NYM	0.915
Torii Hunter	LAA	0.873
Matt Kemp	LAD	0.842
Angel Pagan	NYM	0.837
Andrew McCutchen	PIT	0.836
Marlon Byrd	TEX	0.808
Denard Span	MIN	0.807
Shane Victorino	PHI	0.803
Kosuke Fukudome	CHC	0.796
Mike Cameron	MIL	0.795
Adam Jones	BAL	0.792
Cody Ross	FLA	0.790
Grady Sizemore	CLE	0.788
Nate McLouth	ATL/PIT	0.788
Rajai Davis	OAK	0.784
Curtis Granderson	DET	0.780
Jacoby Ellsbury	BOS	0.770
Dexter Fowler	COL	0.770
Franklin Gutierrez	SEA	0.764
Willie Harris	WAS	0.757
Nyjer Morgan	WAS/PIT	0.757
Melky Cabrera	NYY	0.752
Josh Hamilton	TEX	0.741
Michael Bourn	HOU	0.738
Aaron Rowand	SFO	0.738
Colby Rasmus	STL	0.714
Vernon Wells	TOR	0.711
Chris Young	ARI	0.711
Gary Matthews Jr.	LAA	0.697
Tony Gwynn	SDG	0.693
Alex Rios	CHW/TOR	0.691
B.J. Upton	TAM	0.686
Rick Ankiel	STL	0.672
Mitch Maier	KAN	0.665
Carlos Gomez	MIN	0.623
Willy Taveras	CIN	0.559

Gomez wasn't just bad at that plate. He was awful. Eye-watering. Breathtaking. His badness approached "evil".

And how much did his defense make up? Not much. A bump in OPS of 4 to 5 points is generally worth a single run over 500 or so at-bats. So let's add a column which points out just how many runs better or worse each of these guys was over Gomez:

PLAYER	TEAM	OPS	Runs
Carlos Beltran	NYM	0.915	+65
Torii Hunter	LAA	0.873	+56
Matt Kemp	LAD	0.842	+49
Angel Pagan	NYM	0.837	+48
Andrew McCutchen	PIT	0.836	+47
Marlon Byrd	TEX	0.808	+41
Denard Span	MIN	0.807	+41
Shane Victorino	PHI	0.803	+40
Kosuke Fukudome	CHC	0.796	+38
Mike Cameron	MIL	0.795	+38
Adam Jones	BAL	0.792	+38
Cody Ross	FLA	0.790	+37
Grady Sizemore	CLE	0.788	+37
Nate McLouth	ATL/PIT	0.788	+37
Rajai Davis	OAK	0.784	+36
Curtis Granderson	DET	0.780	+35
Jacoby Ellsbury	BOS	0.770	+33
Dexter Fowler	COL	0.770	+33
Franklin Gutierrez	SEA	0.764	+31
Willie Harris	WAS	0.757	+30
Nyjer Morgan	WAS/PIT	0.757	+30
Melky Cabrera	NYY	0.752	+29
Josh Hamilton	TEX	0.741	+26
Michael Bourn	HOU	0.738	+26
Aaron Rowand	SFO	0.738	+26
Colby Rasmus	STL	0.714	+20
Vernon Wells	TOR	0.711	+20
Chris Young	ARI	0.711	+20
Gary Matthews Jr.	LAA	0.697	+16
Tony Gwynn	SDG	0.693	+16
Alex Rios	CHW/TOR	0.691	+15
B.J. Upton	TAM	0.686	+14
Rick Ankiel	STL	0.672	+11
Mitch Maier	KAN	0.665	+9
Carlos Gomez	MIN	0.623	+0
Willy Taveras	CIN	0.559	-14

So those 15 runs that he makes up defensively still leave him towards the bottom of the list. He was nowhere near average. He was bad. As in, not good. Beyond shaky. Poor. Inferior. Deficient. Lacking. Flawed. Substandard. Occasionally dreadful. Frequently appalling. Approaching abysmal.

To be fair, when a lot of people praised Gomez's value, their point wasn't really that Gomez was good. It was really:

1) "Hey, we've got these great defensive metrics that I want to show you!" I'm glad we have these defensive metrics. They're a step in the right direction. But a position player's defensive value is almost always dwarfed by the value of their offensive performance. Just because we can measure it now doesn't make it more important than it was a couple of years ago. Just clearer.

2) "Delmon Young is terrible." Which has absolutely been true. I'd love nothing more than to see the Twins bring in a veteran backup that can show Young how to conduct himself on and (maybe more imporantly) off the field. And, even better, threaten to take Young's job if he doesn't straighten out.

But that's far different than saying Carlos Gomez had any present-day value whatsoever. He was never part of the solution. He was always part of the problem. To argue anything else makes us look stupid.

Silver Linings

The gray cloud of not acquiring Akinori Iwamura has all kind of silver linings which I’d love to dive into today.

Geek Chorus: Actually, you would have loved to dive into them yesterday, but you were too lazy to finish the column.

Yes. Yes, I was. And that was the Geek Chorus, whose job it is to keep me honest. So honestly, while I'm disappointed to not get Iwamura, there are plenty of positive signs to come out that little episode. Like:

Silver Lining #1: The Twins are interested in upgrading at second base.

Geek Chorus: Uh, doi?

"Doi?" You're going with "Doi?" Nicely done. Very retro.

For most of the nation, this is a "Doi." But those folks don’t root for the Twins, who could trot out at least two reasons to not upgrade:

1) Nick Punto played competently there down the stretch and
2) Alexi Casilla is out of options

The Twins might still mention either or both of those reasons later this offseason, just as Bill Smith did in his interview with TwinsCentric for the Offseason GM Handbook two weeks ago. But neither stopped the Twins from trying to acquire a competent replacement who was going to cost them just short of $5 million next year.

Geek Chorus: Provided it didn’t cost them a B-level prospect – god forbid.

Yeah, the hoarding mentality remains annoying, but there are a slew of free agent second basemen who don’t cost them a B-level prospect, too. Which brings us to…

Silver Lining #2: As good a fit as Iwamura was to plug the vacancy at second base, there are at least a half dozen better fits who will be available this offseason.

When we ranked the free agent second basemen in terms of desirability, Iwamura ranked 6th in guaranteed money, behind Freddy Sanchez, Felipe Lopez, Orlando Hudson, Placido Polanco, and Adam Kennedy. And that list doesn’t include Chone Figgins and Mark Derosa, because they were in the list of third baseman. And doesn’t include potential trade targets like Dan Uggla.

Geek Chorus: Ooh. Dan Uggla. Dan Uggla. The most beautiful sound I ever heard. Dan Uggla. All the most beautiful sounds in the world in two single words - Dan Uggla, Dan Uggla, Dan Uggla, Dan Uggla! I just....

We'll interrupt the Bernstein musical in progress because it's creeping me out a little bit. But the Geek Chorus has a point. I may be guilty of a Polanco Crush, but that's only because Uggla is the girl who is way too far out of the Twins' league to be crushing on. He is Caroline Mulford to Polanco's Molly Ringwald.

Geek Chorus: Now who is the creepy one?

We'll move on.

Silver Lining #3: The Twins recognize that Brian Buscher is not the answer.

Geek Chorus: Unless the question is "Who can strike out more often than Delmon Young?"

Yeah, how about that? Last year at this time Buscher was being touted as two-thirds of the answer at third base because of how he hit lefties. But last year, he not only posted a .235 batting average and a 676 OPS, but he struck out 35 times in 136 at-bats, which was the worst ratio on the team.

Geek Chorus: Careful. This is where one of your more anal-retentive readers points out to you that at-bats are not synonymous with plate appearances.

Super. And this is where I point out that when you're splitting hairs so your boy comes out slightly ahead of Young and Carlos Gomez in flailing futility, you've already conceded the point.

Buscher needs to find a nice non-competitive team that can give him some time playing consistently against right-handers. Maybe there is still time for him to find his way out of the wilderness and into the promised land.

Geek Chorus: Let my people go. (Oh. I guess we did.)

Silver Lining #4: There is a decent chance the Twins think Mike Redmond is coming back as a player.

Why, of all the moves the Twins could have made to the 40-man roster, did the Twins drop Buscher, their main option as a bench bat last year? It's not like there weren't other candidates. Deibinson Romero is a 23-year-old third baseman who is still struggling at High A ball. Trevor Plouffe is a 23-year-old shortstop at AAA who has struggled offensively at every step in his major league career. Is 28-year-old Justin Huber more likely to have a productive role next year than Buscher?

Well, Smith mentioned last month that there is another left-handed bat available:

"Buscher was essentially a left-handed pinch hitter if we needed it. We had pretty good balance. [Jose] Morales was another guy. When he was up for September, he was a switch-hitter, but he’s a better left-handed hitter."

Geek Chorus: So Morales replaces Buscher on the bench, and you think that means Redmond must be coming back as backup catcher? That's a stretch. It might mean just as easily that Redmond is NOT coming back. Can the roster support both Redmond and Morales?

Let's see - five bench spots belong to Brendan Harris, Gomez or Young, Casilla or Tolbert, the backup catcher and...yeah, I think there's room for one more. I'm going with it.

Geek Chorus: Well, I'm withholding my endorsement.

Maybe I should modify #4 to read that it looks like Morales is in the Twins' plans next year. That, by itself, isn't especially good news. Morales' minor league history isn't especially promising. But he had a hot start, cooled considerably, and could end up thrust into a role which he's not ready for...

Geek Chorus: Much like Brian Buscher.

Precisely.

Thanks for stopping by, and make sure to stop by TwinsCentric.com where our first book is now available. We'll see you on Monday.

We Have a Book!

We have books.

Real, live, turn-the-page, display-it-in-your-collection-of-baseball-stuff books. That's it, over on the right. It's TwinsCentric's first REAL book, and I can pretty much guarantee it won't be the last, because meeting tomorrow night to plan our first Minnesota Twins Annual.

But that's tomorrow and today is today, and you can get our first printing of our first book today by clicking here, or following the link from TwinsCentric.com. Thanks so much for you support and feedback. We really are having a lot of fun writing these.

And I'm having a lot of fun writing a story about the silver linings of Tuesday's Akinori Iwamura fiasco, but it's not ready for publication. Stop by tomorrow and we'll go over them all, including what it might mean for Red Dog's future with the Twins.

Provided I finish writing it. And after I buy about a dozen of these books.

Buscher and Rage and Nothing

You'll see this later, but I can't wait much longer to spit it out: DAMN! Damn, damn, DAMN!!!!

One of the early signs that this blog was going to turn from technical experiment to tragic little obsession took place on January 31, 2002. On that date, the Twins had signed relief pitcher David Lee to a contract - and there was no mention of it in the local papers.

I whipped myself into a self-righteous rage. That was a significant signing, or at the very least a signing with some delicious implications. How could their be no coverage? So I sat down and wrote 400 words comparing Terry Ryan to a Pyrolobus fumarii and this blog (with a few notable breaks) has been dedicated to exploring Twins minutia ever since.

Which bring us to yesterday's minutia, and the infinite implications it represents:

Minnesota Twins outright Brian Buscher to AAA-Rochester.

Implication #1: DAMN! Dammity-damn-damn, dammit!! It looks like the Twins just missed trading for Akinori Iwamura. And it was close enough that they made a roster move to clear space for him.

I guess we're skipping straight to dessert, or what looked an awful lot like dessert, until it was snatched away by Pirates GM Neal Huntington.

The compelling aspect about the Buscher roster move was the timing. The Twins have plenty of time to make their 40-man roster decisions, and the most obvious reason to clear a spot now is to open a space for a new player in a trade. So what kind of players are traded within days of the end of the World Series?

A specific kind of player is usually traded at that time. It's a player who has an option that a team can pick up, but whose option the team doesn't WANT to pick up, because they don't need that player.

(For instance, the Chicago White Sox has a $12 million option on Jermaine Dye for 2010 that they're unlikely to exercise. But that doesn't mean that nobody else would be willing to pay $12 million to Dye for 2010. So rather than just let him walk as a free agent, you can bet that White Sox GM Kenny Williams was on the phone this week asking other GMS if they wanted to trade for Dye.)

That kind of player was traded today when Iwamura was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates today. We wrote up Iwamura in the TwinsCentric Offseason GM Handbook. We said:

Akinori Iwamura*:
Tampa Bay Rays
Age: 30 (DOB: 2/9/79) | 2009 Salary: $3.25M
2009 Stats: .290/.355/.390, 1 HR, 22 RBI
The Rays have a $4.25 club option for Iwamura, but it’s quite feasible that they could buy that out for $250K given that they already have a strong starting infield unit with Ben Zobrist, Jason Bartlett and Evan Longoria. If Iwamura hits free agency, he’d be someone the Twins would need to take a long hard look at. He was limited to only 54 games in 2009 by injury, which might make him an even better bargain.
Estimated Contract: 2 years, $8M

We were right that he was going to be available, but we didn't anticipate the Rays would trade that option rather than just not exercise it.

Before I heard that Buscher had been outrighted, I had heard from both local and national sources that the Twins were in final talks over Iwamura. Now, I hear stuff like this all the time, but the Buscher roster moves raises those rumors to another level.

I'll stop short of saying there is NO reason to make that roster move at this time if the Twins were not expecting to acquire a player, because there could be something personal going on with Buscher that we don't know about. But the timing of it is exceptionally strange. Usually the timing for this kind of move points to a second move.

So - damn. Iwamura has a career OBP of .354 and plays league average defense at second base, which are two thing the Twins didn't do in 2009. He's been a leadoff hitter for most of his MLB career, which would've played nice at #2 in the order, though he does bat left-handed.

So he's not an exceptional player, but he's a clear upgrade over what the Twins trotted out at second base last year. Losing him isn't going to cripple the offseason plans, and there are plenty of other, more positive implications to this move. But it looks like the Twins missed out on someone they wanted, and someone who would have made lots of sense.

Which brings us back to that entry from 2002. David Lee never played in a game with the Twins that year. He was sent to AAA a couple weeks before the Twins broke camp. All of that outrage and fine literary effort was ultimately for nothing. Like, it seems, this latest one.

It sounds like a couple of teams held onto their potential free agents this weekend, and that's both good news and bad news for our Twins. We'll start with the (kinda) bad news...

Freddy Sanchez signs a 2-year, $12 million contract with the San Franciso Giants.

First, lets see what the TwinsCentric Offseason GM Handbook had to say about Sanchez...

Freddy Sanchez*
San Francisco Giants
Age: 31 (DOB: 12/21/77) | 2009 Salary: $6.1M
2009 Stats: .293/.326/.416, 7 HR, 41 RBI
A .300 career hitter, Sanchez would be a nice acquisition for the Twins. The Giants say they won’t activate his 2010 option, but are interested in signing a multi-year deal with him before he hits the free agent market.
Estimated Contract: 3 years, $21M

You'll remember there was a fair amount of interest around here in Sanchez prior to the trade deadline, or prior to him fighting through knee problems prior to the deadline. He ended up getting traded to the Giants, did them almost no good because of said knee injuries. So the Giants didn't activate their option and did get him to sign a multi-year deal instead. Nice job by them.

But there's plenty of silver-lining surrounding this cloud. First, Sanchez signed for less than we had predicted, which is a good sign for the market. Second, even though Sanchez isn't on the supply-side any more, the Giants aren't on the demand-side any more either. Whether or not they signed Sanchez, they were going to sign somebody, so it doesn't change the overall complexion of a plentiful second baseman market.

The next news was about the third baseman market:

Geoff Blum signs a 1-year contract for 1.5 million with the Houston Astros.

Significant? Probably not. Or at least hopefully not. Blum was the at the bottom of the list of free agent third basemen in the Handbook:

Geoff Blum
Houston Astros
Age: 30 (DOB: 4/26/73) | 2009 Salary: $1.1M
2009 Stats: .247/.314/.367, 10 HR, 49 RBI
Blum would not be a big-name signing. Most would probably not know that Blum has played in 109 or more games each of the past 10 seasons. Although he has played nearly every position on the diamond, he has been the Astros’ primary third baseman the past two years. However, his career OPS is .700, and it has not been higher than .705 since 2002.
Estimated Contract: 1 years, $1M

I'm putting this in the category of "good news" just because Blum strikes me as exactly the kind of guy the Twins might have settled for at the last minute in a Tony-Batitst-ICK kinda way. He's bad enough that I would consider Brendan Harris a better overall fit as an every day third baseman. And that's a fragment of a sentence that makes me feel unclean.

----------------------

I hope to have some very exciting news regarding the hard copy of the TwinsCentric Offseason GM Handbook by the middle of this week. Thanks everyone, for your patience.

I'll also be at the Taste of the NFL tonight. If anyone has any advice about the event, I'd love to hear it. And I'd love to talk a little Twins with you if you happen to be there too.

On Contests, Nick Punto and Oil Wrestling

I'm betting that title got your attention, huh? Let's count them down in order....

1. Over at TwinsCentric.com we started a contest to try and predict the Twins Opening Day roster. You just click over from the main page, fill out the roster the way you think it will look on Opening Day, and win a prize if yours is the closest. So pull out your crystal ball and go at it.

2. I filled out mine and almost immediately wanted to change it. I basically decided that the Twins would re-sign four of their free agents and that would pretty much be the end of the offseason. And that still might be right.

But I wonder how soon Joe Crede and his agent Scott Boras are going to be looking to sign a deal. Probably not soon. And so if the Twins re-sign Orlando Cabrera and then take a gander at all those free agent second basemen, I wonder if they don't sign one of them and move Nick Punto to third base. It's defensible, and the more I think about it, the more I suspect that might happen.

3. Speaking of Punto, I happened to compare his on-base percentage to those shortstops in MLB who had at least 500 at-bats. His .337 OBP last year ranks 11th of 20, sandwiched between Miguel Tejada and Rafael Furcal. I still say he doesn't make a bad shortstop, especially if his defense returns to where it was before 2009.

4. And finally, I've been blogging this since 2002. I've spent plenty of hours wondering where it would lead. And now I know that all of it was a complete waste of time. Because yesterday I got this email from Judd Spicer, who writes for GameDay and is a 'sports blotter' on the City Pages site. And is apparently the most brilliant blogger of all time:

For immediate release--

This Friday, October 30th, City Pages sportswriter Judd Spicer will be participating in an evening of women's oil wrestling, battling for the universal pride of those who cover sports for a living. Spicer's aim is to "dispel the notion that sportswriters are tubby, hot-dog-eating, booze-hounds that write about sport instead of participating in the field of battle."

His opponent in the exhibition match: The tenacious Amanda Hansen, former contestant on ABC's "Big Brother" and current finalist for 93x's "Ultimate Xgirl" competition. To learn more about Amanda and her Xgirl quest, please visit and vote for her here. (SFW)

The Event: An Evening of Women's Oil Wrestling, sponsored in part by "Seconds Out Boxing Promotions" (Facebook Page)

Start Time:Friday, October 30, 2009 at 8:00 p.m.
Location:Robert Bar in Mounds View
Street:2400 County Road H2
Tickets: $15 for General Admission
Special Guest Judge: "Golden" Caleb Truax
Get your pre sale tickets at www.vitalculture.com

Spicer vs. Hansen - Never Question The Power of the Pen

Writer, schmiter. Spicer is a blogger, and I gotta say, I'm ashamed my brainstorming never included oil wrestling with a fetching lass.

Or, at least not that I'm going to admit.

The Polanco Crush

One of the more interesting things about writing the TwinsCentric Offseason GM Handbook was the internal debates that raged. The obvious ones are about Twins players. For instance, Nick Nelson and I have never seen eye-to-eye on whether Carlos Gomez or Delmon Young should be the Twins starting outfielder. I believe Young should play simply because the Twins have a substantial investment in both players and Gomez can play in Rochester. Nick believes Gomez should play because Nick is terribly, almost tragically, wrong.

A smaller debate flared up about the value of Placido Polanco during our meetings, mostly because I have a man-crush on Polanco, and have ever since he was with the Phillies. To me, he's a top-notch defender and a terrific #2 hitter. Polanco's career batting average is .303 and his ability to avoid strikeouts borders on legendary. In my offseason blueprint, I wrote:

"The market for second basemen is so thick you can take your pick. I’m budgeting up to $7 million for Placido Polanco, Freddy Sanchez, Mark DeRosa, Orlando Hudson or Felipe Lopez. Heck, I’ll even jump on Akinori Iwamura if his option isn’t picked up. I’m not that concerned about which one, and I’m not hesitant to offer a multi-year deal."

I wrote that I didn't care which one we got, but if you look at my final grid, the name that's in the slot for second base is "Polanco." And the Twins stealing him from their main division rival would only add to the impact. Mmm - sticking it to the Tigers. I recognize that warm feeling inside is a little ugly. It's still pleasant.

My feelings waned a little bit the final week of the season. Watching the Tigers, the 34-year-old Polanco looked old and tired. His defense, which has always been praised, looked limited. (Though I should mention, his UZR metric is +12.1, which is very, very good.) And while he looks like Chase Utley compared to what the Twins trotted out there last year, his OPS has fallen from 846 to 767 to 727 over the last three years. Of the available free agent second basemen (and there are a lot of good ones) he had one of the worst years.

There's also some question about whether Polanco will be available. The Tigers have a 24-year-old prospect named Scott Sizemore who hit over .300 this year in AA and AAA. He just broke his ankle in the Arizona Fall League, but that shouldn't affect his status for next year. So a possible replacement is in place.

Which means the Tigers have a decision to make. Although Polanco is a free agent, they essentially have a $6-7 million option on him for next year. That's because Polanco will be a Type A free agent, which means that if the Tigers offer him arbitration and he doesn't accept it, he'll cost a signing team a first or second round draft pick. Lots of younger second basemen last year with better years found out how tough it is to sign with a team with that artificial price tag hanging around their neck. If Polanco is offered arbitration, he would likely need to accept it.

The Tigers surely know this, and need to decide if their bloated payroll can handle another $6-7 million for Polanco. Detroit spent over $120 million last year while playing in the most economically depressed city in major league baseball. And they're going to have some raises to give, like to pitchers Justin Verlander and Edwin Jackson. To be honest, I don't know how they could afford their team last year, and I don't know how they can afford it next year, so I'm not about to rule anything out.

We'll know on December 1st if the Tigers are offering Polanco arbitration. I have until then to try and talk some reason into myself. 34-year-old second basemen whose OPS has dropped 120 points over the last two years are not a good investement. They're certainly not a good investment if you need to offer a multi-year contract. I know this, just like I know that it isn't 2007 anymore.

But I still need to get over this Polanco crush.

The Twins Internal Meetings

So you think the 137-page TwinsCentric Offseason GM Handbook has a lot of info? Try again. According to Minnesota Twins General Manager Bill Smith, it’s a fraction of the info the Twins generate in their annual internal October meetings to prepare for the offseason.

“We review all of the players in our organization from the Major Leagues down to the Dominican Summer League,” said Smith in an interview last week with TwinsCentric for the Handbook. “Each one of the players gets discussed, some more than others. Some are great prospects that don’t need a lot of discussion because it’s pretty clear what path they’re on; where they played this year and where they’re going next year. And others are organizational players that also for different reasons may or may not need a lot of discussion, but we talk about every player in the organization.”

Smith agreed to an interview with TwinsCentric for an appendix to the Offseason GM Handbook, which is currently available at TwinsCentric.com. In a 30-minute, 14-page transcribed interview, he revealed several details about offseason planning and the Twins future, including:

• It looks like there won't be a Santana-esque rumor mill this offseason surrounding Joe Mauer. Smith is "very comfortable" going into spring training without Mauer signed to a long-term extension, provided he feels Mauer would like to stay long-term. Nick Nelson talks more about this at www.NicksTwinsBlog.com.
• The international signings of Miguel Sano, Max Kepler and Jorge Polanco are the result of a 10-year initiative to be more competitive in the international player markets, and that Twins fans should expect the Twins to continue to be aggressive in the international market. Seth Stohs dives into that at SethSpeaks.net.
  

(Just an administrative point for those of you who have already purchased the pdf of the Handbook: we are sending out the new version with the appendix attached on Monday morning. And for those of you who have received the free one-third book, we’re sending you a new version too, with a subset of the interview included. That’s also the version available at TwinsCentric.com right now as a FREE download.)

The work doesn't stop once Smith and his team review their own players. "We talk about our free agents – our minor league free agents, our major league free agents," Smith continued. "We go over all of the major league free agents and attach some kind of a role grade to them. And we discuss every major league organization, where we see them, who might be good trade partners, what they need and what we think they need, what they may have available. So it’s a very, very good meeting."

The meeting occurred last week in Fort Myers. But the Twins don't put their information in a handbook. Instead ends up on enormous multi-colored boards in Smith's office. The long wall of his office is a series of big boards, with the names of each MLB team going across the top. Underneath each are names of those teams top major league and minor league players on little plaques that can be moved around.

"We use these boards every day of the year," Smith explained. "They’re color-coded with birth dates and by position and it really gives you an opportunity to look at a team and see strengths and weaknesses. We update transactions on these boards multiple times every day when somebody sees a trade or an outright assignment or an option or something. We try and keep them up to date."

But not all the players on the boards are under teams. Smith pointed to yet another wall. "We’ve got our free agent board behind you on the wall. Those are all what we call 20-D free agents, who are players that were on major-league rosters this year who have elected free agency." Within a couple of weeks, when players file for free agency, that board will change significantly. "That small board will transform into a huge board once all the major-league guys start coming up," Smith confirmed.

But the purpose of the internal meeting isn't to just gather and organize all that information. Its purpose is to gather opinions and gain alignment. Smith explains, "It’s a communication tool that gets everybody pretty much on the same page. We gather all the opinions. And a lot of the opinions are different. That’s why we do it. And then we move forward."

And "forward" means...

“Frankly, I hate to be this way, but I’m not going to tell you. I’m not going to tell you what our plan is," Smith answers politely.

But fortunately, after that statement, there are 4400 more words in the interview for us to dissect.

And infinitely more than that if you read between the lines.

Phoning It In: Denard's Defense

Sorry gang, but I'm cooked. The night was spent standing on frigid Fort Snelling fields watching The Boy™'s soccer playoffs. Then a late dinner, an Always Sunny In Philadelphia episode featuring the Phillies "Phranatic" kicking the crap out of Charlie, and I'm pretty much cooked at 9:30.

So I was relieved to see that Parker Hageman from Over The Baggy stopped by yesterday's comments section and brought some insight to why Denard Span's defense might be rated poorly by UZR. In short, the baggy in right field doesn't allow him (or Micheal Cuddyer) to catch balls in the Metrodome that would be likely be caught in other parks. He points out that an alternate system ranks Span's defense much higher.

There's lots more to explore here, but tonight, that's going to be good enough. We'll come back to UZR later this offseason. If you're looking for more debate about it's merits and demerits, yesterday's commentators brought up plenty of good points.

Thanks for stopping by. See you Monday.

There's a Stat for That: UZR

There is a question that TwinsCentric didn’t answer, or even raise. We’ll raise it today. Maybe we’ll answer it tomorrow.

One thing we tried to do within the TwinsCentric Offseason GM Handbook is pay increased attention to defense. For instance, I mentioned it in the first half of this review of Orlando Cabrera:

Last year at this time, Orlando Cabrera had plenty of reason to be hopeful about his impending free agency. He was a .300 hitter, a veteran shortstop, and had been a key component to a number of playoff teams over the latter half of the decade. He’d been so good that he easily found himself listed as a ‘Type A’ player by Elias in their year-end rankings.

That last fact turned ugly in a hurry. The White Sox offered Cabrera arbitration when neither side wanted him to return there. Since Cabrera turned down the arbitration and was an ‘A’ player, any team signing him would need to forfeit a first-round draft pick to the White Sox. And with that additional (and artificial) cost, the market for Cabrera dried up like a Sham-wow.

He finally signed with the Athletics in March, but he could only procure a one-year deal for $4 million, essentially signing a “make-good” contract after he had already made good. But give him and his agent credit for having learned their lesson. They reportedly made sure the new contract specified that whichever team has him can’t offer him arbitration if he’s a Type A free agent again.

It looks like he’ll be just that. Alas, the Twins won’t be offering him arbitration, so he might get a better deal despite having a worse year. His batting average and OPS fell to .284 and 705 respectively, but his defense was a bigger concern. The 34-year-old isn’t getting to groundballs the way he used to, and defensive metrics like a UZR of -14.9 confirm that.

(And yes, you can download that, along with 1/3 of the Handbook, absolutely free at TwinsCentric.com. Thanks for asking!)

You’ll notice in that last paragraph that we use UZR or Ultimate Zone Rating. It’s cited a few times in the Handbook, and we referenced it behind the scenes multiple times. It’s become a standard defensive metric, but I worry a little that it’s popularity stems mostly from being readily available at FanGraphs.com.

So I was excited to stumble across this interview with the developer of UZR, Mitchel Lichtman at BaseballDailyDigest.com, conducted by Joel Hamrahi. (Who, apropos of nothing, calls the Handbook “every baseball fan’s dream.” But I digress.) So let’s see how this thing works.

UZR starts with a map of the field that divides it into 22 slices and then divides those up into distances of 30-35 feet. (Just so you can picture it, I threw together the dreadful little drawing on the left.) For each of those spots they know from lots of major league data what percentage of the time a ball is turned into outs.

But it doesn’t stop there. Each of those probabilities are broken down into more granular probabilities based on further conditions. Those other conditions are important, so he specifies them. They are:

- Type, which I think he means as type of hit, but the values are hard, medium, and soft
- handedness of the batter, because it influences positioning and he claims it influences the speed, which I don’t quite understand
- game situation, meaning the baserunners and outs, because is also influences positioning
- ground ball/fly ball ratio of the pitcher, which again he says influences the speed

So, basically you have a huge table that has location and the rest of these conditions as columns, and for every possible combination of those, it has the percentage of time a ball is turned into an out by each fielder.

Based on those percentages, a fielder gets or loses varying amounts of credit for their performance. For instance, if Jermaine Dye catches a ball that 90% of right fielders catch, he gets credit for 10% of an out. If he misses a ball that 60% of right fielders catch, he loses 60% of an out.

Then UZR turns those plays into runs using a very high level metric. It counts an out as .28 runs, an infield hit as .5 runs and an outfield hit as .6 runs. Since every ball is one or the other, I’m assuming that a play by an infielder credits or subrtracts .78 runs, and an outfielders play counts as .88 runs. So I think that if we go back to our outfielder who got credit for 10% of a catch, he gains .088 runs for that catch.

Lichtman goes into more detail, and I think a few of them are important. First, he rightly points out that in his system “fielder positioning is inherent in the results.” He only tracks flyballs to outfielders and groundballs to infielders, so an outfielder who misplays ground balls isn’t penalized. He also adjusts the final numbers based on the outfielders throws. He adjusts for park factors. And finally, an outfielder is never penalized if a gap hit is caught by another outfielder, but is if it is a hit.

That final point is an important one to me, because all this research was driven by a simple question – why is Denard Span listed as such a poor defender by UZR? That’s a topic we didn’t tackle, or even raise, in the Handbook. I hope to jump into some possible explanations tomorrow.

Geeking Out: The #2 Batter

As the Voice of Reason™ and I are kicking back and watching her Phils tonight, I notice #2 Shane Victorino's stats: .292/.358/.445. And I thought - now there is a guy Parker would like.

Because in the TwinsCentric Offseason GM Handbook, Parker wrote a great essay on the importance of the Twins finding a solid #2 hitter, called Never Break the Chain. It starts like this:

In 1986, Bill James constructed a poignant analysis on lineup composition and revealed that the total runs scored and second spot in the batting order had the strongest correlation among any player in the lineup — more than leadoff, third or cleanup. Mr. James noted in his 1986 Baseball Abstract that “many managers tend to waste the second spot in the order by putting somebody there who isn’t one of the better hitters on the team...Too many managers will say ‘bat control’ as if these words were a magic wand, and place some .260 hitter with a secondary average of .150 batting second…”

Someday I want to compose a poignant analysis. Anyway, Parker's essay then covers the Twins woes at the second spot in the order and options they might have this offseason. To get a better sense of the essay, you can download the free 1/3 book at TwinsCentric.com

I wondered what trait of the second batter was most important? On-base percentage makes sense, but so does batting average. Or maybe it's a patience-power mix, like OPS? So I ran a quick correlation between runs scored by teams and the stats their #2 hitter put up. The higher the number, the higher the correlation. Here are the results:

OBP - 0.526
OPS - 0.523
BA - 0.469
SLG - 0.446

It looks like on-base percentage or OPS are a little more important than batting average. That's not exactly ground-breaking, but it's good to know. Because I had also copied all the other stats for #2 hitters, I ran correlations on them too. Here they are:

R - 0.680
H - 0.532
RBI - 0.525
TB - 0.508
AB - 0.451
HR - 0.255
2B - 0.247
GP - 0.158
3B - -0.037

Heh. Shocking. Runs is the most important. So a team that scores a lot tends to have a #2 hitter that racks up a lot of runs. Whoulda thunk?

Still, it's nice to clarify a little what we're looking for from the #2 hitter. As we might suspect, we want them to set the table.

If anyone has any other correlations that they would like to see, make sure to enter them into the comments section. Thanks.

J. J. Hardy

Supply and demand is a bear. Or at least I suspect it it in this case.

You're going to hear his name a lot. In fact, you probably already have. Every offseason there is one name that rises above the others as a trade target. It's a little silly to speculate who that's going to be this offseason, because the Twins are gathering and planning their offseason priorities. this week. But the early leader is Hardy.

On the left is his writeup in the TwinsCentric Offseason GM Handbook. I didn't write it (I think Nick Nelson did) but I like it because it gives a thumbnail sketch of the important points. Namely:

1) Hardy is young and supposedly very good both offensively and defensively
2) He's available because the Brewers have a decent replacement and because he had a bad year in 2009
3) The Brewers would probably require pitching in return.

By the say, if you would like a dozen or so more thumbnail sketches of trade targets, stop by at check out the TwinsCentric Offseason GM Handbook. You can download 1/3 of it for free! Even Bill Bavasi would recognize that as a great deal.

It's a good overview, but we have a little more room here, so let's break it down a bit.

He is (or at least was) very good both offensively and defensively. Defensively he has graded above average every year he was in the majors, and his minor league reviews mention that it's his defense that will compensate for his bat if he's to have a major league career. Even last year, when he struggled with back problems, his defense suffered a little, but was still above average.

Offensively he was worth drooling over in 2007 and 2008, averaging a .280 batting average with 25 home runs and an OPS around 800. Just to put that OPS in context, Marco Scutaro, who will probably be the highest paid shortstop in this year's free agent market, posted an OPS of 788.

If that was the full story, then it's obvious he's exactly what the Twins need. Of course, if that was the full story, he wouldn't be available. And if he was, he certainly wouldn't be affordable.

Last year was a nightmare for Hardy, medically, athletically and ultimately financially. He had a fantastic spring training, but struggled for most of April before revealing he was having back problems. It turns out those back problems are something that he had been dealing with for years. In fact, it's often overlooked that he had some real injury issues early in his career, missing most of 2004 and 2006 with ankle and shoulder problems.

He surged early in May, and his back problems reappeared in late May. He struggled the rest of the year, posting a 229 batting average and a 659 OPS, about 50 points lower than Orlando Cabrera. The season ended especially disastrously (and possibly litigiously) when he was sent down to AAA in August. That 3-week stint in Nashville is going to put off his free agency a full year, so he'll be a free agent after 2011.

The Brewers are looking for pitching in return, but there was a lot of debate about how much pitching. Others think and offer of Glen Perkins and a high prospect might get the deal done. After all, he struggled last year, he's due at least $4 million this year, and he'll be a free agent after 2011.

I expect it would take more, and it would take more of exactly what the Twins don't have - veteran pitching. The Brewers don't want "kind of" pitchers. They are built to win now, and they want veteran pitchers. The ideal fit for the Brewers would be Nick Blackburn, and given the starting pitching depth (or lack thereof) the Twins have, I can't imagine that happening. Nor would I advocate it.

The problem is that even with all his issues, Hardy is still young, solid defensively, affordable and capable of being a stud offensively. There are a LOT of teams interested in someone like that at shortstop. The Red Sox have been rumored to be interested. He would be a great fit on the Cardinals. The Jays would have a lot of interest if they don't re-sign Scutaro. The Tigers might if they lose Placido Polanco. Ditto Astros and Miguel Tejada. You can count on the Padres, Reds, Cubs and Orioles possible also being interested.

The name is great, and worth talking about. He's appropriately placed near the top of the list of trade targets. But that's also what makes it so hard to get him. Supply and demand is a bear.