Predictions!

Nothing is more fun and more pointless, don’t you think?

AL Cy Young

Zack Greinke – He’s crazy. He is a crazy person. No one else pitches as awesomely as he does. He’s got you in newer and more effective metrics of performance like FIP and ERA+. He’s got you in old school numbers like ERA and strikeouts. I’ll write up a post about how wins don’t matter at all when evaluating a pitcher. It’s been an ongoing argument between my dad and I, but in this instance, let’s say wins don’t matter. Because they don’t; particularly with Zack Greinke. He made Joe Mauer look retarded the first time he faced him this year (Mauer adjusted later, of course). He threw this insane slider cutter thing that, had it continued on its initial course, would have hit Mauer in the balls. But then it darted right into the inner half of the plate. Not particularly hittable, in my estimation. Guys gotta protect his balls.

Al Rookie of the Year

Andrew Bailey – Contrary to how this will get voted, this choice is obvious. Bailey is awesome, and I don’t know where he came from. A 226 ERA+?? 9.8 K/9, 5.3 H/9. That’s phenomenal. If there were a more worthy candidate, perhaps on a better team, maybe I would consider that player. But Rick Porcello was slightly better than league average, Gordon Beckham was better than decent but got called up midway through the year, Elvis Andrus can’t hit yet, despite how you want to construe his 85 OPS+, and Jeff Niemman is only slightly better than Porcello. At least he pitched in the Al East.

Al MVP

Joe Mauer – He leads the league in everything that matters. His team managed to make the playoffs, too, so you can’t even pull the ‘no meaningful games’ card.

Player Mauer

.365 / .444 / .587 / 177

Player B

.292 / .383 / .565 / 146

Player C

.334 / .406 / .465 / 129

Player D

.300 / .369 / .539 / 143

Those are the standard slash lines plus OPS+ in the last column. Obviously Mauer is a million times better than the other candidates, which you may recognize as first Mark Texiera then Derek Jeter. But who is this player D character? That’s Jason Kubel. Yeah he doesn’t play much defense and isn’t the best against lefties, but clearly you get the idea that he’s closer in proximity to Jeter and Texiera than those Yankees are in proximity to Mauer. That’s all.

That’s the AL. Why not the NL tomorrow then?

Why New Yorkers are Assholes

This has been said before. Although I should clarify that it’s New York baseball fans who can be the true assholes.

The game last night between the Twins and Yankees was awful. Just awful. But the Twins had leads for much of the game. During this time, the Yankee fans were silent. A few boos were heard. And of course they went crazy when the Yankee mystique went to Joe Nathan’s head.

But I’ll get to them later. Right now I’m watching the Cardinals Dodgers game. Matt Holliday just came up in the bottom of the first and was greeted with the most loving cheers I’ve heard for someone who has played with the club for less than 4 months. And this is the same Matt Holliday who dropped an easy, and game winning, catch only a few nights before to put the Cards down 0-2 in their NLDS.

The Cardinals are a fairly illustrious franchise, yet their fans were actually.. forgiving.. of their star left fielder as opposed to venomous and hateful. Which are emotions we’ve seen an abundance of from Yankee fans over the years. They hate indiscriminately; when things don’t go exactly as they wish, they boo. And they get pissed. Yankee stadium turns into a snakepit.

My favorite example was in the 2004 ALCS against the Red Sox. The bloody sock game. You remember. In the eighth inning facing Bronson Arroyo, Alex Rodriguez hits a ground ball fielded by Arroyo. As he is about to be tagged out, Rodriguez (With an odd air of femininity) slaps the ball from Arroyo’s glove, an obvious infraction that should have resulted in an out. He was initially called safe, which caused the Yankee fans to really get into it. They were down two with two men on now. The fans all saw what happened on the jumbotron; they didn’t care, they demanded for the ruling to be upheld. When it was rightly overturned they flew into a gigantic uproar. Security had to be called onto the field because whether A-Rod cheated or not, they were Yankee fans and they demanded victory.

And I’m sure not six Yankee fans give one shit about what happened last night.

Even the fans sitting ten feet away from the foul line that avoided Phil Cuzzi’s eye don’t care. They’re Yankee fans and teams from one horse states in the midwest don’t deserve to play by the same rules.

They’ll joyfully cavort with their Yankee fan friends about what a wonderful game it was.

Hey A-Rods back I was about to boo him cuz he hadn’t hit a homer yet but then badda bing he takes Nathan up the shitter.

Oh yeah that was awesome I was about to boo Texiera too for hitting under .300 for two games but I’ll wait until game 4 to boo him now since he got that homer.

You see that Mauer guy, let’s sign that guy he’s ok and Posada’s getting old.

Yeah we better if we don’t I’ll boo whoever we start at catcher till they fold under the pressure and turn into.. wait who was that guy who was good before he played for us and then sucked hardcore?

Everyone?

Oh yeah. Haha let’s go beat up some midgets.

I might be a tad bitter.

Hi Woody Paige

I’m listening to Woody Paige rip on Matt Holliday right now. Because he missed that catch that would have ended the game against the Dodgers that would have resulted in a 1-1 series tie. A terrible, crucial, error. Paige is talking about how Holliday was a terrible third baseman in the minors and that he’s been ‘hidden’ in left field ever since. He’s one of the worst left fielders Paige has ever seen. When informed that Holliday was one of the best left fielders in baseball from a statistical standpoint (He ranks second behind Laynce Nix in RZR among NL left fielders with over 500 innings played), Paige dismissed the comment because of what he’d seen. Apparently what he’d seen was Holliday in the minors at 3rd base, and then one missed catch in the 9th inning yesterday.

…

Matt Holliday fucked up. This time. At a terrible time, under the biggest magnifying glass. But seriously, what does him missing a basket catch in left field have anything to do with the following:

His overall defense in left field

His minor league defense at third base.

This is just a classic example of loudmouthed ESPN analysts saying obnoxious things without any evidence because the event in question happened on a gigantic stage. Let’s say Jacoby Ellsbury steals 2nd in the 9th inning against the Angels tonight but overslides the bag and is tagged out.

Woody Paige: HEY! I’m just SAYING that Jacoby Ellsbury oversliding the bag in the 9th inning makes him a GOAT. He CAN’T STEAL BASES I don’t CARE what you stat nerds say!

It’s a common tactic for unskilled baseball analysts.

Player makes mistake in particular area A.

Previous performance  B in that area ignored.

Hunches and cherry-picked observances C, from the player’s past are cited.

Extra credit for demonizing statheads of any sort.

Now use an obnoxious tone of voice and working for ESPN is as easy as ABC.

Intro and Playoff Preview

Hello, world. My name is Hans and this is my first foray into the world of sabermetric baseblogging. I’ve been a blogger for several years now but my writing hasn’t been focused on baseball analysis to this point. I kind of felt as if my friends would hate me for that and thus, would never read any of my posts unless to make fun of me. I have wonderful friends.

But in spite of this, I have been a student of blogging based baseball analysis since the Twins’ historic 2006 season. I sometimes wonder, had that season been any less epic, would I have 16 different baseball oriented sites in my quicklinks?

Probably. I’m obsessed with statistics, the game itself, the countless variables in analyzing the game, and  blogging in general. Firejoemorgan was my shit until it went defunct (Crime of the new century). Now I read Baseballmusings, John Sickels’ Minor League Ball, Joe Posnanski, Umpbump, Aaron Gleeman and countless other local Twins blogs quite religiously. Wonderful forms of procrastination are blogs these days.

I should also run down my many biases. I will forever be madly in love with the Minnesota Twins. I’m not naïve; I don’t consider Ron Gardenhire a particularly good manager (Not letting Mijares face Granderson last Tuesday? C’mon!), I’m aware that Nick Punto doesn’t deserve a starting Major League job, Matt Tolbert is NOT a prospect ,and no I don’t have any hope for Delmon Young despite his September/October surge (Including 3 whole walks!). The Twins simply represent everything that is appealing to me in a baseball team. And I won’t go on a diatribe about “playing the game the right way” or anything. They’re just perpetual underdogs regardless of the circumstances. The players’ egos seemed subdued, even if they’ve come from a different organization; look at Delmon and O-Cab. Maybe that’s a result of media suppression, but in any case I always feel I can be proud of the Twins, which is quite a bit more than I can say about The Evil Purple Empire, and those mismanaged kinder-woofies. Hockey isn’t a sport in my mind, if you were wondering.

Other favorites include the Red Sox, Braves, Marlins and Athletics. I very much respect the job those teams do from a business standpoint.

** BUT BILLY BEANE IS OVERRATED! Not really; pretty much every move he made this offseason made a ton of sense, but in baseball, so much is left up to chance. You couldn’t have predicted that Matt Holliday would have an OPS+ of 125, that Giambi couldn’t bat .200, that Justin Duchscherer was composed of styrofoam, or that Jack Cust would regress for the second season in a row. Beane did fine.**

I may have been a tad influenced by this article, but I do respect Theo Epstein as a true genius of the game. He’ll have the Sox winning for decades simply due to the depth he builds with his low risk-high reward contracts as well as his feel for modern statistical analysis. He would never have signed A.J. Burnett because that would have been retarded. You know that Burnett hasn’t ever performed to the money he was demanding last offseason.. in his entire career. Not that he has many full seasons to compare to because he’s ALWAYS INJURED. Epstein has quite the knack for letting the Yankees buy the most overpriced free agents and then subtely building really balanced teams of his own. J.D. Drew is secretly awesome! But no one knows because they’re too busy complaining about him getting hurt and striking out sometimes. Well enough with that Epstein love song.

Seriously, enough with all that. The Twins have just won one of the most thrilling games in their history. When Bobby Keppel (THE Bobby Keppel) fell behind 3-1 to Gerald Laird (Yes, THE Gerald Laird), I probably had the capacity to crap myself. But now in about an hour they play the Yankees. Those 103 win best at everything Yankees. Here’s their order:

1. Derek Jeter, SS – Not by any means an MVP, but damn he’s still a .406 OBP with power while rediscovering how to play defense at a premium position. At 35??
2. Johnny Damon, LF – Picked a nice year to have his best power numbers.
3. Mark Teixeira, 1B – Picked a nice year to be just as awesome as he was. But now he’s on a really good team.
4. Alex Rodriguez, 3B – Chose the last day of the year to hit 2 home runs and drive in 7. To put him exactly at 30 and 100 in those categories, respectively. No I don’t think he did that in purpose.
5. Hideki Matsui, DH – Immobile, but productive.
6. Jorge Posada, C – Old as hell but still can OPS in the mid .800’s while catching.
7. Robinson Cano, 2B – Helped my fantasy team to bludgeon the opposition with a .320 average and 25 home runs. But batting where he is, how come he only had 85 RBI when he slugged .520?
8. Nick Swisher, RF – Great bounce back season. 29 home runs from your 8th place hitter? Jesus, good luck Duensing.
9. Melky Cabrera, CF – The only player in their lineup who isn’t at least somewhat awesome.

So there. Deal with that. Here’s who the Twins will throw at them:

Brian Duensing – I have a feeling I was cooler in high school than Brian Duensing was. And that is not saying much. He’s pitched decently this year though, at least since joining the rotation, where he has a sub 3.00 ERA. His peripherals aren’t great and he’ll probably be destroyed by the Yankees lineup by the second time through the order.

Nick Blackburn – He seems to pitch extremely well in big games. Well that’s what everyone’s been saying. I watched him his last two starts. The first one, against Detroit and Rick Porcello round one, he was pretty bad; he had very little in the way of stuff. But when runners got on base, he went crazy and shut those bitches down. The second game against Kansas City (Who in all honesty had a better offense than the Tigers in September, at least) he had tons of movement on his fastball and was great at keeping it down in the zone. Both results ended up in wins and pretty nice boxscore lines for Blackburn. In fact, the Twins have won all 4 starts by Blackburn since the 16th of September. That’s valuable, and even against an offense like the Yankees I have some implicit trust in Blackburn. Or at least more trust than I have in Carl Pavano. He’ll make the pitches he’ll need to, he’ll have the right mindset and the right approach. The Yankees still might get 5 runs but that’s only because they’re ridiculous, not because Blackburn didn’t pitch a good game.

Carl Pavano – His FIP is 3.56, which is rather remarkable. Maybe he could do decently. It certainly would be a good story considering his history in New York. He has a pretty good K/BB ratio and he’s had success in his career prior to being a Yankee. We’ll see, I guess.

Scott Baker – I love Scott Baker. I remember in ’07 when the Twins had about as pathetic an offense as was possible with Torii Hunter, Mauer and Morneau on board. They were somehow still in contention into August, and pulled off some impressive wins against the division leading Indians. On August 5th, Baker tossed 8 innings of 4 hit ball and no runs allowed. Which was good, because the Twins scored one whole run off an Alexei Casilla ground rule double. In the 8th inning, with one out and clinging to that 1 run lead, Trot Nixon got a bloop hit. Than Jhonny Peralta got a bunt airborne. Baker dives for it, catches it and then flips to first for a double play. I will always trust him in a big game because of that, even though he likes to give up home runs. At least his start against the Yankees will come in the Metrodome.. which, if nothing else, doesn’t have a 200 ft left field fence.

That was long. Bear with me.