Next Up: The Minnesota Twins

Continuing their tough second half schedule, the Pirates travel to Minnesota to play two games against the Twins, their eighth and ninth straight games against teams currently qualifying for the postseason, before traveling to Cincinnati for four games against the (Cueto-less) Reds. After that respite, it's twelve straight against teams with winning records: Cubs, Dodgers, Cardinals, and Mets.

How Are They Doing Lately? The Twins are 12-12 over the past 30 days, the sixth best record in the American League. During those 30 days, they've scored 4.3 runs per game, the seventh most in the league, while giving up 4.2 per game, the seventh most. That's the run differential of a .500 club. So far this season, they're in second place in the American League Central, eight games behind the Royals. They're tied with the Astros for the two American League wild cards, three ahead of Toronto and Baltimore. I still consider the Twins to be the most surprising team in the majors this year, given that they seemed, going into the season, a lock for the American League Central cellar. They're only 3-6 since the All-Star break, though six of those games have been against the two hottest teams in the league, the Angels and Yankees.

What's Going Right? The Twins are seventh in the league in batting average (.258) over the past 30 days, sixth in on base percentage (.316), and sixth in slugging percentage (.417). They strike out a lot (21% of plate appearances, fourth most in the league) and don't hit a lot of home runs (ninth in the league in home run rate). They make up for it by walking a fair amount (7% of plate appearances, seventh most) and hitting lots of doubles and triples (two per game, third most in the league). They've stolen a lot of bases over the past 30 days (16, second to the Royals) but negated it by getting caught stealing too often (nine times, most in the league), resulting in a subpar 64% success rate. 

What's Going Wrong? The bullpen ERA of 4.25 is the fourth worst in the league over the past 30 days, and, typical of the Twins, they've struck out the fewest batters in the league. They've blown four saves, tied for the third most in the league. The starters have been better--3.86 ERA, seventh best in the league over the past 30 days--with a middle-of-the-pack strikeout rate (ninth highest in the league). Twins pitchers pitch to contact--opposing batters have whiffed on only 19% of their swings over the past 30 days, the fourth lowest rate in the league--but the team defense rates somewhere between average and below average by standard and advanced fielding metrics, meaning that all that contact's resulting in base hits that a better-fielding team might prevent.

Who's Hot? The Twins signed pitcher Ervin Santana to a four-year, $54 million (with a $15 option/$1 million buyout for a fifth year) free agent contract over the winter and he promptly got himself suspended 80 games by testing positive for PEDs. He's back now, and has been pretty good: 2.60 ERA over four starts, though with lousy peripherals (not a lot of strikeouts, too many walks and homers, and an unsustainably low .205 batting average on balls in play). He'll face the Pirates tomorrow. Over the past 30 days, All-Star second baseman Brian Dozier is batting just .221 but he leads the team with six homers and 18 RBI. Rookie Miguel Sano, called up at the beginning of the month, has a team-leading .922 OPS in 18 games at DH. Center fielder Aaron Hicks, a strong defender who's blown hot and cold offensively throughout his career, has been hot over the past 30 days, with a .306/.392/.516 slash line. Third baseman Trevor Plouffe's hit four homers, leads the club with 17 runs scored, and is second in RBI to Dozier. First baseman Joe Mauer's hit .326 over the period.

Who's Not? Closer Glenn Perkins has pitched in nine games over the past 30 days. In seven of them, he's pitched seven innings, allowing no hits and one walk while striking out eight, racking up five saves. But in the other two--two of his last three appearances--he's pitched 1.2 innings, allowing seven hits (including two homers) and five runs, blowing two saves. This presents a problem for the Twins, whose only other relievers who've pitched over seven innings in the past 30 days with an ERA below 4.50 are Brian Duensing (0.00), who doesn't strike out enough batters, Ryan O'Rourke (1.23), who walks too many, and J.R. Graham (3.86), who's been used more as a long relief/mop-up guy than a set-up man. Tonight's Twins starter, Mike Pelfrey, has been terrible over the last 30 days (7.78 ERA in four starts, barely more strikeouts than walks). 

On offense, over the past 30 days, the Twins have gotten almost no production from catcher Kurt Suzuki (.222/.290/.238 slash line), shortstop Danny Santana (.234/.279/.344), and right fielder Torii Hunter (.209/.242/.442). (The league average is .252/.310/.408.)

What's the Outlook? I haven't made any secret of my disdain for Twins management, and it strikes me that the Pirates are catching a team that played over its head for the first half of the season just as the clock's striking midnight, to mix metaphors.

Sweet Play of the Day - April 30

The Dodgers drew first blood in the long-awaited replay of the 1965 World Series in Minnesota yesterday (44 degrees, 12 mph wind at gametime) but not before the Twins got a nifty putout at first on a heads-up play by second baseman Brian Dozier.

Waiting for Replay, Who Knows How Long

Major League Baseball has finalized its rules for replay in the coming season. As someone who still bears the psychological scars of Phil Cuzzi's call in the 2009 ALDS, I kind of don't understand the opposition to replay. But I heard plenty this morning from Jim Memolo on Sirius XM's MLB First Pitch. He had a bunch of objections (including the lack of a challenge flag--please, this is baseball, not the NFL), but the most credible to me is that challenges will slow down the game, break the pitchers' rhythm, make fans lose interest, etc.

That's his opinion. Mine is that the way it's being done (calls reviewed by an umpire at MLB Advanced Media in New York) will minimize delays. But they're both opinions. So I propose this: By August, it's reasonable to think the kinks will be worked out of the system. In August 2013, the average nine-inning game took 180.4 minutes to complete. (Thanks, Retrosheet!) My call is that that average will not move meaningfully in August 2014. We'll see. Look for an update around Labor Day.

What Happens When a Pitch is Thrown: Part 3 - Swing, Batter

So far in this series we've seen that while it's good for pitchers to throw strikes, it's better to get strikes. The difference between pitching a ball into the batter's strike zone and getting the batter to swing at the pitch (or get it called a strike) is largely a function of inducing swings on pitches that aren't in the strike zone. We'll look at that now. 

How often do batters swing at pitches? Batters swung at 46.4% of pitches last year. That compares to 44.7% of pitches that were in the strike zone. Batters swung at 65.5% of pitches in the strike zone and 31.0% of pitches outside the strike zone. Don't those figures strike you as low and high, respectively? But when you think about about, it makes sense. Super-selective hitters let a lot of strikes go by as they wait for something they can hit. Mike Trout and Joe Mauer each swung at fewer than 56% of the strikes they saw, while even the most swing-happy guys have some strikes called on them. As for the outside-the-zone pitches, some pitches just an inch or two out of the strike zone may be to a hitter's liking, while some breaking balls with late movement fool batters as they dart out of the strike zone.

Is there a difference between the leagues? Yes, a slight one. NL pitchers get more swings. Batters facing AL pitchers swung at 46.0% of pitches: 65.0% in the strike zone and 30.7% outside the zone. Batters facing NL pitchers swung at 46.8%: 66.0% in the zone and 31.3% out of it. I thought, "Must be pitchers batting," but pitchers watch a lot of strikes go by. Last year they swung at 46.1% of pitches: 57.4% in the zone and 33.8% out of it. So NL pitchers get more swings outside the strike zone in part because of pitchers flailing away when they bat. But the reason NL pitchers get more swings in the strike zone is due to something else.

Is there a difference between starters and relievers? Relievers get more swings. Starting pitchers got batters to swing at 46.4% of pitches: 65.4% in the strike zone and 30.9% outside the zone. Relievers got swings at 47.7% of pitches: 67.2% in the strike zone and 31.9% outside the zone. Relievers, as I've mentioned earlier, come in and throw gas for an inning or so, so they get more strikeouts, almost one more per nine innings than starters. 

Is there a difference between right-handed and left-handed pitchers? Lefties got batters to swing at 46.3% of their pitches: 65.0% in the strike zone and 31.0% out of the zone. For righties, pitchers got swings 46.5% of the time: 65.7% in the strike zone and 31.0% out. The conclusion here is that left-handed pitchers induced fewer swings on pitches in the strike zone than righties, which means they must've gotten more called strikes. I have no idea why that should be. The difference isn't large, so I'm not going to worry about it.

Does it matter? Let's look at swings in the strike zone and out of the zone. First, in the strike zone. As with the previous entries, I've divided pitchers into then groups: the 10% who got the most swings in the strike zone (Group 1), the next 10% (Group 2), the next 10% (Group 3), etc. I looked at how the groups compared in ERA, WHIP (walks and hits per inning), and percentage of batters struck out, walked, or allowed a home run:
   Group ERA  WHIP   %K    %BB   %HR
     1  4.03  1.33  19.8   8.3   2.7
     2  3.45  1.22  20.7   7.4   2.4
     3  4.14  1.31  19.8   7.7   2.9
     4  4.18  1.36  18.1   7.7   2.6
     5  3.59  1.25  19.9   7.3   2.3
     6  3.87  1.30  18.6   7.7   2.6
     7  3.66  1.29  19.6   7.9   2.2
     8  4.11  1.32  20.2   7.9   2.6
     9  3.76  1.29  20.2   7.9   2.4
    10  3.92  1.34  21.9   9.5   2.5
Do you see a pattern there? I don't. I think we can safely say that getting batters to swing at pitches in the strike zone isn't correlated to pitching success.

How about pitches outside the strike zone? That's a different story completely:

   Group ERA  WHIP   %K    %BB   %HR
     1  3.20  1.13  22.0   5.8   2.3
     2  3.44  1.22  21.5   7.2   2.4
     3  3.67  1.25  20.6   6.9   2.5
     4  3.83  1.27  20.6   7.4   2.4
     5  3.73  1.27  19.8   7.3   2.4
     6  4.00  1.29  20.3   7.8   2.9
     7  3.85  1.31  19.3   8.4   2.4
     8  4.15  1.36  18.4   8.3   2.8
     9  4.44  1.47  17.2   9.6   2.5
    10  4.49  1.47  18.6  10.7   2.6
This is almost as dramatic as the impact of getting strikes, detailed in the last post: The pitchers who got the top 10% of strikes had an ERA of 3.16 and a WHIP of 1.10. Group 10 had an ERA of 4.64 and a WHIP of 1.55. It's the same pattern for pitchers who get batters to swing at pitches outside the strike zone. The best pitchers get the most strikes, and they get strikes in part because they throw pitches in the strike zone but also, at least as importantly, because the get batters to swing at pitches outside the zone.

I looked at pitchers who do one well but not the other. First, pitchers who were in the top 30% of throwing pitches in the strike zone but the bottom 30% of getting swings outside the zone. The numbers are:
              ERA  WHIP   %K    %BB   %HR
             4.14  1.36  18.8   8.3   2.9
     Average 3.87  1.30  19.9   7.9   2.5

(Average is the major league average last season.)

Now, pitchers who were in the top 30% of getting batters to swing at pitches outside the strike zone but the bottom 30% of throwing pitches in the zone. The numbers for them are:

              ERA  WHIP   %K    %BB   %HR

             3.55  1.25  20.1   7.6   2.2

     Average 3.87  1.30  19.9   7.9   2.5

I wasn't expecting that. Pitchers who are good at throwing pitches in the strike zone but bad at getting batters to swing at pitches outside the zone are below-average pitchers. Pitchers who are bad at throwing pitches in the strike zone but good at getting batters to swing at pitches outside the zone are above-average pitchers. Pitchers in the former group include Rockies starters Jhoulys Chacin and Juan Nicasio, Yankees closer-in-waiting David Robertson, free agent innings eater Bronson Arroyo, and Dodgers washout Brandon League. Pitchers in the latter group include Angels starter Jered Weaver, Yankee starter Hiroki Kuroda, Pirate ace Francisco Liriano, and several top closers, indluding Jason Grilli, Mariano Rivera, Joe Nathan, and Sergio Romo. 

What We Know So Far: The best pitchers get the most strikes, in part because they throw pitches in the strike zone but also, more importantly, because the get batters to swing at pitches outside the zone.

Next, we'll see whether these rules apply to hitters as well.