The All-Metrodome Team Revisited

I meant to do this weeks ago, but of course, just as they said they would, the Twins released the combined fans-and-experts' All-Metrodome Team selections about a month ago.

In four posts this spring, I named my own All-Metrodome Team. So how'd I do?

Here's the "real" All-Metrodome Team, with asterisks next to selections that were also mine:

C Joe Mauer*
1B Kent Hrbek* AND Justin Morneau*^
2B Chuck Knoblauch*
3B Gary Gaetti*
SS Greg Gagne*
OF Tom Brunansky
OF Dan Gladden
OF Torii Hunter*
OF Kirby Puckett*
DH Paul Molitor

SP Bert Blyleven
SP Johan Santana*
SP Frank Viola*
SP Brad Radke*

RP Joe Nathan*
RP Rick Aguilera*

MGR Tom Kelly*

^ I cheated and put Morneau at DH; they cheated and put Morneau as a second 1B.

Not bad, right? 18 names, and the super-awesome panel of Twins experts and I agree on 14 of them (78%).

But: I only picked 15 names. Because the ballot only allowed for 15 names, so I went ahead and stayed within the rules (except Morneau, and only because the DH picks were ridiculous). Our panel did not; they added for PR reasons, I have to assume, Morneau, Blyleven, and Gladden, because all three currently have roles with the team and they didn't want to offend them or the viewers/listeners (given that, though, it's a shock that they didn't pick both Tom Kelly and Ron Gardenhire).

So here's where they were dumb:

1. Leaving Shane Mack off. It's not any kind of surprise--I acknowledged when I made my pick that most people wouldn't agree with me--but just take a look at it, and he's a no-brainer. He played just five seasons with the Twins, but was an integral part of the 1991 World Series team, and played phenomenal defense at all three outfield positions while putting up a 130 OPS+. I knew they'd leave him off, but to name four outfielders, out of twelve on the ballot, and still leave him off? Terrible.

2. Dan Gladden. What? I mean, I know he's a radio broadcaster now (a terrible one, by the way), I know he's a World Series hero and one of the few to play in both Series, and I know...well, that's all I know. Gladden played five seasons with the Twins (hey, the same number as Mack, and with a whopping 300 more plate appearances!) and posted a 90 OPS+. Great outfield defense, but no better than Mack's--his defense simply made him about an average player, while Mack's made him one of the better players in the league. There's no contest. Not only that, but Jacque Jones, Michael Cuddyer and Matt Lawton were all better choices than Gladden as well.

3. Tom Brunansky. He was fine--and my first runner-up, so I guess if I'm gonna pick four he's in--but not even close to Mack.

4. Paul Molitor. I get it--Hall of Famer, St. Paul native, was a coach for a while, and the other choices were David Ortiz, Chili Davis, Roy Smalley and Dave Winfield. But he played only three seasons with the Twins, and only in the first was he actually a competent DH. If you're going to cheat and throw Morneau in anyway, why not do what I did and throw him in at DH?

5. Bert Blyleven. Obviously one of the Twins' two greatest pitchers of all time. His Metrodome-era career, though? Three and a half seasons with approximately a 100 ERA+ and the (at the time) two highest HR-allowed seasons in history. If he's not in your employ, there's no need to expand the team to add him at all.

Honestly, though? It's a lot better than I thought they would do. Hrbek's on the team, Gaetti over Morneau Koskie [EDIT: heh, all you Canadians look the same to me] [EDIT AGAIN: I actually picked Koskie over Gaetti, but noted that it was basically a toss-up, so whatever], and they got all three of the correct pitchers along with Blyleven. I was pleasantly surprised.

Figuring Out the AL Central, or: I Have Hope Again

About a week ago, everybody was writing off the 2009 Twins. I certainly did. Most Twins bloggers did. The folks on the wrong side of the MVP debate were arguing that Joe Mauer couldn't win it because he was playing for a team that wasn't going to make the playoffs, and the argument against them wasn't that the Twins were a contender after all (they weren't), but that the whole idea that the MVP and the playoffs were somehow linked was absurd (it is). And yeah, the 2006 team overcame a bigger deficit in a short amount of time, but as Aaron Gleeman reminded everybody, that team was good; this one is not. The Twins had the easiest schedule of any contender post-All-Star Break, and they came out looking terrible.

Well, there's another difference from 2006, too: Detroit and Chicago were good back then, too, and now they're fundamentally no better than the Twins are. Coming into play yesterday, all three of those teams had Pythagorean records of within a game of each other (right around 63-61). And the actual standings, the Twins having won six of their last seven games while the other two have scuffled a bit, now look like this:
Tigers 66 58 --
Wh.Sox 63 62 3.5
Twins 62 63 4.5

The Tigers are still in control, but it's far from decided. Now take a look at the teams' remaining games against opponents that aren't each other:
Det (24): LAA-2, TB-6, CLE-6, KC-6, TOR-4
Chi (25): BOS-7, NYY-3, OAK-2, LAA-3, SEA-3, KC-3, CLE-3, CHC-1
Min (23): BAL-2, TEX-3, CLE-6, TOR-3, OAK-3, KC-6

The Tigers have 8 games against very good teams, the Twins just 3. The White Sox have 13, and then 4 more against the M's and Cubs, against whom they're about equally matched. The Twins' five opponents other than Texas (who they handled pretty well on the road last week) are the five teams with the most losses in the American League. I think it's fair to expect the Twins to pick up 1 game on the Tigers and 2 on the White Sox based on that schedule, and if they don't, either they're tanking or one of those two teams is playing out of its head. That would leave the Tigers 3.5 up on the Twins and 5.5 up on the White Sox. Then you've got this:

Det vs. Min: 7 games
Det vs. Chi: 6 games
Min vs. Chi: 6 games

It's easy to say it'll all come down to that, but realistically, it'll all come down to Detroit. If the Tigers can win 3 of those games against the Twins and 3 of those games against the White Sox, it's hard to see them falling apart so badly in their other games that they give up the lead. But if the Tigers drop 4 or 5 games against either or both, it should be a pretty good fight.

More interestingly, all six of those games between the Tigers and White Sox come in Detroit's last 10 games, and the other four of the last ten are all against the Twins. As I said, the Tigers are still in control: the various playoff odds sites seem generally to have the Tigers at about 50-55% and the Twins and Sox at 20-25% each, and that seems about right (though I'd put the Twins closer to 25% and Sox closer to 20% based on the remaining schedules). What that means, though, is that there's almost a 50% chance that the Tigers won't win the Central. Which, if nothing else, should once again make for some very exciting baseball in those last ten games in the least exciting division in baseball.

Well, dammit.

It's just like I was saying the other day: the one and only thing this team needs is just one more middle infielder who can't hit and can't field his position. Success!

At least they didn't give up much, I guess. I mean, analytically, in pure value terms, this isn't a bad deal at all. It just doesn't help the Twins in any significant way, and I guess I was hoping (despite knowing better) for a little more.

Note: the entire T-D-S editorial staff is off to the beach for a week with his family starting tomorrow. I'll probably post Something every now and then, but I very much doubt that it'll be Daily. Back to regularly scheduled programing on August 10!

On the Twins and the Deadline

So I've been called out. Or called upon. Or called something.

And in stark contrast to the caller-outer himself, when that happens, this guy responds. Or he is this time. I mean, you know, he's not making any promises.

The question: what should the Twins do with the rest of this season? Buy? Sell? Nothing (which we all know is what really will happen)?

My answer: well, it's complicated. First, of course you don't pack it in right now, especially since, as TCM notes, there aren't all that many sellable commodities anyway. I'm writing this with the added perspective of one extra game over TCM, but it was (or felt like) a pretty huge game--they completed the sweep over the White Sox and jumped past said stockings into second place. still just two games behind the Tigers (and six out of the wildcard, but with four teams in front of them, two of which are clearly better teams). The Twins aren't particularly good, but the Tigers and Sox aren't either. The Twins and Tigers are separated by two games in the standings and one in expected W/L; they're separated in run differential by a single big blowout (currently 11 runs). And I don't see the Tigers or Sox getting any better this year either. There's absolutely no reason not to do everything within reason to win this year (for your sanity, three additional uses of the word "reason" have been omitted from this sentence).

That said, I don't think you should ever engage in a big buying spree unless you (a) feel like you have a great chance to win it all and (b) are pretty sure you're gonna suck for the five years after this anyway (old team, expiring contracts and so on), and neither of those things are in place here.

Moreover, the realistic middle infield options are pretty well gone; I doubt the Mariners are moving Lopez at this point; Jays GM Riccardi has shown himself to be a useless trading partner, so Marco Scutaro is probably out; and my favorite target, Freddy Sanchez, just went to the Giants (and for waaaaaayyyyy too much). If they're going to get significant middle infield help, it's going to come from Mark Grudzielanek (which, as I've said before, isn't nearly as unlikely as people seem to be assuming it is). And for God's sake, Just Say No to Orlando Cabrera.

But what the Twins both (a) need and (b) can feasibly get is another pitcher. With Slowey gone for the year, they could use a starter, and as weird as the Mariners' last couple days have been, I bet Jarrod Washburn is still available. But even he might cost too much for what he's likely to bring them (I sure hope they're asking, though).

My answer, then; be buyers, but for only one thing: a dependable relief pitcher who won't cost any big prospects. Arthur Rhodes. John Grabow. There are probably ten or twelve of these guys who will or should be available, and they're all pretty fungible, because they all have equal amounts of the one quality we're looking for here: that elusive quality of not being Jesse Crain. If a team wants too much for one of these guys, you forget about him and move on to the next guy on your list.

Matt Guerrier's and Jose Mijares' ERAs look awfully good right now, but I just don't trust those numbers (and neither does FIP--both are 1.5 to 2 runs higher than their ERAs). And with the starters struggling the way most of them are, another bullpen arm for depth--regardless of whether he slots into the 6th-7th behind those two or in the 8th in front of them--would really help.

So that's it. Get a relief pitcher. Hope Grudzie gets ready quickly to provide some much needed league-averageness. Don't go crazy just trying to "make a move" and thereby give away anything you're going to miss a bunch later (like, say, Danny Valencia). Catch the Tigers. Leave the White Sox in the dust. Win the Series. 'Kay?

The Twins Know Casilla Sucks Too

Hey, I guessed one right! Just took 2 1/2 months longer than I had hoped.

Apparently the team decisionmakers watched Casilla flailing around second base and had the same reaction I did (tastes a lot like what you had for dinner the night before), because today they signed 39 year old Mark Grudzielanek to a minor-league deal.

I expect story-breaker Seth's reaction will be echoed by most Twins fans: essentially, "ew." He's old; he hasn't played in nine or ten months; he's old; he's not Freddy Sanchez; and he's old.

But. It's clear that the Pirates want a lot for Sanchez. Otherwise, they wouldn't be making the big show of making extension offers to him and Jack Wilson (offers both of them rejected, but still). A year ago, Sanchez was a terrible player. At 31, he's reaching the age where most middle infielders start to break down. For all we know, that could happen in August.

Grudzielanek, meanwhile, made it through that barrier age and then some. In every year from 2003 to 2008, Grudzie hit between .290 and .314 and posted an OBP between .331 and .347 (with an outlier .366 in '03) with a SLG between .399 and .432. Combined with surprisingly good defense for his age (saving 3.1 runs over average in 2008 per UZR), that's a damn fine second baseman. Not an All Star or anything, but the kind of solid everyday player that playoff teams have filling all their non-All-Star positions. Not as valuable as Sanchez was in 2006 or has been so far in 2009, but a whole lot better than Sanchez ca. 2008.

Now, some assumptions need to be made. One needs to assume that (a) the Twins did their homework and determined that Grudzie has been working out and is still in playing shape, and (b) if he reports to the complex at Ft. Myers and proves otherwise, the Twins are ready to make another move. Because if one thing on this earth is clear, it's that nothing is happening this year as long as Tolbert or Casilla stays at second base.

But my hopes are relatively high. Grudzielanek has certainly wanted to play, and would've been signed in February or March had it been any other offseason--it would be profoundly stupid of him not to stay in playing shape. I don't think it's crazy to hope that he'll take a week or two in Florida and be ready to be the same .300 hitter with doubles power that he's been for forever. And if that's the case, you've got a player who, over the remainder of the season, is probably about half a win worse than Sanchez, and who in the context of baseball economics has cost virtually nothing. Whatever small piece of the Twins' future that would've been mortgaged to obtain Sanchez, it's a good bet that that piece is worth more than a half-win in 2009.

So, for maybe the first time in his tenure, I'm going to provisionally approve of something Billy Smith has done.

Then again, it's feasible that this is just a tactic for use against the Pirates--if Huntington thinks the Twins are desperate and he has them over a barrel, it would be really, really smart to show him that they have another option besides the two subreplacement stiffs they've been throwing out there. So it'll be interesting to see what happens. Either way, I'm liking this move...and that's a really weird thing for me to say.

Chairman Mauer: The First 100 PAs

I've crossed a line, or the Twins have, or Joe Mauer has.

Someone or something has crossed a line. And now I don't even care all that much that the Twins lost yesterday, because Joe hit another one:


Quite a one, too. He didn't start the game (which was ridiculous to begin with; if you've got the best left-handed hitter in the game, and the other guys have a straight-fastball-throwing righty on the mound and a lefty throwing tomorrow, don't you want to give him a day off tomorrow?), but pinch hit for Mike Redmond against Jonathan Papelbon in the bottom of the 9th with two outs and a runner on. His 11th home run of both the season and the month of May, making this his third consecutive game with a homer and fourth in the last five games, clanked high off the collapsed seating in right-center field, and made it a one-run game.

An even-more-lost-than-usual (understandably, it should be noted, with the recent passing of his mother) Delmon Young was due up next, which made it a foregone conclusion that that was as close as they were going to get. But, I kid you not: at least at the time, the result of the game didn't matter at all, because Joe hit one. It must be just a little like what Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak was like.

Conveniently, Mauer's pinch-hit homer came on his 100th plate appearance of his season, which (also conveniently) began on May 1. His season line now looks like this:

PA	AB	R	H	HR	RBI	BA	OBP	SLG
100	81	25	36	11	31	.444	.530	.914

He's still about 43 plate appearances shy of qualifying for percentage leader boards, but even if you give him 43 hitless at-bats (as BBREF does on its leaderboard). he's still in the top ten in on-base, slugging and OPS. He moved into the top ten in homers, and is only a few out of the top ten in RBI. Essentially, the league needed him to take that month off just so everyone else would have a chance to do something worth noticing before he took things over.

Here's all he's done since May 21 (four games plus the one at-bat): 9-13, .692 BA, .684 OBP (that's right, his two sac flies outbalance his three walks and an HBP), 1.211 SLG, 4 HR, 13 RBI.

Dave Cameron wrote a few days ago that Mauer's power surge probably wouldn't last, because he was hitting everything to center or left and not turning on pitches like power hitters usually do. That seems problematic to me to begin with--you might not think much of one or two wall-scrapers down the left field line, but a guy that can hit them out consistently to the opposite field and two or three in a month to the deepest part of the ballpark probably has some real power--but as though he read of Mr. Cameron's concerns, Mauer's home runs in the last two games have been no-doubters to right. Here, via Hit Tracker Online, is the distribution of his HR so far (minus the one from yesterday; add another one about where that furthest-right one is):

At least one among the cluster in left was actually much more toward center, and the one currently in right was further down the line than that. But you get the idea. He can hit 'em anywhere, apparently.

Obviously, no one is a true .444/.530/.916 hitter, and I doubt Mauer is going to hit 50 or even 40 home runs, this year or any year. But in 100 plate appearances, he's come two short of his career high (13 over 608 PA in 2006). With apologies to Mr. Cameron, it's pretty clear that he's a changed (and, unbelievably, improved) hitter: what remains to be seen is by how much he's improved.

Here's the storm cloud, though: generally, the concern with Mauer has been how long he'll last. He's a catcher, and is huge for a catcher, so he's liable to either switch to a different (and much less valuable) position or to suddenly burn out in, say, his early thirties. Now, though, the concern for me is this: does he even get that far as a Twin? Or does he keep playing like the perfect blend of Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina and completely price himself out of their league when his contract is up after next season (2010)? My gut tells me that he's the one guy they can't afford to lose (especially after just one season in their new stadium), and that they'll have to do anything to lock him down before he hits the market, even to the detriment to the rest of the team. But then, if this is the exaggerated version of a real, new and improved Joe Mauer, how much would the Yankees or Red Sox pay for something like that, as their own catching stalwarts just happen to be hitting (or well past) retirement age? I shudder to think...


[Psst. If you haven't been around for a couple days, I hope you had a great weekend, and you should check out Saturday's big sabermetricians vs. RBI guys post, its aftermath posted Sunday, and the associated links to posts from Way Back and Gone and Baseball Over Here. Also, Happy Memorial Day.]

"Maybe it's a tumor." "IT'S NAHT A TOOOMAH!!!"

So.

Wednesday afternoon, and it's the weirdest thing: the entire T-D-S editorial staff comes down with an illness that is either (a) a really bad, late-season flu or (b) Intermittent Dysmorphic Attachment Dysfunction with Smelly Feet (IDADWSF). It's bad, whatever it is.

So the planned epic response to the very thoughtful post from tHeMARksMiTh that I mentioned yesterday (the draft in my head is tentatively titled "IN DEFENSE OF COMPASSIONATE (ButStaunchAndUnwavering) SABERMETRICISM") will be on hold for at least one more day. Instead, I'll just say this:





Craig Breslow, we hardly knew ye.

I know, he was horrible for 14 or so innings this season. But he was great for 40 or so innings last season. And he went to Yale. (No, I don't know what that has to do with it.) And he figures to be better, right now, than 25 year-old AA pitcher and marginal prospect Anthony Swarzak. Whatever the solution to the Twins' bullpen woes was, dropping one of the few relievers who was likely to improve (unlike, say, Luis Ayala) wasn't part of that solution.

For more, refer to ubelmann.

*COUGH* *WHEEZE*
/ staggers off to bed

The All-Dome Team: Relief Pitchers and Manager

Dan Serafini, Scott Klingenbeck, and Billy Gardner. Kidding.

Infielders here, outfielders and DH here, starting pitchers here. Two relievers and a manager will round out the official ballot. It's a little anticlimactic to be ending with these guys, but so it goes.

#1 Reliever: Joe Nathan (364.2 IP, 1.88 ERA, 235 ERA+, 444 K)
Well, duh.
He's overshadowed by Mo Rivera and Jon Papelbon, but if there's been a better reliever than Nathan since 2004, the difference between that better guy and Nathan is too small to be worth talking about. I never want to hear or talk about what happened on Friday night again, but that notwithstanding, Nathan has been everything you could ask a closer to be. He got started too late to be in any sort of Hall of Fame discussion -- and I don't think the Hall needs any more relief pitchers after Mo goes in anyway -- but he's been as valuable as a 70-innings-a-year pitcher can be. Would've been nice to see what he could do as a more sensibly used, Gossage-style, 100-innings-a-year pitcher. But alas.

#2 Reliever: Rick Aguilera (694.2 IP, ~3.39 ERA, ~130 ERA+, 609 K)
Again, not a huge surprise. Aggie is a good illustration of The Daily Something Immutable Principle #347: you can always assume a closer (or any reliever), no matter how great, is no better or more talented than an average starter, and any above-average starter can generally become a dominant reliever. Behold:

Year	G	GS	IP	ERA+
1995	60	0	55.1	186
1996	19	19	111.1	94
1997	61	0	68.1	121

Further recommended reading is Goose Gossage: 212 ERA+ in 141 relief innings in 1974, and 243 ERA+ in 133 relief innings in 1976; in between, 91 ERA+ in 224 innings as a starter in 1975. This is why I said above that I'm generally against relievers in the Hall (though I'm pro-Goose); is it really enshrinement-worthy that some coach at some point decided to make them into Bruce Sutter rather than Bruce Hurst?

Anyway, Aguilera's numbers with the Twins, aside from being hard to pin down because of his involvement in three mid-season trades, are dragged down by that one year as an awful starter and by the offense-heavy era in which he pitched. Extra credit for happening to turn in his best year as a Twin -- 2.35, 182 ERA+, 42 saves in 69 innings -- in 1991, contributing nicely to the World Championship effort.

Runner-Up: Eddie Guardado (697.2 IP, 4.52 ERA, 105 ERA+, 605 K; 141 ERA+ from 2000-03). Everyday Eddie was solid in lots of different roles, but really blossomed when he took over as closer. Sure seemed to make you nervous every time he took the mound in the ninth, but he generally got it done. His early numbers look a lot worse than they were; in the Metrodome in the mid-to late-90s, an average pitcher was putting up a 5 ERA.

Manager: Tom Kelly, 1140-1244 (.478). If you recognize that Billy Gardner being in the conversation is kind of silly, the only two names left on the ballot are Ron Gardenhire and Tom Kelly. As it should be. I'm thinking this is a tough decision for most Twins fans, and it is for me too, though perhaps for a different reason: they're both deeply flawed in almost the exact same ways. They both distrust(ed), mistreat(ed) and have (had) very little patience for young talent (Todd Walker, David Ortiz, Jason Bartlett, Johan Santana), and both fall (fell) in love with "scrappy" little vets who don't really have much talent (Al Newman, Denny Hocking, Nick Punto). They both have plenty in their favor, too, of course, but they've both made me want to pull my hair out on many, many occasions. Ultimately, I think, you've got to go with the guy who got the two titles. Gardy has a much better winning percentage (.547) and four division titles, but I don't think there's a manager on the planet who could've done any better than TK did with the garbage he was handed from 1993 onward.

Errors in Judgment

As Rob Neyer brought to your attention yesterday, a five-member panel appointed by MLB granted the Royals' appeal, overturning the Angels' official scorer's decision granting Howie Kendrick an inside-the-park home run on what was really a routine popup down the right field line that was completely misplayed by Jose Guillen.

I happened to be watching that game live, and, I mean, this was a terrible decision by the scorer. No two ways about it. You can click on the second link above and watch the video clip for yourself. If that's a home run, we should go back to '86 and give Mookie an RBI single.

So, I'm glad they overturned it. And Rob's post and some of the comments beneath it raise some good questions about the quality and motivations of (team-employed) official scorers.

But I think this touches on an even bigger issue. The only reason this was any kind of controversy is that the ball just barely grazed Guillen's glove on the way by. Consider this same result in a couple alternate universes:

1. Guillen gets a great jump on the ball and camps under it, but he pulls his eye off it too early and it pops right out of his waiting glove, and then he kind of head-butts it all the way to the fence, resulting in Guillen being featured prominently in blooper reels for the rest of the year.
   
   
2. Guillen takes his eye off of it on his way over, so he takes a slightly wrong angle whereby he comes too far in on the ball, and then watches helplessly as it bounces six feet beyond his reach.

Is there any question in the world that (1) is scored an error, (2) a home run? Yet, isn't Guillen exactly equally culpable in both scenarios? And in the third scenario, the one that happened back in reality? In all three cases, he should've made the play, but didn't. Why (at least for purposes of fielding and pitching analysis) treat the three cases any differently?

If you can watch the play and read the accompanying story and not come to the conclusion that "errors" and "fielding percentage" are utterly useless as tools for measuring defense, I'd really love to hear your argument in their favor. (Well, read the rest of this, then let me have it in the comments.)

Properly evaluating defense, at its core, requires you to ask one question, and it has nothing to do with whether or not the guy got a glove on the ball. Whether the fielder caught the ball, or dropped the ball, or ended up thirty feet away from the ball, the question should be exactly the same: should we have expected a dude in that position to make the play that that dude just made (or didn't make)?

The Twins provide another convenient vehicle for making this point. Most days, as I've discussed here before, they start one of the worst left fielders in baseball (Delmon Young, or occasionally Jason Kubel); on the other days, they start one of the best (Denard Span sliding over from CF when Carlos Gomez plays). Now, Young and Span may end up with essentially the same number of "errors" over the course of the season, but if you watch them every day, you'll routinely see Young come up ten feet or more short on fly balls hit at the exact same angle and speed as balls that Span catches with no difficulty. And when Span does make an "error," odds are it'll be on a ball just like that: one that Delmon could have been expected to play into a double. See, this works both ways. If Span's legs and instincts get him to a ball that only one or two other guys in baseball could've hoped to, it doesn't make a ton of sense to punish him if he bobbles it.

Turns out, most MLB clubs already have, internally, done away with fielding percentage and errors. Most teams (not the Twins, clearly; get Go-Go back in the damn game already!) employ some kind of sophisticated system of defensive analysis using tools -- like my oft-cited favorite, UZR -- that really do nothing but attempt to answer that one simple question (albeit in a slightly more sophisticated way than the way I just posed it).

But how long do you think it'll take before this straight-forward, common-sense, weirdly counterintuitive idea takes hold among the media and public at large?

Or, to pose the same question in a different way: how many times must the author hear Joe Q. Colorcommentator cite errors made or fielding percentage as evidence that a team is first or last or sixth in "team defense" before he experiences some sort of cataclysmic psychic event?

The All-Dome Team: The Starting Pitchers

We've got the starting nine set. Today I had planned to cover all the pitchers and the manager, but it turns out I had a lot to say about the starting pitchers. So I'll stop there, and pick up with yet a fourth part in a day or two.

The ballot, for whatever reason, has room for three starting pitchers and two relievers. So that's what we'll be doing, too.

#1 Starter: Johan Santana (1308.2 IP, 93-44, 3.22 ERA, 141 ERA+, 1381 K)
Well, that's not hard. Johan wasted away in the bullpen for what felt to many of us like a very long time, at least a year after everyone had figured out that he was the best pitcher on the team, but then stepped into the rotation in 2004 and immediately became the best pitcher in all of baseball. He won the Cy Young Award in 2004 and 2006, and if you don't think he also deserved it in 2005...well, I probably don't want to hear it. Check out this comparison (FIP explained here, ERA+ here):

Name	IP	K	ERA	FIP	ERA+
Colon	222.2	157	3.48	3.77	122
Santana	231.2	238	2.87	2.80	155

Just ridiculous. Every single thing that a pitcher even arguably has control over, Santana wins. No, Santana dominates. K/BB ratio? 5.29 to 3.65. HR allowed? 22 to 26. And so on. Santana was the best pitcher in the league by a very wide margin, and Colon didn't have a particularly strong claim to being in the top five.

Yet Colon won the Cy Young, and for one reason: he pitched for a team with a better offense. Colon's run support was an amazing 7.28, while the Twins managed a middling 5.71 for Johan. So Colon ends up with 21 "wins" against 8 losses, Santana with 16 and 7.

Now, I know I've cited pitcher wins a few times on here, because, well, they're kind of fun to talk about, and easy to understand. But if you're comparing two pretty good pitchers, wins and losses are of absolutely no use. None at all. I can't stress that enough. Santana was your deserving Cy Young in 2005 (which would've made it back-to-back-to-back come '06, and been pretty freaking cool), just as Nolan Ryan and his amazingly unlucky 8-16 record probably was in 1987. The award shouldn't go to the pitcher whose offense outscores the other guys the most often when he's on the mound--it should go to the best pitcher. (The killer is, Santana didn't even come in second; Mo Rivera also impressed the voters more by appearing in roughly one-third as many innings as Santana did. I won't even get into how ridiculous that idea is.)

I'm still a little mad about this.

Fun fact: in all his starts spanning his entire career with the Twins, the offense scored a total of exactly zero runs for him (just going by memory on that one--might be off by a couple). And yet he managed to win 67.8% of his decisions in those games. Johan is a special, special player.

#2 Starter: Brad Radke (2451 IP, 148-139, 4.22 ERA, 112 ERA+, 1467 K)
The dependable old pickup truck to Santana's Aston Martin, Radke is another of my favorite Twins and was one of the most underrated pitchers in the game during his career. I think (without thinking about it too hard) that he'd have been #1 on many other teams' lists from the last 20 years or so, considering especially his longevity with the team. Unfortunately for him, Johan is Johan.

I remember a very young Radke in a commercial for a baseball video game (I'm shocked that it's not on YouTube like everything else that has ever been created, but I swear I'm not making it up). But anyway, the commercial mentioned that he'd given up a league-leading number of homers that year (which means it could've been after either of his first two seasons in the league, '95 or '96), and basically consisted of him snapping his neck around to watch the imaginary balls sail over the fence, while a literal parade of batters did kind of a conga line around the bases.

So he was a good sport, too...or else he was 22 or 23 and really needed the money.

#3 Starter: Frank Viola (1772.2 IP, 112-93, 3.88 ERA, 110 ERA+, 1214 K)
Here's a lesson for all you aspiring little league pitchers at home about run-scoring environments: Viola's ERA with the Twins was 34 points lower than Radke's, but when you adjust them for the era and park and compare to league average, which is what ERA+ tries to do, they end up being almost exactly the same pitcher, with Radke just a tiny bit ahead (112 to 110).

Both Bradke and Sweet Music were changeup artists, and both were called up too early for very bad teams, putting up 5-plus ERAs at age 22 (though, again, 5-plus was a lot worse in 1982 than it was in 1995). Viola, unlike Radke, actually took a tiny step backward in season 2, but he broke out in a big way in season 3 (1984), going 18-12 with a 131 ERA+ and finishing in the top ten in wins, ERA, WHIP, IP, strikeouts, starts, complete games, shutouts, and the Cy Young voting.

His years to remember, though, were 1987 and 1988. In the first, he won 17 games with a 159 ERA+, finished 6th in the Cy Young voting (should probably have finished third, but it's those pesky "win" totals again) and was named World Series MVP. In the second, he had almost the exact same year (four more innings, 12 fewer hits, six fewer walks, four fewer Ks, 153 ERA+), but:

(a) his ERA artificially looked better, because the league had had a sudden offensive spike in 1987 and came back to earth in '88; and, more importantly,

(b) he won 24 games instead of 17, mostly because the 1988 Twins, who won 91 and missed the playoffs, were actually a much better team than the 1987 squad that somehow won 85 and the Series.

Viola ran away with the Cy Young Award in '88, of course, with 27 of the 28 first-place votes (24 wins!!!!11!1!), and probably did deserve it -- but that's because the field was weaker, not because the 24-win pitcher was any better than the 17-win one from the year before. But they were both unquestionably great seasons. His '82 and '83 drag his numbers down (and he was roughly average in '85 and '86, which doesn't help either), but he was one of the best pitchers in the league for four of the eight seasons that he wore the uniform, and that's certainly something. So the similarities to Radke are actually pretty superficial. Radke's great contribution was being consistently good, but he was never great, whereas Viola was never good, not once; awful and average and (especially) great, sure, but never "good."

Even better: Viola's midseason trade to the Mets in 1989 brought four young pitchers back, three of whom played vitally important roles in the 1991 Series championship: Kevin Tapani, David West, and someone who I'm very sure will make an appearance next time.

Runners-up: You know, no one else is even all that close. Consider: Allan Anderson, Eric Milton, and Jack Morris[' single season with the team] all make the ballot. And there are only eleven names on it! Tapani had his lights-out '91 and four other average seasons, and two of Bert Blyleven's three were pretty good (he had many more great years with the Twins, of course, but all in his first tour of duty, back at the old Met), and Scott Erickson's first three were excellent.

In all, though, it's a very good thing that the Dome-era Twins have had three really good pitchers, because there's nobody else who (considering only Bert and Jack's Dome years)) you'd want to see on an all-time anything anywhere. Absolutely nothing wrong with the top three, though.

Hasta Luego, Alexi

I've taken a couple shots at Alexi Casilla already. He clearly has some talent, very athletic and quick and all that, but I can't stand to watch the kid play second base. His defensive numbers, UZR in particular, don't look that bad (not good, either), but he just looks like he's always out of position and just starting to get moving as the ball takes its million or so hops right past him.

Oh, and he's hitting .167/.231/.202. I guess that's not quite what the Twins were hoping to get out of their #2 hitter, because yesterday they recalled Matt Tolbert and sent Casilla down to Rochester. What can you do?

As down as I am on Alexi, I really hope he's not done with the Twins entirely, as Dave Cameron suggests he is; I don't think he has much trade value right now, and I'd sure like to see him turn himself into something eventually -- though Aaron Gleeman joins me in thinking that's probably unlikely at this point. (I really hope, as Cameron advocates for on his less even-handed outlet, that a trade for Yuniesky Betancourt, a worse version of the same problems with an even more awesome name, isn't in the works.) But Casilla just obviously didn't have whatever it was he had (maybe just luck?) in the spring and early summer of 2008, and the Twins weren't going to compete in the Central with an absolute zero at second base.

But as Cameron says in the Fangraphs article, they're not very likely to contend with Brendan Harris or Matt Tolbert there, either. I have a hunch that, if they're still in the race in a month or so, a call will be put in to 39 year old Mark Grudzielanek or 37 year old Ray Durham, both of whom are apparently still sitting by the phone from the offseason. And frankly, I don't think it's a bad idea. Neither can really field the position anymore, but neither can Brendan Harris, and both can still hit a little--Durham posted a .380 OBP and hit 36 doubles last year, and Grudzielanek has had a batting average within 10 points of .300, OBP over .330 and SLG at or over .400 for each of the last six seasons. I guess I'd prefer Durham. But at least one of them is probably still worth a look, don'cha think?

In any case, I wish Alexi nothing but the best (unless the White Sox are in his future somehow) and look forward to not having to watch him wave at singles bouncing through the right side of the infield anymore, at least for a while. Of course, a couple Twins pitchers not named Francisco or Joe are going to have to stop throwing batting practice the way Kevin Slowey did on Wednesday night for any of this to make any sort of difference.

The All-Dome Team: Outfielders (and DH)

Last Thursday, I talked about the official Twins' All-Metrodome Team ballot and picked my infielders. Today, we continue with the outfielders and DH. The official ballot, like an All-Star ballot, lists a group of outfielders and instructs you to pick three without differentiating between left/right and center...so that's what we'll do, too.

Outfield #1: Kirby Puckett (.318/.360/.477, 66.5 WARP3).
The day he died, I wrote this:

If you saw Kirby Puckett play baseball, whether or not you like the sport itself, you'd have loved him. Most of Minnesota did. A funny little round man, an amazing athlete in an almost completely average-looking body, Kirby did all those little cliches that add up to one big cliche called Playing the Game the Right Way. He was always playing at full speed, no matter what the score was, how he felt, or whether it was Spring Training or the World Series. And you could just tell he really loved to play, more than anyone you've ever seen. See that huge smile? It seemed (in retrospect, at least) like it was just always there.

Turns out that Kirby was also a legitimately great player. A flawed player, just as he was quite obviously a flawed man. But he's a no-brainer for this team and a cornerstone of any all-time Twins team, and the Hall of Fame is a better place for having him in it.

Outfield #2: Torii Hunter (.271/.324/.469, 41.0)
Torii was overrated both offensively and defensively and was (and is) disproportionately beloved by Twins fans. He continued to be considered "the Face of the Franchise" while going out of his way to undermine teammates, most notably calling out a very young Joe Mauer for not playing through an injury while Torii himself would miss time with much more apparently questionable injuries. Frankly, I don't have a lot of good things to say about Torii, except this: he was better for longer than any outfielder in Dome-era Twins history save one.

Outfield #3: Shane Mack (.309/.375/.479, 30.6)
Probably the biggest surprise among any of my picks, but I have no hesitation at all about putting Mack on this team. He had a weird, weird career; he spent 1987 and 1988 as a poor fourth outfielder for the Padres and then spent all of 1989 in Triple-A or injured; he played in Japan in 1995 and 1996 before finishing his career as a more than adequate fourth outfielder for the Red Sox, A's and Royals in 1997 and 1998. In the five seasons in between the two MLB absences, though -- 1990 to 1994 -- he was a Twin, and was very quietly one of the very best players in the league. I remember him as an expert hitter who hit a line drive just about every time he swung the bat. He ran well and played excellent defense. The only knock on him was that he was rather frequently hurt, but when he was on the field, for those five seasons, he was one of the best players in the game.
A good, exhaustive write-up on Mack's career was done quite a while ago by Aaron Gleeman, here.
Runners-up: Tom Brunansky, Matt Lawton and Jacque Jones (probably in that order) were all very solid players for the Twins, but none are really all-time anything material.

Designated Hitter: Justin Morneau (.282/.348/.501, 22.3)
I can't do it!

The official ballot consists of Roy Smalley (discussed in the infielders post) and the names of four very-good-to-all-time-great hitters, none of whom came all that close to distinguishing themselves as Twins: Chili Davis, David Ortiz, Paul Molitor and Dave Winfield. Ortiz played the equivalent of four nondescript years with the Twins, Molitor three (and he hit .341 in one of them, but it was an incredibly good year to be a hitter), Winfield and Chili two apiece.

Pass. I refuse to put a guy on this team who isn't one of the 75 or so best or most important players in Twins history, simply because he "played" a "position" whose only distinction is that it asks nothing at all of you.

So I see no reason Morneau can't DH for this team. He's clearly the best hitter of the Metrodome era who isn't already on the team, so we're going that way.
Runner-up: Davis (.282/.385/.476, 9.2). It was only two years, but the first was a legitimately awesome offensive year given the era, and helped lead the Twins to the 1991 World Championship.

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So we've got our lineup, and we're two thirds of the way through the All-Metrodome Team. I'll be back sometime soon with pitchers and the manager (only because "manager" is on the ballot), and then we'll do a wrap-up post to take stock of what we've got.

The All-Dome Team: Infielders

As they count down to the frigid opening of Target Field next April, the Twins are making some effort to acknowledge/celebrate the 28 seasons that have been spent at the Metrodumpome. Which I guess they should, what with the two World Championships and all. So one thing they're doing now is, through their official website, running a balloting process to select the all-time All-Metrodome Team. It's more interesting than an all-franchise team, I think, because you have to make some tougher choices; Killebrew, Oliva, and Carew never played in the Dome (at least not, in Carew's case, while with the Twins).

So I thought that, in the absence of some really compelling and timely topic for today, I'd go ahead and post my (slightly modified) ballot here, with comments (and stats from their time with the Dome-era Twins only). This is much longer than I was anticipating and I'm suddenly swamped with work, so we'll stick with the infielders today and pick up with the outfielders and pitchers in separate posts sometime in the next few days.

Catcher: Joe Mauer (.317/.399/.457, 31.6 Wins Above Replacement Player [WARP3]).
He's played only four mostly-full seasons in the Majors, and yet this is the easiest pick until we get to the man pictured in my avatar. Not since Carew, at least, have the Twins ever had a position player that you could really argue was the single best player in the American League...but Mauer is that. Catchers just don't hit and get on base the way Mauer does, at least not the ones who can really catch. I don't know how much longer he can keep it up as a catcher, but enjoy it while he does.
Runner-up: Brian Harper (.305/.339/.428, 16.8 WARP3). No patience or defense, and not much power, but if you're in the just-pre-Juiced Ball era and can find a durable catcher who can hit .300 with 10+ homers every year, hang on to that guy.

First Base: Kent Hrbek (.282/.367/.481, 53.9)
I assume that Justin Morneau is going to win the fan vote, and quite easily, but it should be a blowout in the other direction. Hrbek, a local Minneapolis boy, had more than twice the number of PA Morneau has had so far with the Twins, was a better hitter when you adjust for the difference in eras (128 OPS+ to 122), and was a better defender (both have/had very good defensive reputations among Twins fans, but Hrbek actually earned his). And then of course there were the two World Series. Hrbek never had a year in which his raw numbers looked as huge and pretty as Morneau's '06, but he had several years that, viewed in the proper context, were just as good or better. Morneau has a long way to go. If you're unfamiliar with the story that goes along with the picture to the right, that's Hrbek tackling Ron Gant to make him fall off of first base in the 1991 World Series. And Gant was called out. That performance alone might have been enough to put Hrbek on the top of my list.
Runner-up: Morneau (.282/.348/.499, 21.7), of course. Though I'm more interested in the fact that Ron Coomer (now one of the Twins' broadcast analysts, seen here in Fort Myers in March, photo by the author) made the list. We used to call him Fred Flintstone, for obvious reasons. Seems like a good guy; 87 OPS+. On the occasion he was even the best 1B on his own team, that was a sad team.



Second Base: Chuck Knoblauch (.304/.391/.416, 46.3).
He's become kind of a joke because of his throwing troubles once he hit New York and connection to the Mitchell Report, but when he left Minnesota, Knoblauch looked like a tiny, troll-like, obnoxious, future Hall of Famer. He was an excellent hitter and baserunner, and only the presence of real future Hall of Famer Roberto Alomar kept him from winning, and deserving, a whole bunch of Gold Gloves (he did get one, in 1997). Second basemen as a whole burn out bizarrely early, and that's something I'll explore here someday; it was more in Knobby's head than his body, but he was done as a useful player by age 31.
Runner-Up: Todd Walker (.288/.344/.419, 3) was a fine hitter who was mistreated by manager Tom Kelly, but I was a little hasty in guaranteeing upon his 1996 callup that he'd be a Hall of Famer someday (hey, those were desperate times). John Castino was probably a better player, but only played parts of two years in the Dome.

Third Base: Corey Koskie (.280/.373/.463, 33.7)
Toughest choice of them all. Gaetti had a longer career, even just considering his time with the Twins, and was a better defender. But Koskie was a fine glovesman himself, and was often the one truly excellent hitter on contending teams that really needed help to score runs.
Runner-Up: Gary Gaetti (.256/.307/.437, 28.8). My first favorite player. His hitting was overrated because of his aversion to taking a walk, and he was a little injury-prone, but the power + Gold Glove defense combination was awfully valuable. He's probably become underrated now, as memories have faded and people have started to better grasp the importance of OBP. The Rat also has easily the best and weirdest unofficial fan club on the 'Net.

Shortstop: Greg Gagne (.249/.292/385, 21.2)
Slim pickins here. Gagne was never on base, but was a very solid defensive shortstop with some pop. Extremely fast, but probably the worst base-stealer ever to swipe more than 100 bases (career 109SB/96CS). Looked a little like Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock.
Runner-Up: Roy Smalley (.258/.350/.419, 4.5). Almost all of his games at shortstop with the Twins happened in the pre-Dome era; by the time he came back in 1985, he was playing first and third almost exclusively (and he's actually listed on the ballot as a DH). Still easily the next-best option in this era.

So that's your infield. My planned Thursday night gameblog for Friday is looking less feasible with this sudden crush at work, but there will be, well, something...

The Importance of Catching Strikes

We're going Twins-related again (and graphics-free today), and then yet a third Twins post tomorrow, probably, and back to regularly scheduled programming with a non-Twins gameblog on Friday morn.

If you have Extra Innings, or MLB.TV, or live in Minnesota or central Florida, try to take some time out to catch an inning or two of the Twins-Rays game tonight. Not because I expect it to be a great game, really; they're two pretty interesting teams, I think, and Kazmir is on the hill, but I don't expect it'll be making Lar's Most Interesting this morning or anything.

But, see: Mauer is set to be back for Friday's game, and the Twins are off tomorrow, so this should be the last chance you get for quite a while to watch Jose Morales catch.

After a rough start, I've come around on Morales. He's a switch-hitting catcher, which is rare enough in itself (there's a chance he might move into a tie for 48th place tonight on the all-time-plate-appearances-by-a-switch-hitting-catcher list, with 50), and he can hit a little. But that's not why I want you to watch.

He might be the worst defensive catcher since Matt LeCroy, and that's kind of entertaining -- his throws to second seem to stop for cheese and crackers somewhere above the mound, and he's lost a couple of very routine foul pops -- but that's not it, either, not really.

No, I'd like you to watch part of this game because I'd like you to notice how Morales catches each pitch. That's it! See, as I'm sure you know, most professional (and college, and a lot of high school) catchers practice a technique called framing the pitch, whereby you subtly nudge your glove back toward the strike zone as a close pitch comes in, hoping to get your pitchers a few extra called strikes over the course of the game. (Little white lies make up about 40% of baseball, if you haven't noticed.)

Morales, I've convinced myself, does exactly the opposite, stabbing at pitches that should be strikes and effectively driving them well out of the umpire's idea of the strike zone. I've seen pitches that defined the very concept of "down the middle" called balls because Morales almost falls on the pitch, pushing it down toward the batter's ankles as he catches it. Just watch and see if you see what I see, I guess, because I can't believe I haven't heard anyone comment on it.

Like I said, I like Morales. But he's very likely going to be getting an all-expenses-paid trip to Rochester tomorrow, and this is something he's going to have to work on. Not only is it frustrating to watch, but an extra ball here and there can make a much bigger difference than most people realize.

Say you have an average AL hitter on an 0-1 count. If the next pitch is a strike (and called such), you have the hitter at a huge disadvantage; the American League as a whole hit .172 with a .245 SLG on PAs with the last pitch coming on 0-2 in 2008, and just .185 with a .274 SLG in PAs in which the count was 0-2 at any point in the at-bat! Meanwhile, the league hit a shocking .330 BA/.519 SLG swinging on 1-1 counts.

Look at those numbers again...I think everybody knows that the count is important, but that important? An average hitter becomes an average-hitting pitcher on an 0-2 count, and the same hitter becomes an MVP candidate when he swings on a 1-1 count. So if Morales stabs at an 0-1 pitch and turns what should have been a strike into a ball, he's essentially transformed the hitter from Roy Oswalt into Lance Berkman (if the hitter swings at that pitch, that is -- the stats after a 1-1 count are much closer to the overall league average, because the possibility of a strikeout comes back into play -- but still: would you rather face a league-average hitter or Oswalt?).

I don't really believe in the surpassing importance of catcher defense; I don't think having a guy with a cannon arm or superior wild-pitch-avoiding ability is going to win that many games for you. Matt LeCroy could have caught for my team just about any time, back when he could hit. But from watching Morales and looking at those stats, I'm starting to believe that whatever else he can or can't do, a catcher who doesn't know how to frame a pitch can lose his share of ballgames for you.

Do any other catchers do this? I feel like framing is such an ingrained practice that every single professional catcher does it without drawing attention, but maybe this sort of shortchanging one's own pitcher is more common than I think and I just haven't been paying attention? I'm sure there's a study to be done there (adjusted called strike percentage for catchers against average, or something)...

Thing Fifteen: Solving the Twins' Outfield

To this point the blog has, if nothing else, justified its name, with this being the fifteenth new thing in fifteen days. And yet, aside from the occasional cheap shot at Alexi Casilla or Delmon Young, I've completely avoided talking about my own favorite team. The main reason for that is that my goal is to write one relatively succinct, digestible thing per day, and as I'm sure you've seen, I've struggled with that a few times already; if I start writing about the Twins, odds are I'm going to just prattle on forever. But I'm afraid that's a chance I'm going to have to take today. It's just time.

The general thinking is that five outfield/DH types -- Young, Denard Span, Carlos Gomez, Michael Cuddyer and Jason Kubel -- are all good enough to be playing every day somewhere, but only four spots are open to them. So the question coming into the year was: who's the odd man out?

Well, so far, Gardy has done his best to answer that with: "well, nobody! Or everybody, depending on how you look at it!" Through the first 20 games, he's started the following combinations (left-center-right):

Young - Span - Cuddyer: seven times
Span - Gomez - Cuddyer: six times
Young - Gomez - Span: four times
Young - Gomez - Cuddyer: two times
Kubel - Span - Cuddyer: one time

All told, Span has started six in left, eight in center, and four in right; Gomez has started 12 games, all in center; Young has started 12 games in left and one at DH; and Cuddyer has started 15 in right and two at DH. Kubel has essentially been the full-time DH, starting against both righties and lefties, though two others have spelled him there in addition to Cuddyer and Young.

Let's take a look at who these guys are. Two career numbers for each player are given below; the first is wOBA, a system that's about as good as any for assigning one number to the offensive value of a player, and it works on essentially the same scale as OBP (.300 is bad, .340 fine, and .400 great); the second is UZR/150, which attempts to measure how many runs a player saves or costs his team per 150 games played against the average at his primary outfield position, relying on play-by-play data.

Michal Cuddyer (.339, -6.3): the elder statesman of this group (but still a week or so younger than me), Cuddyer had an excellent year with the bat in 2006 (.282/.362/.504, 24 HR, .370 wOBA), but slipped in 2007 and was hurt for most of 2008, and is off to a terribly slow start in 2009. He has a reputation among Twins fans as an excellent outfielder, but fans often confuse excellent arms with excellent outfielders; Cuddy has a cannon, but doesn't get around well at all. His defensive numbers through his first 15 starts this year are bizarrely good (26.4 UZR/150), but his real ability tops out at about a minus-five-run right fielder. He hits righties well enough to justify playing every day for most clubs, but his real talent is hitting lefties, against whom he's a career .280/.368/.439 hitter.

Carlos Gomez (.287, 18.7): Just 23 years old, Go-Go can be both a delight and absolute torture to watch. He swings from his heels (often falling to his knees off a particularly ambitious miss), never walks, is prone to mistakes on the bases, and, in 2008, would often bunt (often foul) with two strikes. But he might be the fastest player in baseball, and he absolutely is the best defensive centerfielder in baseball. As such, he needs only to get on base about 30% of the time, as he did in 2008, to be a useful everyday player. With his youth and talent (and he has a very nice swing on the rare occasion that he keeps it within reason), he still has the potential for much more than mere usefulness.

Jason Kubel (.338, -20.0): He's a better hitter than his career wOBA suggests; that's brought down by a poor first year back from surgery in 2006. He had a .345 wOBA last year and is tearing the cover off the ball in the early going this year, at .417. A typical lefty, Kubel has a career OPS 120 points higher against righties than against southpaws. With his reconstructed knee, he moves like he's about eighty. A team without Justin Morneau might try him at first base, but he has no business "running" around the outfield.

Denard Span (.364, 12.0*): a former first-round pick, Span had pretty much obtained "bust" status heading into 2008, and then suddenly exploded. With an excellent 2008 in both the minors and majors and a similar start to 2009, it seems safe to conclude that Span did suddenly become a player: great eye at the plate, good bat control, good instincts on the bases, some gap power. He can apparently hit left-handed pitching despite being a lefty himself. He's not quite the centerfielder Gomez is, but he can more than hold his own out there, and is an incredible asset in either corner.
* The 12 UZR150 is a reasonable guess; he hasn't played enough games at any one position to really trust the numbers. What's clear is that he's an excellent defensive player at any of the outfield positions.

Delmon Young (.321, -15.8): Bill James recently wrote that Young must be the worst percentage player in baseball, and at this point, frankly, you could almost take "percentage" out of that label. Young, like Gomez, is just 23, but unlike Gomez, he has shown few flashes of potential and no currently useful Major League skills. He's hit around .290 in both of his two full seasons, was once considered the #1 prospect in baseball, and had 93 RBI in 2007. That's enough to convince some people that he's a useful or promising player. Watch him every day, though, and you see something different. In the field, Delmon looks uninterested at best, clueless at worst; he frequently misses routine plays and routinely makes even minimal challenges into adventures (or doubles, or triples). He hasn't balanced that by showing any power, hitting a total of just 23 HR in 1220 AB in 2007-08, and he's drawn just 52 unintentional walks (against 232 strikeouts) in that same period. Even his minor league stats are largely underwhelming. I tend to believe that any player the scouts loved as much as they once loved Delmon must have something going for him, and maybe Delmon will show that something someday. But right now he's here, and here is very, very, very, very far from there.

So what should he be doing with these guys? I see a few things that should be just blindingly obvious:

• Span should be starting somewhere every day. Not only is he the best overall player of these five, which he clearly is because of his defense; he might even be the best pure offensive player among them. Whatever else you do, if Span is healthy, pencil him in in the leadoff spot and one of the outfield positions. He's already sat out two of the first 20 games, and that's two too many.
• Young should not be starting anywhere on a contending team. Look, I get the argument. He's a promising player, or people consider him as such, and needs to be playing every day. But if this team intends to compete in the Central -- and this year, every team in the Central figures to compete in the Central -- Delmon has no place on't. Let him start every day in Triple-A (where, it should be noted, he's never exactly proved himself), coach him heavily on defense and pitch recognition, and hope you don't have to call him up before he's ready because of an injury.
  
• If you've got a flyball pitcher in the game, Gomez has to be in the game too. The thing about the Twins' five outfielders is that only two of them are good defensive outfielders. So if you've got a guy on the mound who gives up a lot of fly balls (and that's most of the Twins' rotation), your best chance to win is to have both Gomez and Span in the outfield, even if you take a hit on offense.
• Kubel shouldn't DH versus lefties. Even in 2008, his best offensive year, Kubel had just a .704 OPS against left-handed pitching, worse than the overall OPS of Nick Punto and about equal to Casilla's. Unless Gardy has some reason to believe Kubel has completely come around in that area -- and I really don't think he does -- that's just not a designated hitter.
  

So here's what I'd do (assuming demoting Delmon isn't an option):

Against RHP: Span LF, Gomez CF, Cuddyer RF, Kubel DH
Against LHP: Span LF, Gomez CF, Young RF, Cuddyer DH

So yeah, first, I'd play Gomez every day, flyball pitcher or no. I really think his defense is just that good, and, like a lot of people do with Young, I want to see him play every day to see if his bat will come around. Moreover, Span blanketing left allows Gomez to shade toward right, minimizing the damage done by playing Cuddyer and/or Young, who can pretty much just guard the line.

Second, I'm never putting Young in left, where his numbers have been uniformly terrible (I've watched him miss a relatively easy foul fly against the Rays as I've been writing this). For some reason, his numbers from about a season's worth of playing right field with the Rays are above average (6.0 UZR/150 in 163 career G). That might just be a blip (and probably is), but it might also be that he had to depend less on his range and more on his strong arm in RF than he does in LF. There seems to be less foul territory in right field in the Dome, and the fence is closer. At least by putting him there you'd be giving him a chance of being a useful player, rather than just watching him flail helplessly around in left every day (as I have to currently).

Third, a Kubel/Cuddyer DH platoon is actually an above-average DH, whereas the current Kubel/Kubel setup is a serious weakness against lefties, especially in a lineup where your two best hitters are lefties.

Is this really worth spending all this time thinking over? ...Well, yes, by somebody (probably not by me, but what can you do?). A Span/Gomez LF-CF would save about 40 runs on defense over the course of a season compared to a Young/Span one, which makes about four wins. And you give a little bit of that back on offense, but honestly, until Delmon actually shows something, it's not all that much (and then Gomez takes a little back again on the basepaths). Four extra wins in the 2009 American League Central could very well mean the playoffs. To Gardy's credit, he knows what his best defensive outfield is, frequently subbing Gomez in for Young and shifting Span to left in the late innings of close games. Now someone needs to explain to him the kind of difference having that for nine innings could make.

All that said, if Joe Mauer doesn't come back on May 1 and knock the ball all over the park for 130 games, it's not going to matter. But they might as well put their best lineup out there until we know for sure...