A lot of people have tried to analyze what went wrong with the Twins' offense in 2005, and one of the theories often brought up is that the hitters "didn't do the little things" well enough. Now, I would never argue that the Twins were particularly good at situational hitting last season, but I would definitely argue that it was actually "the big things" that hurt them the most.

The other day on his ESPN.com blog Buster Olney ran a chart of the Productive Outs leaders from last season. Productive Outs has more or less been proven to be a junk stat with no correlation to actual run scoring, and Olney quickly stopped touting it after an initial love affair. With that said, the Twins ranked second in the league with 184 Productive Outs, trailing only the Angels' 187. In other words, they moved plenty of runners over.

The Twins also ranked fourth in stolen bases and fifth in sacrifices, both of which typically fall under the category of "little things." What they didn't do enough of was avoiding outs, productive or otherwise, and hitting the ball into the gaps and over the fence. The Twins were 10th in on-base percentage, 12th in doubles, and 12th in homers, which is why I'm a whole lot more concerned about the "big things" this season.

3/01/2006 07:55:00 AM|W|P| amr|W|P|Yeah, remember that at some point last year, June I think, the Twins had the league's top BA with RISP (not OPS with RISP tho). All beacuse they were great at getting the guy from second to third. At the same time, their BA with bases loaded was pretty low, and I think they biggest hit they had with bases loaded was a double, though I could be wrong on that.

Then, it only got worse as the season progressed, culminating in that embarrasing loss to Denny Hocking and the Royals in which 22 players reached base safely and none scored. We chased 5 pitchers from the game without a single one giving up even an unearned run. A little more bases per hit would have given the Twins a lot more runs.3/01/2006 09:35:00 AM|W|P| Anonymous|W|P|It's a "front office" issue as much as its a Gardenhire issue. Terry Ryan has made reference that the Twins do use some numbers, but you still get the impression that they rely a bit too heavily on what their eyes tell them versus what the facts are. The organization is fixated on the "little things".

On a totally separate note: Pardon the off-topic comment but it does have a Gleeman tie-in.

First, I'll start off by saying until you started "pimping" P. Reusse, I was a little down on him. I've always been a fan of columnists and the profession. I sort of felt for the past few years that Reusse was just mailing it in, and I'd written him off as a relic, tool old to change and to young to retire.

For the past 6 months or so, I feel he's cranked it up a notch. There's a bite to his analysis and a richness to the writing, that at the very least, I'd missed.

Now, I'm sure some of this has to do with some of the re-jiggering they've done over at the Tribune, some of it I think is due to icreased competition they face from other media, including the blogs, and some of it has to do with his internal competition (which has lapsed a bit) but this nugget buried in today's column had to have Gleeman grinning from ear to ear.

The fact that Reusse is reading and writing about ariticles in the Baseball Research Journal has to signal some kind of seismic shift in the cosmos. Now if he'd leave KSTP all would be right in the world.

From the article in question:


87 Twins: still a puzzle

Kent Von Scheliha of Kirkland, Wash., wrote an article in the most recent issue of the Baseball Research Journal that offered a statistical analysis of the 200 teams that played in the World Series from 1903 through 2004.

According to Von Scheliha's analysis, the strongest World Series team was the 1998 Yankees, and the weakest was the '87 Twins.

"The 1987 Twins stand as the biggest anomaly in history," he wrote. "This is the only team of the 200 which played in the World Series to have been below average in both scoring and preventing runs. They have the distinction of being the only World Series team with a negative TSI [Team Strength Index]."

According to the TSI formula, the biggest World Series upset was 1985: Royals over Cardinals. The Twins over the Cardinals in '87 was rated third. One flaw: Slugger Jack Clark was missing from the St. Louis' lineup, distorting the disparity in the Cardinals' and the Twins' seasonlong numbers.3/01/2006 10:02:00 AM|W|P| SBG|W|P|That game was easily the most embarrassing game of the year and would have to be on the short list of all-time embarrassing games for the Twins.3/01/2006 10:15:00 AM|W|P| SBG|W|P|I read that Reusse column and I agree with your assessment of his writing. He's clearly very talented and he's always been my favorite writer in town, even though he's been uneven. And yes, he's been better lately than he has been.

It's hard for me to gauge the impact of bloggers on a guy like Reusse. I've been of the opinion that they don't make much difference and have said so right here. Certainly, though, Gleeman and Twins Geek have written enough very good stuff over the years to at least provide a path for local writers to consider. Whether Reusse himself reads Gleeman is subject to much debate, but there's no question that people at the Strib read him. I have to believe that when Gleeman is writing about baseball, at least someone there has to have thought that he's provided more insight with his work than what is published in the Strib. So maybe there's some effect. On the other hand, what percentage of the population gets what Gleeman is saying, would get it if they read him, or wants to get it? I suspect that the average shmoe doesn't want Gleemanesque writing in the paper. They want something else. I could be wrong. Me, I'm reading Gleeman before I read the Strib.3/01/2006 11:27:00 AM|W|P| SBG|W|P|It is amazing that Al Newman lasted as long as he did in the majors. With a career OPS+ of 58, he somehow collected 2,409 plate appearances, including 954 in the two years you mention. Lombardozzi was a better hitter by far (career OPS+ of 76), but I think he and Tom Kelly did not see eye-to-eye.

Newman, obviously, is the definition of a (sub)replacement level player at the plate. For his career, he had a batted runs "above" replacement of -30 (-110 runs "above" average). He was a league average fielder (1 career fielding run above average, 103 fielding run above replacement). I guess that was the best that the Twins could do. I would venture to guess that he had a good relationship with Kelly, which no doubt helped keep him in the lineup.

When you consider that Al Newman was a regular second baseman for a couple of years, it's not hard to understand that some of Gleeman's Top 40 Twins are not all that impressive.3/01/2006 11:38:00 AM|W|P| Anonymous|W|P|I think the bloggers are having a huge impact on the way the MSM covers all kinds of news. The fact that the Star Tribune and other papers like the Washington Post and New York Times are actually referencing blogs, building blogs themselves and covering bloggers as news indicates that it's had an impact.

As it relates to sports coverage, to use an analogy, it's an ecosystem in a way. While there are plenty of jocks and old-timey announcers spewing out cliche after cliche there's a lot more referece to meaningful statistics clearly driven by an audience who wants to hear those things and a sea change in the way baseball is covered. Peter Gammons had a nice columnn on this very topic about 3 weeks ago. Your're right, a lot of the stuff is not fit for primetime, but I think it's slowy leaching over and changing the ways teams and players are covered.

If I had to guess, Reusse probaly is not subcribed to Gleeman's RSS feed but I would guess his editors are very aware of Gleeman's Blog and others. I like the fact that seemingly an old dog can learn new tricks. It gives hope to the rest of us.3/01/2006 04:20:00 PM|W|P| Anonymous|W|P|And why do we think that Reusse is actually reading articles from the Baseball Research Journal, as opposed to reading the occasional press release sent across his desk by flunkies employed by the STRIB to sort through press releases?

case in point: I'm involved in a research paper that analyzes postwar Olympic figure skating data. Nobody has ever read our paper (including, it would seem, the reviewers selected by the journal to which it has been submitted but not yet reviewed after many months), but we've been profiled several times on local/regional TV and radio and by local newspapers.

I was a reporter in a past life, so I claim credibility. When a story falls in your lap, you report it. Going out and looking for a story requires effort. One mention of a sabermetric piece by Reusse doesn't (yet) count as credible evidence in my eyes.