Yovani Gallardo vs Francisco Liriano
I think the Yankees just own every Midwest team. The Brewers swept the Twins but were then swept by the Yankees. They scored a meager four runs compared to the 22 by the Yankees over the three games. Which leads to somewhat interesting interleague records for the Twins:
Twins away record against the NL: 1-8
Twins home record against the NL: 5-1
Just where the Twins want them. Sweep time!
Ted Lilly vs Brian Duensing
Apparently the Twins decided to compress their 54 wins into large, sparsely distributed batches. At least the Wolves have gotten everyone used to long losing streaks.
Duensing, you're our only hope.
One thing that jumped out at me as I perused Light Rail's B-R page was his strikeout rate: 8.6 K/9. What? It did increase from 7.3 in 2009 to 7.8 in 2010, but I wasn't expecting another 0.8 jump. However, the season is just shy of 50% complete and so, how much of the increase is real? Fortunately, that was recently answered.
What we want is the K/(PA-IBB-HBP)* line, and that says at 126 denominator units, 50% is the player's ability and 50% is the mean. Baker has 369 PAs, which means 74.5% of the 8.6 K/9 is him while the other 25.5% would be regression to the mean. The mean we want would be Baker's historical performance with however much regression is needed.
Taking the last three years, Baker has 2240 PAs, which means we need 94.7% of those three years and 5.3% league average. Baker's three year average for those three years is 7.5 K/9, which is reasonably close to the league average of 6.8. Let's just use 100% Baker. More rounding error.
Putting it all together means the best estimate for his talent right now is 8.3 K/9. Combined with the miniscule (0.09) increase in his BB/9 rate equals good things for his results. His xFIP so far is easily his best yet and his FIP is slightly better than from 2008. Finally, an ace!
* I'm calling these PAs from now on, despite it actually not being a plate appearance. He has one intentional walk and four hit batters, so it's basically rounding error anyway.
Clayton Richard vs Brian Duensing
Jake Peavy with White Sox: 3.3 fWAR for $25.067 million, with $21 million more guaranteed.
Clayton Richard with Padres: 2.8 fWAR for $0.746 million.
I hear Peavy did quite well in his last rehab start though.
The Padres rank dead last in runs scored per game. The Twins next stop, the Giants, rank second to last, a smidgen less than the Mariners. Both have good pitching, although it's helped one more than the other.
Playing well over last two weeks: check
Playing a weaker league: check
Time to take back first place move above .500!
Things are looking brighter. The Twins swept a mediocre team, won their first three game series against a better team, and did well against Texas.
Texas sends another lefty to the mound tonight, since it worked so well last night. Let's just not give up the game-tying homer this time, okay?
Pavano seems to be repeating his 2009. Unfortunately, the Twins are the recipients of the poor performance.
Duffy decided to return to baseball in 2010 and racked up some frequent flyer miles proving himself. Seven games with the Rafters (which B-R doesn't even list and I can't corroborate), two games with a rookie team (Arizona), two more with another rookie team (Idaho), three games at A+ (Delaware), and finally seven games at AA (Arkansas).
He averaged more than a strikeout per inning in the minors while walking three per nine innings. The strikeouts followed him, but the control lagged some. The number of free passes issued has monotonically decreased. I don't expect the Twins to change that.
I predicted a sweep last week. Sorry 'bout that.
The offense now merely looks bad instead of terrible with 3.7 runs/game in May. The defense is still terrible though.
And now begins the interleague preview.
The Twins have played the Diamondbacks three times. The most recent series was here in 2008, sweeping them. Livan out pitched Webb for the win in game 1. The Twins visited Arizona in 2005, winning the series 2-1, and again in 2004 with the same results. Their sole loss was a complete game by Randy Johnson. I guess Silva, Aaron Fultz, and Joe Roa weren't a good match against him. In 2003, the Twins lost the series 1-2, with the sole win coming from spot starter Santana. It was his final start for a month before he was permanently installed in the rotation.
Following the clear progression, I predict a sweep.
Number of teams to make the postseason since 1995 that started at 12-23: one. The previous team to do that was the Blue Jays in 1989. In 1981, the Royals made the postseason with a worse record after 35 games, but unless the players plan on striking for a third of the season, I don't think it's a good model. After that, just one more team* did it: the 1974 Pirates.
It doesn't look good my friends.
* Caveat: I only checked for the years since divisional play started.
Knuckleball pitchers may be ageless, but Wakefield's time machine finally broke. Nonetheless, I think he will have a long leash in today's game. Knowing the Twins' offense, they might not be able to score enough runs in a single inning to knock him out of the game and expose the tired bullpen. Instead, they will have time to perfect the single/walk, steal, sacrifice, sacrifice (fly) strategy.
The Red Sox used their entire bullpen for Wednesday's game, including Wakefield, for a 13 inning game in which the starter lasted 4.1 innings. Naturally, the starter in yesterday's game also lasted a mere four innings, but it was mop-up time after that and anyone important was saved for today's game. The Sox have yet to top .500 after failing two previous times. Hopefully the Twins don't notice the "Red" part and treat these Sox like their bleached brethren.