Archive for July, 2010

I guess I can’t find a source that says it’s official yet, but I’ll go with it edit: official now, per everybody. Tonight Bill Smith took his biggest trade chip, arguably the best catching prospect in the minor leagues (and I mean true catching prospect, Yankees fans) and turned him into a reliever with one more year of arbitration left. Let’s read that again: the 58th best prospect in the game according to Baseball America, a guy who is a lock to stay behind the plate, is going for a reliever who had a 4.90 FIP last year. I haven’t [...]

Going 11-14 with 7 RBI and a monster homer is a pretty good series for Joe Mauer. Except that effort was just turned in by rookie 3B Danny Valencia. Although Valencia’s minor league numbers are uninspiring (.298/.353/.469) he has hit .400/.449/.511 since coming to the big club. Valencia’s BABIP is a sky high .450 right now, and while you don’t have to be a sabermetrician to know that is coming down, it will be interesting to see how far it falls. Valencia hasn’t showed much power as a major leaguer (though after his current hot streak a fourth of his [...]

Well, with Dan Haren off the table it’s looking a lot less likely that the Twins are going to make any significant trades at the deadline, so all of my work on this series might be in vain (or maybe not, if they are indeed close to a trade with the Blue Jays). Whatever, I put three days of my life into this thing and I’m going to finish it (in case you missed them, parts one and two). In this part, I am going look at the farm system, and at least attempt to determine the trade value of [...]

In the second part of my three-part series on trade value, I am going to assess the position players, though I’m doing things a little differently this time. Instead of ranking every single position player on the active roster, I pretty much stuck to the regulars. Non-prospects like Alexi Casilla, Jason Repko, and Drew Butera might be useful as bench players, but they aren’t going to fetch anything of value in a trade. While the position players on the whole have been above-average, they have considerably less trade value than the pitchers. The Twins just don’t have many position players [...]

With the trade deadline approaching, I decided to try and figure out the trade value of each player on the active roster. Since I ended up writing something close to 10,000 words, I thought it might be better to break this thing up into three parts: first the pitching staff, then the position players, and then the prospects most frequently mentioned in trade rumors. I am mostly trying to determine the market value of each player, not his overall likelihood of being dealt (though I did make note of that). After the jump, the pitchers ranked in order of trade [...]

When Slama was called up to the major leagues, twitter reaction was amazingly in favor of it (as was I) and the move was heralded by some as a savior to the season. Likewise, there was much celebrating over the news that Nick Blackburn was moving to the bullpen. I had seen Slama pitch only once (in the Future’s Game), so of course I was eager to see him today (especially after viewing his minor league stats). I knew that Slama’s stuff wasn’t elite,  but I was still disappointed. After looking at his pitch f/x for today’s game, I had [...]

Ok, so the starting rotation, outside of brilliant performances by Francisco Liriano and Carl Pavano, is a little bit of a mess right now. Scott Baker has put forth at least a league-average effort (and his peripherals suggest he is pitching much better than that), but he might be suffering from elbow inflammation. Kevin Slowey has been disappointing, and Nick Blackburn has been throwing batting practice almost every single start. While the Twins are searching for outside help, they are preparing to slide Brian Duensing into the rotation. That’s probably a good idea. Duensing isn’t really anything special, so Twins [...]

The Twins have (finally) promoted righty Anthony Slama from AAA Rochester, and sent Burnett down to make room. To make room for Slama on the 40 man roster, the Twins transferred Clay Condrey to the 60 day DL. Slama has a 1.58 ERA and 0.97 WHIP this year for Rochester and has a 31.3% strikeout rate. Although he doesn’t have the best stuff, Slama certainly deserved a shot long before now. I don’t think he’ll be an ace out of the pen or anything, but I do think that despite his lack of dazzling stuff his feel for pitching will [...]

(photo credit: yardbarker.com) Yesterday, I looked at Kevin Slowey’s season and concluded that, despite being a fly-ball pitcher with a poor outfield defense behind him, the defense wasn’t entirely to blame for his struggles. Slowey just isn’t pitching all that well, though he’s still around league-average and his performance isn’t bad for a fourth starter. Fellow fly-ball pitcher Scott Baker, on the other hand, is a completely different story. He’s actually pitching better than his 4.87 ERA would indicate and, if anything, is completely underrated as a starter. Dave Gobliewski of Fangraphs wrote an excellent post on Baker’s season right [...]

It’s an understatement to say that Kevin Slowey is having a rough year. After last night’s loss to the White Sox, Slowey is posting a thoroughly mediocre 4.94 ERA, 4.40 FIP, and 4.60 xFIP. For the fifth time this year, he failed to make it past the fourth inning, and he’s pitched more than six innings in just seven of his eighteen starts. Which is strange, because, unlike fellow struggling starter Nick Blackburn, Slowey really isn’t getting hit all that hard. His 21.4% line drive rate is right around his 20.2% career average. He has been giving up a lot [...]