Do yourself a favor and turn off the television when Miguel Cabrera steps to the plate tonight. Photo bySteven Bisig-US PRESSWIRE

The Matchup:

Wednesday, May 16, 6:05 p.m. CDT: RHP Nick Blackburn vs. RHP Rick Porcello

Thursday, May 17, 12:05 p.m. CDT: RHP P.J. Walters vs. RHP Doug Fister

Porcello can beat the Twins – he holds a 2.86 ERA in 12 career starts. But the Twins might have a little offensive success if they get the first two hitters on. Denard Span is hitting .364 in 22 at bats, and Jamey Carroll is hitting .400 in 10 at bats versus Porcello. Fister also owns a nice ERA against the Twins (3.24), but since he spent much of his career with the weak-hitting Mariners, his record versus Minnesota is just 1-4. Span can hit Fister as well, with a 1.071 OPS in 14 plate appearances.

Plenty of Tigers have good lines against Blackburn, so we won’t list them all here. But slugger Miguel Cabrera has had the most success, with a .448/.484/.793 slash line in 31 PAs. Walters has only faced the Tigers once in his career. Back on June 16, 2009, while he was with the Cardinals, Walters tossed two innings versus Detroit. The first batter he faced was Cabrera, who hit a home run. The rest of the outing was scoreless, and the Cards won 11-2.

The Weather:

Highs will hover near 70 both days, and rain is possible, but not likely.

The Head to Head:

Since 1901, the Detroit franchise has done well against the Washington/Minnesota franchise. Detroit holds a 1,055-971 head to head advantage. Since the Twins were born in 1961, things have been much brighter. Among Minnesota vs. Detroit matchups, the Twins have 383 wins to the Tigers’ 339, including some key victories with playoff implications. The Twins eliminated the Tigers in the 1987 ALCS, and they also beat them in Game 163 in 2009.

Last year, though, the Tigers severely pummeled the Twins, winning 14 of 18. Detroit currently rides a three game win streak against the Twins.

The Story:

Nearly a quarter of the way through the season, the Twins have not yet played a game against their division rival (excepting a Spring Training matchup which the Twins won 7-3). The Tigers, who have fallen slightly behind division leader Cleveland, are no doubt eager to face the AL Central’s weakest team.

If nothing else, at least one good thing will happen in this series: the Twins get Justin Morneau back. The oft-injured slugger missed the minimum 15 days after hitting the DL with a sore wrist. Chris Parmelee, who had been struggling, was sent to Rochester to make room for Morneau.

Aside from Morneau’s return, the picture looks quite bleak for the Twins. They lost a heartbreaker Monday night when closer Matt Capps surrendered a run after an impressive rally tied the score, and they failed to put a run across versus 38 year old wonder Derek Lowe Tuesday afternoon. In both games, the starting pitching was as unreliable as it has been all season long. No Twins pitcher with more than three starts this season has an ERA under 5.14. Four of them have put up ERAs over 6.50. Extreme numbers like those are not usually seen outside the very early stages of a season, but the Twins have proven the ability to maintain awful pitching over large sample sizes.

Meanwhile, Detroit is not hitting as well as one might expect. Despite the addition of super-slugger Prince Fielder, the team is just ninth in the AL in OPS (.704) heading into Tuesday. That mark is still 39 points above the Twins, but far from the performance one would expect from a contending team that relies on its bats. On the mound, the Tigers are just 10th in the AL in pitching with a 4.43 ERA. They are tied for the league lead in strikeouts per nine innings, though, with 8.3. The Twins will probably struggle to put balls in play the next two days.

This will be the first time all year the Twins face former teammate Delmon Young. They saw him last year, but that was before he was accused of a hate crime in a truly embarassing incident last month. Young would undoubtedly face some boos from the crowd if this game were held in Minnesota. As it is, the Tiger fans may make some unpleasant noises of their own when Young bats. In addition to his reprehensible off-field behavior, Young is hitting just .234/.297/.318.

The Bottom Line:

Don’t worry about how many games the Twins will win. Just be grateful they managed to avoid Justin Verlander this series. They made Lowe look like a Hall of Famer yesterday, so it’s scary to think what an actual ace could do to this lineup.

The success rate seemed depressing, but it got me wondering: how do those number compare to other players, like college hitters, high school hitters, and high school pitchers? Selecting a college pitcher may be risky, but is it any riskier than taking a different type of player? To answer these questions, I conducted my own research, using data from Baseball Reference as a guide.

It's tempting to draft a college pitcher like Stanford's Mark Appel. But is that the smart choice? Photo by Jake Roth-US PRESSWIRE

Methodology/Data

My data set consisted of all first round selections (not counting supplemental round picks) from 1995 through 2008. I chose 1995 as a starting point because that was the year after the big strike, and thus a sort of beginning point for modern baseball. I ended in 2008 because that is the last year in which most of the first round draft picks have appeared in the Major Leagues (the Twins’ Aaron Hicks notwithstanding). The data are current as of May 1, 2012, which was the day I compiled all of this information. Players who did not sign and later re-entered the draft (such as J.D. Drew and Aaron Crow) were only counted the second time they were drafted.

Results

Let’s start with the most basic measure of a succesful draft pick. We can’t have the same expectations for every player, but we can probably agree that a pick is a failure if the player never makes it to the Major Leagues. Here are the rates of success for each type of player drafted:

If you judge only by the percentage of players who reach the Big Leagues, it seems a college hitter is the way to go. The worst type of player to pick is a high school pitcher; those players have about even odds of never making it to the Show at all.

Another variable to consider is the amount of time it takes a player to make it to the Majors. A team like the Twins is in need of help ASAP. They will not want to wait four or five seasons for their top pick to help.

This chart shows that the largest number of college hitters and pitchers can expect to make it to the Majors in the second season after they are drafted (for example, a player drafted in 2006 might have debuted in 2008). If they don’t make it by year four, they are probably not going to make it at all. High school players are more variable. The largest number is in the Big Leagues by the fourth season after the draft, but some take six seasons or more to make it (think about Trevor Plouffe, who was drafted out of high school in 2004 and did not play in MLB at all before 2010). Thus, if you want a player to make a quick impact, a college hitter is again the best route to go. It makes sense that college players make it to the Majors about two years quicker than high school players, since college guys have essentially received two to three extra years of minor league experience at the expense of their schools.

But just making it to the Major Leagues is not enough. After all, Adam Johnson was the number two overall pick for the Twins back in 2000, and after he made it to MLB he contributed just 26 (awful) innings. How many of these draftees actually become succesful?

Again, college hitters lead the pack. If you want a player who is eventually going to become an All Star or a guy who will bring a lot of Wins Above Replacement over time, pick a college hitter. One in every five college hitters drafted in the first round gets selected to an All Star team at some point in his career. Interestingly, though, high school pitchers make up some ground here. They take a long time to get to the Majors, if they make it at all, but the ones that do have a good chance of becoming stars. If you draft a high school pitcher, there’s about a one in six chance he’ll be an All Star.

One more note on succesful players. I won’t include a table here, since the numbers are so low, but if you count players winning a Cy Young and/or MVP award, high school pitchers again take the prize. Roy Halladay, Zach Greinke, CC Sabathia, and Clayton Kershaw all won the Cy, compared to three college pitchers: Justin Verlander, Tim Lincecum, and Barry Zito. Two high school hitters have won an MVP (Joe Mauer and Josh Hamilton). Despite all the success that first round college hitters have had in every other aspect of this study, only one of them – Ryan Braun – has won an MVP.

Conclusion

Drafting a baseball player is like betting on a horse. Even if you do your research and make an intelligent choice, there is still a very good chance that you’ll end up with a loser. Most picks, even high ones, do not go on to grace the covers of sports magazines and video games.

That said, the safest pick in the first round is a college hitter. If you draft a college hitter in the first round, that player will almost certainly reach the Big Leagues, and he’ll probably do it relatively quickly. Once he does, there’s a good chance that he will become a strong contributor to the team. The next safest choice is a college pitcher, though the flame-out rate for these players is a lot higher than their offensively-gifted counterparts.

College players in general are much safer bets than high school players, probably because they’ve had two or three extra years of vetting. High school pitchers, who are still young and untested, are the worst overall. But if a team is willing to invest a lot of time (and money) to coach the right high school pitcher along, there is a small chance they might end up with a superstar.

Time would seem to be a luxury the Twins do not have. Back when they were drafting at the end of the first round, they might have done well to nab a few high school pitchers and turn them into projects. But now there is a sense of urgency as the team faces a second consecutive awful season. If Minnesota wants to avoid a 90′s style descent into irrelevance, they need to start rebuilding this team immediately. Given the fact that the current hitters and pitchers are both terrible, they probably cannot go wrong taking either one. But a college player would probably provide a more immediate boost to team morale and performance.

Former Twin Michael Cuddyer won't take part in this series, but this picture was too good to pass up. Photo by David Richard-US PRESSWIRE

The Matchups:

Monday, May 14, 7:10 p.m. CDT: RHP Carl Pavano vs. RHP Jeanmar Gomez

Tuesday, May 15, 12:10 p.m. CDT: RHP Jason Marquis vs. RHP Derek Lowe

Seemingly every series so far has featured at least one matchup that looks incredibly lopsided on paper. This series has one too, a rare Tuesday afternoon contest in which Marquis (6.26 ERA) faces Lowe (2.47). But there is a silver lining for the Twins. They are 4-1 against Lowe all time, and he has a 5.97 ERA in 63 innings against our local team. Joe Mauer is 6 for 10 against him.

Pavano absolutely owns Asdrubal Cabrera, who has just a .038/.133/.038 line in 30 PAs against the Twins’ pitcher. Pavano has been successful against the Tribe in general, holding a 2.83 ERA in 70 innings. Gomez has only made 26 starts in his career, but three have been against Minnesota (plus one relief appearance). The Twins have tagged him for 24 hits, eight walks, and 12 runs in 20.2 innings.

The Weather:

It’s a great time for baseball, weather-wise. Highs will hit the low 80s both days, which means it will still be nice and warm Monday night, and it will just be warming up on Tuesday. There is zero chance of rain either day, and only a few little clouds in front of the picture of the sun that Weather.com showed for Tuesday.

The Head to Head:

These are both original American League franchises, so this rivalry dates all the way back to 1901. The Indians have a big edge in the all-time series, with 1,080 wins compared to just 943 for the Washington Senators/Minnesota Twins. Since the move to Minnesota in 1961, the Twins have done a bit better, going 349-371. At home in Minnesota, the Twins are actually over .500 with a 194-167 record.

Cleveland won 11 of the 18 games between the two clubs in 2011, ending a three year streak of Twins’ dominance. At one point last year, the Indians had an eight game winning streak against the Twins, but that snapped with a 6-4 Twins victory last September 25th.

The Story:

2012 is starting to look a lot like 2011. For most of the early part of that season, the Twins were well under .500, but the rest of the division struggled so mightily that they failed to earn any real separation in the standings. We’ve reached mid-May, and though the Twins’ winning percentage is under .300, they are only eight games back from the Tribe. As ludicrous as it sounds, they could pull within six of first place if they somehow manage to sweep this series.

They’ll need pitching to accomplish that. Despite strong starts from P.J. Walters and Scott Diamond, Minnesota is still suffering for starters. After being a rock of stability the last two seasons, Pavano has looked weak in his recent starts. His fastball has lost significant velocity, and he has to try to win on sheer cunning and guile (with help from his defense as well). Marquis has surrendered nine walks and 11 hits in 10 innings pitched this month. Base runners seem to be an every-inning occurrence.

Despite the Twins’ obvious pitching struggles, don’t expect too much hitting in these two games. The Twins had a lowly .236 team batting average entering play Sunday, and the Indians were not a lot better at .245. Cleveland has done a much better job converting hits into runs, though. They have scored 147 runs compared to the Twins’ league-worst 116.

A week ago, after sweeping a doubleheader against the White Sox, the Indians were in a pretty solid position. Since then they have lost five of six, and they visit the Twins on a three game losing streak, thanks to the Red Sox. The Twins have had no shortage of chances to beat up on slumping opponents this year, but they have opted to pass on all of them so far. Instead, Minnesota has become something of a slump-buster, which means the Indians are probably landing in Minnesota at exactly the right time.

The Other Side:

For some Indian-centric commentary, we turn to Lewie Pollis, editor and very talented writer for Wahoo’s on First. Here are his answers to three big questions:

1. The Indians seem to be the perfect model of a team that goes through bad stretches and rebuilds itself. After being very succesful in the ’90s, they hit a rough stretch. Then they rebuilt and reached the ALCS by 2007, only to collapse again. But this year they seem to have risen from the ashes again. Can Twins fans take any consolation from the Indians’ real-life story? Or would we be better off hoping for a real-life version of the movie “Major League” to happen in Minnesota?

LP:  The crowning achievement of Mark Shapiro’s tenure as GM was the unparalleled speed with which he rebuilt the team. The fire sale started in 2002, but by 2005 the Indians were back winning 93 games. The honeymoon didn’t last very long (rebuilding started again in 2008) and it’s taken a little longer to get back to contention this time around, but Shapiro showed that you can build a team from scratch in a hurry.

The Bottom Line:

As mentioned above, a sweep would pull the Twins within six, but that seems impossible given the Marquis vs. Lowe matchup on Tuesday. Let’s hope for a split.