A young Carl Pavano, sans mustache.

Ron Gardenhire announced last week that Carl Pavano was going to be the Twins’ 2012 Opening Day Starter.  While Pavano has certainly earned the right to be the Opening Day Starter, the wiley old veteran is not likely to be confused as the ace of the Twins pitching staff.  Over the past four seasons Pavano has been slightly worse than league average, posting an average FIP- of 104, meaning that he was about 4% worse than an average Major League pitcher over that period of time.  Despite those numbers, Pavano has been one of the most consistent and reliable pitchers for the Minnesota Twins since coming over midseason in 2009 from the Cleveland Indians (traded for a PTBNL that turned out to be Minor Leaguer Yohan Pino, who has yet to even earn a September call up, and ended 2011 playing for the Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats in the Toronto Blue Jays organization).  In the 2009 year he split between Minnesota and Cleveland, and the two full years since then, Pavano has averaged 214 innings pitched, meaning that he’s thrown often (32+ starts), and averaged 6 and 2/3 innings per outing.  Pretty solid when you consider that the Twins have not had another 200 inning start of their own since Nick Blackburn and Scott Baker both hit 200 innings in 2009, throwing 205 2/3 and 200 innings respectively.  While Pavano is certainly not going to strike a ton of guys out (career 5.5 SO/9, and just 4.8 and 4.1 the previous two seasons), he should continue to give the Twins reliable innings and his pitch to contact style should result in a modest increase in his stats for 2012 thanks to an improved Twins defense behind him, especially up the middle.

Bill James, RotoChamp and the fans over at Fangraphs all project Carl Pavano to have another strong year, throwing 200+ innings.  James’ projection is the rosiest, estimating 226 innings pitched, a SO/9 just under 5 and 4.98, a BABIP of just .288 on balls put in play against him.  Pavano hasn’t had a full season BABIP that low since 2004 when he finished 6th in the Cy Young voting for the Marlins, so James is obviously giving both Jamey Carroll and Alexi Casilla the benefit of the doubt behind Pavano, and he is expecting Ben Revere and Denard Span to get to more than their fair share of balls in the gap to help Pavano create extra outs.   (more…)

*I had an interesting conversation with my significant other last night during which I lamented the inner turmoil I will almost certainly face when Cuddyer leaves and I will have to find a new favorite Minnesota Twin.  I’m an adult, and I’m agonizing over who my favorite Twins player is like a 9 year old boy.  Unlike many 9 year old boys (or girls) I’m not leaping straight to Joe Mauer or Justin Morneau as my favorite Twin, but they’re not out of the running.  I haven’t decided yet, as this will likely be a difficult decision to make, requiring more thought than I can afford to give it at the moment.  In the vein of saddness, here is a Michael Cuddyer Eulogy from Twins Fan From Afar.

With yet another busy week behind us, let us look again at the best reads of the week that was:

Here is all of the Josh Willingham signing coverage you are likely to need.  First, an excellent piece by Parker Hageman about how well suited Willingham’s offensive style is for Target Field.  In case you like being skeptical, here is Rob Neyer’s counter argument, which doesn’t say that Willingham isn’t going to be successful in Minnesota, rather that Target Field might not be such a bad place for power hitting righties who hit the ball to the opposite field.  However, it seems fairly evident that no matter where he is hitting the baseball Willimgham’s power will help boost the Twins offense in 2012.  Even my new favorite man crush, Dustin Parkes, weighs in on the Willingham signing, suggesting that it is probably a good deal, but might not be as good as Twins fans hope.  Finally, Twinkie Town weighs in with an estimation of the Twins’ 2012 payroll, including Willingham’s estimated 2012 salary, pushing the Twins dangerously close to their suggested $100 million dollar cap.  (more…)