Foolproof

The Twins have long been known around baseball for having one of the best relief corps, but over the past couple of years most Twins fans have watched as what was always one of our strengths had quickly turned into an Achilles heel.

Going into this season, the loss of our most consistent bullpen presence -- Joe Nathan -- left many of us wondering what kind of mess we'd be late in games once again. Arbitrarily, the role of "closer" was handed to Jon Rauch out of Spring Training, presumably because he had what was known as "closing experience", but most likely because he was just so tall he looked terrifying.

Amazingly enough, the Twins bullpen has made a resurgence this year to claim its once heralded place among the best in baseball. Going into today our bullpen is statistically dominant -- 2nd in MLB ERA with 3.11 behind only the Padres, 3rd in WHIP with (1.22) and a commanding 1st in fewest walks allowed: 82 -- the next closest being Tampa Bay with 88.

Despite all of our success in late game pitching this year, as a fanbase we've come to mistrust our team's bullpen management. The Save has become a statistic so meaningless and yet always sought after that we've thrown our most valuable trading piece away after the hope of gaining one or two more "saves". Players with numbers and track records screaming for recognition continue to sit in the minors while those we view as overrated or on the decline continued to pitch with the major league club.

But despite all this, our bullpen is in an amazing place -- and there's no way our manager or anyone else can mess this up.

The most consistent annual criticism of Gardy's bullpen management has been his reliance on having a closer and confining him to a role at the backend of the bullpen, despite the need to use him elsewhere. Understandably this is vexing and it was vexing for many years. But the only way that can be considered bad is when it's your best reliever is given this limited closer's role.

In 2010 any fan would be hard pressed to say who our best reliever is. I think even the team's management would have a hard time determining that. Without the presence of someone so statistically dominant in every category, our manager has just arbitrarily handed the role of closer over to someone with experience.

The only pitching category that Jon Rauch or now Matt Capps is more distinguished in than the rest of our bullpen is that of the Save. And the Save is a completely meaningless statistic.

Jose Mijares has the best ERA of any reliever on our team.

Matt Guerrier has the best WHIP.

Mahay and Mijares have the fewest free passes.

Capps only has one more strikeout than Jesse Crain.

Essentially the Twins have a bullpen full of quality pitchers, none of whom really have such overwhelming dominance that everyone in a room could point to them and say "Him. He's the closer. Put him in at the end of games." So while this might be a conundrum for someone like Gardy who has to have that anchor he only uses at the end of games, for fans that means that we'll always see someone reliable at the end of the game but that there are many other equally reliable options being trotted out there before him.

It's foolproof.

246?

It's taken me awhile to get everything together since coming back to New York and catching up on all the work that didn't go away while I was gone (sadly ... it never does). Unfortunately while I was too busy getting my life straightened away to focus on blogging, some very meaty topics have arisen:

1. Joe Mauer apparently turned down an initial offer from the Twins and the two sides are still far apart. I don't want to speculate on this too much, there's always a lot of back-and-forth in contracts and we'll see what happens, I don't think Smith and Pohlad are going to just throw in the towel and trade him away in exasperation. A deal will happen, I have to believe that.

2. Nick Blackburn just got guaranteed about $14 million dollars over 4 years. Good for him. Not necessarily the smartest move by the team, IMHO but I don't think it's awful. Just doesn't make a whole lot of business sense. I don't think that through arbitration he would make more than that, so we're basically just guaranteeing his price for the next four years (even if an injury were to occur). Still $14 million for four years of a reliable everyday type of pitcher is nothing to groan about.

3. And this is the real meat of the post: Joe Nathan's "significant" UCL tear. I knew in my gut that something bad happened when I was at City of Palms watching him pitch, he couldn't get the ball over the plate and eventually was pulled. I still kept hoping for the best, but alas, barring a miracle he will be out for this year and more than likely next year as well.

Besides losing our best reliever (and, arguably the best reliever in the American League), this has to be a horrible personal loss to Nathan himself and to the franchise for what this year would have meant for him. Nathan's career saves as a Twin stands at 246 -- a meager 8 saves shy of the team record set by Rick Aguilera. Which means if this hadn't happened, we probably would have been crowning a new Twins record holder by the end of April or beginning of May.

I'll make no secret that Aguilera is hands down my favorite baseball player ever, I grew up as a pitcher, fancied myself a closer, and so Aguilera was my hero. More than anything I want him to be enshrined forever in the Twins record books, but by this point I had come to terms with the fact that Nathan was going to be the face of Twins closers from here on out. It was inconceivable that he wouldn't be. Now, in my mind Aguilera's record will still stand for many more years.

I just don't see Nathan coming back from this if he has Tommy John surgery. Nathan is 35 years old and has already more than likely been on the decline of his career (though that decline would have been slow and steady and likely taken him through the end of his 4 year deal). We will be eating salary for 2010 and more than likely 2011 as well, and there's no telling what he'll be like pitching in 2012 when he starts the season at 37 years old coming off two years away from the game recovering from an arm injury.

The Twins will need to find an answer for the closer's role if they hope to compete, and these next three years would have been spent looking for Nathan's successor even if he hadn't had this injury; it's only speeding up the process for the team. When Nathan gets back in 2012 most likely, chances are we will have a new established closer and he will at best be a set-up man if he's still on the team and can pitch to some form resembling his old self.

Barring some team nostalgia to let him close out just enough 3-run lead games to get him in the Twins record books, I don't see how he's going to make up those 9 saves in a Twins uniform that he'd need in order to supplant Aguilera.

I don't mean to be all doom and gloom. And I'm horribly sad both for Nathan and for the dilemma the team finds itself in. Nathan is a great teammate and is an amazing closer so I would have been perfectly fine with him being the Twins' all time saves leader, but I'm skeptical it's going to ever happen. We'll find a good young player in their prime in these next two years who will lock down the closer's role ... and I don't want to imagine what will happen in these next two years if we don't.

The Forgotten Acquisition

Ok, slight exaggeration, perhaps he's not quite forgotten, but he's certainly the least hyped of the moves we've made this offseason:

Try to forget this kind of intensity!

Clay Condrey certainly isn't the most exciting name to see on our roster, but let's not forget that even with our bullpen's late-season resurgence, it's still been our Achilles heel for the past couple of years. Condrey's arm gives us a solidly reliable option that might just be the boost we need to return our 'pen to its rightful dominance.

First, let's take obvious upside: Clay Condrey is better than Bobby Keppel.

Don't get mad Bobby. Or should I call you Bob? (Thanks for the picture Betsy...)

Keppel just wasn't good. Despite lighting it up during his stint in Rochester and being met with some early success when he first came up (including not allowing a run in his first 10 innings over 4 games), Keppel had a sinker that just eventually didn't sink -- perhaps we could call it a stinker? If your survival as a pitcher comes from killing worms instead of missing bats, you had better be sure that you keep that ball constantly biting downward, but as soon as his pitches started to flatten out, he certainly didn't have the velocity or the guile to fool anyone in the majors. He became the de facto mop-up guy, and I'm sure when Gardy had to trot him out there in that topsy-turvy Game 163, the fans weren't the only ones praying fervently for him not to blow it.

So, essentially, Condrey not being Bobby Keppel is a plus.

And being buddies with Chris Coste is another plus, right Seth?

Any of the Phillies fans I know would go say that Condrey was a better pitcher out of their bullpen than Brad Lidge. But of course, when your ERA is a full 4.00 points lower than your closer, something's a little screwy. Of course, Lidge really can't pitch his way out of a paper bag with a hole in it, so saying that Condrey is better isn't much of a surprise.

How about if I took it a step further and said that Condrey can be, for all intents-and-purposes, better than Jon Rauch?

Not just because his stare of death scares Rauch's neck tattoos.

Yes, the Jon Rauch that became somewhat of our essential 7th inning, key situation guy. Rauch's WHIP and ERA were both higher than Condrey last year.

I don't want to anoint Condrey as the savior of our bullpen necessarily. And to be fair to Rauch, our tattooed giant's career numbers are certainly better than Condrey's. If you want to play devil's advocate, you could call Condrey's great season last year somewhat of an anomaly in a thoroughly mediocre 4-and-some years in the bigs. But mediocre would be a decided step up from what we saw mop up for us last year. And the Twins have a definite history of taking mediocre bullpen pitchers and turning them into diamonds in the rough.

If the members of the bullpen can play their parts, Condrey is the missing link we were waiting for. With Nathan, Mijares, Rauch, and Guerrier to be our crucial late inning pieces, that leaves Crain, Condrey, and a pitcher TBD (Duensing?) to be our low-leverage guys -- and all of those names certainly instill much more confidence than names like Keppel, Bass, Ayala, Henn, Cali, Humber, etc., etc.

So here's to hoping we've found our next diamond in the rough...

A Return To Dominance?

As Twins fans, we've come to realize a painful tendency these past couple of years that previously we had been blissfully unaware of. In baseball, I would argue that there's nothing more deflating or devastating than a blown save; to take that a step further, losing a game because of a shoddy pitching job in the bullpen is just flat out unacceptable.

Under the guidance of Rick Stelmaszek and Rick Anderson, the Twins bullpen was dominant since our team's resurgence from obscurity in the early part of this past decade. Thanks in large part to name like Eddie Guardado, Juan Rincon, JC Romero, Grant Balfour, and several other since-departed Twins.

One of the things I think we all took for granted was being able to see our name consistently up there with the Los Angeles Angeles as having one of the best records in baseball when ahead after 7 innings.

Several other bloggers have pointed out that the Twins pitching woes this past year are perhaps mistakenly put on the shoulders of our rotation. I'm not quite sure that's the case -- they weren't particularly worse than they've been in the past (with the notable exception of not having Santana of course), but our bullpen offered absolutely no relief -- no pun intended -- and our starters were naturally forced to go longer and perhaps face more trouble than previously accustomed.

That changes this year.

Beginning in August and September we saw the bullpen begin to turn a corner, and we have every reason to expect that this trend should continue, which in itself will be a huge boon to our rotation and to our collective heartbeats as the game gets into later innings.

Obviously there's our star:

Joe Nathan is about as good as they come. At the end of the season I think everyone was cringing when they saw him come in, but we can't put all the failure on his shoulders. Those were some heartbreaking losses, but for every blown save he had at least 10 times where he was a rockstar. First off, late inning save situations are naturally tense. And Nathan's tweaks and quirks and twitches are a little scary to watch too. But for 95% of the games he's put in, he'll dominate. He deserves the benefit of the doubt as a model of consistency.

Mijares & Guerrier are at the very least league-average relievers, and when they're on point they're much better. Mijares is a power arm from the leftside with the ability to make batters look silly. He has a bad tendency of pitching off the plate and letting batters coax favorable counts against him before either ultimately walking them or coming back with a piece of cheese that gets lifted into the seats. But those bad moments are the ones that stick out, and numbers don't lie: 2.34 ERA and 1.056 WHIP and a 60-23 K-BB ratio in 2009 is not something to scoff at. Guerrier is almost the opposite of Mijares. Guerrier relies less on power than control and guile. This past year his numbers look a little flukey, and so I was an advocate for trading him (and still am because I think his value will never be higher), but he's also been a model of consistency, as shown by the fact that he is always one of the league leaders in appearances out of the bullpen. That's actually one of the biggest fears: that he's so consistent that he'll be overused. No complaints from me if that's the worst thing I can say about him.

Jon Rauch is the kind of pitcher that I'm sure has batters quivering at the plate. He looks like he's either going to hit you in the face with a baseball or a beer bottle, and neither would be pleasant. Down the stretch he was one of the most clutch performers out of our 'pen, and if he has a good supporting cast around him he'll be able to keep slinging at full strength right into October. A big guy like that is a good asset on the mound (and he's not even the biggest guy in our system...)

Pat Neshek is unbelievably awesome. Not only is his delivery one of the coolest things to watch, but the fact that no one can seem to touch him makes it even better. The biggest question mark here is how effective he'll be coming back from injury. We should know this pretty quickly in spring training, but the thought is that sometime during the season he'll be able to step in and provide that electric spark that made him so nasty in his debut. I think we all know he can do that, the only question is how soon.

Clay Condrey makes Bobby Keppel look like the career minor leaguer we know he should be. One of the biggest concerns last year for me is how long we stuck with him when his sinker stopped sinking -- it seemed like he was holding blackmail over Gardy and Smith that allowed him a permanent place on the active roster. This year, that's changed. (What is a Ham Fighter?) Condrey was a key piece of the Phillies bullpen during the regular season, and I can't explain why he didn't see the light of day during the postseason, but it speaks more to the Phillies' depth than anything bad about Condrey. The one thing here is that we shouldn't expect him to come in and be the next Joe Nathan, but he's at least league average and should be a much better mop-up guy and able to keep the games from getting out of hand, which is more than I could say for Keppel.

Jesse Crain is a guy that everyone loves to hate this offseason. I think that's more in part for the fact that he struggled at the beginning of the season and kept getting trotted out there. Thankfully the Twins wised up and let him fix things in the minors, and in the second half of the season he was amazing. He had a 2.91 ERA, 1.206 WHIP, and a 30-15 K-BB ratio and he generally seemed a lot more confident. The biggest problem is that we're paying through the nose for him, but that's more the fact that we signed him to a stupid contract than that he's a bad pitcher. If he's the weakest link in our pen, it's a pretty strong pen.

Other options? We have plenty. The Duensing/Perkins/Liriano/Manship/Swarzak 5-headed monster will undoubtedly see some time in the 'pen, and it's not because they can't cut it in a rotation but just because we have too many people logjamming! This in fact makes it hard for some of our best prospects, who are currently idling away in Rochester and will sadly probably start the year back there. The one that I'd like to see break camp with the Twins but fully expect to be a fresh, lights-out, sparkplug down the stretch: Anthony Slama.

He was named the Twins minor league pitcher of the year in '08 when he dominated the FSL with Fort Meyers. He had a 1.01 ERA with a 0.944 WHIP and a 110-24 K-BB ratio. He's calmed down a little bit since then but still continues to be the best option out of the pen in each stop that he makes in our system.

In summary? Despite getting rid of Boof Bonser and not retaining Keppel or Mahay, the Twins will have a plethora of serviceable arms to stock our pen. And if anyone is ineffective or gets injured, there should be plenty of options to remedy the situation with. Not only will this shore up what's been an Achilles heel for the Twins the past couple of years, but it will undoubtedly make our rotation better as they'll be able to hand off the ball with more confidence.

This is our bullpen's return to dominance. And it's been much needed.

A Piece the Twins SHOULD Trade

By now, enough other bloggers have expounded on the fact that the Twins will probably only have around $20 million dollars or so at most to spend this offseason, and that will have to cover any restructuring of Joe Mauer's contract and plug all the leaks that have sprung in the infield and rotation. This could be a tall task for a Twins front office that hasn't displayed much in the way of creativity over its short tenure.

Consequently, one of the off-season options we could potentially expect to see again would be a significant trade. Twins Fix poses Jason Kubel as a potential tradable asset in a very well-thought out article. While I'd have to agree that if Kubel were able to net us a gold-mine, we should be willing to part with him, I'm not sure if he's the most likely candidate.

Kubel's position on our offense has been invaluable. And we have him at a relative bargain for at least the next two years if the Twins pick up their option (and I don't see how they wouldn't). After endless seasons of not having much power in the middle of our lineup, Kubel's presence has solidified a punch that I don't think we would be able to easily replace for a decent value on the free agent market or in our farm system. Without him, our potent lineup takes a big knock.

I'd like to pose that the Twins should deal from an area where they have overabundance. That area, believe it or not, is in our bullpen.

The Twins are going to have a massive group of pitchers lining up for a spot in their bullpen this year, and one area that practically every team in the majors is always looking to address (and always willing to overpay for) is in the bullpen.

Don't scoff. It's true that this past offseason, and up until our acquisition of Jon Rauch and Ron Mahay at the waiver deadline, the bullpen was a major achilles heel for our team as well. But with all the major players from this last year returning, in addition to Boof Bonser, Pat Neshek, and several people knocking on the door in Rochester, we might just have too few spots for all the available arms.

I am not advocating trading Joe Nathan.

Joe Nathan is one of the best closers in baseball, and no untimely misfortune in a high-pressure series against the Yankees will convince me otherwise. Give me one relief pitcher I want to see trot out of a bullpen in a close game and 5 out of 5 times I'll take Nathan.

I think we need to trade Matt Guerrier.

I love Guerrier. I think Guerrier is a quality bullpen arm and has been the second most reliable person out of our pen the past few years. I also think he performed well over his head this past year, and his value will never be higher.

The old adage is that it's better to trade a player too soon than too late. The ideal would to be trading that player right after they've peaked. Matt Guerrier is 31, his prime is just behind him, and he just posted a career year, with a 2.36 ERA and a 0.969 WHIP (well below his 6-year career numbers of a 3.41 ERA and 1.269 WHIP). He also was tied with Jeremy Affeldt for the most "Holds" (a meaningless stat but a stat nonetheless) with 33 on the season, 5 more than the next best of the set-up men.

I think Guerrier still has several solid years as a set-up man, but I would be willing to wager almost anything he doesn't post numbers like these again. (See Erin's article at Plunking Gomez for more on Guerrier's sustainability.)

Consider for a minute that next year we will have 6-7 spots open in the bullpen. You can assume that Joe Nathan, Jose Mijares and Jon Rauch will occupy 3 of those spots. Unless Jesse Crain is non-tendered, he is also a lock, and the way he pitched since coming back from his demotion to Rochester I have to believe that Crain will remain on our team. As frustrating as he's been, he's not been all that bad of a relief pitcher compared to many others.

I believe that that both Neshek and Bonser will be members of the bullpen as well. And between Liriano, Perkins, and Duensing, only one of them will likely make the rotation while the other two will either be traded or moved to the bullpen.

That's at least 7 good-to-serviceable arms in the pen, not counting Guerrier's. Top that with the fact that Gardenhire is strongly pushing to bring Mahay back under contract, and we have those vaunted prospects of Rob Delaney and Anthony Slama waiting for their shot down in Rochester. We have too many options!

Guerrier is entering his third year of arbitration after making nearly $1.5M in '09. In 2011 he'll hit free agency and the Twins will certainly not retain him. By all means the Twins should see how much somebody would be willing to overpay in a trade.

Perhaps the Angels or Dodgers, who both have suffered this past post-season from ineffective bullpens? Or perhaps Guerrier could be packaged with someone like Delmon Young or Glen Perkins to make a sweeter offer for an infielder like JJ Hardy or Yunel Escobar?

Truth be told, I don't know what kind of package we could get in return for one year of Guerrier, but I imagine that there are many teams looking for a solid reliever, and Guerrier is coming off his best year while the Twins suddenly find themselves with a surplus of bullpen arms for 2010. Some things just make sense.

You too can pretend to dream up brilliant moves and imagine you're the Twins GM, and the TwinsCentric Offseason GM Handbook is not only a useful tool for your musings, but it is packed with enough information to get you through the lonely winter months of the offseason. And it's only $9.95! That's a real deal, especially considering all the free blogging that John Bonnes, Seth Stohs, Parker Hageman, and Nick Nelson have supplied us with on a daily basis.

Anyway, that's all for now. Be sure to check back later this week. I'll be rejoining Jack Steal on his podcast Wednesday night for another go-round, and on Friday I'll be continuing my Twins Bloggers: Get to Know 'Em segment focusing on Betsy of For the Love of the Game!

E is for Elimination

September is the time of year when teams who are actually in contention begin watching their Elimination Number to find out when they clinch the division. Or, it could also be the number you watch slowly shrink as you shuffle off into oblivion until spring comes again.

I've been ignoring this number, because instead I've had the optimism to focus on the "Games behind" stat. Which currently sits at 7 as I write this and if Detroit stays ahead of Kansas City, it will be 7.5, if they lose, it will be 6.5. Regardless, it's been growing.

Our E number stands at 19. For some reason, 19 games until elimination is a much more palatable number for me to comprehend than 7 games behind. It seems as if there's more season left to play, and that's always a good thing in my book (although my roommate has already turned his attention to football).

-----

What little I caught of the game tonight due to an incredibly busy workload today, shows me that: A) completely resting Joe Mauer and starting Mike Redmond = white flag, B) Jose Morales and his great pinch-hitting performances (even if they end in an out he battles like a rock star) would be much more useful if they appeared several times a game, thus, again, why Redmond? and C) I think letting Justin Huber -- and hopefully Valencia at some point -- get some swings would actually make me more excited to watch the games than seeing our current team flail about. Maybe playing some of our youngsters wouldn't be giving up? Look at what the infusion of new blood did to give Cleveland somewhat of a boost?

For some reason I got the Toronto broadcast on my MLB Extra Innings package, and for those of you listening to Dick & Bert, you missed some sincere adoration of Joe Mauer's ability and praise for Jose Mijares and what a gem he's been for our bullpen. I tend to agree. In fact, I feel more comfortable with Mijares out there than Guerrier.

Honestly though, looking at their numbers, Guerrier has been more effective than Mijares recently. Let's take a look at two splits in particular that emphasize this:

1st half vs. 2nd half

A lot of people argue that Gardy has been running Guerrier into the ground and he wears down in the second half of the season. Well, in the 1st half, batters were hitting 1.99 against him in 159 plate appearances, and he posted a 3.38 SO/BB ration. And, although the season isn't over, he has posted an ever-so-slighty higher BAA of .204 in 99 plate appearances -- although his SO/BB ratio has also increased to 5.67. Oddly enough, even with a slightly elevated BAA in the 2nd half so far, it's still lower than Mijares.

Mijares posted a .217 BAA in the 1st half, and it dropped down to .213 in the 2nd half, which is quite good, but Guerrier's been even better! Similarly, his SO/BB ratio has been lower than Guerrier's in both halves, as it was 1.79 in the first half and has increased to 3.00 now.

Platoon Lefties vs. Righties

Mijares seems most adequately suited as the lefty specialist, and, true to form, he's held lefties to a .227 BAA and 2.50 SO/BB ratio in 94 plate appearances, and against righties it's elevated to .282BAA and his SO/BB ratio drops to 1.91 in 119 plate appearances.

But wait just a second ... Guerrier is actually more effective against lefties and righties -- this despite being a right handed pitcher and probably being the assumed counterpart of a "righty specialist" to Mijares. Guerrier boasts a .221 BAA and a 4.00 SO/BB ratio in 155 plate appearances against righties, but his numbers against lefties are actually better. He's posted a .170 BAA, exactly the same SO/BB ratio, and has done this over 103 plate appearances.

All this just makes me wonder why I trust Mijares more than Guerrier? Perhaps it's because I've simply seen Guerrier's mistakes in person more than I have of Mijares. Or that squat lefties who look like Rich Garces just make me feel giddy.

Don't get me wrong, I think they're both excellent weapons in the bullpen. The thing that Mijares has on Guerrier though, is age. We can probably expect Mijares to keep getting better as he reaches his prime, and we've probably been witnessing Guerrier's best years. I stick by a comments dialogue I had with Erin over at Plunking Gomez awhile back, that we might be wise to sell high on Guerrier this offseason as we could have a crowded bullpen and his dominance might bring us a nice return due to the shortage of reliable bullpen arms. It sounds strange, but if you think about it, it makes sense.

Assuming we carry 6-7 relievers, we can wager that Nathan, Mijares, and Rauch are locks. Crain will very probably come back. Neshek will hopefully be back, but even if he isn't, Bonser will probably net a bullpen role. You still have to consider Slama, Delaney, and probably Gabino. And if we land a veteran starter or not, we will most likely have a long relief man in the form of Manship, Duensing, Swarzak or maybe Perkins. Even though we've considered our bullpen a weakpoint for awhile now, Guerrier might just be expendable enough to still bring us a decent package that if Smith gets a good offer he should probably act.

Just a thought...

Sad fact: Toronto announcers during the game bemoaned the poor state of the Pirates -- they are the only professional sports team in North America to endure 17 straight losing seasons. Ouch. At least Twins fans can take heart that we haven't reached that level of despair.

Around the blogosphere: If you haven't seen k-bro's pledge yet, check it out and try to pledge along! Over the Baggy has some more assurance on why we shouldn't worry too much about Nathan. And Twins Fix has some great analysis of why Gomez is the better option than Delmon Young.