MLB.com talks about the Twins

Yesterday, MLB.com decided to make a nice little video of Vinny Micucci, Harold Reynolds, and Hal Bodley talking about our very own Minnesota Twins. I'm always open to hear what other people have to say about my team in case I might learn something new. You figure MLB.com hired analysts would be able to teach me something about my team, but apparently I'm going to have to append some comments onto their transcript and hope that they can learn something from me here.

Vinny: Francisco Liriano makes his return to that Twins lineup, even when he was out it was obvious how much he'd be missed in that rotation, but now that he's back, the Twins see exactly why.
Harold: Well, he was fantastic, you know, he had an electric slider, his fastball looked like it was back..

Not exactly, Harold. Yeah, his slider still looked solid. But it also lost a lot of movement and velocity as the game went on, which is part of the reason he didn't have a strikeout in the last 2 1/3 innings he pitched. Also, saying his fastball looks like it was "back" means it's back to where it was, which it obviously wasn't. It was still solid, but it wasn't the 96-98 fastball he used to have. He also had some control issues which have to be cleared up before you can start thinking "ace" again. Even then, the only way Liriano gets back into "ace" form is if he gets Cliff Lee's command (Mephistopheles's fastball), which he is nowhere close to now. That's not to say he can't still be a solid 2-3 starter, but he's not an ace again yet.

Vinny: Hal, that this Twins team is in first place at this point in the season, is that surprising to you?
Hal: I think it really is, but they keep pushing the right buttons, they keep doing the right things.

Top notch analysis here. Hal went on to talk about how our pitching staff is solid and young, which is nice to know, but that doesn't explain what "pushing the right buttons" and "doing the right things" are. Essentially, Hal tried to explain the Twins success and came up with "hell if I know how they're doing it," which in all honesty, is a pretty good answer.

Vinny: They seemingly also do it with some great hitting as well too ... Ultimately the lineup doesn't have some of the names that some of the other teams in the AL do, yet they're still able to produce.
Harold: Well the thing that I like is Gardenhire takes what he has and works with it ... they use the team speed, and then they move the man over, they did the little things they have to do. They pick a certain type of player they want, and then they play a certain style...

Yes, thankfully we have Gardy pulling the strings! Don't get me wrong, I think Gardy's a great character and the players seem to like him, but he gave Gomez over 400 PAs at leadoff this year. It was obvious out of training camp Gomez wasn't ready and should start the year in AAA, and just became even more obvious as the year went on. You do realize that Gomez, while leading off, had 97 strikeouts in 409 PAs? And an OBP of .281? That's atrocious for a leadoff hitter. Not only that, but Gardy refuses to mess with the lineup enough that when Redmond starts in place of Mauer, Redmond will bat third because Gardy "doesn't want to mess with the lineup."

The biggest reason the Twins are in first place is pretty simple: luck. Two forms of luck, actually. First, anybody who watches the Twins games has heard Bert tout the fact that the Twins have the highest team batting average with runners in scoring position. He calls it "clutch", but as analysis has shown, it's just luck.

(If you need a BP account to read this and don't have one, I'll quote a small part of it here that capture's the gist of the article:

" You can see this yourself if you like, and you don't need to understand correlations to do it. Pick any five players at random, and check out their splits for the last few seasons (you can do this fairly easily at any of the major sports portals). You'll find that their statistics from year to year in the various clutch situations (RISP, late-inning pressure, September) can vary widely, with no rhyme or reason to the splits. But over a large enough sample, players will hit in given situations pretty much as they do overall. ")

For some more evidence, the Twins are 7th in the majors in runs scored, but are just 16th in MLV with a barely positive value of 2.3. Although not TECHNICALLY what this value means, it essentially says that the Twins have a league average lineup, not the 7th best lineup in the majors. The reason they've scored as many runs as they have is simply the high BA with RISP, which, as I said earlier, is plainly luck.

Not only have the Twins gotten lucky with how they've scored runs, but they've gotten lucky with which games they've scored runs. Ordering the teams by third order wins and losses, the Twins are third in the division. Third order wins and losses are the expected wins and losses a team will have given the equivalent runs scored and allowed by each team, adjusted for the quality of their opponent's pitching, defense, and offense.

So what is the Twins' secret? Luck. Lots and lots of beautiful, delightful luck. The addition of Liriano in place of Livan obviously improves the Twins chances of making the playoffs this year, but the only way they will is if they continue to get lucky.