Justin Morneau and the Twins Offense

Over the last two seasons Justin Morneau has been one of the best run roducers in the American League with 62 HR and 219 RBI. What makes this fact more impressive is that on the surface he has been producing all those runs on a team who does not possess one of the elite AL offenses. It would seem intuitive to conclude that Morneau has to be more efficient in the opportunities that he gets, since the more potent offenses are going to yield more opportunities for hitters in their lineups. While there may be some truth to that way of thinking, it's actually Morneau's ability to go deep that is keeping him on the RBI leaderboard this season, not his performance with runners on base.

A simple way to approximate the chances a hitter gets to drive in baserunners is baserunners per PA, which is shown in the table below for the top 5 AL hitters in Runners Driven In (RDI = RBI-HR).

Player	RDI	BR	BR/PA
M. Ordonez	72	346	0.77
A. Rodriguez	68	356	0.76
V. Guerrero	67	324	0.74
J. Morneau	61	333	0.77
V. Martinez	61	296	0.70

Morneau is in the middle of the pack here, so at first glance it doesn't seem he's suffering from a lack of opportunities. But one of the hallmarks of the Twins offense is its lack of power, so is it reasonable to expect a larger percentage of those runners to be on first base? It turns out that is not the case either. In fact, Morneau has had the most chances with a runner on third (the easiest RDI opportunity) and isn't getting less chances with RISP than any of the top 5. If you've noticed that the number of chances (the numbers in parentheses) don't add up to the number of baserunners in the previous table, I discounted plate appearances in which the hitter was intentionally walked because that doesn't represent an opportunity to drive in any runners. Back to the numbers with RISP, a caveat to that observation is that a larger percentage of those RISP chances come with two outs for Morneau. This is most likely the result of "productive" outs moving runners into scoring position (or "non-productive" outs keeping them there until Morneau comes to bat). What struck me is the fact that Morneau doesn't stand out in driving runners in from third base (more two out situations mean less RBI groundouts or sac flies) and he is merely average bringing runners in from second and first. In general the Twins offense has had difficulties scoring runners from first, as detailed previously here.

Player	from 1st	from 2nd	from 3rd	RISP	% of PARISP w/ 2 out
M. Ordonez	0.09 (171)	0.22 (119)	0.60 (50)	0.33	0.43
A. Rodriguez	0.13 (181)	0.15 (115)	0.50 (54)	0.26	0.41
V. Guerrero	0.12 (150)	0.22 (88)	0.51 (58)	0.34	0.33
J. Morneau	0.08 (151)	0.20 (98)	0.41 (70)	0.29	0.47
V. Martinez	0.07 (159)	0.22 (86)	0.65 (48)	0.37	0.38

While Morneau has performed well in his role, driving in plenty of runs, his place on the RBI leaderboard has come abgout differently than the other hitters. Morneau has been able to remain on this short list mostly due ot his ability to hit HR. Only A-Rod has more home runs in the AL and the highest percentage of RBI from HR. Looking at the runs per HR for these hitters, it could be used as an argument that not enough Twins are getting on base in front of Morneau. If you've been paying attention, you know that Morneau is second in the AL in solo HR (Morneau-16, Carlos Pena-17) not because of a lack of opportunities. He's been able to hit a lot of solo HR to make up for a performance with runners on which isn't quite in line with the other top AL hitters this season.

Player	HR	RBI% from HR	R/HR
M. Ordonez	16	0.28	1.56
A. Rodriguez	35	0.66	1.94
V. Guerrero	14	0.36	2.07
J. Morneau	28	0.49	1.57
V. Martinez	17	0.37	1.71

With all of this considered, Morneau is having another monster year in which he is currently on pace for 43 HR and 137 RBI. Those numbers are impressive enough that the footnote that he's doing it all within a subpar offense needn't be applied. Especially since the surrounding offense is actually giving him a reasonable amount of opportunities to add to those numbers.

Inconsistent Offense?

The Twins just completed a series in which they scored five runs in three games while being swept by the Blue Jays. In my searches for the Series Preview in Blog, I came across this article about the inconsistency of the Jays offense in comparison to some other teams. The Twins were one of the more inconsistent offenses mentioned in the study. The author doesn't delve into cause and effect with his numbers (except for a rough characterization of teams as 'power' or 'speed' reliant offenses), but the short answer has little to do with a reliance on speed in the Twins offense. Rather the Twins offense goes mostly as the 3-6 hitters go. Unfortunately those hitters are the least consistently productive of the Twins regular lineup.

Player	OPS	St. Dev.	High	Low
Mike Redmond	.680	.224	1.173	.343
Jason Tyner	.649	.221	1.026	.266
Jeff Cirillo	.741	.202	1.019	.449
Michael Cuddyer	.923	.184	1.156	.508
Joe Mauer	.849	.182	1.249	.547
Torii Hunter	.901	.174	1.180	.623
Justin Morneau	.949	.160	1.260	.689
Luis Castillo	.702	.156	.901	.372
Jason Bartlett	.666	.155	.867	.247
Nick Punto	.594	.137	.816	.370
Jason Kubel	.709	.120	.919	.512

I looked at the eleven Twins players that have the most plate appearances so far this season. For each player, I divided the 100 games of the 2007 season into 19 ten-game sections (i.e. 1-10, 6-15, 11-20, etc.), calculated the OPS for each section, and then calculated the standard deviation of that data set. I threw out any of those sections where the player had less than 15 plate appearances, which gave the results in the table at the left.

The most inconsistent performers (Tyner, Redmond, Cirillo) are those that don't play as often. The next rung on the inconsistency ladder belongs to Minnesota's "big 4"; Cuddyer, Mauer, Hunter, Morneau. The most consistent are the "little 4"; the regular players with OPS under .800 (Kubel, Bartlett, Punto, Castillo). The biggest surprise to me was Joe Mauer's numbers. It's hard to believe that Mauer is less consistent than Torii Hunter. And, in fact, if you eliminate just the 10 game stretch immediately after he came off the disabled list the standard deviation drops significantly. So I dropped the highest and lowest sections from each players data and recalculated the data.

Player	OPS	St. Dev.	Adjusted	High	Low
Jeff Cirillo	.741	.202	.175	1.019	.449
Jason Tyner	.649	.221	.164	1.026	.266
Mike Redmond	.680	.224	.163	1.173	.343
Torii Hunter	.901	.174	.156	1.180	.623
Michael Cuddyer	.923	.184	.154	1.156	.508
Justin Morneau	.949	.160	.136	1.260	.689
Luis Castillo	.702	.156	.128	.901	.372
Nick Punto	.594	.137	.122	.816	.370
Jason Bartlett	.666	.155	.117	.867	.247
Joe Mauer	.849	.182	.113	1.249	.547
Jason Kubel	.709	.120	.104	.919	.512

For the most part the trends remain the same. The bench players are the most inconsistent, probably due to the uneven amount of playing time they get during the season. Cuddyer, Hunter, and Morneau remain in the same position. They produce more overall, but their production is less consistent than others in the offense. The biggest movers in this adjustment are Joe Mauer and Jason Bartlett, who both suffered from one below average cross-section (Mauer coming off the DL, Bartlett's first 10 games of '07). Mauer is pretty remarkable. Not only is he able to produce at a high level, he's one of the most consistent hitters in the Twins lineup this season. The other players at the bottom of the table are all of the lighter hitting variety, consistently providing a lower level of offense.

Therein lies the problem with the Twins offense. The top and bottom of the order are consistently producing subpar offensive numbers (OPS of .594 to .709) so they rarely are able to pick up the slack when the middle of the order isn't at its top production. Unfortunately, it seems that the middle of the order this season has been the most unpredictable part of the offense, whether it's availability (Mauer spending significant time on the DL) or just production. If one or two (or sometimes three) of the "big 4" aren't producing, the offense almost completely evaporates. It's also interesting to note that the right-handed component of the "big 4" is the less consistent half. That might be a factor in the Twins struggles against left-handed pitching.

The inconsistency is not the fault of the middle of the order being more or less consistent than the rest of the lineup. In fact, I would predict that most of the high OPS hitters would see more variance than lighter-hitting players. Rather, it is an offense that is constructed to rely on a few people in the lineup to produce the majority of the runs, and when the remainder of the lineup doesn't heat up to cover the downswings of the big bats, the offense is doomed to sputter.

Recap 4/22/2007 Twins 1, Royals3

MLB.com Recaps and boxscore

Coming into tonights contest between the Twins and Royals my main concern, as I stated towards the end of last nights recap, was for a letdown from Ramon Ortiz. To a certain extent I was right, as he probably had his worst outing of the season, though seven innings and three runs is certainly far from bad. The one thing I didn't anticipate was such a precipitous decline in production from an offense which had been racking up hits the last two evenings like they were going out of style. However that is precisely what Twins Nation received.

Ramon Ortiz took the hill against a team that had just beaten up on Sidney Ponson, which many predicted, and then on Boof Bonser, which few predicted. Looking ahead I thought conditions were ripe for a return to form from Ortiz, what with having pitched so well of late, a return to normal was entirely too predictable. That was not the case though as Ramon delivered another seven sterling innings, allowing just three runs to an offense that has thus far been solid against the Twins, roughing up not only the starters, but to some degree the vaunted bullpen as well.

Once again I didn't get to see the game, I haven't seen a a single game of this series due to the sports gal's demanding softball schedule, and I must admit, I'm going through a serious bout of withdrawal. From what I heard on the car radio between rain delays the Twins bats were stifled by the always imposing sounding, though never dominating Jorge De La Rosa. De La Rosa, who will from here on be referred to as DLR obviously had it going as he held the Twins to only five hits, and only one extra base hit, a double off the bat of Michael Cuddyer which plated Batting Champ for the Twins lone run in the sixth. DLR, a 26 year-old from Mexico came into tonight with some incredible career numbers, though for all the wrong reasons. A reliever for most of his career, DLR has pitched a total of 170 2/3 Major League Innings, also known as almost a full season for a starter. In those innings he's managed to post a career WHIP of 1.73, (184 hits, 11 walks (yeah that's right, 111 walks in ~171 innings...)) all to the tune of a 5.43 career ERA. And while he's been much better this year, going 1-1 and registering a 3.04 ERA (all coming into tonights game)

On the other hand you could probably say much of the same things for Ramon Ortiz, a career
4.80 pitcher who as of today is sporting a 2.48 ERA and a 0.86 WHIP(no thats not a typo) . As I stated earlier, this was probably Ramon's worst start of the year, however he still allowed only three runs and only seven hits in as many innings while striking out four and walking none. Along with dishing out another good outing, Ortiz also surely delivered the quote of the game which I stole from MLB.com's recap, "If I pitch like that all year, we'll win more games than we'll lose." Brilliantly well stated Mr. Ortiz.

Usually I finish by mentioning how the Twins offense did, but seeing as how they scored just one run and had only five hits, I'll say nothing, since thats pretty much what happened. I would however like to hear about what others thought of the Twins hitters, especially in terms of patience, and plate approach, etc... Generally I'm of the opinion that the Twins are most effective when they're hitters aren't hacking away early, a common bit of baseball acumen, but certainly one which I find far too often to be applicable to a team of veterans that should know better. My guess is that the Twins we're they're own biggest enemy, not DLR, swinging early, and allowing him to pitch until the eighth.

Positives

- Ramon Ortiz baby, Cy Young, here he comes. Seriously though, thats four pretty great starts from a guy who most people (coming into spring training) thought would be lighting it up for Rochester (or maybe Tampa Bay (aren't they the same thing?)) by now.

- Batting Champ, for using his arm to gun down two more runners today.

Negatives

- Everyone in the batting order who's last name does not rhyme with 'power'. I suppose Cuddy gets a pass too for drawing the only walk against a guy who's made a career of allowing people the free pass to first. Honestly, thats pathetic.

- Ron Gardenhire. Seriously, did he miss the part of the pre-game speech where he tells the guys the pitcher they're about to face has allowed walks at a rate of 5.85 per 9 innings? Did that just conveniently slip by? Did he miss the, "make sure to work the count so we can spend as much time pounding the worst bullpen in baseball," part? Sure, DLR's final strikes-thrown rating was pretty good at 68%, but I'm curious how many of those were Twins hitters flailing away at pitches out of the zone. My guess is a lot. I'm hoping someone who saw the game will confirm this, because I'm almost positive its true.

- MVP, who has been anything but so far this year, failing with astounding consistency with guys in scoring position. Today's line? 0-4 with two strikeouts (including a bases loaded, one out job) and four left on base. I may be the only person who's hating on him hard right now, but he's really been bad. So far this season he's hitting .208 with runners in scoring position. However, as a leadoff hitter he's batting .412. Looks like he and Luis Castillo have decided to swap roles. Castillo is hitting .400 with runners in scoring position.

Another point of interest with Morneau would be that it seems he's trying harder than ever to hit homeruns, and for the most part, failing. For his career, Morneau has a .94 GB/FB ratio, this season that ratio has dipped to .79. I can't be certain if it's a mechanical problem or a mental one, but its clear that he's probably not bringing the bat through the middle on a level plane, which is probably the reason I've been hearing, "Morneau hits a harmless pop fly just behind shortstop," so often this season. Also, has anyone else noticed that he's no longer hitting the ball consistently to left field as he did last season and that teams have once again begun to play him hard to pull? According to Inside Edge from ESPN, 26% of his balls in play have been to left, compared to 40% to right. He also has a HUGE hole up and in where he consistently chases and fails to put ball in play. Just to pile on, he's also averaging a career low 3.26 P/PA. If anything good can be taken from all of this, it'll be that it'll give T.R. some leverage in contact negotiations, presuming these trends continue throughout the year. Of course that would also mean the twins probably won't be making the playoffs again, but I didn't/don't expect them to anyways.

Looking Ahead

Tomorrow the Twins have to face a real team in the Cleveland Indians and yet another left hander in Jeremy Sowers, regretfully to say, this lefty has talent. So far this season the Twins have hit lefties at a .240 clip and righties at a .304 rate. The good news? We send Cy Young contender Carlos Silva to the mound to face a team who he's allowed a 4.87 ERA and .324 BAA against to over the past three seasons. Oh, hold on, thats not good news? Well, 11-8, here we come!