Twins and Rays and Wild
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Everett is having arm trouble. I was a big fan of signing Everett in the offseason, but that was because he has been the best defensive shortstop in the game since he made the bigs, by far. If he can't play defense, he can't play, its as simple as that. In fact, even if he was fully healthy and defending like he has over the past few years, I wouldn't mind seeing Tolbert starting over him at short (especially vs. right handed pitchers) when Slowey or Baker is pitching as they are both extreme fly ball pitchers... which means the defensive value of the shortstop is lessened.
After blowing two leads in a row, the Twins bullpen pitched three scoreless innings tonight. Of coarse Kubel had a good game. I love the PT Kubel has been getting lately, but I'm worried about what will happen when Cuddy returns... which doesn't sound imminent. Hopefully he still gets plenty of PAs.
The Twins play their final home game against the Rays for the season tomorrow. I like some things about the unbalanced schedule, but I wish I could have at least one chance to watch them play.
5-0 last night was ugly. What makes it worse was this article published before the game:
http://www.denverpost.com/avalanche/ci_8927475
Oh, and read the comments, they are as funny as the article itself.
In honor of the concert I'm going to this Friday:
Posted bySL__72 at 12:17 AM
Labels: Adam Everett, Boy From School, Hot Chip, Jason Kubel, Matt Tolbert, Minnesota Twins, Minnesota Wild
Gardy is on record stating that he would like to get Kubel 550+ at bats this season.
Correction:
- The Wild lost 5-1, not 5-0.
Oh, my bad. I turned it off in disgust after two periods and for some reason thought no one scored in the third. I obviously didn't read about it at all afterwards.
Since I spent the time writing this up and it relates to this post, check out this comment I just made about Tolbert vs. Everett over at
Nick & Nick's Twins blog:
I spent a lot of time reading/thinking about run/win math this off-season. Using the following projections for Everett I came to the conclusion that he represents roughly 2.5 wins over a replacement level player:
0.245/0.292/0.343
+31 runs over AVERAGE defensively at SS.
I might be under adjusting for position, but since I'm comparing him here to another SS that doesn't matter.
Using this projection for Tolbert:
0.250/0.308/0.370
8 runs below average defensively at SS (The projection I used for Harris)
I have Tolbert as basically the definition of a replacement level player.
So while my method is quite different, I came to the same conclusion: that a healthy Everett is worth about 2.3 wins more than Tolbert at SS.
None of this really matters if Everett isn't playing as well defensively due to injury or otherwise...
What about this idea I suggested on my blog yesterday:
Start Tolbert when you have an extreme fly ball pitcher going (Slowey, Baker) and Everett when you have one who gets more ground balls (Blackburn, Liriano, Livan, Bonser).
A whole different kind of platooning...
That Denver Post article was the silliest thing I have ever read. I bet if you polled the average Wild or Avalanche fan they would say this series has been an unbelievably physical, exciting series. Plus physical hockey, especially in the playoffs, is essential because the refs let more things go, and by the end of a 7 game series you can really wear down a team. I literally laughed at the end of that article. What I thought was the funniest thing, however, was how someone else posted another article from the same guy during the 2003 series which was nearly identical. That dude seriously hates the Minnesota Wild.
Yeah he wrote a similar story after the last game suggesting that Veilleux should be suspended for tonight's game.
http://www.denverpost.com/sports/ci_8953465
I actually read it in the Pioneer Press I think.