Yesterday, the Twins lost to the Yankees to close the book on the 2009 season and their time in the Metrodome. After going quietly in the first game against CC Sabathia the Twins made games two and three interesting, pushing game two to extra innings and keeping game three close in a pitching duel between Andy Pettitte and Carl Pavano.

Pavano gave the Twins a real shot to win the game, striking out nine while giving up just five hits and no walks over seven innings. Unfortunately, two of those hits were solo homers to Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada.

Pavano, for the most part, throws three pitches: a fastball, changeup and slider. The Yankees had a lineup full of lefties and switch hitters and Pavano predominately uses a fastball-changeup combo against lefties. Yesterday he went up-and-in with the fastball and down-and-away with the change. Here are the locations of those pitches. The colors are based on the colors in the pitchf/x section here, so green for fastballs and yellow for changeups. Faded out pitches were taken. Boxed pitches were called strikes, circled swinging strikes and the Posada homer is in the red circle.

Pavano got lots of called strikes on his fastballs up-and-in. It looks like he did a good job at challenging the Yankees up there, even though he only works in the low-90s. Then he went down-and-away with the change, and got tons of swings chasing those pitches. He changeup was nasty, inducing seven whiffs on 13 swings. The fastball Posada hit for a HR was down-and-away.

The Twins’ magical run is over. They had to play a great Yankees team in especially tough circumstances because of when they clinched and when the series started. Still, it has to be considered a good season for the Twins, Joe Mauer had an amazing season and will most likely be the MVP, and they got to the playoffs one of the most dramatic ways possible.

Unfortunately for the Twins yesterday’s game went just about how everyone expected it to. They took a half-inning lead in the top of the third, but gave the runs back in the bottom half. The Yankees added more runs in the next two innings, the Twins couldn’t muster any more, and there was little drama after that.

The game displayed of the offensive limitation of the Justin Morneau-less Twins. Look at the lineup with 2009 wOBA:

Denard Span     0.359
Orlando Cabrera 0.310
Joe Mauer       0.438
Michael Cuddyer 0.370
Jason Kubel     0.383
Delmon Young    0.312
Brendan Harris  0.295
Matt Tolbert    0.278
Nick Punto      0.295

Five players not only below average, but all fairly far below it and three players below 0.300. Even with Joe Mauer this is not a playoff caliber offense. As a group they don’t strike out much and have a fairly high BABIP, so they can get hits. And actually out hit the Yankees last night, 10 to 9. The problem is only two of those were extra base hits (both doubles) and they only drew one walk. For an offense like this to score runs they have to get lucky stringing their singles together in one inning.

Further exacerbating the problem, as I talked about yesterday is that Kubel, Mauer and Span are all lefties. Span and Mauer do not have that bad platoon splits, but Kubel’s is extreme. Versus lefties he joins the list of below-average hitters. Against CC Sabathia he looked very over matched, striking out twice and popping out to foul territory.

The Twins get a needed day off to rest a bullpen that got a lot of work in the past two days and calm down after some high pressure days. Tomorrow they face AJ Burnett, the only time they will see a righty until a possible game five, maybe they can string some hits together and steal one from the Yankees in New York.

Last night’s thrilling four and a half hour game capped a magical run for the Twins to clinch the AL Central title. In so doing they earned the right to fly to New York and play the Yankees less than 24 hours after finishing off the Tigers and burning through seven relief pitchers and their best starter.

As Dave touched on earlier since the Yankees had the best record they could choose to force the Twins to play the longer series that starts today. The Twins have been playing meaningful games up to just hours ago, so they had no chance to set their rotation up going into the playoffs. Scott Baker, obviously, cannot go, Carl Pavano pitched Sunday, Nick Blackburn pitched Saturday and would be going on three days rest, so the Game One start–opposite CC Sabathia, the first playoff game in the HR-haven New Yankee Stadium, facing a lineup with eights hitters who have wOBAs above 0.370–falls to Brian Duensing.

Duensing is 26 and got his first taste of the bigs in mid-August and has been in the rotation ever since. He had underwhelming strikeout numbers in the minors and his success so far in the majors seems to be dependent on a LOB% much higher than in any stop in the minors. Against CC Sabathia this is a serious mismatch.

After that the Twins will go Blackburn in game two, Pavano in game three, Baker in game four and back to Blackburn in game five if necessary. Unfortunately this means they might not get to their best pitcher, Baker, at all and Blackburn rather than Pavano or Baker gets two starts. All three of these guys limit walks really well, so they will make an OBP-heavy Yankee’s team do some hitting (not that the they have any problem in that department). Pavano turned out to be a major pickup for the unusually pitching-starved Twins and it will be interesting to watch him pitch to his old friends, some of whom have less than stellar memories of his time with them.

With Justin Morneau the Twins had a solidly above average offense. And even without him they have five great to above average hitters: Joe Mauer, Michael Cuddyer, Jason Kubel, Denard Span and Jose Morales. Thought Kubel has trouble with lefties, who they will face in two of three, three of four or three of five games. The main problem for the Twins is the huge drop off after those five guys. The other four spots in the lineup feature guys with wOBAs ranging from 0.318 to 0.278, too many easy outs.

People say that baseball playoff series are crapshoots and five games is a small sample, but I think the crapshootness is overstated. This series features the best team in MLB by a significant margin versus a good, but far from great, team. You have to think the Yankees will be favored in every game, even Pavano versus Andy Pettitte and Baker versus Sabathia in games three and four at the Metrodome. Still all of the intangibles-momentumy kind of stuff points in the Twins direction, if you believe in that kind of stuff.

Trevor Hoffman came through for the Brewers in 2009 saving 37 games while posting solid a solid ERA, FIP and tRA (1.83/2.63/2.40). So the Brewers rewarded him with a 8 million dollar deal for 2010 with a mutual option for 2011. The deal seems like the standard closer overpay as Hoffman has not been worth 8 million dollars in any of the past eight years, those in which FanGraphs has calculated player value.

Still as just a one year commitment it is not a wild over payment, as Hoffman can, clearly, still pitch. His strikeouts numbers are down from his peak but are still above average, and his walk numbers are still very good. But a big reson for Hoffman’s success is his control over his balls in play. Hoffman has always had a low BABIP and over the past three years his cumulative BABIP is 0.266, 9th best among relievers over the time period. Part of this is his ability to get infield flies, over the past three calendar years he got them on 15.6% of his balls in play (4th best among relievers). He is also able to limit HRs in spite of his low GB% by limiting HRs to just 5.7% of flyballs over the past three years (5th best). Hoffman is like the poster-boy for anti-DIPS theory.

Jonathan Hale showed that fastballs with more ‘rise’ generate more pop ups, and Hoffman’s fastball has a huge 14 inches of ‘rise’. That could partially explains his great infield fly numbers. Maybe this also plays a role in his low HR numbers, as could his excellent changeup which is always low in the zone. It would be interesting to really dissect his pitchf/x numbers and see if a full explanation for his extreme batted ball success could be found

Last night Adam Lind capped a break-out season with a three-HR burst. Together with Marco Scutaro and Aaron Hill, he provided some excitement in an other wise forgettable year for the Toronto fans.

Lind has emerged as a major power threat. Those three bring his total up to 35 and his wOBA of .394 makes him one of the ten best hitters in the AL this year. Here I display his HRs in a way I started doing over at Baseball Analysts. Along the bottom I plot the horizontal location of the pitch he hit for a HR. Lind stands to the right of the image as a lefty. Then I connect that point to the horizontal angle of the HR. I color coded the lines by pitch type, with the same colors used here in the pitchf/x section. Just to make things a little simpler I grouped all fastballs (four-seam, two-seam and cut) into one group.

Lind has great plate coverage, hitting HRs on pitches across most of the plate. In addition he has power to all fields, hitting a number of opposite (left) field HRs. For the most part he pulls inside pitches and goes the other way with outside pitches.

There are some other interesting trends. The sliders (red) he hit for HRs were all on the inside half of the plate, while the changeups (yellow/orange) were middle-away. He pulls changeups more often, while going the other way with fastballs.

As Dave Cameron noted a couple months ago Lind’s trip to this point has been bumpy (with concerns of the dreaded AAAA tag coming into this year), but he has made it in a big way.

Over the past three weeks Atlanta has done everything in its power to add a little more excitement to the end of the regular season. They have gone 16-3 and catapulted themselves into the NL playoff picture. By Cool Standings’ reckoning they now have a 21% chance of winning the NL Wild Card. Here is how that 16-3 run has affected their Wild Card hopes (again based on Cool Standings numbers):

Their chances grew only a little bit in the first two weeks, but in the last week the Braves have gone 6-0 while Colorado 3-3. As a result their WC chances have quadrupled from around 5% to over 20%.

In the past two weeks (which misses the beginning of their torrid pace, but is one of the splits that FanGraphs provides) their batting has provided a nice jolt, with a wOBA of 0.348. But their pitching and defense has been the major reason for the success. Their FIP has only been slightly above average 4.05, but their ERA has been 2.9. This is courtesy of a low BABIP, but more so of a huge 83% LOB. Their pitching has been very clutch, (1.43 clutch over the past two weeks, for an explanation of clutch see here), performing better in high leverage situations like when runners are on or when the game is tight.

So over the past two weeks Atlanta has preformed well, and either got a little lucky or raised to preform even better in the most important situations, depending how you look at it. Either way the great run has added a second race of interest in the last week of the regular season.

Today’s most important game is at 7pm when the Tigers host the Twins. The Twins sit just 2 games behind the Tigers and the two teams will play in Detroit the next four games. This gives the Twins a chance to close the gap and make the playoffs.

After this series both teams play a three game set to finish the regular season this weekend–the Twins at home against the Royals and the Tigers at home against the White Sox. Minnesota needs to take at least three of four from the Tigers to have a realistic shot heading into the weekend. Just a split sends them back home still down two and they would need a ton of help from the Sox.

Tonight’s game features Rick Porcello versus Nick Blackburn. If you are a fan of strikeouts this might not be the game for you. As I noted last week Blackburn is second to last among starters with just 4.2 K/9. Porcello is not much better, sixth from last with just 4.5 K/9. What you will see a lot of is two-seam fastballs, both throw the pitch over 60% of the time. As expected by the lack of strikeouts neither two-seamer misses many bats (Blackburn’s has a whiff rate of 6% and Porcello’s 9%). Blackburn makes up for it with excellent control, only walking 1.9 per 9 (tenth best in the league), Porcello with extreme ground ball tendencies, 55% GB per BIP (fifth best in the league).

So enjoy tongith’s game, one of the most important of the regular season for both teams, and expect to see a lot of balls in play.

Brad Lidge blew another save last night. He has been a major story this year, after amazing results last year in the Phillies’ championship season he has totally fallen apart this year. Obviously his true talent then was not as good as he pitched and his true talent now is not as bad as he is pitching. The issue for the Phillies is just were that true talent is. Here I am going to look at some pitch-level indicators to see how things have changed for Lidge in the past three years (those covered by the pitchf/x data).

First off Lidge throws about 50% four-seam fastballs and 50% sliders, and the two pitches have a nice separation in movement.

The average speed on each of these pitches has declined steadily since about 2005. And both have seen a corresponding drop in whiff (misses per swings) and o-swing (percent of pitches out of the zone swung at) rate. [The pitchf/x system was installed during the course of the 2007 season so the numbers from 2007 cover 400 of the 1100 pitches Lidge threw that year].

Whiff Rate
+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|          |  2007 |  2008 |  2009 |  LgAv |
+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| Fastball |  0.15 |  0.14 |  0.11 |  0.14 | 
| Slider   |  0.52 |  0.49 |  0.46 |  0.29 |
+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

O-Swing Rate
+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|          |  2007 |  2008 |  2009 |  LgAv |
+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| Fastball |  0.19 |  0.19 |  0.17 |  0.24 |
| Slider   |  0.44 |  0.39 |  0.36 |  0.30 |
+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

Lidge’s slider was (and still is) a really nasty pitch missing lots of bats and inducing lots of swings outside the zone. While his fastball has always just been ok; used to set up the slider. But all of these rates have moved in the wrong direction over the past three years. This gives at least partial support to his big drop in strike outs and rise in walks so far this year.

Beyond that though, his poor success has been the result of factors he has less control over: a horrid BABIP, HR/FB and LOB% (all of which were unsustainably good last year). We expect these values to regress to more reasonable levels and his performance going forward should improve, the tricky question is by how much.

Coming into the season two members of the A’s youthful rotation were particularly exciting to watch. Trevor Cahill and Brett Anderson were both top prospects and linked by a host of similarities, both were just 21 years old to start the season, had never pitched above AA and had the rare combination of good ground ball and strikeout numbers. Both pitchers struck out over 8 batters per 9 innings and got over 50% ground balls per ball in play at every level in the minors coming into this year. The big difference is that Anderson combined those skills with excellent walk numbers, while Cahill’s were poor.

That difference as translated to the bigs. Anderson is having an amazing season. By FIP he is the 10th best starter in the AL, an amazing feat for someone of his age and experience. Dave C. and I have each profiled him already (here and here), so I will turn my attention to Cahill’s season.

His ground ball rate is solid (over 47%), but his walk (3.6 per 9) and strikeout (4.6 per 9) numbers have been bad. In fact his K/BB ratio is second worst (again to John Lannan) among qualifying starters. Here is the movement on his pitches.

Like many ground ball pitchers Cahill throws a lot of fastballs (almost 70% of the time), and the problem is he has not been very good at getting them in the zone. His fastballs are in the permissive pfx zone 50% of the time, compared to the 55% for the average fastball. This is one of those things that seems like a small difference but is not. The variation is fastball zone percentage is narrow, so 50% is quite low, and over the course of the whole year those extra balls really pile up.

Cahill has the stuff. His two-seam fastball induces lots of ground balls (55%) while getting an almost average whiff rate (13%) and his good changeup gives him a solid option against lefties. Although this has been a rough year he is very young and with improvement in his command he will be a solid pitcher.

The Twins won two of three versus Detroit over the weekend to keep their play off hope alive and with four more games against Detroit next week they ‘control their own destiny’ as they say. Last night they picked up half a game by beating the White Sox. Nick Blackburn pitched a relatively non-Blackburnian game striking out six, a total he has reached or exceeded only four times previously in over thirty starts.

Blackburn strikes out only 4.18 batters per 9 innings, second lowest among all qualifying starting pitchers (John Lannan strikes out the fewest). He is one of only four qualifying starting pitchers to strike out fewer than a batter every other inning. But he is very good at limiting walks and thus second to only Joel Pineiro in lowest K+BB per 9 innings. So he is one of the most extreme pitch to contact pitchers. Here are his pitches.

The big reason for all the contact is that he throws his cutter and two-seam fastball 82% of the time. The contact rate on fastballs (two-seam, four-seam, cutter or splitter) is generally much higher than on changeups, curveballs or sliders. So right there you should expect much more contact.

But beyond that Blackburn’s two-seam fastball (which he throws 60% of the time) is particularly mad at missing bats. It has a whiff rate (misses per swings) of only 6%. The average fast ball is at 14%. It is probably one of the easiest pitches to hit in the game. Even Pineiro’s two-seam fastball has a higher whiff rate at 9%. Piniero gets fewer strikeouts in spite of his two-seam fastball having a higher whiff rate because he throws it even more often than Blackburn throws his and Blackburn makes up for it with his cutter which has a fairly good whiff rate of 20%. The problem is that Blackburn’s two-seam fastball is only ok at getting ground balls, 49% per ball in play, compared to the good groundball two-seamers which get upwards of 60% GB per BIP.

Blackburn is one of those interesting players existing at the extremes. He allows nearly the highest rate of contact possible by a pitcher who still holds a job in the major leagues.