Since Ron Gardenhire took the reins in Minnesota in 2002, the Twins have played .547 baseball and won five AL Central Division titles. Somehow, they have managed to succeed in a small market while teams like the Royals, Pirates, Brewers, Reds, Nationals, Orioles, Blue Jays, and Marlins are mired in relative futility. Even the brilliant Billy Beane’s Oakland Athletics couldn’t maintain their small-market success in the latter part of the decade.

Meanwhile, the Twins have maintained their competitive edge, highly due to their reliance on “doing the little things right.” Never mind that they’ve fielded players like Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Johan Sanatana, Torii Hunter, and Joe Nathan. It’s the little things.

One player on the 2009 Minnesota Twins that fits this mold exactly is Nick Punto . Yes, the same Nick Punto that Derek Jeter threw out on a baserunning gaffe in Game Three of this year’s ALDS. Outside of that one instance, Punto has the perfect Minnesota Twin reputation: light hitter, great defender, runs the bases well, can move runners over, and can pick up hits in clutch situations.

Punto certainly is a light hitter. Since 2005, Punto has accrued at least 375 plate appearances in every season. In these seasons, Punto’s wOBA ranges from .260 to .324. Punto simply has no power, and his on-base skills don’t mitigate this deficiency. In a league that averages an ISO between .155 and .160, Punto has never posted an ISO above .098 – his career rate is .076. Combine that with a career walk rate that hovers around average and you’ve got a consistently below average hitter. His only near average years came with fluctuations in BABIP in ’07 and ’09, where his BABIP was nearly 30 points above his career norm both years.

Punto’s defensive reputation appears real. He is a far above average shortstop and third baseman, and in a sample of about 1.5 seasons has a +16 and +20 UZR/150 respectively at these positions. At 2B, where he has a similar sample, UZR doesn’t like him nearly as much, grading him as a +5 2B. Although these samples aren’t large enough to conclusively say that Punto is an Adam Everett-esque fielder, they do suggest his fielding ability is well above average, especially on the left side of the infield.

Now, the other things reflect what are generally considered “the little things.” For baserunning, Baseball Prospectus has a handy (if poorly implemented) tool where they display a player’s EQBRR, or Equivalent Baserunning Runs – including SB/CS as well as other measurements of baserunning such as taking the extra base. Punto’s hardly been a world beater. Since 2005, he’s been worth +6 runs. He had an excellent baserunning season in 2009, at +4 runs (the spread is rarely more than a win on either side), but his true talent is probably nearer the average of +1 run he’s shown in this span.

The other two skills mentioned above involve situational hitting. If we were to see evidence of Punto’s ability to “move runners over ” or perform better with men on base, we should see this difference in his RE24 numbers, based on run expectancies of base-out states, and his wOBA numbers (check this out for more on “little things” ). We don’t really see any consistent evidence either way. Overall, Punto’s actually been five runs worse by RE24 than wOBA, indicating that he is actually worse in situations with runners on. The data doesn’t suggest much predictability, as the numbers fluctuate from -8 to +7 depending on the season.

Similarly, if he’s a “clutch” hitter, we’d see this in his “clutch” stat that we calculate here at FanGraphs. Once again, there is no conclusion to gain from this data. Punto has been +.45 wins better in the clutch, according to the calculation, but again we see wild fluctuation (from -.65 to +.72) and what could possibly be interpreted as skill is likely just random variation.

Nick Punto may be heralded as one of those rare players who, despite having little tangible hitting talent, does those little things so well that he can bring a team to the top. Don’t believe it – it’s not true. Look at Punto for what he really is – a tremendous defender who managed to put together a couple of seasons with a solid BABIP. He’s a great bench player who can adequately fill in at any non-1B infield position, but any team that starts him wont’ be a perennial playoff contender. That is, unless that team’s catcher is Joe Mauer.

Over the winter, the Baltimore Orioles signed right fielder Nick Markakis to a six year, 66.1 million dollar contract, covering Markakis’s arbitration years and first three years of free agency, and including a $17.5MM mutual option for another. It appeared that the Orioles may have been locking up a perennial all-star. Markakis posted win totals of 2.0, 3.8, and 6.2 from 2006 to 2008. He showed tremendous improvement each year, with wOBAs increasing from .346 to .366 to .389 each year, and flashed a solid glove in RF, with a total UZR of +20 over the three seasons.

Unfortunately for Baltimore, this success would not carry over into the 2009 season. His wOBA regressed back to its 2006 total, and his defense slipped below average for the first time in his career. As a result, Markakis saw a 40 run swing in his value, posting 1.9 wins, nearly identical to his rookie season.

What’s behind the fall? On the offensive side, we see a fall in nearly every major statistic. Obviously, wOBA, OBP, and SLG fell. Looking at some component statistics, we also see a fall in BB%, ISO, BABIP, HR/FB%, and LD%.

That’s a pretty exhausting list, and certainly explains a 20 run drop in offensive production, but what explains the drop in these component statistics? To get to the heart of the matter for Markakis, we have to look at his plate discipline statistics.

Markakis has shown the ability to post high BABIP numbers throughout his career. With no other discernible increase in ability, a BABIP gain in 2007 led to a gain for Markakis. Then, in 2008, he began to swing at fewer pitches overall and fewer pitches in the zone. This led to a large increase in walk rate. We can also infer from this that his LD% and thus BABIP rose, because pitches in the zone are easier to hit hard than those out of the zone. This led to his fantastic .389 wOBA and an all-star caliber six win season.

His swing rate remained relatively constant in 2009, but it was because of a rise in O-Swing% and a dip in Z-Swing%. As a result of this, his BB% and LD% both returned to 2007 levels. However, this time, Markakis’s BABIP returned to a number more consistent with his 2006 level, based on his batted ball profile. As such, his overall hitting line was very similar to that of his rookie year – above average overall, but not anywhere near all-star levels for a corner outfielder.

Still, this bat would play at a high level with Markakis’s 2006-2008 fielding stats. Whereas a UZR in the +5-+10 range, as his 2006-2008 play suggested, would have placed Markakis at a 3-3.5 win level, his roughly -5 UZR this year reduced him to a merely average outfielder. The problem was a precipitous drop in RngR, from 4.2 in 2008 to -11.1 in 2009. None of his offensive speed stats suggest anything that would cause a 1.5 win drop in range over the course of the year. This may be one of those one-year drops we can see in UZR much like we can see a 2 month slump in hitting. At this point, it’s best to assume that Markakis’s true fielding talent lies somewhere near the +3 UZR/150 he’s posted through 4 nearly full seasons at RF.

If Markakis can find a way to fix whatever caused him to swing at more pitches out of the zone and fewer pitches in the zone, he should be able to return to his 4 win level of 2007 or above. Even if he does not, his prior fielding numbers suggest that he will at least return to an above average level now. The contract that the Orioles signed Markakis to is team-friendly enough that even at the bottom end of this projection, the production the team receives out of Markakis may equal the salary paid. The Orioles and their fans shouldn’t be worried unless his light hitting continues for another season.

Alex Rodriguez entered the Yankees ALDS against the Twins with a playoff wOBA of .377 in 170 plate appearances. Certainly an impressive mark, given a league wOBA ranging from .330 to .340 in the years in which Rodriguez’s teams reached the playoffs. However, his playoff stats pale in comparison to his regular season performance, where he performed as one of the top hitters in the game, with a wOBA of .412. This 35 point difference works out to roughly an 18 run difference over 600 plate appearances. This large difference in regular season and playoff performance has led to the media blasting Rodriguez with such names as “Mr. April.”

Is it really fair, though? We in the sabermetric community certainly understand the dangers of judging a player on 170 plate appearances. Players slump. Players play while injured. Many things can happen to produce 170 plate appearances below a player’s natural ability. BABIP luck can come into play with samples of a full season, and even more so with the sample size of less than a third of a season we have with Rodriguez. Due to the small sample size, his wOBA is actually within one standard deviation of what we’d expect based on his career numbers.

That’s even without considering that the pitching staffs of playoff teams have allowed a .301 OBP over the last decade, for an OBP+ allowed of 89. Similar results occur with other statistics. Simply put, we should not expect hitters to fare as well against the superior pitching staffs they encounter in October. What makes Derek Jeter so remarkable isn’t that he performs so much better in the post-season. His wOBA in the playoffs is only 2 points higher than his career norm – .377 vs. .375. What is remarkable is that he’s done it consistently (a significant sample of 576 PAs) against superior run prevention.

As Rodriguez showed in the series against the Twins, it just plain doesn’t work to make the kind of assumptions that Rodriguez’s reputation as “unclutch” would have many making regarding his playoff hitting ability. So let’s take a quick look at his numbers before and after this year’s ALDS.

Note: I am not including SB/CS numbers in wOBA calculation

Regular Season: 9611 PA, .390/.576/.965, .405 wOBA, .362 BABIP

Postseason (Pre-2009): 170 PA, .376/.483/.859, .372 wOBA, .333 BABIP

Postseason (Current): 182 PA, .381/.519/.900, .388 wOBA, .355 BABIP

It only required 12 ridiculous plate appearances to boost Rodriguez’s playoff wOBA by 16 points. Over 600 plate appearances, this would be an 8 run swing, or nearly a win. Not only that, his postseason numbers approach his career numbers, and are a statistically insignificant distance away (roughly .4 SDs). Again, this is even without adjusting for the quality of run prevention he’s facing.

Next time you hear somebody telling you about how unclutch Rodriguez, or for that matter, any other player, is in the playoffs, there are things we must keep in mind. First, wOBA and all other offensive stats are extremely volatile over the small sample sizes we have with the playoffs. We see this even with teams like the Yankees that reach the postseason on an almost yearly basis, due to BABIP fluctuations and other factors. Second, it’s not reasonable to expect (or demand, in the case of some fans) a superhuman increase in production in the postseason, due to the increase in the pitching and defensive talent they will face.

Every baseball fan can understand batting average. Surely, if you ever played little league, you would occasionally find yourself computing your game batting average mid-game. Every team would have somebody keep everybody’s batting average. It’s fun, because it’s easy to understand and it’s easy to calculate. It tells you one thing – did the batter get a hit or not – and it does it in a very simple way – it’s pure and simple division. It doesn’t make you include bunts or walks like OBP, it doesn’t make you keep track of total bases like SLG. It certainly doesn’t make you memorize constants for some complicated multinomial expression like wOBA.

This simplicity is what makes it such an easy tool for analysts to use, whether they’re armchair analysts watching the game with you in the living room or on the air for Baseball Tonight. Of course, simple doesn’t always mean better. Guys like Bill James, Rob Neyer, Pete Palmer, and all our other sabermetric heroes have been letting us know this since the 1970s. That is not to say that batting average is a completely useless stat – it just doesn’t correlate with run scoring nearly as well as OBP, SLG, or linear weights.

For those less familiar with wOBA, let’s take a look at results from 2009. The following graphic shows batting average on the horizontal axis and wOBA on the vertical axis, so we can see how the two are related.

The correlation coefficient (r^2) for the regression line shown above is .36. Briefly, that means that although there is a positive correlation between the two statistics, it is not very strong. As we see with guys like Carlos Pena, having a low batting average doesn’t necessarily lead to a low wOBA. Conversely, with guys like Ichiro, having a high-percentile batting average doesn’t necessarily lead to a similarly high-percentile wOBA. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t help – getting a lot of hits will increase a player’s wOBA just as it increases any other offensive statistic.

What sets players apart isn’t whether or not they get hits, of course. What sets players with the same batting average apart is (a) what they do with their hits – SLG, or more aptly measured by Isolated Power (ISO, SLG-AVG), and (b) their ability to take walks – OBP, or more aptly measured by Isolated Discipline (OBP-AVG). That’s why Carlos Pena (IsoP – .310, IsoD – .129) is a better hitter than Yuniesky Betancourt (IsoP – .106, IsoD .029) and Brandon Inge (IsoP – .176, IsoD – .084), and why Albert Pujols (IsoP – .331, IsoD – .126) is the best hitter in the game.

It has been long known that Russell Branyan can hit a baseball a long way. He holds the record for the longest home run in Miller Park history at 480 feet, hit in 2004. Branyan flashed brilliant power through his career, hitting 133 HRs in 2319 PAs entering 2009, averaging 34 HRs per 600 PAs, an impressive number. However, due to very high strikeout numbers (a career rate of 38.9%), Branyan had been limited to journeyman status and multiple stints in the minor leagues.

The Seattle Mariners’ new GM, Jack Zduriencik arrived in 2009 after 3 years as Director of Amateur Scouting for the Milwaukee Brewers. As such, he was witness to Branyan’s injury-shortened 2008 season. In that season, after tearing up the Pacific Coast League with a .479 wOBA, Branyan joined the playoff bound Brewers. Branyan was up to his old tricks with Milwaukee. Despite striking out nearly 32% of the time, he posted a .383 wOBA and once again made sabermetricians wonder why he’s never received a legitimate shot at a starting job.

Zduriencik made sure we’d no longer have to wonder, as he snapped up the slugger with a low-risk 1.4 million dollar deal this winter. Although injuries limited Branyan to only 505 PAs, the season was enough for him to silence those who would condemn him to AAA or a platoon. Despite seeing more left-handed pitching than ever, Branyan lowered his K-rate to just above 31% and maintained his well above average slugging ability. Even against left handed pitching, Branyan reached base at a respectable rate of .321 and slugged a fantastic .481. His overall .520 SLG ranked in the top 15 in the American League and his 31 home runs caught the attention of the most traditional analysts.

Still, while doubters of Branyan’s hitting prowess existed prior to 2009, few in the sabermetric crowd were astonished by his season of solid hitting. The real question for Zduriencik and the Mariners revolved around his defense. In 329 career games at 3B, Branyan never flashed the leather. His UZR/150 of -6.9 left questions as to whether or not he could play the field. Still, these are by no means Adam Dunn type numbers, and there was evidence that Branyan wouldn’t detract from the defensive machine under construction in Seattle. The Mariners committed to him at 1B for 2009 and were not disappointed, as his +1.2 UZR and fantastic hitting numbers led to a 3-win season.

Now, Branyan is once again a free agent. With one productive season as an American League starter under his belt, it remains to see what kind of payday he will receive entering his age 34 season. One thing is for sure, though. Branyan has a major league reputation, and he’s no longer going to be a diamond in the rough.

We’re happy to introduce Jack Moore as our newest addition to the FanGraphs team. We think you’ll enjoy his contributions here.

October is upon us, and most of our attention is upon the eight playoff teams vying for the Commissioner’s Trophy. However, there are 22 other teams, and there are some notable stories and players from these teams as well.

One of the main stories entering the season was the impending arrival of catcher and savior of the world Matt Wieters. The Orioles delayed Wieters service clock and then called him up this May after amassing a minor league career OPS of over 1.000. Wieters is a switch hitter with impressive power and by all scouting accounts is a plus defensive catcher. Plus, he can steal home from first base.

PECOTA projected Wieters to be an 8 win player this year, which some considered to be a dubious claim, even by WARP3’s questionable calculation of replacment level. CHONE was slightly pessimistic, pegging Wieters as a 3 win player. Wieters did not meet either of those projections. Wieters only accrued 385 PAs this season, and in that span he put up nearly 2 wins. Among AL rookies, this number is overshadowed by the likes of Brett Anderson and Elvis Andrus. Still, this is a number that any organization could appreciate out of a rookie. But this is Matt Wieters, who once hit home runs in AA and AAA… at the same time.

Wieters’ wOBA dropped to .330 this year, a substantial drop from his AAA line of .391 and his low-minors numbrs which ranged from .440 and .490. Both his IsoP and his walk numbers plummeted upon reaching the show. A human .124 ISO and 7.3% walk rate led to a nearly exactly average season at the plate for Wieters. As a catcher, an average hitting season ranks as the 12th best season out of a catcher this year, certainly acceptable out of a rookie, despite the fact that this rookie snacks on batting donuts.

The Orioles have no reason to be alarmed. Wieters still projects to be a fantastic player going forward. Although his 2009 numbers may be sobering, they are only 385 plate appearances. We still have roughly 700 incredible minor league plate appearances to judge him on, and they don’t magically disappear now that he’s in the big leagues. Any player that puts up .440+ wOBAs in the minors and then hits like an average major leaguer in his first season at the age of 23, all while playing catcher, is worthy of accolades and is one of the biggest assets a major league organization could hope for.

Even if he can’t cure world hunger by flexing his left bicep.