Neil Allen will return as Minnesota Twins pitching coach in 2017. Expect to see more Tampa Bay Rays influence as a result.

Allen spent eight years coaching in the Rays system before coming to the Twin Cities prior to the 2015 season. He’s already incorporated a changeup philosophy since his arrival. The next steps — based on a conversation I had with him this summer — will likely include an increased emphasis on fastball command at the minor-league level.

Allen shared with me his thoughts on pitcher development, including how certain philosophies were implemented in his old organization. Given the success the Rays have had bringing quality arms to the big leagues, it should come as no surprise that he’d like to see many of them embraced within the Twins system.

———

Allen on process and reports in Tampa Bay: “The philosophies come from the higher-ups. The general manager, the manager, and the pitching coordinator would get together and start the program. It would be explained to the coaches and we’d take it to the field. It was up to us — it became our responsibility — and if we didn’t see improvement in individuals, well, we had to answer to that. Why isn’t this guy getting better?

“After every game, there would be reports to fill out. We would report on consistency, on strikes, on location, on arm action. They would get those reports in Tampa Bay every night. They could see the amounts and percentages, as well as our comments on things like the depth of the breaking balls, the movement and arm speed on the changeups, the location of the fastballs. I don’t know exactly what they would do with the data, but every pitch that was thrown in the minor-league system that night was recorded.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Longenhagen is publishing brief, informal notes from his looks at the prospects of the Arizona Fall League and, for the moment, the Fall Instructional League. Find all editions here.

As Fall Instructional League winds down here in Arizona, teams have begun playing their games earlier in the day, allowing scouts to double and triple up should they so choose, catching instrux at 9 or 10 am before moving on to the afternoon and night Fall League games. For me yesterday, that meant seeing the Brewers’ and Diamondbacks’ instructional-league teams in the early morning. Of note from that game, the Brewers lined up second-round pick Lucas Erceg at shortstop and shifted Gilbert Lara over to third. Lara’s destiny likely lies at a position other than his usual shortstop — and so, too, does Erceg’s (despite a 70-grade arm) — and this was probably more of a fun experiment or opportunity to let Lara move around than it is earnest developmental news for Erceg, who has looked great throughout instrux but can’t play shortstop.

Luis Alejandro Basabe homered the opposite way during the game. He has more power than his incredibly small frame would otherwise indicate. His double-play partner, Jasrado (Jazz) Chisholm, showed off his precocious defensive ability at shortstop, ranging to his left behind the bag, corralling an odd hop while he simultaneously made contact with second base and then making a strong, mostly accurate throw to first base from an awkward platform. It wasn’t especially pretty but an impressive play nonetheless.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all seen those swings so terrible that a batter can’t help but smile. Swings like this one from Brandon Phillips last year.

Phillips, of course, isn’t the only victim of this sort of thing. He’s been a league-average major-league hitter for a decade, which is a substantial accomplishment. But even accomplished hitters can look bad, can get it very wrong.

Were Phillips batting not for a last-place club but one contending for the postseason, we might gnash our teeth. Couldn’t he see that was a slider? What was he thinking? What was he looking at?

The answer to that last question, turns out, is way more complicated than it seems. Phillips clearly should have laid off a breaking ball that failed to reach the plate. He clearly has done that — otherwise, he wouldn’t have had a major-league career. So what happened? What did he see? Or not see? Ask hitters and experts that question, and the answers are vague, conflicting, and sometimes just strange.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, it’s true that this is the year of the second baseman. As a group, second basemen are putting up better offensive numbers than they have in nearly a century, and are outhitting their defensively challenged counterparts in left field for the first time in the history of the live-ball era, dating back to 1920. And yes, it’s true that power across the sport is nearly at an all-time high. The league’s power output has returned to peak steroid-era levels, with this year’s isolated slugging percentage and home runs per plate appearance trailing only the year 2000 as the most power-laden season in the game’s history.

Those trends are real, and they should help shape the way we evaluate hitter’s performances in 2016. But don’t let those trends fool you: Brian Dozier is truly having a season for the ages.

The Minnesota Twins’ second baseman clubbed three home runs against Kansas City on Monday afternoon, bringing his season total to 38. Only Mark Trumbo has hit more homers than Dozier for the season; only David Ortiz has a higher ISO. Dozier’s homered eight times in the last week and has been baseball’s most valuable player in the second half according to WAR. His .298 ISO is the highest unadjusted figure in the expansion era (1961-present) for a second baseman and the highest by any second baseman not named Rogers Hornsby in baseball history.

Read the rest of this entry »

Byron Buxton played a major league game for the Minnesota Twins last night, the first since his most recent demotion to Triple-A Rochester last month. Also, in that game, Byron Buxton hit a big dinger:

It’d be great to see Buxton succeed. You hate to see any individual fail, let alone one with the type of promise which Buxton possesses. He’s still just 22 — this thing’s far from over — but thus far, Buxton’s done little to deliver on that promise. So we look for developments.

Upon his demotion in early August, I detailed, with the help of hitting instructor Ryan Parker, the numerous changes we’ve already seen in Buxton’s swing. So of course, I was interesting in seeing what that swing looked like this go-around. Particularly so when that swing led to a dinger in Buxton’s first game back.

Buxton had a leg kick in high school, which the Twins muted upon their drafting of him in favor of the organization’s go-to “front foot down early” hitting approach. That’s what we saw in 2015. That’s what we saw in the beginning of 2016, too, though after his first demotion to Triple-A in April, he returned a month later with a leg kick. Given the lack of success Buxton experienced in that stint, it was worth wondering whether Buxton and the Twins would stick with the leg kick, or revert to the original plan.

The leg kick’s still there, and maybe the most important note to be gleaned from this at-bat is that Buxton stuck with the leg kick throughout the count, even after it got to two strikes, something he wasn’t always doing his last time in the bigs. Where Buxton used to shorten up by going back to the toe-tap with two strikes, we’re now seeing Buxton commit to the leg kick more than ever, though it comes with the same caveat Parker provided in my analysis of Buxton last month: the foot’s still coming down before the upper-half of the swing begins, negating much the timing and power the leg kick is intended to provide.

As a counter, watch the .gif above again and pay close attention to where in the swing Buxton’s front foot plants on the ground, and then do the same for this Josh Donaldson swing:

Of course, comparing any hitter to Donaldson is unfair, but if you want to see what an effective leg kick looks like, look no further than Donaldson.

It’s just another something to monitor with Buxton. They could’ve abandoned the leg kick altogether, and they didn’t. To me, that’s a positive sign. The kick itself could still probably use some ironing out, but the committal with two strikes seems to indicate that the plan is to stick with this approach for the time being. The strikeouts never went away, but Buxton homered in four consecutive Triple-A games last week, and he’s already got the first of this go-around in the bigs under his belt. Byron Buxton isn’t going away any time soon, and neither is his intrigue.

Back in June, Eno Sarris discussed with Byron Buxton some adjustments the latter had made in his attempt to succeed at the major-league level. Then, about two weeks ago now, shortly after Buxton was sent back down to the minors, August Fagerstrom discussed whether any of the aforementioned adjustments had helped or hurt Buxton’s production. We know both that (a) Buxton has attempted to make adjustments and that (b) he possesses tools that have distinguished him, at points, as the top prospect in all of baseball. We also know that his stat line is pretty much terrible so far. Here I’d like to ignore the tools and focus only on that latter part. What does Byron Buxton’s awful stat line tell us about his potential for future success?

In August’s piece on Buxton, he mentioned Milton Bradley, Jackie Bradley Jr., Carlos Gonzalez, Brandon Phillips, and Miguel Tejada as examples of players who struggled and then recovered. Surely there are other examples of players who fit that description — and probably an even greater number of players who were terrible from the start and quickly found themselves out of the league. Before finding those players, we should acknowledge just how difficult the transition to major-league can be, especially for a player like Buxton, who’s still just 22 years old.

Even if Buxton doesn’t get another plate appearance this season — a scenario which seems unlikely given the possibility of a September call-up — he’ll end his age-22 season having recorded 356 career plate appearances. In the last 50 years, only 334 position players have reached 350 PA by the end of their age-22 season — or, roughly 13% of all players over the last 50 years who’ve recorded at least 350 PA total. Of those 334, only around 40% have produced even average offensive numbers (100+ wRC+), and just one-third of those players have actually excelled at the plate (in this case, recorded a 120 or greater wRC+). Out of all position players to record at least 350 plate appearances in the majors, the population to produce a line above 120 wRC+ by age 22 is under 2%. Increasing the pool to all position players — regardless of plate-appearance thresholds — drops the percentage of players who excelled by age 22 to under 1%. Essentially, simply making the majors at Buxton’s age and earning the playing time Buxton did is a feat unto itself, and success at that age is rare.

Read the rest of this entry »

Byron Buxton’s demotion to Triple-A Rochester on Sunday brings the tally to four demotions to Triple-A Rochester more than fans of the Minnesota Twins hoped to witness their top prospect endure once he made his major-league debut on June 14, 2015. Buxton is headed to the minors to do one thing, and one thing only: fine-tune his swing. It’s what every demotion’s been about thus far.

Buxton’s got the tools. Stop me if you’ve heard that one before. Few players in the game have more speed. The defense certainly isn’t a question; he’s been something close to a +10 defender in center field. Already, he’s shown just how far his athleticism alone can take him, so long as the bat can do enough to stick in the lineup. If Buxton could manage a batting line just 20% below league average, as his current ZiPS projection forecasts, he could be something like a 2.5-win player at the age of 22. Even a league-average batting line would turn him into a borderline star. He would seem so close to that reality, if only his numbers didn’t make him appear so far away.

Buxton’s career batting line through 356 plate appearances sits at .199/.248/.319, the batting average being one point below the Mendoza Line embodying the tantalizing frustration of his being simultaneously so close and yet so far away. Among 363 batters who have batted at least 300 times since the beginning of last season, just three have a lower wRC+ than Buxton’s mark of 49. And so now, he returns to Rochester to diagnose what in that swing is keeping him from success at the major-league level, as we at home attempt to diagnose just how we got to this point.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brian Dozier isn’t concerned with the first three digits of his slash line. Nor does he worry about his spray chart, which reveals his pull-heavy approach. What the Twins second baseman cares about is creating runs.

Extra-base hits are Dozier’s forte. He had 71 of them last year, and this season he has 48 with two months left on the schedule. Yesterday he went deep for the 22nd time, putting him on pace to match last year’s career-high total of 28.

Dozier established his hitting identity in 2013. Since that first full season in Minnesota, he’s slashed .245/.325/.440, with 128 doubles and 91 home runs. Now, at age 29, he’s turning it up a notch. Gong into the weekend, Dozier is slashing .263/.341/.506 with the aforementioned 22 dingers.

Dozier discussed his approach during a recent visit to Fenway Park.

———

Dozier on value: “The game has changed. Everything is being brought into light as far as advanced stats, and all that. They’re evaluating players like… for instance, a .300 hitter who slaps 5, 10 home runs is less valuable than a .250 hitter who hits 25-30 home runs. A guy who creates runs. People are realizing that’s it’s not just the statistics we see on the scoreboard that you use to evaluate a hitter.

Read the rest of this entry »

When a top prospect completes his ascension through the minor leagues and begins to carve out the early stages of a big-league career, a little war wages in all our heads, whether we know it or not. It’s the battle between our pre-debut perception of that player and our post-debut perception. Really, it’s just a variation of the age-old debate of scouts vs. stats.

When a player debuts, our knowledge of his skill set and abilities is limited almost entirely to the information found in public scouting reports. Sure, there’s minor-league numbers, too, but those can often be misleading or difficult to translate. Early on in a player’s career, the scouting report trumps all.

The more we see of the player in the majors, though, the more data we collect, and the balance of power regarding what informs our perception begins to shift from the scouting reports to the stats. The major-league stats become not only the more recent information but the more detailed. Sometimes, the data aligns with what the scouts reported. Other times, the two are at odds. It’s up to the individual to decide how much weight to give to either side, and why.

Twins rookie Max Kepler hit three homers against the Indians the other day, and has been among baseball’s best hitters since the All-Star Break. Digging through his scouting reports recently, something stuck out. Any emphasis that follows is mine.

Read the rest of this entry »

Though both technically still prospects, RHPs Alex Meyer and Alan Busenitz (who were involved in yesterday’s minor Angels/Twins trade that saw the clubs exchange Ricky Nolasco and Hector Santiago, as well) are now 26 and 25 years of age, respectively, and probably needed a change of scenery. Both only realistically profile as middle-relief options barring intervention from the player-development gods.

Meyer has a first-round pedigree. Drafted by the Nationals 23rd overall back in 2011, he was seen as a bit more of a project than the typical college arm because of wildness. He was traded to Minnesota for Denard Span in November of 2012, a watershed moment in the history of the Minnesota Twins, as they shifted their franchises strange obsession with pitchability prospects toward high octane howitzers.

Read the rest of this entry »