When the Twins signed 30-year-old right-hander Jared Burton to a minor league contract this winter, it was little more than a blip on the offseason radar. He managed to rack up 1.3 WAR in 161 relief innings for a Reds from 2007-2009 after being taken from the Athletics in the Rule 5 Draft, but hyperthyroidism and shoulder surgery limited him to just eight big league innings in 2010 and 2011. Relievers get hurt and drop off the baseball radar, it’s what they do.

Burton appears to have avoided that fate, at least for the time being. He had a strong Spring Training and made Minnesota’s bullpen with an assist to Scott Baker’s elbow injury. Through five innings across six appearances, he’s struck out six batters and walked zero. He did surrender two solo homers in his first game, so it’s going to take some time for him to work off that 5.40 ERA and 6.32 FIP. Burton has allowed just one baserunner (a single) since that first game.

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Right-hander Scott Baker was set to undergo surgery on his elbow for a cleanup of his flexor pronator tendon earlier this week. Any elbow surgeries can result in complications for a big league pitcher, but considering the alternatives, Baker appeared to be rather lucky in terms of his diagnosis. As he said:

[The team doctor] said this is something that’s not going to repair itself. It’s not going to cure itself. It’s something that needs to be taken care of. Fortunately, he said the (UCL) ligament looked great, so I guess in a way, as bad as this is, the flexor pronator tendon is what needs to be repaired.

However, when the team doctor, Dr. Altchek, opened up the elbow, he determined that the UCL was damaged to the point that it needed repair. The MRI testing done prior to the surgery completely missed the UCL damage. Now, instead of missing only six months of the 2011 season, Scott Baker will not pitch again for approximately 12-18 months.

The good new for Baker is that the success rate for Tommy John surgery is now upward of 85-92 percent. The likelihood of returning to the big leagues in some capacity appears overwhelmingly positive. Most likely, though, his next big league job will not be with the Minnesota Twins. Baker has a $9.25M club option for the 2013 season, but there is almost no conceivable way Terry Ryan and the Twins exercise that option at this point.

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The Twins announced Wednesday that their top starter, Scott Baker, would miss the rest of the season after upcoming surgery to clear scar tissue from his right flexor pronator tendon. While this procedure has a shorter rehab time than Tommy John surgery, the rehab process is expected to take around six months, leaving Baker unavailable until late October at the earliest. The good news for Baker is that his ulnar collateral ligament was not damaged, so he will be able to go through a normal offseason work program and should be ready for spring training. The bad news for the Twins is that their already thin rotation just lost their captain. Read the rest of this entry »

After three games, five teams — the Braves, Giants, Red Sox, Twins and Yankees — are 0-3. You can hear the hair pulling and consternation all over the land. Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine poured a tanker of gasoline on to the “Daniel Bard going back to the bullpen” story, and Giants manager Bruce Bochy is already benching Brandon Belt, using the old “we haven’t won a game yet” rationale as his reasoning. But even in a weekend of seeming disasters, positives abound for each squad.

Several hitters with question marks had good weekends. None were more encouraging perhaps, than Justin Morneau. After posting just a 69 wRC+ in a second-straight injury shortened campaign in 2011, it was an open question as to whether or not Morneau would ever be right at the plate again. Now, three games against the Orioles are not going to erase doubts, but Morneau showed positive signs. He tallied a hit in all three games, including a double each on Saturday and Sunday. Down in Atlanta, Jason Heyward didn’t collect a hit in all three games himself, but he made his two hits count, as both went for extra bases. Heyward also drew two walks, and looked very much like the guy Atlanta needs him to be this season.

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Dave Cameron laid out the methodology behind the rankings last Friday. Remember that the grading scale for each category is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.

2012 Organizational Rankings

#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston
#28 – Oakland
#27 – Pittsburgh
#26 – San Diego Read the rest of this entry »

The Orioles are reportedly looking to trade “third baseman” Mark Reynolds and reliever Kevin Gregg. You think so, doctor? It would be strange if the team really waited until this late to start shopping these two veterans, who are rather pointless on a team that is at the beginning of what looks to be a long rebuilding process. To be fair, while the rumor is just coming out now, they may have been shopping these guys for a while. Gregg is a pretty generic reliever (other than having that oh-so-valuable “closer experience”), but Reynolds is an interesting case. His problems making contact with both the bat and glove make him a flawed player, but his monstrous power makes him playable in the right situation. But are there any teams on which that situation exists?

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It doesn’t get talked about very often, but spring training serves a dual purpose for many teams. Not only is it a time to get their players warmed up and ready for the regular season, but it’s also a perfect time for teams and players to finalize contract extensions. Free agent acquisitions are finished for the year and the off-season madness is in the past, so teams have the free time to focus on locking up their players. Coming into today, there had already been seven extensions signed since the beginning of spring training…and the Twins just added number eight:

The Twins have signed left-hander Glen Perkins to a three-year, $10.3MM extension, the team announced. The SFX client was already under contract for $1.55MM in 2012, so the deal covers the 2013-15 seasons. It includes a club option for 2016.  (MLB Trade Rumors)

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With disabled list information available going back 10 years, I have decided to examine some league wide and team trends.

League Trends

To begin with, here are the league values for trips, days and average days lost to the DL over the past 10 years.

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As someone who spends a significant part of their work day at a desk, I spend a lot of time perusing stats. Not exactly an earth-shatterer — this is FanGraphs after all — but it does prod my mind to some interesting questions and processes. In fact, you may have read about one last week. As most of you know, I’m willing to be an open book when it comes to researching my pieces — like the Larry Walker one — so keep that in mind as you read.

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It is a simple question.

What is sabermetrics?

Not the history of it, but what is it, right now? What is, in our nerdiest of lingoes, its derivative? Where is it pointing? What does it do?

Last Tuesday I created no little stir when I listed the 2012 saber teams, delineating them according to their perceived embrace of modern sabermetrics.

Today, I recognize I needed to take a step back and first define sabermetrics, because it became obvious quickly I did not have the same definition at heart as some of the readers and protesters who gathered outside my apartment.

I believe, and this is my belief — as researcher and a linguist — that sabermetrics is not statistics. The term itself has come to — or needs to — describe more than just on-base percentage, weighted runs created plus, fielding independent pitching, and wins above replacement.

Sabermetrics is the advanced study of baseball, not the burying of one’s head in numbers.
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