3/14/14

Twins Spring Training Report From Fort Myers: 3/14/2014 and the newest dashboards

Second day of live coverage of the Twins Spring training from Fort Myers.  Today there was mainly major league action and some minor league drills before the Miracle and Kernels games, with the Red Wings and Rock Cats squads traveling.

 As a reminder, you can find all Spring Training coverage here

On the single A Beloit side of things, there was a lot of fielding practice going on, including a lot of serious work with the pitchers.  I think that these gentlemen might make a pretty mighty squad this coming season:


On the field few paces west (Field 2) the high A squad was doing drills with Doug Mientkiewitz and company.   This is more of a note to self, but this guy, is one to follow, especially after his lights out appearance at Elizabethton last season.  Second tallest person in the Twins' system (Loek Van Mil now has replaced Tanaka in his previous team in Japan) and I think that his future is bright.


And, yes, Hudson Boyd looks a lot slimmer and he ever volunteer to carry stuff around:


Even this guy was practicing with the Miracle:


And it was good to see him rip a couple and let them go.  (This is Alex Wimmers, if you don't know.)  He then joined a bunch of Red Wings' pitchers like Alex Meyers, Yohan Pino, Danny Turpen and company for a toss.

The main affair at Hammond Stadium was a 2-2 a piece tie with Baltimore.  Mike Pelfrey started and he pitched a fine 3 innings.  A couple things to note (actually one) :  Either he is working on a sinker (yes) or they calibrated the Hammond Stadium radar (yes too).  He was tossing mainly two seamers with a couple of curves and splitters mixed in today and his two-seamers were sitting around 89-91 a good 4-5 mph below his usual four seamer velocity.

Good to see Mattie Guerrier throw today, especially after Jared Burton, because he was so much better than Burton.  Easy 92-93 mph, nice mechanics, I am not sure whether he should be regarded as a dark horse at this point.  Give him a week or so of work and I suspect that he might make the team.

Glen Perkins signed a contact extension and this was what he had to say:


The other half of the Twins' split squad punished the Yankees 7-2 up in Tampa today.  

Here are the newest Spring Training Dashboards reflecting both games today:

(You can find all of the 2014 Spring Training dashboards here) :

A reminder of the scoring system:


For the pitchers, I quantify using  a measurement created by Bill James more than a decade ago called "Game Score".  It is calculated as follows:
You start with 50 points for each pitcher.
Add 1 point for each out.
Add 1 point for each strikeout.
Subtract 2 points for each hit.
Subtract 4 points for each earned run.
Subtract 2 points for each unearned run.
Subtract 1 point for each walk.
There is a point bonus for pitching more than 4 innings as well, adding 2 points for each IP after the 4th, but this is not too applicable here.

Game Scored of 49-51 are "average" (yellow),
everything higher than 51 "above average" (green),
and everything below 49 "below average" (red).

For position players, I devised a similar metric that goes like this:
Start with 0 points (unlike the pitching Game Score that starts with 50)
Add 1 point for each Run, RBI, 2B, SB, BB, and HBP recorded.
Add 2.5 for each hit, 3 for each 3B and 4 for each HR.
Subtract 1 for each CS and GIDP,
subtract 1 for each error,
for catchers add 1 for each CS
Subtract 0.2 for each SO and 0.5 for each AB.

Again, as in the Pitching Battle Dashboard, the Position Player Battle Dashboard is color-coded based on average, above average and below average performances, where:

Average is Batting Game Score between 0 and 2
Above average is Batting Game Score higher than 2
Below average is Batting Game Score less than 0

Players on the 40-man roster are in bold.  The ones without options are also underlined.  Left-handed pitchers are in italics.

Here is the Dashboard for the Twins' position players:



 and for the pitchers:





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