In defense of Jesse Crain

It seems that these days, Jesse Crain has been the favorite target of the Twins' fanbase, bloggers, media and potentially his manager (if one reads between Gardenhire's words) as a result of the latest unsuccessful road trip on the East Coast, which resulted in elimination of the Division lead for the Twins and having the team tied in first place with the Detroit Tigers. Jesse Crain has been looked at as the sacrificial lamb, who needs to be cut from the team, to solve the Twins' woes, and his last name more times than not, appears on the internet hyphenated with "Wreck". Does he deserve the outcry for his dismissal? He must, since he is pitching in the rhythm of 6.88 ERA, has walked 5 and struck out only 12 in 17 innings and his WHIP is an ugly 1.588. Or doesn't he? Let's dig deeper into the numbers:

• Jesse Crain has been unlucky. His (opponents' batting average on balls in play, BABIP) is .346, which is inflated and will regress to the league norm of .295, resulting in lower WHIP and more effectiveness.


• Speaking of effectiveness... Jesse Crain has been effective (did not allow an earned run) in 12 of his 17 appearances this season. I understand that this might look like a surprise to some. If we look closer at 5 appearances he has been ineffective, 4 of them came with 3 days rest and one with no rest. Here is how opponents hit against Jesse Crain, based on how much rest Crain has before he pitches:
  
  
  
  • No rest: .444/.500/.889 (1.389 OPS)
  
  
  • 1 day rest: .286/.286/.357 (.643 OPS)
  
  
  • 2 days rest: .176/.176/.235 (.412 OPS)
  
  
  • 3 days rest: .417/.481/.917 (1.398 OPS)
  
  
  
  So, Jesse Crain has been effective other than when he pitched with no rest or 3 days of rest. This could be explained by the fact that his fastball has been his most ineffective pitch. A hard thrower like Crain needs some rest to command his fastball but not enough rest so that his fastball becomes too flat (which has been a general complain about Crain). So it looks like how and when Crain is used affects his stuff and not that "Crain has lost his stuff" per se



• So is a manager or a pitching coach supposed to be a seer and guess that when Crain has too much rest he is not himself, so they use him with less rest? Not exactly... Here are Crain's career numbers (opponents hitting) with various days of rest (same as above, but career, not only 2010 and just OPS, not slashlines):
  
  
  
  • No rest: .669 OPS
  
  
  • 1 day rest: .719 OPS
  
  
  • 2 days rest: .636 OPS
  
  
  • 3 days rest: .817 OPS
  
  
  
  Clearly, Crain has always been less effective when rested 3 days. His manager and pitching coach should have known that and not have allowed it to happen. They should set him up to succeed and not fail. As far as the discrepancy of the no rest numbers between 2010 and career go, it could be an artifact due to that single (the one of the 5) bad outing with no rest this season (5/18 0.1 IP, 2 H, 2 ER, 1 HR) and just the sample might not be enough. The 3 days rest day, based on the career is significant




• So how much has Jesse Crain hurt the Twins in 2010: Not that much. His total win probability added (WPA) for 2010 is = -0.02, which is close to zero. Players like Cuddyer (WPA = -0.96, which is losing a game practically) and Drew Butera (WPA = -0.78) have hurt the Twins more. Could this be because Crain was good only when the game was not close? Let's look at the numbers. This is how opponents hit against Jesse Crain in 2010, in high leverage, medium leverage and low leverage situations:
  
  
  
  • High Leverage: .231/.286/.385 (.670 OPS)
  
  
  • Medium Leverage: .313/.353/.438 (.790 OPS)
  
  
  • Low Leverage: .333/.378/.690 (1.068 OPS)
  
  
  
  In other words, Crain has been very good when the game was close and not so good in mop-up role and really has not cost the Twins games this season.

What can one do to make Crain successful? I know that it might appear counter intuitive to many, but the above suggest:

• Use him only with 1 or 2 days rest


• Do not use him in mop up situations


• And Crain, truthfully, has pitched much better than his ERA suggests this season, really... (His FIP is 2 points less than his ERA, btw, for the ones who like that metric.) He just has not been used in the right manner and failed when used in the wrong manner. So it is unfair to him to be the sacrificial lamb for the Twins' struggles...
  

The Ballad of Jesse Crain: Is he injured?

Jesse Crain has probably been the most disappointing pitcher in the Twins' bullpen. After an excellent performance in Spring Training, both with the Twins and Team Canada, armed with a new hard breaking curve ball, the expectations were extremely high for Jesse. However, he has been very inconsistent, to say the least, and his newest feat was to lose last aftenoon's game in Wrigley Field on the bottom of the night.

Is there anything obviously wrong with Jesse Crain, which might result in his lack-luster performance?

Ron Gardenhire, after yesterday's game said that "Crain got too many pitches up in the strike zone"

Let's examine that statement, because it might be as good a clue as everything about Jesse Crain. The following images are created using pitchF/X data at Brooksbaseball.net.

Here is how Jesse attacked the strike zone yesterday:



Let's compare that to how Joe Nathan attacked the strike zone the previous day:



So it seems that Gardenhire was correct up to a point, but not entirely accurate. If we compare Nathan's attack with Crain's, we see that the accurately described difference is that Crain left too many balls in (not up) the strike zone. So it seems that if Crain wants to be successful he should pitch outside the zone appropriately.

Let's look at an earlier successful outing by Jesse and the way he was attacking the strike zone. This image is from the 4/14 game this season against Toronto where he pitched 2 innings of ho hit ball, did not walk anyone and struck out 2 batters:



Much better. Several balls close but out of the strike zone, balls up and down the strike zone. This indicates more movement and life in his stuff.

So, what's the difference? To make long things sort, it is his release point, which at a critical time for him this year, moved. Let's look at Jesse's release point evolution from last last season to now.

This is from the last game of the 2008 season against Kansas City. Jesse pitched an inning, gave up one single and struck out two. (There is a line drawn at the 0 horizontal mark for reference in all these figures) :



as you see his arm comes dead center at the zero width release point.

Fast forward to his successful April 14 game against Toronto:



not much difference. In this game, Jesse got the win by pitching 2 hitless innings, striking out 2 batters. He threw 28 pitches in total.

The next game he was used, was two days later on April 16th, to finish a blow out the Twins lost to Toronto 2-9. He threw 11 pitches and had an 1-2-3 inning with one strikeout. Here is his release point from that game:



As you can see something happened between the 28 pitch effort 2 days previously and this game. His release point moves significantly to the left (from the batter's perspective.)

His next game was the first real disappointing game this season for Jesse and the one that ultimately drove him to the 15-day DL. It happened the next day (April 17th) against Anaheim. In this game Crain threw 30 pitches, getting only one out, had three walks, two hits and was credited with 4 earned runs. Here is his release point:



As you can see it is getting worse by the game. After the game, Crain was placed in the 15-day DL with a sore shoulder. Just by looking at the release point changes (and it is harder to throw overhead with shoulder issues) I would argue that the injury occurred sometime before (or during) the second Toronto game.

Crain came of the DL and his next game was a May 5th game at Detroit. Here is his release point from that game:



Not good.

Fast-forwarding to yesterday's game; here is his release point:



Wow. Huge difference between this game and the pre-DL Crain this season. He favors his shoulder even more than when he was placed in the DL earlier this season. I wonder whether his shoulder has issues, based on those release point differences. Remember, this is his surgically repaired shoulder. I hope that Jesse is ok, but it would be worth while for the Twins to have a look at his shoulder. I would not be surprised if he lands in the DL some time soon...

Pitching Checkpoint

This off day I was planning or writing something about the catching situation, but since there were a few new developments on the pitching side, I decided not to ignore those. Since it looks like there will be a rain out tomorrow, I will discuss catching tomorrow.

It is old news by now, but Jesse Crain has been placed at the 15-day DL retroactive to a couple days ago and Jose Mijares has been called up from Rochester to replace him. LEN3 was the first to break that story. Mijares after an awful spring when he showed up in camp looking like Pat Williams and pitching in a way that made Kevin Frederick look like a Cy Young candidate, seems to have found parts of his last September in Rocherster, where in five games he amassed these numbers: 6.1 IP, 2 H, 1 BB, 4 K, 0 ER (0.00 ERA, 0.47 WHIP.) Crain did get overused so far this season. It was inexcusable for Gardy to put him in the 9th inning to close a blow out game. That is done, it cannot be corrected, but I hope that Gardenhire realizes his mistake and does not repeat it. Speaking of repeating mistakes, when Gardenhire was asked about who the set up man will be now, he answered that everyone who is rested except Morillo who is still "a project". Wrong answer. He should select one (even pull names off a a hat) and go with him. The worse thing about a reliever is not knowing what his role is. Pitchers need to get ready to pitch. I hope that Crain gets healthy soon and that he returns effective because he showed signs of brilliance so far this season.

A lot of people are climbing on Glen Perkins' bandwagon this season and with a good reason: he has been the most effective starter on the staff. Yesterday in the Angels series' review I wrote the following about Perkins:

The Perkins of 2009 so far is different than the Perkins of 2008: He apparently worked on his change up and slider this off-season and unlike last year, he has complimentary pitches to his fastball. His slider still needs work, but his change up is very effective. And when he is down on the count he does not throw fastballs in the middle of the plate like he did in 2008. This allows him to get through innings with fewer pitches and pitch deeper into the games



And because a picture is supposedly worth a thousand words, I will save myself two thousand and present you with these two from one of the great baseball sites out there, Brooksbaseball.net, to illustrate my previous point.

Exhibit A:



This is a graph of pitch number on the X axis and pitch velocity on the Y axis. This is Perkins pitching in yesterday's game against the Angels. As you can see, it is rare that he is throwing more than 2 fastballs in a row and there is a great mix between fastballs and off-speed pitches.

Exhibit B:



This is from a typical Perkins' outing in 2008. The 8/14 game in Seattle: He throwed a series of only fastballs four times (red circles-me-Bert), very few off-speed pitches, and when he got in trouble towards the end of his outing he threw 10 straight fastballs. This was not the way to pitch successfully and I had indicated ad noseum last season, that if this continues, Perkins does not belong in a major league rotation.

I am very happy that this has change and I hope that Glen keeps it up and when in trouble does not revert to bad habits.

The general opinion is that the Twins' starters have struggled last season:

here is a little known fact: The Twins (co-lead the majors) with 9 starters going more than six innings. I hope this makes the Twins' fans feel a little better.

Spring training week 1 summary.

The first week of spring training passed and found the Twins within 2 runs of a perfect record. I will be giving weekly recaps of the cumulative performance of players in Spring training, focusing on the roster battles.

Here is the summary of week one:

Position Players:

Outfield Starter Battle:

Young .857/.857/1.000, 1 SB (7 AB)
Gomez .222/.300/.556, 1 HR, 1 BB (9 AB)
Cuddyer .167/.167/.167 (7 AB)
Span .111/.200/.111 1 BB (9 AB)

Spot on the Bench vs Rochester Battle:

Buscher .600/.600/1.100, 1 HR (10 AB)
Hughes .333/.333/.333 (6 AB)
Machado .200/.200/.200 1 SB (5 AB)
Tolbert .167/.231/.167 1 BB (12 AB)
Macri .000/.200/.000 1 BB (4 AB)
Plouffe .000/.000/.000 (5 AB)

Battle for Rochester vs. New Britain:

Valencia .800/.800/.800 (5 AB)
Martin .600/ .667 /.889 (5 AB)
Peterson .200/.429/.800 1 HR (GS) 5 AB

Other notable starter stats:

Kubel .500/.714/1.500/.500 1 HR, 3 BB (5 AB)
Morneau .429/.500/.714/ 1 BB (7 AB)


Position Player of week 1:

Delmon Young



Honorable mention: Brian Buscher, Jason Kubel, Danny Valencia, Dustin Martin


Pitchers:

Best Starter Performance:

Slowey ERA 0.00, WHIP 0.00, 0 BB, 1 K 2 IP
Blackburn ERA 0.00, WHIP 0.00, 0 BB, 0 K, 2 IP
Perkins ERA 0.00, WHIP 1.00, 0 BB, 3 K, 5 IP

Battle for set up man:

Crain 0.00 ERA, WHIP 0.00, 0 BB, 0 K, 2 IP
Ayala 0.00 ERA, WHIP 0.50, 0 BB, 0 K, 2 IP
Breslow 4.50 ERA, WHIP 1.00, 0 BB, 2 K, 2 IP
Guerrier 4.50 ERA, WHIP 1.50, 2 BB, 0 K, 2 IP

On the bubble; battle for the last 1-2 spots:

Dickey 0.00 ERA, WHIP 1.00, 1 BB, 3 K, 2 IP
Henn 0.00 ERA, WHIP 1.50, 1 BB, 0 K, 2 IP
Mijares 0.00 ERA, WHIP 1.50, 2 BB, 3 K, 2 IP
Jones 3.00 ERA, WHIP 2.00, 2 BB, 3 K, 3 IP
Goslin 0.00 ERA, WHIP 2.50, 2 BB, 1 K, 2 IP
Humber 18.00, WHIP 2.50, 0 BB, 0 K, 2 IP

pitcher of week 1, spring training:

Kevin Slowey





honorable mention: Nick Blackburn, Jesse Crain, Glen Perkins, R.A. Dickey