Amish Sports Machine | Amish Baby Machine Pop Culture Podcast

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SPRING THAW, TWINS CODE BROWN FEST BEGINS!!

Well, its spring time here in the Twin Cities. Everyone is pumped to see those giant piles of white stuff melt away! Soon America’s pastime begins. Minnesota Twins baseball time!!(Insert GIGANTIC fart noise) The team that ranks 30 of 30 on “Big Mott’s Dumbest Ass’d teams” list… For some reason I talked myself into buying tickets and going to the 12th game of the season. Man I hope they are only 3-9 at that point and not 1-11!! That would be a good start to the season for this shit team. 1 more thing to interject, Target Field, the glorious still new Twins stadium opened in 2010, in the 3 years after the owner has slashed payroll $15 million/year after it was in all-time high for the first season of the new park. A season which the team won 90+games and won the Central Division. Vom. Now they have added Ricky Nolacso and Phil Hughes, and re-signed crazy crazy awful Mike Pelfrey, which will not help at all as you will see below.

The Twins are a team that has for years subscribed to the “pitch to contact” strategy. What they must not realize is, every single time a batter puts the ball in play with his bat (known to us ultra stat geeks as BABIP=batting average on balls in play) the average of such plays is around .300. That’s right, our fav local team CHOOSES to turn every hitter into a hall of famer. Lately they say they have gone away from this strategy. Well I disagree big-time.
Here is a little stat action for all of you on the Twins gloriously god awful Pitching staff….They have yet to decide on a 5th starter, so I will keep this to just the “TOP” 4 pitchers they will roll out in 2014. 1st stat I am using is ERA+, it’s like ERA, but compares it with all pitchers to determine an average. The MLB average for this stat is 100. Next stat is K% or K rate, or simply the % of batters a pitcher strikes out, current MLB avg for this is 18.3%. And then, as mentioned above, BABIP allowed…Where .298 is current league average. WELLLLLLL, let’s take a look at how the top 4 Twins pitchers have fared throughout their careers in these stats…

Rickey Nolasco ERA+ 94 K% 19.3 BABIP against .313 Career (yrs) 8

Phil Hughes ERA+ 95 K% 19.3 BABIP against .295 Career (yrs) 7

Kevin Correia ERA+ 89 K% 19.7 BABIP against .301 Career (yrs) 11

Mike Pelfrey ERA+ 90 K% 15 BABIP against .317 Career (yrs) 8

Go ahead and evaluate away!! No matter what level stat geek as you can see we are in for another 90+ loss season here in the Twin Cities as the Twins send their squad of shit out onto the field for the 2014 season! Did I use enough exclamation points describing my fav team turrrrrible’ness???

Amish Sports Machine
Head Sports Reporter
Big Mott signing off for now