Twinkies in the Outfield
The Minnesota Twins are not known for their outfield. The team’s big league outfielder core sports a combined OPS under .800 that puts the group in the bottom tier of major league outfields. With such a flawed group, the way the teams uses their assets will be very important, so let’s take a look at how each is being used and how they should be used.
Denard Span – Span has elbowed his way into a solid position on this team by being pretty good at everything. His solid approach at the plate (12.3% walk rate, 16.5% strikeout rate) has continued, and his 15.9% reach percentage is 12th in the league and close to elite status. He’s much better against lefties (.914 OPS) than righties (.768 OPS), but beggars can’t be choosers.
Unfortunately for the Twins and Span, his defense is not elite. Span’s UZR at center field this year is 30 runs under average, and he really should only be used on the corners according to the numbers. In 2008, he was 43 runs in the negative in center field. Yeah, he’s getting better with the glove, but Span is a corner outfielder that hits like a center fielder. In this group, though, he probably should be an everyday starter.
Delmon Young – Here’s another Twinkie outfielder that hits like a center fielder, and the last time he played center field (2007 in Tampa Bay), he cost his team almost 45 runs per 150 games according to his UZR rating. Young is not the answer in CF, either.
The rest of his Young’s game does not emulate Span’s. Young has improved his reach rate from 50.3% in his debut to 34.4% this year, but the new number is still on par with such ‘disciplined’ luminaries as Jeff Francoeur and Jose Lopez. With a line drive number that has decreased every year in the majors, and a strike out rate over 30% this year, both the short-term and long-term views of Young’s career have plenty of warts. Moving to Minnesota has also been famously terrible for his power, and his fly ball rates have continued to drop this year. An almost-decent fly ball rate of 32.6% in Tampa has turned into a terrible 24% rate this year.
The only thing worth pointing to in Young’s resume is that his decent speed has led to a career BABIP of .345 that seems steady at this point. With a nice BABIP like that, he should be able to maintain good batting averages, and ZiPS agrees by projecting him to hit .285 from here on out. Since he offers so little everywhere else, fantasy owners should be rooting for a trade, or looking for a trade partner in their league. Some people still like Young.
Michael Cuddyer – With a career slugging percentage of .446, Cuddyer is the slugger in this outfield. He’s having a good year and seems to be recovered from his myriad health issues from last year.
Earlier in his career he struck out a little too much but he’s now settled into a sub-20% level. He reaches a bit (25.1% career), and right now he’s making contact with 66% of the balls he swings at outside the zone. With a career contact rate at 53.6%, this number may point to some coming whiffs. Another negative is that Cuddyer is in the middle of a three-year decline in fly balls. He’ll need to loft the ball a little more in order to keep getting the ball out of the yard – his 18.6% HR/FB rate is an unsustainable career high, in other words.
All of this said, something in between his 2006 and 2007 levels of production are almost certainly on the way, meaning he’ll end up with a batting average around .280 and a decent home run total. That’s another every day starter for you, and a solid starter in leagues any deeper than standard mixed leagues.
Carlos Gomez – The reason for this article has been Gomez’ ‘improving’ play recently. So far in May, he’s gone .250/.327/.354, which counts as a solid jump up from his .195/.250/.293 slash line in April. He’s done so by improving his walk rate to 8.2% and his reach rate from 36.8% to a more decent 25.2% level so far this year.
The question might still be, though, if a center fielder putting up even his improved walk rate can succeed if striking out 22.5% of the time and not showing any power. Sure, his defense in center field is the best of the bunch (15.6 UZR/150 career), but he’s currently a negative on offense. Right now, his best value would be as a defensive replacement in center field, but he’s young and the team will continue to run him out there and cost the more valuable Cuddyer, Young and Span at-bats for no real good reason. If that changes, though, Cuddyer and Span should get a nudge up in your rankings.
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Frankly I’d prefer a Span/Gomez/Young outfield every day.
Cuddyer is only getting worse, and as much as I like the guy, the Twins are better off dealing him.
Span is a solid defender, and that CF UZR seems too low. Regardless, there’s no question he’s performed better on the LF side. Having him and Gomez cover 3/4ths the field leaves opposing teams relatively impotent with OF hits. He’s been excellent at the plate, and ~.825 OPS with relatively little power means he’s pretty far from useless.
Gomez is incredible on defense, and with the FB-heavy pitching staff he’s a no-brainer. I’d be very happy with league-average OBP if he can put up those defensive numbers.
Young is a butcher in LF for some reason, but historically good in RF. No matter how bad the Twins batting coaches are, I don’t expect him to get worse. I’d like to see him somehow get his own batting help, since he seems to have the requisite tools to be a decent corner outfielder and the Twins are an awful place for hitters to develop.
Gomez ‘lost’ 15 runs on offense last year, about on level with the 16 runs he gained on defense according to his UZR. I suppose netting an average player in CF works, and certainly you don’t want to lose 30 runs (and 3 wins) by putting Span in CF every day, so I agree on that level that what they are doing is probably best for the team.
But from a fantasy perspective, we’d be best suited by Cuddyer/Span/Gomez because I am very pessimistic about Gomez on offense.
Span isn’t a -30 defender in center. He has had less than 300 innings in center, and UZR ratings are worthless in such a small sample size. For a better estimate of his true fielding ability, you should look at CHONE’s preseason defensive projections. He projected Span to be +6 in centerfielder using his total zone ratings from the majors and the minors.
Agreed. He was also really good according to UZR in right field. There’s no way he’s a terrible center fielder and an elite Right fielder. The position adjustment should just be a handful of runs.
I’d like to know how Michael Cuddyer is getting worse. Can anybody answer that question? Last season he hardly played and I assume you’re basing everything off that.
Have you seen his numbers this season “jtr”?
A career .270 hitter, Cuddyer is currently batting .285 with 8 homeruns and 31 RBI. His OPS isn’t bad at .888 either. With these numbers Cuddyer is on pace to hit 28 homeruns and drive in 109 runners.
If that is getting worse, I’ll take it…
I don’t mean to say Cuddyer isn’t an asset, but I don’t think he’ll sustain this sort of performance past age 31 and I’d rather not see an aging mediocre hitter sitting on the Twins bench in 3 years because he isn’t worth enough to deal.
I see what you’re saying. The good thing for the Twins is that after being guaranteed a contract with the Twins in 2010, the team has an option for 2011.
So, next season could be his last in Minnesota if he slows down in his production or if the team has other options. If he does what he’s doing right now, I’d take his production and leadership in ‘11.
No, Cuddyer is not getting worse. In fact, he’s finally healthy. A lot of the home runs he’s hit this year haven’t been fly balls…they’ve been line drives. I don’t think he’ll match the current pace he’s setting for himself in terms of homers and runs driven in, but he’ll have a good year. He’ll be the best offensive Twins outfielder, and it won’t be by a close margin.
In regards to Span, his weakness isn’t his glove at all. It’s his arm. He’s fast and he makes plays on pretty much anything in his zone, and he’s definitely quick enough to make plays outside his zone as well. The problem is when somebody hits one to the gap and he has to try and hold a guy to a single, but he gets a double. Or a triple. And offensively, he’s a great leadoff hitter for this team. With Kubel pigeon-holed (corrently) as a DH, he and Cuddyer provide the only offense from the outfield.
Young is frustrating as hell. Gomez is the confusing one for me. Either play him everyday, so he can learn by doing (even failing, that’s fine), or send him to Rochester so he can continue to play everyday and see live pitches. Both of these guys are incredibly raw, and considering who they were traded for, they both have a lot to live up to.
Finally I have to argue that Gomez is best used as a late-inning defensive replacement. You say yourself that Span is best used as a corner outfielder. Ignoring that, the problem is that without Gomez in the outfield, Span is in center which means either Young or (gasp) Kubel have to play left. Both of those guys are painful to watch in the field. And as long as the Twins are keeping Gomez with the big league club, I have no problems with him getting playing time. He needs it if he’s ever going to get better. And all things considered, it’s not as though playing Young gets you much more value.
I agree that Span’s problem is his arm more than anything else. He has great speed and has tracked down some balls that for a lot of teams would fall in.
Young is frustrating, and while I think he’ll hit for a decent average (high .280s or so), most of his hits are singles.
To say nothing of the fantasy implications, it’s entirely clear that Gomez needs to go down to AAA and work on balls/strikes and contact. He’s unlikely to improve much in this regard while not playing every day. Nice glove, but you have to hit better than an NL pitcher to be a valuable asset. Span is no prize pig in CF, but he’s good enough that his bat/glove combination makes him more valuable than Gomez’s.
Both of these two are young and athletic; it’s not as if we can declare that neither of them are capable of improving their weaknesses. If they both need to play every day in order to do that, however, then Gomez has to be sent down.
How is Young “more valuable” than Gomez, exactly? You pull that conclusion out of nowhere at the end of your article, in spite of the fact that no evidence supports such a ridiculous claim.
You and I both know, Nick, it’s because Delmon’s so “young” and has so much “potential”!
Exactly. Using the WAR on this site, Gomez was a league average player and Young was below replacement level. You can regress the fielding numbers some, but there’s still at least a 15 run advantage to Gomez. Also, as you said Gomez is actually showing signs of improvement! Young has not shown any signs of getting better in any way. There is absolutely no argument that justifies Young playing every day over Gomez. Both are young and could improve, but Young would need to turn into Manny Ramirez to be a productive player, while Gomez would just need to start walking a bit more and hit a few homeruns.
I should have been more clear: Young is only more valuable than Gomez from a fantasy perspective (something I figured would be more clear given that this is the fantasy blog on the site, but something I should have emphasized). No matter how many bags you steal, a .250 batting average is such a negative in most formats (roto especially), that a guy that should give you .290 and 15/15 has to be more valuable.
Because of defense, there are few non-fantasy arguments for playing Young over Gomez right now, other than perhaps that their overall development might best be served by Gomez going down to AAA to play every day and Young playing every day on the Twins. I remain pessimistic about both, though. They both hit the ball into the ground and strike out a lot, neither walks much or hits the ball with much authority.
The point about Span’s defense is well-noted. I’ll look into the reliability of UZR more, though I had thought that 300 innings was a decent sample size. It does seem obvious that the team itself doesn’t like his D much, or maybe they are blinded by Gomez’ D – in contrast, Span looks much worse. But if it’s just his arm, maybe the team would best be served by having a Damon-like CF…
Yeah, sometimes I forget when I click on articles over here that they are written from a fantasy perspective.