In what is thought of as one of the greatest Simpsons episodes of all-time, Nuclear Power Plant owner turned softball manager, C. Montgomery Burns gave one of his ringers, Daryl Strawberry, an invaluable hitting tip.

“You there. Strawberry. Hit a home run,” advised the decrepit hitting instructor. Strawberry took the counsel and smacked a dinger onto the Springfield Expressway. In a perfect world designed by major league hitting coaches, life would be that easy.

Certainly, the Minnesota Twins’ newest hitting advisor, Tom Brunansky, would likely agree with that.

In reality, hitting coaches have to work with players who have different styles, personalities and needs. There is no “easy button” that fixes mechanics or gets them to recognize what they are doing wrong. Hitting coaches have to surf through a sea of information, digest it and then present it back to the players in a manner in which the players can relate to.

Brunansky, much like a couple of his students, made the jump from the minors to the majors this year.

In the minor leagues, you have buses and Red Roof Inns. In the majors, you have jets and the Four Seasons. Tools for hitting coaches have just as much separation between levels. In the minors, there are no extensive databases of pitch charts to turn to or PitchF/X cameras lining the walls of the single-tiered stadiums in the Eastern League capturing every bit of movement a pitching prospect has. Minor league hitting coaches work on instinct and experience.

“Up here it’s a lot about the approaches and not about all the prep work you put into getting ready to do it because there is so much information, there’s so much video, everything you can have to get prepped and ready to go. Lower level, you don’t really have a lot, you just go out and play. Here you can really get a good idea what you’re getting into and set up a pretty good approach and have an idea what a [pitcher’s] got before you face him.”

At the major league level, you can have anything you want supplied for you at the ring of a bell. Justin Morneau wants to know about every slider that the Yankees’ C.C. Sabathia has thrown to lefties before a game? Brunansky could have in that in charts, numbers, graphs or videos in the snap of the finger. That said, even with all the availability, Brunansky does not overindulge his hitters in the deluge of data and video. It’s not that he is advocating flying blind - it is that it can often be overwhelming.

“You can get enough stuff here to choke a cow with,” says Brunansky wryly. “You can get anything you want here. There’s some in-depth stuff. You can get any stat, any number, anything you want to look at. But how does that apply? It’s taking it and seeing the [pitcher] and seeing how he pitches out there and translating all that information and breaking it down and going ‘OK guys.’ These guys don’t want to hear all that garbage. It’s my job to go crazy and decipher all that garbage and say, OK, look, this is what he does.”

What about the job duty of being the swing repair man? After the first month of the season, Brunansky, it seemed, would have his plate full getting guys comfortable at home plate.

The Twins offense in April was fairly anemic. They completed the month with a .239 batting average, 23 out of the 30 team, and a .355 slugging percentage, ahead of just the hapless Marlins. Rookie Aaron Hicks was posterized by pitchers. Justin Morneau provided very little punch in the cleanup spot. Ryan Doumit as well.

How does a hitting coach retool on the fly during a sport which has about two scheduled off-days a year? Like a pit stop at Daytona, it seems that major league hitting coaches have just a few moments to tinker under the hood with the mechanics, then pat them on their butt and say go get ‘em.

For example, Morneau, as was pointed out numerous times by the Twins broadcasters, was pulling his front side open like a screen door in the wind. This left him vulnerable to being pitched away, which teams happily obligated. When the month concluded, Morneau held a middle infielder-esque .253/.309/.379 batting line and fewer extra base hits than he had fingers on his hands.

Would Brunansky set Morneau up with a video viewing room much like the one in Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange, holding his eyes open and re-watching his swing until the idea of performing that act would make him violently ill? No, although that would be an interesting technique that an experimental hitting coach should try someday (perhaps in the forward-thinking Rays’ organization). Brunansky’s philosophy revolves around executing a physical feel rather than driving home the appearance.

“A lot of that goes to just the feel. And that’s what hitting is anyways. Like anytime you play the game – it’s feel. You want guys to not really dwell on what they look at, it’s what they feel. And feel is easy to replicate, the look is tough. You can see something that looks like it needs a mechanical change in the swing and we’ll go try to implement it in the cage or on the field with the rest of the team, but it is feel that is easy to replicate and take that back into a game.”

Likewise, the season snowballed quickly out of control for Hicks in the early going. After one month of play Hicks was staring at a .356 OPS and had struck out in over a quarter of his plate appearances. Many openly wondered if he would benefit from additional seasoning in Rochester. Would it even be possible to correct course at this level? How do you straighten a player out like that on the fly?

Brunansky says it goes back to reintroducing the feel of hitting, getting hitters like Hicks and others scuffling back to the point in the batting cage and drills where they have a fundamentally sound swing. Dozens of at bats may go by without reaping the benefits of the changes but the message is that the coach would like to see the seeds of success sown during prep time.

“It’s not so much that it is ‘to take effect on the field’,” says Brunansky. “It is more or less ‘to take effect in the cage’. That’s all I look for. Look for replication in the cage, the feel in the cage and take it on the field for BP. And then after that I don’t them to think, I don’t want them to do anything. I want them to set the approach for the guy that they’re facing and the situation that they are in and trust what they did. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, you have a [bad] swing. Heck with it. We go back to work.”

Has Brunansky’s influence been a factor in the offensive resurgence in May? Obviously there are plenty of reasons for a significant rise in performance in a small period of time – some of that begins and ends with Joe Mauer. Yet the Twins find themselves with a .272 average in May, ninth-best in baseball, with a much improved .449 slugging percentage, fifth-best of the month so far. Individually, those struggling in the first month have rebounded nicely. Hicks has vastly reduced the amount of strike outs and put the ball in play with some power. Morneau is hitting .375. Doumit is slugging .500.

It is nearly impossible to separate Brunansky’s contributions from the player’s talent, however, this month they are working well in tandem.

On Saturday, May 4, Ryan Doumit, at .203, was not even hitting his weight. With a slugging percentage of .291 to boot, the Minnesota Twins’ switch-hitting catcher/DH was a few nights of binge eating hot wings from matching that number as well. As a regular guest of manager Ron Gardenhire’s vital fifth spot in the batting order, Doumit’s woes directly impacted the team’s offense. An offense, which had concluded April with just 92 runs scored – ahead of only the Chicago White Sox at 89.

Last year, while providing crucial support in the heart of the order, the vast majority of his plate appearances came from the left side of the plate. His total numbers are buoyed by whether or not he succeeds as a left-handed hitter. In 2012, he hit a respectable .288/.335/.488 and dropped 13 of his 18 home runs from the port side. That carried him through the year and earned him his contract extension. This year, however, Doumit had yielded little returns from either side of the plate.

That is until the trip to Boston.

Despite leaving Thursday night without a hit, Doumit did a great deal of damage in a two-day span which included six hits in nine at-bats, two home runs and a double. Heading into Fenway, he was the owner of the sad .203 average and a middle infielder-esque .554 OPS. He had not hit one jack job all year. When the Twins left the city, Doumit’s average was 30 points higher and his OPS had 100 points added to it as well. He also smacked two dingers. What changed was his ability to square up on pitches…in the zone.

[Pause while audience gasps.]

Doumit entered the Boston series not necessarily chasing after pitches out of the zone at a higher rate than last year but he was making contact with pitches out of the zone. Opponents – fully aware of the fact that Doumit is a pull hitter – have attempted to defuse his powers by feeding him with pitches away, hoping he tries to pull them and, thus, turn them over for weak grounders.

Here’s a better visual reference to understand what was happening during the series in Cleveland:

As a pull hitter, it is not a surprise to see teams attacking him with pitches away. Additionally, they had increased the usage of changeups on him (from 15% to 22%) in order to see if he will roll over on those offerings. These past few games, however, we have seen something different out of Doumit. Compare those points of contact to the ones he made while in Boston most recently:

Clearly, when a hitter makes contact with pitches in the zone, they are better able to square the ball off the barrel of the ball. Doumit’s poor pitch selection may indicate why he has had an inordinate amount of grounders put into play this year %) in comparison to his career average (43%). Without the elevation, he would suffer a power outage.

Heading into the Boston showdown, Doumit was put the ball on the ground 35 times versus the 31 times he got underneath it. That changed significantly in Massachusetts when he went vertical eight times and bounced three times (save for Thursday night’s game). It is no surprise, then, that when we witness Doumit accumulate extra base hits, he is elevating the ball much better.

Also a curious aspect to Doumit’s inauspicious start has been his inability to make pitcher’s pay when he has been in favorable counts. In 2012, when he had been up on pitcher’s, he absolutely raked - posting a .327 average and a 1.026 OPS ahead in the count. This year, that average is down to .154 with a OPS of .584. The results in those situations circle back to his expansion of the zone where two of the three examples above came in hitter’s counts.

Is this a corner-turn moment for Ryan Doumit? It is definitely plausible that the Twins are seeing the old Doumit return with his swing decisions exercised in Boston. It would be wildly beneficial as the team has suffered with his lack of production in the heart of the order. Keep an eye on his swing location through the upcoming home stand to see if this output continues.

On Tuesday night in Boston, Aaron Hicks compounded his issues with the manager with a seemingly innocuous action on the field in the eighth inning with the Twins securely up by six runs.

With Jonny Gomes up at the plate, the Sox’s beefy right fielder lifted a fly ball into short center field. Hicks came racing in from the deepest regions of center field Fenway (which is also shallow Maine) and in one motion nabs the falling sphere and flips it to second baseman Brian Dozier.

Afterwards, the Fox Sports North camera transitioned to the ancient Fenway dugout to capture manager Ron Gardenhire mimicking Hicks’ maneuver to one of the coaches and displaying general displeasure for what his center fielder just did. The broadcast team went over the play several times and then provided a close-up of Hicks who seemed to be peeking towards the direction of the dugout while his manager fumed.

Here you can find a quick glimpse of the play in question:



When he came in after the inning, Hicks was greeted by Gardenhire, who, if he had any sense of Lou Brown/Major League humor at all, would have said “Nice catch Hicks, now don’t ever f**king do that again.” Instead, in the far corners of the green dugout, Gardenhire subjected Hicks to a Twins Way re-education seminar.

Again, it is simple enough. Nothing overtly flashy or egregious. It was not as if the rookie has flipped the ball behind his back or between his legs at Dozier. He did not take a pen out of his back pocket and sign it or did the Sam Cassell “big ball” celebration dance. While one cannot say for certain, this feels like a move that Torii Hunter and Carlos Gomez have at least done a handful of times during their tenure with the Minnesota Twins. Still, when you are put on Gardy’s double-secret probation list, the slightest indiscretion triggers these types of reactions.

Hicks’ recent defensive gaffes had pushed him out of the lineup on Tuesday. On Monday, the center fielder allowed a seemingly catchable fly ball drop to the earth while, later, he overshot his cut by four states – a play that was only salvaged because Pedro Florimon was able to make a strong throw home and Joe Mauer was able to sell the fact that he applied the tag when no tag was made.

Ron Gardenhire thought the play should have been much easier than that.

"If we'd hit the right cutoff man, he'd have been out by 50 yards. Second baseman Brian) Dozier was standing with his hands up, and we threw the ball to second base with (Pedro) Florimon, so now the ball has to bounce and gives the guy extra time. Florimon got rid of it quick, threw it high and Joe made a heck of a play. Dozier was standing there with his hands up. That's where we want the ball to go: our first guy."

Monday night was not the first time this year in which the manager had to take a moment to lecture his young player on the merits of hitting the cut-off man. During spring training, Hicks missed his cut and Gardenhire talked to him afterwards in the dugout.

"It was perfectly understandable why he got into me," Hicks told reporters after the spring training game. "I have to be able to hit the cutoff man. That's my job. That's what needed to be done, and I didn't do it."

Overall, his defensive performance has been even more troublesome than just those two isolated instances. According to UZR/150, his mark of -14.2 runs is 18th out of 23 qualified center fielders. Meanwhile, his Revised Zone Rate (RZR) of .862 ranks 22 out of 23 – meaning that he is making just 86.2% of in-zone plays that center fielders should make. Last, Baseball Info Solution’s Plus/Minus has his contributions at -5. Certainly the small sample size warning applies but the three metrics all agree and appear to confirm the eye test that Hicks is not a defensive wizard to this point in the season.

There is no question that Hicks has the speed to cover copious amounts of real estate and an arm to shut down opponents’ running games. He still has a lot to learn about how the game is played at the major league level. Gardenhire wants him to understand that you cannot have a million dollar arm and a ten cent head.

After a slow start in the season’s opening week, Joe Mauer was once again cracking line drives – right on schedule – but has more recently found himself in one of the worst stretches of offensive baseball of his career and quite possibly the worst since he was a fetus.

Pardon the arbitrary endpoints, from April 6 to April 20, Mauer had collected 18 hits in 35 at bats (a whopping .514 batting average). In that time, the Twins catcher was blistering the baseball to the opposite field, accumulating five of his seven extra base hits that direction, including both of his home runs (per the Mauer norm). Then, as quick as the flick of his wrists for an outer-half offering, his production disappeared. Since April 21, he has he has gotten just three hits (including Tuesday night’s single off of Verlander) in his last 33 at bats, making this nine-game span’s batting average a puny .090.

According to Fangraphs.com’s Splits Leaderboard, over the last seven days Mauer’s .077 batting average is the fourth-worst in baseball, besting only Drew Stubbs, Ryan Raburn and Adam LaRoche. While it may be easy to dismiss this output as a product of the baseball gods correcting his absurd balls in play average over the previous stretch, Mauer’s drought may be structural based.

Far be it from me to deconstruct one of the smoothest, most mechanically sound swings the game has ever seen. That would be like a St Cloud State art major trying to criticize the painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Ron Coomer, on the other hand, presented his thoughts on what has suddenly happened to this beautiful motion. During last night’s broadcast on Fox Sports North, Coomer observed that Mauer is opening up slightly, thereby elongating his swing. This, he said, altered his contact point to some extent and has been causing him not to square up on the ball.

It is hard to see clear evidence of this in available video clips yet there is no denying Mauer has taken some of his most un-Mauer-ian cuts at pitches as of late and those have resulted in very few line drives over his past 33 at bats. In fact, last night’s line drive single was just the second line drive he has hit since April 21. Hell, over the weekend we nearly witnessed him pop out to the infield – an event that has occurred just once in the last three seasons.

Consider this awkward swing in this screen grab from his strike out last night:

Notice how far Mauer’s head moved offline in order to track Verlander’s curveball. Full disclosure, Justin Verlander makes a lot of great hitters look stupid. That said, Joe Mauer - with his career 1.072 OPS against Verlander - is typically not one of them.

To Coomer’s point, Mauer has taken more swings at pitches middle and in during this cold streak compared to his hot streak in which he had swung at more pitches middle and away – those kinds he was driving to left field. Part of the reason for the increase on the swings on the inner-half of the plate could be due to pulling off the ball a bit.

The teams have also changed their approach with him too. Perhaps the reports from the advanced scouts indicated that there was less to be concerned over with Mauer at this point because, beginning in the Rangers series, opponents simply stopped missing the strike zone. In his 14 games leading up to April 26, pitchers had landed 59% of their pitches for strikes against him. Since then, that rate has shot up to 76%. In theory,he has been seeing tons of hittable pitches.

What is going on with Minnesota’s $184 Million Dollar Hit Man?

The simplest answer is that it is a short timeframe and everyone is susceptible to these statistical anomalies in a small sample size over 38 plate appearances. Within that regression lie a handful of drivers that is pulling his numbers down – a subtle mechanical flaw here, poor swing decisions there and topped off with the strike zone aggressiveness of the opposition. Success in baseball is fluid. Those like Mauer who have been able to hit consistently over .300 in their careers are able to do so because they can make changes and corrections relatively quick. If we all just breathe for a second, at some point in the near future he will snap out of this dry spell.

Just a month removed from being celebrated for his amazingly quick recovery from Tommy John surgery less than 11 months ago, Mike Pelfrey’s numbers through his first four starts in a Twins uniform have been extremely disappointing.

This raises the questions of whether or not Pelfrey is completely ready for reintroduction into the major leagues. After all, this follows step with the plight of Joe Nathan in 2010 who rushed through his rehab only to hit a wall a month into the season. Despite being the owner of a 7.94 ERA through 17 innings in 2013, the notion of removing Pelfrey from the rotation at this point appears moot. The idea was quickly shot down by manager Ron Gardenhire following his most recent start, said Pioneer Press beat writer Mike Bernadino.

Clearly, Pelfrey has a lot of things going wrong right now. If you were listening to the broadcasts, you would be told that the reason that the big right-hander is struggling is due to his decline in velocity. But let’s be honest here: It’s not as if Pelfrey is sudden throwing the Henry Rowengartner floater pitch to every batter he sees. It’s less than a mile per hour of difference. In 2011, his last full season at the major leagues, he was throwing his fastball at 92.2 miles per hour. This year, it has been at 91.3. All things considered, that is not substantial.

Let’s take a look at the things that are really plaguing him in 2013.

(1) Command.

Experts and those who have gone through the procedure agree that command is the last skill to return after Tommy John surgery.

Last week, Jeff Zimmerman of Fangraphs.com interviewed Kansas City Royals’ pitching coach Dave Eiland – someone who had gone through the surgical process and recover in his playing days – echoed that sentiment.

“One of the last things to come back is the command.” Eiland told Zimmerman, “You might feel strong. You might be fast. You might be good to go. Pitching off the mound and competing in a game is all together different then throwing sides and batting practice. My suggestion is if you think everything feels good, take another month.”

Pelfrey’s return was heralded as nothing short of miraculous. And in many ways, it was. No other pitcher on record had comeback from the surgery in less than 12 months and competed in a major league game. However, what we have seen is his struggles to command the ball. Like Eiland said, you can feel great in many other facets of the game, but once the real games start, your precision may not be all there.

In Perlfey’s case, his ability to locate the ball in the strike zone has been one of the worst in the league. In after his first three outings, Pelfrey’s in-zone percentage – the number of pitches he has thrown in the strike zone – is at 39.8%, the sixth-lowest in baseball. To make matters worse, the five ahead of him throw a high percentage of breaking balls – pitches that are harder to command and are often suppose to be out of the strike zone -- while Pelfrey has throwing his fastball/sinker 70% of the time. Fortunately, Pelfrey found the zone more frequently in his start against the Marlins on Tuesday (58 of 94 pitches) to increase his zone presence.

What is more worrisome than not throwing the ball over the plate is his missing his spots. Here is a recent example of this malfeasance. This sinker to Rob Brantley was supposed to be down and away, per Ryan Doumit’s request, but wound up in the middle of the zone:

This particular pitch was lasered to the right field gap for a two-run double. Some are not nearly that detrimental but a lot of the contact allowed, even on the ground, has been loud.

(2) His pitches are staying up in the zone.

What the noise off of the bats may tell the ball guys around the stadium, the data from pitch f/x confirms: Pelfrey’s pitches just are not moving the same way they did prior to the injury.

When it comes to his sinker, the pitch is staying up in the zone – on average – above an inch high than it had in the past. Where it was coming in at 5.5 inches in 2010, 6.7 in 2011 and 6.2 in 2012, it has shot up to 7.5 inches this season, meaning there is less of a sink. Less sink from a sinkerball pitcher is not a good thing. Results wind up like the aforementioned example above.

His slider, his most often used secondary pitch, has had less vertical drop compared to previous season. In 2010, his vertical finish was 3.4 inches. Same in 2011. This year, it is 6.8, a little over three inches higher than his last two healthy seasons, meaning less downward movement. This is very comparable to Joe Nathan during his recovery with the Twins in 2010. Prior to heading back to Rochester, his slider stayed in the 6-to-7 inch range after being much more substantial prior to that.

Lastly, his split-finger change, a pitch he throws mainly to lefties, has been splattered across the field the few times he has thrown. Opponents are 4-for-6 off of it and, you guessed it, it too is staying up in the zone.

This has translated into a whole lot of contact and a whole lot of well-struck contact – even if the majority of it has been on the ground. That is how you “scatter” 29 hits over 17 innings.

(3) Release point.

This ties into the first two items and that is his release point is measurably lower than his 2011 season. Two years ago, Pelfrey was releasing his pitches a little over six feet high. That has since dropped to under five-feet-nine-inches, according to BrooksBaseball.net.

The angles are different, but the release point is captured well in these examples. In 2011, you see the taller release point – a great thing considering his overall large stature. In 2012, that is leveled out some. While a few inches may not seem like much, this lowered released point is likely one of the reasons he is not seeing the movement as his sinker and slider flatten out when his arm angle drops and his unable to stay on top of the ball.

(4) Mound Presence.

Sinkerball pitchers are a finicky lot. Former Met teammate and once-upon-a-time sinkerballer, R.A. Dickey, told reporters in 2011 how easy it is to completely lose the feel for the pitch after Pelfrey continued to have issues that spring.

“There’s so many different things that can impact the movement of the pitch,” Dickey told reporters, “that you do, sometimes, lose it for a period.”

Dickey went on to say that the slight change in the grip or the arm action could cause a loss of movement that he would struggle to regain. The Mets have discovered that Pelfrey is someone who has a history of needing to readjust regularly. Early in his career, he had kept his glove at his chest level when he started his windup. He changed that to keeping his hands at belt-level before his windup. In spring training of 2012, he went to bringing his hands over his head in order to get better downward plan and stay on top of his sinker, the same motion he uses today.

Additionally, after being a guy who had worked off the third base side of the rubber for most of the previous two seasons, he swapped that practice for the far left side of the rubber, pitching instead off the first base side.

Take a look:

It may be minor, but when you add up all these changes and alterations in the past several years in addition to the recovery from the Tommy John surgery, it may be affecting his ability to repeat his mechanics consistently to the point where he can command all of his pitches effectively.

(5) Tempo.

Mike Hargrove, in his playing days with Texas and Cleveland in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, was affectionate known as “The Human Rain Delay” for his deliberate routine before and after each pitch in the batter’s box. Meanwhile, Mike Pelfrey, a few decades and sixty-feet-and-six-inches away from the batter’s box, is doing his own version of that in 2013.

While not nearly as OCD as Hargrove, Pelfrey’s pace on the mound is staggeringly slow. After maintaining a normal pace of around 22 seconds per pitch, the right-hander is lulling opponents and fans to sleep with his 27.5 seconds between each pitch. By comparison, Houston’s Bud Norris, the next slowest pitcher in the majors, is nearly two seconds quicker with his delivery to home.

Is this a lack of confidence in his stuff, not being on the same page as his catcher or simply a paced slowed by 11 months of rust? There is a lot to be read into the fact that Pelfrey has been holding the ball a lot longer than usual.

****

Pelfrey has an extensive list of things that are not going right for him. Lack of command, movement, a noticeably lowered release point, a revolving mound presence and a tempo problem that is wearing down his own defense and spectators alike have been just part of the reason he has struggled so much to open the season.

At this point, management is convinced to let him fight through his own issues. That said, a few more outings like the one against the lowly Marlins don’t be surprised if Pelfrey himself trying to figure out what is wrong in Rochester.

After his start on Opening Day, I chatted with Twins starter Vance Worley about his on-going efforts to add a change-up to his arsenal.

Worley’s response was that he had not quite comfortable throwing this particular pitch. Being a “feel” pitch, the right-hander bounced between throwing a split-finger change and a more conventional circle change, he admitted to rarely throwing it.

On Saturday at USCellular Field, Worley told reporters after his start that he threw two change-ups to the White Sox lead-off hitter, Alejandro De Aza. In the second pitch of the game, Worley tossed an 80 mile per hour change in the middle of the zone that De Aza fouled off to move it to a 0-2 count. After a fastball for a ball, Worley went back to the change. This time, De Aza jacked it for a solo home run.

Here’s what Worley said after that game:

"I was frustrated by that," Worley said. "I threw him a changeup the second pitch of the inning and he swung right through it. I said, `All right, why not? I can go back to it.' And he was sitting right on it. It happens."

It was the only real bad pitch in Worley’s otherwise flawless afternoon – one in which he struck out seven in seven innings while allowing just five hits. In terms of his on-going development process, we see that Worley may not be quite as ready to throw the change regularly.

On that particular change to De Aza, we see a few things. The first being that he used a split-change – as you can see by his grip:

A split-change is a downgraded version of the split-finger fastball, in which a pitcher spreads the index and middle finger some, giving it some vertical drop while decreasing the velocity. Of the three he threw on Saturday, Worley’s change showed a velocity variation of 7-to-9 miles per hour slower than his fastball, adding some needed deception.

The issue, as Worley said a few weeks ago, is gaining the “feel” for the pitch – ball guy lingo for being able to locate at will. This offering to De Aza did not reach the intended target, in fact, drifting all the way back over the plate into the Chicago outfielder’s swing zone.

Here we see Mauer’s requested target – down and away where changeup have a high percentage of success. Note the red circle where the pitch actually reached the zone:

What we can deduce from this is that Worley’s changeup is still very much a work in progress. It’s possible that instances like this may shake his confidence in the pitch and keep him from using it, especially considering he threw it only one other time after the De Aza at bat. Still, with his two-seam sinking fastball, his cutter and slow curve, Worley was able to keep the White Sox lineup from doing any further damage. The extra pitch may eventually be just a “show-me” pitch that is used sparingly.

Attachment 3807Let’s just say Brian Dozier has had a slow start to his 2013 season.

Repping a less than stellar.189/.279/.243 batting line through his first 44 plate appearances, the Twins’ second baseman has been extremely inoffensive and has statistically continued where he left off during following his demotion in August of last year. Despite this slow beginning, there is reasons to not lose hope that Dozier’s career will fall into a no-hit middle infielder that has plagued the Twins for the better part of the new millennium.

The first encouraging sign from Dozier is that he is (1) sporting a much improved strikeout-to-walk ratio.

This is supremely important to any future success for the middle infielder. As a minor leaguer, Dozier owned a decent 1.2 strikeouts-to-walks ratio – meaning he drew nearly as many walks as he did strikeout. When he was promoted to the majors last year, that ability to hone the zone dissipated. He took just 16 walks in 340 plate appearances while striking out 58 times - or a 3.63 strikeout-to-walk ratio – a true indicator that he was not completely comfortable at the major league level. But, through 13 games this year, he’s had a much improved walk rate and has a 1.8 strikeout-to-walk ratio, closer mirroring his minor league track record.

Those few free passes in 2012 resulted in a 4.7% walk rate which placed him in the bottom third in that category. Much of that derived from overextending the strike zone (35% out-of-zone swing rate compared to the 30% league average) and having an overall overzealous approach at the plate. Again, in the small sampling this year, he’s increased his walk rate to a significantly improved 11.4% - the fifth-highest among qualified second basemen.

The story has been slightly different for Dozier in 2013. He has trimmed his swing zone down to a more manageable area (chasing just 26% of out-of-zone pitches) and has been able to fight off a high number pitches to extend his at bats. So far this year, he’s 39% of his strikes have originated from foul balls while the rest of the league’s average is 27%.

Consider this: When Ron Gardenhire put him in the lead-off spot after Darin Mastroianni was pushed to the DL on Tuesday, Dozier’s first at bat against the Angels’ Jason Vargas consisted of him fouling off five fastballs – working the left-hander over for ten pitches total. While the at bat resulted in an out, Dozier got Vargas’s pitch count rising from the get-go. In the fourth inning, he got enough of Vargas’s 0-2 down-and-dirty curve in order to see a fastball the next pitch which he drilled into right field for a base hit.

Fouling off pitches is not a repeatable skill, per se, but it has aided him in prolonging his at bats which has led to a higher frequency of walks. The end game -- more walks and high on-base percentage -- bodes very well for Dozier’s contributions for the rest of the season.

The second reason Dozier is rather than attempting to pull every pitch, he’s (2) going the other way and back up the middle.

Check out his breakdown of batted balls by direction hit from last year to this year:

Dozier’s Batted Ball By Location
	Pulled	Center	Opposite
2012	40%	41%	19%
2013	26%	37%	37%

Without question, Dozier is going the other way with the pitches that are on the outer-half of the strike zone rather than trying to yank everything under the sun. As I outlined at Twins Daily last year, opponents recognized this tendency and lambasted him with fastball away and an abundance of sliders. I concluded that analysis by writing:

“Specifically for Dozier, offensive progress means trying to re-calibrate his swing zone. If pitchers are going to continue to pound away, make sure you start going with that pitch instead of turning it over (CC: Danny Valencia). If they are trying to get you to fish, try to wait for something in the zone (which is always easier said than done). Being a successful everyday contributor means being able to make adjustments quickly.”

As mentioned above, Dozier’s keying in on pitches in the zone better. Additionally, what we see out of him is a much better ability to go with the pitch rather than turn on everything. He is allowing the ball to travel deeper into the zone before contact. As such, he keeps his weight back well and that helps drive the ball to center and opposite field.

Here’s a still comparison of the point of impact and his improved mechanical balance. The first two images are his swings in 2013. Notice how he has a firm front side and keeps his weight back on these pitches middle-up and middle-away:






There are examples of swings that Dozier displayed in spring training, in which I advised to watch for this year. While the results have been not been there, the form is much better.

Compare those two examples to two from 2012. Both instances came against left-handed pitches, both locations were away and both wound up grounders to the left side. In both cases, Dozier’s weight gets out in front of him as he reaches for – and pulls – both pitches thrown on the outer-half of the zone. Notice, too, that his front foot comes unglued in the samples. This is creating a less than solid base to swing from.






Dozier has a much more solid fundamental approach at the plate this season - something that was not present a year ago. With a more discriminating eye at the plate and now functional mechanics in place to drive the ball to all areas of the ballpark, his numbers should steadily improve as the season progresses.

Let’s just say Brian Dozier has had a slow start to his 2013 season.
Sporting a less than stellar.189/.279/.243 batting line through his first 44 plate appearances, the Twins’ second baseman has been extremely inoffensive and has statistically continued from where he left off following his demotion in August of last year. Despite this slow beginning, there are reasons to hope that Dozier’s career will not fall into the no-hit-middle infielder-hole that has plagued the Twins for the better part of the new millennium.

The first encouraging sign from Dozier is that he is (1) sporting a much improved strikeout-to-walk ratio.

This is supremely important to any future success for the middle infielder. As a minor leaguer, Dozier owned a decent 1.2 strikeouts-to-walks ratio – meaning he drew nearly as many walks as he did strikeouts. When he was promoted to the majors last year that ability to control the zone dissipated. He took just 16 walks in 340 plate appearances while striking out 58 times - or a 3.63 strikeout-to-walk ratio – a true indicator that he was not completely comfortable at the major league level. But, through 13 games this year, he’s had a much improved walk rate and has a 1.8 strikeout-to-walk ratio, more closely mirroring his minor league track record.

Those few free passes in 2012 resulted in a 4.7% walk rate which placed him in the bottom third in that category. Much of that derived from overextending the strike zone (35% out-of-zone swing rate compared to the 30% league average) and having an over-zealous approach at the plate. Again, in the small sampling this year, he’s increased his walk rate to a significantly improved 11.4% - the fifth-highest among qualified second basemen.

The story has been slightly different for Dozier in 2013. He has trimmed his swing zone down to a more manageable area (chasing just 26% of out-of-zone pitches) and has been able to fight off a high number pitches to extend his at bats. So far this year, 39% of his strikes have originated from foul balls while the rest of the league’s average is 27%.

Consider this: When Ron Gardenhire put him in the lead-off spot after Darin Mastroianni was pushed to the DL on Tuesday, Dozier’s first at bat against the Angels’ Jason Vargas consisted of him fouling off five fastballs – working the left-hander over for ten pitches total. While the at bat resulted in an out, Dozier got Vargas’s pitch count rising from the get-go. In the fourth inning, he fouled off Vargas’s 0-2 down-and-dirty curve. The next pitch was a fastball which he drilled into right field for a base hit.

Fouling off pitches is not a repeatable skill, per se, but it has helped him prolong his at- bats which has led to a higher frequency of walks. The end game -- more walks and higher on-base percentage -- bodes very well for Dozier’s contributions for the rest of the season.

The second reason for hope is that rather than attempting to pull every pitch he’s going the other way and back up the middle.

Check out his breakdown of batted balls by direction hit from last year to this year:

Dozier’s Batted Ball By Location
	Pulled	Center	Opposite
2012	40%	41%	19%
2013	26%	37%	37%

Without question, Dozier is going the other way with the pitches that are on the outer-half of the strike zone rather than trying to yank everything under the sun. As I outlined at Twins Daily last year, opponents recognized this tendency and challenged him with fastballs away and an abundance of sliders. I concluded that analysis by writing:

“Specifically for Dozier, offensive progress means trying to re-calibrate his swing zone. If pitchers are going to continue to pound away, make sure you start going with that pitch instead of turning it over (CC: Danny Valencia). If they are trying to get you to fish, try to wait for something in the zone (which is always easier said than done). Being a successful everyday contributor means being able to make adjustments quickly.”

As mentioned above, Dozier is keying in on pitches in the zone better. Additionally, what we see from him is a much better ability to go with the pitch rather than turning on everything. He is allowing the ball to travel deeper into the zone before contact. Thus, he is keeping his weight back and that helps drive the ball to center and left fields.

Here’s a comparison of the point of impact and his improved mechanical balance. The first two images are his swings in 2013. Notice how he has a firm front side and keeps his weight back on these pitches middle-up and middle-away:






These are examples of swings that Dozier displayed in spring training this year. Commenting on his swing, I advised to watch for this year. While the results have been not been there, the form is much better.

Compare those two examples to two from 2012. Both came against left-handed pitchers, both pitches were away and both produced grounders to the left side. In each case, Dozier’s weight gets out in front of him as he reaches for – and pulls – both pitches thrown on the outer-half of the zone. Notice, too, that his front foot comes unglued in the samples. This is creating a less than solid base to swing from.






Dozier has a much more solid fundamental approach at the plate this season - something that was not present a year ago. With a more discriminating eye at the plate and now functional mechanics in place to drive the ball to all areas of the ballpark, his numbers should steadily improve as the season progresses.

Catcher framing is extremely popular in baseball research circles right now. Go over to Fangraphs.com or BaseballProspectus.com and you will find several studies and articles on the subject. It’s Hansel hot right now.

While we can determine which catchers are better at getting more out-of-zone pitches called strikes than others, we still do not have a full grasp on what it means to a team’s bottom line. In some ways, it feels like a butterfly effect. If a catcher is unable to get a borderline pitch for a punchout strike, it could mean an additional pitch for the pitcher, which could mean a base hit, which means another at bat, which means an additional four or five pitches, which runs up the pitch count and could mean going to the bullpen in the fifth rather than the sixth or seventh.

One of the more recent studies on Baseball Prospectus found that Joe Mauer has a relative inability to coax the low strike. As Ben Lindbergh’s data shows, Mauer’s 19.5% strike rate low in the zone is well-below the average for catchers –in fact, 41.3% below average. By comparison, Milwaukee’s Jonathon Lucroy has excelled at getting this pitche called. His strike rate in the low portion is 77.1% (or 66.1% above average).

On the other hand, because of his tall stature, Mauer has been much better at getting high strikes versus the smaller framed Lucroy. Much, MUCH better. According to Lindbergh’s figures, Mauer is 86.3% better than the average at coercing the high strike.

Lindbergh provides a .gif that visually shows the difference between the two catchers’ called strike zones, note the bottom dark dots on Mauer’s chart that represent called balls:

As a real-life example, in Tuesday night’s game against the Angels, Anthony Swarzak was cruising through his first inning of work, retiring Howie Kendrick and Chris Iannetta on seven pitches. He was in the middle of doing the same to Angels’ third baseman, Luis Jimenez, up 0-2, and twirled off this exquisite curveball:


Everybody in the ballpark had thought Jimenez would be rung up. Swarzak, Mauer, the fan sitting behind the foul pole in right field, Jimenez, heck, even Jimenez’s mom probably thought he needed to grab some pine. Home plate umpire Paul Nauert, the most important person in that decision-making process, did not believe it was a strike.

Here’s the location via MLB’s Gameday:

That pitch -- pitch number 4 -- certainly falls within that area where Mauer has not had those pitches called strikes.

In the grand scheme of things, this was a non-event. Swarzak would retire him on the next pitch – a curve in the dirt – and no damage would be done beyond the extra pitch. However, as I revisited the location of the pitch, I couldn’t help but think of Lindbergh’s study and how we have another incident to add to the collection of Mauer not getting the low strike call.

Admittedly, this may have had nothing to do with Mauer’s framing or stature. After all, Nauert was having somewhat of a rough game – as evidenced by Chris Parmelee’s called third strike in the bottom of that inning:



Here’s a thought: How does Mauer’s inability to get low strikes affect what is predominately a sinker ball rotation? In years past, Mauer’s height and tendency to get high strikes called would have played well for pitchers like Scott Baker who work mainly up in the zone with their fastballs. But with Vance Worley and Mike Pelfrey toeing the rubber, their arsenal is more reliant on getting low borderline pitches called strikes in order to get strike three. So far, both pitchers are well-below their career strikeout norms. Obviously, plenty of blame needs to be assigned to the pitcher, but how much influence does Mauer’s handling have?

Leading baseball in strikeouts probably is not what Aaron Hicks had in mind when he daydreamed about his first week in the major leagues.

He probably has visions of scorching liners into the right-center gap or sending a shot into the overhang in right field. He pictured himself dancing off of first and swindling second with blaze of dust behind him. Instead, he has made so little contact at the plate that his bat is going through separation anxiety.

How has it started this poorly for Hicks and how can he turn it around? The first key to improvement is avoiding falling behind in the count so frequently.

Perhaps pitchers in the Eastern League would tip-toe around the strike zone but major league pitchers have come right at Hicks. With a reputation for being borderline overly patient, opponents have poured in first-pitch strikes and put the center fielder behind in the count 76% of his plate appearance thus far in his young career. By comparison, the rest of the league’s hitter’s have been ahead in the count more often than not, as pitchers have gained a first-pitch strike edge just 48% of the time on average.

Overall, Hicks has not given opponents much reason to avoid pumping strikes, either. While he has swung 11 times on the initial pitch of his at-bats, he’s put the ball in play just twice (one of his two hits, no less). This may evoke comparisons to Joe Mauer’s laissez-faire attitude towards first pitches but even this season in which the catcher has had an unusually high strikeout rate, pitchers have fallen behind him too (45% first-pitch strike rate). While he does not swing often, Mauer does have a .422 career average when swinging on the first pitch, providing pitchers consideration for not living inside the zone. Hicks, however, has built no such reputation.
The second key for Hicks to rebound is improving his pitch recognition – specifically the breaking balls.

Once he falls behind in the count, teams have twisted and turned the ball at him. In counts when behind (0-1, 0-2 and 1-2), Hicks has seen 17 fastballs compared to 26 non-fastballs (curves, sliders and change-ups). According to Pitchf/x data, Hicks has seen 46 non-fastballs from right-handed pitchers. He’s offered at 18 of those pitches. Of those 18 swings, he’s made contact just seven times. His early season lack of contact is one reason – besides falling behind in the count – which he has struck out in 16 of his 37 trips to the plate.

In his second inning at-bat against Kansas City’s Wade Davis on Wednesday night, the pitch sequencing used has become a common theme for Hicks – dominating the strike zone airspace early in the count and then dropping the hammer with two-strikes.

First pitch: Fastball, strike looking.

Second pitch: Fastball, strike looking.

Third pitch: Cutter, ball.

Fourth pitch: Fastball, foul.

Fifth pitch: Curve, swinging strike. Strike three. Goodnight Gracie.

Take a look at the concluding pitch:



Now this pitch had very little chance of being put into play but what you see in these clips is what Hicks has been doing all season on breaking and off-speed pitches. His front side opens up and then his back side drops, effectively eliminating any chance of making decent contact. All of this happens because he over-commits to the pitch.

The way he swings at these grossly unhittable pitches, it is clear that he is having troubles deciphering breaking balls from fastballs. On a basic level, hitters know that breaking balls and other various swing-and-miss type pitches are coming once a pitcher gets ahead in the count. The trick is recognizing the spin. And that part simply comes with comfort and repetition.

This is not an uncommon struggle for younger ballplayers. In a recent interview, Mets hitting coach Dave Hudgens addressed outfielder Kirk Nieuwenhuis’s similar curve ball problem and his advice is very applicable to Hicks as well:

“The key is laying off those pitches you should be lay off, and that comes down to pitch recognition. When you start struggling a little bit, guys start chasing hits, and chasing results. Whenever you start doing that, you start a little bit earlier. … I try to teach the guys, if you see spin down — knee high or thigh high — if it’s spinning, you have to discipline yourself. But when you’re hunting hits, it’s very difficult to do. That’s how it snow balled with Nieuwenhuis a little bit. He couldn’t calm himself down and he wanted to hit so bad, he was committing himself early and not recognizing those pitches. My suggestion to [the hitters] is early in the count, we’re tracking pitches. Right now, we’re going down and watching our pitchers on the side and watching that spin. Then when the games begin, hunt fastballs. [He] can hit breaking balls, but it has to be a breaking ball that’s up.”

It is early in the year and management knows that he has plenty of time to turn things around. Still, if this continues for a prolonged period of time, Hicks may have to recalibrate in Rochester.

You would think with a moniker like “Vanimal” that Vance Worley would be a rock star-party hard individual. Some meathead with torn off sleeves and who breaks “No Pepper” signs on the backstop with a 99-mile per hour fastball.

That’s simply not Vance.

He is not a huck-n-chuck hurler who puts little thought in the process and just pitches on animal instincts. He realizes that his stuff isn’t electric. He knows that his fastball doesn’t wow radar gun enthusiasts or that his breaking ball doesn’t cause hitters to spin themselves in to the dirt. He does know what he has and how to use it. After all, you don’t get as may strikeouts as Worley did in 2011 and having most of them registered as caught looking without outsmarting and outthinking your opponent.

When asked if he would ever use Pitchf/x to help create an advantage over his opponents, he shrugged.

“There’s nothing to really use a whole lot,” he admits. “I tend to use it more against guys I have already faced, so I can see what they have done against me. It’s tough to go off of what other guys do because it everybody is different. There might be a guy who’s throwing upper-90s, such as Verlander, and he’s getting guys out by blowing them up and throwing hammer curveballs. For me, it’s like, OK, I don’t have that so I’m going to move it a little bit more and go the other way with it. Stuff that goes both directions. Every pitcher has success differently.”

Still, at just 25-years-old, there is always room for improvement. For example, Worley has had troubles establishing a threatening change-up, which has been a work-in-progress for the past two spring trainings.

“In spring last year with Philly, it was a matter of just getting a feel for the change-up, for consistency,” Worley said. “And today [Opening Day], I didn’t throw any because [the Phillies] were trying to get me to work on a split-finger change. I didn’t use it at all last year, so we just went with my strengths. Once I went down with the elbow injury, there were no strengths at all. I thought, why not?”

You may be wondering how is it that a pitcher develops all through the minor leagues and comes away without a serviceable change-up in his arsenal. After all, it’s like a fastball only less so, right? Shouldn’t a pitcher just ease up on the gas and – voila! – change-up!

The same question was recently posited to two Rockies pitchers who said that, in the minors, pitchers tend to fall back on what they are comfortable with or what they have had the highest level of success with. Far too often, that’s fastballs and breaking balls – repertoires conceived in high school and college to avoid aluminum bats, rather than induce soft contact. What’s more, if a pitcher is trying to develop a change during minor league games, a few bad results often sends the pitcher scrambling back to comfort zone to avoid his raw numbers from being dinged too much.

Change-ups definitely take the right placement and require the necessary feel to put them where a pitcher wants. With command of the circle-change residing in the hand’s last three digits and the split-change’s control found in the unbalanced positioning between a spread index and middle finger, mastering a change-up is not as easy as simply throwing softer. Worley had attempted both versions.

“It’s a feel pitch. Everybody’s different. There’re guys that can throw sinkers and there are guys that can’t. For me, I’m a guy who can throw a sinker and you try to teach it to people and some people can get it and some people can’t.”

Some change-ups come naturally, but not without some work. Worley’s teammate Jared Burton fooled around with a change-up grip while with Western Carolina University and perfected it to the point where his “splange-up”, so named by the diving split-finger action of the pitch, became a dominating out-pitch for him. In 2012, opponents hit just .156 off of it and rang up 31 of his 55 strikeouts with the pitch, helping him earn his two-year extension.

In the Hardball Times 2010 Baseball Annual, baseball researcher Dave Allen took a look at Pitchf/x data and examined where different pitches had success. His findings showed that a majority of pitchers kept their change-ups reserved for opposite-handed batters (i.e. a left-handed pitcher to a right-handed hitter) and only occasionally showing them to same-sided batters. Furthermore, change-ups that were thrown either down in the zone or away had the highest rate of success.

When asked if he would deploy his change-up much in the similar manner as the rest of the league, Worley disagreed.

“You can throw it to lefties or righties,” Worley said before launching into a detailed explanation. “It really depends more on pitch sequence. For righties, if you know you have a good one with good tumble to it and sink, that’s a good one to throw inside to a right-hander. Right-on-right. Lefties, same thing. Start over there or you can throw it at ‘em – kind of front-hip them. You know, Fernando Rodney does that really well with his changeup. It’s just a matter of how much your ball moves. If you throw a straight one, live on the corners with it but just know if it is too firm or they are sitting on it, it’s probably going to get hit.”

You may know Fernando Rodney for his tilted brim but his change-up has been devastating and deserves your attention. While Trevor Hoffman may be remembered as having one of the greatest change-ups of all-time, Rodney’s version is possibly one of the best in the game today.

In 2012, Rodney threw his changeup 396 times, according to Fangraphs.com’s Pitchf/x data base. Hitters tied themselves up in knots swinging at a pitch that carried an average of 13 miles per hour of difference from his fastball – nearly twice the differential as an average pitcher. Rodney has also perfected the arm action which mimics his fastball’s motion to the tee, causing hitters mass confusion and little time to deliberate on which pitch is coming off the mound. Opponents chased it out of the zone 44% of the time and missed on it completely on over a quarter of their swings.

Worley knows his limits. He knows he doesn’t have Verlanderian stuff. He knows he needs to go in-out, up-down, fast-slow in order to keep hitters off of his pitches. Even a new change-up would not turn him into a strikeout pitcher but rather give him one more tool to use to keep opponents at bay.

Congratulations, Mr. Hicks. You are going where few Minnesota Twins minor leaguers have gone before: Straight to the Opening Day starting lineup.

Since the opening of the Metrodome in 1982, there have been just seven players in the Minnesota starting lineup to jump to from the minors to the Opening Day lineup: Jim Eisenreich, Chuck Knoblauch, Marty Cordova, Chad Allen, Cristian Guzman, Joe Mauer and Tsuyoshi Nishioka.

While all of those aforementioned players produced strong numbers in the minor leagues, they faced increasingly challenging competition in the first season as the dossier on their strengths and weaknesses grew. Some -- like Knoblauch, Cordova and Mauer -- adjusted well. Others did not.

This is a story from a free ebook that TwinsDaily is publishing on Opening Day that previews the Minnesota Twins 2013 season. To get your free copy, just make sure you follow @TwinsDaily on Twitter or Like our Facebook page.

Why is it that players can seem so destined for greatness based on their minor league track records, struggle once promoted to the ultimate level?

For starters, there is a lack of knowledge in the minor leagues which favors the hitters. Red Sox catcher Ryan Lavarnway explained to the Providence Journal’s Brian MacPherson exactly how difficult it is to create a strategy for minor league hitters.

“Going into a game in the minors, you don’t know the hitters,” said the Red Sox catcher. “You’re kind of blind. In the big leagues, you have a game plan of how you want to go about it.”

In the minors there are no Pitchf/x graphs or extensive collection of video to determine how to approach a particular hitter. There are no advanced scouts marking down every observation on how to best exploit a hitter’s weaknesses for the upcoming series.

Players who have quality approach at the plate often see a fleeting rush of success at the major league level prior to reports circulating among the clubs. Teams will attack the strike zone with strikes. They will fire fastballs in fastball counts. Only once it becomes clear that a young player proves he is very capable of handling that assortment do pitchers start to pick around the plate and breaking off more benders when a fastball is expected.

Then it is up to the hitter to make the adjustment.

In many ways, what will be awaiting Hicks is the same process that both Chris Parmelee and Brian Dozier faced in 2012.

When Parmelee came up in September 2011, he was punishing the ball all over the field. He saw few off-speed offerings in fastball counts. Teams rarely challenged him up-and-away. This performance continued into spring training but opponents began to cultivate a different game plan during the regular season and he scuffled more, only to be sent back to Rochester for additional tooling.

Similarly, Dozier had some immediate success by driving plenty of fastballs to left field. That is, until teams picked up on his pull-happy tendency and moved their target to the outer-half of the zone. The same hitter who had once drew walks in 10% of his minor league plate appearances, was only able to finesse a free pass in 5% of his MLB plate appearances. Unable to adjust, Dozier’s numbers continued southward and in August, Dozier was headed eastward to Rochester.

Hicks’ gaudy minor league walk rate does not necessarily mean that he is a strike zone savant or stingy with swinging at breaking balls in the dirt. Hitters that move up levels likely won’t see a significant amount of breaking balls – a product of a lack of advanced scouting. Sure, there is always the two-strike hook, but those should be anticipated at any level. As Hicks gets challenged more as the 2013 season progresses, we will see how disciplined he actually is. He is already prone to strike out (20% of his minor league plate appearances), so it is possible that he is going to K more frequently.

Like all players before him, Hicks will need to be able to adapt to his opposition – which is easier said than done.

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Before the opener on Monday morning, Glen Perkins sat at his locker, lacing up a new pair of cleats. His locker’s location – one of four corner spots in the spacious clubhouse reserved for the pillars of the team like Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau, a spot that once was home to Joe Nathan’s garb – is standing as a reminder of his status with the team.

It is hard to envision now but not long ago it appear that his time in the Twins organization was nearing an end.

Ineffectiveness, followed by a shoulder injury and topped with a semi-contentious battle regarding his arbitration status left him seeming like a pariah with the team. To observers, the left-hander who had grown up on the eastern edges of the Twin Cities and developed in the heart of Minneapolis for the Gophers looked to be on borrowed time. However, a switch to the bullpen combined with good health and a shift in his mental approach resuscitated his career with the Twins.

And now? Now, he is one of the best relievers in the game. He won the organization’s Good Guy Award this past winter. He has a multi-year contract. He has been asked to play with Team USA in the World Baseball Classic. He has a 5K which he and his wife organize, Fifteen’s 5K, which raises money to benefit Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. He’s got nearly 16,000 followers on Twitter where his interactions range from telling someone the best way to prepare meat for the smoker to joshing that he switching from his current agent to Dwight Yoakam, in response to Robinson Cano’s switch to CAA that is partnered with Jay-Z. Plus - oh man - that coveted corner locker.

There’s no question he is embraced in Minnesota.

Over the past few years, the pitcher had become more analytical and thinking more about his craft, using sabermetric theories and tools as he wields the ball. Perkins says he has digested the information and ideas to add another level his game.

Approaching a player and raising some timely statistical analysis is not a new shtick. In 2010, ESPN broadcaster Jon Sciambi wrote about his rather humorous encounter with Chipper Jones. The gist of it is Sciambi had presented Jones with some new data that the surefire Hall of Fame third baseman was not aware of: Jones had seen the fewest first-pitch strikes in the league. Sciambi wanted to know why the great hitter still swung at a high amount of first pitches seen. The data surprised Jones to the point where he circulated the findings around the clubhouse. The rest of the team, meanwhile, appeared well aware of this phenomenon.

In a similar fashion Perkins, who was lacing up his fresh field kicks and readying himself for a new season of baseball, was asked if he was familiar with a recent study on Fangraphs.com. The piece studied Pitchf/x data for pitchers who had the highest percentage of pitches taken in the strike zone but was called balls. As the game’s foremost victim of squeezing, Cleveland’s Justin Masterson received the primary attention but Perkins was informed that he could find his name within the top ten as well.

“So that obviously means I’m getting screwed,” Perkins replied a bit quizzically after being presented with the study’s synopsis.

Well, yeah, by some measurements.

The bulk of the data for the research was collected while Perkins was a starting pitcher, over 44 starts between 2007 and 2010. Still, that carried over into his first year as a full-time reliever. According to StatCorner.com’s data, in 2011, when opponents did not swing at in-zone pitches – those that are inside the strike zone as measured by Pitchf/x cameras – were called for a ball a whopping 25.7% of the time. By comparison, the rest of the league averaged 16.7%.

A quarter of all pitches that should have been called strikes not being called strikes two years ago? Did the Perkins notice any of this?

“To be honest with you, I feel like I get a pretty good zone. I mean, I throw in and I feel like there are some times when I get the pitches off the plate. I don’t feel like they are tight on me,” said Perkins. “I feel like my slider gets squeezed. Like I throw some on the inner half to righties that a catcher and it will be an inch or two in off the plate and that those catch the corner, the front corner of the plate, and sometimes I just don’t get those. That’s mainly it.”

The speculation regarding his slider probably has some traction. After all, that cuts across the zone rather quickly, often making a catcher move and a hitter flinch. If you look at his strike zone map from TexasLeaguers.com which dates back to before the 2011 season, you can see quite a few of his sliders on the inside portion of the plate to righties were called for a strike. Conversely, there’s a significant grouping of sliders at the lower portion of the zone – right where Perkins senses he may be getting squeezed – that are literally borderline pitches that were not called for a strike.

Pitchf/x, a system of cameras designed to capture and catalogue the release point and where the pitch crosses the plate – while measuring velocity, spin and other data in-between – is not without its flaws. For starters, across baseball each stadium’s cameras are slightly different and therefore pump out slightly different results – some minuscule, some noticeable.

Additionally, strike zones are not all the same for all hitters. That needs to be taken into account. So while Pitchf/x data suggests Perkins was hosed significantly in 2011, Inside Edge’s data refutes that. Their data – which is used by many major league teams including the Minnesota Twins and is compiled by video scouts – says that between 2011 and 2012, 90.9% (290 of 319 in-zone pitches taken) were called strikes compared to the 90.6% league average.

Then there is the categorization of pitches.

“I don’t ever throw changeups and it classifies them as changeups,” said Perkins. “If I go look at Brooks Baseball [BrooksBaseball.net] after a game and I see it shows I threw two changeups, obviously I don’t throw that pitch so I know none of them are changeups.”

While that aspect of the game has improved substantially, there are misses – such as Perkins’ slider being called a changeup. In 2011, Fangraphs.com’s Pitchf/x database says that 17.7% of his offerings were changeups. But even the human element gets fooled too. Fangraphs.com’s other pitch database, one provided by Baseball Info Solutions and their team of video scouts, says that he threw 1.4% changeups in 2011.

Rather than being satisfied with the numbers stating he was getting screwed, Perkins continues to ask questions about the study. He wants to understand why instead of taking it at face value. Did the study break it down by pitch type? Is that available? He offers up several hypotheses as to why he may be getting squeezed, why Pitchf/x is not categorizing his pitch correctly and deliberates on the meaning of it all.

This brought him full circle to his career’s rebirth which coincided with his exploration of a more analytical approach to the game.

“I didn’t get into any advanced stats until 2010 when I was in Triple-A and struggling,” said Perkins. “It was a combination of [Ryan] Vogelsong and when Brandon McCarthy came back and I started to hear about those guys who were injured or unsuccessful and then they adjusted their pitch selections and focused doing different things. That got me thinking, maybe it’s something I should do.”

It doesn’t hurt, too, that Perkins returned equipped with a mid-90s fastball whereas the other two starters barely get out of the 80’s -- quite the advantage before even considering the added layer of sabermetric insight.

“Part of it is that I throw harder,” Perkins acknowledges, completely ignoring the fact that his slider bends through space and time. “But I know what I don’t want to do. I know what results I don’t want. You can’t obviously get ideal results across the board all the time, but I know that I don’t want to get fly balls and I don’t want to walk guys.”

Of course, Perkins knows that there is more to his success than just knowing the sabermetric basics – like getting ground balls and not walking people. There needs to be an ability to execute pitches. Consider Brian Bannister. Prior to the emergence of McCarthy and Vogelsong, Bannister’s foray into the stat community drew attention but, ultimately, because of his natural ability limits Bannister could not practice what he preached as well as the other three pitchers.

“It was: This is what I need to do. I knew early last year I had a higher ERA but I knew that I had given up base hits, I had given up a two-run homer to Hamilton, I knew that over time that if I continued to execute my pitches, my ERA would end up matching up with my FIP and that I do not need to change what I’m doing because I have an eight [ERA] 4 innings into the season. Over the course of the season – and it did -- it will even out.”

Now, with his shoes fastened and prepared to join the rest of his team for warm-ups, Perkins concluded the advanced stats discussion with a refreshing simplification of the art that has inspired numerous websites to generate charts, graphs, theorems, percentages and raw numbers to better understand a position that teams pay millions upon millions for:

“It is obvious stuff in hindsight, but keep the ball down, try to get ground balls, don’t give up fly balls and don’t walk guys.”

Joe Mauer carries a lot of pressure on his knees, both physically and metaphorically speaking.

Some of that is pressure a few of us can relate to, like being a newly married man with a family on the way (twins, no less). Most of it, however, we can’t. Like checking your bank account and seeing a figure which includes multiple commas or getting buzzed by a Chris Sale fastball followed by a slider that seems to bend through space and time. And the scrutiny that follows when you don’t deliver 30-plus home runs a season.

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This is a story from a free ebook that TwinsDaily is publishing on Opening Day that previews the Minnesota Twins 2013 season. To get your free copy, just make sure you follow @TwinsDaily on Twitter or Like our Facebook page.

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As the anchor of the lineup, Mauer’s knees carry the weight of the local baseball world.

Physically, catching can definitely take a toll on the body, especially the knees, and that can certainly affect a player’s output at the plate. After the 2011 season, then-hitting coach Joe Vavra said in a radio interview that he noticed Mauer had troubles “getting off of his backside and favored his legs a bit” during his swing. To improve, Mauer focused heavily on strengthening his knee after that season and entered the 2012 season better prepared for the rigors of the position, and the numbers speak for themselves.

The added offseason attention helped overall but he also demonstrated that he could continue to hit even while catching on a regular basis – a feat some felt was not possible as they plotted a new position for Minnesota’s highest paid athlete. In 2012 his offensive production when adorning the tools of ignorance far exceeded that when he wasn’t squatting in 2012. In 323 plate appearances last year while catching, he put up a triple-slash line of .365/.460/.493 with six of his home runs. The results were significant improved from over his 2011 season in which he hit .239/.328/.324 in the aftermath of his knee surgery.

That said the knees may have been a factor behind his defensive decline in ’12. His caught stealing rate plummeted to a career low and the coaching staff attributed this to a mechanical change.

“I don’t know if he’s throwing different but I think he’s had some injuries that have changed some of his mechanics,” manager Ron Gardenhire told reporters in camp. “His arm is still there, he’s still got a cannon. I think the tendencies are when you are not able to work on things like that a lot you get a little long with your actions.”

One of the biggest questions is how many innings will Mauer play as a catcher. While Mauer has offensive acumen that would play anywhere on the field, having his bat at the catcher’s position greatly enhances his value to the team, allow someone with more traditional power to assume the first base or designated hitter role.

Last year, in terms of innings played at the position, he ranked 26^th among all backstops. One of the game’s ironmen, the Cardinals’ Yadier Molina, caught multiple games in a row for long stretches of time, maxing out at 12 in September. By comparison, Mauer’s longest streak was three games in 2012. With the addition of Ryan Doumit, it is conceivable that the days of Mauer hooking up the chest protector for more than 900 innings are behind him, but Gardenhire says the amount that Mauer spends behind the plate in 2013 is purely up to his star. With more time to heal and his admitted passion to catch, he could be more inclined to do so this year.

The defensive abilities may simply erode with age but Mauer’s hitting will never come under question. If you are expecting a sudden home run outburst, that is probably never going to come to fruition. Because of his hitting style and ballpark that is not conducive to it, his home run totals will probably fall into the 10-to-15 range annually. Still, the on-base percentage and high average should continue so long as his is able to draw a breath.

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About a year ago, the Minnesota Twins left Florida with a roster of 25, bound for the Twin Cities and, ultimately, the basement of the American League Central.

Quite a bit of turnover has occurred from that collection of individuals – a whopping 12 from the 2012 Opening Day roster are no longer with the organization. Several of those players caught on elsewhere but have deemed unfit to place on another team’s 40-man roster. A few of those are out of major league baseball.

Among the departed is last year’s Opening Day starter (Carl Pavano, who remains unsigned because of a life-threatening injury sustained while shoveling), the team’s closer (Matt Capps, who was recently cut from the Cleveland Indians but was retained on a minor league deal), two of the five bench bats (Sean Burroughs, unsigned, and Luke Hughes, who last played in Australia) and their situational lefty in the ‘pen (Matt Maloney, who may not pitch much due to recovering from Tommy John surgery).

Beyond that group, Opening Day third baseman Danny Valencia failed to catch on with the Baltimore Orioles this spring and will start the season with their Triple-A affiliate. Reliever Jeff Gray did not merit enough of a role to even make the Chicago White Sox’s 40-man either and will be stashed with their International League team as well.

Think about that for a second. These were supposed to be either key contributors or maneuverable pieces that turned into flotsam and now a vast majority of the other 25 teams would not bend over to pick up for nothing. Just one year removed from the Twins evaluators determining these guys were among their best 25 players.

[How did they ever win 66? It’s a miracle. It’s a miracle.]

With the finalization of the roster occurring over the next few days, the Twins staff will be attempting to move on from a group that went 6-16 through the season’s first month.

The objective of the offseason was to create a rotation that can keep the Twins in the game long enough to remain competitive but this year, the staff is having troubles identifying their number one guy as the Opening Day starting pitcher still remains unknown (but is widely believed to be Worley). Outside of Jamey Carroll, the bench will consist of athletically talented yet unproven players in Eduardo Escobar, Wilkin Ramirez and Darin Mastroianni. Maloney and Gray will be replaced in the bullpen with Tyler Robertson and Ryan Pressly, two guys who have 25 major league innings between the pair.

While the success of the team is dependent on the rotation, the starting lineup and defense, depth plays a large role as well. Is this group solid enough to finish April at or near .500, let alone for the duration of the season?