Which Nice Teams Are Starting Out Naughty?

Welcome to Atlanta, where your 8-25 Braves stand as the 2016 poster boys for mortgaging the present. It's hard to believe now, but the Cincinnati Reds have to wish they were the Braves.

The Reds tried to play both ends against the middle two off-seasons ago and ended up getting toasted both ways. After a 76-86 campaign in '14, they unloaded their second and third best starters but left the rest of the team intact, en route to a 98-loss season.

Having flipped ace Johnny Cueto for some future chips at last year's trading deadline, GM Walt Jocketty sent Todd Frazier to Chicago for more prospect goodies this off-season. And that was it.

Hanging on to middling veterans like Brandon Phillips, Jay Bruce (getting tagged out, left) and Zack Cozart, he left Joey Votto and the Seven Dwarfs to compete this year against the likes of Pittsburgh, St. Louis and the Cubs. By failing to convert veterans into promising youth, the Reds lack the prospect-laden farm system that hints at a brighter future.

At least the residents of Marietta, Georgia have a future to look forward to.

Others Worthy of Relegation
In short, neither Atlanta nor Cincinnati is surprising anyone with their wretchedness so far this season. Nor are the Twins, who blinded themselves into a false sense of hope with a moment of incandescence last season, nor the Padres, a basket case of a different weave, nor the A's, whose management seems to have run out of ideas about how to convert trash into energy. The Brewers are sowing the bad karma that building around Ryan Braun reaps, not to mention a pitching staff of the following luminaries: Taylor Jungeman, Jimmy Nelson, Willy Peralta, Chase Anderson and Zach Davies.

Then there's the Angels, despite a gargantuan payroll and two inner-ring Hall of Famers, who can't buy a run and whose best starter, now that Garret Richards got laid up is...um...the smoldering ruins of Jered Weaver? Dude hasn't fanned a Major Leaguer batter since 2014.*

It's possible we'll see some dead cat bounce out of Minnesota this year, but that's about the best this pile of owl upchuck can hope for. The real question for these franchises is whether they are on the way up or the way down, or whether they even have a way.

One of These Things Is Not Like the Other
All that leaves us with one head-scratcher, the Houston Astros. If ever a team was tailor-made for a season in which runs are being scored off big flies, it's this ultimate three true outcome team. Houston finished second in homers and fifth in walks last season, and first in whiffs, with seven batters accumulating 100+ Ks, including Colby Rasmus and Chris Carter, who fanned more than 300 times between them. (They also led the league in steals. Go figure.)

They're doing it again this year -- first in strikeouts, first in walks and fourth in going yard. The problem for the Astros is that the guys throwing the most innings are their worst pitchers. Starters 1-4, including last year's Cy Young, have been scorched fora combined 4.87 ERA. Starters #5 and #6 rock a combined 2.48 ERA and the bullpen has neither added nor subtracted.

The all-or-nothing offense combined with a pitching rotation regressing well beyond the mean have spelled doom for Houston, but there is good news in both the immediate past and on the horizon. They've won seven of their last 11 in large part because scads of ill fortune foisted upon them in April is settling out in May. The Astros have played sub-.400 ball so far but Baseball Prospectus projects them to play .543 the rest of the way. Projection systems are for movie theaters, but at least this suggests that the underlying conditions are there for a real recovery.

The early bottom feeders really do appear to be the sport's worst, with one exception. But baseball is a funny game and five months is an awfully long time.

*mild hyperbole but his average pitch speed is 82.7, or roughly how fast I can spit.

New Study: Walking Is Good for You

Danny Santana, the shortstop for the Minnesota Twins who shocked even his own organization with a .319/.352/.472 season in 101 games at short and center field last year, has this season struck out only the third most often among his teammates -- 49 times.

The issue is, that while Brian Dozier and Trevor Plouffe have fanned on a few more occasions, they've also earned more than 20 bases on balls each.

Salazar has walked twice.

Fortunately, he's been hit by two pitches, inflating his .218 batting average into a .235 on base percentage. This from Minnesota's leadoff hitter.

Mix in an inability to exit the yard and you've completed the slash line with a slugging average of .291, which explains why Santana is currently working out the kinks in Rochester, NY.

The good news is, no more Major League strikeouts. The bad news is he's stuck, for now, at two walks.

The organization will have to parse whether Santana's problems hitting stem from his lack of strike zone control, or whether no one is walking him because they don't fear pitching in the zone. Very likely it's more former than latter, which spells long-term issues for the young Dominican.

An unsustainable .405 BABIP last year masked some of these issues in the first place, but even then he walked about five times as often. In other words, stay tuned, but don't expect him to ever repeat that rookie campaign.

Still, as a shortstop and center fielder, Santana would have great value if he could just get on base a little less often than league average, pop an occasional dinger and field his positions well. And Paul Molitor could help him by finding someone else -- perhaps someone who knows how to walk? -- for the top of the order.

A Twin Killing

You might recall, back months and months ago when the NBA playoffs were in their second round; or third, I can't keep track; Memphis led Golden State two games to one and supposedly knowledgeable sports analysts began their Chicken Little dance around the Warriors.

Steph Curry & crew proceeded to win the next three games, take the series in six and earn their way to the league championship for the first time in 40 years.

It's easy to do the same thing with the long baseball season. Who could blame a St. Paul resident for thinking that the first 60 games of the season are representative of something for their beloved Twins.

Alas, there is nothing in the record, besides 33 wins and 25 losses, to suggest the Twins are even average. A peak behind the curtain, the kind of thing we couldn't do in the halcyon days before advanced metrics, suggests Minnesota has taken a long ride on a carpet of smoke, mirrors and just plain luck.

When you're among the best teams in the league, you tend to be particularly adept at some element of the game, or generally adept at all elements. The Twins are neither. Here is their offense:

• middle of the pack in batting average
• fifth worst in OBP
• third worst in slugging
• with the fourth fewest home runs and
• fourth worst in steals and caught stealing

The Twins lead all but three AL offenses with 12 triples, but I doubt that's the reason that they've scored the fifth most runs.

Huh?

Yes, a pretty substandard offense has scored more runs than 10 of the other 14 teams. How? Good timing -- what the geezers in the retirement home call "clutch hitting," bless their hearts. But if clutch hitting is hardly a thing among individual players, it's certainly a passing wind at the team level.  The sequencing of Twins hits have produced runs so far. Expect karma to start making amends in Minneapolis right soon.

The formula is similar on the defensive end. Pitchers have allowed the fewest walks in the league, but registered the fewest strikeouts and allowed the most hits. They keep the ball in the park reasonably well (sixth out of 15), and the result is the eighth best ERA, which is dead center for the league, about what you'd expect.

So the pitching isn't carrying them.

On defense, Baseball Reference rates the Twins just slightly below average. Baseball Prospectus isn't that sanguine. Either way, the gloves haven't transformed weak pitching into shutouts.

Is there some magic formula at Target Field? The team has prevailed in one-run games, but not enough to dress a talent-challenged team in Wild Card clothes. Closer Glen Perkins has turned out the lights consistently (five runs in 27 innings and a league-leading 21 saves) but the rest of the pen is a mish-mash that fails to scream "secret sauce."

In short, the Twins are nothing special, despite the special status in the standings. Those with deadlines and column-inches to fill will credit manager Paul Molitor for teaching his charges "how to win" and settling them down after a poor start. But real people know that managers, even great managers, even Hall of Fame former players, even really smart people with spectacular emotional IQs, can't turn the 2015 Twins into a pennant contender.

Reporters can't interview luck, can't describe it, and won't be received well in the clubhouse if they refuse to credit their sources with the good results those sources have produced. But luck is the reason Minnesota began the season 30-19 and luck is fickle.

The fall won't be pretty because, like fire, luck is a great servant but a terrible master.

The Last Shall Be First

A quarter of the way into the season, the three best teams in the American League have been the Houston Astros, Minnesota Twins and Kansas City Royals. They are a combined 32 games over .500.

Those very teams were rated the three worst in the AL by most projection systems when the season began. Baseball Prospectus's PECOTA system had the triad dropping 85, 92 and 91 games, respectively.

Is this a great game, or what?

Fister Bump for Washington

While Democrats and Republicans in the legislative and executive branches continue their largely successful effort to promote the merits of a Chinese-style dictatorship, there is one man, at least, in the District of Columbia who has demonstrated the ability to deal effectively with adversaries.

Nationals GM Mike Rizzo didn't even need his ATM card to wrangle #2-level starter Doug Fister from the Tigers for a trio of farmhands whom the experts say are more likely roster-filler than prospects. 

It seems to be an artifact of positional glut that teams with one too many (name your position, in this case starting pitcher) often fail to demand equal value in trade. They seem to be settling for the value that the redundant player represented for them, rather than the value he would bring to his new team. The Tigers, flush with the Verlanders and Scherzers of the world, found themselves with six healthy starters and five starter slots.

Perhaps Detroit knows something about Fister that none of the rest of us does and was willing to flip him and the $20 million or so he'll command in his last two years of arbitration for some spare parts. (Or perhaps GM Dave Dombrowski needed to unload 20 big stacks in order to sign closer Joe Nathan.) But one would think the rest of Major League Baseball could use 200 innings of top-shelf righthandedness to complement whatever currently constitutes their rotation. It boggles the mind that no one else offered a real package for Fister. Instead, Washington adds to its embarrassment of mound riches -- Strasburg, Gonzalez, Zimmermann, Detwiler and now Fister. Yowzah.

You may be wondering what all the fuss is about. For a guy standing six-foot-eight, Fister has largely hidden from view of the average fan these past three years. In 2011, his Seattle teammates saddled him with a 3-12 record despite an ERA 13% better than league average and a nearly 3-1 K/BB rate. The W-L record improved to 8-1 after a mid-season trade to Detroit, which Fister followed in 2012 by rocking a 3.7-1 K/BB rate, battling injuries and continuing to pitch well in Justin Verlander's shadow. This past year, he again topped 200 innings of good command, kept his ERA 15% below league average and trailed in Max Scherzer's wake.

The result is that Doug Fister is a top 20 hurler and now he goes to the weaker league without a DH, where he has dominated batters to the tune of a 2.04 ERA. Hope you enjoyed your playoff run, Braves!

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The woeful Twins, they of 96 losses fully earned in 2013, have at least begun moving in the right direction. Of course, that's hard not to do when your team's primary attributes are lousy hitting and abysmal pitching. 

Said by the cognoscenti to possess MLB's best farm, including a pair of pitchers due for The Show in the next 500 days, the team went shopping for a pair of league-average innings eaters to bolster the studs when they arrive. GM Terry Ryan landed Ricky Nolasco for 4/$60 Million, about the going rate, and then headed to the discount rack for Phil Hughes, 3/$24 Million. 

Before you gack up breakfast over a 4-14, 5.19 choker coaxing 24 million guaranteed, consider this:  As a flyball righty, Phil Hughes was uniquely qualified to suck in Yankee Stadium, where the rightfield fences beckon, and to succeed at spacious Target Field. Looking deeper at the peripherals, Hughes delivered in his misery-plagued 2013 a nearly identical performance to his All-Star 2010 season when he "won" 18 games. If a handful fewer balls had fallen in for hits last season, he'd be his own twin.

And now he is a Twin. And Minnesota can expect the league-average results Hughes was providing to the Yankees while fans were bamboozled by his W-L record. But those league-average results, worth $15 million-a-year to ink Ricky Nolasco, will cost the franchise just $8 million-a-year on Hughes, thanks to that 4-14, 5.19. 

The Twins could still use, well, just about anything but a catcher. Signing a pair of ordinary pitchers with digestible contracts is necessary but insufficient. But as the Buddha said, even a thousand mile journey begins with a single step.

I'm Not Sayin'. I'm Just Sayin'.

This is not another rant against Justin Morneau, a fine player who is nonetheless over-rated because he collects RBIs like they're stamps, thanks largely to Joe Mauer's freakish on-base regularity.

Morneau is a hitting machine, cranking out a .286/.358/.511 career line in five full and two half seasons. He's won an MVP (the one rightfully belonging to Mauer or Derek Jeter), come in second in the voting another time (about eight spots too high), and joined four All-Star parades. He was having his best year yet in 2010 (.345/.437/.618 with 18 dingers in 81 games) before suffering a serious concussion.

How valuable was the Canadian's presence to the Twins this season? Minnesota won and lost in roughly equal measure with Morneau at first base, 4.5 games out of first place at the moment of his departure. Since then, their newly cobbled together lineup has won 21 of 31 and roared into the division lead.

It's been an all-hands-on-deck adventure. Michael Cuddyer, the replacement at first, has picked up the slack, batting .308 and swatting four homers and nine doubles for the month. Joe Mauer, back from injury himself, has finally gotten acquainted with Joe Mauer. So has Delmon Young. Jim Thome's increased playing time adds a .973 OPS to the mix. In total, the Twins are scoring six runs a game in their slugger's absence, up from fewer than four at the time he got kicked in the head.

I'm not sure how much, if any, of this reflects on Justin Morneau. It seems likely that the team will further prosper upon his return. Still, it's the second year in a row that this has happened.

Last year, Morneau went down on September 12 with the team two games below .500. A 17-4 surge followed, making up 5.5 games in the standings, plus a playoff win. Hmmm....

Okay, to be fair, it was pitching that launched their rocket without Morneau last year and a patch of easy schedule helped this year. The point is, if Justin Morneau were really the critical cog that many think he is, you'd expect his team to falter without him. I mean, consider where the Giants would have been five years ago without Barry Bonds. Instead, for two straight years, the Minneapolis nine has kicked the season into gear exactly after losing the guy whom baseball writers seem to think is their MVP.

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