Twins Podcast

This week I discuss the Boof Bonser situation and I ponder whether this year’s Twins disaster could have been predicted with basic sabermetrics.

Twins Podcast available here or on the sidebar.

I also wanted to note this column from Jim Souhan which was brought to my attention by JT (I don’t read Souhan or Sid Hartman as a matter of policy but I will read Ruesse from time to time). Souhan suggests moving Joe Mauer to third base, something I have talked about for a long time.

I don’t completely agree with everything in the Souhan column, he gets a few things wrong:

-The Twins don’t honestly need to keep Santana, we have enough young pitching to fill the rotation and by trading Santana we can pick up some much needed offense which will make up for the loss. The Twins have been mediocre this year with great pitching because we can’t score runs.

-The Twins can score runs without Hunter, replacing Hunter with a league average third baseman and a league average left fielder would more than make up for the loss of Hunter even if he is replaced by the likes of Jason Tyner.

A summary of my arguments about moving Mauer to third:

-Mauer hits better as a DH (We don’t know what he’d do as a 3-bagger)
-Mauer seems to get a lot of minor nagging injuries
-Catchers don’t play everyday while DHs and Third Basemen do
-Mauer is one of the Twins best hitters
-It’s important to get your best hitters in the lineup everyday
-Mauer would be one of the largest catchers in history
-Large catchers aren’t as durable as smaller catchers
-All catchers have shorter careers than other positions, normally about 5 years shorter
-I want to see Mauer playing for a long time.
-The Twins have plenty of catchers: Jose Morales, Chris Hientz (might be gone next year), Mike Redmond and we have a lot of competent catchers below them in the org.
-The Twins have no one to play third base and they aren’t going to spend money to fill it with a decent hitter.