January 2, 2013

BP Unfiltered

The Twins and Sabermetrics

by R.J. Anderson

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The Twins use sabermetrics. That is the takeaway from Parker Hageman’s interesting Twins Daily piece on Minnesota’s quantitative analysis. Hageman quotes Jack Goin, Minnesota’s Manager of Major League Administration and Baseball Research (and ostensibly the club’s lead quant), throughout the article. Here are some highlights:

The truth is, Goin says, they view themselves as a middle-of-the-road team when it comes to using statistical analysis. There are the overachievers, there are a few on the bottom and the rest, like the Twins, reside somewhere in between.

One way in which they have progressed in just a few shorts years is that Goin has turned to MLBAM’s Pitch F/X system – a relative unknown to the staff as recently has 2010 – when attempting to analyze potential free agent pitchers.

[…]

“We try to find not a hidden guy but a lesser known guy – someone not on all the prospect lists, maybe not on the scout’s radar for whatever reason it might be,” says Goin. “You try to find another guy we might at least talk about because when you are trying to make a trade, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do. You get turned down a bunch before someone says ‘yes.’ You have to come up with multiple names.”

R.J. Anderson is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @r_j_anderson
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