Introducing all-Twins Killers Team
Also, some thoughts on a beautiful old baseball game and 2004 Ben Sheets
Happy quarantining! Let’s converse, fellow rich people.
The all-Twins killers team
~Jake
We all have those guys we see coming up in the lineup that make us wish we had considered wearing diapers.
A lot of times it’s the league MVP with the mega-contract. But sometimes it’s Alexei Ramirez. Listen, it’s snowing on Easter Day and we’re in a pandemic--it doesn’t have to make sense. The world is weird.
Unfortunately, unlike Curt’s art last week that included somebody beating clothed meat with their wood, I have no fun videos to share. This is definitely not a fun video. Neither is this. Why did I sign up to do this.
Like Curt, though, I found this exercise to be pretty bad for the ol’ memory bank. These guys are the ones who have caused me emotional and sometimes physical pain, and they don’t even know it. They are the Twins Killers.
Here are the basics: I chose players that drive me nuts when they’re coming up to bat. Most of these decisions are backed by stats, but some are just a personal gut feeling. I focused mostly on regular season, because if I focused on playoff disappointments it would be an only-Yankees team and I just can’t put myself through that right now.
Also, at the very end, I look at some older guys who baptized young me with mammoth dingers and stupid cutters.
One more thing: You’ll see each player’s tOPS+ listed alongside his batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage slash line. tOPS+ is the player’s OPS relative to his career average, weighted on a scale where 100 is average.
Alright, let’s do this before I start crying again.
Hitters
Catcher: Salvador Perez (.301/.327/.512, 126 tOPS+)
Tom, Curt and I once went to a doubleheader where Sal hit three moonshots against the Twins and I’ve never fully recovered. He’s on this list for that reason alone. It turns out, though, that he’s been pretty good beyond those two games, too. He’s smacked 22 homers, 27 doubles and three triples, somehow. These are all good numbers, but it’s still funny to see just 14 walks in 493 plate appearances.
First Base: Howie Kendrick (.363/.392/.545, 135 tOPS+)
There’s a little chicanery here. I know. Kendrick isn’t really a first baseman. He is in the sense that he’s played 143 games there, but most of his damage against the Twins came as a second baseman for the Angels. The truth is, since Mark Teixeira, Mike Sweeney and Paul Konerko retired, first basemen haven’t exactly overwhelmed the Twins. Kendrick, however, has. He has ripped 12 doubles, four triples and four homers, good for a .904 OPS.
Second Base: Jose Altuve (.362/.403/.531, 125 tOPS+)
Don’t let a relatively low 125 tOPS+ fool you: Altuve has crushed Twins pitching. Jose Altuve’s normal self plus 25% is pretty incredible. The thing about Altuve is he just hits everyone well. Against the Twins specifically, though, he has just five homers in 192 plate appearances, but 15 doubles. Add in nine stolen bases and 10 walks and things start to get interesting. Perhaps the worst part of facing Altuve, though, is what he represents: a table-setter for Alex Bregman and Carlos Correa, who have a 196 wRC+ (third-highest of any active player) and 189 wRC+ (fifth-highest) against the Twins, respectively. George Springer often hits ahead of Altuve, but he also has a 183 wRC+ against the Twins, the sixth-highest mark for any active player. The Astros suck.
Shortstop: Didi Gregorius (.345/.387/.655, 176 tOPS+)
We had to include a (now former) Yankee, and Didi is a quality representative of that stupid franchise. A lot of times with exercises like this, you remember some guy with a couple of big hits and just assume he destroyed you every game, but the numbers don’t back that up. There’s probably a psychology term for that. Yeah, uh, that isn’t the case with Didi. Take last year: he went 8-for-10 against the Twinkies, with three doubles, a triple and a home run. He had a 2.418 OPS! And that was just in the regular season. He added four more hits and six RBIs as he and Gleyber Torres broke my heart.
Third Base: Josh Donaldson (.395/.487/.852, 199 tOPS+)
Thank God the Twins signed Donaldson. He’s been the single toughest out for Twins pitching, smacking 19 homers in 191 plate appearances. He has a 258 wRC+ against the Twins!! The next closest is this team’s right fielder, all the way down at 198. Prorated to a 600-plate appearance season, and that’s 59 long balls. Add in another 17 doubles and Donaldson quickly gets up to a 1.339 OPS and many broken hearts. Donaldson is a former MVP with plenty of destruction in his past; he has an OPS greater than 1.000 against nine teams! His mark against the Twins, though, reigns supreme.
Left Field: Alex Gordon (.291/.370/.482, 126 tOPS+)
I wonder what other people think of Alex Gordon. He was the No. 2 overall pick back in 2005 and since then has sneakily stacked up 32.1 fWAR (a 6.6 win season in 2011!), hauled in seven Gold Gloves and won a ring. And at the same time, it’s unlikely anyone outside Kansas City or Minnesota has ever really considered him a star. He has had serious moments of stardom, though, especially against the Twins. He’s made so many diving catches or strong throws from left field and has been an ever-present thorn in the side of Twins pitching. The biggest knock against Gordon is his lack of power, but he’s clubbed 27 of his 186 career home runs against Minnesota.
Center Field: Andrew McCutchen (.344/.453/.638, 153 tOPS+)
Cutch has largely been an NL guy, so you wouldn’t think he would have had the time to beat up on the Twins but shhhh. The former NL MVP has made the most of his 16 games against the Twins, logging nine extra-base hits. He’s a Yankee at heart; his three highest marks for tOPS+ are the Tampa Bay Rays (197 tOPS+), Baltimore Orioles (161) and the Twins (153). A 191 wRC+ is just silly.
Right Field: Yasiel Puig (.424/.473/.652, 173 tOPS+)
Yeah, Puig was on the Brewers list. I don’t care. He has to make the Twins list. Homie has a 1.124 OPS! It’s only in 74 plate appearance, so that’s the saving grace. Of his 28 hits against Minnesota, nine went for extra bases. He’s just simply been a tough out and if he ends up playing in Japan, Minnesota will be fine with that.
Designated hitter: Alex Bregman (.326/.425/.709, 145 tOPS+)
Man, the Astros really kick our butts. Donaldson was the obvious choice for this team at third base but Bregman has to make this team, too. If Bregman could play the Twins all the time, maybe he’d finally sneak past Trout, Our Lord and Savior, for MVP.
Pitchers
Felix Hernandez (2.26 ERA in 127.1 innings)
I always felt like King Felix was truly elite and I suppose it’s because he has been against Minnesota. He held the Twins to a remarkably low .197 batting average and struck out 116 in his 127 innings.
Justin Verlander (2.91 ERA in 253.2 innings)
OK, so Verlander is probably on the list for a bunch of teams, but listen: Verlander showed up like twice a month for 13 years and just destroyed dreams. He has 253 strikeouts in those 253.2 innings and has held Twins hitters to a .277 wOBA. I’m glad he left the division, but Houston isn’t far enough.
David Price (2.59 ERA in 125.1 innings)
David Price hasn’t ever lost a stop when facing the Twins. It hasn’t mattered what team he pitches for; if there are Twins in the box, he mows them down. He has 122 strikeouts in those 125 innings.
Mike Clevinger (2.79 ERA in 67.2 innings)
It would be great if Cleveland continued to make weird decisions and traded Clevinger. He has 73 strikeouts in 67.2 innings and often feels like the best Cleveland pitcher when he faces the Twins. He’s basically a new Verlander whenever Minnesota sees him.
Masahiro Tanaka, 2.27 ERA in 35.2 innings
Yeah, of course there’s a Yankee in here. James Paxton also has a 2.27 ERA against the Twins, but Tanaka feels harder to hit, doesn’t he? Man, I hate the Yankees.
Liam Hendriks, 1.66 ERA in 21-2/3 innings
There are few things that feel worse than when your team gives up on somebody and they go on to destroy you. It happened with Papi and now it’s happening with Liam Hendriks. To be fair, he’s doing this to everyone. But a 1.66 ERA from a guy the Twins DFA’d is just hurtful.
Some other guys:
We’re going to do things a bit differently than last week. This group of other guys will include some active guys who maybe should have been in the team above, but it’s mostly going to be a group of old guys who gave my young heart some serious palpitations.
George Springer: He definitely deserved a spot on the main team but there has to be an Astros limit. So, the guy with a 143 tOPS+ and the sixth-highest wRC+ among active players has to be left out.
Mark Teixeira: Tex had a 1.062 OPS, a 143 tOPS+ and 21 dingers against the Twins in 333 plate appearances. And, obviously, he played for the stupid Yankees.
Alexei Ramirez: This might seem like a random pick but man was he annoying. He slashed .309/.345/.478, somehow hit 17 of his 115 career homers and managed a 135 tOPS+.
Dustin Pedroia: He’ll always be the guy the Twins could have had instead of Trevor Plouffe, to me at least. He went just one round later and destroyed the Twins every chance he could, hitting .363/.410/.536.
Mike Sweeney: Hey, remember Mike Sweeney? Big man crushed 25 dingers and slashed .325/.384/.554 against the Twins. He was like the one good Royal for a long time against the Twins.
David Ortiz: Yep, this one hurts. The Twins didn’t value Papi like they should have and he spent his career getting back. He ha a 123 tOPS+ against the Twins, slugged .636 and socked 21 jacks.
Magglio Ordonez: Ordonez finished his career with 38.8 career bWAR and I think he racked up all of it against the Twins. He hit 37 home runs against Minnesota, more than against any other opponent, and finished with a .906 OPS.
Paul Konerko: Nobody has ever hit more homers against the Twins than Konerko. He finished his career with 43 in 215 games against the Twins. Second-place on that list is Miguel Cabrera, who has 42 home runs and is technically still active. Miggy doesn’t make this list because he has just a 102 tOPS+ against the Twins.
Joel Zumaya: Man, remember Joel Zumaya? Before his catastrophic Guitar Hero injury, Zumaya was the real deal against the Twins, posting a 1.55 ERA with 29 strikeouts in 29 innings.
Mariano Rivera: He was dominant against everyone, I know, but he has to be here. He had a 1.45 ERA in 37.1 innings and finished with 36 saves against the Twins.
Francisco Rodriguez: K-Rod was so annoying. Mostly because he kept 1.66 ERA in 48.1 innings against the Twins and played for all the teams I couldn’t stand. He finished with 27 saves against the Twins, his second-highest total of any team.
CC Sabathia: This newsletter is very torn on CC because he had one strong half for the Brewers and spent the rest of his career pooping on the Twins. He finished with a 3.24 career ERA in 266.1 innings against the Twins and he played for the Yankees and Cleveland, so he always made me sad.
A thing that once happened
~Curt
This section is titled ‘A thing that once happened.’ It is about things that happened in Milwaukee Brewers baseball. We will remember said things.
As recently as Saturday, I had no plans of writing anything for this week’s newsletter. Jake and Tom had everything figured out, I just wrote 2,000 words on players that destroy the Brewers last week and work has been more draining than usual of late. Taking an Easter weekend off sounded nice.
Then I looked at Ben Sheets’ Baseball Reference page.
One of my most firmly-held stances in sports (and, if we’re being honest, life) is this: 2004 Ben Sheets deserves more respect.
Sometimes, when I’m in a quiet place with nobody around, I’ll just pull up Sheets’ 2004 season numbers and stare at them, longingly.
34 starts. 237 innings. 2.70 ERA. 2.65 FIP. 2.26 DRA. 264 strikeouts. 32 walks. 24.8 K-BB%. 0.98 WHIP. 2 shutouts. 62 ERA-. 59 FIP-. 46.5 DRA-. An 18-strikeout game. Zero or one runs allowed in 14 starts, all of at least six innings.
Oh, yeah, and one more thing: one of the biggest screw jobs in Cy Young voting of, well, all time.
Let’s dig in further, shall we?
Remember how good Justin Verlander was last year? Or Jacob deGrom was in either of the past two seasons? Or 1.77-ERA Clayton Kershaw was in 2014? Or 1.83-ERA Clayton Kershaw was in 2013? Or Max Scherzer has been in literally every season his entire career?
None of those individual seasons top Sheets’ 46.5 DRA- or his 9.2 WARP in ‘04.
Roger Clemens (Roger freakin’ Clemens!) never had a single-season DRA- better than Sheets’ 46.5. Neither did Roy Halladay. Or John Smoltz. Or (sorry, Jake) Johan Santana. Or Felix Hernandez. Or Zack Greinke. Or almost any other elite, Hall of Fame-caliber, Cy Young-winning starter of the last 30 or so years, save for Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson and a couple of other fun names who had incredible seasons ((Kevin Brown! Jason Schmidt! Jake Peavy! Twice! (I will be spearheading the Jake Peavy 4HOF campaign as of now.) Stephen Strasburg!)).
Sheets’ 2004 campaign, by fWAR, was the 12th-most valuable of any season by a pitcher since 2000. Only twice in that 20-year span has a player walked fewer than 1.3 batters per nine innings and struck out more than 10--Sheets and 2002 Curt Schilling. That year, Sheets was third in all of baseball in strikeouts, second in fewest walks (min. 200 innings), third in ERA, second in complete games, third in shutout, fourth in innings pitched, third in WHIP and second in FIP.
Another very fun nugget for you. Here’s the entire list of pitchers in the entire history of baseball to post a season with a K/9 of at least 10.0, BB/9 1.3 or lower and an ERA+ of at least 141 (mind you, Sheets’ was 162):
Ben Sheets
All of this is just to say: Ben Sheets was a very good pitcher in general, but he was an absolute monster for one (1) baseball season.
I teased the ‘04 National League Cy Young voting a bit ago, and I’m not going to just leave that fruit hanging there.
It sure is a good thing a) Twitter didn’t exist in 2004, and b) 9-year-old Curt did not have a Twitter and, in general, was very offline.
This is why:
I’m not sure what the most egregious thing about this voting is. There’s so much to choose from, so I’m just going to try and rank them by their level of atrocity.
Sheets taking eighth. Look, I can understand Johnson winning. I probably would vote for him over Our Curveball Throwing King. But you’re telling me that Sheets got one measly third-place vote?!? One?!? Someone put Carl Pavano second on their ballot and left off Ben Sheets?!? My man had a historic season and got eighth place? I demand a recount.
Neither Randy Johnson nor Ben Sheets won Cy Young. Again, Johnson, not Sheets, probably deserved to win (which would have been his sixth) instead of Clemens picking up his seventh. The only “stat” in which Clemens outperformed Johnson (and Sheets, for that matter) was win-loss record and, look, I know 2004 was still a Pitcher Winz time in history, but this is simply outrageous. It’s not Sheets and Johnson’s fault that their teams were bad! The Brewers scored 0-2 runs in 13 of Sheets’ starts, and he went 1-12 in such outings with a 2.66 ERA! Also: if we thought Sheets’ record was screwed over by his 67-94 team, the Diamondbacks won 51 games that year. 40-year-old Johnson was the winning pitcher in 16 of those. This is now one of my favorite fun facts.
Roy Oswalt getting a first place vote. Look, I get that he won 20 games. But if you are of the opinion that leading the league in wins means you are the best pitcher in the league, I regret to inform you that you may be reading the wrong newsletter.
Carl Pavano got a second-place vote. I don’t even have anything else to say about this.
Eric Gagne over Brad Lidge. Never mind that both beat out Sheets (and also that Gagne was on PEDs. And also that Gagne signed a 1-year, $10-million deal with Milwaukee in 2008 and proceeded to be below replacement value). The only thing Gagne had going for him was that he saved 16 more games, but it’s not Lidge’s fault that Octavio Dotel started the year as Houston’s closer and wasn’t removed until late June.
So, uh, I guess that’s that. This ended up being much longer than I intended. I guess 2004 Ben Sheets deserves better than a simple word count.
I will leave you with one more Ben Sheets Fact, perhaps the most fitting Ben Sheets Fact there is.
Sheets is just one of seven pitchers since 1900 to start at least 200 games, have an ERA+ of at least 113 and have a losing record.
This is not the entire Ben Sheets story. There’s far more to tell of the ace of the mid-2000s in Milwaukee, one of the best pitchers in baseball over a five-year stretch despite throwing just two pitches. Maybe we’ll get to that some other day.
For now, please, someone score some runs for Ben Sheets.
5 takeaways from watching Brewers’ comeback win on Easter ‘87
~Tom
As a resident of Minnesota for my entire life (although outside of St. John’s University I barely recognize Stearns County as part of the Land O’ 10,000 Lakes), I didn’t become a big fan of the Brewers until I started covering the team (or, to be more accurate, started exclusively producing GIFs of Eric Sogard) for FOX Sports Wisconsin in 2016. And while I know just about everything about the teams of the last decade or so, my knowledge of deep Brewers history was lacking.
What I didn’t know was the year 1987 was significant in Milwaukee, too. Here in the Twin Cities it meant Kirby Puckett, Frank “Sweet Music” Viola, Astroturf and the first World Series title in Twins history. In Milwaukee, it was Paul Molitor and Rob Deer leading the team to 13 consecutive wins to start the 1987 campaign, which *double checks notes* still stands today as an American League record.
I celebrated Easter Sunday by watching — for the first time — the Brewers’ 6-4 win over Texas during that stretch. Milwaukee’s 12th win was arguably its most dramatic and memorable victory from that special season.
A quick summary: Milwaukee entered the game 11-0. Texas was 1-9. The Rangers carried a 4-1 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning before Rob Deer and Dale Sveum clobbered homers to steal the victory and to keep the Brewers’ magical winning streak alive.
You can watch the final three innings of this game right here. Now let’s get to my thoughts.
1) I have some #thoughts on the game’s aesthetics.
I am now convinced that MLB in the 1980s was more than a league of baseball players. It was a mustache cage match. Everyone, and I mean everyone was sporting some sort of lip ornament. It was like the entire Brewers roster was in on the plot of “Groundhog Day” and kept waking up in Movember. Here are a few of my favorites.
I don’t even know who this is. But that ‘stash is engraved in my mind forever.
You have no idea how many screenshots it took to get the perfect snapshot of Dale Sveum blowing a bubble. I need more iCloud space. Please enjoy it (and the ‘stache
).
Ok, not a mustache. But Cecil Cooper’s glasses — or are they goggles? *chef’s kiss*
And can we talk about Milwaukee’s uniforms in this game? I would never say anything negative about these pinstriped beauties sent straight from Baseball Heaven, but Chris Bosio wearing these threads makes the thick blue belt look like something middle-aged moms would buy on late-night QVC to help tone their cores.
2) Paul Molitor made striking out look good
Even though he would go on to bat an absurd .353/.438/.566 in 1987, Molitor was far from being a factor in this matchup. He went 0 for 4 with two strikeouts. But, my goodness, Molly didn’t lose an ounce of #drip that afternoon. After he whiffed on three pitches to something called Mitch Williams in the eighth, Molitor gave his bat a swift flick, caught it in stride and somehow contained the “swagger of a college kid,” as T.I. brilliantly wrote in 2008.
I mean, c’mon. That’s art. Another side note: Molly was a strong candidate to be the namesake of this newsletter. As much as I love Rocco Baldelli, I still feel slightly guilty about Derek and Thad cutting ties with the 2017 AL Manager of the Year.
3) Shirtless men. Everywhere.
When the Weather Girls dialed up the song “It’s Raining Men,” did they picture shirtless 20-something guys who smelled like beer, brats and salty losses in tailgate cornhole? If so, they might want to re-shoot their music video.
The game footage features thousands of shirtless dudes in the bleachers. Sun’s out, guns out. Based on my one minute of research, it barely reached 70 degrees in Milwaukee that day. By the look of the nearly-nude crowd you’d think County Stadium’s home plate was located right on the equator.
Let’s go over a few highlights.
First stop: The immediate reaction to Sveum’s walk-off bomb. Note the shirts being used as fan towels.
Up next: Either this dude knew he was on television and was hunting for some clout, or he was so taken aback by emotion that he had to physically turn around, bend over and let the longest fist pump in the history of humanity loose into the wild.
And finally: A dancing Easter bunny (feat. more shirtless males). He is risen. And so is this guy’s BAC.
4) The broadcast.
As a self-proclaimed broadcast geek, it would be wrong to not give a nod to the Rangers radio network which covered this game. The call of Sveum’s game-winner went like this: “Long one to right! Twelve in a row!” … which was pretty darn solid. In the seventh inning, the play-by-play announcer referred to a player’s glove as a “meathook,” which is the most Texas thing of all time. And the broadcast also mentioned that Rangers manager Bobby Valentine was quoted in the newspaper that same morning that he wasn’t impressed with the undefeated Brewers. A classic 1987 @OldTakesExposed.
5) The bat flip.
While Sveum hit the walk-off knock, Rob Deer owned the best bat flip of the game. By a large margin. On his game-tying, three-run blast in the ninth, Deer knew the baseball was bound for the County Stadium seats right away. A legendary stare down.
And that’s not even the best part. Main man held his bat in the air all the way down to first base like he’s the golden boy Michael Phelps carrying the Olympic torch. Fear the Deer.
We’re about two months into writing this newsletter and I think we’ve mentioned bat flips at least once in every edition. I’m proud.
Jon Heyman has never seen The Sandlot
A two-act play: A National Baseball Writer Has Never Seen Sandlot.
