The beauty of the game of baseball is that two people can watch the game and come away from it telling completely different stories. That’s why multiple outlets can send reporters to a game, with each possibly coming away telling a compelling enough game story to entice readers.
In the same vein, over the course of the year statistics can accumulate that maybe we aren’t even aware of. Surely someone has to lead the team in line drive rate, or being caught stealing, or any other statistic that doesn’t jump right off the stat page as well, right? And with an adequate enough sampling, that could be interesting as well, right?
Well, I hope so, anyway. Here are some of the weird stat leaders for this year’s Twins team that I found. Offense will be today, and we’ll break down pitching tomorrow:
Caught Stealing – Danny Santana (nine)
We’ll start with an easy one, as most people who’ve watched the team this year could deduce that Santana — who is fast, but hasn’t been particularly good at stealing this year — would lead the team. It’s not by a small margin either, as the next highest is Eduardo Nunez with six. And, well, he isn’t on the team anymore. So beyond that, you’d need to go to Robbie Grossman (three), Brian Dozier and Eduardo Escobar (two each) and two of the trio of Jorge Polanco, Eddie Rosario and Byron Buxton (one apiece) to match Santana’s nine on the year.
Basically, here’s the lowdown: Santana’s been caught stealing nine times. The rest of his current teammates have been caught a combined 10 times.
Intentional Walks – Joe Mauer (10)
It’s unclear how strange this is, as Mauer has been one of the most consistent-ish forces in the lineup all year. But right now, Mauer is tied for eighth among 153 qualified hitters across MLB with 10 IBB. You know who else has 10? Mike Trout. So too does Brandon Crawford, so maybe there isn’t too much of a common tie here. But anyway, Mauer has more intentional walks than possible AL MVP Jose Altuve, Manny Machado, possible NL MVP Anthony Rizzo, Nolan Arenado, Buster Posey…..you get it. The list goes on.
The same deal here applies as with Santana, more or less. Mauer has been intentionally walked 10 times. His teammates have been intentionally walked 11 times total.
Double Plays Grounded Into – Dozier (11)
Wait, it’s not Mauer? True enough, as Mauer is third on the team with eight, behind Dozier and Trevor Plouffe (10). This is a little surprising, as Dozier has spent a large part of the season (47 starts) batting leadoff behind a cast of low OBP No. 9 hitters like Byron Buxton and Santana, but keep in mind that Dozier has also batted second quite frequently (24 times), and has also spent 42 games batting third or fourth. He’d have been behind a blistering hot Nunez earlier in the season, and behind Mauer frequently as a cleanup hitter — leaving ample opportunities to hit into a twin killing.
As for Mauer, he hasn’t really stopped hitting the ball on the ground — he’s been a two-plus GB/FB guy for five of the last six seasons — but there are some theories in play here. Batting behind Nunez would have led to many, many stolen base attempts to avoid the double play. Batting behind Dozier wouldn’t lead to a runner on first base all that often, especially with his stretch of play of late. But no matter the reason, Mauer has just eight. He hasn’t had a full season in single digits since, well really ever. He hit into nine in 2005 (131 games), nine in 2011 (82 games) and seven in 2013 (113 games). Mauer is also operating at a three-year low in terms of groundball rate with runners on base, according to the Fangraphs split tool (49 percent). That’s still a high rate, but when combined with other factors probably plays a role.
UBR – Rosario (3.1)
Now this is a stat that even I don’t know a ton about. It’s called ultimate base running, and it basically measures — separate from steals and caught stealing — how good a runner is at adding value on the scale of runs above average. Check out this primer from Fangraphs, which tells us that means Rosario is in the range of “great” as a baserunner. That was true last year as well, as he had a plus-3.8 mark a year ago. It may or may not be all that useful statistically, but it’s an interesting concept. Other reasonably good baserunners on the Twins include Dozier (2.2) and Max Kepler (1.6), while Kurt Suzuki (minus-3.8) is regarded as the worst.
Lowest GB/FB rate – Kennys Vargas (0.64)
I’ll readily admit I expected Dozier to take the cake here by a wide margin, but he’s not even in second place, but rather tied for third with Buxton. That is, even if you want to disqualify Vargas on the grounds of not enough playing time — a valid complaint — you still have to contend with Miguel Sano, who just sneaks past Dozier’s 0.75 mark with a 0.73 of his own. Basically speaking, this makes a lot of sense. For guys with raw power and not great foot speed, Sano and Vargas — and even Dozier, to some extent — are going to make their money hitting the ball in the air. This is a good thing. On the opposite end of the spectrum? Mauer at 2.55 and Santana at 2.12. Not too crazy there.
Infield Hits – Dozier (12)*
We put an asterisk on it because technically Nunez had 13 while with the Twins, but it’s still worth noting that nearly 10 percent of Dozier’s 136 hits this year have been of the infield variety. Of course, more than half (68) have also been extra-base hits. So it’s been just a really interesting year with Dozier, let’s just say. Kepler has nine in his limited big league time, and there are some fun names on the list too. Vargas and Juan Centeno have one each, Byungho Park actually legged out two and Mighty Miguel has three this season.
Bunt hits – Santana (five)
Blech.
Pull Rate – Dozier (55.7 percent) / Push Rate – Mauer (35.3 percent)
Neither of these are surprising, but it’s always fun to see how the data lines up with our eyes. Dozier’s pull rate is a little behind last year’s mark (60.2 percent), but he’s made up for it with production the other way, as he’s got a .706 OPS on balls hit to right field this year. For his career, that’s just a .452 mark. And for all the crowing about Mauer never pulling the ball, he’s made a hell of a career going the other way. He’s got nearly a 1.300 OPS to the opposite field this year (.485/.481/.808), and for his career it checks in at 1.118.
