If you're looking for a reason that the Twins are staying afloat despite having the fourth-worst ERA in baseball, maybe look to Brad Pitt for the explanation.
Pitt, playing general manager Billy Beane in the 2011 Best Picture nominee Moneyball, is shown in the film trying to justify the acquisition of former Red Sox catcher Scott Hatteberg.
"He gets on base a lot," said Beane to the team's brain trust. "Do I care if it's a walk or a hit?"
Maybe Beane actually said that – or maybe the producers just wanted viewers to believe that Beane was a genius for bringing in Hatteberg. After all, Hatteberg went on to have an on-base percentage (OBP) above the league average in each of his four Oakland seasons. He walked 257 times between 2002 and 2005, striking out just 211 times. Beane was onto something.
Through the first month of games in 2014, the Twins have a few "Hattebergs" that are keeping them around the .500 mark. This is a encouraging to see in a league that has seen its collective OBP freefall since 2006 (in other words, the beginning of the end of the steroid era). Baseball's average OBP stood at .336 eight years ago. Here are the averages since:
2007: .336
2008: .333
2009: .333
2010: .325
2011: .320
2012: .319
2013: .317
For the most part, the Twins have followed this downward trend. In two of their last three dreadful seasons, the Twins have been well below the league average in OBP. The 2011 Twins were 27th in baseball with a measly .306. After a good-but-not-great .325 effort in 2012, the 2013 squad finished at a subpar .312.
The common thread in recent seasons was that the Twins, frankly, stunk at hitting for average. The batting average was low, therefore the OBP was low. In more than 16,000 at-bats over the past three seasons, Minnesota hit just .250.
That hasn't changed in 2014. The Twins are currently hitting at .248, placing them 17th in the league. The oddity? They are third in OBP at an impressive .342, just behind Colorado (1) and Oakland (2). Juxtapose that against the league average of .318, and the Twins look pretty darn impressive. Minnesota's margin of .094 between team average and team OBP is tops in baseball, slightly ahead of Boston (.244 versus .337).
Obviously, the biggest factor in all of this jargon is Minnesota's walk total. The Twins have 141 walks, two behind – guess who – Billy Beane's team in Oakland. However, Minnesota's walk rate (walks divided by plate appearances) is a league-best 12 percent, which FanGraphs considers "Great" in its sabermetrics library.
It would be nice to see this type of patience on a team with greater middle-of-the-lineup power. Lead-off hitter Brian Dozier leads the team with 24 walks, good for fifth in baseball, and No. 2 hitter Joe Mauer is tied for 15th in the league with 19 free passes. Look no further than this to explain how Chris Colabello broke the team record for RBIs in the month of April.
While it's too difficult to explain in this space, Sporting News wrote an elaborate piece in 2013 that shows a direct correlation between OBP and runs per plate appearance. Give it a read (or at least check out some of the interesting graphs). The Twins are living proof of the theory as their total of five runs per game demonstrates.
If the Twins continue at this pace, they will shatter the team record of 649 walks set in 1962. At their current clip of 4.7 walks per game, the Twins will draw 761 free passes. But in this 162-game derby, the Twins are barely at the quarter-pole. Insane paces like that are difficult to keep up.
Nonetheless, hitting coach Tom Brunansky deserves some credit. The Twins' second-year assistant (who ironically struck out more than he walked in all 14 of his big-league seasons) has taken a group that was fourth-worst in walks under Joe Vavra in 2011 and turned them into arguably the most patient team in the league.
It's not a secret that there are still areas to criticize with this thoroughly average team. They strike out too much, they rarely hit home runs, their games are too long, and what happened to Jared Burton?
But in terms of having a good eye at the plate, the Twins are seeing 20/20.
| Sam Ekstrom is a staff writer for Cold Omaha at 105 The Ticket. He has previously served as a play-by-play broadcaster in Iowa and South Dakota and has covered Minnesota sports since 2012. Follow him on Twitter @SamEkstrom for further insights |