Kiss Today Goodbye
The Sweetness and the Sorrow

Seeing as I have not written anything specific to the Twins in a few weeks, and my site is at least nominally about the Twins, I feel like I should start trying to pander… er, return to the topic.

Earlier in the summer, I touched on the subject of departed Twins in response to J.C. Romero’s comment that he needed to leave so he could fulfill his potential. If nothing else, he gets at the important point that the Twins are among a handful Major League teams that succeed despite a surprisingly high turnover rate. Just in terms of (semi-)regular position players, this year’s Twins lost Blanco, Mientkiewcz, Guzman and Koskie, not to mention Restovich, Offerman and Gomez. So was Romero right? Do former Twins experience more success after leaving the team? My initial reaction was that they do not, and that Romero was using selective examples (namely David Ortiz) to prove his point. Today I’ll embark on the first part of a quest to prove or disprove that hypothesis, using VORP averages for players for the last three years they were regulars with the Twins and after they left.

Sample questions: I’m using anyone who had even a small amount of playing time with the Twins and with other teams. I’m not accounting for injuries, even though VORP is a cumulative stat. David Ortiz was often injured as a Twin, depressing his VORP totals, and Corey Koskie has been injured for a good deal of his first season away from Minnesota. These players illustrate my justification: Injuries are part of the game, and Terry Ryan decided to cut loose both Koskie and Ortiz because they were injury prone. One has since avoided the DL and become America’s Sweetheart, while the other had a freak broken thumb. Finally, I’m only going back to 2001, the start of the Twins current run of success. The seasons leading up to it had much to do with building the team that would win three straight AL Central titles, but I want to avoid comparing prime players to declining players somewhat, and there is a diminishingly small number of players before that year.

2004 Departures:

Henry Blanco (Minnesota VORP avg: -8.0, post-Minnesota VORP avg: 2.2): Blanco is employed as a backup catcher because he is an excellent defender, and has a reputation for handling pitchers. When the Twins needed him to play 100+ games, the holes in his swing turned black (get it? Black holes: sucking in everything around them), though his defense stayed solid. As a full-timer, he hit the free agent market, but landed as a backup anyway. Although Dusty Baker found regular playing time for Neifi Perez, not even he could justify playing Blanco in front of Barrett. As a result, Blanco turned in a performance slightly above replacement level.

Pat Borders (1.4, -6.3): Nobody expected much from him either year, nobody got much. Although he was definitely better as a Twin, it’s hardly even worth mentioning.

Aaron Fultz (6.9, 23.2): I wrote about Fultz’s success a couple of weeks ago while looking at the Phillies playoff chances. While they missed out by a game, Fultz is not to blame, as he shaved nearly a walk and a half off of his ‘04 BB/9, yielding less than half of his previous ERA (2.24, 4.86). Credit Charlie Manuel with getting the most out of Fultz through proper usage.

Christian Guzman (13.3, -9.7): Guzman’s failures have been well publicized, and I think the cause has not to do with leaving Minnesota, but with the Ullger-imposed swing change that sapped him of all of his power. After Guzman came back from his season-ending injury in 2001, he started beating the ball into the ground and trying to run it out. The strategy immediately cost him several points of batting average, and lots of slugging, as he dropped about .100 points the next year. Moving from turf to grass made the problem even worse, and now that he has reportedly lost a step, the problem gets worse. If he could recapture his old swing, some of his triples may only go for doubles, but I’m sure Frank Robinson would be happy with a line drive here and there.

Corey Koskie (36.6, 11.0): As I mentioned earlier, much of Koskie’s regression comes from a freak injury (broken thumb) that actually occurred against the Twins. Koskie was not retained partially because of his age and history of back injuries. His missed time may make Terry Ryan look like a prophet, but the injury had nothing to do with his back. While the extra rest may have been exactly what Koskie needed to keep his back from acting up, we can’t give Ryan credit for a second degree potentiality. Still, when Koskie was healthy, he slugged only .398, playing far below the level he established in Minnesota. Ryan would be foolish to think that his regression is an anomaly rather than an effect of his age, and following through on the rumored Koskie for Morneau swap would not only be misguided, it would be moronic.

Jose Offerman (7.3, -0.3): Offerman was a revelation for the Twins in 2004, getting hit after hit, but still does not play nearly the defense to start anywhere. His peripherals changed very little, but he hit far less singles. Offerman’s stats will fluctuate at this point in his career due to small sample sizes, but he’s probably not done yet, and may never be.

Mike Restovich (2.5, -0.1): It would have been nice to have Restovich around this year when Hunter and Stewart were both hurt and Gardy was forced to patch together an OF with Mike Ryan, Jason Tyner and Mike Cuddyer, leaving the lineup bare of power and the IF bare of a Major League third baseman. That’s not to say that Restovich is a star, but a hometown guy with some versatility has at least some purpose.


Not listed: Augie Ojeda (out of Majors), Joe Beimel (pitched 1 2/3 innings for MN), Seth Greisinger (pitched 5 innings for ATL in ‘05)

Tomorrow, I’ll go through the departures from 2001-2003