Article: Twins 2018 Position Analysis: Starting Pitcher

[yarnivek1972]

Is that official Hughes is going to the DL?

I thought I saw something here (like a Bernadino tweet or something) that said he was. Strained oblique.

[IndianaTwin]

 

True, but Santana also threw 30 more innings than in 2016, with 5 complete games and 3 shutouts. He carried a big portion of the load. If not for his impact the staff would've ranked near the bottom of the league again.

 

I agree with your point that without Ervin, they probably would have been near the bottom in 2017. My point is that the improvement from 30th to 23rd didn't primarily come from Ervin pitching better in 2017. It came from the improvement in other places, primarily from two spots in particular.

 

Ervin was huge last year. But in 2016, the starters overall ERA was 5.39. If you take out Ervin's 2016 starts and replace them with his 2017 starts (including the 30 extra innings), the starters ERA would have only dropped by 0.10 to 5.29, and they still would have been close to last.

 

However, going from 30th to 23rd was from the starters ERA dropping from 5.39 in 2016 to 4.73 in 2017, a net drop of 0.66. So my point was that if Ervin's improvement dropped the ERA by about 0.10, the remaining 0.56 came from improvements elsewhere.

 

So looking elsewhere, 2016 Gibson vs. 2017 Gibson was virtually a wash, as was 2016 Nolasco vs. 2017 Colon (really, I was surprised too!). 2017 Santiago was a tiny bit better than 2016 Millone and 2017 Hughes was a smidge better than 2016 Hughes, in each case in similar numbers of starts. 

 

I didn't go to the bother of totaling the riffraff of small-volume starters, other than to note that the leash was short on Turley, et al., in 2017, both in numbers of starts individuals got and in how long they lasted in a game. By contrast 2016 gave us 9 starts of Pat Dean (6.85).

 

If those were mostly a wash, where did the big improvement come from? Ultimately, it wasn't primarily from Ervin's slight improvement in 30 additional innings. Rather, it was from having...

• 25 starts from Berrios (3.89) and 21 from Mejia (4.50) in 2017 (46 starts total)
• vs. 26 starts from Duffey (6.43) and 14 starts from Berrios (8.02) in 2016 (40 starts total)  

[DocBauer]

Best staff in years. Berrios will be better. Santana is still quality when healthy. Odorizzi is solid, should be much better this season healthy, and finished 2017 strong. Lynn adjusting to a new league, but also a full year recovered from surgery. And really, Gibson is your #5, not Hughes.

 

Excited we can dip down to Rochester for someone young and talented and not a street signing if need be.

[Circus Boy]

 

I have this feeling that Lance Lynn is going to be a pleasant surprise, for some.  Will go so far as make two predictions.  One, he will have a better season than that Darvish guy; and two, he will like it here and they will shock everyone this July when the Twins extend him with a contract similar to what he was looking for this past winter.  

Lynn -- it rhymes with win. And Darvish will become the answer to "Whatsamattah Yu?"

[Jham]

This is a far far deeper group than were accustomed to. I like that the season isn't hinged to a prospect becoming an instant star or a has been returning to form worth plan b being aaaa roulette. Out of the 10 or so guys who figure to make starts, hopefully we can find 5 or 6 who pitch well and 2-3 who tear it up.

Edited March 26, 2018 by Jham

[Guest]

 

The Twins have nice depth so they should be ok. The offense will lead them so the pitchers just have to be adequate and they look like they can pull that off. If Lynn or Ordozzi fail, we have Romero (who I like a lot) in the wings as well.

 

It'll also be fun to watch how Thorpe handles AA hitters. He's close and has some big upside.

Read into it what you will, but Thorpe was the SP for high-A Ft. Myers today on the back fields. There have obviously been several roster adjustments and I haven't seen the latest list, but he may be opening the season with the Miracle. Guess we will find out in about a week.

[bean5302]

I was under the impression Darvishes escalators were cy young awards. If he wins 2 cy Young’s, the $150M will almost certainly be money well spent.

 

It’s possible Darvish melts down. I don’t think he will. I think he’s ripe for a really nice few years. I’m guessing 2-3 years as an ace, plus 2-3 years as a #2 and 0-2 years as a #3 would be completely reasonable. That’s be worth it.

[Nick Nelson]

 

If those were mostly a wash, where did the big improvement come from? Ultimately, it wasn't primarily from Ervin's slight improvement in 30 additional innings. Rather, it was from having...

• 25 starts from Berrios (3.89) and 21 from Mejia (4.50) in 2017 (46 starts total)
• vs. 26 starts from Duffey (6.43) and 14 starts from Berrios (8.02) in 2016 (40 starts total)  

 

All good points. I guess the real takeaway is this: Santana might not have primarily driven the improvement, but him delivering a quarter of the team's SP innings with a 3.28 ERA was a huge reason for whatever level of success they had in 2017. This year they won't be able to count on that again, both because he'll throw fewer innings and he's extremely unlikely to replicate that performance upon returning.

 

So the statement laid out in the 2nd-to-last paragraph fully stands.

[Danchat]

 

I thought I saw something here (like a Bernadino tweet or something) that said he was. Strained oblique.

I didn't see anything in Berardino's tweets but I did find a source here: https://www.twincities.com/2018/03/24/injuries-to-phil-hughes-zack-granite-complicate-twins-plans/

 

If Hughes hits the 15 day DL, I wonder who the 5th starter would be. I think it could be Tyler Duffey or maybe even Fernando Romero, but I don't think these two are stretched out enough. Maybe Aaron Slegers? I don't think it'll be Gonsalves or Jorge.

[jmlease1]

 

Those fangraph IP projections seem awfully low. Other than maybe Erv’s.

 

My problem with the FanGraph ratings is they're assuming last season was the correct assessment of Odorizzi and Lynn's ability/performance when projecting their likely performance this season, rather than accounting for their total track record. Additionally, I don't love the way fWAR handles pitching; it's a metric of what they're saying the pitcher should have produced based on their peripherals, rather than what they actually did.

 

Now, Lance Lynn was probably lucky last season, considering the difference between his ERA and his FIP. But he was also coming off Tommy John and posted the worst FIP he'd ever had in the majors. So FanGraphs is projecting him to be basically that again using his career-worst FIP as the baseline but his career-average delta between his ERA and FIP as the measuring stick to get to his ERA? Ouch. That's a lot of regression to assume on a guy who is only 30. Additionally, they've assumed he'll only pitch 149 innings; since becoming a full-time starter he's never pitched less than 175. I get that they have to try to make some guessed on injury; there's no way a team gets through the year without guys missing some starts, but I can't say I love this guess. Why are they assuming Lynn throws 35 inning less than last season and Gibson 2?

 

Odorizzi suffers in similar fashion; they're weighing last season awfully heavily on a guy who has had a solid enough track record and reportedly pitched hurt last year. 

 

Something else to consider: the difference between 16 and 21 is 1 WAR. 

 

 

 

[djmo]

Remember the days when there were only about four statistical pitching benchmarks to go by?

Not to be overly Bert Blyleven about it (i.e., super basic and repetitive) but from outward appearances, this rotation (except maybe for Gibson) seems likely to consistently deliver quality or near-quality starts (imagine Bert's voice) and might be capable of getting on a roll. No more 4+ innings in the box score every third game (one can hope). It's maybe a little old-school to look at it that way, and yeah, no "ace" exactly, but consistent, stable performances on a daily basis would be a vast improvement, even over 2017.

 

[caninatl04]

"Starters not named Ervin went from a 5.91 ERA in 2016 to 5.19 in 2017."

 

Question 1:  What was the ERA from starters named neither Ervin nor Berrios?

 

Question 2:  Is a 4.50 SP really that rare these days?

[Minfidel]

 

The traditional Twins rotation consisted of bringing black powder muskets to nuclear arm's pow wows.

No, the traditional Twins rotation consisted of bringing matches to a mound of black powder.

[HrbieFan]

It is nice to have 3 spots with solid pitchers and a 4th when Santana comes back. If Gibson and/or Hughes fail, we have some decent options waiting in the wings. I hope the days of retread SPs is gone for a long time. We might not have an ace, but we don't have 3 #5 pitchers in the rotation either

[bean5302]

 

"Starters not named Ervin went from a 5.91 ERA in 2016 to 5.19 in 2017."

 

Question 1:  What was the ERA from starters named neither Ervin nor Berrios?

 

Question 2:  Is a 4.50 SP really that rare these days?

 

A1 = 5.55

A2 = Kind of. There were 14 qualified starters with ERA's of 4.49+ last year. It's not that starters posting 4.50 ERAs are rare. It's that pitchers who post those ERAs for consecutive years are rare. A guy can have a bad season driven by luck. BABIP, a couple of his solo shots wind up being grand slams instead... those make big differences in ERA.

 

Teams look to shed pitchers who pitch at that 4.25+ level because they make it awfully hard to win games. 6 innings and 3ER (4.50 ERA) is treated as a quality start, but it's really not. Your team will probably allow at least one more ER over the last 3 innings of the game (ERA 3.00) which means your team needs to score 5 runs to win. The probability of scoring 5 runs in a game is far lower than 4 runs. Actually, that's the very basis of the "Ace" for the playoffs discussion. An Ace is expected to give you 7 innings at 2 ER. A #3 will give you 7 innings at 3 ER, which is still a solid start, but the expectations of winning are probably 80% in favor of the Ace's team at that point.

[howieramone2]

 

I do agree years five and six will be interesting. I like him for the next four, so it's a matter of how much those first four years are worth, in terms of the cost of the last two.

A bad contract is a bad contract, regardless of how you spin it. 

[caninatl04]

 

A1 = 5.55

A2 = Kind of. There were 14 qualified starters with ERA's of 4.49+ last year. It's not that starters posting 4.50 ERAs are rare. It's that pitchers who post those ERAs for consecutive years are rare. A guy can have a bad season driven by luck. BABIP, a couple of his solo shots wind up being grand slams instead... those make big differences in ERA.

 

Teams look to shed pitchers who pitch at that 4.25+ level because they make it awfully hard to win games. 6 innings and 3ER (4.50 ERA) is treated as a quality start, but it's really not. Your team will probably allow at least one more ER over the last 3 innings of the game (ERA 3.00) which means your team needs to score 5 runs to win. The probability of scoring 5 runs in a game is far lower than 4 runs. Actually, that's the very basis of the "Ace" for the playoffs discussion. An Ace is expected to give you 7 innings at 2 ER. A #3 will give you 7 innings at 3 ER, which is still a solid start, but the expectations of winning are probably 80% in favor of the Ace's team at that point.

 

Thank you, Bean

 

So how many qualified starters had ERAs less than 4.5?

 

Hence my query about how rare it is.  For me, one of the keys of the season is the ERA (or WHIP) for starting pitchers other than Erv and Berrios.  It would be wonderful if it was less than 5.55

 

[Danchat]

[Mike Sixel]

A bad contract is a bad contract, regardless of how you spin it.

It costs that much to get him. I'm not sure why spreading the money over more years is bad. You need to look at the entirety of the contract, not just the bad years, to judge the contract.

[yarnivek1972]

A1 = 5.55

A2 = Kind of. There were 14 qualified starters with ERA's of 4.49+ last year. It's not that starters posting 4.50 ERAs are rare. It's that pitchers who post those ERAs for consecutive years are rare. A guy can have a bad season driven by luck. BABIP, a couple of his solo shots wind up being grand slams instead... those make big differences in ERA.

 

Teams look to shed pitchers who pitch at that 4.25+ level because they make it awfully hard to win games. 6 innings and 3ER (4.50 ERA) is treated as a quality start, but it's really not. Your team will probably allow at least one more ER over the last 3 innings of the game (ERA 3.00) which means your team needs to score 5 runs to win. The probability of scoring 5 runs in a game is far lower than 4 runs. Actually, that's the very basis of the "Ace" for the playoffs discussion. An Ace is expected to give you 7 innings at 2 ER. A #3 will give you 7 innings at 3 ER, which is still a solid start, but the expectations of winning are probably 80% in favor of the Ace's team at that point.

Yet, the Twins are stubbornly holding onto a guy that has been below 4.47 exactly once in 4 full seasons (145 + IP) and over 5 the last two. Indeed, an awful lot of posters on this board are placing a great deal of faith in this individual.

[Mr. Brooks]

A bad contract is a bad contract, regardless of how you spin it.

Wait, I thought before you said you were giving your opinion?

A few posts later it's just a factually bad contract regardless of Mike's opinion?

[diehardtwinsfan]

 

 

 

Question 2:  Is a 4.50 SP really that rare these days?

 

For the record, the starting pitching average ERA for the AL in 2017 was 4.54. League average for both leagues was 4.49. 

 

I wouldn't call it rare, but I think it's far to echo what others have said that it's hard to find guys who can consistently pitch better than average. Part of that is health. Part of that is pitching is hard. I think saber in particular has changed a lot of that, especially with the focus on things like launch angles and what not. 

[KirbyDome89]

 

The Darvish contract is one of the 10 worst in baseball. Let's see what Theo does with an anchor around his neck.

My guess would be he competes for another WS....