The Twins' Offense Has Gotten Off to a Poor Start - Why is that?

[nicksaviking]

57 minutes ago, Irishman said:

Baldelli needs to be replaced by Rowson.   Twins hitting performance declines since Rowson left.

Rowson might have helped, but the de-juiced balls seem to be a bigger factor.

[Azviking101]

They won’t be this bad all year but I generally think the lineup is much worse than people think it is. 
Kepler and Sano have regressed over the years. Jeffers has shown no ability to hit in the majors, Arraez can’t hit lefties and most of the starters we’ve faced so far are lefties. 
Larnach and Kiriloff have both struggled staying healthy and we’re going to need an adjustment regardless. Twins prospects rarely crush it the moment they’re promoted. 
And then relying on major bounce backs from Sanchez and Urshela. 

And then there’s Polanco (always a slow starter), Correa (no clue what’s wrong with him) and Buxton who struggles with health. 
 

we’ve already seen Garlick hitting cleanup, Gordon hitting 5th. Celestino is playing every game recently. The depth is awful right now and the hitting is talent just isn’t there 

[OptimisticTwinsFan]

On 4/21/2022 at 8:39 AM, Trov said:

Sano actually is very disciplined hitter, which why his strikeouts are an even bigger issue.  He has a low chase rate for a guy that strikes out as much as he does.  His issue is he cannot hit fastballs in the zone well, and he takes a lot of called strikes on the edge of the zone.  He is not up there swinging at anything thrown, his huge issue, which is worse than chasing, is that he misses strikes in the zone.  

There is truth to this, but I disagree with your conclusion. Sano is a very disciplined hitter that I agree with. His chase rate is low because he doesn't expand the zone or try to generate contact with pitches on the outside edge of the zone unless he is forced to do so with 2 strikes. I actually think this description gets it completely backwards.

Sano's primary goal during his plate appearances is to wait for a pitcher to make a mistake or deliver a pitch in an area of the strike zone with high XBH expected outcomes. Sano wants to maximize the chance that a pitcher makes a mistake and avoid bailing pitchers out by swinging at pitches that correlate with weaker contact even if it's a strike because it's well place on the corner of the zone. There is no reason to bail the pitcher out by swinging at a pitcher's pitch if you still have strikes available.  

The best way to maximize the chance of getting a pitch that has a high expected XBH outcome is to only swing at pitches that fall outside of that areas unless you have to do so. In addition, this means being willing to take a walk if a pitcher is not willing to challenge you in those areas of the zone.

Sano consistently faces pitches per plate appearance that rank him in the top 5-10 range. This whole approach that you've called out is actually the right approach to maximize the chance that you can drive a pitch for an XBH on an at bat by at bat basis. This is a feature by design and actually represents Sano executing this approach at what you could call an elite level. Part of this approach also means that you are looking to wait the pitcher out and try to drive pitches in those areas even if you have 2 strikes. It is difficult at the MLB level to get drivable pitches over the heart of the zone and the idea is that you have to maximize your chance of generating an XBH by looking to drive those balls even with 2 strikes. 

Basically, what you are suggesting is that Sano should swing at strikes on the edge of the zone instead of taking them and going deeper into counts or getting behind. Sano has maximized his approach to generate the highest possible sample size in any given game (based on how many he gets) of high expected XBH outcomes and selectively almost exclusively swings at those pitches. If Sano doesn't get that pitch or he misses that pitch and the at bat continues with balls or strikes at the edge of the zone until it's 3-2 this means that push has to shove. Either a pitcher has to attack the zone where Sano wants him to throw or they have to continue to not attack the zone and try to get Sano to chase.

Basically what you are saying is that Sano should swing at strikes in non-high XBH area outcomes trying to generate something that will most likely resemble weak content instead of keeping the chance open that he either gets a high-XBH-percentage pitch or gets on base by a walk if the pitcher doesn't. That's not to say that I wish Sano chased breaking balls off the plate less in this situation. However, now with 2 strikes Sano DOES have to swing at that lower percentage pitch that you talked about if it's on the corner of the zone. The large majority of these swing and misses Sano identifies fastball on the edge of the zone and it falls off. Many other times he lays off and walks as well. So while pitchers do beat him in some of these at bats, he is also able to navigate working through counts to get on base at a really high level with an 11-12% BB that puts him in the 20-30 range among qualified hitters.

Part of the goal of Sano being really patient looking for these pitches is that not every contact is created equal and not every hitting outcome is worth the same. The goal of Sano's approach at the plate is to create an outcome where he is generating extreme amounts of line drives, hard hits, barrels, and an extremely high exit velocity. Throughout his career Sano has actually ranked either the best in the league in these areas or close to the best in the league. Basically, Sano's approach and execution of that approach may actually mean that he is the best in the league at making pitchers execute pitches and nail the corners of the zone without catching too much of the plate. If pitchers are a little bit off either on or off the plate Sano wins the AB. 

Most hitters end up creating contact that benefits pitchers with low expected SLG% outcomes despite the fact that if they were patient they likely would have had the chance to face a better hitter's pitch. Sano is one of the best in the league at making sure he is selectively swinging at pitches with high expected SLG% outcomes and forcing you to execute multiple perfect pitches to get ahead of him and in positions where you can make him expand the zone. We know this is true because when Sano makes contact there is arguably no one who hits the ball harder on average. This is not by accident the result is a purposeful outcome of a diligence and patience to trust a framework that allows him to more consistently swing at better pitches than other hitters.

You want Sano to swing at more lower SLG% pitches to create more contact and decrease his K%. What you don't properly correlate is that Sano's K% is not something that can be thought of in isolation. If you swing at more lower SLG% strikes you are getting a benefit that largely results in largely weak contact and a high percentage of easy outs with some additional singles and maybe a limited number of XBHs. Mostly, it's going to be a lot of outs with some smattering of seeing eye singles or bloopers. If the tradeoff was get those extra singles in exchange for a decrease in K% that would be great, but it's not.

The actual trade-off is that you want Sano to adjust his swing profile to increase the number of weak contact outs & some increase in singles and maybe driving a small amount of pitches and what you want Sano to lose is that you want him to decrease the number of high SLG% outcome pitches that he faces, lower his BB%, lower the number of 2Bs, lower the number of HRs. To me this doesn't make any sense at all. I can't understand why swinging at strikes on the edge of the strike zone earlier in counts gets you anything but weak contact outs + singles instead of strikeouts + BBs and decreasing your hard hit / barrel / LD / XBH% because you feel differently about a strikeout out versus a weak ground ball, pop-up, or fly-ball out.

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Your statement is why I feel like people just don't take the time to properly understand what Sano is trying to or why his approach allows players to generate those types of outcomes. If you do understand what Sano's goals are and why those goals correlate to certain outcomes you realize that the whole package is a consequence of eachother. You cannot get the good without the negative externality of the strikeouts. 

Sano actually has arguably optimized his approach to produce the outcomes he wants to produce at what you could consider a 95th+ percentile level. He is also extremely patient and disciplined in sticking to that framework in each at bat understanding that these outcomes are produced over large samples. 

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Sano has an extremely dialed in approach--where things get inconsistent and frustrating is his execution

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Sano is no longer the hitter that he was and doesn't generate quite as elite of hard contact as he used to. In addition, Sano definitely goes through periods of time where his timing is slightly off meaning that instead of driving the high percentage pitches in the middle of the plate Sano is either swinging through them or popping pitches up (this is what he's done right now). There is a relatively low margin of error with this approach because you have to execute on a high percentage of fewer swing attempts and may find yourself in more potential counts where the pitcher has the advantage.

The point of this paragraph is that while Sano has almost completely perfected the approach that he is trying to use to generate trips on base and XBH's that doesn't mean he always executes at the same level. Sano could definitely serve to be more consistent in his execution and less prone to timing issues that resent in multiple-week or month long slumps as he works to resolve that. 

Note: If I were to suggest one reason that Sano didn't reach his potential as a power bat that his hype suggested I would suggest that Sano has more inconsistent execution than one would expect from an elite player. Sano has throughout his career struggled to consistently keep his timing dialed in leading to some inconsistencies in output.

If I were to suggest to Sano a trade-off that would be worth it and decrease his strikeout rate, I would suggest that instead of continuing to take bug cuts on pitches that start on the outside of the zone with 2 strike you build in a variation into your three-true-outcome approach that priorizes contact specifically when the pitch starts in this area of the zone.

The reason that I suggest this is really the one area where Sano could make a tradeoff that is worth it is that this pitch mix that is really difficult for Sano to handle is really the result of strong placement by pitchers who make the pitch look like it's located on the outer edge and then spin it out of the zone. The likelihood through which Sano is able to drive pitches in this location is small. Prioritizing more contact could allow you to wait until this pitch is deeper toward you and potentially identify the breaking pitches more often, increase your average, and decrease your K rate.

Sano may just not really be capable of dialing back. However rather than your suggestion, to me this is the best small change that could decrease your K% and increase your .avg & BB% when pitchers have three-true-outcome hitters in one of the most disadvantagous counts for that approach.

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Additional Note

Everyone knows about Sano's power but I wanted to make one more point about how much fans obsess over the strikeouts and the three true outcome approach. To use this example I will use someone has an opposite approach (Trea Turner). Turner was among the league leaders in 1Bs and average (130 & .328) respectively. Turner prioritizes putting balls in play even if he's not driving the ball. This also means that he's looking for pitches to hit and many times not going to end the AB in a walk.

Turner's heavy contact + ball in play + batting average approach resulted in Turner reaching 1B at the end of an AB from a 1B or a BB about 26% of the time while Sano reached first base at the end of an AB from a 1B or BB 21-22% of the time. This is a Sano that is not nearly the hitter that he was prior to 2020. Outside of his injury shortened bad year during 2015-2019, Sano reached first base through a single or a walk about 25% of the time.

 

 

 

 

[OptimisticTwinsFan]

I think that I am in the camp that this line-up is probably not as bad as it has been thus far, but is worse than expected when entering the year. Lineup mainstays have continued to regress (Sano/Kepler), prospects haven't developed (Kirilloff/Larnch/Jeffers), the new additions are just okay (Urshela, Sanchez) and other pillars have yet to take off (Correa/Polanco).

The plan needs to be to hope that Kirilloff an play like he did pre-injury last year and that the Twins should focus on the best defensive lineup to help their pitchers.

C - Jeffers

- 1B - Sano

- 2B - Polanco 

-3B - Urshela

- SS - Correa

- LF - Kirilloff

- CF - Buxton 

- RF - Kepler

-DH - Arrea