It Takes a Team to Blow a Game

[Matt Braun]

On June 30th, the year of our lord 2022, the Minnesota Twins’ bullpen blew a two-run lead with two innings left in the ballgame. It felt inevitable; the team had already melted down in four similar games against this same Cleveland team, each loss degrading from tragedy to outright comedy. The bullpen is the scapegoat, and while they deserve their share of criticism, these excruciating losses are a group effort.

 

Frequently in baseball, we break up starters and relievers into separate, distinct groups; both types of pitchers exist in their sphere outside of the influence of the other. But such a view is myopic and inaccurate. Baseball is a team sport, after all, and the actions of one player reverberate among every player in this game and into future matches. Take it from a former soccer goalkeeper; sure, it’s the keeper's fault when they allow a goal, but why did an opposing player have the opportunity to score in the first place? What happened amongst the defense? Is it fair to blame a streaking striker on the keeper? Previous actions influenced the future.

To lay this out in baseball terms, we must consider the workload the game flow demands of each party; a starter unable to collect a few extra, precious innings places more strain on the bullpen. A team can adjust for a series or even a month, but the wear-down will hit at some point; the Pied Piper always earns his due. As of Thursday, Twins starters have thrown the 11th fewest innings in MLB, while their bullpen has tossed the 4th most innings; the team is 4th overall in total innings.

By itself, this isn’t necessarily a sign of an unhealthy pitching ecosystem; the Rays bullpen has thrown the most innings of any team in MLB, and they are probably okay with that given that their crew owns a 3.18 ERA. 

But the Rays are a unique beast; the Twins are a different animal entirely. The Rays want their relievers to pitch those innings; they have melted down titles like “starter” and “reliever” until a pitcher is merely an “out-getter” precisely until they aren’t, whether that ends with three or 12 outs. Kevin Cash mixes and matches his assorted pitchers until the team nets their allotted nine innings, and everyone goes home. The Twins perhaps had some mildly similar plan on hand when the season began, but they lacked the preparation.

Chris Archer pitched four innings on Thursday, a standard fare for him these days. Knowing that Archer would not be suitable for more than five innings, the Twins decided to back him up conventionally; no pitcher after him netted more than five outs. Rocco Baldelli—a manager already working with an exhausted bullpen—called on Jovani Moran, Tyler Duffey, and Tyler Thornburg to end the game. He had no choice; he had already used five relievers the day prior. Moran and Duffey did their job, but games are not seven innings long, and suddenly a player signed earlier this month pitched the final two frames. It went as well as you expected. This situation would not have happened if the starter had pitched six innings, if they had a true multi-inning pitcher available, or if the bullpen wasn’t horribly gassed.

You can blame Baldelli—he absolutely threw the game by keeping Thornburg out an extra inning—but his options were slim. You can blame Thornburg—he was the man on the mound in the situation—but he’s not supposed to be an 8th-inning reliever. The problem is that the Twins bullpen is constantly tired due to a shortage of effective arms mixed with a starting staff that has failed to pitch deep into ballgames.

This shortcoming falls squarely on the front office, but luck is also at play. Derek Falvey and Thad Levine knowingly ran headfirst into the season with a pitching staff low on starters that can pitch deep into the game combined with a bullpen missing their ace reliever, Taylor Rogers. Instead—and again, they knew that pitchers like Archer, Dylan Bundy, and Bailey Ober are dead-to-right five-and-fly guys—traditional single-inning relievers who can occasionally stretch an extra out or two populated the bullpen. That plan worked fine when everyone was healthy, but injuries combined with Archer and Bundy failing to bounce back have strained the relief core to exhaustion.

Of course, when the baseball gods sense weakness, they’ll painfully expose it. A team ill-prepared for an overwhelming amount of innings has been fed them like slop in the trough; their 690 2/3 innings looks monstrous compared to Cleveland’s MLB fewest 641. 

Perhaps, to play a little Devil’s Advocate, this is an extreme consequence of a plan gone awry; the team primed Winder for the swingman role, but his injury left a void no pitcher could fill. Devin Smeltzer could have done it, but the team needed him in the starting rotations; Cole Sands could have done it, but he lacked major league polish. Jorge Alcala, Joe Smith, Trevor Megill, Danny Coulombe, and Cody Stashak are all trustworthy arms to varying degrees; none of those relievers are currently healthy. The answer could just be to wait. 

The situation isn’t impossible to climb out of; the Twins will get Ober and Kenta Maeda back at some point, they’ll run into a few extra off-days soon, and the team will pick up extra arms before the trade deadline. Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax are a good 1-2 punch already; adding two more competent relievers knocks everyone down the totem pole until pitchers like Cotton and Thornburg are early-game/mop-up arms like they should be. An extra stud starter—Tyler Mahle, Frankie Montas, and the such—can move a rotation member like Bundy or Archer into the missing long relief role, making them the aid in an emergency, not the cause. Solutions to the problem do exist; we will just have to see which ones the team chooses.

 

 

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[Old Twins Cap]

Twins don't win a lot of games when they score 3 runs or fewer.  I think the magic number is 5, where they actually win more games than they lose.

So, yeah, can't get one big hit, score three runs and hope it turns into a win.

Users of this site run screaming from the room when the bullpen lets one get away, like its the worst thing ever.

Reality is:  if you can't stand to have your heart broken during a 162-game season, find some other team or sport to spend your days emoting over.  Baseball ain't for wimps.

[Doctor Gast]

The problem isn't that the rotation isn't pitching enough innings, the problem is everything is out of balance because there's never really any long relief to take up the extra innings. To help to compensate the over use of short relief they went to extend our rotation beyond their profile, resulting in injuries and ineffective arms. They should have had Winder, Smeltzer, Jax and Cotton scheduled to pitch long relief from the very beginning. By having the long relief put the ball in the closer's hand or even finish off a game that'd take a lot of pressure off the short relief and rotation help eliminate most of our injuries and ineffectiveness.

To me sending Winder down to AAA was rediculous because we desperately need long relief. It's like long relief is not even an after thought. Until management wakes up we will constantly have the same problems year after year.

 

[ToriiRules!!]

Um no it’s the pitcher giving up the runs and Baldelli not knowing how to manage a pitching staff…

[gbg]

6 hours ago, Doctor Gast said:

 

To me sending Winder down to AAA was rediculous because we desperately need long relief. It's like long relief is not even an after thought. Until management wakes up we will constantly have the same problems year after year.

 

Winder's option to AAA is a timing thing. He pitched 6 innings in his return from the DL on Tuesday, so Saturday would have been the first time he could have pitched again. As we saw, the bullpen is already overextended, so why keep a guy who can't pitch?

I believe that since he was named as the 27th man for the double header, that he's allowed to be brought back up within ten days. If I'm right on that, I'm guessing he already has a plane ticket to Chicago for the series there.

Edited July 2, 2022 by gbg

[Squirrel]

9 minutes ago, ToriiRules!! said:

Um no it’s the pitcher giving up the runs and Baldelli not knowing how to manage a pitching staff…

Did you even read this article or just respond to the title?

[rv78]

Twins need to make the change immediately moving Archer to the bullpen in a long relief role. He's had too many short starts to warrant him as a consistant starter for them going forward. Gray, Ryan, Bundy, Smeltzer, Winder need to be the starting 5 until Ober comes back and proves he's healthy. Say bye bye to Thornburg or Pagan or Cotton, take your pick, none of the 3 will be missed and give their innings to Archer. 

[Trov]

20 minutes ago, rv78 said:

Twins need to make the change immediately moving Archer to the bullpen in a long relief role. He's had too many short starts to warrant him as a consistant starter for them going forward. Gray, Ryan, Bundy, Smeltzer, Winder need to be the starting 5 until Ober comes back and proves he's healthy. Say bye bye to Thornburg or Pagan or Cotton, take your pick, none of the 3 will be missed and give their innings to Archer. 

You contradict yourself by saying Archer should be in a long relief roll, but then say he should replace the innings of guys that are not long relief roll right now.  Do you want Archer to just be in long relief roll, or do you want him in single inning roll like Cotton and Pagan generally get? Sometimes Cotton goes 2 but Pagan is almost always 1 inning. 

[VivaBomboRivera!]

Gleeman called this situation very accurately in last week's podcast,

Some thoughts:

• The manager on the field is burdened with having to work with the arms the GM provides
• The staff has been absolutely snakebit when it comes to injury and illness this year
• At 356 runs in 77 games (4.6/g), the staff could do with a little more run support to tire opposing bats by keeping them running around the field longer

These three things said, going back to 2019 Baldelli (and Johnson, of course) has occasionally shown weakness in his ability to measure out the arms he has carefully enough to get all 27 needed outs.

Plenty of room for improvement all around. Right now the only thing the Twins are contending for is an early exit from the wild card round.and

[Dan Engebretson]

To build on Old Twins Cap a bit, I think we look too much at the shortcomings of the Twins pitching staff and not enough at the shortcomings of the Twins offense and mistake-prone play.  To grab a recent example -- June 29th's 10th inning loss.  At the end of 9 innings the Twins were 1-8 w/RISP and had left six on base.  The Twins ranks near the bottom of MLB of OPS w/RISP *(particularly with 2-outs); you cannot expect to consistently win games when you routinely leave baserunners on the bags.  Additionally, the Twins seem to make lots mistakes -- not necessarily errors -- think wild pitches, passed balls, dropped fly balls in foul territory, poor baserunning, etc.  Specific examples  from game #2 of the doubleheader include Jeffers sloppy early-home-run-that-wan't trot that resulted in an out at second, which was immediately followed by the Celestino/Miranda confusion of suicide vs. safety squeeze that eliminated a runner a third.  Granted, the Twins won 6-0 so the lost runs are moot, but sloppy play is sloppy play.  Also in that game, the Twins were 1-9 w/RISP (so you can win with poor performances w/RISP).

In terms of problems, I think the pitching problems are more solvable than the clutch hitting and mistake-prone play.  You can buy your way out of the pitching problems (I don't know the Twins appetite for spending more or trading assets), but poor clutch hitting and mistake-prone play seems like a development problem that likely starts early in the minors and will take years to fix.

To summarize, I agree that Twins have pitching problems, but I think the bigger, and more difficult to solve problems are poor clutch hitting and generally sloppy play.  I think these problems have plagued the Twins for years and are at the heart of the 0-`18 playoff streak.  Until these problems are resolved, I don't think the Twins can be an elite team.

[Rosterman]

If a pitcher can't throw strikes when they have a 2+ run lead, you wonder what they are doing on the staff. You put the ball in play until your fielders screw up.

And never give up. Cleveland is the eprfect example where they kept trying to win, and did in the end. You put pressure on the pitchers. You sacrifice to move the runner. You don't follow a preset pecking order for pitcher appearances. And don't bench two of your better bats in any game.

[rv78]

16 hours ago, Trov said:

You contradict yourself by saying Archer should be in a long relief roll, but then say he should replace the innings of guys that are not long relief roll right now.  Do you want Archer to just be in long relief roll, or do you want him in single inning roll like Cotton and Pagan generally get? Sometimes Cotton goes 2 but Pagan is almost always 1 inning. 

If Pagan, Cotton and Thornburg pitch an inning each in the same game that's 3 innings total. Archer usually can handle 3 innings by himself.