Could the Twins' Injured Roster Win the AL Central?

[Cody Christie]

Few MLB teams have been bitten by the injury bug like the Twins this season. Could Minnesota win the AL Central with the players currently on the injured list?

Image courtesy of Jim Cowsert-USA TODAY Sports

Minnesota's injury list has continued to fill up with players up and down the roster. No AL team has put more players on the injured list than the Twins, making it tough to evaluate the team's overall talent value. Looking back on the 2022 season, it will be easy to point to all the team's injuries as one of the reasons for its downfall. That being said, the AL Central is still up for grabs, so could the Twins' injured players win the division?

Catcher: Ryan Jeffers
Jeffers was supposed to take over the full-time catching duties this season after the team traded Mitch Garver. Before fracturing his thumb, he saw his OPS+ rise eight points compared to 2021. He also does a great job behind the plate as his framing ranks in the 65th percentile. 

1B: Miguel Sano
There's no question that Sano struggled during the 2022 season, but this is a player that averaged a 122 OPS+ over the last three seasons. He's been streaky throughout his career, which doesn't help how fans view him. His Twins tenure is likely done, but he was a solid contributor during that time. 

2B: Jorge Polanco
Polanco had avoided the injured list for much of his career until the 2022 season. He's played through injuries in the past and been relatively productive. This season the injuries were clearly bothering him at the plate, and his defensive numbers took a significant drop. Even with injuries, his WAR ranks in the team's top 5. 

3B: No Current Injury <Knock on Wood>
Minnesota doesn't have a current injured third baseman, but this position can be filled with an infielder from St. Paul. Andrew Bechtold seems like a possible fit since he can be a replacement-level player and has played third base during the 2022 season. 

SS: Royce Lewis
It's hard not to think about what Lewis might have meant to the 2022 Twins if he had stayed healthy. His first taste of the big leagues was spectacular as he went 12-for-40 (.300) with four doubles and two home runs. Lewis looked like a star, and the Twins could desperately use a right-handed power bat for the stretch run. 

OF: Byron Buxton, Alex Kirilloff, Trevor Larnach
Minnesota expected all three players to fit into the middle of the lineup this season. Buxton avoided the injured list for much of the season, but now he hasn't been available for the team's stretch run. Kirilloff put together some eye-popping numbers at Triple-A as he returned from injury. Unfortunately, something was still wrong with his wrist, and he underwent a unique surgery to alleviate some of the pain. Larnach had a 105 OPS+ in 2022, and the team has been forced to use replacement-level players to fill in for his production.  

Rotation: Tyler Mahle, Chris Paddack, Kenta Maeda, Bailey Ober, Randy Dobnak
The top three pitchers in the injured rotation have been acquired by the current front office in trades. Now it seems unlikely that any of the three will be available for Minnesota's stretch run. Ober and Dobnak have started their rehab assignments, but it's questionable how much they will be able to provide the club for the season's remainder. Josh Winder is also another name to consider as he is no longer rehabbing but he is getting back to strength in the Saints rotation. Adding him to this rotation allows Dobnak to be a long-man out of the bullpen. 

Bullpen: Jorge Alcala, Danny Coulombe, Jhon Romero, Cole Sands, Cody Stashak
Minnesota's bullpen has been a mess, so it's intriguing to consider what these missing players may have been able to provide the team. Alcala has the make-up to be an elite reliever and had the potential to take over a late-inning role in 2022. Stashak and Sands can fit into this team's imaginary set-up roles. Not much was expected from Coulombe and Romero, but relievers can surprise in small sample sizes. 

Cleveland and Chicago have flaws, and the Twins roster above might be good enough to compete in the AL Central. Do you think they'd have enough pieces to compete in the division? Is the Twins injured roster better than their current roster? Leave a COMMENT and start the discussion.

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[dogsday]

I think a balanced perspective is helpful. The Twins were projected to be a +/- .500 team this year. The team on the field now has maybe 50% of the players that projection was based on with Buxton, Polanco, Jeffers, Kirilloff, Ober, Alcala, Winder et al out.

A Twins ownership that spent like the Dodgers or Yankees might have another 4-5 impactful players on the roster (assuming no other teams also upped their spending.) But that is extremely unlikely to happen. So scouting, development and exploitation of market inefficiencies (Moneyball) remain key to a competitive Twins team.

One glaring market inefficiency that should be possible to address is player conditioning. Baseball puts incredible repetitive stresses on the body (pitching and hitting) as well as running stresses. A team that developed a training regimen that kept players healthy and on the field would benefit enormously. (And it would probably be cheaper to implement than the cost of a decent relief pitcher.) To their credit the Twins have been trying a regimen that involves regular days off. But, that doesn’t seem to be an effective answer to avoiding IL stints.

Cleveland has been cited as a model for developing good pitching. (Hence Falvey.)  Among the pitchers Cleveland gets credit for developing: Kluber was drafted by San Diego. Bauer and Carrasco had been identified as potential high end pitchers before they were drafted (by Arizona and Philadelphia respectively). Clevinger was drafted by the Angels. Bieber and McKenzie were both drafted by Cleveland.

So identifying pitchers who can be developed, and acquiring and developing them seems to be a key skill. (But, it’s not just about drafting.)

The current Twins regime seems fair but not great at identifying and developing pitching (Jax, Duran, Ryan). If any of Ober, Winder, Balazovic, Varland, Canterino, SWR, etc. turn into above average major league pitchers that assessment could change. But for the present? An awful lot of question marks.

Can the Twins win the division. Sure. Will they? Most likely not this year. So, next year? The potential is there, but….

[Blyleven2011]

Once they reach the major leagues they are all professionals  no matter what their prospect ratings are ...

It's a physical and mental game ...

They can't win because the team does not play baseball fundamentals  .....

[mikelink45]

This is an exercise that has only one dimension - The White Sox have lost considerable time with Luis Roberts and Tim Anderson - both vital clogs.  Gandal has had back problems. Crochet is a big loss in pitching as is Crick and Stiever.  Who has the biggest losses?  I don't know.  

This is certainly an impressive list and has hurt the Twins chances.  Could they win?  Fun to speculate. 

[SanoMustGo]

no chance, as is, bottom 3rd in baseball

[Seth Stohs]

I think the bigger point here is multi-parts. 

1.) The Twins have a dozen players on a 26 (now 28) man roster that would normally not be. 

2.) The White Sox have had guys missing too, and so have Cleveland, but not this quantity, and not always at the same time. 

3.) Maybe even more important, it would be really great to be getting guys like Jeffers, Kirilloff, Larnach and Lewis more development time in the big leagues, and playing in a pennant race. That's important short and long term. 

4.) There's just never enough pitching to overcome 5+ starters missing so much time. 

5.) This doesn't even account for the amount of time that guys like Buxton, Polanco, Kepler and others played when they maybe should have been on the IL. 

6.) As mentioned by someone above, this was a team predicted to finish around .500 with health. I think it's impressive they're still at .500 right now. 

[stringer bell]

There isn’t enough left to win enough games. 

[ashbury]

As this roster was being constructed starting last November, half the names on the list given were known injury risks (or in the case of Maeda were already shelved for at least the first part of the season).  The Front Office is getting no sympathy from me, not even patience, if they are moaning "oh, the injury bug!"  Some injuries to unexpected players are an inevitable part of baseball, but this roster was constructed to court injury.

[tony&rodney]

The injured roster isn't going to win any games because they cannot make it on to the field.

The team has performed admirably at times. I think I predicted 79-85 wins just before the season began. When a team fails to plan thoroughly in the offseason there are consequences.

My main concern in the last 3-4 years with the Twins (including when they win) is the number of mental errors. The number of mistakes due to a lack of fundamentals is actually pretty glaring: throwing to the wrong base; not backing up every play; missing the cutoff or failing to have a cutoff; not reading wild pitches to advance; failing to advance a runner; getting doubled off on clear line drive outs; failing to score from second base with two outs on a single to the outfield; and more. Physical errors will happen as will the occasional mental mishap, but the shear number of fundamental problems are something that can and should be reduced through an emphasis on playing basic baseball.

[FlyingFinn]

Interesting note - if everyone had stayed healthy, Gordon would have been cut (replaced by Lewis) before he got a chance to play almost every day and show what he can do. Also, Miranda - there probably wouldn't have been room for him, he would stayed with the Saints and he may have been dealt at the trade deadline for pitching, again before we knew he could or couldn't handle MLB pitching. Right now, those are 2 of our best 4 hitters.

[bean5302]

I think this is an interesting exercise, but it ignores all the cause and effect.
If Maeda wasn't injured, Paddack wouldn't have been acquired.
If Paddack wasn't injured, Mahle wouldn't have been acquired, etc.

If Sano and Kirilloff weren't injured, where would Arraez be playing?
Lewis wasn't about to supplant Correa so where would he be playing? I guess he'd be taking Nick Gordon's role, but then where would Nick Gordon be since Gordon can't be optioned?

 

[Fighting4par]

Even though the rogers trade didn't work out great for us. If Paddack comes back next year and the year after and puts up an under 5 E.R.A. Next year our pitching SHOULD be stacked. 

[rickyriolo]

Twins are done Time for Viking football

[tony&rodney]

4 hours ago, ashbury said:

but this roster was constructed to court injury.

Man I so agree with the haphazard roster construction. It was put together with a plan that no player would miss time during the year.

The sweep at Target Field was such an expression of the separation of the two team's philosophies. The Guardians are the youngest team in baseball, had more than half their roster debut this year at the MLB level, and have a top farm system with many skilled athletic players near ready to make the next step if they can only get an opportunity. Oh, and the way the contract with Jose Ramirez was constructed, Cleveland pays him less each of the next four years than he makes this year. Cleveland is flush with players and cash.

Hentges could be the next dynamite starting pitcher for Cleveland.

Will the Twins sweep the Guardians in Cleveland next weekend? Will they sweep the Royals at home before that?

[jkcarew]

In a recent critical game against the White Sox, Chicago played a lineup without Anderson, Robert, Jimenez, and Moncada. It’s not just quantity, it’s quality.

If everyone had been healthy all year, Chicago, Minnesota, Cleveland, 1,2,3. Although, this probably sells short the advantage Cleveland has in the dugout…which is very significant.

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

Lewis is maybe the one truly unlucky unexpected injury that stands out to me.

I might actually take the trio of Gray, Bundy, Ryan over Mahle, Maeda, and Paddack, but that’s just me. The hurt group seems slightly better but either group seems above average, at best. Berrios would improve either set, or heaven forbid, a big free agent signing.

As other posters have mentioned, let’s see the comparison with Chicago and other teams, and expected production lost, not just a count of players.  @Cody Christie would that be something you would be up for doing? An in-depth comparison with other post-season hopefuls?

[TwinsDr2021]

6 hours ago, Seth Stohs said:

There's just never enough pitching to overcome 5+ starters missing so much time. 

The Twins have played 139 games and have gotten gotten 95 starts from Ryan, Gray, Bundy and Archer. If you add the 5 from Paddack and 7 from Ober before they got injured that is 107, meaning they had to cover 32 games,  Smelzter covered 12 of them and Mahle 3, So we are really talking about 17 games and that is too much to over come?

To me that say more about this front office than anything else or the lack of people that cover the Twins actually looking at the data. But that is just me getting sick of excuses.

[Beast]

I’m seeing these lists put together a lot lately, and it’s mostly just dramatic effect.

The big problem is the reliance on a lot of these guys.  This isn’t an aw-shucks, who could’ve seen that coming, scenario.

Byron Buxton, Jorge Polanco, Miguel Sano, Alex Kiriloff, Kenta Maeda, Bailey Ober, and Randy Dobnak have all had recent and/or significant injury history.  Some with little to no expectation of contributing this year.  They even came into the year setting a goal of 100 games for Buxton.  You can’t set that expectation, then turnaround and lament one IL stint.

Paddack and Mahle were hurt when they traded for them.  Hell, casual fans here were expressing concern at the time of acquisition of both.  There should be no surprises there at all. I still like both moves and they can still payoff - but acting like it’s hard luck that they’re currently hurt is disingenuous.

Guys like Larnach and Lewis were basically unknown commodities, with Lewis also coming off a major injury.

Jeffers has been OK at best, not something that should be overly difficult to replace.  We didn’t choke the season away due to missing Ryan Jeffers playing mediocre defense and hitting at the Mendoza line.

A handful of those guys weren’t going to contribute even if healthy, (Bechtold, Romero, etc.) or can be easily replaced (Stashak).

The problem is that they placed some sort of reliance on these guys.  There is some luck involved on one or two of these guys.  But, when we’re seeing it to this extent, it leans much more toward awful judgement.  It’s their job to make the right call on personnel.  Get the damn job done.  No more excuses.

[dxpavelka]

10 hours ago, ashbury said:

As this roster was being constructed starting last November, half the names on the list given were known injury risks (or in the case of Maeda were already shelved for at least the first part of the season).  The Front Office is getting no sympathy from me, not even patience, if they are moaning "oh, the injury bug!"  Some injuries to unexpected players are an inevitable part of baseball, but this roster was constructed to court injury.

yeah, maybe not

 

[chinmusic]

18 hours ago, Seth Stohs said:

As mentioned by someone above, this was a team predicted to finish around .500 with health. I think it's impressive they're still at .500 right now. 

Predicted by whom?

[Minderbinder]

No.

Quote

 

 

[beckmt]

13 hours ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

The Twins have played 139 games and have gotten gotten 95 starts from Ryan, Gray, Bundy and Archer. If you add the 5 from Paddack and 7 from Ober before they got injured that is 107, meaning they had to cover 32 games,  Smelzter covered 12 of them and Mahle 3, So we are really talking about 17 games and that is too much to over come?

To me that say more about this front office than anything else or the lack of people that cover the Twins actually looking at the data. But that is just me getting sick of excuses.

You forget about Winder and Varland, who covered some of those games and look like they belong.  That going forward may be a good thing.

[TwinsDr2021]

15 minutes ago, beckmt said:

You forget about Winder and Varland, who covered some of those games and look like they belong.  That going forward may be a good thing.

Agreed going forward this could be a good thing, hopefully WInder can stay healthy. I didn't list them because they were part of the pitchers that covered the 17 games and weren't part of the original six/seven starters

It will be interesting where they fit in next year, but have all winter to discuss that

[farmerguychris]

That is a pretty impressive injury list when you lay it out by position like that - I can't imagine how any team could compete with that type of time lost due to injury.

So the big question is WHY?  Are we selecting injury prone players?

Is our training staff not very good at their jobs?  This isn't anything new for us, should we look closer at this department?

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

I will ask again in another thread later, so no need to answer right away, but in my opinion a better analysis would start with something like how much WAR was the team projecting for a player, and how much time (and therefore how much WAR) was then lost to injury.  

in other words, Sonny Gray had a trip to the IL if I recall. How much contribution were the Twins expecting from Gray this year, and how much did they lose on account of that IL stint? 

Going into the season, how much contribution were the Twins expecting from Maeda? From Dobnak? From Paddack? From Mahle? 

I could argue that, combining all four of those pitchers, they were expecting zero contribution, nothing, from any of them.

I could argue that they were expecting some positive contribution from Ober and Alcala. Joe Ryan had a stint on the Covid IL— that would count for a little. We’re they expecting anything from Coloume? How does this compare to what the White Sox were expecting from Lance Lynn or Garret Crochet, who were hurt?

That said, I agree injuries were a part of why Twins pitching suffered and I’ll tentatively buy the argument that the Twins lost more in pitching than the Sox. For offense, m I’d say the White Sox lost more, much more, production from position players than the Twins. But I’ll keep my mind open if a good analysis shows otherwise.

Just something to think about and an idea for a deeper analysis than just listing a count of players. 

@Cody Christie @Seth Stohs @John Bonnes 
 

[Craig Arko]

Possible, but highly unlikely, would be my estimation.