Sonny Gray and the Twins' Reverse Splits Problem (PREVIEW)

[Matthew Trueblood]

Minnesota Twins starter Sonny Gray had a superb season in 2022. He struck out 26.6 percent of opposing hitters, walked just 5 percent of them, allowed very little power, and ended up with a 2.62 FIP, seventh-best of 94 qualifying hurlers. That’s the good news. 

The bad news is, Minnesota Twins starter Sonny Gray had a mediocre season in 2022. He struck out just 21.9 percent of opposing hitters, walked 9.2 percent of them, gave up average power, and sported a 4.12 FIP, just 98th-best of 165 qualifying hurlers.

The first set of numbers is how the right-handed hurler Gray performed against lefties in 2022. The second set is how he did against righties.

Image courtesy of © Jordan Johnson-USA TODAY Sports

The Twins’ ace not only had reverse splits, but was a true ace against lefties, and more of a fourth starter against righties. Since he saw more righties than ever before, the latter was a real problem. 

This isn’t primarily a Sonny Gray problem, though. The Twins have to be better at making the platoon advantage an actual advantage. They had reverse splits as a team last year, for both left- and right-handed pitchers. The same was true in 2020, and in 2019 for righties. Dylan Bundy, Chris Archer, Joe Ryan, Josh Winder, and Emilio Pagan all ran reverse splits last season, just like Gray. 

That’s not always a bad thing, but it’s not as though these teams have been loaded with stellar changeup artists. On the contrary, the current Twins front office looks for fastballs with carry and breaking balls with more vertical movement than lateral, on the theory that vertical disparities between the fastball and breakers will generate whiffs against batters from either side.

That’s not universally true, though, and the team mismanaged its idiosyncratic cases for the second straight season in 2022. The result was that they were 12 percent better than average against opposite-handed batters, as a team, but 11 percent worse than an average club against same-handed ones. Factor in the fact that they had the (in this case, merely hypothetical) platoon advantage more often than not, and the team gave back all the gains they got by m running reverse splits, and then some. 

Gray changed the way he approached righties and the usage patterns of his pitches upon joining the Twins, and his changes amount to a streamlining that only worked half the time. When you ask some pitchers to streamline their repertoire, you get monsters capable of mowing down opponents. When you ask others to do it, though, or when you try to conform their style to your organizational one, you hamstring guys. The Twins need to tweak the way they instruct their pitchers and pursue certain pitch shapes, so as to help their pitchers better conquer the difficult double task that is being a successful starting pitcher in the majors.

We’ve reached the point where it’s time for a deeper dive into Sonny Gray's splits and pitch selection to see the issue he and the Twins face, but but that deeper dive is reserved for Twins Daily Caretakers’ eyes only. 

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[Doctor Gast]

It seems like team problem, so all the coaching staff has to do is not to change what they do against lefties but definitely change their evaluations of how to pitch righties. Under these premises we don't need to look for a LHP.