Santiago Starting To Turn Heads

Well, Nolasco had a nice 11 start run for the Angels last year too.  I wouldn't be so quick to pat the Twins on the back after 3 good starts from Santiago.

FWIW, 2 of those 3 starts have come against the White Sox and Royals, who rank 11th and 15th respectively out of 15 AL teams in runs per game, 13th and 15th in batting average, 12th and 14th in walk rate, etc.

Nolasco leads the league in HRs allowed (7)

He's had a rough start, but interestingly Nolasco has managed to limit the damage from those dingers about as well as could possibly be expected. 7 HR, but 5 of them have been solo shots and the other 2 have been 2-run shots.  I was expecting to see a pretty horrendous overall line for him, but he's managed to be run of the mill Nolasco bad.

Meyer has a 4.80 ERA and 1.60 WHIP in Triple A

Obviously Meyer is more likely to fail than succeed, etc. But his current line might be influenced a bit by the Pacific Coast League too.  His K and BB rates are good through 3 starts, but he's got a .429 BABIP.  And the two parks he's pitched in so far were recently ranked just behind Colorado Springs as the most hitter-friendly in that league:

https://www.milb.com/international/news/toolshed-final-triple-a-park-factors-review/c-155266172/t-209979210

Of course, he did the high-BABIP thing back in early 2015 with Rochester too.  He's still a project.  It will be interesting to see how the next few months go for him, and to see how the Angels handle him.

Miss Nolasco do you? I was thinking about the money it freed up. Who said anything about 3 good starts? He's had a nice career and I figure will get 3 years and 25-30M in free agency.

With Santiago's arbitration salary, the trade was cash neutral.  The Twins paid all of Nolasco's remaining salary last year, and are paying $4 mil of Nolasco's salary this year.

EDIT: Actually the Twins did appear to save $1 mil -- the buyout on Nolasco's 2018 option.  At the time of the deal, arbitration estimates for Santiago were $8-9 million and I guess his poor finish helped ensure he came in at the lower number. Had he come in at $9 mil it would have offset Nolasco's buyout too.  In any case, it was effectively cash neutral.

It's not like we spent the Nolasco money this offseason either, so let's not go down that road....

Actually we did spend it! On one year of Hector Santiago.

Some of Santiago's peripherals are concerning but he's another situation - an inverse Nolasco - where FIP is failing to account for something in the makeup of the player.

 

Santiago's career FIP is one full run higher than his ERA in 733 innings across three different teams.

 

At some point, we need to conclude that FIP just plain wrong about some players.

I think Santiago could continue to out-perform his FIP.

But right now in 2017, he's out-performing it by almost two runs.  And it's also a career-low FIP by almost a run too.  (And in fairness to Thrylos, he was citing xFIP, and Santiago's 2017 HR rate is only 38% of his career rate, and only 30% of his 2016 rate.)

This isn't a FIP issue, it's a small sample / peripherals issue.

From what I can see, the new strike zone and new catcher both help Santiago. He works up in the zone (so did Phil Hughes during his fine 2014) and has a lot of balls hit in the air. The good defensive outfield the Twins can put out there helps greatly, so does the weather if the fly balls aren't carrying that much.

It is an oversimplification to say pitches at the top of the zone are mistakes, particularly fastballs. Last night, Bert criticized every well-hit ball by the Tribe with "he got that one up", more accurately the pitches were up in the zone and over the heart of the plate. Movement can allow a high strike over the middle to be a good pitch, too.