Sabir Aden

Because of other Labor Day shenanigans, I wasn't able to watch any of today's Twins-Tigers game, but listened to the opening innings. As if oft my wont, I had the opposition's broadcast chosen so I got to hear the Tigers' radio guys demonstrate their love for the Minnesota Twins. One of the most valuable things about listening to opposing teams' broadcasts this season is to hear the amount of respect this Twins team has around the league. But one thing struck me as perhaps going a bit too far, and that was a comment that the Twins were like the Astros in terms of being able to provide an analytical improvement to a pitcher. They were specifically talking about Jake Odorizzi and commenting on how the Twins had made him a better pitcher by having him throw his fastball more often and higher in the zone. This was compared to what the Astros have done with pitcher such as our old friend Ryan Pressly.
 
As I said, this caught my ears unawares because I often think of this as one of the Twins' areas of need, as they (and it was this front office group) who let Pressly go and have watched him thrive in Houston. But I wanted to give it a look to see if there is anything to the idea that Odorizzi has changed his approach since coming from the Rays.
 
First some basic statistic conversation about Odorizzi's value. In his 4+ years with the Rays (2013-2017 with 2013 being very limited), Odorizzi earned an ERA+ of 103, a FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) of 4.22 and earned 8.2 bWAR. In his two years thus far with the Twins, that compares to an ERA+ of 108, a FIP of 3.96 and a bWAR of 4.5. The majority of this value has come in 2019 as his ERA+ is 128. This compares to his Rays high of 117 in 2015. So 2019 has been the best year of his career, but 2018 was not: in fact, his first year with the Twins saw an ERA+ of 95. So the first thing to say is that if the Twins have done something special with him, it was not until this year.
 
Then I began to dig into pitch distribution, as the Tigers' radio team suggested. This year, according to Statcast, Odorizzi has thrown 56.4% 4-seam fastballs, 19.1% cutters, 17.1% splitters, and 7.4% curveballs. This IS the highest percentage of 4-seamers since his first two years in the league, but the trend has been consistently upward since a low of 31.1% in 2016, before he became a Twin. The splitter and curveball have not changed significantly. The big change, according to the way Statcast charts these pitches, is in this: in 2019, Odorizzi has not thrown a slider, a pitch he threw 21% of the time in 2018 which was the highest percentage of his career. He has swapped that pitch for a huge increase in his use of a cutter, at 19.1% in 2019 from a low of 2.4% in 2018 and surpassing the previous career high of 12.4% in his previous career year of 2015.
 
So, based on comparing pitch usage in 2019 to 2018 (a down year) and 2015 (his previous career year) it would seem that the consistent pattern for good Odorizzi is: throw more cutters, scrap the slider, and keep the 4-seamer going. Perhaps, given some strangeness in the data and the fungibleness of these definitions, the same pitch that used to register as a slider is now reading as a cutter. But either way, the change in that pitch seems to be the change that connects Odorizzi's quality 2019 to 2015.

“Baseball is a relative sport.”

By nature we often remember the really good or really bad things, and not the okay or decent things that someone does. I bet you can vividly remember the last time you won an award, but perhaps not the last time you went to the grocery store, or who your 10th grade history teacher was.
 
It’s a core principle to how memories are formed. Those that stand out are often fueled by the emotional context the situation derives from.
 
Say me for instance, I remember when Adrian Peterson nearly clipped the 2,100 yards or when Jason Zucker beat the Blackhawks in 2013, and conversely when Blair Walsh's epic failure from 27. These were momentous occasions to me personally, and culminated milestones of jubilee and heartbreak with lots and lots of backstory.
 
Why is that such an important thing to consider when discussing the plight to Jose Berrios? It’s these disaster moments to fans in a season, where we can get way over our heads and make truly outrageous statements, and during the offseason in retrospect be like ---”Did I actually say that?”
 
He began the season on a pristine pinnacle. Logistically, Jose was exerting his mechanical best in how he was driving through his hips along with his delivery, and keeping his hands back in sync with driving those hips, which was a bad tendency he would commit in his youth.
 
 
 
 
 



You can in the video how the different the glove placement is imperative to gaining that 2 to 3 ticks in velocity to the plate. In hardcore pitching circles they call this the kinetic chain, where the components of one’s mechanics are at an equilibrium, where the joints are in a symphonic harmony, making it all a simplistic, clean, and efficiently repeatable delivery.
 
And Berrios looked really good. He proved with the results to bear, and added a new wrinkle into that much anticipated pitch mix, the changeup. In that 2019 opening unveiling we saw the changeup being fruitfully showcased 12.5% of the time, more than his total the previous season (9.1%) and the cumulative average during his very short career (10.7%).
 
He wasn’t deliberately delaying his arm speed, and everything in that start was sublime. Pristine. You could say Berrios was perhaps an “ACE” in that start had things not turned sideways and pearshaped just a handful of months later.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------TD--------------------------------------------------------------
 
Now fast-forward to today. Fresh or perhaps rotten from that second consecutive all-star appearance, Jose Berrios is showcasing his most agonizing and problematic struggle points of his career. He’s been hittable, hit very hard with declining velocity, and to boot; seemingly single-handedly taking baseball’s 3rd best offense (in wOBA and wRC+; .348 and 115 respectively) out of critically important games.
 
What’s even more frightening? That the strength of the opposition over the past 4 games has sported a 91 wRC+, with 100 being league average. He’s struggling mightily against bad opponents, compounded with the fact that they shouldn’t be hitting him this hard, period.
 
So far, we as all seperate pitching expert entities haven’t found the culprit to what hindering subset of pitching statistics is responsible for pruning our Johan of today, devoid of the attributes that made us reminisce of Johan, the great killer of men, sheep, and those brave enough to step into the battered boxes of right and left.
 
But jokes aside, what’s really been the inhibitor to Jose’s velocity and coincidentally his release point since his dynamic beginning?
 
Let’s zoom into one of his particular starts, this one against the Indians on June 6th as the start to our inquiry.
 
In that one start, Berrios didn’t feature the curveball that we have become expected of. He would throw a whopping 25.4% changeup, nearly double his career-total and triple his season percentage to that point. But something interesting of note lied in that changeup subgrouping.
 
In that start he would throw 27 changeups of his entire 107 pitches in those 6 strong innings. Only one ball was hit harder than 85mph, and here’s a mapping of those pitch velocities with their extensions metrics.
 
 
 
 
 



Notice anything weird? For a guy throwing from an average release point of 6.5ft away from the pitching rubber, the extensions point were remarkably scattered and the changeup release points also dropped, along with the average pitch velocity.
 
Increasing extension would typically incite would velocity, (Josh Hader’s extension would come in mind) and it’s a very peculiar trend into Jose’s portfolio.
 
If we critically analyze even more into Jose’s pitching approach, we wouldn't have anything particularly striking about his movements.
 
Berrios has a unique windup, something of another other beast where he utilizes his windup as a vehicle to increase the movement and velocity of his pitches. Whereas others use their windup as a balancing point or to find their zen, Berrios uses his windup like a stress ball where he curled himself into a ball, and breaks out of the ball in smooth rhythm to swing his front side and lurch the back end, and launch the pitch.
 
Looking at the progress he’s made since his debut, where his arms and legs need a lot of refinements, he’s made noticeable and encouraging strides. When he was young he would treat his arms and legs as separate mechanism, and he now manages to keep his core in rhythm and not out of motion with his elbows, knees, and front stridding foot.
 
So nothing abundantly different with the windup, and not that much difference in the general technique with his hand placement, etc.
 
Berrios, technically speaking hasn't changed anything with the conducting of his delivery, until Glen Perkins spoke about it during Jose’s latest start. I’m paraphrasing what Roy Smalley said during the game, but here’s what he said:
 
“This is what Glen Perkins was talking about in the pregame shows, where (Jose) coils up and then has to uncoil and gets way spun around and his arm either lags or he’s gotta really rush to catch up, and that’s what happens when you spike that curveball….. And just you’ve opened up way to quickly and your arm just whips around.”
 
“They are trying to get (Jose) to alter his mechanics a little bit, but he’s very rotational and he gets really turned around and can’t get his arm back through, so when his hips come way around behind him he coils up, and his arm has to speed up to catch up. That’s why you see so many fastballs up and into lefthanders, and spiked breaking balls.”
 
 
 
 
 



You can see that his windup is almost, where he isn’t riding with the energy generated by his windup as much and through that back heel, that the great Parker Hagemen discussed during the offseason as a foundation through building and sustaining velocity. We can see the locked back leg not pulling through, anchored and dragging his weight in a counterproductive direction. It’s slinging and stopping, preventing him from riding through that back leg and pulling in his follow through. It’s a sign of stress and unease to rip through, as young pitching are taught today to rip through with elastic bands at data driven developmental programs. You can see the lazy back leg grappling with the front side and the glove holstered to his side, almost as if he’s more location conscious then ripping the back leg through for the additional ticks of velocity he needs to be at his best.
 
This looks more like a fatigue and midseason swoon related dilemma than a mechanics dead-gone disaster, but the velocity problems and mechanical technique are very much redeemable.
 
 
 
 
 
 

-----------------------------------------------------------TD--------------------------------------------------------------

Additionally I wanted to dive into more of what’s causing the lower arm slot, and perhaps an aggravator of the lower velocity readings and the dropping of the arm slots.
 
 
 
 
 



This graphic below shows the release points of all of Jose’s pitches horizontally since the beginning of the season. I postulated the changeup he’s been throwing has played role in why the release point has waned lately, so I consulted with two acute baseball minds to at least minimally come to a conclusion.
 
 
 
 
 
 


Through some research and conspiracy thinking, changeups might play a part in cannibalizing fastball velocity. Now take with a grain of salt, but changeup reduces fastball velocity for youth pitchers, and Paul Nyman theorized that an intentionally manipulated change for sink and drop would lead to fastball velocity dropping.
 
Coupled with the fact that Jose played with the changeup in the Cleveland start I spoke of, and that his deviation of his velocities are so wide, maybe the changeup is playing with his repetiore and his mehanics. It’s certainly cause for concern given that the more he’s thrown his changeup the more his velocity as dropped.
 
So I talked with Bill Hetzel, Manager of Mechanical Analysis at Driveline and Analysis, and former pitching coach and Michael O’Neal, former pro-ball pitcher and Driveline pitching trainer, and now SIUE baseball assistant coach about the changeup possibly curtailing Jose’s potential.
 
ME: Hey Guys. I was recently diving into a pitcher (Jose Berrios), and just wanted to ask that if….. say a righthander where to increasingly lower their arm slot, which just so happened to coincide with an increase in spin rate and decrease in velocity, would you say an increase to using a changeup could be a detriment of this?
 
I look at some of the side effects of short-arming a changeup (like slinging from the side) and couldn’t find anything, but I did however find that Jose’s changeup spin rate has increased. Do you think that a lowering of the arm slot on a changeup and an increase in spin could lead to decreased velocity? Or perhaps the lowering of arm slot could increase spin in general?
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); It depends on the guy, but lowering the arm slot would help to create more sidespin on a changeup, which also would increase horizontal movement on the pitch. Jose’s arm slot might also be more natural for him which could be an increase in spin rate.
 
Bill (Driveline Pitching Analysis Expert); Unfortunately you can’t (increase spin on arm slot) when it comes to increasing spin rate. Raw spin rate that is, there is not anything definitive that has been found to increase it outside of the use of foreign substance.
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); Me personally, I have the same tendency when I try to “get on top” of my fastball. I laterally trunk-tilt more causing a higher arm slot. This also negatively impacts my spin rate. When I stay taller and don’t tilt so much (unlike what Jose has been doing), my spin rate increases and also causes my arm slot/release point to be lower on the Z axis.
 
Bill (Driveline Pitching Analysis Expert); Now increasing true spin is different. Pitchers increase true spin all the time by improving spin efficiency. In terms of a change up you ideally and in most cases want to kill or decrease spin. Most changeups, whether it is a circle change or a split type change are trying to kill total spin, kill lift on the pitch to create separation from the heater and kill velocity. I would have to look at Berrios’ pitch metrics to really tell you anything in regards to arm slot changes or spin total changes. Traditionally a change up is predominantly side spin. The spin direction or spin axis for a righty usually needs to shift in the direction of 3:00. Sometimes pitchers won’t have a good feel for how to do that so they will manipulate theirs arm action or arm slot to try to get there instead of pronating the pitch more to create that side spin. In the case of Berrios and knowing how exceptionally good Wes Johnson is with utilizing Trackman data, I’m sure Wes has him trending in the correct direction at the very least.
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); (It) Depends. A laggy arm could be possible, BUT better changeups have a fast arm speed. Also though, his changeup could play close to the 2 seam fastball, so hows his usage on the 2 seam changed?
 
So that was the end to this conversation and the article. I hope you enjoyed. As far as what I would expect the Twins to do, we saw earlier in the season when Michael Pineda’s velocity was hitting a rough patch so they placed on the DL. I could conceivably see Rocco buying some time by giving the duo of Lewis Thorpe and Devin Smeltzer a start against the lowly White Sox and Tiger on this coming road trip, and perhaps recharge the rotation (Gibson and Odorizzi velocity has been down lately). Wes Johnson in the splendid piece by Dan Hayes of the Athletic during a makeup interview of his sudden unavailability, said something of significance.
 
“We’re getting him back on his heel and trying to get him to rotate, get his chest velocity back up,” Johnson said. “It’s not just to get José to survive. We want more of the start against Chicago that he had when he was 94 mph and was dominant. Or even you go to the Miami start when his velocity was down a little bit. The pitch execution was through the roof for seven innings.
 
“Our focus isn’t to find a way just to get this guy through. We have to try to get him better every time he goes out.”
 
Which again corroborates with what Wes has done with biomechanics velocity induction. If you want to read more, I would encourage you to read this.
 
Please Follow me @Sabir

“Baseball is a relative sport.”

By nature we often remember the really good or really bad things, and not the okay or decent things that someone does. I bet you can vividly remember the last time you won an award, but perhaps not the last time you went to the grocery store, or who your 10th grade history teacher was.
 
It’s a core principle to how memories are formed. Those that stand out are often fueled by the emotional context the situation derives from.
 
Say me for instance, I remember when Adrian Peterson nearly clipped the 2,100 yards or when Jason Zucker beat the Blackhawks in 2013, and conversely when Blair Walsh's epic failure from 27. These were momentous occasions to me personally, and culminated milestones of jubilee and heartbreak with lots and lots of backstory.
 
Why is that such an important thing to consider when discussing the plight to Jose Berrios? It’s these disaster moments to fans in a season, where we can get way over our heads and make truly outrageous statements, and during the offseason in retrospect be like ---”Did I actually say that?”
 
He began the season on a pristine pinnacle. Logistically, Jose was exerting his mechanical best in how he was driving through his hips along with his delivery, and keeping his hands back in sync with driving those hips, which was a bad tendency he would commit in his youth.
 
 
 
 
 



You can in the video how the different the glove placement is imperative to gaining that 2 to 3 ticks in velocity to the plate. In hardcore pitching circles they call this the kinetic chain, where the components of one’s mechanics are at an equilibrium, where the joints are in a symphonic harmony, making it all a simplistic, clean, and efficiently repeatable delivery.
 
And Berrios looked really good. He proved with the results to bear, and added a new wrinkle into that much anticipated pitch mix, the changeup. In that 2019 opening unveiling we saw the changeup being fruitfully showcased 12.5% of the time, more than his total the previous season (9.1%) and the cumulative average during his very short career (10.7%).
 
He wasn’t deliberately delaying his arm speed, and everything in that start was sublime. Pristine. You could say Berrios was perhaps an “ACE” in that start had things not turned sideways and pearshaped just a handful of months later.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------TD--------------------------------------------------------------
 
Now fast-forward to today. Fresh or perhaps rotten from that second consecutive all-star appearance, Jose Berrios is showcasing his most agonizing and problematic struggle points of his career. He’s been hittable, hit very hard with declining velocity, and to boot; seemingly single-handedly taking baseball’s 3rd best offense (in wOBA and wRC+; .348 and 115 respectively) out of critically important games.
 
What’s even more frightening? That the strength of the opposition over the past 4 games has sported a 91 wRC+, with 100 being league average. He’s struggling mightily against bad opponents, compounded with the fact that they shouldn’t be hitting him this hard, period.
 
So far, we as all seperate pitching expert entities haven’t found the culprit to what hindering subset of pitching statistics is responsible for pruning our Johan of today, devoid of the attributes that made us reminisce of Johan, the great killer of men, sheep, and those brave enough to step into the battered boxes of right and left.
 
But jokes aside, what’s really been the inhibitor to Jose’s velocity and coincidentally his release point since his dynamic beginning?
 
Let’s zoom into one of his particular starts, this one against the Indians on June 6th as the start to our inquiry.
 
In that one start, Berrios didn’t feature the curveball that we have become expected of. He would throw a whopping 25.4% changeup, nearly double his career-total and triple his season percentage to that point. But something interesting of note lied in that changeup subgrouping.
 
In that start he would throw 27 changeups of his entire 107 pitches in those 6 strong innings. Only one ball was hit harder than 85mph, and here’s a mapping of those pitch velocities with their extensions metrics.
 
 
 
 
 



Notice anything weird? For a guy throwing from an average release point of 6.5ft away from the pitching rubber, the extensions point were remarkably scattered and the changeup release points also dropped, along with the average pitch velocity.
 
Increasing extension would typically incite would velocity, (Josh Hader’s extension would come in mind) and it’s a very peculiar trend into Jose’s portfolio.
 
If we critically analyze even more into Jose’s pitching approach, we wouldn't have anything particularly striking about his movements.
 
Berrios has a unique windup, something of another other beast where he utilizes his windup as a vehicle to increase the movement and velocity of his pitches. Whereas others use their windup as a balancing point or to find their zen, Berrios uses his windup like a stress ball where he curled himself into a ball, and breaks out of the ball in smooth rhythm to swing his front side and lurch the back end, and launch the pitch.
 
Looking at the progress he’s made since his debut, where his arms and legs need a lot of refinements, he’s made noticeable and encouraging strides. When he was young he would treat his arms and legs as separate mechanism, and he now manages to keep his core in rhythm and not out of motion with his elbows, knees, and front stridding foot.
 
So nothing abundantly different with the windup, and not that much difference in the general technique with his hand placement, etc.
 
Berrios, technically speaking hasn't changed anything with the conducting of his delivery, until Glen Perkins spoke about it during Jose’s latest start. I’m paraphrasing what Roy Smalley said during the game, but here’s what he said:
 
“This is what Glen Perkins was talking about in the pregame shows, where (Jose) coils up and then has to uncoil and gets way spun around and his arm either lags or he’s gotta really rush to catch up, and that’s what happens when you spike that curveball….. And just you’ve opened up way to quickly and your arm just whips around.”
 
“They are trying to get (Jose) to alter his mechanics a little bit, but he’s very rotational and he gets really turned around and can’t get his arm back through, so when his hips come way around behind him he coils up, and his arm has to speed up to catch up. That’s why you see so many fastballs up and into lefthanders, and spiked breaking balls.”
 
 
 
 
 



You can see that his windup is almost, where he isn’t riding with the energy generated by his windup as much and through that back heel, that the great Parker Hagemen discussed during the offseason as a foundation through building and sustaining velocity. We can see the locked back leg not pulling through, anchored and dragging his weight in a counterproductive direction. It’s slinging and stopping, preventing him from riding through that back leg and pulling in his follow through. It’s a sign of stress and unease to rip through, as young pitching are taught today to rip through with elastic bands at data driven developmental programs. You can see the lazy back leg grappling with the front side and the glove holstered to his side, almost as if he’s more location conscious then ripping the back leg through for the additional ticks of velocity he needs to be at his best.
 
This looks more like a fatigue and midseason swoon related dilemma than a mechanics dead-gone disaster, but the velocity problems and mechanical technique are very much redeemable.
 
 
 
 
 
 

-----------------------------------------------------------TD--------------------------------------------------------------

Additionally I wanted to dive into more of what’s causing the lower arm slot, and perhaps an aggravator of the lower velocity readings and the dropping of the arm slots.
 
 
 
 
 



This graphic below shows the release points of all of Jose’s pitches horizontally since the beginning of the season. I postulated the changeup he’s been throwing has played role in why the release point has waned lately, so I consulted with two acute baseball minds to at least minimally come to a conclusion.
 
 
 
 
 
 


Through some research and conspiracy thinking, changeups might play a part in cannibalizing fastball velocity. Now take with a grain of salt, but changeup reduces fastball velocity for youth pitchers, and Paul Nyman theorized that an intentionally manipulated change for sink and drop would lead to fastball velocity dropping.
 
Coupled with the fact that Jose played with the changeup in the Cleveland start I spoke of, and that his deviation of his velocities are so wide, maybe the changeup is playing with his repetiore and his mehanics. It’s certainly cause for concern given that the more he’s thrown his changeup the more his velocity as dropped.
 
So I talked with Bill Hetzel, Manager of Mechanical Analysis at Driveline and Analysis, and former pitching coach and Michael O’Neal, former pro-ball pitcher and Driveline pitching trainer, and now SIUE baseball assistant coach about the changeup possibly curtailing Jose’s potential.
 
ME: Hey Guys. I was recently diving into a pitcher (Jose Berrios), and just wanted to ask that if….. say a righthander where to increasingly lower their arm slot, which just so happened to coincide with an increase in spin rate and decrease in velocity, would you say an increase to using a changeup could be a detriment of this?
 
I look at some of the side effects of short-arming a changeup (like slinging from the side) and couldn’t find anything, but I did however find that Jose’s changeup spin rate has increased. Do you think that a lowering of the arm slot on a changeup and an increase in spin could lead to decreased velocity? Or perhaps the lowering of arm slot could increase spin in general?
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); It depends on the guy, but lowering the arm slot would help to create more sidespin on a changeup, which also would increase horizontal movement on the pitch. Jose’s arm slot might also be more natural for him which could be an increase in spin rate.
 
Bill (Driveline Pitching Analysis Expert); Unfortunately you can’t (increase spin on arm slot) when it comes to increasing spin rate. Raw spin rate that is, there is not anything definitive that has been found to increase it outside of the use of foreign substance.
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); Me personally, I have the same tendency when I try to “get on top” of my fastball. I laterally trunk-tilt more causing a higher arm slot. This also negatively impacts my spin rate. When I stay taller and don’t tilt so much (unlike what Jose has been doing), my spin rate increases and also causes my arm slot/release point to be lower on the Z axis.
 
Bill (Driveline Pitching Analysis Expert); Now increasing true spin is different. Pitchers increase true spin all the time by improving spin efficiency. In terms of a change up you ideally and in most cases want to kill or decrease spin. Most changeups, whether it is a circle change or a split type change are trying to kill total spin, kill lift on the pitch to create separation from the heater and kill velocity. I would have to look at Berrios’ pitch metrics to really tell you anything in regards to arm slot changes or spin total changes. Traditionally a change up is predominantly side spin. The spin direction or spin axis for a righty usually needs to shift in the direction of 3:00. Sometimes pitchers won’t have a good feel for how to do that so they will manipulate theirs arm action or arm slot to try to get there instead of pronating the pitch more to create that side spin. In the case of Berrios and knowing how exceptionally good Wes Johnson is with utilizing Trackman data, I’m sure Wes has him trending in the correct direction at the very least.
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); (It) Depends. A laggy arm could be possible, BUT better changeups have a fast arm speed. Also though, his changeup could play close to the 2 seam fastball, so hows his usage on the 2 seam changed?
 
So that was the end to this conversation and the article. I hope you enjoyed. As far as what I would expect the Twins to do, we saw earlier in the season when Michael Pineda’s velocity was hitting a rough patch so they placed on the DL. I could conceivably see Rocco buying some time by giving the duo of Lewis Thorpe and Devin Smeltzer a start against the lowly White Sox and Tiger on this coming road trip, and perhaps recharge the rotation (Gibson and Odorizzi velocity has been down lately). Wes Johnson in the splendid piece by Dan Hayes of the Athletic during a makeup interview of his sudden unavailability, said something of significance.
 
“We’re getting him back on his heel and trying to get him to rotate, get his chest velocity back up,” Johnson said. “It’s not just to get José to survive. We want more of the start against Chicago that he had when he was 94 mph and was dominant. Or even you go to the Miami start when his velocity was down a little bit. The pitch execution was through the roof for seven innings.
 
“Our focus isn’t to find a way just to get this guy through. We have to try to get him better every time he goes out.”
 
Which again corroborates with what Wes has done with biomechanics velocity induction. If you want to read more, I would encourage you to read this.
 
Please Follow me @Sabir

“Baseball is a relative sport.”

By nature we often remember the really good or really bad things, and not the okay or decent things that someone does. I bet you can vividly remember the last time you won an award, but perhaps not the last time you went to the grocery store, or who your 10th grade history teacher was.
 
It’s a core principle to how memories are formed. Those that stand out are often fueled by the emotional context the situation derives from.
 
Say me for instance, I remember when Adrian Peterson nearly clipped the 2,100 yards or when Jason Zucker beat the Blackhawks in 2013, and conversely when Blair Walsh's epic failure from 27. These were momentous occasions to me personally, and culminated milestones of jubilee and heartbreak with lots and lots of backstory.
 
Why is that such an important thing to consider when discussing the plight to Jose Berrios? It’s these disaster moments to fans in a season, where we can get way over our heads and make truly outrageous statements, and during the offseason in retrospect be like ---”Did I actually say that?”
 
He began the season on a pristine pinnacle. Logistically, Jose was exerting his mechanical best in how he was driving through his hips along with his delivery, and keeping his hands back in sync with driving those hips, which was a bad tendency he would commit in his youth.
 
 
 
 
 



You can in the video how the different the glove placement is imperative to gaining that 2 to 3 ticks in velocity to the plate. In hardcore pitching circles they call this the kinetic chain, where the components of one’s mechanics are at an equilibrium, where the joints are in a symphonic harmony, making it all a simplistic, clean, and efficiently repeatable delivery.
 
And Berrios looked really good. He proved with the results to bear, and added a new wrinkle into that much anticipated pitch mix, the changeup. In that 2019 opening unveiling we saw the changeup being fruitfully showcased 12.5% of the time, more than his total the previous season (9.1%) and the cumulative average during his very short career (10.7%).
 
He wasn’t deliberately delaying his arm speed, and everything in that start was sublime. Pristine. You could say Berrios was perhaps an “ACE” in that start had things not turned sideways and pearshaped just a handful of months later.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------TD--------------------------------------------------------------
 
Now fast-forward to today. Fresh or perhaps rotten from that second consecutive all-star appearance, Jose Berrios is showcasing his most agonizing and problematic struggle points of his career. He’s been hittable, hit very hard with declining velocity, and to boot; seemingly single-handedly taking baseball’s 3rd best offense (in wOBA and wRC+; .348 and 115 respectively) out of critically important games.
 
What’s even more frightening? That the strength of the opposition over the past 4 games has sported a 91 wRC+, with 100 being league average. He’s struggling mightily against bad opponents, compounded with the fact that they shouldn’t be hitting him this hard, period.
 
So far, we as all seperate pitching expert entities haven’t found the culprit to what hindering subset of pitching statistics is responsible for pruning our Johan of today, devoid of the attributes that made us reminisce of Johan, the great killer of men, sheep, and those brave enough to step into the battered boxes of right and left.
 
But jokes aside, what’s really been the inhibitor to Jose’s velocity and coincidentally his release point since his dynamic beginning?
 
Let’s zoom into one of his particular starts, this one against the Indians on June 6th as the start to our inquiry.
 
In that one start, Berrios didn’t feature the curveball that we have become expected of. He would throw a whopping 25.4% changeup, nearly double his career-total and triple his season percentage to that point. But something interesting of note lied in that changeup subgrouping.
 
In that start he would throw 27 changeups of his entire 107 pitches in those 6 strong innings. Only one ball was hit harder than 85mph, and here’s a mapping of those pitch velocities with their extensions metrics.
 
 
 
 
 



Notice anything weird? For a guy throwing from an average release point of 6.5ft away from the pitching rubber, the extensions point were remarkably scattered and the changeup release points also dropped, along with the average pitch velocity.
 
Increasing extension would typically incite would velocity, (Josh Hader’s extension would come in mind) and it’s a very peculiar trend into Jose’s portfolio.
 
If we critically analyze even more into Jose’s pitching approach, we wouldn't have anything particularly striking about his movements.
 
Berrios has a unique windup, something of another other beast where he utilizes his windup as a vehicle to increase the movement and velocity of his pitches. Whereas others use their windup as a balancing point or to find their zen, Berrios uses his windup like a stress ball where he curled himself into a ball, and breaks out of the ball in smooth rhythm to swing his front side and lurch the back end, and launch the pitch.
 
Looking at the progress he’s made since his debut, where his arms and legs need a lot of refinements, he’s made noticeable and encouraging strides. When he was young he would treat his arms and legs as separate mechanism, and he now manages to keep his core in rhythm and not out of motion with his elbows, knees, and front stridding foot.
 
So nothing abundantly different with the windup, and not that much difference in the general technique with his hand placement, etc.
 
Berrios, technically speaking hasn't changed anything with the conducting of his delivery, until Glen Perkins spoke about it during Jose’s latest start. I’m paraphrasing what Roy Smalley said during the game, but here’s what he said:
 
“This is what Glen Perkins was talking about in the pregame shows, where (Jose) coils up and then has to uncoil and gets way spun around and his arm either lags or he’s gotta really rush to catch up, and that’s what happens when you spike that curveball….. And just you’ve opened up way to quickly and your arm just whips around.”
 
“They are trying to get (Jose) to alter his mechanics a little bit, but he’s very rotational and he gets really turned around and can’t get his arm back through, so when his hips come way around behind him he coils up, and his arm has to speed up to catch up. That’s why you see so many fastballs up and into lefthanders, and spiked breaking balls.”
 
 
 
 
 



You can see that his windup is almost, where he isn’t riding with the energy generated by his windup as much and through that back heel, that the great Parker Hagemen discussed during the offseason as a foundation through building and sustaining velocity. We can see the locked back leg not pulling through, anchored and dragging his weight in a counterproductive direction. It’s slinging and stopping, preventing him from riding through that back leg and pulling in his follow through. It’s a sign of stress and unease to rip through, as young pitching are taught today to rip through with elastic bands at data driven developmental programs. You can see the lazy back leg grappling with the front side and the glove holstered to his side, almost as if he’s more location conscious then ripping the back leg through for the additional ticks of velocity he needs to be at his best.
 
This looks more like a fatigue and midseason swoon related dilemma than a mechanics dead-gone disaster, but the velocity problems and mechanical technique are very much redeemable.
 
 
 
 
 
 

-----------------------------------------------------------TD--------------------------------------------------------------

Additionally I wanted to dive into more of what’s causing the lower arm slot, and perhaps an aggravator of the lower velocity readings and the dropping of the arm slots.
 
 
 
 
 



This graphic below shows the release points of all of Jose’s pitches horizontally since the beginning of the season. I postulated the changeup he’s been throwing has played role in why the release point has waned lately, so I consulted with two acute baseball minds to at least minimally come to a conclusion.
 
 
 
 
 
 


Through some research and conspiracy thinking, changeups might play a part in cannibalizing fastball velocity. Now take with a grain of salt, but changeup reduces fastball velocity for youth pitchers, and Paul Nyman theorized that an intentionally manipulated change for sink and drop would lead to fastball velocity dropping.
 
Coupled with the fact that Jose played with the changeup in the Cleveland start I spoke of, and that his deviation of his velocities are so wide, maybe the changeup is playing with his repetiore and his mehanics. It’s certainly cause for concern given that the more he’s thrown his changeup the more his velocity as dropped.
 
So I talked with Bill Hetzel, Manager of Mechanical Analysis at Driveline and Analysis, and former pitching coach and Michael O’Neal, former pro-ball pitcher and Driveline pitching trainer, and now SIUE baseball assistant coach about the changeup possibly curtailing Jose’s potential.
 
ME: Hey Guys. I was recently diving into a pitcher (Jose Berrios), and just wanted to ask that if….. say a righthander where to increasingly lower their arm slot, which just so happened to coincide with an increase in spin rate and decrease in velocity, would you say an increase to using a changeup could be a detriment of this?
 
I look at some of the side effects of short-arming a changeup (like slinging from the side) and couldn’t find anything, but I did however find that Jose’s changeup spin rate has increased. Do you think that a lowering of the arm slot on a changeup and an increase in spin could lead to decreased velocity? Or perhaps the lowering of arm slot could increase spin in general?
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); It depends on the guy, but lowering the arm slot would help to create more sidespin on a changeup, which also would increase horizontal movement on the pitch. Jose’s arm slot might also be more natural for him which could be an increase in spin rate.
 
Bill (Driveline Pitching Analysis Expert); Unfortunately you can’t (increase spin on arm slot) when it comes to increasing spin rate. Raw spin rate that is, there is not anything definitive that has been found to increase it outside of the use of foreign substance.
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); Me personally, I have the same tendency when I try to “get on top” of my fastball. I laterally trunk-tilt more causing a higher arm slot. This also negatively impacts my spin rate. When I stay taller and don’t tilt so much (unlike what Jose has been doing), my spin rate increases and also causes my arm slot/release point to be lower on the Z axis.
 
Bill (Driveline Pitching Analysis Expert); Now increasing true spin is different. Pitchers increase true spin all the time by improving spin efficiency. In terms of a change up you ideally and in most cases want to kill or decrease spin. Most changeups, whether it is a circle change or a split type change are trying to kill total spin, kill lift on the pitch to create separation from the heater and kill velocity. I would have to look at Berrios’ pitch metrics to really tell you anything in regards to arm slot changes or spin total changes. Traditionally a change up is predominantly side spin. The spin direction or spin axis for a righty usually needs to shift in the direction of 3:00. Sometimes pitchers won’t have a good feel for how to do that so they will manipulate theirs arm action or arm slot to try to get there instead of pronating the pitch more to create that side spin. In the case of Berrios and knowing how exceptionally good Wes Johnson is with utilizing Trackman data, I’m sure Wes has him trending in the correct direction at the very least.
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); (It) Depends. A laggy arm could be possible, BUT better changeups have a fast arm speed. Also though, his changeup could play close to the 2 seam fastball, so hows his usage on the 2 seam changed?
 
So that was the end to this conversation and the article. I hope you enjoyed. As far as what I would expect the Twins to do, we saw earlier in the season when Michael Pineda’s velocity was hitting a rough patch so they placed on the DL. I could conceivably see Rocco buying some time by giving the duo of Lewis Thorpe and Devin Smeltzer a start against the lowly White Sox and Tiger on this coming road trip, and perhaps recharge the rotation (Gibson and Odorizzi velocity has been down lately). Wes Johnson in the splendid piece by Dan Hayes of the Athletic during a makeup interview of his sudden unavailability, said something of significance.
 
“We’re getting him back on his heel and trying to get him to rotate, get his chest velocity back up,” Johnson said. “It’s not just to get José to survive. We want more of the start against Chicago that he had when he was 94 mph and was dominant. Or even you go to the Miami start when his velocity was down a little bit. The pitch execution was through the roof for seven innings.
 
“Our focus isn’t to find a way just to get this guy through. We have to try to get him better every time he goes out.”
 
Which again corroborates with what Wes has done with biomechanics velocity induction. If you want to read more, I would encourage you to read this.
 
Please Follow me @Sabir

“Baseball is a relative sport.”

By nature we often remember the really good or really bad things, and not the okay or decent things that someone does. I bet you can vividly remember the last time you won an award, but perhaps not the last time you went to the grocery store, or who your 10th grade history teacher was.
 
It’s a core principle to how memories are formed. Those that stand out are often fueled by the emotional context the situation derives from.
 
Say me for instance, I remember when Adrian Peterson nearly clipped the 2,100 yards or when Jason Zucker beat the Blackhawks in 2013, and conversely when Blair Walsh's epic failure from 27. These were momentous occasions to me personally, and culminated milestones of jubilee and heartbreak with lots and lots of backstory.
 
Why is that such an important thing to consider when discussing the plight to Jose Berrios? It’s these disaster moments to fans in a season, where we can get way over our heads and make truly outrageous statements, and during the offseason in retrospect be like ---”Did I actually say that?”
 
He began the season on a pristine pinnacle. Logistically, Jose was exerting his mechanical best in how he was driving through his hips along with his delivery, and keeping his hands back in sync with driving those hips, which was a bad tendency he would commit in his youth.
 
 
 
 
 



You can in the video how the different the glove placement is imperative to gaining that 2 to 3 ticks in velocity to the plate. In hardcore pitching circles they call this the kinetic chain, where the components of one’s mechanics are at an equilibrium, where the joints are in a symphonic harmony, making it all a simplistic, clean, and efficiently repeatable delivery.
 
And Berrios looked really good. He proved with the results to bear, and added a new wrinkle into that much anticipated pitch mix, the changeup. In that 2019 opening unveiling we saw the changeup being fruitfully showcased 12.5% of the time, more than his total the previous season (9.1%) and the cumulative average during his very short career (10.7%).
 
He wasn’t deliberately delaying his arm speed, and everything in that start was sublime. Pristine. You could say Berrios was perhaps an “ACE” in that start had things not turned sideways and pearshaped just a handful of months later.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------TD--------------------------------------------------------------
 
Now fast-forward to today. Fresh or perhaps rotten from that second consecutive all-star appearance, Jose Berrios is showcasing his most agonizing and problematic struggle points of his career. He’s been hittable, hit very hard with declining velocity, and to boot; seemingly single-handedly taking baseball’s 3rd best offense (in wOBA and wRC+; .348 and 115 respectively) out of critically important games.
 
What’s even more frightening? That the strength of the opposition over the past 4 games has sported a 91 wRC+, with 100 being league average. He’s struggling mightily against bad opponents, compounded with the fact that they shouldn’t be hitting him this hard, period.
 
So far, we as all seperate pitching expert entities haven’t found the culprit to what hindering subset of pitching statistics is responsible for pruning our Johan of today, devoid of the attributes that made us reminisce of Johan, the great killer of men, sheep, and those brave enough to step into the battered boxes of right and left.
 
But jokes aside, what’s really been the inhibitor to Jose’s velocity and coincidentally his release point since his dynamic beginning?
 
Let’s zoom into one of his particular starts, this one against the Indians on June 6th as the start to our inquiry.
 
In that one start, Berrios didn’t feature the curveball that we have become expected of. He would throw a whopping 25.4% changeup, nearly double his career-total and triple his season percentage to that point. But something interesting of note lied in that changeup subgrouping.
 
In that start he would throw 27 changeups of his entire 107 pitches in those 6 strong innings. Only one ball was hit harder than 85mph, and here’s a mapping of those pitch velocities with their extensions metrics.
 
 
 
 
 



Notice anything weird? For a guy throwing from an average release point of 6.5ft away from the pitching rubber, the extensions point were remarkably scattered and the changeup release points also dropped, along with the average pitch velocity.
 
Increasing extension would typically incite would velocity, (Josh Hader’s extension would come in mind) and it’s a very peculiar trend into Jose’s portfolio.
 
If we critically analyze even more into Jose’s pitching approach, we wouldn't have anything particularly striking about his movements.
 
Berrios has a unique windup, something of another other beast where he utilizes his windup as a vehicle to increase the movement and velocity of his pitches. Whereas others use their windup as a balancing point or to find their zen, Berrios uses his windup like a stress ball where he curled himself into a ball, and breaks out of the ball in smooth rhythm to swing his front side and lurch the back end, and launch the pitch.
 
Looking at the progress he’s made since his debut, where his arms and legs need a lot of refinements, he’s made noticeable and encouraging strides. When he was young he would treat his arms and legs as separate mechanism, and he now manages to keep his core in rhythm and not out of motion with his elbows, knees, and front stridding foot.
 
So nothing abundantly different with the windup, and not that much difference in the general technique with his hand placement, etc.
 
Berrios, technically speaking hasn't changed anything with the conducting of his delivery, until Glen Perkins spoke about it during Jose’s latest start. I’m paraphrasing what Roy Smalley said during the game, but here’s what he said:
 
“This is what Glen Perkins was talking about in the pregame shows, where (Jose) coils up and then has to uncoil and gets way spun around and his arm either lags or he’s gotta really rush to catch up, and that’s what happens when you spike that curveball….. And just you’ve opened up way to quickly and your arm just whips around.”
 
“They are trying to get (Jose) to alter his mechanics a little bit, but he’s very rotational and he gets really turned around and can’t get his arm back through, so when his hips come way around behind him he coils up, and his arm has to speed up to catch up. That’s why you see so many fastballs up and into lefthanders, and spiked breaking balls.”
 
 
 
 
 



You can see that his windup is almost, where he isn’t riding with the energy generated by his windup as much and through that back heel, that the great Parker Hagemen discussed during the offseason as a foundation through building and sustaining velocity. We can see the locked back leg not pulling through, anchored and dragging his weight in a counterproductive direction. It’s slinging and stopping, preventing him from riding through that back leg and pulling in his follow through. It’s a sign of stress and unease to rip through, as young pitching are taught today to rip through with elastic bands at data driven developmental programs. You can see the lazy back leg grappling with the front side and the glove holstered to his side, almost as if he’s more location conscious then ripping the back leg through for the additional ticks of velocity he needs to be at his best.
 
This looks more like a fatigue and midseason swoon related dilemma than a mechanics dead-gone disaster, but the velocity problems and mechanical technique are very much redeemable.
 
 
 
 
 
 

-----------------------------------------------------------TD--------------------------------------------------------------

Additionally I wanted to dive into more of what’s causing the lower arm slot, and perhaps an aggravator of the lower velocity readings and the dropping of the arm slots.
 
 
 
 
 



This graphic below shows the release points of all of Jose’s pitches horizontally since the beginning of the season. I postulated the changeup he’s been throwing has played role in why the release point has waned lately, so I consulted with two acute baseball minds to at least minimally come to a conclusion.
 
 
 
 
 
 


Through some research and conspiracy thinking, changeups might play a part in cannibalizing fastball velocity. Now take with a grain of salt, but changeup reduces fastball velocity for youth pitchers, and Paul Nyman theorized that an intentionally manipulated change for sink and drop would lead to fastball velocity dropping.
 
Coupled with the fact that Jose played with the changeup in the Cleveland start I spoke of, and that his deviation of his velocities are so wide, maybe the changeup is playing with his repetiore and his mehanics. It’s certainly cause for concern given that the more he’s thrown his changeup the more his velocity as dropped.
 
So I talked with Bill Hetzel, Manager of Mechanical Analysis at Driveline and Analysis, and former pitching coach and Michael O’Neal, former pro-ball pitcher and Driveline pitching trainer, and now SIUE baseball assistant coach about the changeup possibly curtailing Jose’s potential.
 
ME: Hey Guys. I was recently diving into a pitcher (Jose Berrios), and just wanted to ask that if….. say a righthander where to increasingly lower their arm slot, which just so happened to coincide with an increase in spin rate and decrease in velocity, would you say an increase to using a changeup could be a detriment of this?
 
I look at some of the side effects of short-arming a changeup (like slinging from the side) and couldn’t find anything, but I did however find that Jose’s changeup spin rate has increased. Do you think that a lowering of the arm slot on a changeup and an increase in spin could lead to decreased velocity? Or perhaps the lowering of arm slot could increase spin in general?
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); It depends on the guy, but lowering the arm slot would help to create more sidespin on a changeup, which also would increase horizontal movement on the pitch. Jose’s arm slot might also be more natural for him which could be an increase in spin rate.
 
Bill (Driveline Pitching Analysis Expert); Unfortunately you can’t (increase spin on arm slot) when it comes to increasing spin rate. Raw spin rate that is, there is not anything definitive that has been found to increase it outside of the use of foreign substance.
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); Me personally, I have the same tendency when I try to “get on top” of my fastball. I laterally trunk-tilt more causing a higher arm slot. This also negatively impacts my spin rate. When I stay taller and don’t tilt so much (unlike what Jose has been doing), my spin rate increases and also causes my arm slot/release point to be lower on the Z axis.
 
Bill (Driveline Pitching Analysis Expert); Now increasing true spin is different. Pitchers increase true spin all the time by improving spin efficiency. In terms of a change up you ideally and in most cases want to kill or decrease spin. Most changeups, whether it is a circle change or a split type change are trying to kill total spin, kill lift on the pitch to create separation from the heater and kill velocity. I would have to look at Berrios’ pitch metrics to really tell you anything in regards to arm slot changes or spin total changes. Traditionally a change up is predominantly side spin. The spin direction or spin axis for a righty usually needs to shift in the direction of 3:00. Sometimes pitchers won’t have a good feel for how to do that so they will manipulate theirs arm action or arm slot to try to get there instead of pronating the pitch more to create that side spin. In the case of Berrios and knowing how exceptionally good Wes Johnson is with utilizing Trackman data, I’m sure Wes has him trending in the correct direction at the very least.
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); (It) Depends. A laggy arm could be possible, BUT better changeups have a fast arm speed. Also though, his changeup could play close to the 2 seam fastball, so hows his usage on the 2 seam changed?
 
So that was the end to this conversation and the article. I hope you enjoyed. As far as what I would expect the Twins to do, we saw earlier in the season when Michael Pineda’s velocity was hitting a rough patch so they placed on the DL. I could conceivably see Rocco buying some time by giving the duo of Lewis Thorpe and Devin Smeltzer a start against the lowly White Sox and Tiger on this coming road trip, and perhaps recharge the rotation (Gibson and Odorizzi velocity has been down lately). Wes Johnson in the splendid piece by Dan Hayes of the Athletic during a makeup interview of his sudden unavailability, said something of significance.
 
“We’re getting him back on his heel and trying to get him to rotate, get his chest velocity back up,” Johnson said. “It’s not just to get José to survive. We want more of the start against Chicago that he had when he was 94 mph and was dominant. Or even you go to the Miami start when his velocity was down a little bit. The pitch execution was through the roof for seven innings.
 
“Our focus isn’t to find a way just to get this guy through. We have to try to get him better every time he goes out.”
 
Which again corroborates with what Wes has done with biomechanics velocity induction. If you want to read more, I would encourage you to read this.
 
Please Follow me @Sabir

“Baseball is a relative sport.”

By nature we often remember the really good or really bad things, and not the okay or decent things that someone does. I bet you can vividly remember the last time you won an award, but perhaps not the last time you went to the grocery store, or who your 10th grade history teacher was.
 
It’s a core principle to how memories are formed. Those that stand out are often fueled by the emotional context the situation derives from.
 
Say me for instance, I remember when Adrian Peterson nearly clipped the 2,100 yards or when Jason Zucker beat the Blackhawks in 2013, and conversely when Blair Walsh's epic failure from 27. These were momentous occasions to me personally, and culminated milestones of jubilee and heartbreak with lots and lots of backstory.
 
Why is that such an important thing to consider when discussing the plight to Jose Berrios? It’s these disaster moments to fans in a season, where we can get way over our heads and make truly outrageous statements, and during the offseason in retrospect be like ---”Did I actually say that?”
 
He began the season on a pristine pinnacle. Logistically, Jose was exerting his mechanical best in how he was driving through his hips along with his delivery, and keeping his hands back in sync with driving those hips, which was a bad tendency he would commit in his youth.
 
 
 
 
 



You can in the video how the different the glove placement is imperative to gaining that 2 to 3 ticks in velocity to the plate. In hardcore pitching circles they call this the kinetic chain, where the components of one’s mechanics are at an equilibrium, where the joints are in a symphonic harmony, making it all a simplistic, clean, and efficiently repeatable delivery.
 
And Berrios looked really good. He proved with the results to bear, and added a new wrinkle into that much anticipated pitch mix, the changeup. In that 2019 opening unveiling we saw the changeup being fruitfully showcased 12.5% of the time, more than his total the previous season (9.1%) and the cumulative average during his very short career (10.7%).
 
He wasn’t deliberately delaying his arm speed, and everything in that start was sublime. Pristine. You could say Berrios was perhaps an “ACE” in that start had things not turned sideways and pearshaped just a handful of months later.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------TD--------------------------------------------------------------
 
Now fast-forward to today. Fresh or perhaps rotten from that second consecutive all-star appearance, Jose Berrios is showcasing his most agonizing and problematic struggle points of his career. He’s been hittable, hit very hard with declining velocity, and to boot; seemingly single-handedly taking baseball’s 3rd best offense (in wOBA and wRC+; .348 and 115 respectively) out of critically important games.
 
What’s even more frightening? That the strength of the opposition over the past 4 games has sported a 91 wRC+, with 100 being league average. He’s struggling mightily against bad opponents, compounded with the fact that they shouldn’t be hitting him this hard, period.
 
So far, we as all seperate pitching expert entities haven’t found the culprit to what hindering subset of pitching statistics is responsible for pruning our Johan of today, devoid of the attributes that made us reminisce of Johan, the great killer of men, sheep, and those brave enough to step into the battered boxes of right and left.
 
But jokes aside, what’s really been the inhibitor to Jose’s velocity and coincidentally his release point since his dynamic beginning?
 
Let’s zoom into one of his particular starts, this one against the Indians on June 6th as the start to our inquiry.
 
In that one start, Berrios didn’t feature the curveball that we have become expected of. He would throw a whopping 25.4% changeup, nearly double his career-total and triple his season percentage to that point. But something interesting of note lied in that changeup subgrouping.
 
In that start he would throw 27 changeups of his entire 107 pitches in those 6 strong innings. Only one ball was hit harder than 85mph, and here’s a mapping of those pitch velocities with their extensions metrics.
 
 
 
 
 



Notice anything weird? For a guy throwing from an average release point of 6.5ft away from the pitching rubber, the extensions point were remarkably scattered and the changeup release points also dropped, along with the average pitch velocity.
 
Increasing extension would typically incite would velocity, (Josh Hader’s extension would come in mind) and it’s a very peculiar trend into Jose’s portfolio.
 
If we critically analyze even more into Jose’s pitching approach, we wouldn't have anything particularly striking about his movements.
 
Berrios has a unique windup, something of another other beast where he utilizes his windup as a vehicle to increase the movement and velocity of his pitches. Whereas others use their windup as a balancing point or to find their zen, Berrios uses his windup like a stress ball where he curled himself into a ball, and breaks out of the ball in smooth rhythm to swing his front side and lurch the back end, and launch the pitch.
 
Looking at the progress he’s made since his debut, where his arms and legs need a lot of refinements, he’s made noticeable and encouraging strides. When he was young he would treat his arms and legs as separate mechanism, and he now manages to keep his core in rhythm and not out of motion with his elbows, knees, and front stridding foot.
 
So nothing abundantly different with the windup, and not that much difference in the general technique with his hand placement, etc.
 
Berrios, technically speaking hasn't changed anything with the conducting of his delivery, until Glen Perkins spoke about it during Jose’s latest start. I’m paraphrasing what Roy Smalley said during the game, but here’s what he said:
 
“This is what Glen Perkins was talking about in the pregame shows, where (Jose) coils up and then has to uncoil and gets way spun around and his arm either lags or he’s gotta really rush to catch up, and that’s what happens when you spike that curveball….. And just you’ve opened up way to quickly and your arm just whips around.”
 
“They are trying to get (Jose) to alter his mechanics a little bit, but he’s very rotational and he gets really turned around and can’t get his arm back through, so when his hips come way around behind him he coils up, and his arm has to speed up to catch up. That’s why you see so many fastballs up and into lefthanders, and spiked breaking balls.”
 
 
 
 
 



You can see that his windup is almost, where he isn’t riding with the energy generated by his windup as much and through that back heel, that the great Parker Hagemen discussed during the offseason as a foundation through building and sustaining velocity. We can see the locked back leg not pulling through, anchored and dragging his weight in a counterproductive direction. It’s slinging and stopping, preventing him from riding through that back leg and pulling in his follow through. It’s a sign of stress and unease to rip through, as young pitching are taught today to rip through with elastic bands at data driven developmental programs. You can see the lazy back leg grappling with the front side and the glove holstered to his side, almost as if he’s more location conscious then ripping the back leg through for the additional ticks of velocity he needs to be at his best.
 
This looks more like a fatigue and midseason swoon related dilemma than a mechanics dead-gone disaster, but the velocity problems and mechanical technique are very much redeemable.
 
 
 
 
 
 

-----------------------------------------------------------TD--------------------------------------------------------------

Additionally I wanted to dive into more of what’s causing the lower arm slot, and perhaps an aggravator of the lower velocity readings and the dropping of the arm slots.
 
 
 
 
 



This graphic below shows the release points of all of Jose’s pitches horizontally since the beginning of the season. I postulated the changeup he’s been throwing has played role in why the release point has waned lately, so I consulted with two acute baseball minds to at least minimally come to a conclusion.
 
 
 
 
 
 


Through some research and conspiracy thinking, changeups might play a part in cannibalizing fastball velocity. Now take with a grain of salt, but changeup reduces fastball velocity for youth pitchers, and Paul Nyman theorized that an intentionally manipulated change for sink and drop would lead to fastball velocity dropping.
 
Coupled with the fact that Jose played with the changeup in the Cleveland start I spoke of, and that his deviation of his velocities are so wide, maybe the changeup is playing with his repetiore and his mehanics. It’s certainly cause for concern given that the more he’s thrown his changeup the more his velocity as dropped.
 
So I talked with Bill Hetzel, Manager of Mechanical Analysis at Driveline and Analysis, and former pitching coach and Michael O’Neal, former pro-ball pitcher and Driveline pitching trainer, and now SIUE baseball assistant coach about the changeup possibly curtailing Jose’s potential.
 
ME: Hey Guys. I was recently diving into a pitcher (Jose Berrios), and just wanted to ask that if….. say a righthander where to increasingly lower their arm slot, which just so happened to coincide with an increase in spin rate and decrease in velocity, would you say an increase to using a changeup could be a detriment of this?
 
I look at some of the side effects of short-arming a changeup (like slinging from the side) and couldn’t find anything, but I did however find that Jose’s changeup spin rate has increased. Do you think that a lowering of the arm slot on a changeup and an increase in spin could lead to decreased velocity? Or perhaps the lowering of arm slot could increase spin in general?
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); It depends on the guy, but lowering the arm slot would help to create more sidespin on a changeup, which also would increase horizontal movement on the pitch. Jose’s arm slot might also be more natural for him which could be an increase in spin rate.
 
Bill (Driveline Pitching Analysis Expert); Unfortunately you can’t (increase spin on arm slot) when it comes to increasing spin rate. Raw spin rate that is, there is not anything definitive that has been found to increase it outside of the use of foreign substance.
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); Me personally, I have the same tendency when I try to “get on top” of my fastball. I laterally trunk-tilt more causing a higher arm slot. This also negatively impacts my spin rate. When I stay taller and don’t tilt so much (unlike what Jose has been doing), my spin rate increases and also causes my arm slot/release point to be lower on the Z axis.
 
Bill (Driveline Pitching Analysis Expert); Now increasing true spin is different. Pitchers increase true spin all the time by improving spin efficiency. In terms of a change up you ideally and in most cases want to kill or decrease spin. Most changeups, whether it is a circle change or a split type change are trying to kill total spin, kill lift on the pitch to create separation from the heater and kill velocity. I would have to look at Berrios’ pitch metrics to really tell you anything in regards to arm slot changes or spin total changes. Traditionally a change up is predominantly side spin. The spin direction or spin axis for a righty usually needs to shift in the direction of 3:00. Sometimes pitchers won’t have a good feel for how to do that so they will manipulate theirs arm action or arm slot to try to get there instead of pronating the pitch more to create that side spin. In the case of Berrios and knowing how exceptionally good Wes Johnson is with utilizing Trackman data, I’m sure Wes has him trending in the correct direction at the very least.
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); (It) Depends. A laggy arm could be possible, BUT better changeups have a fast arm speed. Also though, his changeup could play close to the 2 seam fastball, so hows his usage on the 2 seam changed?
 
So that was the end to this conversation and the article. I hope you enjoyed. As far as what I would expect the Twins to do, we saw earlier in the season when Michael Pineda’s velocity was hitting a rough patch so they placed on the DL. I could conceivably see Rocco buying some time by giving the duo of Lewis Thorpe and Devin Smeltzer a start against the lowly White Sox and Tiger on this coming road trip, and perhaps recharge the rotation (Gibson and Odorizzi velocity has been down lately). Wes Johnson in the splendid piece by Dan Hayes of the Athletic during a makeup interview of his sudden unavailability, said something of significance.
 
“We’re getting him back on his heel and trying to get him to rotate, get his chest velocity back up,” Johnson said. “It’s not just to get José to survive. We want more of the start against Chicago that he had when he was 94 mph and was dominant. Or even you go to the Miami start when his velocity was down a little bit. The pitch execution was through the roof for seven innings.
 
“Our focus isn’t to find a way just to get this guy through. We have to try to get him better every time he goes out.”
 
Which again corroborates with what Wes has done with biomechanics velocity induction. If you want to read more, I would encourage you to read this.
 
Please Follow me @Sabir

With injuries to Byron Buxton and the more recent hamstring injury to Eddie Rosario, Jake Cave has had an extended opportunity with the Minnesota Twins and has made the most of it. After hitting two home runs in the opener against the Detroit Tigers he came back in Saturday's game and hit another dinger, with a double to boot. Buxton is off to a short rehab assignment in Cedar Rapids but he could rejoin the big league club as soon as Tuesday in Chicago. Rosario’s injury is listed as day-to-day but hamstring injuries are tricky, so he could potentially land on the 10-day IL. Either way, with the way Cave has played of late the Twins will have an interesting decision to make when Rosario returns.
 
Cave was a pleasant surprise for the Minnesota in 2018, as he hit .265/.313/.473 with a wRC+ of 108 and was good for 1.3 bWAR in just 91 games. He filled in for Buxton during Buxton’s disastrous and injury-riddle 2018, spending a lot of time in center field, where he played decently but showed that he was definitely better suited for the corners. Flash forward to 2019 and Cave was slated to be the Twins fourth outfielder, but he struggled out of the gate slashing just .176/.299/.243 for a 52 wRC+ in the first half and Cave was sent down to AAA to figure things out.
 
And boy did he figure it out in Rochester. Cave hit the cover off the ball (.352/.393/.592) and since returning to the Twins, Cave hasn’t cooled a bit. Since the All-Star break, Cave has hit an unreal .417/.482/.708 for a 209 wRC+. With his second-half surge, Cave’s numbers on the year are now looking quite good as well. Cave has hit .280/.381/.464 on the year for a 125 wRC+. His on-base percentage has risen from .313 in 2018 to a very good .381 in his second season. In watching Cave, he seems to be taking much better at-bats of late, showing an ability to lay off pitches outside of the strike zone. While Cave will probably never have an elite walk rate, he has shown significant improvement in this area, going from a 5.8% walk rate in 2018 to 8.4% in 2019. He is getting better pitches to hit and hitting them hard, with a 52.6% hard hit percentage.
 
Rosario on the other hand, hadn’t looked particularly good at the plate prior to his injury. Rosario has just a 3.9% walk rate on the year and lately, even when getting into a hitter’s count, he’s been liable to put a weak swing on a pitch outside of the strike zone. On the year he has hit .282/.307/.515 for a wRC+ of 107, which is certainly respectable but not as good as Cave. Rosario started the year off with 11 home runs by the end of April but has hit just 10 in the last three months. In the second half, Rosario’s walk rate is down to an almost non-existent 2.9% with just a 93 wRC+.
 
Although Rosario and Cave have similar skill sets (hit left-handed, play aggressively, and are streaky), Cave’s ability to reach base gives him a definite advantage over Rosario. Beyond that, Cave has clearly been the hotter hitter of late and it would be really hard to take his bat out of the lineup at such a critical juncture of the season. Although Cave has not looked good defensively in center field, he is probably a better overall outfielder than Rosario. MLB Statcast measures Rosario at a -2.0 jump vs. average with 31.5 feet covered. Cave on the other hand is better than average with a 0.8 jump and 34.5 feet. Both Rosario and Cave are liable to make a few boneheaded mistakes in the field, but Cave seems more athletic overall and better able to make difficult catches.
 
Of course, Rosario has the longer track record as a major leaguer, is a fan-favorite, and has had his share of big moments in the 2019 season. Cave has slightly better career numbers but has only played 141 games in parts of two seasons. Cave also has a really high batting average on balls in play (BABIP) at .400 for the season, but he has always carried a very high BABIP in both the minors and the majors (though not quite that extreme). Part of this may be due to Cave’s ability to hit the ball hard to all fields, allowing him to beat the shift. Cave’s ability to hit the ball hard brings a lot of swing and miss as well. He is currently striking out in 31.1% of his plate appearances, so there is definitely room for improvement.
 
Now entering the final stretch of the season and caught in a tight race with Cleveland, it will be imperative for the Twins to run out the players who give them the best chance to win. We have already seen this happen with Luis Arraez taking the second base gig from Jonathan Schoop. The Twins greatest strength may be their overall depth. With players who are ineffective due to injury or other factors, such as Rosario and C.J. Cron, the Twins would be amiss not to take advantage of the depth they have and put their best nine out on the field.
 
It remains to be seen how much playing time Cave will take from Eddie Rosario this season, but Cave’s success may make Rosario more expendable in the offseason. Minnesota could dangle Rosario as part of a package to obtain starting pitching, knowing that Cave at the very least gives the team a stop-gap in left. The Twins farm system is loaded with corner outfield types who are close to big league ready in Alex Kirilloff, Trevor Larnach, and Brent Rooker and the MLB team will still have Marwin Gonzalez under contract in 2020. Rosario has been a valuable player for the Twins, but he seems unlikely to improve upon what he already is. With little to no plate discipline and decreasing speed with age, the Twins may be better off moving on from Rosario and getting something in return for him while they still can (Rosario becomes a free-agent in 2022). In the meantime, whether a long-term solution or not, Jake Cave has presented the Twins with a welcome problem.

“Baseball is a relative sport.”

By nature we often remember the really good or really bad things, and not the okay or decent things that someone does. I bet you can vividly remember the last time you won an award, but perhaps not the last time you went to the grocery store, or who your 10th grade history teacher was.
 
It’s a core principle to how memories are formed. Those that stand out are often fueled by the emotional context the situation derives from.
 
Say me for instance, I remember when Adrian Peterson nearly clipped the 2,100 yards or when Jason Zucker beat the Blackhawks in 2013, and conversely when Blair Walsh's epic failure from 27. These were momentous occasions to me personally, and culminated milestones of jubilee and heartbreak with lots and lots of backstory.
 
Why is that such an important thing to consider when discussing the plight to Jose Berrios? It’s these disaster moments to fans in a season, where we can get way over our heads and make truly outrageous statements, and during the offseason in retrospect be like ---”Did I actually say that?”
 
He began the season on a pristine pinnacle. Logistically, Jose was exerting his mechanical best in how he was driving through his hips along with his delivery, and keeping his hands back in sync with driving those hips, which was a bad tendency he would commit in his youth.
 
 
 
 
 



You can in the video how the different the glove placement is imperative to gaining that 2 to 3 ticks in velocity to the plate. In hardcore pitching circles they call this the kinetic chain, where the components of one’s mechanics are at an equilibrium, where the joints are in a symphonic harmony, making it all a simplistic, clean, and efficiently repeatable delivery.
 
And Berrios looked really good. He proved with the results to bear, and added a new wrinkle into that much anticipated pitch mix, the changeup. In that 2019 opening unveiling we saw the changeup being fruitfully showcased 12.5% of the time, more than his total the previous season (9.1%) and the cumulative average during his very short career (10.7%).
 
He wasn’t deliberately delaying his arm speed, and everything in that start was sublime. Pristine. You could say Berrios was perhaps an “ACE” in that start had things not turned sideways and pearshaped just a handful of months later.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------TD--------------------------------------------------------------
 
Now fast-forward to today. Fresh or perhaps rotten from that second consecutive all-star appearance, Jose Berrios is showcasing his most agonizing and problematic struggle points of his career. He’s been hittable, hit very hard with declining velocity, and to boot; seemingly single-handedly taking baseball’s 3rd best offense (in wOBA and wRC+; .348 and 115 respectively) out of critically important games.
 
What’s even more frightening? That the strength of the opposition over the past 4 games has sported a 91 wRC+, with 100 being league average. He’s struggling mightily against bad opponents, compounded with the fact that they shouldn’t be hitting him this hard, period.
 
So far, we as all seperate pitching expert entities haven’t found the culprit to what hindering subset of pitching statistics is responsible for pruning our Johan of today, devoid of the attributes that made us reminisce of Johan, the great killer of men, sheep, and those brave enough to step into the battered boxes of right and left.
 
But jokes aside, what’s really been the inhibitor to Jose’s velocity and coincidentally his release point since his dynamic beginning?
 
Let’s zoom into one of his particular starts, this one against the Indians on June 6th as the start to our inquiry.
 
In that one start, Berrios didn’t feature the curveball that we have become expected of. He would throw a whopping 25.4% changeup, nearly double his career-total and triple his season percentage to that point. But something interesting of note lied in that changeup subgrouping.
 
In that start he would throw 27 changeups of his entire 107 pitches in those 6 strong innings. Only one ball was hit harder than 85mph, and here’s a mapping of those pitch velocities with their extensions metrics.
 
 
 
 
 



Notice anything weird? For a guy throwing from an average release point of 6.5ft away from the pitching rubber, the extensions point were remarkably scattered and the changeup release points also dropped, along with the average pitch velocity.
 
Increasing extension would typically incite would velocity, (Josh Hader’s extension would come in mind) and it’s a very peculiar trend into Jose’s portfolio.
 
If we critically analyze even more into Jose’s pitching approach, we wouldn't have anything particularly striking about his movements.
 
Berrios has a unique windup, something of another other beast where he utilizes his windup as a vehicle to increase the movement and velocity of his pitches. Whereas others use their windup as a balancing point or to find their zen, Berrios uses his windup like a stress ball where he curled himself into a ball, and breaks out of the ball in smooth rhythm to swing his front side and lurch the back end, and launch the pitch.
 
Looking at the progress he’s made since his debut, where his arms and legs need a lot of refinements, he’s made noticeable and encouraging strides. When he was young he would treat his arms and legs as separate mechanism, and he now manages to keep his core in rhythm and not out of motion with his elbows, knees, and front stridding foot.
 
So nothing abundantly different with the windup, and not that much difference in the general technique with his hand placement, etc.
 
Berrios, technically speaking hasn't changed anything with the conducting of his delivery, until Glen Perkins spoke about it during Jose’s latest start. I’m paraphrasing what Roy Smalley said during the game, but here’s what he said:
 
“This is what Glen Perkins was talking about in the pregame shows, where (Jose) coils up and then has to uncoil and gets way spun around and his arm either lags or he’s gotta really rush to catch up, and that’s what happens when you spike that curveball….. And just you’ve opened up way to quickly and your arm just whips around.”
 
“They are trying to get (Jose) to alter his mechanics a little bit, but he’s very rotational and he gets really turned around and can’t get his arm back through, so when his hips come way around behind him he coils up, and his arm has to speed up to catch up. That’s why you see so many fastballs up and into lefthanders, and spiked breaking balls.”
 
 
 
 
 



You can see that his windup is almost, where he isn’t riding with the energy generated by his windup as much and through that back heel, that the great Parker Hagemen discussed during the offseason as a foundation through building and sustaining velocity. We can see the locked back leg not pulling through, anchored and dragging his weight in a counterproductive direction. It’s slinging and stopping, preventing him from riding through that back leg and pulling in his follow through. It’s a sign of stress and unease to rip through, as young pitching are taught today to rip through with elastic bands at data driven developmental programs. You can see the lazy back leg grappling with the front side and the glove holstered to his side, almost as if he’s more location conscious then ripping the back leg through for the additional ticks of velocity he needs to be at his best.
 
This looks more like a fatigue and midseason swoon related dilemma than a mechanics dead-gone disaster, but the velocity problems and mechanical technique are very much redeemable.
 
 
 
 
 
 

-----------------------------------------------------------TD--------------------------------------------------------------

Additionally I wanted to dive into more of what’s causing the lower arm slot, and perhaps an aggravator of the lower velocity readings and the dropping of the arm slots.
 
 
 
 
 



This graphic below shows the release points of all of Jose’s pitches horizontally since the beginning of the season. I postulated the changeup he’s been throwing has played role in why the release point has waned lately, so I consulted with two acute baseball minds to at least minimally come to a conclusion.
 
 
 
 
 
 


Through some research and conspiracy thinking, changeups might play a part in cannibalizing fastball velocity. Now take with a grain of salt, but changeup reduces fastball velocity for youth pitchers, and Paul Nyman theorized that an intentionally manipulated change for sink and drop would lead to fastball velocity dropping.
 
Coupled with the fact that Jose played with the changeup in the Cleveland start I spoke of, and that his deviation of his velocities are so wide, maybe the changeup is playing with his repetiore and his mehanics. It’s certainly cause for concern given that the more he’s thrown his changeup the more his velocity as dropped.
 
So I talked with Bill Hetzel, Manager of Mechanical Analysis at Driveline and Analysis, and former pitching coach and Michael O’Neal, former pro-ball pitcher and Driveline pitching trainer, and now SIUE baseball assistant coach about the changeup possibly curtailing Jose’s potential.
 
ME: Hey Guys. I was recently diving into a pitcher (Jose Berrios), and just wanted to ask that if….. say a righthander where to increasingly lower their arm slot, which just so happened to coincide with an increase in spin rate and decrease in velocity, would you say an increase to using a changeup could be a detriment of this?
 
I look at some of the side effects of short-arming a changeup (like slinging from the side) and couldn’t find anything, but I did however find that Jose’s changeup spin rate has increased. Do you think that a lowering of the arm slot on a changeup and an increase in spin could lead to decreased velocity? Or perhaps the lowering of arm slot could increase spin in general?
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); It depends on the guy, but lowering the arm slot would help to create more sidespin on a changeup, which also would increase horizontal movement on the pitch. Jose’s arm slot might also be more natural for him which could be an increase in spin rate.
 
Bill (Driveline Pitching Analysis Expert); Unfortunately you can’t (increase spin on arm slot) when it comes to increasing spin rate. Raw spin rate that is, there is not anything definitive that has been found to increase it outside of the use of foreign substance.
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); Me personally, I have the same tendency when I try to “get on top” of my fastball. I laterally trunk-tilt more causing a higher arm slot. This also negatively impacts my spin rate. When I stay taller and don’t tilt so much (unlike what Jose has been doing), my spin rate increases and also causes my arm slot/release point to be lower on the Z axis.
 
Bill (Driveline Pitching Analysis Expert); Now increasing true spin is different. Pitchers increase true spin all the time by improving spin efficiency. In terms of a change up you ideally and in most cases want to kill or decrease spin. Most changeups, whether it is a circle change or a split type change are trying to kill total spin, kill lift on the pitch to create separation from the heater and kill velocity. I would have to look at Berrios’ pitch metrics to really tell you anything in regards to arm slot changes or spin total changes. Traditionally a change up is predominantly side spin. The spin direction or spin axis for a righty usually needs to shift in the direction of 3:00. Sometimes pitchers won’t have a good feel for how to do that so they will manipulate theirs arm action or arm slot to try to get there instead of pronating the pitch more to create that side spin. In the case of Berrios and knowing how exceptionally good Wes Johnson is with utilizing Trackman data, I’m sure Wes has him trending in the correct direction at the very least.
 
Michael (Former MLB Player); (It) Depends. A laggy arm could be possible, BUT better changeups have a fast arm speed. Also though, his changeup could play close to the 2 seam fastball, so hows his usage on the 2 seam changed?
 
So that was the end to this conversation and the article. I hope you enjoyed. As far as what I would expect the Twins to do, we saw earlier in the season when Michael Pineda’s velocity was hitting a rough patch so they placed on the DL. I could conceivably see Rocco buying some time by giving the duo of Lewis Thorpe and Devin Smeltzer a start against the lowly White Sox and Tiger on this coming road trip, and perhaps recharge the rotation (Gibson and Odorizzi velocity has been down lately). Wes Johnson in the splendid piece by Dan Hayes of the Athletic during a makeup interview of his sudden unavailability, said something of significance.
 
“We’re getting him back on his heel and trying to get him to rotate, get his chest velocity back up,” Johnson said. “It’s not just to get José to survive. We want more of the start against Chicago that he had when he was 94 mph and was dominant. Or even you go to the Miami start when his velocity was down a little bit. The pitch execution was through the roof for seven innings.
 
“Our focus isn’t to find a way just to get this guy through. We have to try to get him better every time he goes out.”
 
Which again corroborates with what Wes has done with biomechanics velocity induction. If you want to read more, I would encourage you to read this.
 
Please Follow me @Sabir

The Twins have played 3% of the scripted schedule, and are on pace to eclipse 130 wins, and a meager 32 losses. Not to mention the Twins are well on their way to capture the division title, but would only be slated to the second seed in the conference seeding chart, playing the mediocre, (but good?) Seattle Mariners in the divisional round.


HOLD YOUR HORSES, PEOPLE
 
Consider this. If the entire season was tabulated in the form of a baseball game, meaning that each of the 54 outs recorded in a game would be translated to represent each of the 162 scheduled games, the Twins haven’t even recorded the second out of that very game. That’s a super complicated way of synthesizing that the season is grueling monster, and that 4 games can't really convey any semblance of what the Twins midseason form might be, much less their state come season’s end. Sample size is a word occasionally tossed around as a gauge to what’s legit or not, and no matter how much of a buzzkill word sample size is, it's a small sample size. You can’t go wrong with 4-1, but playing a awfully decimated Indians club and the tantalizingly pesky and obnoxious, but inferior Royals rosters does nothing in solidifying or cementing our far-fetched hopes to a stellar season.
 
So people don't get all worked up or hyped that Byron Buxton’s hitting .500, or that Marwin Gonzalez cannot hold the trigger on a curveball for his life, or that Willians Astudillo is current sizing up as the best hitter in the history of baseball, because the reality of it is that these players either scorching hot or ice cold will eventually fall in line with their typical production outputs, UNLESS there's some superior extraneous force that might mitigate someone’s (wink*wink*Logan Morrison wink*wink*) career slashline. Typically in baseball you don’t see dramatic changes in someone’s batting line for example, and prospect development is a great indicator of this, unless there’s a change in scenery, or shift in a regime (managerial usually). Here is one physical scenario.
 
I wanted to chose someone someone semi-millennial, preferably still active to debate this debate or myth of the hot-hand effect.
 
*(Statistics calibrated in the American League)
 
During the 2013 season, Jose Altuve didn’t have a firm-grip in the major leagues. On a rather atrocious Astros club that had stunk for a long time, spanning back to the Carlos Beltran days, they were scuffling and being spanked in the shadows of their unforsaken superstar. Under manager Bo Porter, unbeknownst to the Astros that they would have 2 MVP candidates and Hank Aaron best hitter awards, under their 2013 disposal (JD Martinez and Jose Altuve), they wound up a travesty rather than a juggernaut, drowning under 4 consecutive seasons of sub-60 win play. After Martinez was run outta town, Jose Altuve barely scraped by as a undrafted free agent and frankly played above expectation with all-star accolade to this credit. Nonetheless he hit .276 during the beginning month of April in 2014, pretty accurate representation of his career to that point. From that point on, Altuve wound up hitting a whopping .357, and vaulting his name into the MVP conversation, and having the best batting average, most hits, and 10th best OPS in the AL for what it's worth. A bargain in my boat, for a player that hadn’t exceeded an average above .290 and amassed a 6.1 WAR after a 2013 WAR of just 1.0!
 
That’s one way you could express how little the first handful of games has on the rest of the season. The Twins postseason road down look as bleak as it did a few years back, however there’s little doubt that the behind the Yanks or Sox, their is a tier of about 3-5 clubs that could contest for the final spot and courtesy to play the latter of the loaded brethren in the AL East. The Rays and Athletics are also both, ballclubs that could collectively catch fire at any point if all things go right respectively, and the Angels aren’t a snooze themselves with perennial sluggers who could easily foil the Twins plan. The final spot should be hotly contested and the Twins need to orchestrate a bunch of runs, and configure somewhat of a capable staff, that has room for improvement. So, if your left partly conforming, or a down the middle perception on this club, that’s okay. I reckon that is the first team in years, that in every department of the roster I could point to that position group carrying the load. The offense is as dynamic and stacked in this century as it ever will be, the starting pitching staff possesses some electric and bat-missing stuff, and the bullpen has the makings of a shutdown backend if things goes according to plan. Not enough yet to be playoff or bust, but something around the ballpark would be fair.
 
So I caution those jumping on the bandwagon and already scoreboard watching, to take the opening week of games with a grain of salt. So those needless stats of the 1 HR, and the insane 0-fer that Eddie Rosario snapped don’t really have tangible effect through the course of a season. Jose Berrios’s 10k, 7⅔ outing was impressive and all that, but really does it do a testament on Jose’s stuff or really just crucifies how mishmashy the Cleveland lineup is in its patchwork. How many times have we heard that the road to the Twins postseason runs will go as far as Buxton and Sano goes? Well the reality check is, Buxton is showing signs of improvement and candidly is playing as purposefully as I've ever seen and Sano isn’t on the roster. More or less, to the antithesis of Sano’s and Buxton’s liability to this team, is how important the newcomers need to perform to keep this team from falling off a cliff. Is it to early to say, that I sense collapse over the horizon?
 
Regardless of how explicitly I may tread to heed caution, I can’t even refrain from excitement, myself. What’s for certain though? That this season will go haywire, for good or bad, and whatever of which will only the heighten the scope of interest on this club.
 
So, (Don’t Jinx it, Don’t Jinx it, DON’T JINX IT) this season gonna be crazy good. The Phillies will provide a great litmus test of superior competition nearing the weeks end, and let’s just hope we give it to them good, and scurry to the Bronx with something more than a .500 record.
 
 
 
From the Outer Galaxy of Fantasy,
 
Sabir Aden

The Twins have played 3% of the scripted schedule, and are on pace to eclipse 130 wins, and a meager 32 losses. Not to mention the Twins are well on their way to capture the division title, but would only be slated to the second seed in the conference seeding chart, playing the mediocre, (but good?) Seattle Mariners in the divisional round.


HOLD YOUR HORSES, PEOPLE
 
Consider this. If the entire season was tabulated in the form of a baseball game, meaning that each of the 54 outs recorded in a game would be translated to represent each of the 162 scheduled games, the Twins haven’t even recorded the second out of that very game. That’s a super complicated way of synthesizing that the season is grueling monster, and that 4 games can't really convey any semblance of what the Twins midseason form might be, much less their state come season’s end. Sample size is a word occasionally tossed around as a gauge to what’s legit or not, and no matter how much of a buzzkill word sample size is, it's a small sample size. You can’t go wrong with 4-1, but playing a awfully decimated Indians club and the tantalizingly pesky and obnoxious, but inferior Royals rosters does nothing in solidifying or cementing our far-fetched hopes to a stellar season.
 
So people don't get all worked up or hyped that Byron Buxton’s hitting .500, or that Marwin Gonzalez cannot hold the trigger on a curveball for his life, or that Willians Astudillo is current sizing up as the best hitter in the history of baseball, because the reality of it is that these players either scorching hot or ice cold will eventually fall in line with their typical production outputs, UNLESS there's some superior extraneous force that might mitigate someone’s (wink*wink*Logan Morrison wink*wink*) career slashline. Typically in baseball you don’t see dramatic changes in someone’s batting line for example, and prospect development is a great indicator of this, unless there’s a change in scenery, or shift in a regime (managerial usually). Here is one physical scenario.
 
I wanted to chose someone someone semi-millennial, preferably still active to debate this debate or myth of the hot-hand effect.
 
*(Statistics calibrated in the American League)
 
During the 2013 season, Jose Altuve didn’t have a firm-grip in the major leagues. On a rather atrocious Astros club that had stunk for a long time, spanning back to the Carlos Beltran days, they were scuffling and being spanked in the shadows of their unforsaken superstar. Under manager Bo Porter, unbeknownst to the Astros that they would have 2 MVP candidates and Hank Aaron best hitter awards, under their 2013 disposal (JD Martinez and Jose Altuve), they wound up a travesty rather than a juggernaut, drowning under 4 consecutive seasons of sub-60 win play. After Martinez was run outta town, Jose Altuve barely scraped by as a undrafted free agent and frankly played above expectation with all-star accolade to this credit. Nonetheless he hit .276 during the beginning month of April in 2014, pretty accurate representation of his career to that point. From that point on, Altuve wound up hitting a whopping .357, and vaulting his name into the MVP conversation, and having the best batting average, most hits, and 10th best OPS in the AL for what it's worth. A bargain in my boat, for a player that hadn’t exceeded an average above .290 and amassed a 6.1 WAR after a 2013 WAR of just 1.0!
 
That’s one way you could express how little the first handful of games has on the rest of the season. The Twins postseason road down look as bleak as it did a few years back, however there’s little doubt that the behind the Yanks or Sox, their is a tier of about 3-5 clubs that could contest for the final spot and courtesy to play the latter of the loaded brethren in the AL East. The Rays and Athletics are also both, ballclubs that could collectively catch fire at any point if all things go right respectively, and the Angels aren’t a snooze themselves with perennial sluggers who could easily foil the Twins plan. The final spot should be hotly contested and the Twins need to orchestrate a bunch of runs, and configure somewhat of a capable staff, that has room for improvement. So, if your left partly conforming, or a down the middle perception on this club, that’s okay. I reckon that is the first team in years, that in every department of the roster I could point to that position group carrying the load. The offense is as dynamic and stacked in this century as it ever will be, the starting pitching staff possesses some electric and bat-missing stuff, and the bullpen has the makings of a shutdown backend if things goes according to plan. Not enough yet to be playoff or bust, but something around the ballpark would be fair.
 
So I caution those jumping on the bandwagon and already scoreboard watching, to take the opening week of games with a grain of salt. So those needless stats of the 1 HR, and the insane 0-fer that Eddie Rosario snapped don’t really have tangible effect through the course of a season. Jose Berrios’s 10k, 7⅔ outing was impressive and all that, but really does it do a testament on Jose’s stuff or really just crucifies how mishmashy the Cleveland lineup is in its patchwork. How many times have we heard that the road to the Twins postseason runs will go as far as Buxton and Sano goes? Well the reality check is, Buxton is showing signs of improvement and candidly is playing as purposefully as I've ever seen and Sano isn’t on the roster. More or less, to the antithesis of Sano’s and Buxton’s liability to this team, is how important the newcomers need to perform to keep this team from falling off a cliff. Is it to early to say, that I sense collapse over the horizon?
 
Regardless of how explicitly I may tread to heed caution, I can’t even refrain from excitement, myself. What’s for certain though? That this season will go haywire, for good or bad, and whatever of which will only the heighten the scope of interest on this club.
 
So, (Don’t Jinx it, Don’t Jinx it, DON’T JINX IT) this season gonna be crazy good. The Phillies will provide a great litmus test of superior competition nearing the weeks end, and let’s just hope we give it to them good, and scurry to the Bronx with something more than a .500 record.
 
 
 
From the Outer Galaxy of Fantasy,
 
Sabir Aden

The Twins have played 3% of the scripted schedule, and are on pace to eclipse 130 wins, and a meager 32 losses. Not to mention the Twins are well on their way to capture the division title, but would only be slated to the second seed in the conference seeding chart, playing the mediocre, (but good?) Seattle Mariners in the divisional round.


HOLD YOUR HORSES, PEOPLE
 
Consider this. If the entire season was tabulated in the form of a baseball game, meaning that each of the 54 outs recorded in a game would be translated to represent each of the 162 scheduled games, the Twins haven’t even recorded the second out of that very game. That’s a super complicated way of synthesizing that the season is grueling monster, and that 4 games can't really convey any semblance of what the Twins midseason form might be, much less their state come season’s end. Sample size is a word occasionally tossed around as a gauge to what’s legit or not, and no matter how much of a buzzkill word sample size is, it's a small sample size. You can’t go wrong with 4-1, but playing a awfully decimated Indians club and the tantalizingly pesky and obnoxious, but inferior Royals rosters does nothing in solidifying or cementing our far-fetched hopes to a stellar season.
 
So people don't get all worked up or hyped that Byron Buxton’s hitting .500, or that Marwin Gonzalez cannot hold the trigger on a curveball for his life, or that Willians Astudillo is current sizing up as the best hitter in the history of baseball, because the reality of it is that these players either scorching hot or ice cold will eventually fall in line with their typical production outputs, UNLESS there's some superior extraneous force that might mitigate someone’s (wink*wink*Logan Morrison wink*wink*) career slashline. Typically in baseball you don’t see dramatic changes in someone’s batting line for example, and prospect development is a great indicator of this, unless there’s a change in scenery, or shift in a regime (managerial usually). Here is one physical scenario.
 
I wanted to chose someone someone semi-millennial, preferably still active to debate this debate or myth of the hot-hand effect.
 
*(Statistics calibrated in the American League)
 
During the 2013 season, Jose Altuve didn’t have a firm-grip in the major leagues. On a rather atrocious Astros club that had stunk for a long time, spanning back to the Carlos Beltran days, they were scuffling and being spanked in the shadows of their unforsaken superstar. Under manager Bo Porter, unbeknownst to the Astros that they would have 2 MVP candidates and Hank Aaron best hitter awards, under their 2013 disposal (JD Martinez and Jose Altuve), they wound up a travesty rather than a juggernaut, drowning under 4 consecutive seasons of sub-60 win play. After Martinez was run outta town, Jose Altuve barely scraped by as a undrafted free agent and frankly played above expectation with all-star accolade to this credit. Nonetheless he hit .276 during the beginning month of April in 2014, pretty accurate representation of his career to that point. From that point on, Altuve wound up hitting a whopping .357, and vaulting his name into the MVP conversation, and having the best batting average, most hits, and 10th best OPS in the AL for what it's worth. A bargain in my boat, for a player that hadn’t exceeded an average above .290 and amassed a 6.1 WAR after a 2013 WAR of just 1.0!
 
That’s one way you could express how little the first handful of games has on the rest of the season. The Twins postseason road down look as bleak as it did a few years back, however there’s little doubt that the behind the Yanks or Sox, their is a tier of about 3-5 clubs that could contest for the final spot and courtesy to play the latter of the loaded brethren in the AL East. The Rays and Athletics are also both, ballclubs that could collectively catch fire at any point if all things go right respectively, and the Angels aren’t a snooze themselves with perennial sluggers who could easily foil the Twins plan. The final spot should be hotly contested and the Twins need to orchestrate a bunch of runs, and configure somewhat of a capable staff, that has room for improvement. So, if your left partly conforming, or a down the middle perception on this club, that’s okay. I reckon that is the first team in years, that in every department of the roster I could point to that position group carrying the load. The offense is as dynamic and stacked in this century as it ever will be, the starting pitching staff possesses some electric and bat-missing stuff, and the bullpen has the makings of a shutdown backend if things goes according to plan. Not enough yet to be playoff or bust, but something around the ballpark would be fair.
 
So I caution those jumping on the bandwagon and already scoreboard watching, to take the opening week of games with a grain of salt. So those needless stats of the 1 HR, and the insane 0-fer that Eddie Rosario snapped don’t really have tangible effect through the course of a season. Jose Berrios’s 10k, 7⅔ outing was impressive and all that, but really does it do a testament on Jose’s stuff or really just crucifies how mishmashy the Cleveland lineup is in its patchwork. How many times have we heard that the road to the Twins postseason runs will go as far as Buxton and Sano goes? Well the reality check is, Buxton is showing signs of improvement and candidly is playing as purposefully as I've ever seen and Sano isn’t on the roster. More or less, to the antithesis of Sano’s and Buxton’s liability to this team, is how important the newcomers need to perform to keep this team from falling off a cliff. Is it to early to say, that I sense collapse over the horizon?
 
Regardless of how explicitly I may tread to heed caution, I can’t even refrain from excitement, myself. What’s for certain though? That this season will go haywire, for good or bad, and whatever of which will only the heighten the scope of interest on this club.
 
So, (Don’t Jinx it, Don’t Jinx it, DON’T JINX IT) this season gonna be crazy good. The Phillies will provide a great litmus test of superior competition nearing the weeks end, and let’s just hope we give it to them good, and scurry to the Bronx with something more than a .500 record.
 
 
 
From the Outer Galaxy of Fantasy,
 
Sabir Aden

There was an effort to discuss this topic awhile ago, but I thought I would pick it up again now that the rumors and suggestions are increasing about what to do with the existing pitching staff, both starters and relievers.
 
I'm not someone who lives and breathes Baseball Reference, but I think a strong statistical analysis is the best route to take in considering both 1) what the front office is thinking; and 2) what the needs and holes are with the existing roster.
 
So let's assume that in a 162-game season, you will have 35-40 games a year that you will lose on the road without having to pitch a 9th inning, but you will have a dozen extra-inning games that will stretch the innings. Last year, we had 1443.1 innings pitched in the season; we know (from painful experience) that a handful of those will be pitched by position players (we had 3.2 last year), but given the numbers, let's ignore that for now. We need to fill 1,443 innings.
 
My math (also from the Twins page on Baseball Reference) shows that 907 of those innings (thereabouts, as I didn't try to winnow out how many innings that Gabriel Moya threw as a starter rather than reliever, or several others, but spitballed it with those types of players) were pitched by starters. That averages 5.2 innings per start, and whether you use the opener strategy or a "traditional" starting pitcher, (then calling the "starter" the primary pitcher rather than the opener) you are hoping to get something close to that out of your primary/starter.
 
That leaves room for optimism, as we can hope that the slate of starters picks it up a notch (whether that is 5 guys or 15 over the course of a season), but let's assume they don't, that we need 536 innings out of the non-starters. My quick South Dakota math tells me that is 3 1/3 innings per game.
 
I am also going to assume that we will roll with a 13-man pitching staff, unless the starters are on track to bump their innings to a level where the remaining innings can be handled by 7 guys (and that doesn't appear to be the case, but if we get to a point where starters are putting in over 1,000 innings combined, we might). How can we best divide innings for our 8-person staff so as to make that possible?
 
1) Simple but wrong - that is 67 innings per reliever per year (and no, I don't assume that the same 8 guys will man the posts all season, but perhaps like a second unit in basketball, the substitutes will take the innings/minutes not played by the first string). 8 guys getting 67 innings per year means that within a 26-week season, each relief pitcher would pitch roughly 3 innings per week.
 
2) More specialized - A look at the "typical" workload of a closer shows that they average pretty close to that number - 65-75 innings per year, maybe 30-40 of which are in closing situations. I don't expect the Twins to vary significantly from that role, even if they don't have that player on their roster right now (I think they do in Trevor May). But for purposes of this analysis, let's say we do have a closer (whether May or Allen from the Indians or someone else, that can be debated) and that person pitches 70 innings.
 
3) Who does what? That leaves us with 466 innings. I think we can pencil in Reed (for all of these guys, let's just say "assuming health" without really assuming that all of them will stay healthy for the year) Hildenberger, and Rogers for 70 innings each. That's not unreasonable, given their traditional workloads, again citing this page: https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/MIN/2018.shtml#all_team_pitching.
 
Now we're down to it. That is 280 innings pitched by the core four relievers, leaving 256 remaining innings for 4 pitchers. The names of those now-existing pitchers includes Romero, Stewart, Gonsalves, Moya, Littell, Slegers, Vasquez, Curtiss, DeJong, Duffy, and Magill (I'm assuming for our discussion that Mejia is our 5th starter, but you can change names if you want to).
 
While only 4 of them can be on the roster at once, many of the remaining names have options and can be shuffled between leagues as need arises.
 
4) Opener strategy - if the team is indeed - as has been hinted - considering an opener strategy, it seems that Stewart and Gonsalves might be the primary candidates for those roles (lining up with Mejia and Pineda, possibly Odorizzi). If we utilized them for the typical 30 starts that your #3 through 5 starters get, and hoping for 2+ innings - once through the order and averaging a little over a hit and walk per inning means that you face 9 batters while getting roughly 6 2/3 outs or 2 1/6 innings per open). 2.16 times 30 equals 65 innings, so 130 innings with two openers.
 
5) We have now defined several spots (which can be intermingled or altered depending on performance), but we allot 907 innings to Berrios, Gibson, Odorizzi, Pineda and Mejia; we allot 280 innings to May, Hildenberger, Reed and Rogers; we allot 130 innings to Stewart and Gonsalves.
 
That leaves - ta-daa! - 126 innings to be covered by two remaining pitchers with Romero and Vasquez and Moya as your primary candidates, the third of them stashed at AAA and the remaining names, plus potentials in Tyler Jay, Jake Reed, et al lined up behind. That strikes me as do-able, especially if Romero emerges as the long man to back up short starts from Berrios, Gibson or Odorizzi, and Vasquez/Moya as the short-stint lefty.
 
6) Now who do you want? Once whittled down to innings and performers for those innings, any discussion of a reliever or starter should also include the ramifications of what happens to the pecking order and opportunities for the above players. If we added a 5th starter, for instance, a Wade Miley (no offense, but please don't) and he took up his share of those 900 innings, either Mejia is bumped back into the core of 4 relievers, or one of the opener positions or one of the two remaining slots. Who should be bumped? Knock out Gonsalves for Mejia and leave the rest the same? Knock out Stewart? Move Mejia into Hildenberger's innings, Hildenberger into Moya/Vasquez's innings? Do we consider not giving Romero an audition in the regular season?
 
While I think the strategy of strengthening the bullpen is a sound one, I get far more lost in the thinking process when I follow the logical chain and try to decide what this means for our chances of promoting from within or giving real opportunity to a slew of candidates.
 
Best guess - no more starters will be signed (other than minor league contracts with an invite in case someone intriguing slips through the wintertime cracks), 1 more dependable reliever, only one opener (either Stewart or Gonsalves) to pair with Mejia, the other to start at AAA, plus Hildenberger, Rogers, May and Reed. Remaining two slots are taken by Romero as more of a long man and either Moya or Vasquez as the 8th arm/lefty. I think you also have to cut bait with some of the remaining names and keep your roster alive with players who could be optioned as the season progresses, even if that player isn't the one causing the gaping void. The more you fill this roster with veterans and guaranteed contracts, the more you make that flexibility impossible and are forced into waiver/release positions on players. I'd rather be in a position to take on someone else's unfortunate waiver casualty than be forced into one of our own.
 
Happy holidays everyone!

A Quick Intro:


Happy Super Bowl Sunday, everyone! If you’re anything like me, another year with no real “dog in the fight” so to speak, I’ll be mostly meandering around the kitchen and living room – eating too much junk, maybe having a drink or two, passively watching the game whilst waiting for a decent commercial to come on. Then, of course, judge them harshly against all of my favorite Super Bowl commercials from the past. My wife asked me who was playing in the Super Bowl last week, I literally had to take a moment and think, thankfully my 10 year old son chimed in with the correct answer pretty quickly so I was able to save some face. Needless to say, I’m not exactly the world’s biggest football fan (Skol Vikings, though).
Baseball is only 11 days away. Time to get excited.

A Cardinal Comparison


Alright. Credit where credit is due, the inspiration for this comes from an article Brandon Warne wrote, where he basically broke down three distinct categories of teams through his lens. Broken down into tiers, he had the Yankees tier – of which we have never ( or should never ) expected the Twins to live up to – the Cardinals tier, and the Rays tier. The article was tailored around roster construction and payroll behaviors, and I think it’s a pretty cogent place to start.
 
On the surface, there is no reason the Twins shouldn’t be operating like the St. Louis Cardinals. According to Sports Media Watch, Minneapolis-St. Paul is the 15th largest sports team media market in the country, outpacing St. Louis with 1.713 million Nielson homes vs. 1.164 million. The Cardinals “new” one billion ($1B dollar), 15 year television deal with Fox Sports Midwest, signed in 2015, kicked in during the 2018 season and paid the team a cool $50 million dollars. The Twins current television deal with Fox Sports North that runs through 2023, pays an average of $40 million annually. Considering the term, the Twins could feasibly expect their next deal to reach (or exceed) similar numbers.
 
To be fair, being a well-run organization over several decades have some salient advantages, also. If we look at simply Forbes valuations of the Cardinals, they rank #7 in all of Major League baseball, vs. 22nd for the Twins. If we look at the attendance figures for the 2018 season, the Cardinals had the 3rd highest attendance vs. 19th for the Twins. Without getting into the weeds too much, there is a pretty stark discrepancy in direction the franchises have taken when one brand is worth $110 million and the others is worth $245 million. The amount of revenue per fan coming into the Cardinals organization is $87, the same revenue per fan coming to the Twins is $45.
The Cardinals, perennial contenders in one of (if not THE) toughest divisions in baseball, manage to win – and win consistently – despite having some of the “disadvantages” the Twins seem to embattle themselves with every season. The dreaded small market stigma. The last season with a losing record, you might ask? 2007.
The Twins, on the other hand, are neck deep in the worst decade (winning percentage, wise) in franchise history, post 1961.
 

Farming


Winning is probably a big factor. Everything seems better when you’re winning. Even just winning enough to be competitive every year, it just feels different. Attendance figures, generally, rise during winning seasons – or stretches of winning seasons. Fan investment in the team also tends to go full bore fevered pitch. The city buzzes. Everyone wants to be part of a winner. Fans, players – free agents – all like to be part of a winner.
If we really boil it down, though, its front office management, player development and scouting . When we are talking this tier, the margins between success and failure are razor thin. If you didn’t notice, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, the Yankees went through a recent rebuilding phase (The urge to laugh hysterically is palpable) – but when you have the kind of resources that could feasibly build a real Death Star (read: buy a team of all-stars, if need be), if you fail to draft and develop well – that team can still field a competent team. For teams like the Twins, and the Cardinals, drafting and developing talent poorly for any stretch of time is a death knell. The Cardinals, however, are the gold standard.
 
Let’s make a quick comparison. In the last decade, just 1st round draft picks (again, the Cardinals haven’t had a losing season since 2007, so, not exactly low 1st round picks) the names drafted include Shelby Miller, Kolton Wong, Michael Wacha, Luke Weaver and Dakota Hudson. They account for a 32.7 fWAR, and some pretty competent MLB players. Dakota Hudson was the 93rd ranked MLB prospect in 2018. Mind you, this isn’t even including the Randall Grichuk’s or Oscar Tavares’s (who unfortunately left us too soon), these are just the 1st rounders.
 
Over that same time frame, the Twins have drafted Kyle Gibson and Byron Buxton who have spent any significant time in the MLB, for a combined 14.6 fWAR. Alex Wimmer threw 7.1 IP for the Twins in 2017. Levi Michael has famously (infamously) never figured it out. Kohl Stewart has 36.2 IP, all in this last 2018 season, and may be a late bloomer, but has yet to contribute anything meaningful. Nick Gordon, Alex Kirilloff and Royce Lewis might each develop into something special, there is reason to be hopeful.
 
Building a winner from within is key, and that’s all player development, scouting, drafting and a savvy front office. We’ve seen this recently from the Astros and Indians, and to a lesser extent (because of available resources) the Chicago Cubs. Winning brings money, winning brings the desire to play in a specific market – and winning builds trust with the fan base.
 

The Open Window


If you’ve hung with me this long, great job, thanks for reading and I appreciate each and every one of you. Really, you don’t know how much it means to me that people actually take an interest in what I have to write. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
 
I will end this on a hopeful note for the future. The 2019 season is on the horizon and every team is tied for first place. All of the hallmarks that make the Cardinals the Cardinals, the drafting and scouting, analytics and player development, a smart front office and managerial staff – all of these factors that make the Cardinals the gold standard and placeholder of this middle tier of baseball teams - are things the Twins have motioned and positioned themselves toward.
 
Even as the frustration toward payroll utilization (I feel you, I could’ve written an entire piece on that as well) mounts, let’s not forget the Twins have tangibly moved themselves away from the “old business” – the good ol’ boys club, the antiquated, advanced metric information-phobic era - and sprinted toward embracing new information, coaching methods, erstwhile maintaining payroll flexibility for the next decade.
The Twins seem to be pressing all the right buttons toward being a gold standard of their own, and seating themselves in the middle tier.
 
Let’s Go Twins.

When players and owners put pen to paper on the last collective bargaining agreement, the hope seemed to be that a combination of revenue-sharing and a luxury tax would work in concert to allow all organizations to field competitive teams. The players went along with the traditional formula of underpaying minor leaguers, and locking up younger players for pre-arbitration (3 years, or at least 2 years if you were a Super 2 - including a minimum 86 days and being in the top 22% of your same-year peers in service time in the most recent season). That was followed by three more years of arb eligibility.
 
But after six years, all those players who had not already signed long-term deals would be free agents. They would have reached the open market, competing to divvy up all that shared money, with at least a few teams pushing up to - and past - the luxury tax.
 
Teams weren't supposed to make deliberate decisions to sacrifice on-field performance in the hope of accumulating cheap young players, rising in the draft (and international bonus pool money), trading away players in their second- or third-year of arbitration for lower-level flyers. The recent success of Kansas City and Houston employing that strategy to draft or trade veterans for high-end controllable talent, then supplementing that core with an expensive free agent or two, and winning a World Series, has not helped matters.
 
For when a team or two employs that strategy, it gives them an edge in the construction of a future ballclub, at the price of fielding their best possible current team. When over half the league simultaneously employs that strategy, you end up with a lot of very poor baseball - and a lot of veteran players seeking out roles on the few teams remaining who will even consider employing them.
 
How do we fix this? How do we simultaneously bring in new players, reward veterans, encourage analytics in personnel, and avoid the bust-and-build strategy? There is no one answer, but rather, a combination of factors, that seem necessary.
 
A spending floor - Every team would have a requirement to spend a percentage of revenues, approaching 50%. This idea would promote the service of free agents to make sure teams spend sufficiently. It would also allow smaller-market teams to creatively invest in arb- and pre-arb extensions to give their teams financial and personnel stability. I can imagine owners neither wish to advertise their revenues or their utilization of those, or have their hands tied in deciding how to construct their teams. How can we be required to spend money on players whose contractual obligations might serve to block a simultaneous core of younger players more in need of big-league development?
 
Given the disparity in revenue from top to bottom, one could also imagine a scenario where this could lead to unfair monopolization. Are the Dodgers now required to spend twice as much as other teams? Aren't we going to hit a point where the floor for the top teams comes dangerously close to the luxury tax we don't want them to spend beyond? We Twins fans (as most other teams not pushing the luxury envelope) have seen some pretty questionable roster moves made solely based on economics and options remaining , but one can imagine a team having to retain a $12 million albatross rather than promote a rookie in order to stay above sea level.
 
Draft order and draft compensation for lost free agents - I suggested a lottery system for the first three rounds in an earlier article. I saw another suggestion that the team that came closest to the playoffs would pick first, on down to the worst non-playoff team, and then finally the playoff teams from worst to first. The concern here is that teams could easily be stuck in hellish mediocrity for a long time, unable to select the top draft picks, and unable to elevate their seasons, perhaps because of a single poor long-term signing that weighs down payroll for seasons to come.
 
I will confess that I like a little competitive imbalance - races in which all drivers have the same exact car are not interesting to me. Even with revenue-sharing, a luxury tax and a spending floor, some teams are going to be more able to sign premium players than others. That is fine with me - it is when this practice is combined with the lack of a spending floor and half the league serving as a development pool for the top 8 teams that it maligns the sport.
 
Many other ideas have been floated - decrease the amount of time until free agency. Decrease the amount of time until arbitration eligibility. Increase the pay of every level of minor leaguers, and the minimum salary for anyone making a big-league club.
 
Some ideas promote greater interest in the sport from a less-patient audience (the "bigger pie" theory) - fewer trips to the mound. A pitch clock. A 3-batter minimum for any pitcher. The universal DH combined with a 26-man roster with a 13-pitcher maximum (wait, you just killed the LOOGY but you want to double the number of jobs for the aging slugger?). A much smaller roster expansion in September, so late-season games don't become a substitution-fest. An international draft. Major league free agency taking place all in the week after the Super Bowl. I'm not convinced personally that drastic changes to the sport will do more to bring in new fans than it will to alienate traditional ones, though common-sense pace-of-play tweaks seem justified.
 
Of all the items out there, to me, the salary floor is the key. Simply by requiring a certain amount be spent by each team allows minor leaguers to survive, young major leaguers to be compensated earlier and more highly, and still retains a share of revenue that every team is going to need to spend on the accumulation of veterans. All the other competitive balance measures fail if not coupled with a requirement, at least, to try.

♪Tis the season for Spring Training♪,
♪Come Along with me to Fort Myers♪
 
Not as catchy as I contemplated, but the day pitchers and catchers report usually marks a new focus for the American Sports Landscape. You get predictions, it’s (newly inundated) but the clock’s ticking for free agency crunch time, rosters battles are waged as players jockey for roster positioning, and the fresh aroma of roster cuts lingers through the air. No better time of year, especially since every club is granted a new slate to which to engrave their fate. With the season rapidly approaching, spring training is the time of year which rejuvenates the baseball brethren. You get some real baseball (exhibition practice) but baseball more or less, despite the majority of us being in an absolute winter inferno.
 
Speaking of Spring Training, it's also the time where newly added players begin sporting snazzy and brand new spanking merch and apparel. The Twins have infused their voids with many of these stop-gaps, budget friendly assets through free agency. Martin Perez, Blake Parker, Michael Pineda, Nelson Cruz, and C.J. Cron only begin the conversation of what new faces we probably might see play significant roles during the season. Among the most recently acquired faces, is Marwin Gonzalez.
 
When reports surfaced that the Twins were interested in Gonzalez, let's say I was fairly reluctant that they would incline to pull trigger. And I assure, I wasn’t alone. But, sitting in biology class taking a genetics quiz I nearly lurched outta my seat as my phone buzzed incessentally. Let’s just presume that I wasn’t doing anything against the rules beforehand, but I literally couldn’t not stop smiling after I found out. But to my compadres, me enjoying this reprehensible quiz just added another layer of my peculiarity to my mantle. And in hindsight, I aced that quiz so who’s winning now….
 
But aside from this tangent, let’s analyze MarWIN, its implications on the roster picture, my horrendous takes on Sano and Buxton, and other housecleaning duties we must confer about because of my long absence (Sorry). Let’s dig’in
 
MarWINS = More Wins?
The Twins made some buzz and fairly interesting news on a Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, signing maybe* (we’ll get to that part later…) one of the under the radar gems of the free agency class—Marwin Gonzalez to a very cost-friendly 2 year, 21 million dollar deal. It’s funny how the Twins went from offseason failure to preseason sleepers in a matter of days after striking luck with the versatile man but….
 


 
You’ve probably already surfed the internet for some introductory description or sort of primer to what Gonzales provides. But for the sake of those who didn’t here’s a brief report card on the guy the Astros nicknamed Margo (appropriately named)...
 
Dubbed the Jack of all Trades, Swiss Army Knife, Utility Man Extraordinaire and whatnot, Marwin Gonzalez was once a fabulous hitter in 2017. Prognosticators had thought he would have only bulked up the 2018 free agent crop, but a rough 2018 get-go depressed his stats and this suppressed market only further lessened his margins. We’ll get to the intriguing tidbits later, but in short and sweet delivery Marwin succumbed to depreciation-itis and proved to be less a safety valve contributor to the Astros than his 2017 numbers would suggest. Reading around 2017 articles of Marwin, some tabloids had been lobbying for Marwin to push for MVP votes, and in retrospect it’s rather hard to believe. What comes to Marwin’s calling however is his insane versatility. The AL’s closest apparent to Ben Zobrist, Marwin played the role of super-utility during his time down south, and had a breakout 2017 campaign.
 


 
Gonzalez should at minimum provide exemplary depth, but its clouds my judgement that the Twins went luxury over necessity (pitching). I’m further dumbfounded that bulk inning eaters like Gio Gonzalez and Dallas Keuchel still remain waiting for some appealing offers. My dumbfoundedness is further compounded because there isn’t any shortchange of any money to invest in some semi-lucrative contracts. Getting back to Marwin, I kinda do enjoy this veil of obscurity in what your getting in Marwin. So I dived in to his stats an…..
 


 
Marwin was super lucky in 2017. And he wasn’t in 2018. This explain his nondiscript aberration that soared him up into the 2017 MVP discussion. I spoke about wOBA and expected wOBA in my last article conveniently hyperlinked and located nearby here, but if you’re too lazy like me here’s a short snippet….
 
[wOBA is simply a synthesized linear statistic where singles/walks are considered as a the primary building block, and incrementally scales a hit as for it’s due result. Expected wOBA is as self-explanatory as it sounds, and just express the quality of contact and how it yields to on field results. Their are some flaws to this that might apply to (X PLAYER) for being left handed, but if a player scorches a frozen rope and persists to label it INTO THE SHIFT, xwOBA would flag that as an unlucky hit, even though the entire left side of the infield is just begging for a bunt down the left field line. This is what hinders the stat, and I haven’t found a way to quantify how much this action has tainted (X PLAYER’s) stat value.]
 


 
When I used Baseball Savant to tailor the pool with the highest differentials of wOBA and expecting, essentially denoting the most lucky hitters, I found Gonzalez at the top of list with a shocking amount of amassed luck. Which explains why he had a high.303 batting average. I would like to get more in-depth with his OBP and wider array of his totals in 2017 outlier season, but it's clear that luck isn't a sustainable trait and if you want more just go here.
 
This offense now appears more meticulous and premeditated than a patchwork assembly in the years past, and with Gonzalez I think this has some sudden implications. I’m currently at work with my piece for my Opening Day roster prediction, but for now I can tell this lineup is going to kindle a lot of traffic on the bases and by implementing boom in the form of Cruz, Cron and Schoop it has loads of boom or bust potential. I going to admit even I couldn’t have fathomed a offense this dynamic would actually be wearing Twins uniforms coming into the 2019 season. Yet I feel the rhetoric is still glass half empty (alluding to the pitching fronts). Yet I feel this offense can compete with the premier firepower offenses of the AL (on paper at least). Could we be entering the dawn of a monolithic juggernaut? My jaded and (not level headed) convoluted glasses lenses having me saying that. Or I’m probably just super pumped.
 
Speaking of juggernauts, let’s forensically say the Twins offense will cook. I don’t believe that’s a question unless something catastrophic happens which has a funny way of playing out strangely enough?! But on paper I think you have an offense that might mimic the historic (raking) K.C royals in terms of from top to bottom. I could honestly go on and rattle off and outline a parade of heavily optimistic circumstances that each player in this lineup could feasibly do. What this lineup is, is healthy and fruitful and abundant in it’s upside and spunk. If they just played to their abilities we wouldn’t be staring at a constant cycle of depressing yearly season exits that make us dispel our hope. So boys just…...
Buxton-hit for average
Sano- be 2016 you
Kepler- let development journey take in full effect
Polanco- play like the 2017 you (without PEDS)
Cruz-destroy baseballs
Cron- hit as far as those muscles can take you
Castro- don’t swing at those high fastballs
Schoop- deep soul searching for some all star swagger and lose the rust
Rosario- be freakin awesome and all the power to yah
So far what the Twins lack in is pitching. But no so long ago, did we see a frontline staff make the postseason with BARTOLO COLON, DILLON GEE, MATT BELISLE, and HECTOR SANTIAGO’s elicit shells manning our staff. Aside from the much more stiffer completion, there resides a little recurring theme in all the Twins moves. They’re banking on the bouncebacks. Hildenberger, Reed, May, Pineda, Buxton, Sano, and many more are players that in a perfectly Twins oriented world should be able to recreate their peak performances or fulfill their prospect potential. All we can do is let it unfold before our eyes. So take a seat back and hunker down on a menacing joyride of hell that is the Twins season.
 
The Buck and Sano Scoop;
I’ve been preaching for the Twins to sign a high-caliber relievers to shore up the bullpen all offseason, at such a profound volume that I’m starting to feel like I’m sounding like a broken record. But imagining Kimbrel in our bullpen gets me hyped just even envisioning it, and any passable reliever you’d be even marginally comfortable handling the 9th inning would get my red stamp of approval. This makes me wonder why I would be resistant or even hesitant on with signing a premier commodity over some cheap flyers (no offense) in the case of Gonzo, Cruz and Schoop etc… It’s because of Sano and Buxton.
 
Every coming season since 2014 have I found myself convinced that ‘This is the Year’ and ‘they’re going to flick the switch’ or found myself defending their culpable cases by saying ‘its bound to be time they hit their stride’. But it’s time to set a ultimatum. This year is the final audition year to sparkle just a scintilla of that superstar pulse we’ve all been fixated on eventually showing. But let's be real. I’m going to speak as candidly as I can (maybe to an excess) but this is the season they must either
Put up
Or shut up.
No undisclosed, or half hearted excuses. This is the final tryout act. So let's speak a little speculation, shall we.
 
Let’s say they (Sano and Buxton) spearhead a blistering first half and you hunker down on some legitimate division title hopes. You supplement and complement during the trade deadline and weigh the options of adding a short term implicating star to at least temporarily get you over the hump. We can levy and count our losses if all goes wrong later, but that’s what I would do (yet what am I to believe). But in the case of Buxton and Sano faltering and underperforming you sever your ties and reload with the next wave of incoming prospects (Alex Kirilloff, Royce Lewis, Brusdar Graterol etc.) Some rationale has to dictate hope and promise and the end of line repercussions must be enforced. As a faithful and diehard (maybe to my disadvantage) as Twins fans we must stop settling with this modest and mediocre production complex, where this second rate performance is just OK, but frankly the Buck and Sano are underachieving specimens with freak of nature tangibles that can’t muster any of the things you'd expect they could. How many hitters like Sano’s build and frame are there that just strike you as someone who literally could annihilate the baseball and maybe the bat they use to hit it. But they strike out at such an excessive rate that their warts mask their Kodak moments. In reality Sano possesses no athletic mobility, can’t play anything close to passable defense anywhere so they have to be relegated to a 1st basemen role they probably play substandardly (Heck we’ve got 2 of those guys in Tyler Austin, Lucas Duda and toss in C.J. Cron too). In Buxton’s case, I could probably spot and distinguish with identical profiles similar players on every single team. Perhaps the Billy Hamilton’s, Jarrod Dyson’s, Rajai Davis’s, Jose Iglesias’s of the world that are literal speed demons who can flat out fly on the basepaths, and play dynamite outfield/infield D, but can’t muster any kind of sufficiency in their offensive game that they end up contributing as a negative anchor in the grand scheme. Just look at Melvin Upton, who has been staked as a similar player comp. (in the early years when Buxton showed promise) that if you keep a baseline level of competency and competitiveness and you're instantly vaulted into the MVP conversation. Now changes like that are drastic, but say that Buxton hits for average and plays like the 2nd half 2017 phenom he was, and Sano plays exactly like the 1st half 2017 mauler he was. Now you have a expectation setter or baseline ceiling (weirdly redundant) for the on-field product they can yield. In the right mind it's practically inconceivable for me that Buxton and Sano live up to their respective game-wrecker, superstar labels that they were pegged, but rest assured they should be able to contribute a feasible fringe all-star 3 WAR. In that case, at least we get a disclaimer of what were are dealing with they. So….Sano and Buxton…..NO PRESSURE

This is the second winter that Glen Perkins will not be gearing up towards playing in the regular season for the Minnesota Twins after his retirement following the 2017 season. The baby-faced pitcher with a bright smile that fans became used too, is still there, but now, it’s hidden behind a large grey beard. Like every Minnesotan, right now he’s just trying to survive winter, yearning for the days where he would be in Fort Myers for Spring Training at this time. The Stillwater native, who now resides in Lakeville, is at peace with how his career went.
 
Playing his whole career with Minnesota Twins was “surreal”. “I went to a lot of games in high school. In the spring, on Wednesday’s, they would have $5 tickets and $1 hot dogs. I still remember as a kid, sitting up in right field watching Tom Brunanski and Kent Hrbek play catch,” Perkins said. He hasn’t taken for granted how lucky he was to be a Twin for his whole career. Not only that, but to make friends with his childhood icons and former Twins as well. It’s every fans dream.
 
The Twins had three 1st round picks in the 2004 MLB draft. They selected Trevor Plouffe at pick number 20, Perkins at pick number 22 and Kyle Waldrop at pick 25. All three players made it to the major leagues. Many first-round picks don’t make the major leagues, the Twins had not one, not two, but three from one draft. For Perkins, being drafted by the Twins was the perfect match. “It kind of worked out that I was getting clumped into that 15-25 range, the Twins had three picks and they like local guys. I got picked to pitch for the Twins, pitch for the organization just out of pure luck,” he said. Perkins pure luck turned into joy for many fans who had followed him since his playing days at Stillwater high school and the University of Minnesota.
 
Throughout his career Perkins only experienced one playoff game playing for the Twins. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to what his most memorable moment on the field was, the 2014 MLB All-Star game in Minnesota. “That night running out on the field, the crowd and all those things, I had said at that time, unless I got to pitch a World Series game at Target Field nothing could top that.” Perkins went on to pitch one scoreless inning, striking out one and collecting the save as the American League All-Stars beat the National League.
 
Collecting saves was not always what Perkins had in mind for his playing career. Being a starter his whole career, relieving did not appeal to him. “My wife had asked me one time if I would ever be a reliever, as I was a starter coming up, I said no. I’m going to be a starter and all that, I’ll never be a closer or anything like that. That was 2008, 2009 and 2010 and all of a sudden four-years later I was closing an All-Star game,” said Perkins. Looking back at it now, Perkins wished he had switched to a reliever earlier in his career.
 
The days off in between starts for a guy who has ADD were quite boring for him and as a reliever he had a chance to be a part of the team every day. “I struggled with going to the field knowing that I’m going to be on my own today and I don’t even know if people would have known if I showed up or not.” Moving to closer was something he grew to love. “This team is trying to get me the ball at the end of the game and that’s a really cool feeling, that’s motivating and I think that’s what kind of helped me succeed as I got into that role,” he said. Perkins went on top be one of most dominant closers for a three-year span collecting 102 saves between the 2013 and 2015 seasons. His success came from a love for analytics.
 
Perkins developed a love for math in his early years and when he found out that baseball had advanced metrics to analyze, he jumped right on it. “There really wasn’t a whole lot of analytics or anything like that when I first started playing and then it was around 2009 when I kind of discovered that there was people talking about and it still was far from mainstream. That’s why I started to learn about pitch trajectories and spins rates,” said Perkins. In 2009, Perkins was already in pro-ball for nearly five-years, but when he found analytics it made baseball “fun” for him.
 
Leaving the Twins never appealed to Perkins, the idea of living out of suitcase throughout the entire regular season was not for him. Not only that, but being with the Twins and in his home state for his entire career was what he wanted most. “It was always cool to me to be able to watch Twins players growing up as a kid in Minnesota knowing that I got to be out on that field having kids in Minnesota watch me play. I think that was more important than money, more important than seeing what other teams were trying to go win with another team. It was always most important for me to stay home.” Perkins wanted to be home with his wife and kids, it was hard enough that he was traveling during the season, but he appreciates the fact he was able to be home more than most players on the team.
 
Perkins agent wasn’t always enthused that he wanted to stay home. “My agent always wanted me to make more money,” Perkins said with a hearty laugh. It didn’t matter to Perkins, home was where he always wanted to be. “I didn’t even want to know what it was like to play somewhere else.”

My Theoretical Mindset during the week;
The status quo surrounding the Twins all offseason was their stubbornness and inability to commit to any outside assets (in free agency or on the trade block), yet until recently did the Twins finally break that narrative. But… they were in-house pieces. By committing to two sprightly and talented yet unproven stars, have they overplayed their hand on their future plans?
 
The Twins right now are waltzing into what I would define as, a free-agency sweet spot. Where every added contributor would stabilize a liability, and boost their win total, which are at such a premium. The roster right now looks to be somewhere around the ballpark (lame pun not intended), to a potential spot in the postseason. Granted if nothing goes wrong (i.e injuries, supensions, curses) we could be staring towards a roster destined to secure a playoff, and readily prepared to be supplemented during the trade deadline. The added emphasis on a win or two or in the Twins case, blown-save-catastrophes-galore might end up sinking the ship when it comes to contention. If last year's bullpen collapses weren’t enough for you, I would say by far the Twins weakest position group lies in the most erratic, fragile and frail baseball clusters in all of baseball; the relievers.
 
I spoke about this briefly in my last article, but what Keuchel or more importantly in Kimbrel possess is a semblance of stability so unprecedented that the last guy to be a stabilizer for us, is being inducted into our hall of fame. If we focus on Kimbrel in depth, the guy is as rare of a breed your ever going to find in the relief pitching industry. I’m not going to speak about Kimbrel in depth, but what really matters is that they both (Kimbrel and Keuchel) have walked the walks, and might play that kickstarter-trailblazer kinda player to get this steam boat sailing. Somehow the Twins front office has managed to finagle towards a somewhat competitive roster, and despite not committing to any external assets, keeping the books dry of anything, and keeping the payroll at or equal to ≈ 100 million is a remarkable feat, no doubt about it. But is it time for the Twins front office to relent and issue a blockbuster contract? That’s very debatable.
 
Into the Nitty Gritty with Kepler and Polanco
Here’s a basic 101 on how rookie contracts work:
This rookie contract system is a focal point of the Collective Bargaining agreement and is tweaked and polished constantly, but it goes as follows;
 
Typically ameuteur hitters agree to a contract with major league clubs coming out of school, or out of the states globally and major league clubs are given a 5 year window on either promoting the player, or releasing him. That promotion would then start the ticking on his 6-7 year free agency departure clock, and would stay with his team through his prime and peak years on a cheap deal, until he would reach free agency (expectedly after he would be years past his best seasons*). During his 3-4 year seasons, the players earns close to nothing on a athletic player scale (I say this because 500k seems like money heaven to me). If the team elects to let the player stick around, when the player hits his 5-7 year season he can contest for a slight raise, provided if both sides agree to a compromise. Until his 7th or 8th year does the player final get his rights to a free departure, and test the market for his free agency rights.
*there are exception to this (Nelson Cruz etc).
 
We’ve seen this philosophy catch some steam in the present, with several clubs purchasing the rights of players who aren’t “seasoned or proven”, and maybe haven’t even made it to the league in some cases. What this leaves fans to savor is team friendly-contracts sculpted to buyout years of arbitration, for a couple years of free agency. Theoretically, this consumes the prime or peak years from a player, but is it really worth it. Let’s take a look.
 
*Tabulated according to Spotrac


For Kepler and Polanco, we’re seeing a hike in annual pay, over the arbitration years that somewhat amount to as what the players would earn in full amount in free agency. Both Kepler and Polanco have received somewhat mildly-risky contracts. Both have underachieved in their time on the major league spectrum, and in Polanco's case been busted for doping with PEDS. These contracts (5yr, 35 mill & 5yr, 25 mill) aren’t going to hinder or cripple the Twins in the future. What I find to be quite interesting is that the Twins have a healthy and expanding prospect pipeline coursing with talent, and yet they still inclined to purchase the underwhelming services of Kepler and Polanco. According to my fortune predictor (oh boy I’m talented fellow, yeet) these are the scenarios I see turning out. When the Twins finally open the window to a championship pursuit, either…
Polanco and Kepler are shrewd bargains
Or they both continue to lag Twins lineup, and logjam the outfield rotation (with prospects + Cave)
I decided to input Scott Kingery, because I thought his situation with the Phillies is an excellent example of when jumping the gun isn’t as picture perfect as it might seem. His contract is nearly identical in terms with Polanco and Kepler, mainly because they have the same backfire caveats and loopholes in dispatching Kingery once he gets old. Kingery hasn’t developed as rapidly as one would expect his minor league numbers would indicate, and played to the tune of a NEGATIVE W.A.R!!! (-1.5). The Phils thought he would form a dynamite paring with Hoskins and the future skeleton of that team. Instead, Manager Gabe Kapler is juggling at-bats between Maikel Franco and Kingery, who are competing to “win or earn” third base. This just hits me clear in the head as when this doesn’t work as anticipated. Just some added insight….
 
Both of these scenarios have their pros and cons. You might have to shuffle playing time between the chain of prospects and the fitful likes of Kepler, and/or Polanco. In this case you unload Kepler and/or Polanco for equitable return values, and propel prospects to replace them. Or both Kepler and Polanco emerge as building blocks and thrive, and you yield for a established major league chip, and supplement for an immediate push (hopefully sooner rather than later). The time tables are rough and tweakable, but both the former and latter are good problems to have.
 
In my mind the extinction of the concept for paying someone for what they’re worth is truly baffling me. It strikes me as that teams are playing with fire and lottery tickets, and trying to pull a quick on the player/(s). The truth to the matter is they aren’t premising the agreement toward constructive proof but rather on whim, Lady Luck, and canniness. Even with the comprehensive and elaborate analytics (which I’m all for, frankly) I don’t think it’s plausible in the right shape of mind to predict someone future who hasn’t set a baseline for what their ascension might be. For all I know, Kepler could go and revert into a complete shell of himself and morph into the eternal spirit of Nick Punto. That might be a little far-fetched, but the guy hasn’t established himself as any kind of consistent regular. He isn’t a ‘proven’ left handed vs left handed hitter (granted he improved from his abysmal marks from a year ago, but there’s a lot more left to be desired). He could turn into a complete sponge against lefty’s, and be relegated to an exclusive platoon role against righties. He’s an admirable right-fielder whose play is fairly consistent, but nothing out-worldly ala The Buck. Could he be in line for a regression? I guess that’s up to him.
 
Typically young players similar to Kepler and Polanco both experiences growing pains, and excruciatingly painful rough patches, but what usually leaves with people is that semblance of promise and hope that a player instills into a fanbase. Kepler and Polanco are by no means generational cornerstone players, but what Kepler and Polanco possess is that consistency a team as inconsistent as the Twins desperately needs. Every position has been a constantly rotating carousel of prospects, and the Twins decided to shore this up, by agreeing to terms with Max Kepler and Jorge Polanco each on intriguing multi year contract that speak to the mindset of the Falvine Front Office. I guess I’m playing Devil’s Advocate right now, because I’m sputtering trying to unravel their rationale.
 


 
There aren’t many other motives for Kepler &co and Polanco &co not to reject these deal like this. This is guaranteed money your dealing with, and the signals and indicators in this suppressed markets wouldn’t sway them that they would command much more (or any offers at all) in the open market. I wanted to take a closer examination at Kepler’s logic in this, because I find much more faith in Polanco, RF is a much more vital to Target Field, and granted he got the more lucrative contract.
 
In Kepler’s case, in some ways your betting with yourself; do you believe that Kepler would turn into a monster player and demand a lucrative contract, or do you settle with what in turn is an appealing and secure the offered multi year deal. It’s as playing with fire in the Twins perspective, and in light of him settling you could deconstruct this in either two way:
 
1. I’m concerned that Kepler would settle with a buy-low contract like this and is satisfied with staying average
2. Or the Twins got an absolute steal of a player.
 
The downsides and upsides are obviously staring us in the eyes. The guys looks he’s a got plenty of a Major League regular’s tools, but the intangibles are worrisome to me. He looks flustered, and stoic at the plate. His demeanor is “I’m under radar, so don’t notice me”. But he’s got those flashes of phenom and potential like he could rake, on an at bat to at bat basis. He got a great, pretty left handed stroke (if that’s worth anything). During 2018, we saw, provided if he hunkers down and locks in that he could hit lefties and for power. 2018 was the year he exorcised those demons and the knocks of his same handed ineptness, and not to mention he’s an above average right fielder. That’s what scares me locking into a promising yet unproven commodity.
 
I have hunch that Kepler’s in for a breakout, quasi- bounceback campaign. I conjured up 7 imperative objectives, if Kepler wants to exponentially improve, and turns his contrast into a bargain.
Don’t regress
Don’t becomes injured (is that harsh?)
Rake and Clobber
Don’t flail to back-foot breaking ball
Keep Smoking the Ball (Guy is getting better over career)
Keep hitting lefties,
Let development take its course (don’t rush it)
- I literally had this stray though, but what if players get mad at their annual salary and if they’re not getting due compensation, play below their abilities. In this case, does Kepler play to the boundary of his abilities?
 
Just on a side tangent, I stumbled on something interesting when looking through Kepler’s Numbers…..
 




 
I recall times last year that Kepler had his extreme cold spells and fits at the plate, and I wanted to see how much of this was a byproduct of bad luck. wOBA is simply a synthesized linear statistic where singles/walks are considered as a the primary building block, and incrementally scales a hit as for it’s due result. Expected wOBA is as self-explanatory as it sounds, and just express the quality of contact and how it yields to on field results. Their are some flaws to this that might apply to Kepler (for being left handed), but if a player scorches a frozen rope and persists to label it INTO THE SHIFT, xwOBA would flag that as an unlucky hit, even though the entire left side of the infield is just begging for a bunt down the left field line. This is what hinders the stat, and I haven’t found a way to quantify how much this action has tainted Kepler’s stat value. But other than that, the stat has enlightened me with some tell-tale suspicions that Kepler slumps have accentuated because of the fact he is inducing himself into slumps. I added Trout’s statistic because quite honestly, the guy is the poster boy of hitting and is a golden standard benchmark stat. The reason why we don’t see the traditional pronounced periodical slumps in Trout, (IMO) is because Trout has found a way to amplify his stretches of success, and mask the monstrosities of his slumps and skids, which help maintain sparkling wOBA’s. (Or maybe he’s just too good to be bad????)
 
This is an excellent inherent trait to have, because...
It’s a great sign of a confidence booster
It reinforces & enhances your overall stat...➡️ (Solid+Amazing=Really Good)
This all might be baloney, but I find it interesting that Kepler’s more distinct patches of droughts tend to follow the Expected wOBA. The thing is, events like this are very common young hitters, (Heck, in real life too). Kepler rides the Hot-Hand like a wave, but when he hits his lows he virtually touches rock bottom. I just find it intriguing that this kinda-gives us a view to Kepler’s psyche during this plate appearances, to my understanding. Is it that Kepler’s gloom and doom approach at the plate is making that his Expected wOBA mimics and dampens his wOBA? That’s the real question…...
 
I bet my theory will get invalidated, but I think this hints toward some better and consistent productions from Kepler in this upcoming season. Maybe just a little forward thought, the vote of confidence upstairs, in this new contract, encouragement from the staff, and some years under the belt will aid Max in carving-it-up in the Bigs.
 
But if Kepler gets better (which I’m all inclined to believe), and if his performance does ride along an expected course, Kepler’s 8th and 7th year salaries are at complete bargain bottom prices. I also believe to some minuscule or macroscopic level (or really anything in between), that this instills some motivation into players. Disregarding why people rip players who pale in comparison near nothing to the owners, it’s a vote of confidence from the Front Office. It’s not like them handing contracts is routine kinda thing, and it issues sort of closure or something close after all summer people were calling for their collective heads. I do like these contracts, if that’s what you came to read this for, but still believe (no matter how much the PR department iterates it), where Buxton and Sano go, so do the Twins. I do hope success for all these player because they will take the fall if everything crashes and burns. Both Sano and Buxton in my mind aren’t ever going to have a year of this magnitude to prove doubters and/or the FO they were destined for stardom. To make the postseason I think the Journey runs right square through Buxton and Sano cascades, and to qualify to the playoffs I think it’s unequivocally contingent if Sano and Buxton rise to the occasion.
 
This all surmises to probably befuddling you more prior to reading my tyrade/spiel but let’s simplify into simpler terms; if Kepler plays at or near a 4-5 WAR per year,(which is roughly fringe all-star level) this contract is a boon for the Twins. It's a bust if Kepler plays to a 1-3 WAR level (because the Twins have plenty of role players to insert). This also applies to some degree with Polanco.

My Theoretical Mindset during the week;
The status quo surrounding the Twins all offseason was their stubbornness and inability to commit to any outside assets (in free agency or on the trade block), yet until recently did the Twins finally break that narrative. But… they were in-house pieces. By committing to two sprightly and talented yet unproven stars, have they overplayed their hand on their future plans?
 
The Twins right now are waltzing into what I would define as, a free-agency sweet spot. Where every added contributor would stabilize a liability, and boost their win total, which are at such a premium. The roster right now looks to be somewhere around the ballpark (lame pun not intended), to a potential spot in the postseason. Granted if nothing goes wrong (i.e injuries, supensions, curses) we could be staring towards a roster destined to secure a playoff, and readily prepared to be supplemented during the trade deadline. The added emphasis on a win or two or in the Twins case, blown-save-catastrophes-galore might end up sinking the ship when it comes to contention. If last year's bullpen collapses weren’t enough for you, I would say by far the Twins weakest position group lies in the most erratic, fragile and frail baseball clusters in all of baseball; the relievers.
 
I spoke about this briefly in my last article, but what Keuchel or more importantly in Kimbrel possess is a semblance of stability so unprecedented that the last guy to be a stabilizer for us, is being inducted into our hall of fame. If we focus on Kimbrel in depth, the guy is as rare of a breed your ever going to find in the relief pitching industry. I’m not going to speak about Kimbrel in depth, but what really matters is that they both (Kimbrel and Keuchel) have walked the walks, and might play that kickstarter-trailblazer kinda player to get this steam boat sailing. Somehow the Twins front office has managed to finagle towards a somewhat competitive roster, and despite not committing to any external assets, keeping the books dry of anything, and keeping the payroll at or equal to ≈ 100 million is a remarkable feat, no doubt about it. But is it time for the Twins front office to relent and issue a blockbuster contract? That’s very debatable.
 
Into the Nitty Gritty with Kepler and Polanco
Here’s a basic 101 on how rookie contracts work:
This rookie contract system is a focal point of the Collective Bargaining agreement and is tweaked and polished constantly, but it goes as follows;
 
Typically ameuteur hitters agree to a contract with major league clubs coming out of school, or out of the states globally and major league clubs are given a 5 year window on either promoting the player, or releasing him. That promotion would then start the ticking on his 6-7 year free agency departure clock, and would stay with his team through his prime and peak years on a cheap deal, until he would reach free agency (expectedly after he would be years past his best seasons*). During his 3-4 year seasons, the players earns close to nothing on a athletic player scale (I say this because 500k seems like money heaven to me). If the team elects to let the player stick around, when the player hits his 5-7 year season he can contest for a slight raise, provided if both sides agree to a compromise. Until his 7th or 8th year does the player final get his rights to a free departure, and test the market for his free agency rights.
*there are exception to this (Nelson Cruz etc).
 
We’ve seen this philosophy catch some steam in the present, with several clubs purchasing the rights of players who aren’t “seasoned or proven”, and maybe haven’t even made it to the league in some cases. What this leaves fans to savor is team friendly-contracts sculpted to buyout years of arbitration, for a couple years of free agency. Theoretically, this consumes the prime or peak years from a player, but is it really worth it. Let’s take a look.
 
*Tabulated according to Spotrac


For Kepler and Polanco, we’re seeing a hike in annual pay, over the arbitration years that somewhat amount to as what the players would earn in full amount in free agency. Both Kepler and Polanco have received somewhat mildly-risky contracts. Both have underachieved in their time on the major league spectrum, and in Polanco's case been busted for doping with PEDS. These contracts (5yr, 35 mill & 5yr, 25 mill) aren’t going to hinder or cripple the Twins in the future. What I find to be quite interesting is that the Twins have a healthy and expanding prospect pipeline coursing with talent, and yet they still inclined to purchase the underwhelming services of Kepler and Polanco. According to my fortune predictor (oh boy I’m talented fellow, yeet) these are the scenarios I see turning out. When the Twins finally open the window to a championship pursuit, either…
Polanco and Kepler are shrewd bargains
Or they both continue to lag Twins lineup, and logjam the outfield rotation (with prospects + Cave)
I decided to input Scott Kingery, because I thought his situation with the Phillies is an excellent example of when jumping the gun isn’t as picture perfect as it might seem. His contract is nearly identical in terms with Polanco and Kepler, mainly because they have the same backfire caveats and loopholes in dispatching Kingery once he gets old. Kingery hasn’t developed as rapidly as one would expect his minor league numbers would indicate, and played to the tune of a NEGATIVE W.A.R!!! (-1.5). The Phils thought he would form a dynamite paring with Hoskins and the future skeleton of that team. Instead, Manager Gabe Kapler is juggling at-bats between Maikel Franco and Kingery, who are competing to “win or earn” third base. This just hits me clear in the head as when this doesn’t work as anticipated. Just some added insight….
 
Both of these scenarios have their pros and cons. You might have to shuffle playing time between the chain of prospects and the fitful likes of Kepler, and/or Polanco. In this case you unload Kepler and/or Polanco for equitable return values, and propel prospects to replace them. Or both Kepler and Polanco emerge as building blocks and thrive, and you yield for a established major league chip, and supplement for an immediate push (hopefully sooner rather than later). The time tables are rough and tweakable, but both the former and latter are good problems to have.
 
In my mind the extinction of the concept for paying someone for what they’re worth is truly baffling me. It strikes me as that teams are playing with fire and lottery tickets, and trying to pull a quick on the player/(s). The truth to the matter is they aren’t premising the agreement toward constructive proof but rather on whim, Lady Luck, and canniness. Even with the comprehensive and elaborate analytics (which I’m all for, frankly) I don’t think it’s plausible in the right shape of mind to predict someone future who hasn’t set a baseline for what their ascension might be. For all I know, Kepler could go and revert into a complete shell of himself and morph into the eternal spirit of Nick Punto. That might be a little far-fetched, but the guy hasn’t established himself as any kind of consistent regular. He isn’t a ‘proven’ left handed vs left handed hitter (granted he improved from his abysmal marks from a year ago, but there’s a lot more left to be desired). He could turn into a complete sponge against lefty’s, and be relegated to an exclusive platoon role against righties. He’s an admirable right-fielder whose play is fairly consistent, but nothing out-worldly ala The Buck. Could he be in line for a regression? I guess that’s up to him.
 
Typically young players similar to Kepler and Polanco both experiences growing pains, and excruciatingly painful rough patches, but what usually leaves with people is that semblance of promise and hope that a player instills into a fanbase. Kepler and Polanco are by no means generational cornerstone players, but what Kepler and Polanco possess is that consistency a team as inconsistent as the Twins desperately needs. Every position has been a constantly rotating carousel of prospects, and the Twins decided to shore this up, by agreeing to terms with Max Kepler and Jorge Polanco each on intriguing multi year contract that speak to the mindset of the Falvine Front Office. I guess I’m playing Devil’s Advocate right now, because I’m sputtering trying to unravel their rationale.
 


 
There aren’t many other motives for Kepler &co and Polanco &co not to reject these deal like this. This is guaranteed money your dealing with, and the signals and indicators in this suppressed markets wouldn’t sway them that they would command much more (or any offers at all) in the open market. I wanted to take a closer examination at Kepler’s logic in this, because I find much more faith in Polanco, RF is a much more vital to Target Field, and granted he got the more lucrative contract.
 
In Kepler’s case, in some ways your betting with yourself; do you believe that Kepler would turn into a monster player and demand a lucrative contract, or do you settle with what in turn is an appealing and secure the offered multi year deal. It’s as playing with fire in the Twins perspective, and in light of him settling you could deconstruct this in either two way:
 
1. I’m concerned that Kepler would settle with a buy-low contract like this and is satisfied with staying average
2. Or the Twins got an absolute steal of a player.
 
The downsides and upsides are obviously staring us in the eyes. The guys looks he’s a got plenty of a Major League regular’s tools, but the intangibles are worrisome to me. He looks flustered, and stoic at the plate. His demeanor is “I’m under radar, so don’t notice me”. But he’s got those flashes of phenom and potential like he could rake, on an at bat to at bat basis. He got a great, pretty left handed stroke (if that’s worth anything). During 2018, we saw, provided if he hunkers down and locks in that he could hit lefties and for power. 2018 was the year he exorcised those demons and the knocks of his same handed ineptness, and not to mention he’s an above average right fielder. That’s what scares me locking into a promising yet unproven commodity.
 
I have hunch that Kepler’s in for a breakout, quasi- bounceback campaign. I conjured up 7 imperative objectives, if Kepler wants to exponentially improve, and turns his contrast into a bargain.
Don’t regress
Don’t becomes injured (is that harsh?)
Rake and Clobber
Don’t flail to back-foot breaking ball
Keep Smoking the Ball (Guy is getting better over career)
Keep hitting lefties,
Let development take its course (don’t rush it)
- I literally had this stray though, but what if players get mad at their annual salary and if they’re not getting due compensation, play below their abilities. In this case, does Kepler play to the boundary of his abilities?
 
Just on a side tangent, I stumbled on something interesting when looking through Kepler’s Numbers…..
 




 
I recall times last year that Kepler had his extreme cold spells and fits at the plate, and I wanted to see how much of this was a byproduct of bad luck. wOBA is simply a synthesized linear statistic where singles/walks are considered as a the primary building block, and incrementally scales a hit as for it’s due result. Expected wOBA is as self-explanatory as it sounds, and just express the quality of contact and how it yields to on field results. Their are some flaws to this that might apply to Kepler (for being left handed), but if a player scorches a frozen rope and persists to label it INTO THE SHIFT, xwOBA would flag that as an unlucky hit, even though the entire left side of the infield is just begging for a bunt down the left field line. This is what hinders the stat, and I haven’t found a way to quantify how much this action has tainted Kepler’s stat value. But other than that, the stat has enlightened me with some tell-tale suspicions that Kepler slumps have accentuated because of the fact he is inducing himself into slumps. I added Trout’s statistic because quite honestly, the guy is the poster boy of hitting and is a golden standard benchmark stat. The reason why we don’t see the traditional pronounced periodical slumps in Trout, (IMO) is because Trout has found a way to amplify his stretches of success, and mask the monstrosities of his slumps and skids, which help maintain sparkling wOBA’s. (Or maybe he’s just too good to be bad????)
 
This is an excellent inherent trait to have, because...
It’s a great sign of a confidence booster
It reinforces & enhances your overall stat...➡️ (Solid+Amazing=Really Good)
This all might be baloney, but I find it interesting that Kepler’s more distinct patches of droughts tend to follow the Expected wOBA. The thing is, events like this are very common young hitters, (Heck, in real life too). Kepler rides the Hot-Hand like a wave, but when he hits his lows he virtually touches rock bottom. I just find it intriguing that this kinda-gives us a view to Kepler’s psyche during this plate appearances, to my understanding. Is it that Kepler’s gloom and doom approach at the plate is making that his Expected wOBA mimics and dampens his wOBA? That’s the real question…...
 
I bet my theory will get invalidated, but I think this hints toward some better and consistent productions from Kepler in this upcoming season. Maybe just a little forward thought, the vote of confidence upstairs, in this new contract, encouragement from the staff, and some years under the belt will aid Max in carving-it-up in the Bigs.
 
But if Kepler gets better (which I’m all inclined to believe), and if his performance does ride along an expected course, Kepler’s 8th and 7th year salaries are at complete bargain bottom prices. I also believe to some minuscule or macroscopic level (or really anything in between), that this instills some motivation into players. Disregarding why people rip players who pale in comparison near nothing to the owners, it’s a vote of confidence from the Front Office. It’s not like them handing contracts is routine kinda thing, and it issues sort of closure or something close after all summer people were calling for their collective heads. I do like these contracts, if that’s what you came to read this for, but still believe (no matter how much the PR department iterates it), where Buxton and Sano go, so do the Twins. I do hope success for all these player because they will take the fall if everything crashes and burns. Both Sano and Buxton in my mind aren’t ever going to have a year of this magnitude to prove doubters and/or the FO they were destined for stardom. To make the postseason I think the Journey runs right square through Buxton and Sano cascades, and to qualify to the playoffs I think it’s unequivocally contingent if Sano and Buxton rise to the occasion.
 
This all surmises to probably befuddling you more prior to reading my tyrade/spiel but let’s simplify into simpler terms; if Kepler plays at or near a 4-5 WAR per year,(which is roughly fringe all-star level) this contract is a boon for the Twins. It's a bust if Kepler plays to a 1-3 WAR level (because the Twins have plenty of role players to insert). This also applies to some degree with Polanco.

My Theoretical Mindset during the week;
The status quo surrounding the Twins all offseason was their stubbornness and inability to commit to any outside assets (in free agency or on the trade block), yet until recently did the Twins finally break that narrative. But… they were in-house pieces. By committing to two sprightly and talented yet unproven stars, have they overplayed their hand on their future plans?
 
The Twins right now are waltzing into what I would define as, a free-agency sweet spot. Where every added contributor would stabilize a liability, and boost their win total, which are at such a premium. The roster right now looks to be somewhere around the ballpark (lame pun not intended), to a potential spot in the postseason. Granted if nothing goes wrong (i.e injuries, supensions, curses) we could be staring towards a roster destined to secure a playoff, and readily prepared to be supplemented during the trade deadline. The added emphasis on a win or two or in the Twins case, blown-save-catastrophes-galore might end up sinking the ship when it comes to contention. If last year's bullpen collapses weren’t enough for you, I would say by far the Twins weakest position group lies in the most erratic, fragile and frail baseball clusters in all of baseball; the relievers.
 
I spoke about this briefly in my last article, but what Keuchel or more importantly in Kimbrel possess is a semblance of stability so unprecedented that the last guy to be a stabilizer for us, is being inducted into our hall of fame. If we focus on Kimbrel in depth, the guy is as rare of a breed your ever going to find in the relief pitching industry. I’m not going to speak about Kimbrel in depth, but what really matters is that they both (Kimbrel and Keuchel) have walked the walks, and might play that kickstarter-trailblazer kinda player to get this steam boat sailing. Somehow the Twins front office has managed to finagle towards a somewhat competitive roster, and despite not committing to any external assets, keeping the books dry of anything, and keeping the payroll at or equal to ≈ 100 million is a remarkable feat, no doubt about it. But is it time for the Twins front office to relent and issue a blockbuster contract? That’s very debatable.
 
Into the Nitty Gritty with Kepler and Polanco
Here’s a basic 101 on how rookie contracts work:
This rookie contract system is a focal point of the Collective Bargaining agreement and is tweaked and polished constantly, but it goes as follows;
 
Typically ameuteur hitters agree to a contract with major league clubs coming out of school, or out of the states globally and major league clubs are given a 5 year window on either promoting the player, or releasing him. That promotion would then start the ticking on his 6-7 year free agency departure clock, and would stay with his team through his prime and peak years on a cheap deal, until he would reach free agency (expectedly after he would be years past his best seasons*). During his 3-4 year seasons, the players earns close to nothing on a athletic player scale (I say this because 500k seems like money heaven to me). If the team elects to let the player stick around, when the player hits his 5-7 year season he can contest for a slight raise, provided if both sides agree to a compromise. Until his 7th or 8th year does the player final get his rights to a free departure, and test the market for his free agency rights.
*there are exception to this (Nelson Cruz etc).
 
We’ve seen this philosophy catch some steam in the present, with several clubs purchasing the rights of players who aren’t “seasoned or proven”, and maybe haven’t even made it to the league in some cases. What this leaves fans to savor is team friendly-contracts sculpted to buyout years of arbitration, for a couple years of free agency. Theoretically, this consumes the prime or peak years from a player, but is it really worth it. Let’s take a look.
 
*Tabulated according to Spotrac


For Kepler and Polanco, we’re seeing a hike in annual pay, over the arbitration years that somewhat amount to as what the players would earn in full amount in free agency. Both Kepler and Polanco have received somewhat mildly-risky contracts. Both have underachieved in their time on the major league spectrum, and in Polanco's case been busted for doping with PEDS. These contracts (5yr, 35 mill & 5yr, 25 mill) aren’t going to hinder or cripple the Twins in the future. What I find to be quite interesting is that the Twins have a healthy and expanding prospect pipeline coursing with talent, and yet they still inclined to purchase the underwhelming services of Kepler and Polanco. According to my fortune predictor (oh boy I’m talented fellow, yeet) these are the scenarios I see turning out. When the Twins finally open the window to a championship pursuit, either…
Polanco and Kepler are shrewd bargains
Or they both continue to lag Twins lineup, and logjam the outfield rotation (with prospects + Cave)
I decided to input Scott Kingery, because I thought his situation with the Phillies is an excellent example of when jumping the gun isn’t as picture perfect as it might seem. His contract is nearly identical in terms with Polanco and Kepler, mainly because they have the same backfire caveats and loopholes in dispatching Kingery once he gets old. Kingery hasn’t developed as rapidly as one would expect his minor league numbers would indicate, and played to the tune of a NEGATIVE W.A.R!!! (-1.5). The Phils thought he would form a dynamite paring with Hoskins and the future skeleton of that team. Instead, Manager Gabe Kapler is juggling at-bats between Maikel Franco and Kingery, who are competing to “win or earn” third base. This just hits me clear in the head as when this doesn’t work as anticipated. Just some added insight….
 
Both of these scenarios have their pros and cons. You might have to shuffle playing time between the chain of prospects and the fitful likes of Kepler, and/or Polanco. In this case you unload Kepler and/or Polanco for equitable return values, and propel prospects to replace them. Or both Kepler and Polanco emerge as building blocks and thrive, and you yield for a established major league chip, and supplement for an immediate push (hopefully sooner rather than later). The time tables are rough and tweakable, but both the former and latter are good problems to have.
 
In my mind the extinction of the concept for paying someone for what they’re worth is truly baffling me. It strikes me as that teams are playing with fire and lottery tickets, and trying to pull a quick on the player/(s). The truth to the matter is they aren’t premising the agreement toward constructive proof but rather on whim, Lady Luck, and canniness. Even with the comprehensive and elaborate analytics (which I’m all for, frankly) I don’t think it’s plausible in the right shape of mind to predict someone future who hasn’t set a baseline for what their ascension might be. For all I know, Kepler could go and revert into a complete shell of himself and morph into the eternal spirit of Nick Punto. That might be a little far-fetched, but the guy hasn’t established himself as any kind of consistent regular. He isn’t a ‘proven’ left handed vs left handed hitter (granted he improved from his abysmal marks from a year ago, but there’s a lot more left to be desired). He could turn into a complete sponge against lefty’s, and be relegated to an exclusive platoon role against righties. He’s an admirable right-fielder whose play is fairly consistent, but nothing out-worldly ala The Buck. Could he be in line for a regression? I guess that’s up to him.
 
Typically young players similar to Kepler and Polanco both experiences growing pains, and excruciatingly painful rough patches, but what usually leaves with people is that semblance of promise and hope that a player instills into a fanbase. Kepler and Polanco are by no means generational cornerstone players, but what Kepler and Polanco possess is that consistency a team as inconsistent as the Twins desperately needs. Every position has been a constantly rotating carousel of prospects, and the Twins decided to shore this up, by agreeing to terms with Max Kepler and Jorge Polanco each on intriguing multi year contract that speak to the mindset of the Falvine Front Office. I guess I’m playing Devil’s Advocate right now, because I’m sputtering trying to unravel their rationale.
 


 
There aren’t many other motives for Kepler &co and Polanco &co not to reject these deal like this. This is guaranteed money your dealing with, and the signals and indicators in this suppressed markets wouldn’t sway them that they would command much more (or any offers at all) in the open market. I wanted to take a closer examination at Kepler’s logic in this, because I find much more faith in Polanco, RF is a much more vital to Target Field, and granted he got the more lucrative contract.
 
In Kepler’s case, in some ways your betting with yourself; do you believe that Kepler would turn into a monster player and demand a lucrative contract, or do you settle with what in turn is an appealing and secure the offered multi year deal. It’s as playing with fire in the Twins perspective, and in light of him settling you could deconstruct this in either two way:
 
1. I’m concerned that Kepler would settle with a buy-low contract like this and is satisfied with staying average
2. Or the Twins got an absolute steal of a player.
 
The downsides and upsides are obviously staring us in the eyes. The guys looks he’s a got plenty of a Major League regular’s tools, but the intangibles are worrisome to me. He looks flustered, and stoic at the plate. His demeanor is “I’m under radar, so don’t notice me”. But he’s got those flashes of phenom and potential like he could rake, on an at bat to at bat basis. He got a great, pretty left handed stroke (if that’s worth anything). During 2018, we saw, provided if he hunkers down and locks in that he could hit lefties and for power. 2018 was the year he exorcised those demons and the knocks of his same handed ineptness, and not to mention he’s an above average right fielder. That’s what scares me locking into a promising yet unproven commodity.
 
I have hunch that Kepler’s in for a breakout, quasi- bounceback campaign. I conjured up 7 imperative objectives, if Kepler wants to exponentially improve, and turns his contrast into a bargain.
Don’t regress
Don’t becomes injured (is that harsh?)
Rake and Clobber
Don’t flail to back-foot breaking ball
Keep Smoking the Ball (Guy is getting better over career)
Keep hitting lefties,
Let development take its course (don’t rush it)
- I literally had this stray though, but what if players get mad at their annual salary and if they’re not getting due compensation, play below their abilities. In this case, does Kepler play to the boundary of his abilities?
 
Just on a side tangent, I stumbled on something interesting when looking through Kepler’s Numbers…..
 




 
I recall times last year that Kepler had his extreme cold spells and fits at the plate, and I wanted to see how much of this was a byproduct of bad luck. wOBA is simply a synthesized linear statistic where singles/walks are considered as a the primary building block, and incrementally scales a hit as for it’s due result. Expected wOBA is as self-explanatory as it sounds, and just express the quality of contact and how it yields to on field results. Their are some flaws to this that might apply to Kepler (for being left handed), but if a player scorches a frozen rope and persists to label it INTO THE SHIFT, xwOBA would flag that as an unlucky hit, even though the entire left side of the infield is just begging for a bunt down the left field line. This is what hinders the stat, and I haven’t found a way to quantify how much this action has tainted Kepler’s stat value. But other than that, the stat has enlightened me with some tell-tale suspicions that Kepler slumps have accentuated because of the fact he is inducing himself into slumps. I added Trout’s statistic because quite honestly, the guy is the poster boy of hitting and is a golden standard benchmark stat. The reason why we don’t see the traditional pronounced periodical slumps in Trout, (IMO) is because Trout has found a way to amplify his stretches of success, and mask the monstrosities of his slumps and skids, which help maintain sparkling wOBA’s. (Or maybe he’s just too good to be bad????)
 
This is an excellent inherent trait to have, because...
It’s a great sign of a confidence booster
It reinforces & enhances your overall stat...➡️ (Solid+Amazing=Really Good)
This all might be baloney, but I find it interesting that Kepler’s more distinct patches of droughts tend to follow the Expected wOBA. The thing is, events like this are very common young hitters, (Heck, in real life too). Kepler rides the Hot-Hand like a wave, but when he hits his lows he virtually touches rock bottom. I just find it intriguing that this kinda-gives us a view to Kepler’s psyche during this plate appearances, to my understanding. Is it that Kepler’s gloom and doom approach at the plate is making that his Expected wOBA mimics and dampens his wOBA? That’s the real question…...
 
I bet my theory will get invalidated, but I think this hints toward some better and consistent productions from Kepler in this upcoming season. Maybe just a little forward thought, the vote of confidence upstairs, in this new contract, encouragement from the staff, and some years under the belt will aid Max in carving-it-up in the Bigs.
 
But if Kepler gets better (which I’m all inclined to believe), and if his performance does ride along an expected course, Kepler’s 8th and 7th year salaries are at complete bargain bottom prices. I also believe to some minuscule or macroscopic level (or really anything in between), that this instills some motivation into players. Disregarding why people rip players who pale in comparison near nothing to the owners, it’s a vote of confidence from the Front Office. It’s not like them handing contracts is routine kinda thing, and it issues sort of closure or something close after all summer people were calling for their collective heads. I do like these contracts, if that’s what you came to read this for, but still believe (no matter how much the PR department iterates it), where Buxton and Sano go, so do the Twins. I do hope success for all these player because they will take the fall if everything crashes and burns. Both Sano and Buxton in my mind aren’t ever going to have a year of this magnitude to prove doubters and/or the FO they were destined for stardom. To make the postseason I think the Journey runs right square through Buxton and Sano cascades, and to qualify to the playoffs I think it’s unequivocally contingent if Sano and Buxton rise to the occasion.
 
This all surmises to probably befuddling you more prior to reading my tyrade/spiel but let’s simplify into simpler terms; if Kepler plays at or near a 4-5 WAR per year,(which is roughly fringe all-star level) this contract is a boon for the Twins. It's a bust if Kepler plays to a 1-3 WAR level (because the Twins have plenty of role players to insert). This also applies to some degree with Polanco.

My Theoretical Mindset during the week;
The status quo surrounding the Twins all offseason was their stubbornness and inability to commit to any outside assets (in free agency or on the trade block), yet until recently did the Twins finally break that narrative. But… they were in-house pieces. By committing to two sprightly and talented yet unproven stars, have they overplayed their hand on their future plans?
 
The Twins right now are waltzing into what I would define as, a free-agency sweet spot. Where every added contributor would stabilize a liability, and boost their win total, which are at such a premium. The roster right now looks to be somewhere around the ballpark (lame pun not intended), to a potential spot in the postseason. Granted if nothing goes wrong (i.e injuries, supensions, curses) we could be staring towards a roster destined to secure a playoff, and readily prepared to be supplemented during the trade deadline. The added emphasis on a win or two or in the Twins case, blown-save-catastrophes-galore might end up sinking the ship when it comes to contention. If last year's bullpen collapses weren’t enough for you, I would say by far the Twins weakest position group lies in the most erratic, fragile and frail baseball clusters in all of baseball; the relievers.
 
I spoke about this briefly in my last article, but what Keuchel or more importantly in Kimbrel possess is a semblance of stability so unprecedented that the last guy to be a stabilizer for us, is being inducted into our hall of fame. If we focus on Kimbrel in depth, the guy is as rare of a breed your ever going to find in the relief pitching industry. I’m not going to speak about Kimbrel in depth, but what really matters is that they both (Kimbrel and Keuchel) have walked the walks, and might play that kickstarter-trailblazer kinda player to get this steam boat sailing. Somehow the Twins front office has managed to finagle towards a somewhat competitive roster, and despite not committing to any external assets, keeping the books dry of anything, and keeping the payroll at or equal to ≈ 100 million is a remarkable feat, no doubt about it. But is it time for the Twins front office to relent and issue a blockbuster contract? That’s very debatable.
 
Into the Nitty Gritty with Kepler and Polanco
Here’s a basic 101 on how rookie contracts work:
This rookie contract system is a focal point of the Collective Bargaining agreement and is tweaked and polished constantly, but it goes as follows;
 
Typically ameuteur hitters agree to a contract with major league clubs coming out of school, or out of the states globally and major league clubs are given a 5 year window on either promoting the player, or releasing him. That promotion would then start the ticking on his 6-7 year free agency departure clock, and would stay with his team through his prime and peak years on a cheap deal, until he would reach free agency (expectedly after he would be years past his best seasons*). During his 3-4 year seasons, the players earns close to nothing on a athletic player scale (I say this because 500k seems like money heaven to me). If the team elects to let the player stick around, when the player hits his 5-7 year season he can contest for a slight raise, provided if both sides agree to a compromise. Until his 7th or 8th year does the player final get his rights to a free departure, and test the market for his free agency rights.
*there are exception to this (Nelson Cruz etc).
 
We’ve seen this philosophy catch some steam in the present, with several clubs purchasing the rights of players who aren’t “seasoned or proven”, and maybe haven’t even made it to the league in some cases. What this leaves fans to savor is team friendly-contracts sculpted to buyout years of arbitration, for a couple years of free agency. Theoretically, this consumes the prime or peak years from a player, but is it really worth it. Let’s take a look.
 
*Tabulated according to Spotrac


For Kepler and Polanco, we’re seeing a hike in annual pay, over the arbitration years that somewhat amount to as what the players would earn in full amount in free agency. Both Kepler and Polanco have received somewhat mildly-risky contracts. Both have underachieved in their time on the major league spectrum, and in Polanco's case been busted for doping with PEDS. These contracts (5yr, 35 mill & 5yr, 25 mill) aren’t going to hinder or cripple the Twins in the future. What I find to be quite interesting is that the Twins have a healthy and expanding prospect pipeline coursing with talent, and yet they still inclined to purchase the underwhelming services of Kepler and Polanco. According to my fortune predictor (oh boy I’m talented fellow, yeet) these are the scenarios I see turning out. When the Twins finally open the window to a championship pursuit, either…
Polanco and Kepler are shrewd bargains
Or they both continue to lag Twins lineup, and logjam the outfield rotation (with prospects + Cave)
I decided to input Scott Kingery, because I thought his situation with the Phillies is an excellent example of when jumping the gun isn’t as picture perfect as it might seem. His contract is nearly identical in terms with Polanco and Kepler, mainly because they have the same backfire caveats and loopholes in dispatching Kingery once he gets old. Kingery hasn’t developed as rapidly as one would expect his minor league numbers would indicate, and played to the tune of a NEGATIVE W.A.R!!! (-1.5). The Phils thought he would form a dynamite paring with Hoskins and the future skeleton of that team. Instead, Manager Gabe Kapler is juggling at-bats between Maikel Franco and Kingery, who are competing to “win or earn” third base. This just hits me clear in the head as when this doesn’t work as anticipated. Just some added insight….
 
Both of these scenarios have their pros and cons. You might have to shuffle playing time between the chain of prospects and the fitful likes of Kepler, and/or Polanco. In this case you unload Kepler and/or Polanco for equitable return values, and propel prospects to replace them. Or both Kepler and Polanco emerge as building blocks and thrive, and you yield for a established major league chip, and supplement for an immediate push (hopefully sooner rather than later). The time tables are rough and tweakable, but both the former and latter are good problems to have.
 
In my mind the extinction of the concept for paying someone for what they’re worth is truly baffling me. It strikes me as that teams are playing with fire and lottery tickets, and trying to pull a quick on the player/(s). The truth to the matter is they aren’t premising the agreement toward constructive proof but rather on whim, Lady Luck, and canniness. Even with the comprehensive and elaborate analytics (which I’m all for, frankly) I don’t think it’s plausible in the right shape of mind to predict someone future who hasn’t set a baseline for what their ascension might be. For all I know, Kepler could go and revert into a complete shell of himself and morph into the eternal spirit of Nick Punto. That might be a little far-fetched, but the guy hasn’t established himself as any kind of consistent regular. He isn’t a ‘proven’ left handed vs left handed hitter (granted he improved from his abysmal marks from a year ago, but there’s a lot more left to be desired). He could turn into a complete sponge against lefty’s, and be relegated to an exclusive platoon role against righties. He’s an admirable right-fielder whose play is fairly consistent, but nothing out-worldly ala The Buck. Could he be in line for a regression? I guess that’s up to him.
 
Typically young players similar to Kepler and Polanco both experiences growing pains, and excruciatingly painful rough patches, but what usually leaves with people is that semblance of promise and hope that a player instills into a fanbase. Kepler and Polanco are by no means generational cornerstone players, but what Kepler and Polanco possess is that consistency a team as inconsistent as the Twins desperately needs. Every position has been a constantly rotating carousel of prospects, and the Twins decided to shore this up, by agreeing to terms with Max Kepler and Jorge Polanco each on intriguing multi year contract that speak to the mindset of the Falvine Front Office. I guess I’m playing Devil’s Advocate right now, because I’m sputtering trying to unravel their rationale.
 


 
There aren’t many other motives for Kepler &co and Polanco &co not to reject these deal like this. This is guaranteed money your dealing with, and the signals and indicators in this suppressed markets wouldn’t sway them that they would command much more (or any offers at all) in the open market. I wanted to take a closer examination at Kepler’s logic in this, because I find much more faith in Polanco, RF is a much more vital to Target Field, and granted he got the more lucrative contract.
 
In Kepler’s case, in some ways your betting with yourself; do you believe that Kepler would turn into a monster player and demand a lucrative contract, or do you settle with what in turn is an appealing and secure the offered multi year deal. It’s as playing with fire in the Twins perspective, and in light of him settling you could deconstruct this in either two way:
 
1. I’m concerned that Kepler would settle with a buy-low contract like this and is satisfied with staying average
2. Or the Twins got an absolute steal of a player.
 
The downsides and upsides are obviously staring us in the eyes. The guys looks he’s a got plenty of a Major League regular’s tools, but the intangibles are worrisome to me. He looks flustered, and stoic at the plate. His demeanor is “I’m under radar, so don’t notice me”. But he’s got those flashes of phenom and potential like he could rake, on an at bat to at bat basis. He got a great, pretty left handed stroke (if that’s worth anything). During 2018, we saw, provided if he hunkers down and locks in that he could hit lefties and for power. 2018 was the year he exorcised those demons and the knocks of his same handed ineptness, and not to mention he’s an above average right fielder. That’s what scares me locking into a promising yet unproven commodity.
 
I have hunch that Kepler’s in for a breakout, quasi- bounceback campaign. I conjured up 7 imperative objectives, if Kepler wants to exponentially improve, and turns his contrast into a bargain.
Don’t regress
Don’t becomes injured (is that harsh?)
Rake and Clobber
Don’t flail to back-foot breaking ball
Keep Smoking the Ball (Guy is getting better over career)
Keep hitting lefties,
Let development take its course (don’t rush it)
- I literally had this stray though, but what if players get mad at their annual salary and if they’re not getting due compensation, play below their abilities. In this case, does Kepler play to the boundary of his abilities?
 
Just on a side tangent, I stumbled on something interesting when looking through Kepler’s Numbers…..
 




 
I recall times last year that Kepler had his extreme cold spells and fits at the plate, and I wanted to see how much of this was a byproduct of bad luck. wOBA is simply a synthesized linear statistic where singles/walks are considered as a the primary building block, and incrementally scales a hit as for it’s due result. Expected wOBA is as self-explanatory as it sounds, and just express the quality of contact and how it yields to on field results. Their are some flaws to this that might apply to Kepler (for being left handed), but if a player scorches a frozen rope and persists to label it INTO THE SHIFT, xwOBA would flag that as an unlucky hit, even though the entire left side of the infield is just begging for a bunt down the left field line. This is what hinders the stat, and I haven’t found a way to quantify how much this action has tainted Kepler’s stat value. But other than that, the stat has enlightened me with some tell-tale suspicions that Kepler slumps have accentuated because of the fact he is inducing himself into slumps. I added Trout’s statistic because quite honestly, the guy is the poster boy of hitting and is a golden standard benchmark stat. The reason why we don’t see the traditional pronounced periodical slumps in Trout, (IMO) is because Trout has found a way to amplify his stretches of success, and mask the monstrosities of his slumps and skids, which help maintain sparkling wOBA’s. (Or maybe he’s just too good to be bad????)
 
This is an excellent inherent trait to have, because...
It’s a great sign of a confidence booster
It reinforces & enhances your overall stat...➡️ (Solid+Amazing=Really Good)
This all might be baloney, but I find it interesting that Kepler’s more distinct patches of droughts tend to follow the Expected wOBA. The thing is, events like this are very common young hitters, (Heck, in real life too). Kepler rides the Hot-Hand like a wave, but when he hits his lows he virtually touches rock bottom. I just find it intriguing that this kinda-gives us a view to Kepler’s psyche during this plate appearances, to my understanding. Is it that Kepler’s gloom and doom approach at the plate is making that his Expected wOBA mimics and dampens his wOBA? That’s the real question…...
 
I bet my theory will get invalidated, but I think this hints toward some better and consistent productions from Kepler in this upcoming season. Maybe just a little forward thought, the vote of confidence upstairs, in this new contract, encouragement from the staff, and some years under the belt will aid Max in carving-it-up in the Bigs.
 
But if Kepler gets better (which I’m all inclined to believe), and if his performance does ride along an expected course, Kepler’s 8th and 7th year salaries are at complete bargain bottom prices. I also believe to some minuscule or macroscopic level (or really anything in between), that this instills some motivation into players. Disregarding why people rip players who pale in comparison near nothing to the owners, it’s a vote of confidence from the Front Office. It’s not like them handing contracts is routine kinda thing, and it issues sort of closure or something close after all summer people were calling for their collective heads. I do like these contracts, if that’s what you came to read this for, but still believe (no matter how much the PR department iterates it), where Buxton and Sano go, so do the Twins. I do hope success for all these player because they will take the fall if everything crashes and burns. Both Sano and Buxton in my mind aren’t ever going to have a year of this magnitude to prove doubters and/or the FO they were destined for stardom. To make the postseason I think the Journey runs right square through Buxton and Sano cascades, and to qualify to the playoffs I think it’s unequivocally contingent if Sano and Buxton rise to the occasion.
 
This all surmises to probably befuddling you more prior to reading my tyrade/spiel but let’s simplify into simpler terms; if Kepler plays at or near a 4-5 WAR per year,(which is roughly fringe all-star level) this contract is a boon for the Twins. It's a bust if Kepler plays to a 1-3 WAR level (because the Twins have plenty of role players to insert). This also applies to some degree with Polanco.

If you don’t already know the Minnesota twins inked the former Ranger southpaw, and well seasoned veteran Martin Perez to a short 1 year compact, to what seems to be a lackluster effort to “fortify the rotation.”
 
Now we can interpret this transaction whatever way we deem to be fit, but the Twins projected rotation lines up as….
 


 
Middling at best.With the likes of two potentially elite pitchers Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel standing pat for a desirable bidder, this has caught the chagrin of Twins rage twitter, and you can’t blame them. Imagine inserting Kimbrel or Keuchel into the pitching staff, and the added perks would benefit all parties involved including the most important; rectifying the vast abyss of Twins rants on the interwebs.
 
It isn’t any secret that the Twins have loads of room to supplement the roster to make a bid for the division. With the Indians unloading after 3 years of reigning as division champions, and the Royals, Tigers, and White Sox currently having no plans other the than tanking, the crease is there for the Twins to make a run for the Indian’s money and to snap a near decade for a division title deprived fanbase. Even to that tangent, what even is more baffling is that the Twins have an unprecedented allotment of salary (I felt so deeply compelled to say cap room) on the checkbook or whatever ledger the stingy twins utilize to organize their expenses. As Minnesotan Fans, we are so inherently adept to mediocrity and heartbreak, it’s as if misery is in our compatible middle name. But in this instance, there’s only room to spectate and to be optimistic, which is undoubtedly a tough pill to swallow.
 
The Ugly on Perez
 
The ugly is so glaringly obvious. The kid pitched to the horrendous tune of a 6.22 ERA last season and owns a below average 4.63 ERA. He’s got a poor career 4.44 FIP, and doesn’t strike people out. Watching some footage of his former* (as in last season he was converted into a reliever because he was so awful) starts, the guy doesn’t have an appealing secondary pitch, his control is rather iffy, and his changeup has fallen off a cliff since its former dominance prior to his injury. Speaking of injury, the guy spent 3 stints on the disabled in only the past year, has operated on for Tommy John, and is as far as away from durable as Minnesota is from Texas.
 
The Bad
 
The thing Perez isn’t terrible because he’s bad. As contradictory as it sounds, he isn’t necessarily by any means as pitiful as he appears. Looking at the tape, its as if his performance rides a rollercoaster. During the first inning, the guy is as rocky ever. He gets in many hitters count, can’t find the zone, and gets rocked once he does in 3-0, 2-0, 3-1, or 3-2 counts. But strangely he settles down and is frankly razor sharp with precision in the middle innings. That sinker-changeup combo is to die for on the edge of the plate, and reminds me a lot of….JA Happ. I think toggling with his sinker/four-seamer to changeup ratio, and maybe a change of scenery would do him wonders. Not to mention, GLP in Arlington is no easy place to pitch, because the ball CARRIES out there.
 

 
The Good, and How to enhance it???
 
Believe or not, Perez once was pegged inside the Top 100 prospects in the Baseball America’s 2010 edition. Don’t think because of this though, that I expect him to fulfill his top billing as a prospect. The guy has upside which at this point is hard to believe. But as I watched the tape, he isn’t the doormat pitcher as his number would indicate. He’s a solid and competent enough pitcher in the middle innings and is maybe or not a little shaky-nervous at game tilt. Beyond that, he’s got excellent above-average velocity from a left-handed starter. His relative youth and exuberance leaves room for hope of improvement, and he’s 28. He also is a ground ball demon and induces a well above average GB rate, and at worst is a decent innings eater. We’ve seen this regime sign the flyer free agent, as referencing last year’s Anibal Sanchez reclamation project. After looking at Sanchez’s pitch usage, there’s nothing at first glance that collasally has changed. But taking a deeper dive, we can see that Anibal has surged up in his career ranks in Chase%, Pitches out of the Zone%, and overall Strikeouts%.
 


But his pitch movements, usages, and varying peripherals haven’t drastically changed.
 




What can be attributed to this surge is pitch sequencing. Sanchez better utilized his changeup in complement because he threw the pitch out of the zone. He Split-Finger had a career-high strikeout rate in volume, and had the most minuscule SLG percentage in terms of volume pitched. He cutback the vertical movement of his 12-6 curve, and upped the ante of his split-finger that fit perfectly to a series of pitches (sinker, cutter, split) that better suited his repertoire, featuring horizontal movement. Which is a primary reason why Anibal had a renaissance season.
 
I mention this because..
Anibal was once a former project
Perez bears a striking resemblance to Sanchez, in their deficiencies.

All of this surmounts to absolute and utter baloney if Perez resists in reinventing himself as a pitcher. This, however, does include an unorthodox approach, and completing throwing the entire baseball manual out the window, and tinkering with breaking balls. Look at the Rich Hill’s and the Drew Pomeranz of the world, and we’ve even seen Tyler Duffey rely on an off-speed pitch more than his fastball firsthand. Albeit none of this pitchers are All-Star commodities, they all in some capacity became better to some extent by heavily depending on their secondary stuff. There’s no denying Martin Perez is a fully capable and average enough MLB arm, but the real question remains; Will Martin Perez be open to tinker his arsenal, and if not were the Twins better suited to have unleashed a prospect in his place? That remains to be seen.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZOeXGX0sfY"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZOeXGX0sfY[/
 
My virtual fake money is betting on that Wes Johnson and company already have recognized this, and have a plan waiting to be set in motion. My suggestions are pretty rudimentary, but they follow along on a general theme. Adjust and configure Perez’s pitches to align with his strengths. Just a rogue modification of mine for the sake of hypothetical satisfaction; steer towards an arsenal of the basis of vertical movement, (by tinkering with the cutter), reduce the amount of curves, increase the ratio of sliders:curves, and intensify the changeup as a wipeout pitch (which comes in further developing the arm side run, Ala Dallas Keuchel). This isn’t a foolproof formula for immediate results, but over a long term sample size, it's more than likely that Perez’s results would be slightly better than before. There are models of success that radically changed many players careers (i.e JA Happ etc.) that follow the same general blueprint; gear towards a players strength, and wait to experience slight success (snazzy rhyming jingle huh?
 
And if this completely backfires, convert Perez into the bullpen, transition him into a killer LOOGY (he’s seriously a death on lefty guy, look at his numbers) and deal him during the trade deadline for some fringe B- to C prospect and look to take another bite at the apple next year.

If you don’t already know the Minnesota twins inked the former Ranger southpaw, and well seasoned veteran Martin Perez to a short 1 year compact, to what seems to be a lackluster effort to “fortify the rotation.”
 
Now we can interpret this transaction whatever way we deem to be fit, but the Twins projected rotation lines up as….
 


 
Middling at best.With the likes of two potentially elite pitchers Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel standing pat for a desirable bidder, this has caught the chagrin of Twins rage twitter, and you can’t blame them. Imagine inserting Kimbrel or Keuchel into the pitching staff, and the added perks would benefit all parties involved including the most important; rectifying the vast abyss of Twins rants on the interwebs.
 
It isn’t any secret that the Twins have loads of room to supplement the roster to make a bid for the division. With the Indians unloading after 3 years of reigning as division champions, and the Royals, Tigers, and White Sox currently having no plans other the than tanking, the crease is there for the Twins to make a run for the Indian’s money and to snap a near decade for a division title deprived fanbase. Even to that tangent, what even is more baffling is that the Twins have an unprecedented allotment of salary (I felt so deeply compelled to say cap room) on the checkbook or whatever ledger the stingy twins utilize to organize their expenses. As Minnesotan Fans, we are so inherently adept to mediocrity and heartbreak, it’s as if misery is in our compatible middle name. But in this instance, there’s only room to spectate and to be optimistic, which is undoubtedly a tough pill to swallow.
 
The Ugly on Perez
 
The ugly is so glaringly obvious. The kid pitched to the horrendous tune of a 6.22 ERA last season and owns a below average 4.63 ERA. He’s got a poor career 4.44 FIP, and doesn’t strike people out. Watching some footage of his former* (as in last season he was converted into a reliever because he was so awful) starts, the guy doesn’t have an appealing secondary pitch, his control is rather iffy, and his changeup has fallen off a cliff since its former dominance prior to his injury. Speaking of injury, the guy spent 3 stints on the disabled in only the past year, has operated on for Tommy John, and is as far as away from durable as Minnesota is from Texas.
 
The Bad
 
The thing Perez isn’t terrible because he’s bad. As contradictory as it sounds, he isn’t necessarily by any means as pitiful as he appears. Looking at the tape, its as if his performance rides a rollercoaster. During the first inning, the guy is as rocky ever. He gets in many hitters count, can’t find the zone, and gets rocked once he does in 3-0, 2-0, 3-1, or 3-2 counts. But strangely he settles down and is frankly razor sharp with precision in the middle innings. That sinker-changeup combo is to die for on the edge of the plate, and reminds me a lot of….JA Happ. I think toggling with his sinker/four-seamer to changeup ratio, and maybe a change of scenery would do him wonders. Not to mention, GLP in Arlington is no easy place to pitch, because the ball CARRIES out there.
 

 
The Good, and How to enhance it???
 
Believe or not, Perez once was pegged inside the Top 100 prospects in the Baseball America’s 2010 edition. Don’t think because of this though, that I expect him to fulfill his top billing as a prospect. The guy has upside which at this point is hard to believe. But as I watched the tape, he isn’t the doormat pitcher as his number would indicate. He’s a solid and competent enough pitcher in the middle innings and is maybe or not a little shaky-nervous at game tilt. Beyond that, he’s got excellent above-average velocity from a left-handed starter. His relative youth and exuberance leaves room for hope of improvement, and he’s 28. He also is a ground ball demon and induces a well above average GB rate, and at worst is a decent innings eater. We’ve seen this regime sign the flyer free agent, as referencing last year’s Anibal Sanchez reclamation project. After looking at Sanchez’s pitch usage, there’s nothing at first glance that collasally has changed. But taking a deeper dive, we can see that Anibal has surged up in his career ranks in Chase%, Pitches out of the Zone%, and overall Strikeouts%.
 


But his pitch movements, usages, and varying peripherals haven’t drastically changed.
 




What can be attributed to this surge is pitch sequencing. Sanchez better utilized his changeup in complement because he threw the pitch out of the zone. He Split-Finger had a career-high strikeout rate in volume, and had the most minuscule SLG percentage in terms of volume pitched. He cutback the vertical movement of his 12-6 curve, and upped the ante of his split-finger that fit perfectly to a series of pitches (sinker, cutter, split) that better suited his repertoire, featuring horizontal movement. Which is a primary reason why Anibal had a renaissance season.
 
I mention this because..
Anibal was once a former project
Perez bears a striking resemblance to Sanchez, in their deficiencies.

All of this surmounts to absolute and utter baloney if Perez resists in reinventing himself as a pitcher. This, however, does include an unorthodox approach, and completing throwing the entire baseball manual out the window, and tinkering with breaking balls. Look at the Rich Hill’s and the Drew Pomeranz of the world, and we’ve even seen Tyler Duffey rely on an off-speed pitch more than his fastball firsthand. Albeit none of this pitchers are All-Star commodities, they all in some capacity became better to some extent by heavily depending on their secondary stuff. There’s no denying Martin Perez is a fully capable and average enough MLB arm, but the real question remains; Will Martin Perez be open to tinker his arsenal, and if not were the Twins better suited to have unleashed a prospect in his place? That remains to be seen.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZOeXGX0sfY"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZOeXGX0sfY[/
 
My virtual fake money is betting on that Wes Johnson and company already have recognized this, and have a plan waiting to be set in motion. My suggestions are pretty rudimentary, but they follow along on a general theme. Adjust and configure Perez’s pitches to align with his strengths. Just a rogue modification of mine for the sake of hypothetical satisfaction; steer towards an arsenal of the basis of vertical movement, (by tinkering with the cutter), reduce the amount of curves, increase the ratio of sliders:curves, and intensify the changeup as a wipeout pitch (which comes in further developing the arm side run, Ala Dallas Keuchel). This isn’t a foolproof formula for immediate results, but over a long term sample size, it's more than likely that Perez’s results would be slightly better than before. There are models of success that radically changed many players careers (i.e JA Happ etc.) that follow the same general blueprint; gear towards a players strength, and wait to experience slight success (snazzy rhyming jingle huh?
 
And if this completely backfires, convert Perez into the bullpen, transition him into a killer LOOGY (he’s seriously a death on lefty guy, look at his numbers) and deal him during the trade deadline for some fringe B- to C prospect and look to take another bite at the apple next year.

If you don’t already know the Minnesota twins inked the former Ranger southpaw, and well seasoned veteran Martin Perez to a short 1 year compact, to what seems to be a lackluster effort to “fortify the rotation.”
 
Now we can interpret this transaction whatever way we deem to be fit, but the Twins projected rotation lines up as….
 


 
Middling at best.With the likes of two potentially elite pitchers Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel standing pat for a desirable bidder, this has caught the chagrin of Twins rage twitter, and you can’t blame them. Imagine inserting Kimbrel or Keuchel into the pitching staff, and the added perks would benefit all parties involved including the most important; rectifying the vast abyss of Twins rants on the interwebs.
 
It isn’t any secret that the Twins have loads of room to supplement the roster to make a bid for the division. With the Indians unloading after 3 years of reigning as division champions, and the Royals, Tigers, and White Sox currently having no plans other the than tanking, the crease is there for the Twins to make a run for the Indian’s money and to snap a near decade for a division title deprived fanbase. Even to that tangent, what even is more baffling is that the Twins have an unprecedented allotment of salary (I felt so deeply compelled to say cap room) on the checkbook or whatever ledger the stingy twins utilize to organize their expenses. As Minnesotan Fans, we are so inherently adept to mediocrity and heartbreak, it’s as if misery is in our compatible middle name. But in this instance, there’s only room to spectate and to be optimistic, which is undoubtedly a tough pill to swallow.
 
The Ugly on Perez
 
The ugly is so glaringly obvious. The kid pitched to the horrendous tune of a 6.22 ERA last season and owns a below average 4.63 ERA. He’s got a poor career 4.44 FIP, and doesn’t strike people out. Watching some footage of his former* (as in last season he was converted into a reliever because he was so awful) starts, the guy doesn’t have an appealing secondary pitch, his control is rather iffy, and his changeup has fallen off a cliff since its former dominance prior to his injury. Speaking of injury, the guy spent 3 stints on the disabled in only the past year, has operated on for Tommy John, and is as far as away from durable as Minnesota is from Texas.
 
The Bad
 
The thing Perez isn’t terrible because he’s bad. As contradictory as it sounds, he isn’t necessarily by any means as pitiful as he appears. Looking at the tape, its as if his performance rides a rollercoaster. During the first inning, the guy is as rocky ever. He gets in many hitters count, can’t find the zone, and gets rocked once he does in 3-0, 2-0, 3-1, or 3-2 counts. But strangely he settles down and is frankly razor sharp with precision in the middle innings. That sinker-changeup combo is to die for on the edge of the plate, and reminds me a lot of….JA Happ. I think toggling with his sinker/four-seamer to changeup ratio, and maybe a change of scenery would do him wonders. Not to mention, GLP in Arlington is no easy place to pitch, because the ball CARRIES out there.
 

 
The Good, and How to enhance it???
 
Believe or not, Perez once was pegged inside the Top 100 prospects in the Baseball America’s 2010 edition. Don’t think because of this though, that I expect him to fulfill his top billing as a prospect. The guy has upside which at this point is hard to believe. But as I watched the tape, he isn’t the doormat pitcher as his number would indicate. He’s a solid and competent enough pitcher in the middle innings and is maybe or not a little shaky-nervous at game tilt. Beyond that, he’s got excellent above-average velocity from a left-handed starter. His relative youth and exuberance leaves room for hope of improvement, and he’s 28. He also is a ground ball demon and induces a well above average GB rate, and at worst is a decent innings eater. We’ve seen this regime sign the flyer free agent, as referencing last year’s Anibal Sanchez reclamation project. After looking at Sanchez’s pitch usage, there’s nothing at first glance that collasally has changed. But taking a deeper dive, we can see that Anibal has surged up in his career ranks in Chase%, Pitches out of the Zone%, and overall Strikeouts%.
 


But his pitch movements, usages, and varying peripherals haven’t drastically changed.
 




What can be attributed to this surge is pitch sequencing. Sanchez better utilized his changeup in complement because he threw the pitch out of the zone. He Split-Finger had a career-high strikeout rate in volume, and had the most minuscule SLG percentage in terms of volume pitched. He cutback the vertical movement of his 12-6 curve, and upped the ante of his split-finger that fit perfectly to a series of pitches (sinker, cutter, split) that better suited his repertoire, featuring horizontal movement. Which is a primary reason why Anibal had a renaissance season.
 
I mention this because..
Anibal was once a former project
Perez bears a striking resemblance to Sanchez, in their deficiencies.

All of this surmounts to absolute and utter baloney if Perez resists in reinventing himself as a pitcher. This, however, does include an unorthodox approach, and completing throwing the entire baseball manual out the window, and tinkering with breaking balls. Look at the Rich Hill’s and the Drew Pomeranz of the world, and we’ve even seen Tyler Duffey rely on an off-speed pitch more than his fastball firsthand. Albeit none of this pitchers are All-Star commodities, they all in some capacity became better to some extent by heavily depending on their secondary stuff. There’s no denying Martin Perez is a fully capable and average enough MLB arm, but the real question remains; Will Martin Perez be open to tinker his arsenal, and if not were the Twins better suited to have unleashed a prospect in his place? That remains to be seen.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZOeXGX0sfY"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZOeXGX0sfY[/
 
My virtual fake money is betting on that Wes Johnson and company already have recognized this, and have a plan waiting to be set in motion. My suggestions are pretty rudimentary, but they follow along on a general theme. Adjust and configure Perez’s pitches to align with his strengths. Just a rogue modification of mine for the sake of hypothetical satisfaction; steer towards an arsenal of the basis of vertical movement, (by tinkering with the cutter), reduce the amount of curves, increase the ratio of sliders:curves, and intensify the changeup as a wipeout pitch (which comes in further developing the arm side run, Ala Dallas Keuchel). This isn’t a foolproof formula for immediate results, but over a long term sample size, it's more than likely that Perez’s results would be slightly better than before. There are models of success that radically changed many players careers (i.e JA Happ etc.) that follow the same general blueprint; gear towards a players strength, and wait to experience slight success (snazzy rhyming jingle huh?
 
And if this completely backfires, convert Perez into the bullpen, transition him into a killer LOOGY (he’s seriously a death on lefty guy, look at his numbers) and deal him during the trade deadline for some fringe B- to C prospect and look to take another bite at the apple next year.

If you don’t already know the Minnesota twins inked the former Ranger southpaw, and well seasoned veteran Martin Perez to a short 1 year compact, to what seems to be a lackluster effort to “fortify the rotation.”
 
Now we can interpret this transaction whatever way we deem to be fit, but the Twins projected rotation lines up as….
 


 
Middling at best.With the likes of two potentially elite pitchers Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel standing pat for a desirable bidder, this has caught the chagrin of Twins rage twitter, and you can’t blame them. Imagine inserting Kimbrel or Keuchel into the pitching staff, and the added perks would benefit all parties involved including the most important; rectifying the vast abyss of Twins rants on the interwebs.
 
It isn’t any secret that the Twins have loads of room to supplement the roster to make a bid for the division. With the Indians unloading after 3 years of reigning as division champions, and the Royals, Tigers, and White Sox currently having no plans other the than tanking, the crease is there for the Twins to make a run for the Indian’s money and to snap a near decade for a division title deprived fanbase. Even to that tangent, what even is more baffling is that the Twins have an unprecedented allotment of salary (I felt so deeply compelled to say cap room) on the checkbook or whatever ledger the stingy twins utilize to organize their expenses. As Minnesotan Fans, we are so inherently adept to mediocrity and heartbreak, it’s as if misery is in our compatible middle name. But in this instance, there’s only room to spectate and to be optimistic, which is undoubtedly a tough pill to swallow.
 
The Ugly on Perez
 
The ugly is so glaringly obvious. The kid pitched to the horrendous tune of a 6.22 ERA last season and owns a below average 4.63 ERA. He’s got a poor career 4.44 FIP, and doesn’t strike people out. Watching some footage of his former* (as in last season he was converted into a reliever because he was so awful) starts, the guy doesn’t have an appealing secondary pitch, his control is rather iffy, and his changeup has fallen off a cliff since its former dominance prior to his injury. Speaking of injury, the guy spent 3 stints on the disabled in only the past year, has operated on for Tommy John, and is as far as away from durable as Minnesota is from Texas.
 
The Bad
 
The thing Perez isn’t terrible because he’s bad. As contradictory as it sounds, he isn’t necessarily by any means as pitiful as he appears. Looking at the tape, its as if his performance rides a rollercoaster. During the first inning, the guy is as rocky ever. He gets in many hitters count, can’t find the zone, and gets rocked once he does in 3-0, 2-0, 3-1, or 3-2 counts. But strangely he settles down and is frankly razor sharp with precision in the middle innings. That sinker-changeup combo is to die for on the edge of the plate, and reminds me a lot of….JA Happ. I think toggling with his sinker/four-seamer to changeup ratio, and maybe a change of scenery would do him wonders. Not to mention, GLP in Arlington is no easy place to pitch, because the ball CARRIES out there.
 

 
The Good, and How to enhance it???
 
Believe or not, Perez once was pegged inside the Top 100 prospects in the Baseball America’s 2010 edition. Don’t think because of this though, that I expect him to fulfill his top billing as a prospect. The guy has upside which at this point is hard to believe. But as I watched the tape, he isn’t the doormat pitcher as his number would indicate. He’s a solid and competent enough pitcher in the middle innings and is maybe or not a little shaky-nervous at game tilt. Beyond that, he’s got excellent above-average velocity from a left-handed starter. His relative youth and exuberance leaves room for hope of improvement, and he’s 28. He also is a ground ball demon and induces a well above average GB rate, and at worst is a decent innings eater. We’ve seen this regime sign the flyer free agent, as referencing last year’s Anibal Sanchez reclamation project. After looking at Sanchez’s pitch usage, there’s nothing at first glance that collasally has changed. But taking a deeper dive, we can see that Anibal has surged up in his career ranks in Chase%, Pitches out of the Zone%, and overall Strikeouts%.
 


But his pitch movements, usages, and varying peripherals haven’t drastically changed.
 




What can be attributed to this surge is pitch sequencing. Sanchez better utilized his changeup in complement because he threw the pitch out of the zone. He Split-Finger had a career-high strikeout rate in volume, and had the most minuscule SLG percentage in terms of volume pitched. He cutback the vertical movement of his 12-6 curve, and upped the ante of his split-finger that fit perfectly to a series of pitches (sinker, cutter, split) that better suited his repertoire, featuring horizontal movement. Which is a primary reason why Anibal had a renaissance season.
 
I mention this because..
Anibal was once a former project
Perez bears a striking resemblance to Sanchez, in their deficiencies.

All of this surmounts to absolute and utter baloney if Perez resists in reinventing himself as a pitcher. This, however, does include an unorthodox approach, and completing throwing the entire baseball manual out the window, and tinkering with breaking balls. Look at the Rich Hill’s and the Drew Pomeranz of the world, and we’ve even seen Tyler Duffey rely on an off-speed pitch more than his fastball firsthand. Albeit none of this pitchers are All-Star commodities, they all in some capacity became better to some extent by heavily depending on their secondary stuff. There’s no denying Martin Perez is a fully capable and average enough MLB arm, but the real question remains; Will Martin Perez be open to tinker his arsenal, and if not were the Twins better suited to have unleashed a prospect in his place? That remains to be seen.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZOeXGX0sfY"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZOeXGX0sfY[/
 
My virtual fake money is betting on that Wes Johnson and company already have recognized this, and have a plan waiting to be set in motion. My suggestions are pretty rudimentary, but they follow along on a general theme. Adjust and configure Perez’s pitches to align with his strengths. Just a rogue modification of mine for the sake of hypothetical satisfaction; steer towards an arsenal of the basis of vertical movement, (by tinkering with the cutter), reduce the amount of curves, increase the ratio of sliders:curves, and intensify the changeup as a wipeout pitch (which comes in further developing the arm side run, Ala Dallas Keuchel). This isn’t a foolproof formula for immediate results, but over a long term sample size, it's more than likely that Perez’s results would be slightly better than before. There are models of success that radically changed many players careers (i.e JA Happ etc.) that follow the same general blueprint; gear towards a players strength, and wait to experience slight success (snazzy rhyming jingle huh?
 
And if this completely backfires, convert Perez into the bullpen, transition him into a killer LOOGY (he’s seriously a death on lefty guy, look at his numbers) and deal him during the trade deadline for some fringe B- to C prospect and look to take another bite at the apple next year.

If you don’t already know the Minnesota twins inked the former Ranger southpaw, and well seasoned veteran Martin Perez to a short 1 year compact, to what seems to be a lackluster effort to “fortify the rotation.”
 
Now we can interpret this transaction whatever way we deem to be fit, but the Twins projected rotation lines up as….
 


 
Middling at best.With the likes of two potentially elite pitchers Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel standing pat for a desirable bidder, this has caught the chagrin of Twins rage twitter, and you can’t blame them. Imagine inserting Kimbrel or Keuchel into the pitching staff, and the added perks would benefit all parties involved including the most important; rectifying the vast abyss of Twins rants on the interwebs.
 
It isn’t any secret that the Twins have loads of room to supplement the roster to make a bid for the division. With the Indians unloading after 3 years of reigning as division champions, and the Royals, Tigers, and White Sox currently having no plans other the than tanking, the crease is there for the Twins to make a run for the Indian’s money and to snap a near decade for a division title deprived fanbase. Even to that tangent, what even is more baffling is that the Twins have an unprecedented allotment of salary (I felt so deeply compelled to say cap room) on the checkbook or whatever ledger the stingy twins utilize to organize their expenses. As Minnesotan Fans, we are so inherently adept to mediocrity and heartbreak, it’s as if misery is in our compatible middle name. But in this instance, there’s only room to spectate and to be optimistic, which is undoubtedly a tough pill to swallow.
 
The Ugly on Perez
 
The ugly is so glaringly obvious. The kid pitched to the horrendous tune of a 6.22 ERA last season and owns a below average 4.63 ERA. He’s got a poor career 4.44 FIP, and doesn’t strike people out. Watching some footage of his former* (as in last season he was converted into a reliever because he was so awful) starts, the guy doesn’t have an appealing secondary pitch, his control is rather iffy, and his changeup has fallen off a cliff since its former dominance prior to his injury. Speaking of injury, the guy spent 3 stints on the disabled in only the past year, has operated on for Tommy John, and is as far as away from durable as Minnesota is from Texas.
 
The Bad
 
The thing Perez isn’t terrible because he’s bad. As contradictory as it sounds, he isn’t necessarily by any means as pitiful as he appears. Looking at the tape, its as if his performance rides a rollercoaster. During the first inning, the guy is as rocky ever. He gets in many hitters count, can’t find the zone, and gets rocked once he does in 3-0, 2-0, 3-1, or 3-2 counts. But strangely he settles down and is frankly razor sharp with precision in the middle innings. That sinker-changeup combo is to die for on the edge of the plate, and reminds me a lot of….JA Happ. I think toggling with his sinker/four-seamer to changeup ratio, and maybe a change of scenery would do him wonders. Not to mention, GLP in Arlington is no easy place to pitch, because the ball CARRIES out there.
 

 
The Good, and How to enhance it???
 
Believe or not, Perez once was pegged inside the Top 100 prospects in the Baseball America’s 2010 edition. Don’t think because of this though, that I expect him to fulfill his top billing as a prospect. The guy has upside which at this point is hard to believe. But as I watched the tape, he isn’t the doormat pitcher as his number would indicate. He’s a solid and competent enough pitcher in the middle innings and is maybe or not a little shaky-nervous at game tilt. Beyond that, he’s got excellent above-average velocity from a left-handed starter. His relative youth and exuberance leaves room for hope of improvement, and he’s 28. He also is a ground ball demon and induces a well above average GB rate, and at worst is a decent innings eater. We’ve seen this regime sign the flyer free agent, as referencing last year’s Anibal Sanchez reclamation project. After looking at Sanchez’s pitch usage, there’s nothing at first glance that collasally has changed. But taking a deeper dive, we can see that Anibal has surged up in his career ranks in Chase%, Pitches out of the Zone%, and overall Strikeouts%.
 


But his pitch movements, usages, and varying peripherals haven’t drastically changed.
 




What can be attributed to this surge is pitch sequencing. Sanchez better utilized his changeup in complement because he threw the pitch out of the zone. He Split-Finger had a career-high strikeout rate in volume, and had the most minuscule SLG percentage in terms of volume pitched. He cutback the vertical movement of his 12-6 curve, and upped the ante of his split-finger that fit perfectly to a series of pitches (sinker, cutter, split) that better suited his repertoire, featuring horizontal movement. Which is a primary reason why Anibal had a renaissance season.
 
I mention this because..
Anibal was once a former project
Perez bears a striking resemblance to Sanchez, in their deficiencies.

All of this surmounts to absolute and utter baloney if Perez resists in reinventing himself as a pitcher. This, however, does include an unorthodox approach, and completing throwing the entire baseball manual out the window, and tinkering with breaking balls. Look at the Rich Hill’s and the Drew Pomeranz of the world, and we’ve even seen Tyler Duffey rely on an off-speed pitch more than his fastball firsthand. Albeit none of this pitchers are All-Star commodities, they all in some capacity became better to some extent by heavily depending on their secondary stuff. There’s no denying Martin Perez is a fully capable and average enough MLB arm, but the real question remains; Will Martin Perez be open to tinker his arsenal, and if not were the Twins better suited to have unleashed a prospect in his place? That remains to be seen.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZOeXGX0sfY"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZOeXGX0sfY[/
 
My virtual fake money is betting on that Wes Johnson and company already have recognized this, and have a plan waiting to be set in motion. My suggestions are pretty rudimentary, but they follow along on a general theme. Adjust and configure Perez’s pitches to align with his strengths. Just a rogue modification of mine for the sake of hypothetical satisfaction; steer towards an arsenal of the basis of vertical movement, (by tinkering with the cutter), reduce the amount of curves, increase the ratio of sliders:curves, and intensify the changeup as a wipeout pitch (which comes in further developing the arm side run, Ala Dallas Keuchel). This isn’t a foolproof formula for immediate results, but over a long term sample size, it's more than likely that Perez’s results would be slightly better than before. There are models of success that radically changed many players careers (i.e JA Happ etc.) that follow the same general blueprint; gear towards a players strength, and wait to experience slight success (snazzy rhyming jingle huh?
 
And if this completely backfires, convert Perez into the bullpen, transition him into a killer LOOGY (he’s seriously a death on lefty guy, look at his numbers) and deal him during the trade deadline for some fringe B- to C prospect and look to take another bite at the apple next year.