Matt Braun

The 6’ 7” beast Michael Pineda took the mound the other day in Fort Myers and fired off two scoreless innings to go with his two previous scoreless innings, giving him an easy to calculate ERA of 0.00 so far in spring training. Pineda last pitched in the majors for the Yankees but you might have also recognized him by his nicknames “Big Mike” or “Large Mikeal” or “Why is That Mountain Moving?”When he was signed in the offseason following the 2017 season, it was with the understanding that his value would mostly be in the 2019 season and he would most likely not pitch in 2018 for the Twins as he continued to rehab from Tommy John surgery. His two year $10 million deal essentially works as a one-year deal and set the blueprint for Garrett Richards to sign a similar contract with the Padres this last offseason. Although, Pineda might have had better offers from Rick Spielman to start at guard for the Vikings for the upcoming season. Pineda could prove to be an important bridge in an uncertain Twins starting rotation. While most teams would be happy with a 1-2 punch of Berrios and Gibson to lead the rotation, the names after them aren’t quite as exciting. Odorizzi is fine but should ideally be your fourth starter and the number of candidates for the fifth spot is as long as Santa’s nice/naughty list but has more naughtys than I care for. So getting 160-170 quality innings from Pineda could prove key to leading a strong Twins team in contending for the AL Central title against the Indians. But what does history have to say about starting pitchers who have had such an extended absence due to injury? Pineda’s last major league outing was on July 5, 2017 which is a good 20 months ago. Is it realistic to assume that he can come back and be the normal Pineda in 2019? I looked through the long list of recent MLB starting pitchers who underwent TJ surgery between 2011 and 2017. I cut it off at 2017 because those players have not had their full season of performance yet following their surgery. Then I found the guys who hadn’t played in MLB in over 15 months after their surgery to get a sample size of guys more similar to Pineda. And finally, I only included pitchers who started the season on the major league squad so that they would have a full season of work on their plate as their first taste of the majors after surgery like Pineda and so that their innings totals wouldn’t be skewed. The list of players goes as follows: Bronson Arroyo, Zack Wheeler, A.J. Griffin, Robbie Erlin, Lance Lynn, Matt Harvey, John Lackey An interesting assortment of names, sure, but these are the most similar comps to Pineda that have come about in recent history as far as time off goes. Here they are broken down by innings totals in their first full year back from injury: 60-80 innings: Bronson Arroyo 80-100 innings: Zack Wheeler 100-120 innings: A.J. Griffin, Robbie Erlin 180-200 innings: Lance Lynn, Matt Harvey, John Lackey Well, that’s certainly something. Arroyo was old and bad at this time so take that with what you will. Wheeler was seemingly in witness protection for a few years there as he was suffering from Mets-itits before breaking out just this past year. Griffin missed some time due to injury in his first year back which ultimately hampered his innings total but that could very well be a problem for Pineda as well this upcoming year. Lance Lynn, Matt Harvey and John Lackey all had seemingly normal years immediately following their extended recovery, but Harvey also presents himself as a cautionary tale of why innings limits exist for players recently removed from surgery. He went over his innings limit in 2015 and has not been the same pitcher since. Personally, I find this data to actually be rather optimistic. While no pitcher was within that 160-170 innings total that I mentioned before, a few pitchers were able to come back and have normal years even after an extended break due to recovery. While I don’t want to go as far as thanking Lance Lynn for what he did, he is among those who represent a ray of hope that Pineda can be consistently relied upon in 2019. Now, you might have noticed that I did not mention Robbie Erlin yet. Erlin worked this last year as a swingman for the Padres, or the Giants, be honest, you don’t know whether or not Robbie Erlin actually exists much less the team he plays for. But Fangraphs tells me that there allegedly was a player under the pseudonym “Robbie Erlin” for the Friars last year who got his innings out of the pen and as a starter, and I find that very interesting. The Padres most likely observed the Harvey fiasco and decided it was best not to follow that same path so they artificially reduced Erlin's innings totals by limiting his chances at getting a large number of outs. Why do I find that interesting? The crafty Twins have recently been rather vague about their plans for getting outs in the 2019 season. Instead of referring to Fernando Romero as a reliever, they said that they will transition him to get him ready for “shorter stints”. Instead of saying that Adalberto Mejia is a starter, they said that he will be stretched out for “extended outings”. While GM talk is nothing new, the new wave of baseball strategy has been focused on getting the most outs you can in the most efficient way possible. Hell, Craig Counsell in his infinite wisdom just refers to his pitchers now as “out-getters”. You can say that baseball is getting more progressive in their old and archaic categorizing of pitchers, but it seems to me that teams are catching on to the most effective ways to get outs in today’s game. Much like with the Padres and Erlin, I have to assume the Twins are also very concerned with Pineda’s innings limit. No specific number has become public, but there has to be one. And possibly as a way to limit those innings, we may see the Twins try a bevy of things for Pineda. Maybe they use an opener for him, maybe he is the opener for someone, maybe he occasionally works in long relief, maybe he closes some games! I absolutely would not put it past the Twins to try any number of these strategies to avoid a Matt Harvey situation in the future. Although that also begs the question, do they care? Is Pineda just here as a placeholder for another guy to come in in 2020? While it may be morally wrong, how much would the Twins care about ruining the arm of a guy they have no intention of keeping long term? As the season plays out, we shall see the answers to these questions, but keep in mind that it is realistic for Pineda to fire off a full season of work as a starter in 2019. Click here to view the article

The 6’ 7” beast Michael Pineda took the mound the other day in Fort Myers and fired off 2 scoreless innings to go with his 2 previous scoreless innings, giving him an easy to calculate ERA of 0.00 so far in spring training. Pineda last pitched in the majors for the Yankees but you might have also recognized him by his nicknames “Big Mike” or “Large Mikeal” or “Why is That Mountain Moving?” When he was signed in the offseason following the 2017 season, it was with the understanding that his value would mostly be in the 2019 season and he would most likely not pitch in 2018 for the Twins as he continued to rehab from Tommy John surgery. His 2 year $10 million deal essentially works as a 1-year deal and set the blueprint for Garrett Richards to sign a similar deal with the Padres this last offseason. Although, Pineda might have had better offers from Rick Spielman to start at guard for the Vikings for the upcoming season. Pineda could prove to be an important bridge in an uncertain Twins starting rotation. While most teams would be happy with a 1-2 punch of Berrios and Gibson to lead the rotation, the names after them aren’t quite as exciting. Odorizzi is fine but should ideally be your 4th starter and the number of candidates for the 5th spot is as long as Santa’s nice/naughty list but has more naughtys than I care for. So getting 160-170 quality innings from Pineda could prove key to leading a strong Twins team in contending for the AL Central title against the Indians. But what does history have to say about starting pitchers who have had such an extended absence due to injury? Pineda’s last major league outing was on July 5th in 2017 which is a good 20 months ago, is it realistic to assume that he can come back and be the normal Pineda in 2019? I looked through the long list of recent MLB starting pitchers who underwent TJ surgery between 2011 and 2017. I cut it off at 2017 because those players have not had their full season of performance yet following their surgery. Then I found the guys who hadn’t played in MLB in over 15 months after their surgery to get a sample size of guys more similar to Pineda. And finally, I only included pitchers who started the season on the major league squad so that they would have a full season of work on their plate as their first taste of the majors after surgery like Pineda and so that their innings totals wouldn’t be skewed. The list of players goes as follows: Bronson Arroyo, Zack Wheeler, A.J. Griffin, Robbie Erlin, Lance Lynn, Matt Harvey, John Lackey An interesting assortment of names, sure, but these are the most similar comps to Pineda that have come about in recent history as far as time off goes. Here they are broken down by innings totals in their first full year back from injury: 60-80 innings: Bronson Arroyo 80-100 innings: Zack Wheeler 100-120 innings: A.J. Griffin, Robbie Erlin 180-200 innings: Lance Lynn, Matt Harvey, John Lackey Well, that’s certainly something. Arroyo was old and bad at this time so take that with what you will. Wheeler was seemingly in witness protection for a few years there as he was suffering from Metsitits before breaking out just this past year. Griffin missed some time due to injury in his first year back which ultimately hampered his innings total but that could very well be a problem for Pineda as well this upcoming year. Lance Lynn, Matt Harvey, and John Lackey all had seemingly normal years immediately following their extended recovery, but Harvey also presents himself as a cautionary tale of why innings limits exist for players recently removed from surgery. He went over his innings limit in 2015 and has not been the same pitcher since. Personally, I find this data to actually be rather optimistic. While no pitcher was within that 160-170 innings total that I mentioned before, a few pitchers were able to come back and have normal years even after an extended break due to recovery. While I don’t want to go as far as thanking Lance Lynn for what he did, he is among those who represent a ray of hope that Pineda can be consistently relied upon in 2019. Now, you might have noticed that I did not mention Robbie Erlin yet. Erlin worked this last year as a swingman for the Padres, or the Giants, be honest, you don’t know whether or not Robbie Erlin actually exists much less the team he plays for. But Fangraphs tells me that there allegedly was a player under the pseudonym “Robbie Erlin” for the Friars last year who got his innings out of the pen and as a starter, and I find that very interesting. The Padres most likely observed the Harvey fiasco and decided it was best not to follow that same path so they artificially reduced Erlin's innings totals by limiting his chances at getting a large number of outs. Why do I find that interesting? The crafty Twins have recently been rather vague about their plans for getting outs in the 2019 season. Instead of referring to Fernando Romero as a reliever, they said that they will transition him to get him ready for “shorter stints”. Instead of saying that Adalberto Mejia is a starter, they said that he will be stretched out for “extended outings”. While GM talk is nothing new, the new wave of baseball strategy has been focused on getting the most outs you can in the most efficient way possible. Hell, Craig Counsell in his infinite wisdom just refers to his pitchers now as “out-getters”. You can say that baseball is getting more progressive in their old and archaic categorizing of pitchers, but it seems to me that teams are catching on to the most effective ways to get outs in today’s game. Much like with the Padres and Erlin, I have to assume the Twins are also very concerned with Pineda’s innings limit. No specific number has become public, but there has to be one. And possibly as a way to limit those innings, we may see the Twins try a bevy of things for Pineda. Maybe they use an opener for him, maybe he is the opener for someone, maybe he occasionally works in long relief, maybe he closes some games! I absolutely would not put it past the Twins to try any number of these strategies to avoid a Matt Harvey situation in the future. Although that also begs the question, do they care? Is Pineda just here as a placeholder for another guy to come in in 2020? While it may be morally wrong, how much would the Twins care about ruining the arm of a guy they have no intention of keeping long term? As the season plays out, we shall see the answers to these questions, but keep in mind that it is realistic for Pineda to fire off a full season of work as a starter in 2019.

Recently I was messing around on MLB.com for no particularly good or suspicious reason when I stumbled upon their top prospects list. Now, we all are familiar with prospects because as Twins fans, they sometimes bring us more hope than the major league team. But even cooler than the updated top prospects list was an archived top prospects list from 2011 that included their top 50 prospects of the year along with top 10 lists for each team. An oh boy does nothing brew my fair-trade espresso like looking back at old prospects lists and chuckling at how their careers actually turned out. Guys like Machado, Harper, and Trout were all in the top 10 and have been excellent so far while guys like Jacob Turner, Martin Perez, and Shelby Miller haven’t quite lived up to their hype. Baseball is a funny game and how good of a prospect a player oftentimes does not correlate to major league success. So buckle in and get ready for some weird nostalgia. http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/prospects/watch/y2011/ Aaron Hicks I swear on my life that I didn’t plan this, but the news of Aaron Hicks’ new 7-year extension with the Yankees broke earlier this week and basically every part of that sentence just absolutely stings. Hicks was the OG toolsy centerfielder before Buxton was even in the picture and there was a lot to like about his game. Unfortunately, this story doesn’t end too well for us Twins fans; Hicks struggled in the majors for the Twins, was traded to the Yankees after the 2015 season for John Ryan Murphy, then struggled in 2016 for the Yankees before figuring it out in 2017 and is now coming off a fresh 4.9 fWAR season for the Yankees. There really isn’t any way that you can slice that trade that makes it look good for the Twins, but it does hurt a touch less considering how good the Twins OF is even without Hicks. And it makes me feel a little better if I think of it as a Hicks for Moya trade because good Lord, John Ryan Murphy was just awful for the Twins. Terry Ryan should have known not to trust a guy with 3 first names, but here we are. JRM was one of the worst Twins players I had ever seen and the only fond memory I have of him is when he got tossed in Houston after Jerry Layne’s ego got in the way of making a strike 3 call. Kyle Gibson What an interesting career Gibson has had so far. Gibby was originally taken as a 1st round college arm in 2009 because the Twins philosophy at the time was “take college pitchers in the 1st to get them here as quick as possible”. Gibby took a little longer than expected due to getting Tommy John surgery late in 2011, but he eventually debuted in 2013. After some solid yet unspectacular seasons in 2014 and 2015, the metaphorical feces hit the fan in 2016 and the first half of 2017 for Gibby as his standard groundball special became obsolete and hitters started to tee off on the poor guy. After being sent to AAA in 2017 and changing how he pitched (along with probably “finding himself” or something equally deep), Gibby started to strike people out and he pitched well in the 2nd half of 2017. All of this led to a full breakout 2018 campaign at the ripe age of 30 for the converted groundball man and he looks to stabilize the rotation again in 2019. Miguel Sano Here we have yet another unusual career path because God forbid a Twins prospect develops normally into a quality MLB player without a speed bump or 7 along the way. Sano was one of the few good moves made by Bill Smith as he was signed out of the Dominican Republic in 2009 as a 16-year-old (allegedly, according to Joe Simpson). He mashed through the minors before losing an entire year in 2014 due to Tommy John surgery but skipped AAA the next year and made his MLB debut in 2015. And oh boy did he make a debut. He absolutely mashed to the tune of a 149 wRC+ and was seemingly crushing clutch homers every single night. 2016 was less kind to Sano as he struggled with injuries and dumbassery when the Twins attempted to move him to RF to keep elite third baseman Trevor Plouffe on the roster. 2017 was kinder as he made the All-Star game but still struggled with injuries later in the season. 2018 was just absolutely turrible in the full Charles Barkley sense of the word for him but let’s not dwell on the past. Sano is still around as a 25-year-old (allegedly also to the dude who cares about that kind of thing) with All-Star upside but needs to have a good 2019 year to show that he can stick in the Twins’ future plans. Oswaldo Arcia Oh man, Oswaldo Arcia, what a headache this guy was. All the talent in the world but couldn’t make contact, or hit the ball to left field, or field, or run… Really, it isn’t much of a surprise that this guy flamed out. Arcia is pretty much the cookie-cutter bust as he hung around for a few years with meh numbers and was finally DFA’d in 2016 when the team had enough finally. I mean seriously, when you can’t even make the 2016 Twins better, that isn’t a great sign for where you are skill-wise. Arcia bounced around to a number of teams that year and then chilled in Arizona’s minor league system in 2017 before going international to further his career. He was actually supposed to play in the AAA All-Star game in 2017 but didn’t end up going for some reason. I don’t know who would turn down a nice trip to Tacoma, Washington like that. Now we get to watch his brother, Orlando, do things for Milwaukee and then get the cold 1000-yard stare whenever the word “Arcia” is mentioned. Apparently, he signed a contract with a Mexican league team about 2 weeks ago, so that’s neat. Joe Benson Y’all remember Joe Benson? This absolute legend has all of 74 major league plate appearances and holds a career wRC+ of 67. Benson was in the minor league system for the Twins for what felt like forever but never really got a major shot until 2011. Ironically enough, Benson lost the starting centerfield job to Aaron Hicks in 2013 during spring training and was placed on waivers later that year to make room for P.J. Walters. Benson bounced around some other minor league teams afterward and was last recorded as signing with the Chicago Dogs in Indy ball. Also, as a fun fact to use whenever at the bar, Benson’s first career hit came off of Max Scherzer, so use that for a pickup line whenever you need. That was not a fun trip down memory lane, but I do think it is necessary for us to check our hype on prospects occasionally. As fans, we always expect the perfect outcomes for them as we envision them as future All-Stars who lock down the team for years to come, but the truth is, they don’t always pan out, and that was a big reason for the Twins struggles in the early Target Field era, the Twins couldn’t develop an actual prospect to save their life. Under the new regime, however, a great number of excellent coaches and modern technologies have been implemented to make sure the next wave of top prospects in Royce Lewis, Alex Kirilloff, and Brusdar Graterol, among others can succeed when they hit the majors.

This time of the year is always exciting as a baseball fan, the start of spring training brings an undeniable energy that rejuvenates every single fanbase across the country, yes, even Mariners fans. But the last two offseasons now have brought the droning, political, and monotonous free agency cycle bleeding into the beginning of spring training. Whether it be the owners becoming greedy and selfish in their wealth, the front offices becoming wiser in how money is allocated in free agent deals, or Scott Boras wanting to piss off every single team with his negotiating style, players and teams are no longer seeing eye-to-eye and deals have taken longer to manifest. Even with the shocking announcement of Manny Machado manifest destinying his way out west again, there still sits a bounty of veteran players available on the free agent market including a handful of players who would make every team in baseball better with their presence. One of those players is Craig Kimbrel, a hard-throwing righty who looks like a stunt double who Peter Jackson rejected from his Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Even with this demeanor, Kimbrel has carved out a career as one of the best closers in the game and currently sits as the 14th highest saves getter in MLB history despite being only 30. Now, before I go any farther, I want to make something very clear. I have been a fan of the moves the Twins have made so far this offseason. I love the Cruz addition along with both Kepler’s and Polanco’s extensions, I like the Parker, Schoop, and Cron additions, and I have even come around on believing in a Martin Perez bounceback. I have especially been a fan of the revamped coaching staff at all levels that have included hiring a slew of progressive, forward-thinking coaches with Rocco Baldelli now at the helm of the major league team. I also love reading stories about Wes Johnson, who would probably whoop Rick Anderson if he heard him talking about “pitching to contact”. That all being said, it feels disappointing as a fan to see such a large amount of payroll currently sitting there completely unused. Even the most radical fan understood that they were never going to spend like the Dodgers, but there is still a decent gap between where they are now and where they could still be within the usual parameters of their spending habits. And the size of that gap is 6 feet tall and sticks his arm out like a pelican before delivering a pitch. When talking about Kimbrel’s dominance, his stats truly speak for themselves. His career 14.67 K/9 is so obscene and disgusting that even speaking it out loud could get you arrested for indecent exposure. His career fWAR of 19.0 is 14th all-time among relievers despite the fact that he has half or even a third of the total innings of some of the names ahead of him. His career ERA of 1.91 is 1st among all relievers in MLB history with at least 500 innings thrown. Yes, it is lower than perfect hall of famer, Mariano Rivera. And take a good guess where his career FIP ranks also among relievers with at least 500 innings pitched. Ah, but there is indeed a reason why Kimbrel has not signed isn’t there? We all know what his career has been so far, but MLB teams care more about where your career is going from here, and as I found out in a previous article, relievers typically have a short shelf life in MLB. Kimbrel struggled in 2018 or at least did so by his standards, much like when the smart kid gets an A-. But this A- came with a higher than normal BB/9 of 4.48, a lower than normal K/9 of 13.68, a 2nd half ERA of 4.57, and one hell of a messy playoff streak that is still in the minds of everyone. Despite what the narratives feel like for the redbeard though, his ERA last year was still just 2.74 and his FIP was a “high” 3.13. That FIP would slide in right behind Taylor Rogers and Trevor May for the Twins and be 3rd among their relievers in 2018 or by relievers who threw a full season for the Twins and only the Twins last year, just Taylor Rogers. Strategically, having the sleeping dragon as the final boss in the Twins pen would have an incredible ripple effect throughout all their relievers. May and Rogers would be unleashed in fireman roles, calming down rallies before they even get a chance to begin. Trevor Hildenberger and Addison Reed can re-find their footing in lower leverage roles earlier in the game and eat up important innings before the meat of the pen can do their work. Blake Parker can go do Blake Parker things when needed and Fernando Romero can terrorize hitters at will with his disgusting 98 MPH two-seamer. In my plan, Andrew Vasquez is also here to serve up sliders at a rate that would make White Castle jealous because Gabriel Moya gives me anxiety when he pitches. Also, replacing Matt Magill with Kimbrel would take their projected fWAR total out of the bullpen from 19th in baseball at 2.1 to tied with the Astros at 4th with an fWAR total of 4.2. And changing Magill with Kimbrel in practice is a lot like replacing a flyswatter with a bazooka. I’ve gushed over Kimbrel’s ability quite a lot in this article, but something that a lot of Twins fans would also like to know is that his average fastball velocity last year was 97.1 MPH. Yes, he threw 97 on average. Was there even a guy for the Twins last year to throw a single heater that fast? Maybe old man Rodney, but no one else was doing it as consistently as Kimbrel over here. And as a fan of a team that has been notoriously poor in developing hard-throwing pitchers cough cough, Alex Meyer, cough cough, wouldn’t it feel great to finally have a guy spitting fire in the pen? Earlier this month, Dan Hayes did mention that there was interest on the Twins side to bring Kimbrel aboard and with recent news that the Red Sox would rather play with their World Series trophy than bring him back, the amount of teams that are in play for Kimbrel appears to be limited. While we have heard nothing as far as years and money that the Twins have offered, I can say with a good deal of confidence that there is no contract they could offer that would tank them for the duration of such a deal. I personally would offer Kimbrel a 3 year $54 million deal with a vesting option for a 4th year. That $18 million would bring the Twins to a payroll total around the number it was at last year and would make them more respectable in the AL Central battle between them and the Indians without having to sacrifice flexibility for future contracts if other young guys figure their stuff out. So, Derek Falvey or whatever Twins front office member that stumbles on this article, I beg of you, sign this man to a contract as soon as you can. Twins fans would be very pleased and you would earn a good deal of credit in their eyes as they are begging for you to spend some money. Not only that, but you guys can get creative and put together an elaborate entrance plan for him as you did with Rodney, complete with flashing lights and hype music that could be heard from St. Cloud. I’ll leave you with Craig Kimbrel stealing Giancarlo Stanton’s soul with a curveball that would make Bert Blyleven proud. https://twitter.com/PitchingNinja/status/1048411416896659456 Now, does anyone know what Falvey’s email is? I’m trying to CC him this article but I can’t find him anywhere.

It was brought to my attention the other day that, by xwOBA, the unluckiest hitter in all of MLB in 2018 was Logan Morrison. Let me back that up a little because I’m sure my dad just had an aneurysm trying to read “xwOBA”. Let’s start with the wOBA part before x gives it to ya. wOBA stands for weighted on-base average and it does what slugging and OPS try to do, it calculates the value of a hitter with the understanding, as the opposite of what Thomas Jefferson once proclaimed, that not all hits are created equal.Slugging and OPS attempt this also, but both stats assume that the value of hits is linear, which is to say that OPS believes a homer is exactly twice as valuable as a double or a triple is exactly three times as a good as a single. While OPS thinks this, wOBA understands that this is simply not true and instead calculates the importance of these outcomes with their correct value. If you want to read a piece that goes into more detail about wOBA and how it is calculated, Fangraphs has a great article about it that can be found here and I would highly suggest reading it before moving on in my article. As a quick rule of thumb, an average wOBA is about .320 while an above average wOBA is about .340 and a below average wOBA is .310. But we aren’t just talking about wOBA here, we’re talking about xwOBA! What the hell is that x doing there and what does it signify? Thanks to Statcast data, we can calculate more precisely how much luck is involved in the game. xwOBA only cares about the quality of the contact being made and couldn’t give a rats ass about the actual outcomes of the hits. So a screaming line drive that finds the right fielder's glove may not count for anything during the game, but xwOBA thinks that the guy who hit the ball got unlucky and probably will not continue being unlucky going forward if he is capable of hitting the ball like he currently is. xwOBA specifically uses the term “quality of contact” which encompasses exit velocity along with launch angle to determine how lucky or unlucky a certain hitter was. If you want to read more about it, I have another article for your curious mind that will extend the length of time you spend on my article. Now that all of that is out the way, let’s take a look at what xwOBA says about some choice Twins and their 2018 seasons. I’ll be looking at a handful of the most successful Twins players along with whom I have deemed their “brother” or someone who had the same or a very similar 2018 xwOBA as them. Numbers are pulled from Baseball Savant here. Nelson Cruz and Aaron Judge Isn’t that a tasty comparison? The defier of Father Time put up a ridiculous .392 xwOBA in 2018, a number just a hair north of noted destroyer of baseballs, Aaron Judge. Despite putting up a wRC+ that was his lowest since 2014, there should be nothing to worry about for Cruz as he continued to annihilate balls at a ridiculous rate and he should provide some serious production in the middle of a Twins lineup that has more power in three spots than any of the mid 2000’s teams had in the entire lineup. They might have to start handing out helmets in the left field bleachers for safety reasons. Joe Mauer and J.T. Realmuto While it is great to see Mauer’s name here, it came with some decent scrolling down the list. Cruz was ranked seventh in MLB by xwOBA, but the next Twin comes in at 56th place and he doesn’t even play for the Twins anymore. Wow, that got really sad, let’s spin this in a more positive light. Mauer’s xwOBA says that the dude got robbed hardcore last year as he only put up a .319 wOBA compared to an xwOBA of .350. An unusual feat mainly because hitters like Mauer are prime candidates to be enemies of xwOBA due to their ability to hit the ball to the opposite field. These more “well-rounded” hitters tend to have lower xwOBA numbers because xwOBA does not account for defensive positioning and at the game level, well-hit balls that xwOBA would like are generally pulled and can be gobbled up consistently by the shift. Although, Mauer was such an extreme opposite field guy that the consistency of his hits actually ended up biting him. Oh yeah, and he was as good as J.T. Realmuto in this category, so go trade for that, Philly. C.J. Cron and Giancarlo Stanton You hear that, Yankees fans? Cron is as good as Stanton, open and shut case. Even though probably just about everyone and their mother forgot that Cron was traded from the Angels to the Rays before the 2018 season, he saw a good amount of success with his new team as he translated his “looks like a guy who can whack the crap out of the ball” skills into “actually is a guy that can whack the crap out of the ball” skills. The Rays DFA’d Cron after the season in an effort to recreate the Corey Dickerson fiasco the year before, which led to Derek Falvey waking up from his slumber immediately and punching the “Get Old Rays 1st Baseman Button” he keeps near his bed. Cron put up a respectable .345 xwOBA in 2018 and looks to continue his success with the Twins into the future. Logan Morrison and Daniel Murphy So far, we have two guys that are no longer on the Twins and two guys who just got here, I don’t know what to make of that. As mentioned before, xwOBA feels pretty bad about Morrison’s 2018 and wants to cheer him up with some Jameson, a high-quality steak, a movie on Netflix, and some decent exit velocity numbers. His xwOBA of .340 is a good .057 higher than what his wOBA actually was. As mentioned before with Mauer, Morrison is a prime case of why these numbers aren’t exactly perfect. We all saw him last year refuse to hit the ball the other way and instead ground out to the second baseman directly into the shift over and over. And while the quality of the contact might have been good, the assumption that his luck would change was false. He probably deserved a little better, but I am really glad that he is off the team now. Jake Cave and Whit Merrifield We have quite an interesting pairing here, like when a high school jock starts dating a band girl. Jake Cave was acquired in an incredibly low-profile trade before the season but then forced his way onto the major league team and is now probably in the future plans for the Twins due to his ability to hit the snot out of the ball. Despite a hilariously lopsided 33.0% K percent and a BABIP that would make Christian Yelich blush, Cave’s ability to hit the ball a country mile could hold up and allow for him to grow into a more well-rounded batter. With Whit Merrifield as his xwOBA sidekick, Jake Cave will continue to swing hard and hit hard or not at all. Eddie Rosario and ... Ian Kinsler? For a stat that is called “expected wOBA”, this pairing sure is unexpected. Rosario was easily the most productive Twins hitter in 2018 as he continued to put up solid wRC+ numbers while Kinsler was… not productive at all. Kinsler’s hitting went even farther into the toilet following an already disappointing 2017 year as he put up a wRC+ of 93 in 2017 and followed that up with an 87 wRC+ in 2018. Despite this pretty serious disparity, xwOBA has both guys pegged at a .299 clip that would be consistent for Kinsler but incredibly concerning for Rosario. Also, despite similar numbers in 2017 and 2018 for Rosario, xwOBA was much more of a fan of him in 2017 when they had him pegged at a .334 clip that was more in line with how he actually performed that year. The good news is that there aren’t that many Twins players that look due for regression in 2019 based off their 2018 numbers, but the bad news is that the reason for that is because their xwOBA numbers were poor across the board. Even though some players like Cruz and Kepler should see bumps in their production, using past performance to predict future success is an inconsistently successful measurement and let’s be honest, using the eye test is just much easier to do instead. And my eyes are telling me that the Twins offense in 2019 should be pretty tasty. Click here to view the article

Appreciate it, maybe if we harass Tom and the boys enough then they'll add me to the main rotation, lol

I sit here on the Wednesday of February the 13th, the same day that pitchers and catchers have reported for the Twins, pretty much stuck in my dorm as the classes on my campus were canceled for the 3rd straight day due to snow. At this point, I actually want to go to class because there is something inside me that craves work of some sort and the amount of MLB The Show and Grand Theft Auto that I have played over the last few days would make any sane human nauseous. The solution, of course, is to humbly offer another article to the Twins Daily powers that be in the hope that they approve of my sacrifice and allow me to post another day. It was brought to my attention the other day that, by xwOBA, the unluckiest hitter in all of MLB in 2018 was Logan Morrison. Let me back that up a little because I’m sure my dad just had an aneurysm trying to read “xwOBA”. Let’s start with the wOBA part before x gives it to ya. wOBA stands for weighted on-base average and it does what slugging and OPS try to do, it calculates the value of a hitter with the understanding, as the opposite of what Thomas Jefferson once proclaimed, that not all hits are created equal. Slugging and OPS attempt this also, but both stats assume that the value of hits is linear, which is to say that OPS believes a homer is exactly twice as valuable as a double or a triple is exactly three times as a good as a single. While OPS thinks this, wOBA understands that this is simply not true and instead calculates the importance of these outcomes with their correct value. If you want to read a piece that goes into more detail about wOBA and how it is calculated, Fangraphs has a great article about it that can be found here and I would highly suggest reading it before moving on in my article. As a quick rule of thumb, an average wOBA is about .320 while an above average wOBA is about .340 and a below average wOBA is .310. But we aren’t just talking about wOBA here, we’re talking about xwOBA! What the hell is that x doing there and what does it signify? Thanks to Statcast data, we can calculate more precisely how much luck is involved in the game. xwOBA only cares about the quality of the contact being made and couldn’t give a rats ass about the actual outcomes of the hits. So a screaming line drive that finds the right fielder's glove may not count for anything during the game, but xwOBA thinks that the guy who hit the ball got unlucky and probably will not continue being unlucky going forward if they are capable of hitting the ball like they currently are. xwOBA specifically uses the term “quality of contact” which encompasses exit velocity along with launch angle to determine how lucky or unlucky a certain hitter was. If you want to read more about it, I have another article for your curious mind that will extend the length of time you spend on my article. Now that all of that is out the way, let’s take a look at what xwOBA says about some choice Twins and their 2018 seasons. I’ll be looking at a handful of the most successful Twins players along with who I have deemed their “brother” or someone who had the same or a very similar 2018 xwOBA as them. Numbers are pulled from Baseball Savant here. Nelson Cruz and Aaron Judge Isn’t that a tasty comparison? The defier of father time put up a ridiculous .392 xwOBA in 2018, a number just a hair north of noted destroyer of baseballs, Aaron Judge. Despite putting up a wRC+ that was his lowest since 2014, there should be nothing to worry about for Cruz as he continued to annihilate balls at a ridiculous rate and he should provide some serious production in the middle of a Twins lineup that has more power in 3 spots than any of the mid 2000’s team had in the entire lineup. They might have to start handing out helmets in the left field bleachers for safety reasons. Joe Mauer and J.T. Realmuto While it is great to see Mauer’s name here, it came with some decent scrolling down the list. Cruz was ranked 7th in MLB by xwOBA, but the next Twin comes in at 56th place and he doesn’t even play for the Twins anymore. Wow, that got really sad, let’s spin this in a more positive light. Mauer’s xwOBA says that the dude got robbed hardcore last year as he only put up a .319 wOBA compared to an xwOBA of .350. An unusual feat mainly because hitters like Mauer are prime candidates to be enemies of xwOBA due to their ability to hit the ball to the opposite field. These more “well-rounded” hitters tend to have lower xwOBA numbers because xwOBA does not account for defensive positioning and at the game level, well-hit balls that xwOBA would like are generally pulled and can be gobbled up consistently by the shift. Although, Mauer was such an extreme opposite field guy that the consistency of his hits actually ended up biting him. Oh yeah, and he was as good as J.T. Realmuto in this category, so go trade for that, Philly. C.J. Cron and Giancarlo Stanton You hear that, Yankees fans? Cron is as good as Stanton, open and shut case. Even though probably just about everyone and their mother forgot that Cron was traded from the Angels to the Rays before the 2018 season, he saw a good amount of success with his new team as he translated his “looks like a guy who can whack the crap out of the ball” skills into “actually is a guy that can whack the crap out of the ball” skills. The Rays DFA’d Cron after the season in an effort to recreate the Corey Dickerson fiasco the year before, which led to Derek Falvey waking up from his slumber immediately and punching the “Get Old Rays 1st Baseman Button” he keeps near his bed. Cron put up a respectable .345 xwOBA in 2018 and looks to continue his success with the Twins into the future. Logan Morrison and Daniel Murphy So far, we have two guys that are no longer on the Twins and two guys who just got here, I don’t know what to make of that. As mentioned before, xwOBA feels pretty bad about Morrison’s 2018 and wants to cheer him up with some Jameson, a high-quality steak, a movie on Netflix, and some decent exit velocity numbers. His xwOBA of .340 is a good .057 higher than what his wOBA actually was. As mentioned before with Mauer, Morrison is a prime case of why these numbers aren’t exactly perfect. We all saw him last year refuse to hit the ball the other way and instead groundout to the 2nd baseman directly into the shift over and over. And while the quality of the contact might have been good, the assumption that his luck would change was false. He probably deserved a little better, but I am really glad that he is off the team now. Jake Cave and Whit Merrifield We have quite an interesting pairing here, like when a high school jock starts dating a band girl. Jake Cave was acquired in an incredibly low profile trade before the season but then forced his way onto the major league team and is now probably in the future plans for the Twins due to his ability to hit the snot out of the ball. Despite a hilariously lopsided 33.0% K percent and a BABIP that would make Christian Yelich blush, Cave’s ability to hit the ball a country mile could hold up and allow for him to grow into a more well-rounded batter. With Whit Merrifield as his xwOBA sidekick, Jake Cave will continue to swing hard and hit hard or not at all. Eddie Rosario and ...Ian Kinsler? For a stat that is called “expected wOBA”, this pairing sure is unexpected. Rosario was easily the most productive Twins hitter in 2018 as he continued to put up solid wRC+ numbers while Kinsler was… not productive at all. Kinsler’s hitting went even farther into the toilet following an already disappointing 2017 year as he put up a wRC+ of 93 in 2017 and followed that up with an 87 wRC+ in 2018. Despite this pretty serious disparity, xwOBA has both guys pegged at a .299 clip that would be consistent for Kinsler but incredibly concerning for Rosario. Also, despite similar numbers in 2017 and 2018 for Rosario, xwOBA was much more of a fan of him in 2017 when they had him pegged at a .334 clip that was more in line with how he actually performed that year. The good news is that there aren’t that many Twins players that look due for regression in 2019 based off their 2018 numbers, but the bad news is that the reason for that is because their xwOBA numbers were poor across the board. Even though some players like Cruz and Kepler should see bumps in their production, using past performance to predicate future success is an inconsistent measurement and let’s be honest, using the eye test is just much easier to do instead. And my eyes are telling me that the Twins offense in 2019 should be pretty tasty.

Picture this, I’m sitting in my 1:00 Anthropology class again absolutely bored out of my mind as my professor drones on about, well actually I don’t remember, but I hope it wasn’t important. Anyways, an interesting thought came to me; how did Derek Falvey build the Indians starting pitching staff? This thought came the day after looking at the Fangraphs projections for both Minnesota and Cleveland and realizing that dear God, Cleveland’s starting staff projections are hilariously better than Minnesota’s, even David doesn’t want to take on that Goliath. We can finagle about how much attention the Twins should have given the starting rotation this offseason, but short of signing Dallas Keuchel, trading for Zack Greinke, and then telling Jake Odorizzi to take a hike, the Twins starting staff was always going to be vastly inferior to the Indians. So how did Falvey do it? The man was boasted as the brains behind arguably the strongest rotation in baseball, so let’s dig into how he built it. Falvey first joined the Indians as an intern in 2007 and then transitioned to Assistant Director of Baseball Operations in 2009. Falvey was then promoted to co-director of Baseball Operations in 2011 where he stayed until becoming the assistant GM in 2016, the same year he joined the Twins as executive vice president and chief baseball officer. Admittedly, Falvey’s role in the Indians front office early on was a bit less important than the one he has now with the Twins, so assigning the reason for these moves directly on him is a bit of a stretch. But at the same time, I think it’s fair to assume that Falvey played a decent role in all of these moves. I also have to appreciate the absurdness of some of the job titles they hand out in teams front offices, I could have made up those positions and you would not have been any wiser. Corey Kluber Corey Kluber, Cy Young winner, perfect robot, and the destroyer of Twins hitters hopes and dreams himself. This inhuman wrecking machine was obtained in a 3 team trade in 2010 between the Padres, Indians, and Cardinals. The Indians received Kluber, the Cardinals received Nick Greenwood, and the Padres obtained Ryan Ludwick. Nick Greenwood was worth -0.2 rWAR in the 36 innings he threw for the Cardinals while Ryan Ludwick put up a .659 OPS over 2 years with the Padres before being dropped on the Pirates. Oh yeah, and that Corey Kluber guy has done OK for the Indians so far. For the life of me, I cannot figure out how Kluber became what he is now. At the time of the trade, he was just a body in the Padres system and wasn’t even ranked in their top 30 prospect list. He had a career minor league record of 18-24 when traded and was somehow even worse in his first stint with Cleveland’s AAA team. Apparently, he learned how to throw a sinker in 2011 and then won a Cy Young just 3 years later. So take that as a lesson, kids at home, just add one of the best sinkers in MLB and you too can win a Cy Young. It’s a bit of a disappointing conclusion to draw from Kluber, but basically, we can just say that sometimes it’s the guys who aren’t major prospects who can turn into stars. If I had to assign a player for the Twins that would be their “Kluber”, it would Kohl Stewart. Stewart was initially a better prospect than Kluber but fell so far recently that the Twins were perfectly OK with any team taking him for their own during the rule 5 draft. Since then, he worked his way up through the system until he made his MLB debut in 2018 and became a personal favorite Twin of mine. He even features a similar sinker/cutter combo that has made Kluber an unstoppable pitching machine but lacks the true dominating breaking ball that makes Kluber so ridiculous. Trevor Bauer The most scientific man in baseball was a solid innings eater early in his career until he broke out in 2018 and changed to really, we have to worry about another one of these bastards now? And now we don’t even have Oswaldo Arcia to stop him, such a shame. Bauer was originally the 3rd overall pick in the 2011 draft out of UCLA. But he was actually taken by the D-Backs, in case you forgot. He was acquired by the Indians in yet another 3 team trade, this time in 2012. Bauer went to the Indians along with Matt Albers, Bryan Shaw, and Drew Stubbs, while Didi Gregorius, Tony Sipp, and Lars Anderson went to the D-Backs, and the Reds received Shin Soo-Choo and Jason Donald. Now, that is way more players than I feel like analyzing, but Cleveland made out pretty well here if I do say so myself. Bauer’s path to the majors is a bit more straightforward, he was a top pick from college and moved as quickly as you would expect a top college arm could move. His status as a prospect was always top and while he was just a good pitcher for a while instead of a great one, he became the true thinking man’s pitcher in 2018 thanks in part to a new slider he developed himself. Seems simple enough for the Twins to follow here right? Just use an incredibly high pick on an elite starter that sees the game like few pitchers do and is as dedicated to his craft like I am dedicated to the bagel shop on my campus. The closest comparison I can think of is Jose Berrios, Berrios was also a first round pick who is ridiculously dedicated to improving and has more work ethic in his left pinky than I have in my entire body. While Bauer is the better hurler of a round object at high speeds, Berrios has the kind of talent that even Phil Cuzzi could see and could become even better if Wes Johnson and the boys crack his secret code. Mike Clevinger The man from Florida who looks like a man from California, Mike was originally taken by the Angels in 2011 before they traded him to Cleveland in 2014 for the guy who sounds more like an extra in “Goodfellas” than a baseball pitcher, Vinnie Pestano. Clevinger actually pitched for the Cedar Rapids Kernels who are now the affiliate for the Twins. I have nothing else to add to that, I just thought it was neat. This was just about the definition of a throwaway trade at the time it occurred, but oh man should we really hate the Angels for this one. Clevinger went from an ERA over 5 in class A to you have got to be joking me, they have another really good starter now? Clevinger was kind of on people’s radars as he was ranked the 17th best prospect in the Angels organization at the start of 2014, but his numbers up to that point were incredibly whelming. Much like Kluber, he was a guy that the Indians saw and thought that maybe with a tweak here and there, he could become something in the future. And credit to Clevinger, he was apparently all ears about doing whatever he had to do to succeed. This is another kind of tough one to draw a conclusion from because “just find a guy who is a few changes that no one else can see away from being elite” isn’t really a good blueprint for success or at least not a consistent one. Considering that I have already forced myself to find comparisons for each guy, I will go with Jhoan Duran as the Twins’ “Clevinger”. Duran is a much better prospect than what Clevinger was but also switched teams in a trade during the season. So far in his short time in Cedar Rapids (hint hint), Duran has dominated hitters and looks to move up to high A Fort Myers soon. I hope he doesn't mind that I now have him pegged as the next Clevinger, no pressure there kid. Carlos Carrasco The cookie monster was originally taken by the Phillies in 2003 out of Venezuela. In his first spring training, he ate Domino’s pizza every day for 90 straight days because he didn’t know what else to order in English. I don’t know how he did that considering that Domino’s pizza tastes like the cardboard box it comes in, but to each his own I guess. Carrasco was also acquired in 2009 in a trade (I’m noticing a pattern) along with some other forgettable dudes for Ben Francisco and Cliff Lee. Carrasco was the top prospect for the Phillies and was ranked as the 41st best prospect in all of baseball by Baseball America that year. Carrasco’s journey to be who he is now took a while as he struggled with injuries and not being effective early on in his MLB career. Despite starting his MLB career in 2009, it took Carrasco until 2015 to pitch more than 150 innings in a season. The Indians took a very conservative approach by using him out of the bullpen often in 2013 and 2014 after he underwent Tommy John surgery in 2012. After working his arm back up, they unleashed him as a starter and he’s been a pain in the Twins’ ass ever since. Let’s see here, a top prospect, underwent Tommy John surgery, used out of the bullpen at first… Folks, we already have the next Carrasco here in Fernando Romero. Romero arguably has the nastiest stuff in the Twins system but still needs to learn how to refine his game and be the nightmare pitcher we all know he can be. While it seems that Romero is all but destined for the bullpen in 2019, it could be that the Twins still plan on using him as a starter long term and will be in the rotation in 2020 when more spots become available. Shane Bieber The Biebs was taken in the 2016 draft which was the very last one Derek Falvey participated in for Cleveland before leaving for the Twin Cities. He was taken in the 4th round out of college and moved pretty quickly due to being a college starter and having some ridiculous minor league numbers (.6 BB/9, 2.24 ERA). The Biebs is a much more simple guy to track here, he was taken by Cleveland and moved up their ranks quickly as he continued to perform well at every level. He rose up prospect lists last year thanks to his incredible command and was a top 100 prospect by most publications by the time he made his debut for the Indians. Who’s the Shane Bieber for the Twins? That’s an interesting one to think of because the front office under Falvey and Levine really haven’t taken many college arms with top picks. This is a bit of a reach, but I’ll pick Blayne Enlow as the Twins’ “Shane Bieber”. Enlow was taken out of high school but was a 3rd round pick partly because the Twins saved enough signing bonus money in the Royce Lewis pick to pay over the slot for Enlow and coax him out of going to the collegiate ranks. While Enlow is still just 19, his projections have received much praise from scouts and being able to handle low A ball as a 19-year-old is pretty impressive. While it will still be a few more years before Enlow probably makes the majors, he could be an important piece in a future Twins rotation. There it is, the 5 pitchers that make up the current Indians’ starting staff and how they got there along with their Twins counterparts. 4 out of the 5 guys were not originally taken by the Indians and 2 out of the 5 guys were never really big prospects at all while the other 3 were. Probably the most interesting thing to note is that none of these guys were big free agent signings or acquired via trade as veterans and only Bauer had any experience pitching at the MLB level for another team. Is it any coincidence that Falvey has been a stickler for adding long term solutions to the starting rotation so far in his tenure? Pineda, Odorizzi, and Perez were all obtained with 2 years of team control, but the plan so far has been to shy away from major rotation upgrades in the long term. Looking into 2020, the current rotation is Jose Berrios and possibly Martin Perez if they pick up his option. Odorizzi, Gibson, and Pineda are all set to be gone, leaving up to 4 holes to be filled. Looking ahead also, the starting pitchers available in free agency after the 2019 season are very tasty, to say the least. Go take a quick look, you won’t be disappointed. But now that we know what Falvey did to build his most impressive rotation, will the Twins even bother with free agency then? The Cubs built a successful rotation through free agency in their World Series winning team, but I don’t believe the Twins will follow that same route. Instead, they will run with Jose Berrios, Kohl Stewart, Fernando Romero, Jhoan Duran, and Blayne Enlow, to take them to the World Series and you can bet on that.

Thank you very much, I'm awfully flattered.

That's a very fair thing to consider but is pretty difficult to track in actuality considering the amount of nuance that such an idea takes. Trying to track an individual player's impact beyond the first season they came in can get kind of messy. It would be another interesting article if I could think of a way to standardize such data. But yeah, the point was mainly inspired by so-called "offseason winners" and how often that title was actually true.

How often does spending big in free agency actually result in winning more games the next year? Thank you for asking this question, voice in my head, because I was wondering the same thing. What I want to look at are the teams that spent the most money in the offseason and then how they did the year following with their new toys.Given that we’re Twins fans here, payroll has never been a topic of discussion. No one has ever been annoyed at the lack of big spending in free agency and is always perfectly OK with how the front office allocates their resources, especially this year. Free agency is supposed to be an opportunity to right the sinking ship through veteran additions to a low-talent roster (Texas), to fortify a good roster to take their team over the top (Boston), or to sit around and talk about how good the farm system is (San Diego). Every year, we see the offseason as a chance for teams to flex on small market franchises by throwing money at players like drunken pirates. Nowadays it isn’t as prevalent, but teams are still paying players for their services for the next year or beyond. But is that a recipe for success? The process is quite simple: Find the top 10 spending teams in an offseason over the last five years and then see where they ended up the following year. I’ll rank them by total money spent so that the Padres’ brilliant Eric Hosmer contract screws them over a lot because they deserve to be ridiculed. Information will be used from Spotrac, let’s see what it says! 2018 offseason shopping sprees Download attachment: Spending1.png A few things are already looking interesting here! The Cubs slide into the top spot because they handed out contracts to pitchers like Yu Darvish and Tyler Chatwood who both probably are sleeping in their beds of money, grateful for their agents, while the Ricketts continue to try to print money in order to scrape together a hitting coach that they won’t throw under the bus. Other than that, a great number of the top teams are up there because of financial promises to a single player. Some were great (J.D. Martinez with Boston), some were very good (Lorenzo Cain with Milwaukee), and some were terrible the second they were signed (everyone with the Rockies). Altogether, the top 10 in spending netted +6 wins overall or +34 if you want to ignore Baltimore, which is a good plan for just about everything. Only 3 teams went negative in wins the year after spending like a redneck at a gas station with one of them being, of course, the Twins... great luck there. Let’s go back one more year now. 2017 offseason shopping spree Download attachment: Spending2.png Ah, 2017, a simpler time, a time where Dexter Fowler received the third-most expensive contract of the offseason and Ian Desmond got the fifth. I have to say, I like seeing the spread of typically smaller spending teams here like Miami, Cleveland, and Colorado. It really just warms my cold, frozen heart. Overall the top ten spending teams netted a whole -1 more wins than the year prior but that number becomes +22 if you throw out the massive outlier in the Giants. The Dodgers were by far the biggest spenders but most of it was them keeping players they already had like Kenley Jansen, Justin Turner, and Rich Hill, leaving Sergio Romo and his $3 million payday as their highest paid free agent who came from another team. All in all, this list translates fairly well to success when considering the context of which players were brought in for which team. Houston added a few veterans who turned them into a World Series champion, Cleveland added Edwin Encarnacion to legitimize their lineup and lead them straight into and out of the playoffs after the first round, and the Yankees added back Aroldis Chapman after swindling the Cubs into trading yet another top prospect for pitching. Although, someone should have told St. Louis not to invest over $110 million into Brett Cecil and Dexter Fowler, yikes. 2016 shopping spree Download attachment: Spending3.png The first obvious thing to note, what the hell was going on in this offseason? Are you guys seeing the amount of money that teams were spending here? We talk about the horrible offseason in 2018, but it looks like free agency actually started going downhill a year before that. Maybe it was a fluke year, but teams were dropping money like upper-class toddlers at Toys R' Us on their birthday. All for elite names like Chris Davis, Jason Heyward, Ian Kennedy, and Jordan Zimmermann. Freakin' Jeff Samardzija got $90 million this offseason. What was going on back then? Luckily, there isn’t some massive outlier team, so adding up the wins gained/lost results in a cool +9 overall. I do love how the Twins biggest signing that offseason was David Murphy, who decided that he would rather not play baseball the rest of his life than play for the Twins. And this was after an 83 win season! The next biggest acquisition was Carlos Quentin who you definitely forgot was technically a Twin, leaving the only impactful addition being Fernando Abad who was signed to a minor league deal, great stuff Terry Ryan, it’s a wonder that it took him that long to be canned. Despite that Heyward contract looking like the albatross to end all albatrosses, the Cubs dropping nearly the GDP of the Republic of Palau that offseason brought them to the promised land thanks to other veteran signings like Ben Zobrist, Dexter Fowler, and John Lackey. 2015 shopping spree Download attachment: Spending4.png We finally reach the infamous 2015 offseason where Max Scherzer and Jon Lester got paid handsomely and actually provided good value for their team while Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez also got paid well and did whatever the opposite of providing value would be. Overall, the top spending teams netted +38 wins overall which still stays a +14 even if you throw out the outlier Cubs. There isn’t too much to really report here, spending was about what it typically is. The Royals added some garnish to their eventually World Series-winning club with the signings of Edinson Volquez and Twins legend Kendrys Morales. Hell, they even gave Alex Rios $11 million that offseason to kind of just hang around and do Alex Rios things. This was also the year where the Twins handed out their biggest contract ever to Ervin Santana which went pretty well and they also decided to bring back Torii Hunter for old times sake, which went less well, but who cares? Torii was back! 2014 shopping spree Download attachment: Spending5.png What a strange offseason this was, the Mariners absolutely shocked the world when they gave a 31-year-old Robinson Cano a 10 year, $240 million contract and then later shocked no one by not keeping him through the whole deal. The Rangers gave Shin-Soo Choo $130 million and then lost 24 more games than the year prior. The Yankees decided to back the dump truck of money up for veterans like Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann, and Carlos Beltran and I’m sure that they would still do that Ellsbury contract again if they could. The Twins slot in as the fourth-highest spending team mostly thanks to the elite three-headed Nolasco-Hughes-Pelfrey starting trio. They also tried to bring back Kubel, Bartlett, and Guerrier, all of whom failed miserably and proved that you do in fact become the villain if you live long enough. Kurt Suzuki was a nice cheap find here who made the All-Star Game despite being signed for less than $3 million in the offseason and is still kicking after getting a nice deal from the Nationals this offseason. Overall the top 10 spending teams netted +16 more wins than the year prior and there is something kind of hilarious about the second highest spending team going +26 while the third highest went -24. Interestingly enough, the Giants won the World Series that year despite their biggest signing that offseason being a Tim Hudson who was collecting social security at that point and needed a walker to get to the mound. All right, that’s a lot of information, but what narratives can we draw from this? Overall, through five years of data covering 50 individual team seasons, the top 10 spending teams netted 68 more wins or an average of 1.36 more games won than the year before. Throwing out any season that ended in a +20 or -20 to control for outliers brings the number to 93 more wins total, or an average of 2.07 more games won than the prior year. So, there is a very slight positive correlation between spending money and winning more games than the year before. Let’s get even more specific here: The top spending team over each offseason overall won eight more games than the year before, or an average of 1.6 more games won. Teams that were top three in spending in a given year won 41 more games than the year before overall, or an average of 2.73 more games. Teams that spent more than $200 million in an offseason overall netted 45 more wins the next year, or 4.5 more games on average. For me, this data is certainly interesting, but nothing really groundbreaking or astonishing. Spending more does indeed have a general slight positive correlation with winning the next year, but the numbers weren’t exactly eye-popping to me. Just an average of one to two more games won than the year prior. That total is certainly an improvement, but not such an incredible one that spending becomes such an obscene advantage over other teams that it isn’t even fair. I also find it hilarious that the top spending team on average barely won more games than the year before... so much for a competitive advantage. I suppose if I had any other major conclusions, it would be that spending more than $200 million in an offseason without being the highest spending team would be the best plan of attack for teams who are inclined to do such things. As it pertains to the Twins, spending more would improve the team, but context is more important when considering how much a team spends. Yes, in general spending more will win a team more games, but it has been and will always be about how that money is spent more than how much of that money is spent. Spending will never save a bad team from the depths of irrelevance, but it can certainly lift a team up into the glories of the Postseason. Click here to view the article

Given that we’re Twins fans here, payroll has never been a topic of discussion. No one has ever been annoyed at the lack of big spending in free agency and is always perfectly ok with how the front office allocates their resources, especially this year. Free agency is supposed to be an opportunity to right the sinking ship through veteran additions to a low-talent roster (Texas), to fortify a good roster to take their team over the top (Boston), or to sit around and talk about how good the farm system is (San Diego). Every year, we see the offseason as a chance for teams to flex on small market franchises by throwing money at players like drunken pirates. Nowadays it isn’t as prevalent, but teams are still paying players for their services for the next year or beyond. But is that a recipe for success? How often does spending big in free agency actually result in winning more games the next year? Thank you for asking these questions, voice in my head, because I was wondering the same thing. What I want to look at are the teams that spent the most money in the offseason and then how they did the year following with their new toys. The process is quite simple, find the top 10 spending teams in an offseason over the last 5 years and then see where they ended up the following year. I’ll rank them by total money spent so that the Padres’ brilliant Eric Hosmer contract screws them over a lot because they deserve to be ridiculed. Information will be used from Spotrac, let’s see what it says! 2018 offseason shopping sprees A few things are already looking interesting here! The Cubs slide into the top spot because they handed out contracts to pitchers like Yu Darvish and Tyler Chatwood who both probably are sleeping in their beds of money, grateful for their agents, while the Ricketts continue to try to print money in order to scrape together a hitting coach that they won’t throw under the bus. Other than that, a great number of the top teams are up there because of financial promises to a single player. Some were great (J.D. Martinez with Boston), some were very good (Lorenzo Cain with Milwaukee), and some were terrible the second they were signed (everyone with the Rockies). Altogether, the top 10 in spending netted +6 wins overall or +34 if you want to ignore Baltimore, which is a good plan for just about everything. Only 3 teams went negative in wins the year after spending like a redneck at a gas station with one of them being, of course, the Twins, great luck there. Let’s go back one more year now. 2017 offseason shopping spree Ah, 2017, a simpler time, a time where Dexter Fowler received the 3rd most expensive contract of the offseason and Ian Desmond got the 5th. I have to say, I like seeing the spread of typically smaller spending teams here like Miami, Cleveland, and Colorado. It really just warms my cold frozen heart. Overall the top ten spending teams netted a whole -1 more wins than the year prior but that number becomes +22 if you throw out the massive outlier in the Giants. The Dodgers were by far the biggest spenders but most of it was them keeping players they already had like Kenley Jansen, Justin Turner, and Rich Hill, leaving Sergio Romo and his $3 million payday as their highest paid free agent who came from another team. All in all, this list translates fairly well to success when considering the context of which players were brought in for which team. Houston added a few veterans who turned them into a World Series champion, Cleveland added Edwin Encarnacion to legitimize their lineup and lead them straight into out of the playoffs after round 1, and the Yankees added back Aroldis Chapman after swindling the Cubs into trading yet another top prospect for pitching. Although, someone should have told St. Louis not to invest over $110 million into Brett Cecil and Dexter Fowler, yikes. 2016 shopping spree The first obvious thing to note, what the hell was going on in this offseason? Are you guys seeing the amount of money that teams were spending here? We talk about the horrible offseason in 2018, but it looks like free agency actually started going downhill a year before that. Maybe it was a fluke year, but teams were dropping money like an upper-class toddler at Toys R Us on their birthday. All for elite names like Chris Davis, Jason Heyward, Ian Kennedy, and Jordan Zimmermann. Freakin Jeff Samardzija got $90 million this offseason, what was going on back then? Luckily, there isn’t some massive outlier team, so adding up the wins gained/lost results in a cool +9 overall. I do love how the Twins biggest signing that offseason was David Murphy, who decided that he would rather not play baseball the rest of his life than play for the Twins. And this was after an 83 win season! The next biggest acquisition was Carlos Quentin who you definitely forgot was technically a Twin, leaving the only impactful addition to be Fernando Abad who was signed to a minor league deal, great stuff Terry Ryan, it’s a wonder that it took him that long to be canned. Despite that Heyward contract looking like the albatross to end all albatrosses, the Cubs dropping nearly the GDP of the Republic of Palau that offseason brought them to the promised land thanks to other veteran signings like Ben Zobrist, Dexter Fowler, and John Lackey. 2015 shopping spree We finally reach the infamous 2015 offseason where Max Scherzer and Jon Lester got paid handsomely and actually provided good value for their team while Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez also got paid well and did whatever the opposite of providing value would be. Overall, the top spending teams netted +38 wins overall which still stays a +14 even if you throw out the outlier Cubs. There isn’t too much to really report here, spending was about what it typically is. The Royals added some garnishing to their eventually World Series-winning club with the signings of Edinson Volquez and Twins legend Kendrys Morales. Hell, they even gave Alex Rios $11 million that offseason to kind of just hang around and do Alex Rios things. This was also the year where the Twins handed out their biggest contract ever in Ervin Santana which went pretty well, they also decided to bring back Torii Hunter for old times sake, which went less well, but who cares? Torii was back! 2014 shopping spree What a strange offseason this was, the Mariners absolutely shocked the world when they gave a 31-year-old Robinson Cano a 10 year $240 million contract and then later shocked no one by not keeping him through the whole deal. The Rangers gave Shin-Soo Choo $130 million and then lost 24 more games than the year prior. The Yankees decided to back the dump truck of money up for veterans like Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann, and Carlos Beltran and I’m sure that they would still do that Ellsbury contract again if they could. The Twins slot in as the 4th highest spending team mostly thanks to the elite three-headed Nolasco-Hughes-Pelfrey starting trio. They also tried to bring back Kubel, Bartlett, and Guerrier, all of whom failed miserably and proved that you do in fact become the villain if you live long enough. Kurt Suzuki was a nice cheap find here who made the all-star game despite being signed for less than $3 million in the offseason and is still kicking after getting a nice deal from the Nationals this offseason. Overall the top ten spending teams netted +16 more wins than the year prior and there is something kind of hilarious about the second highest spending team going +26 while the third highest went -24. Interestingly enough, the Giants won the World Series that year despite their biggest signing that offseason being a Tim Hudson who was collecting social security at that point and needed a walker to get to the mound. Alright, that’s a lot of information, what narratives can we draw from this? Overall, through 5 years of data covering 50 individual team seasons, the top 10 spending teams netted 68 more wins or an average of 1.36 more games won than the year before. Throwing out any season that ended in a +20 or -20 to control for outliers brings the number to 93 more wins total or an average of 2.07 more games won than the prior year. So, there is a very slight positive correlation between spending money and winning more games than the year before. Let’s get even more specific here, the top spending team over each offseason overall won 8 more games than the year before or an average of 1.6 more games won. Teams that were top 3 in spending in a given year won 41 more games than the year before overall or an average of 2.73 more games. Teams that spent more than $200 million in an offseason overall netted 45 more wins the next year or 4.5 more games on average. For me, this data is certainly interesting, but nothing really groundbreaking or astonishing. Spending more does indeed have a general slight positive correlation with winning the next year, but the numbers weren’t exactly eye-popping to me, just an average of 1-2 more games won than the year prior. That total is certainly an improvement, but not such an incredible one that spending becomes such an obscene advantage over other teams that it isn’t even fair. I also find it hilarious that the top spending team on average barely won more games than the year before, so much for a competitive advantage. I suppose if I had any other major conclusions, it would be that spending more than $200 million in an offseason without being the highest spending team would be the best plan of attack for teams who are inclined to do such things. As it pertains to the Twins, spending more would improve the team, but context is more important when considering how much a team spends. Yes, in general spending more will win a team more games, but it has been and will always be about how that money is spent more than how much of that money is spent. Spending will never save a bad team from the depths of irrelevance, but it can certainly lift a team up into the glories of the Postseason.

Relievers are weird. Not only because they do strange stuff like play video games on the side, but they are probably also the most volatile position in baseball. Go look up the best relievers of 2015 and have a good laugh at some of the names that appear. Liam Hendriks? Kevin Siegrist? Luke Gregerson? Josh Fields? The top 10 or so names have been relatively consistent and are still playing at a high level now, but after that, there is little to no guarantee that production will be sustained at all. Contrast that with the best position players the same year and it seems that relievers are about as dependable as the current economy. Or even just consider the Twins bullpen this past year, who would have predicted that Taylor Rogers would add a slider and become the Terminator basically from July until the end of the season, or that Trevor Hildenberger would continue his great 2017 season for the first half or so until the ghost of Matt Capps took control of his body and he struggled from August until the end of the season, or how about Addison Reed starting off en Fuego and then losing velocity as the year went on until he couldn’t even strike out my grandmother. The point is, relievers are unpredictable, but what if we could predict them? More importantly, if we could predict if a reliever will bounce back? Ignore the snake-oil-salesman-style question and let me explain my thought process. I want to be able to identify how likely it is for relievers to bounce back, so I looked at data from 2016, 2017, and 2018 to see how many relievers came back from a poor season and how many didn’t. To be exact, I am looking for relievers who had good/great 2016 seasons, noticeably poor 2017 seasons, and then how they fared in 2018. I want a solid basis of talent first, a season that can tell me that this guy has the potential to be legit, which is the point of the 2016 season data. Then I want a poor 2017 season. Since what is “poor” is debatable, I’ll say that if a reliever had either an ERA, FIP, or xFIP that was .75 points higher than the year prior, I will consider that a “poor” season in context with their body of work. I will leave a little wiggle room if the numbers are close enough to give me a bigger sample, but generally, I will stick to the .75 rule. Then I want to see how they performed in 2018 so that I can draw my conclusion and make my closing statement. I will be using their pitching “slash line” of ERA/FIP/xFIP. I also will not be including pitchers who did not pitch in 2017 or threw a fraction of innings that they usually do because there is not enough sample size to draw from. These are the first 10 players who fit my criteria and we have some interesting information already! About 4 players rebounded in my mind; Dellin Betances, Aroldis Chapman, Seung Hwan Oh, and Jeurys Familia (5 if you include Herrera’s ERA but not his peripherals), while 6 players had 2018 seasons that continued their downward trend (or 5 if you think peripherals are for schmucks). Interestingly enough, these were 10 of the top 11 pitchers by fWAR in 2016 with Kenley Jansen being the only player in the top 11 who had a great 2016 and 2017. Let’s continue! This list of players requires a bit more nuance than the previous one and I really need to stick to the peripherals to draw a solid conclusion. I see 5 players who bounced back in a significant way through their peripherals; Edwin Diaz, Will Harris, Brad Ziegler, Zach Duke, and Hector Neris. But the interpretation of this data can vary depending on the reader, if you value ERA, then you might see different bounceback players than me, but I believe that the 5 players I mentioned here had a noticeably better 2018 season compared to their 2017 season. Alright, let’s continue! I’m just going to throw Buchter out of here because he doesn’t seem to really care about what his FIP or xFIP says he should be doing. After that, I see Shawn Kelley, Alex Colome, Sam Dyson, Hansel Robles, Alex Wilson, Ryan Pressly, Tony Barnette, and Jeremy Jeffress as guys who bounced back in significant ways in 2018. That’s 8! The only guy here who didn’t really bounce back was Justin Wilson. These 30 pitchers were among the top 50 relievers from 2016 and 17 of them rebounded after a poor 2017 season in my eyes, good for a 57% success rate. How can this apply to the Twins? Well, I see this as good news for Trevor Hildenberger, who is looking to have a 2019 season that is more in line with his 2017 campaign, but I see this as bad news for Addison Reed who saw his numbers decrease heavily thanks to another drop in velocity. I also see this as good news for Cody Allen, the player who inspired this article, as there’s a better than average chance that he can have a better year than his awful 2018 campaign. This could also be somewhat neutral news for Taylor Rogers, who had the most dominant season of his career so far but needs another one to really cement himself as a top relief arm. An interesting thing to note is that a fair amount of these players who had bounceback years did so on a different team, so maybe there is some credibility to the idea that sometimes a player just needs a change of scenery.

We, as fans, have an interesting relationship between the franchises we support and ourselves. The bottom line of why we support these teams is usually because we enjoy doing so (although it seems like some Twins “fans” on Twitter don’t enjoy anything that has to do with them, but that’s another story). And this vested interest in the team leads us to want our franchise to acquire the best talent available in order to possibly win the championship at the end of the season. But, there are parameters set up by the team that we also must accept in the form of payroll. We understand the limitations which are laid out to us and then theorize events that can occur within them because our teams have shown us what the limits are. In MLB, not all franchise is created equal as there are consistent patterns of spending among the teams which split them up into either “big markets” who can land the big free agents and “small markets” who have to settle for less. Now, let me get one thing clear, I am not whining about if this system is unfair as I personally believe it really is not much of a problem. Nor am I damning the teams such as the Twins who operate under stricter rules than others because I also understand that payroll is correlated to profit and this is a business after all. Teams who spend more generally have a better chance of making the playoffs but there is little to no correlation between spending and actually winning the championship. To put it simply, it’s pretty much just dumb blind luck whether or not a team wins the World Series once they make the playoffs. No, instead I want to comment on the fascinating position fans find themselves in when it comes to theorizing roster moves and creating scenarios in their mind with a certain limit that they must consider. It’s easy for us to disconnect ourselves from the money that the players we root for are making, we don’t see the total in terms of “how much is that player making” as much as we see it in “how will how much that player is making affect the teams ability to make moves”. We squabble over how many millions can we reasonably offer to a free agent along with coming to terms with the fact that teams will keep MLB ready prospects down in the minors in order to keep them around for cheaper for longer. Hell, we just saw this happen with Byron Buxton when the Twins didn’t call him up when rosters expanded party because it would give the Twins an extra year of team control. Of course, the decision required more nuance than that, but the end result was that Buxton will now be stifled in the amount of money he will be making in the future because of the limits set up the team. In a perfect world, he would have been called up in September because it would not matter that the Twins would be forced to pay him more money sooner because it would not be an issue to do so, they could offer him whatever 6 year contract he pleased and both sides would go frolic in a garden somewhere, but that isn’t the baseball world we live in. I rationalized this decision, like most others did, with the reasoning I laid out before, but in doing so I sided with the team and owner who is worth billions of dollars instead of the player worth a fraction of a fraction of that. And now, that doesn’t sit right with me. Along with this, I think of the numerous players who were non-tendered because their arbitration totals were probably going to be higher than how much their teams thought they were worth and those players were cut to save a few bucks. This would be fine if the teams spent more on free agents in return but this hasn’t been the case for a lot of teams as it seems some franchises aren’t aware that they are allowed to sign players right now. There’s also that statement that follows every question about whether a team should sign a player: “sure, as long as he’s cheap”. The easy response is that these players, while worth way less than their owners, will still end up making far more money than any of us will and it becomes hard to feel bad for a player who ends up making only 3 million dollars instead of 4 million dollars because the difference is negligible for us. But again, we’re looking at their salary from the point of view of someone who has a vested interest in them making as little money as possible in order for our favorite team to have more flexibility for future acquisitions. At the end of the day, should teams really be this concerned with cutting miniscule costs in the name of efficiency? Should how much money C.J. Cron is making affect whether or not the Rays DFA him? And should we be infuriated when Andrew McCutchen signs for 5 million dollars more than we think he’s worth? I don’t believe so, but hey, it isn’t my money.

Thanks for the help Tom! Yeah, I'm with you as far as the opportunity with awful teams in the AL, but I still think it's just a little too early to take the plunge and go all in. I think that will happen next off-season or possibly this trade deadline if the season goes well enough.

A profound philosopher once proclaimed that “it just takes some time” and that while you might be “in the middle of the ride”, “everything, everything will be just fine.” “Jimmy Eat World lyrics? That isn’t philosophical.” Well, when I’ve been drinking a little on Friday nights, it starts to sound like Socrates to me so lay off of it. The name of that song is “The Middle”, a little diddy you may have heard of, and it was the inspiration for this article about where the Twins happen to find themselves in MLB’s landscape. The Twins are of course quite a bit better than the trifecta of teams underneath them who have no interest in winning games but are still a fair bit worse than the Indians even if you squint really hard. The Indians also apparently are not very interested in winning more games considering the moves they have made this off-season and the fact that Jordan Luplow is currently one of their starting outfielders. Did I make that name up? Honestly, I checked Fangraphs and I’m still not convinced he’s a real player. But until there is a trade of either Trevor Bauer or Corey Kluber, the Indians will remain favorites for winning the AL Central again which leaves the Twins in the middle. The Wild Card remains an opportunity but considering the Balrog that is the AL East along with a few strong contenders in the West like the Angels and the Athletics, that path may actually be harder than winning the division for Minnesota in 2019. Regression is prime for both the Athletics and the Rays, the former potentially following in the footsteps of Minnesota as the “performed better than everyone thought only to get moped up by the Yankees in a Wild Card game and then fall off the next year” team. But many things will have to go right for Minnesota to see the playoffs again. Is this a bad place to be in? I don’t think so. Every year it seems that the MLB season is as much of a battle of quality players as it is a war of attrition, it comes as no surprise that the teams which make the playoffs are usually teams that avoided major injuries and were able to get consistent production from their major players. While betting on specific injuries and regression is not a good idea, betting on general injuries and regression among the contending teams is not necessarily a bad play. Just look at the 2018 Twins, who would have thought that Brian Dozier would forget how to hit a fastball, Jorge Polanco would get caught with too much O.J., Ervin Santana would lose a finger in the war, Jason Castro would bump knees with Teddy Bridgewater, Byron Buxton would be kidnapped at sporadic parts of the season, Miguel Sano having a metal rod shoved into his leg would be the 4th worst thing to happen to him that year, Logan Morrison would turn into a baked potato, and Lance Lynn would try to eat that potato. The point is, there sits a bevy of teams who are perfect candidates for smiting by the baseball gods and if the Twins just outlast those teams in 2019, they could make the playoffs in a similar fashion to the 2017 team that was able to coast to a surprise Wild Card spot. The 2018 Oakland team saw this happen also when the Mariners fell off as they always do and when the Angels partnered with the local sports hospitals of the greater Anaheim area like they also always do. Once they were out of the way, the only other competition was a Rays team which was the sports equivalent of a Monty Python sketch. After the addition of a boomstick, the 2019 Twins project by Fangraphs to be the 13th best team in baseball by fWAR at 36, .9 ahead of the 15th team (the A’s ironically) who are at 35.1, 2018 Josh Bell is the difference between them. The current free agents left are fairly uninspiring and will probably not make up enough of a difference to launch them into the upper echelon of teams. The farm system, while very very tasty, is probably a year away from having the major prospects grace the major league team. So the plan should be to put together a solid squad in 2018 which includes a reliever addition or two and then hope that things happen to fall in place to allow the 2019 team reach the playoffs while the prospects continue to develop and then hopefully cultivate in a 2020 team ready to take down the champ.