Andrew Bryz-Gornia

Hard disagree, especially since Meg Rowley of FanGraphs has expressed her displeasure of MLB using her site's WAR calculation for arbitration like Brock already mentioned. This is a case where some of the "nerds" don't want to be involved.

fWAR uses FIP, not xFIP. Pitchers are rewarded if they don't allow home runs rather than being judged on their expected home runs allowed.

MLB can say that it's to draw in more fans, but I feel it's really just another stream of money going to the owners.

I can't explain it for you, but for me, they were underwhelming because it seemed like the strongest arms were throwing much harder than they really were. Knowing that Carlos Correa's top 5% of 2022 throws averaged 88.0 MPH just doesn't feel impressive, likely because we're used to pitchers hitting 95+ MPH with ease nowadays. Then again, the counterargument is that the strongest throwers often get converted into pitchers, leaving a weaker subset behind.

I can explain Arraez's arm strength. The 90.2 MPH is actually from 2021 when he was playing far more LF. Statcast pointed out that outfielders naturally have stronger arms than infielders because they have to make longer throws, so Arraez's arm strength is skewed. That's reaffirmed because his 2022 arm strength was 82.7 MPH where he exclusively played 1B and 2B. He didn't lose arm strength, he just played two positions where he didn't need to show it off as much. Regardless, this is the Cuddyer/Sano argument all over again. A strong arm isn't as helpful if you don't have the range for a more demanding position. Just because Arraez has a strong-ish arm doesn't mean it makes up for his other defensive deficiencies.

I agree, Cave's constant hustle was admirable as the season fell apart. I have one complaint though, speed score does not equal a player's running speed. Baseball Savant's sprint speed says he was at 28.0 ft/sec, 8th on the Twins with at least one recorded sprint. Speed score (if you're using FanGraphs' speed score) uses a player's stolen base percentage, frequency of stolen bases, percentage of triples, and runs scored percentage, and FG admits it's an outdated statistic. There's no way it's a reliable way to say Cave was the third-fastest Twin this year. https://library.fangraphs.com/offense/spd/

This is such a cool article and something I didn't know about behind-the-scenes work. Great work, Melissa!

This is a really good article. I do have to complain about the tweet that got me to read this article ("Is velocity overrated?") because no, I don't believe it is overrated. However, it is highly valued and it does seem like Falvey/Levine would rather take advantage of other organizations' desire for it and save their money for lesser but also cheaper pitchers. Besides, pitchers (especially bullpens) are highly volatile, so committing only to flamethrowers may not be the best strategy anyway.

The Twins had the 14th-lowest K% last season at 23.1%. He really only fits in with Miguel Sano.

It's not, the sweeper is more like a slow slider or hard curveball with a ton of horizontal break. The cutter is a hard slider with just a little break.

I don't think it should be a concern for free agent starting pitchers. This model sounds like a variation of the opener or planned bullpen games, but those still use prototypical starters in the other rotation spots. Someone like Pineda will be relatively cheap and can go 5-6 innings consistently (when healthy). Bring him back (or sign someone similar), splash on a higher-end starting pitcher, and then the other rotation spots can be the 3-inning guys.

I constantly look over stats as part of my MLB The Show home project, and every organization has multiple minor league relievers that end up with quite a few more innings than appearances. I think it comes out of necessity of having frequent roster turnover, so you need a few guys to eat up innings. I'm not saying the idea is wrong, I just think the Twins aren't telegraphing anything here as much as it may seem.

That's so interesting that Jax rated so highly. I wasn't impressed with his pitching this year, but perhaps he just needs a tweak or something that will help him improve.

I have no idea, either. I just pulled up his FanGraphs page and now he's at .203/.297/.401 which is a 93 wRC+. I have doubts the 114 wRC+ number was correct.

I think we're suffering from some recency bias here, and also dismissing some of the circumstances that have amplified the departures of these players. Baddoo was a Rule 5 gamble due to his injury history and the fact he had never played above High-A. The Twins most likely were never going to call him up to the majors this year unless he put together some dominant numbers on the farm, and even then, he was buried on the depth chart. Wade was the 5th or 6th outfielder on the 40-man roster, and his lefthanded bat was superfluous with Kepler, Cave, Larnach, and Kirilloff ahead of him or likely to pass him on the depth chart. His absence is being amplified because of injuries to the entire starting outfield this season. (Okay, maybe Buxton's was "predictable," but Kepler's and Cave's were less expected.) He'd absolutely be nice to have now, but he was easily an extraneous outfield piece when the trade first occurred. For what it's worth, I think it was Thad Levine that did admit after Anderson's rookie season that the Twins improperly evaluated him. I find that frustrating because he was so dominant in the minor leagues, yet they didn't give him a chance in the majors. Through Falvey's and Levine's tenure in the front office, I feel they've mainly jettisoned intriguing minor league relief pitchers (Burdi, Reed, Anderson, etc.) with varying results. I would say this is my biggest concern with their talent evaluation.