Matthew Trueblood

The Twins' new school pitching philosophy looks an awful lot like an old school philosophy: throw fastballs. THANK YOU for caretaking Twins Daily. Here's you're exclusive content. When baseball people break down pitch types into categories, they tend to use three: fastballs, breaking balls, and offspeed pitches. This distinction is decades old, long predating modern, data-centric pitching analysis. It’s a natural one, because it centers on the thing that makes each type of pitch effective: speed, movement, and deception, respectively. There’s another natural way to subdivide pitch types, though. It’s rarely used, but equally valid, and perhaps more in line with the way we think about the craft in the age of biomechanics and high-speed video. You can separate pitches into three broad, slightly messy, but telling categories: Those that move to the “arm side”, or in on a same-handed batter: Sinkers and Changeups Those that move to the “glove side”, away from a same-handed batter: Sliders and Cutters Those that move mostly in the vertical plane, with lateral movement mostly incidental: Four-seam Fastballs, Curveballs, and Splitters There are multiple reasons why the taxonomy of pitching has historically favored the first model. For one thing, it’s neater. There are individual examples of pitches within the familiar categories that actually depend on a characteristic other than the one implied by the name of their category for their effectiveness, but they’re rare. The membranes which divide armside, gloveside, and vertical offerings are much more porous. For another thing, pitching (and pitch types, and especially the tendency to classify pitches that walk near a borderline between two possible ones in certain ways) is always evolving, and until relatively recently, breaking things up according to the direction of movement didn’t fit the way most pitching coaches or public commentators thought about things. Consider the advantages, though. So much about a pitch can be explained by whether it primarily moves to the arm side, the glove side, or vertically. Glove-side movement tends to be hard on same-handed batters, but not opposite-handed ones. Vertical movement creates swings and misses, but isn’t good for managing contact quality or inducing ground balls. Arm-side run is the surest way to generate weak contact, but only misses bats if it comes with some other extraordinary characteristic, and can have wide platoon splits. This article continues exclusively for Twins Daily caretakers. To become a caretaker and read the rest of the piece, you can subscribe here. View full article

The Twins' new school pitching philosophy looks an awful lot like an old school philosophy: throw fastballs. Image courtesy of © Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports When baseball people break down pitch types into categories, they tend to use three: fastballs, breaking balls, and offspeed pitches. This distinction is decades old, long predating modern, data-centric pitching analysis. It’s a natural one, because it centers on the thing that makes each type of pitch effective: speed, movement, and deception, respectively. There’s another natural way to subdivide pitch types, though. It’s rarely used, but equally valid, and perhaps more in line with the way we think about the craft in the age of biomechanics and high-speed video. You can separate pitches into three broad, slightly messy, but telling categories: Those that move to the “arm side”, or in on a same-handed batter: Sinkers and Changeups Those that move to the “glove side”, away from a same-handed batter: Sliders and Cutters Those that move mostly in the vertical plane, with lateral movement mostly incidental: Four-seam Fastballs, Curveballs, and Splitters There are multiple reasons why the taxonomy of pitching has historically favored the first model. For one thing, it’s neater. There are individual examples of pitches within the familiar categories that actually depend on a characteristic other than the one implied by the name of their category for their effectiveness, but they’re rare. The membranes which divide armside, gloveside, and vertical offerings are much more porous. For another thing, pitching (and pitch types, and especially the tendency to classify pitches that walk near a borderline between two possible ones in certain ways) is always evolving, and until relatively recently, breaking things up according to the direction of movement didn’t fit the way most pitching coaches or public commentators thought about things. Consider the advantages, though. So much about a pitch can be explained by whether it primarily moves to the arm side, the glove side, or vertically. Glove-side movement tends to be hard on same-handed batters, but not opposite-handed ones. Vertical movement creates swings and misses, but isn’t good for managing contact quality or inducing ground balls. Arm-side run is the surest way to generate weak contact, but only misses bats if it comes with some other extraordinary characteristic, and can have wide platoon splits. Separating pitches this way also works because, to create that direction of movement, the pitcher has to do something with their forearm and wrist through delivery. To throw a running sinker or changeup, you have to pronate–turning your forearm and palm out as you release the ball. Sliders and cutters require a pitcher to supinate their wrist, twisting to the inside through release. Four-seamers and splitters, for the most part, depend on staying behind the ball, although in practice, most pitchers pronate slightly when throwing splitters. Curveballs are a special case, requiring a fairly extreme supination, but the relationship between the fastball arm motion and the curveball one is such that most pitchers can feel their way from one to the other. Looking deeper into the Twins pitch selection this way: It's clear the Twins have a preference, and it's not what you think. The Twins' philosophy matches that of other advanced pitching organizations - except in one area. The Twins made at least one offseason move totally counter to their current trend. Looking at one Twins pitcher who struggled last year, it's apparent it doesn't always work, so they're making different choices. We love providing this level of deep-dive coverage, but it's expensive - too expensive to be paid for just by internet ads. So we reserve the rest of this story for the Caretakers that make this kind of coverage possible. If you're a Caretaker, you can find it here. If you read Twins Daily, well, daily, maybe it's time to become a Caretaker. You'll love it. You'll get more meaty stories like this, plus get perks like Winter Meltdown tickets, and other special recognition. And you can join for as little as $4/moth. You can read all about it and signup here. Those benefits are all nice, but the real reason to sign up is this: 100% of all Caretaker money is channeled directly back into the site. By signing up to be a caretaker, you’re supporting writers you value, and enabling deeper dive Twins-specific content like this that isn’t dependent on ad revenue. We hope you’ll consider it. We expect you’ll love the benefits, and we would love to have you take the next step in supporting the Twins Daily community. View full article

The Twins' infield's arm strength, even with Carlos Correa, isn't particularly impressive. But their pitching staff gives them a sneaky advantage. Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports Like the other 29 MLB teams, the Minnesota Twins face a new defensive challenge in 2023: they’ll have to adapt to rules barring shifts on the infield. When we think about the ramifications of that change, we often focus on fielders’ ability to reach and field the ball. In reality, though, there’s an interaction between raw range and throwing arm–one that will become more important. To that end, bringing back Carlos Correa at shortstop was crucial, but even his strong arm faces a tougher test under the new guidelines. Shifts aren’t just about reaching balls that would otherwise scoot cleanly through to the outfield. They are, in nearly equal measure, about making plays more comfortable for defenders. When a big-league team deploys a shift, a much higher share of ground balls hit by the opposition are within a step or two of a fielder’s starting position. They can usually make the play, plant their feet, and make a strong, balanced throw from a firm footing. In a post-shift world, we will see teams carefully calibrate their positioning to create as many of those easy chances as the new constraints permit. Inevitably, though, we’re going to see more plays made on the run. Since two defenders have to set up on each side of second base, the shortstop won’t be able to shade as far toward the hole against some right-handed batters as they previously had, because the second baseman will have to be a couple of steps further away from any ball hit to the left side of second base. That, in turn, will force the third baseman to play a step further off the foul line, in order to help defend the hole. This article continues exclusively for Twins Daily caretakers. To become a caretaker and read the rest of the piece, you can subscribe here. View full article

The Twins' infield's arm strength, even with Carlos Correa, isn't particularly impressive. But their pitching staff gives them a sneaky advantage. Image courtesy of Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports Like the other 29 MLB teams, the Minnesota Twins face a new defensive challenge in 2023: they’ll have to adapt to rules barring shifts on the infield. When we think about the ramifications of that change, we often focus on fielders’ ability to reach and field the ball. In reality, though, there’s an interaction between raw range and throwing arm–one that will become more important. To that end, bringing back Carlos Correa at shortstop was crucial, but even his strong arm faces a tougher test under the new guidelines. Shifts aren’t just about reaching balls that would otherwise scoot cleanly through to the outfield. They are, in nearly equal measure, about making plays more comfortable for defenders. When a big-league team deploys a shift, a much higher share of ground balls hit by the opposition are within a step or two of a fielder’s starting position. They can usually make the play, plant their feet, and make a strong, balanced throw from a firm footing. In a post-shift world, we will see teams carefully calibrate their positioning to create as many of those easy chances as the new constraints permit. Inevitably, though, we’re going to see more plays made on the run. Since two defenders have to set up on each side of second base, the shortstop won’t be able to shade as far toward the hole against some right-handed batters as they previously had, because the second baseman will have to be a couple of steps further away from any ball hit to the left side of second base. That, in turn, will force the third baseman to play a step further off the foul line, in order to help defend the hole. As a result, we’ll see more plays on which a third baseman’s momentum carries him into foul territory as he fields a ground ball up the line. We’ll see more shortstops making plays that require them to give ground and end up in shallow left field, with less time to get off a throw. We’ll see second basemen having to make a few more plays on which they must field the ball on the move away from first base, twist around, and throw off-balance from a position more familiar to the shortstop. These are all tough plays to make, because of a neglected secret of infield play: the time during which the ball is with the fielder is the window in which a groundout can become an infield hit. The ball is usually hit at somewhere north of 70 miles per hour, even on a seemingly slow chopper. Once a fielder grabs it and flings it, it nearly always travels more quickly than that from wherever they are to first base. The length and strength of the throw in question matters, of course, and the speed of the runner matters. Too often, though, we overlook how pivotal the time between a fielder slapping the leather on a grounder and their release can be. To evaluate how well the Twins can handle that in the new era, one must rely on more than velocity, including more nebulous metrics like "arm utility." We dive into that here, along with where the Twins' infielders rank, and the one advantage the rotation might give them. But just using ad revenue, we can't pay writers enough to do that kind of deep dive. So we reserve it for our Caretakers that support it. If you read Twins Daily, well, daily, maybe it's time to become a Caretaker. You're here, um, daily. You like getting deeper into the team. I'm sure you value the site. Plus, you'll love it. You'll get more meaty stories like this, plus get perks like Winter Meltdown tickets, and other special recognition. And you can join for as little as $4/month. You can read all about it and signup here. Those benefits are all nice, but the real reason to sign up is this: 100% of all Caretaker money is channeled directly back into the site. By signing up to be a caretaker, you’re supporting writers you value, and enabling deeper dive Twins-specific content like this that isn’t dependent on ad revenue. We hope you’ll consider it. We expect you’ll love the benefits, and we would love to have you take the next step in supporting the Twins Daily community. View full article

Trading Luis Arraez for a package centered around right-handed starter Pablo López was no easy decision for the Twins front office. They did it, though, both because of some things López already does that fit beautifully with their organizational pitching philosophy, and because they see some ways in which they can help him get to another level. Image courtesy of © Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports López, who will turn 27 in March, has five pitches, and he’s tinkered with his arsenal several times in the past few years, as he and the Marlins have tried to accomplish the ascension from mid-rotation starter with upside to ace. The Twins will try to further refine that mix. It all starts, though, with the two pitches that require little in the way of further polish: his fastball and his changeup. When it comes to heaters, the Twins have a type, in more ways than one. Firstly, they like four-seamers, not sinkers. Only the Dodgers threw more four-seamers than did the Twins in 2022, and only the Dodgers threw fewer sinkers. Fastball Usage, MLB Teams, 2022 Highest Four-Seam % Lowest Sinker % Team % Team % Dodgers 43.9 Dodgers 6.1 Twins 42.3 Twins 6.9 Reds 41.7 Guardians 8.3 Astros 41.1 Reds 9.5 White Sox 40.1 Mariners 10.0 Source: Pitch Info, via FanGraphs López has both pitches, and the Twins aren’t dogmatic about this, so it’s possible they’ll allow him to keep using each. (Sonny Gray, who came over from a team with similar fastball tendencies in the Reds, threw his sinker more than a quarter of the time last year–though he did throw the four-seamer more, for the first time since 2019.) On balance, though, they’re much more likely to have him eliminate the sinker, because (like Gray) he has a four-seamer with the other characteristic they love: a very flat Vertical Approach Angle (VAA). In the world of pitching nerds, VAA is all the rage. It’s a statistic which requires multiple measurements of the position and velocity of the ball, plus a bit of physics knowledge, and it’s not as publicly available as velocities or spin rates, but it’s a very important piece of information about any pitch. It’s a product, mostly, of three things: velocity, release point, and the location of the pitch when it enters the hitting zone. López throws hard, and despite his 6-foot-4 frame, he has a low release point. His arm angle isn’t sidearm, exactly, but it’s certainly a low three-quarters delivery, and he sinks into his legs well. Of the 169 pitchers who threw at least 500 four-seam fastballs last year, Joe Ryan had the sixth-lowest vertical release point. Gray had the 28th-lowest. Nestled between them at 21st-lowest was López, despite the fact that he stands two and six inches taller than those two hurlers, respectively. Though his height doesn’t factor into the equation in the usual way, López does make use of his size. He gets down the mound and achieves near-elite extension through release, and in combination with his raw velocity, that means that López’s four-seamer has an average perceived velocity of 94.5 miles per hour, according to Statcast. That was good for 44th out of 143 qualifying pitchers last year. The velocity is a welcome addition to the Minnesota rotation, because they ranked 29th in average perceived velocity from starters in 2022, the lowest they’ve landed during the PITCHf/x Era. Given how long it took the team to prioritize velocity at all, that’s jarring. All of this means that almost wherever he throws it within the zone, López has his fastball riding a bit more than does a typical pitcher. He doesn’t generate impressive spin rates or raw movement numbers, but because of the way he throws, those same quirks give him a flat VAA that makes his four-seamer highly effective. Fastballs with a flat VAA generally enjoy higher-than-average rates of both whiffs and called strikes, and they have a wider margin for error. López fills up the strike zone with his heat and still has an above-average whiff rate with it, and he gets an elite number of called strikes on the pitch. The Twins’ tweaks to the fastball, then, will be minimal. They’ll have him largely junk the sinker, but he already used that less often in 2022 than in the past, even with the sinker-happy Marlins. They’ll also try to help López attack the areas of the zone where he has more success with the four-seamer, and focus less on spots where his command gets a bit loose. He excels when he keeps the ball up and to the arm side (in on righties, away from lefties), regardless of which handedness of batter he’s facing. He also does well when working down and to the glove side (in on lefties, away from righties). Those are the locations where we would expect him to be most effective, too, based on his arm action. Consistently hitting those spots will allow him, eventually, to better set up the rest of his arsenal. Speaking of which, we should talk briefly about López’s changeup, about which the Twins will have no notes. Hardly anyone could. Growing up in Venezuela, López got many chances to watch and admire both Johan Santana and Félix Hernández, aces who relied on changeups they could throw in any count, to same- or opposite-handed batters. He’s developed a similar weapon. No one threw more right-on-right or left-on-left changeups than did López in 2022, and it wasn’t especially close. Most Changeups Thrown to Same-Handed Batters, 2022 Player Number Pablo López 481 Zach Davies 442 Logan Webb 344 Lucas Giolito 327 Ian Anderson 322 Source: Baseball Savant Coming from that low arm slot, and with López’s impressive ability to manipulate his hand position, his changeup takes off to the arm side and has heavy sinking action. Of 140 pitchers who threw at least 200 changeups last year, López had more horizontal movement than all but seven, and more sink than all but 31. It gets above-average whiff rates and above-average ground ball rates, despite being compared to pitches used much more carefully and much less frequently. He can make it even more devastating, too, if he can turn the corner with the other two offerings in his repertoire. Let’s remember that, as I wrote a few weeks ago in a discussion of Gray, pitching is really two different tasks in one. Pitching to same-handed batters requires different skills and a different mindset than pitching to opposite-handed ones. One reason for that is that relatively few pitches work well against both types of hitter. López has a leg up in that regard, since (as we’ve already said) his fastball and his change can both neutralize batters from either side. To be a front-of-the-rotation starter, though, one usually needs a third pitch for all opponents. For López, those complementary pieces are already in place, but there’s plenty of room to make them better. Against lefties, López prefers to work high in the zone with his fastball, which is sound thinking. As we’ve already noted, his heat has characteristics that allow him to have success throughout the zone, but his best command spots are up and away and down and in against lefties. Even for such a good pitch, consistently going down and in on lefties is dangerous work. Climbing the ladder also has the salutary effect of setting up his changeup, allowing him to change eye levels. However, he can augment that approach by increasing and altering the usage of his curveball as a third thing for which hitters have to account. He started to do that a bit more in 2022. The curve also took on more of a vertical shape last season, until it was more or less an 11-to-5 breaker. That’s pretty remarkable, considering the way he throws, even if it’s not the 12-to-6 that profiles best against opposite-handed hitters. The arm angle has been one limiting factor in the development of López’s curve. His inability to generate elite spin has been another. Even so, he’s had some success with the pitch. Last year, he only allowed four hits on the pitch–all singles. No other pitcher who threw at least 200 curves allowed as low a batting average as the .095 hitters managed against López’s, let alone doing so without giving up any power, and he did get 18 strikeouts with it. Unfortunately, he did so by throwing the pitch too selectively, and with too little conviction. Despite not getting hurt on it even once, he threw it for a strike less than any other pitcher in baseball, and he hardly ever threw it except when ahead in the count. In the past, he used the pitch to steal strikes on the first pitch of at-bats, but this year, that tendency disappeared. Pablo López, Pitch Usage v. LHH, 2022 Partially as a result of that change in tack, López also stopped throwing the curve for a strike. No pitcher in baseball threw their curve in the zone less often than he did. Given López’s control, it’s inconceivable that he simply lost the ability to hit the zone with that offering. They say if you’re never racing to the gate ahead of the final boarding call, you’re getting to the airport too early. López needs to live a little more dangerously with his curve to neutralize lefties better, and the Twins will help him do so. Against righties, the combination of his fastball and his unique confidence in the changeup make López tough, but his cutter is where his breakout potential lies. Last year, he began a transformation of that pitch, from a hard, short counterbalance to his sinker into something closer to a slider, with bigger break and a velocity differential of 5-7 miles per hour from his fastball. He also started throwing it more, particularly against righties. As they get López targeting his most effective quadrants with the fastball, the Twins can help his cutter play up by having him play the pitch directly off of the heater. A heater up and in on a righty can set up a cutter running from the middle of the plate out to the edge. One located down and away can set up a strike-to-ball cutter off the plate for a chase and a whiff. The latter sequence could be especially effective, because hitters have to keep that filthy changeup in mind. Knowing that, they’re not likely to see the cutter well when it starts on the outer edge. They’ll identify that it isn’t the change and start their swing, but be fooled by the spin axis, which is nearly identical to that of López’s four-seamer. The movement difference comes mostly from seam-shifted wake, which hitters struggle to read. López only used the pitch to try to get ahead early in counts, but in the right sequences, he could turn it into a putaway pitch at times. There are weaknesses in López’s game that cap his upside somewhere south of elite status. He’s an intelligent, multitalented hurler, though, and while he’s already shown the ability to be an above-average workhorse at the big-league level, the Twins gave up an All-Star and fan favorite for him because they have designs on making him even better than that. View full article

Trading Luis Arraez for a package centered around right-handed starter Pablo López was no easy decision for the Twins front office. They did it, though, both because of some things López already does that fit beautifully with their organizational pitching philosophy, and because they see some ways in which they can help him get to another level. Image courtesy of © Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports Pablo López , who will turn 27 in March, has five pitches, and he’s tinkered with his arsenal several times in the past few years, as he and the Marlins have tried to accomplish the ascension from mid-rotation starter with upside to ace. The Twins will try to further refine that mix. It all starts, though, with the two pitches that require little in the way of further polish: his fastball and his changeup. When it comes to heaters, the Twins have a type, in more ways than one. Firstly, they like four-seamers, not sinkers. Only the Dodgers threw more four-seamers than did the Twins in 2022, and only the Dodgers threw fewer sinkers. Fastball Usage, MLB Teams, 2022 Highest Four-Seam % Lowest Sinker % Team % Team % Dodgers 43.9 Dodgers 6.1 Twins 42.3 Twins 6.9 Reds 41.7 Guardians 8.3 Astros 41.1 Reds 9.5 White Sox 40.1 Mariners 10.0 Source: Pitch Info, via FanGraphs López has both pitches, and the Twins aren’t dogmatic about this, so it’s possible they’ll allow him to keep using each. (Sonny Gray , who came over from a team with similar fastball tendencies in the Reds, threw his sinker more than a quarter of the time last year–though he did throw the four-seamer more, for the first time since 2019.) On balance, though, they’re much more likely to have him eliminate the sinker, because (like Gray) he has a four-seamer with the other characteristic they love: a very flat Vertical Approach Angle (VAA). In the world of pitching nerds, VAA is all the rage. We'll take a deep dive into why, and also discuss why Lopez's best pitch - his notorious changeup - is such an unusual weapon. Plus, we'll touch on the pitch selection adjustments he is likely to make. But that kind of 1800-word deep-dive analytics-driven story can't be financially supported by ad revenue in this world, so we reserve it for our Caretakers, who support that kind of content. Eventually, we hope we'll have enough Caretakers to provide it on a regular basis for everyone, but in the meantime, you can see it by becoming a Caretaker. You'll love it. You'll get more meaty stories like this, plus get perks like Winter Meltdown tickets, and other special recognition. And you can join for as little as $4/moth. You can read all about it and signup here. Those benefits are all nice, but the real reason to sign up is this: 100% of all Caretaker money is channeled directly back into the site. By signing up to be a caretaker, you’re supporting writers you value, and enabling deeper dive Twins-specific content like this that isn’t dependent on ad revenue. We hope you’ll consider it. We expect you’ll love the benefits, and we would love to have you take the next step in supporting the Twins Daily community. View full article

Under Derek Falvey and Thad Levine, the Twins have prized depth on their roster and optionality in their processes. Their approach to MLB free agency has reflected that fact. Alas, that means they’re only doing half the job that a great front office must do in free agency, and it’s the less vital half. Image courtesy of © Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports MLB free agency is really one name for two overlapping but distinct tasks. One of those is finding short-term answers to immediate problems. In this aspect, a front office needs to reinforce thin areas on their roster; balance the pursuit of upside with the necessity of setting a firm floor for a given roster spot; and husband their resources as closely as possible. They need to fill holes without leaving themselves ossified or cornered when the opportunity or the need to change tack arises. The other task that makes up free agency, though, is adding high-impact talent to the franchise on a long-term basis. This is talked about too rarely, but it’s crucial. That’s because, ultimately, having star-caliber players is a non-negotiable prerequisite for consistent contention. To longtime baseball fans, this can seem like the vapid talk of a cotton-headed basketball or football fan. No individual can have the same impact on a ball club as LeBron James can have on a basketball team, or even the impact that any of several good quarterbacks can have on their rosters. One of baseball’s beautiful characteristics is that depth will out, and that good teams are unavoidably reliant upon a broader base of contributors. Every roster spot matters, and stars can’t carry subpar fellows very far. The bottom 60 percent of a 26- and a 40-man roster needs to be full of guys who hew closer to average than to the replacement level, or else a team will stall out over the long season. True though that might be when it comes to analyzing a team based on its two or three best players, it fades into irrelevance if you judge a team by its seven or eight best. Good teams need above-average players—not a couple of them, but a cadre. It’s simple math, really. If you have that army of credible, almost-good players rounding out the bottom of the roster, you’ve set a floor somewhere between 70 and 75 wins. If the top handful of batters and pitchers are each just a win above average, though, you can’t push much past 85 wins. Teams with real chances of reaching and causing trouble in the postseason, and especially those who stand any chance of doing so multiple times in a span of a few years, need to have clear paths to 90 wins or more. A deeper dive into players who post a 4+ WAR tells why the Twins have been coming up short against the more elite teams in the American League, including in the postseason. But we reward our Caretakers with the meatier stories like this, since they’re the ones that support paying writers for a more thorough examination. If you would like to join them, you can read this story and also get other perks, like a free ticket to the Winter Meltdown, meet and greets, special recognition in the comments sections, and more exclusive in-depth explorations of Twins topics. Just sign up here. We would love to have you join the hundreds of people that value having Twins stories, rumors and conversation 365 days per year. Thank you for considering it. View full article

Under Derek Falvey and Thad Levine, the Twins have prized depth on their roster and optionality in their processes. Their approach to MLB free agency has reflected that fact. Alas, that means they’re only doing half the job that a great front office must do in free agency, and it’s the less vital half. Image courtesy of © Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports MLB free agency is really one name for two overlapping but distinct tasks. One of those is finding short-term answers to immediate problems. In this aspect, a front office needs to reinforce thin areas on their roster; balance the pursuit of upside with the necessity of setting a firm floor for a given roster spot; and husband their resources as closely as possible. They need to fill holes without leaving themselves ossified or cornered when the opportunity or the need to change tack arises. The other task that makes up free agency, though, is adding high-impact talent to the franchise on a long-term basis. This is talked about too rarely, but it’s crucial. There are a limited set of annual opportunities to make that kind of addition to an organization, and the others are radically different from free agency. International amateur free agency and the amateur draft are much lower-cost alternatives, but there’s also dramatically less certainty that the players a team acquires that way will ever be impactful players, and even if they do so, it won’t be for years. Signing a star free agent for several seasons comes with risk, especially because most such players are already nearing the end of their prime by the time they reach free agency. That risk tends to be wildly overstated, though, because it’s never compared to the risk (let alone the cost, especially in terms of time) of trying to acquire and develop teenagers into players of similar quality. Trading for players that good is even harder, because unlike free agency, it depends upon another team making the frequently irrational, ultimately unpredictable choice to make such a player available. There’s implicit risk involved, since the team that knows the player best is making that strange election. There’s also astronomical cost, because of the paucity of players that good available in that way, and because the currency with which one pays in that kind of deal (talented players on whom scouting resources and player development energy and the artificially scarce resource of signing bonus money have already been spent) is much less renewable and much more valuable than money. All that considered, it’s vital that a team see each year’s free agent class as a chance to add stars to their core. A smart team approaches free agency and the amateur scouting process with the same set of objectives in mind, even though the shapes of the costs, risks, and constraints in the two arenas are so different. That’s because, ultimately, having star-caliber players is a non-negotiable prerequisite for consistent contention. To longtime baseball fans, this can seem like the vapid talk of a cotton-headed basketball or football fan. No individual can have the same impact on a ball club as LeBron James can have on a basketball team, or even the impact that any of several good quarterbacks can have on their rosters. One of baseball’s beautiful characteristics is that depth will out, and that good teams are unavoidably reliant upon a broader base of contributors. Every roster spot matters, and stars can’t carry subpar fellows very far. The bottom 60 percent of a 26- and a 40-man roster needs to be full of guys who hew closer to average than to the replacement level, or else a team will stall out over the long season. True though that might be when it comes to analyzing a team based on its two or three best players, it fades into irrelevance if you judge a team by its seven or eight best. Good teams need above-average players—not a couple of them, but a cadre. It’s simple math, really. If you have that army of credible, almost-good players rounding out the bottom of the roster, you’ve set a floor somewhere between 70 and 75 wins. If the top handful of batters and pitchers are each just a win above average, though, you can’t push much past 85 wins. Teams with real chances of reaching and causing trouble in the postseason, and especially those who stand any chance of doing so multiple times in a span of a few years, need to have clear paths to 90 wins or more. That’s why the search for stars needs to be perpetual and multifarious. If a team creates great processes of scouting, player development, coaching, and aggressive maneuvering to lock up players who show upside at the highest level, they can stick to a largely homegrown core, and they needn’t spend much on the second, more costly task of free agency. The Twins, though, haven’t managed that at all. Since 2018, 151 position players have had a season worth at least 4.0 wins above replacement (WAR), according to FanGraphs. The Twins have had just four of those player-seasons. Eddie Rosario eked out 4.0 WAR in 2018. Jorge Polanco was worth 4.1 in 2021. Nelson Cruz got to 4.3 in 2019. And in 2022, in what still looks likely to be his only season in a Twins uniform, Carlos Correa was worth 4.4 WAR. Another 71 pitcher seasons have cleared that threshold, and the Twins were beneficiaries of just one and a half of them: José Berríos, who cleared the bar in both 2019 and 2021, was traded during the latter campaign. Along the way, Byron Buxton has sometimes looked like that caliber of player. The team signed him to a contract extension that keeps him in Minnesota and manages the risk posed by his inability to stay on the field or produce consistently enough to bring that full potential to bear. Others on whom similar hopes once hung, though, now look as unlikely to be a full-fledged star as Buxton does. Royce Lewis’s development has been twice interrupted by major knee injuries, which are likely to slow down his emergence as a top hitter and to slash his non-batting value much sooner than would have happened otherwise. Injury can be called a culprit in Alex Kirilloff’s derailment, too, and contributed to (though certainly didn’t solely cause) Jordan Balazovic’s failure to turn the corner and become Berríos Redux. Cruz’s (and Josh Donaldson’s) age made him available to the Twins in the range Falvey and Levine find palatable. Correa’s openness to what was effectively a one-year deal fitted him to their mold. Even when they have added impact-level talent, the front office has done so only because external circumstances or limitations to the player’s market made them a comfortable addition. The discomfort of a true star-caliber, long-term free agent acquisition is also where the greatest value of such a move lies. The Twins have been unwilling to withstand that discomfort in order to capture that value. This front office is very good at amassing depth, and at remaining flexible enough to pounce when unexpected opportunities present themselves. That’s how they were in position to land Correa, of course, and to trade for Kenta Maeda, and to scoop up the surprisingly affordable Lance Lynn, Marwin González, Logan Morrison, and Jake Odorizzi. They’ve also done well to reclaim and finish the development of guys like Nick Gordon, Griffin Jax, and Bailey Ober. They seem determined never to fail that first test of good teams, to have quality options on the wrong side of average even when things go a bit sideways. There’s a troubling pattern here, though, of being too unwilling to take the leap and reel in the players who raise their ceiling to the same level as those of the Astros, Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, or even the Guardians. Each of those teams has enjoyed at least twice as many four-win seasons since 2018 as have the Twins. And (because the rich teams are now smart, too, and aware of the value of depth) none of them are much worse than Falvey and Levine at maximizing the utility of their 40-man roster. From a baseball standpoint, there comes a fairly early point of diminishing returns for the skill of filling the organization with guys just south of average. Roster rules designed to give players a fair chance to play where they’re most wanted or valued make the edges gained in that way hard to sustain, and talent starts to leak from the organization for purely entropic reasons. The Twins have lost LaMonte Wade, Jr., Akil Baddoo, Tyler Wells, and others recently to the numbers game, and those are just the most obvious examples. On the other hand, there is no point of diminishing returns for adding above-average players, at least until the team payroll reaches the first threshold of the competitive-balance tax bracket. The Twins are in no danger of breaching that line any time soon. There ae a few potential reasons for the Twins’ consistent preference for short-term, low-risk deals in free agency. Falvey and Levine might be miscalculating—failing to see the collective risk created by their aversion to risk within individual transactions. That seems unlikely, given their established baseball savvy and previous remarks. Alternatively, then, they might be so committed to creating stars via their farm system that they’re willing to wait out the frustrations of players like Kirilloff, Lewis, Balazovic, and Austin Martin. That’s more defensible, but the teams who can reliably produce stars that way (so much so that they don’t need to supplement that part of their roster with high-level free agents) are few, and Minnesota has yet to earn anyone’s trust in that area. The most likely explanation, then, is baseball’s oldest: ownership just doesn’t have the stomach for the higher sustained costs associated with building a winner partially through impact MLB free-agent signings. Maybe that’s sound financial thinking by the Pohlads, and maybe it isn’t. From a baseball standpoint, though, it’s inexcusably foolish. In either case, be it a front-office plan or an ownership limit, things need to change. The Twins need to be more aggressive, and to view free agency as a grander opportunity, not just this season, but every year. Failing that, they’ll remain a small-market team with mid-market resources, instead of graduating into a more dangerous and interesting club. View full article