Matthew Trueblood

The Twins’ co-setup man is an obsessive tinkerer. That label is often unwelcome for a pitcher, but in the age of big data and with the kind of arm Trevor May has, it’s a good thing.May has always been a cerebral hurler, as interested in the craft and the theory of pitching as in the sheer force of his fastball or the filthiness of his changeup. Through a career interrupted repeatedly by injuries, May fought to find the best possible blend of pitches to suit his talents, including his body. It was well-intentioned, but like former teammate Phil Hughes, May sometimes got criticized for spending too much time making changes and too little time perfecting what he already did. Like Hughes, though, May was undeterred by outside opinions. Last spring, he made a potentially big realization: his high arm slot didn’t need to stop him from throwing an effective slider. Long a fastball-changeup guy in a perpetual search for a more workable breaking ball, May ditched the cutter-style slider he had previously tried, opting instead for a harder variant of his curveball. He achieved more depth with the pitch, increased its spin rate, and knew he had the makings of an important fix. However, as May reflected at the time, the change had little immediate utility, because he lacked the command to maximize it. He could throw the “ball-to-strike” version of the pitch, dropping it into the zone for called strikes when batters weren’t expecting it, and he could bury it in the dirt to induce chases from extremely anxious hitters when ahead in the count, but he didn’t develop feel for the “strike-to-ball” version of the pitch—the one hitters would see as a fastball with plenty of the zone out of the hand, only to dip toward their ankles and miss their bats. That’s why, late last season, May put his breaking ball project on the shelf and threw his fastball at a career-high frequency, dominating with sheer power. In the long run, though, it was clear he would need to make another adjustment in order to take the next step toward becoming a true relief ace. (The secret is, even for pitchers who don’t realize it, the need for another adjustment is always right around the corner.) Through two appearances, it’s already clear that the tinkerer has been tinkering again, and that he’s done his homework. May’s slider has now wholly replaced his curveball, at least so far, and it’s for the best. The slider he’s throwing now has the best of his last two versions: it’s about two miles per hour harder than it was last season, but still has the vertical movement he found after making the grip change. More importantly, though, he has full command of this version. He threw the “strike-to-ball” slider a handful of times against St. Louis Tuesday night, leading to two of his strikeouts. Download attachment: Animated GIF-downsized_large.gif May’s changeup is also back in the mix, more than it had been late in 2019. He’s throwing it without the armside run that allowed hitters to differentiate it from his fastball, and thus, he’s fooling them better even without a big movement differential. If he can continue using both the slider and the changeup as this season progresses, May will hit free agency as a full-fledged relief ace with big earning potential, and the Twins will have a pitcher finally comfortable enough with his full arsenal to stop tinkering. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article

The Twins second baseman’s only real weakness at the plate has been a dearth of power. Now, he’s showing enough of that to keep opponents honest, and that could help him reach a new gear.Last season, Luis Arraez hit .334, showing an extraordinary feel for contact, a disciplined approach, and the uncanny ability to find open spaces in the defense where he could turn batted balls into hits. However, the weakness that kept him from becoming a higher-profile prospect during his time in the minors leagues remained clear: Arraez doesn’t hit for power. In the year of the turbocharged aeroball, Arraez hit only four homers in 366 plate appearances with the parent club. The Statcast numbers state the case even more clearly. Arraez’s average exit velocity was in the bottom sixth of the league, among all batters with at least 250 plate appearances, but even that understates the extent to which he was underpowered. There were 320 players with at least those 250 plate appearances. Arraez ranked 288th in Barrel rate, meaning he made less of the highest-value contact than 90 percent of the league, and he ranked 308th in Hard Hit rate. In no game last season did Arraez have three different balls Statcast counted as Hard Hit, meaning they left his bat at 95 miles per hour or faster. He only had six batted balls, all season, that registered at 100 miles per hour or harder. While Arraez clustered his batted balls in the optimal launch-angle band better than all but three other hitters in the game, and while he hits to all fields so well that teams can’t easily align defenses against him, his lack of power made it hard to guess how well he could sustain the high batting average so vital to his overall profile. That’s why Sunday’s game was a huge breakthrough. Arraez had two hits, just as he did in Friday night’s opener. This time, though, he did it with more hard contact, even on his outs. In the first inning, Arraez spanked a line drive into left field, a clean single in front of left fielder Eloy Jiménez, at 100.5 miles per hour. In the second, he lifted a liner slightly higher, and although he hit it more softly, he landed a single that left the bat at 83.9 miles per hour, down the left-field line. In the fourth, Gio Gonzalez threw Arraez a high fastball, and Arraez got under it. He hit it so hard, though, that Luis Robert had to run the ball down on the warning track, slightly to the left of dead center. The ball left the bat at 100.4 miles per hour. After a groundout in the seventh inning, Arraez faced Kelvin Herrera in the final frame of the Twins’ blowout win. Herrera threw him a sinker up and in, and Arraez got under it again. He flew out lazily to center field, partially because of the 45-degree launch angle. Still, the exit velocity on that batted ball was 96.3 miles per hour. Arraez’s swing gets on plane with the incoming pitch extremely well, at least on pitches down in the zone. He’ll continue to square up the ball and hit the ball on valuable trajectories, though he has an adjustment yet to make when it comes to handling high fastballs. However, his data from Sunday demonstrates that Arraez has the potential to hit for more power than he has thus far. He can also continue to run a high BABIP, because of his ability to hit the ball this hard. Showing this capacity will force outfielders to play him at normal depth, rather than pinch in and try to start stealing the flared singles he’s been dropping between infielders and outfielders since reaching the big leagues. He’s shown an unbelievable knack for making the field seem larger than it is, and impossible to defend. If he can sustain this uptick in pop off the bat while making contact and spraying the ball as consistently as he has, Arraez can still improve slightly as a hitter. Given how good he already is, that’s no small thing. Click here to view the article

It’s already becoming clear that, even in a short season, the Twins are going to need more heroics from last season’s most unlikely pitching hero. Randy Dobnak is going to be called upon to pitch crucial innings early this year, including this week. Let’s consider three questions crucial to his outlook.Will batters start to pick up Dobnak better in his second trip around the league? With the schedule compressed to include just 60 games, there’s little time for teams to make big adjustments against pitchers. However, that compression also brings the Twins’ total number of opponents for the season down to nine, and four of those teams saw him down the stretch in 2019. That matters, because Dobnak isn’t a model of release-point matching and tunneling. He tweaks his arm slot and release point to maximize his control and command of each of his four pitches. Here are his average release points for each pitch type in 2019. Download attachment: Brooksbaseball-Chart (1).png On its own, that graphic isn’t overwhelmingly damning. We can see the distinctions between the points clearly, but that’s partially because I’ve zoomed in to allow us to do so; the sheer separation between each point is a few inches. However, there are two things that make it somewhat more telling in Dobnak’s case than in others. One is that he doesn’t vary his arm slot or delivery on any particular pitch, so if batters do start to figure out the keyhole for a given pitch, they can be pretty confident about what they’re looking for. His fastballs all look roughly the same out of the hand; so do his sliders. The other problem for Dobnak is that, with his low arm slot, left-handed batters get a long look at his arm action. That will make the small differences between certain pitches easier to see for them. Last year, Dobnak got good mileage out of his changeup, but that pitch doesn’t have a big movement or velocity differential from his fastball. If hitters start to recognize that change more readily as they get more looks at Dobnak, he might suddenly see opponents chase and whiff on the offering less often. In fact, more broadly, Dobnak relies on deception that might turn out to be fragile, because of his arm slot and release points. Can Dobnak change eye levels effectively? Given his low arm angle, it’s no surprise that Dobnak relies more heavily on his sinker than on his four-seamer. Some pitchers can offset that reliance by having fastballs that ride more than they appear to, even when studying the numbers. Almost any rising action on a four-seamer from a low three-quarter delivery can fool a batter. Alas, Dobnak doesn’t even have that. He has fringe-average velocity, a low average spin rate on both his fastball and his sinker, and relatively heavy action on each. That’s not bad, when he’s executing and locating both pitches effectively, but if he struggles with either on a given night, the pressure on the other becomes more than its quality can handle. Dobnak’s four-seamer is too slow, comes from too low a release and has too little rise to miss bats or induce pop-ups when thrown above the belt. He has to locate the pitch from the belt down, and keep it on the corners, except when he’s able to set it up with his other offerings. That’s the first test he’ll face, in this regard, in 2020: Can he pitch backward? If Dobnak can start lefties with the changeup or righties with the slider at times, or find counts in which they anticipate those pitches especially confidently, he should be able to sneak a fastball in at the top of the zone without having them hammer it. If he can steal strikes that way, terrific, but merely showing that pitch to opponents (without getting hurt in the process) would be huge for Dobnak. Once he’s established the ability to go up there, he can more effectively throw the turbo version of his sinker, the one that tumbles and runs right out of the strike zone. He can get called strikes with the slider. He can force hitters to cover the entire strike zone, instead of keying in on something down. Will Dobnak find both corners of the plate with his hard stuff? The other axis of movement and command is at least as important, though. Last year, Dobnak showed little ability to command his four-seamer to his arm side (inside to right-handed batters, away from lefties), and even less comfort using the sinker over the opposite edge of the plate. He needs to get more comfortable with each, in order to keep inducing weak contact and getting ground balls the way he did in 2019. Vertical movement tends to help generate whiffs; horizontal movement tends to help generate bad contact. Dobnak doesn’t have exceptional movement in either direction, but his pitches form a much more interesting and difficult array for hitters in terms of horizontal movement, which is why he allowed just one home run in 28 innings last year. However, batters will only ever need to pay cursory attention to the top half of the zone when Dobnak is on the mound. That makes it especially important that he make them guard all 17 inches of home plate, and a couple on either side. His slider works well in contrast with both his fastball and his sinker, in terms of tempting opponents to expand the zone, but they’ll have too many opportunities to square up his straight stuff if he doesn’t keep them guessing about where to hunt for it. Throwing any pitch to both sides of the plate with equal comfort and command is hard for any pitcher. It’s even harder for guys like Dobnak, who throw from a lower angle and have to wrestle with horizontal movement than others. He already sets up on the first-base side of the rubber, giving his sinker room to work back toward right-handed hitters, and that’s why he’s been able to locate his four-seamer to the opposite side. His next step will need to be finding the release point that allows him to start an occasional sinker heading right at the hip of a left-handed batter, only to run back over the inside corner, and to start painting the outside corner (to lefties) with the four-seamer. For a guy who has demonstrated excellent control, it’s possible, and neither pitch has to be one to which he turns very often. The four-seamer won’t sneak past righties on the inner part of the plate; it isn’t hard enough. If a lefty sits on the front-hip sinker, or if Dobnak misses even a bit and it wanders over the middle of the plate, it becomes a go-fer ball. Situationally, though, the ability to throw each pitch a time or two per outing, locating and sequencing them well enough not to get hurt with them, will keep hitters off-balance and unprepared when Dobnak goes back to the pitches and locations with which he’s more comfortable. With Jake Odorizzi’s back barking, Jhoulys Chacín having taken his release, and Michael Pineda still suspended, it’s not hard to imagine Dobnak being needed as a starter, and soon. In the meantime, he’ll be a key source of long relief innings. No matter which role he fills in a given appearance, these dynamics will come into play, and in a 60-game season, even small things like these could determine a division title. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article

The Twins' newest right-handed starter has a complicated contract, but the team got some clarity on it for 2020 this week.When the Twins traded for Kenta Maeda in February, one of the interesting nuances of the trade was his complicated, incentive-laden contract. Now, after a massive shakeup, figuring out just what that deal will pay is harder than ever. It might also be more important. The Pohlad family, which owns the team, can certainly afford to pay everyone their prorated salaries, even allowing for whatever losses they might realize based on a truncated season in which they will not be allowed to welcome large crowds at Target Field. Still, every team figures to operate on a tight budget this season, and even into 2021, as owners put up a united front and try to maximize profit despite revenue shortfalls. A contract like Maeda’s can be especially valuable under those circumstances, but it can also become onerous. On Monday, the league and the MLB Players Association announced their agreement on the disposition of incentives and vesting options in player contracts in a short season. The terms of that agreement stipulate that both amounts paid and thresholds will be prorated. Thus, a player who needed to pitch 162 innings in order to qualify for a vesting option would need precisely 60 to do so. A player who met a prorated incentive threshold worth $250,000 would be paid $92,500 for doing so. With those things pinned down, we can now say what Maeda can make in 2020. He’ll get $1,11 million as a base salary. If and when he is on the active roster come Opening Day late next week, he will earn another $55,500. After that, things start to get really interesting. Maeda’s deal provides for incentives based both on games started and on innings pitched. Under the final agreement on such issues, he will make $370,000 each when he makes his sixth and seventh starts of the season. If he gets to nine, 11, and 12 starts, each of those will trigger additional payments of $555,000. If he’s a full-time starter, it seems reasonable to guess that he would get 11 turns during the 60-game campaign. There are 12 different innings totals that would trigger bonus payments to Maeda: 33, 37, 41, 44, 48, 52, 56, 59, 63, 67, 70, and 74. The first 11 would each net him $92,500. If he got to 74 innings, he’d cash in for an extra $277,500. Given both his track record and the ramp-up period that is leading us into the season, however, it seems optimistic to project Maeda for more than about 62 innings. If he does make 11 starts and pitch 62 frames, he’ll add $2.59 million to his earnings for the year, bringing him to a total of $3.755 million. That’s an exceptional bargain for the Twins, considering that the Dodgers kicked in $3 million as part of the trade, and paid $2.4365 million of that to the team this year. The trickiness of prorating starts and innings totals on an incentive-laden deal could make for resentment on one side or the other in a case like this. It could, in the cases of some workhorse starters, make it easier to hit those incentive thresholds, and thus tempt the team to manipulate the situation, as the Dodgers have done with Maeda in full-length seasons over the past few years. Maeda requested a trade from LA, which speaks to the effect of such fudging on player morale. A less equitable system for handling incentives and bonuses could also have left players feeling mistreated, but prorating both thresholds and bonuses was the obvious solution and both sides eventually arrived there. There’s no reason, given this structure, for the Twins to do anything but start Maeda every time his turn in the rotation comes, and to use him to the fullest extent that his health and effectiveness permit. If Michael Pineda returns to the crowded rotation in mid-September, the team could plausibly move Maeda to the bullpen, since he has more and better experience in that role than any of the other candidates for such a shift. They might even be able to do so without upsetting Maeda, given the lower stakes of the decision with prorated dollar amounts and given the strangeness of the whole season. But they should only do so if it’s the optimal baseball decision. Business need not enter into the equation. Click here to view the article

Eddie Rosario and the Twins have been growing apart for a bit, but the shortened season and the outlook for 2021 make it especially hard to envision a good ending for them.From a player’s point of view, there’s no worse career stage at which to be right now than that of Trevor May. He’s due to hit free agency this fall, but free agency is going to be as unprofitable a proposition this fall and winter as it has been since MLB players won the right to become free agents. From a team’s point of view, though, the worst career stage is the one at which Eddie Rosario now finds himself. Rosario, 28, is two seasons of service time from becoming a free agent, but thanks to COVID-19, of course, that has effectively turned into 1.4 seasons. More saliently, the team isn’t necessarily inclined to wait that long before acting. Rosario’s persistent inconsistency at the plate and the Twins’ looming alternatives in left field have made him a trade candidate. Alex Kirilloff and Travor Larnach both seem likely to surpass Rosario in terms of performance within a year. Even if they don’t, Rosario’s poor defense in left field and increasing salary make him a cog ill-suited to operating what is a newly modernized machine. Trading him could, in theory, have been a good option for the team, either this summer or after the season. Now, however, that seems much less likely. Consider that, for players actually reaching free agency, the impact of whatever losses owners realize due to COVID-19 will be clear and straightforward. They’ll only get what the market will bear, and (for better or worse) teams will set the market in accordance with their projected budgets for 2021. For those still early in their careers (either yet to reach arbitration, or just reaching it), the impacts will be minimal, and teams will be more eager than ever to acquire and retain players in that segment of the compensation structure. Arbitration, though, is a different matter. It follows rules and procedures that will be hard, if not impossible, to adjust to fit the present circumstances. What a player earns via arbitration is determined by how much they earned the previous year, how they compare to similar players at the same stage of the process, and (in the case of players late in the process, like Rosario) how they compare to players who have recently reached free agency. The inflexibility of the arbitration system has been a problem for years now, distorting the league’s compensation structure and changing the career trajectories of several individual players. It’s an especially glaring weakness now, however, and it leaves teams and players in a bad position. Rosario was set to make $7.75 million in 2020, though that figure will now be pro-rated. Given his proximity to free agency and the way the system values the antiquated measures of offensive performance in which he excels, he could easily be in line to get an eight-figure salary in 2021. That’s part of why the Twins are interested in moving on. In a league that looks likely to spend substantially less money on players next season, though, it becomes a downright bad deal, and that torpedoes Rosario’s trade value. The only way the Twins might plausibly get something worthwhile for Rosario, at this point, is if they find a trade partner who is also saddled with a player near free agency ill-fitted to their roster and set to make an inflated arbitration-set salary. Failing that, Rosario will either stick around (making it harder to get Kirilloff, Larnach, Brent Rooker, and any other hitter who takes unexpectedly large steps forward, as Mitch Garver and Luis Arráez did just last season), or he’ll have to be traded for virtually nothing. Except in the most craven zero-sum sort of way, no team or player is really benefiting from COVID-19. They’re all being hurt in different ways, though. The Twins and Rosario now find themselves in a tricky spot, and the only really happy resolution for which they might hope is Rosario getting very hot over the course of this short season. Rosario has had All-Star-caliber half-seasons in the past. For multiple reasons, the Twins need another one in 2020. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article

The last two months of 2019 saw Trevor May emerge as a dominant set-up man in the Twins’ bullpen. From August 1 through the end of the season, May not only had a 1.38 ERA, but held opponents to a pathetic .125/.181/.273 batting line. He fanned 34 of the 94 batters he faced, and walked just six. Of the 333 pitchers who threw at least 300 pitches during that span, May allowed the fourth-lowest weighted on-base average.As I documented at Baseball Prospectus last May, May turned a corner partially because he changed the grip on his slider, turning it into a harder version of his curveball instead of the cutterish offering it had previously been. However, that doesn’t mean that the slider itself fueled his newfound dominance. In fact, even at season’s end, he hadn’t found a consistently above-average breaking ball. Trevor May, Slider and Curveball Stats, 2019 Download attachment: Screenshot 2020-07-08 at 8.28.19 PM.png A good breaking ball should induce swings and misses at about half again the rate at which May’s do so. He showed the ability to reshape both pitches, and to spin them at a high rate, but he got no real results with either pitch. What changed, then? To answer that, let’s change the subject for a minute. In 2006, biological researchers at the University of Sydney performed an experiment on plasmodial slime mold. Slime mold is, most of the time, a single-cell organism, but under the right conditions, it can form a kind of glob large enough to be visible to the naked eye. It likes to latch onto and eat oats. As you might guess about something that goes by the name “plasmodial slime mold,” it doesn’t like light. The researchers first put some slime mold into a petri dish with oats at opposite ends, one with an ultraviolet light shining on it and one in relative darkness. The slime mold “chose” (it doesn’t have a brain, but we can call this behavior choosing for these purposes) the oats at the dark end of the dish, over and over again, in repeated experiments. Then, the researchers added more oats to the end where the light was. At a certain point, the greater amount of available food balanced out the aversion to light, and the slime mold began choosing the oats in the light half the time. One more twist, then we’ll get back to May. The researchers then added a third option for the slime mold: a smaller amount of oats in another dark end of the petri dish. The amounts in the original dark and light ends of the dish were held where they had been, the point at which the slime mold had shown roughly equal preference for the two options. The mold should have been expected to change almost nothing; the new option was clearly undesirable and irrelevant. That’s not what happened. Adding the extraneous, irrelevant option led the mold to choose the smaller quantity of oats in darkness (though still a larger quantity than the new option) three times as often as the larger quantity in the light. Again, slime mold doesn’t have a brain. Yet, it’s stunningly capable of irrationality, just the way humans are. May, as it turns out, is capable of the same thing. Changing the slider grip gave him two theoretically workable breaking balls. Neither actually worked, but by adding an irrelevant option to the mixture, he disrupted the overall balance of his pitch mix. Trevor May, Pitch Usage by Month, 2019 Download attachment: Brooksbaseball-Chart.png This is how May started mowing down opposing hitters like they were novice players of one of the video games he plays so well. He started pumping in his fastball about 70 percent of the time, getting pop-ups and empty swings by the bushel. May throws hard, generates good backspin, and achieves good carry on his heat because of his high arm slot. As he began throwing that pitch more often than ever, he found the success that eluded him as he tried to get his changeup, curve, and slider just right over the previous few years. It will still help if May comes into this shortened season with a breaking ball that performs the way he’d hoped one would last year. By the end of the season, the slider and curve had melded into each other in a way that ate into the effectiveness of each. If he remains as reliant on his fastball as he was down the stretch, he’ll remain vulnerable to home runs at inopportune moments. Hitters also might begin to sit on his fastball and start laying off the ones above the strike zone. For now, though, May has turned into a monster, and instead of doing so by finding a great secondary offering, he did it by turning toward what had been his best bet all along—all thanks to his inability to maintain static preferences after the addition of an irrelevant alternative. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article

If Miguel Sanó is unavailable when the season begins, the Twins have a number of interesting candidates to bridge the gap at the cold corner.With the news that Miguel Sanó has tested positive for COVID-19 and will need to remain away from the team for some period in order to reduce the risk of spread, we should assume there’s at least some chance that Sanó will not be ready to man first base when the season begins. The most obvious potential replacement for Sanó is Marwin González, whose knee has had extra time to heal after offseason surgery, but who might still not be the best fit for any potential needs in the outfield anytime soon. González came to spring training in March with an adjusted swing, which invited Twins fans to hope he could build upon the impressive batted-ball numbers he had in 2019. However, González’s utility remains closely tied to his versatility, and there’s still no guarantee that he won’t be needed elsewhere on the diamond come Opening Day. For the moment, outside of González, there are three main candidates to play first base regularly for however long Sanó might be unavailable or unready: Alex Kirilloff, Brent Rooker, and Zander Wiel. None of those three are on the 40-man roster right now. All three would need to be added by late November in order to be protected from the Rule 5 Draft, however, so they’re on equal footing in that respect. (Trevor Larnach is both a half-step further from apparent big-league readiness and a year further from needing to be added to the 40-man, which is why he’s not much of a consideration.) The three have very different profiles and prospect statuses, though, and that could help steer the Twins brass toward a decision. Kirilloff remains a top-100 prospect in the game, and while his 2019 was far less impressive than his breakout 2018, he still looks like an all-around hitter with average power and the ability to handle advanced pitching. He also spent about 40 percent of his 2019 campaign playing first base. However, because he’s such a seemingly safe bat-first prospect, the Twins might reasonably conclude that keeping him off the roster in 2020 would be worthwhile. If they could do so, they’d have significantly better leverage in possible discussions about a long-term extension, especially given the likely financial state of the game over the next few years. It’s pennywise and (arguably) pound-foolish, and the Twins have worked hard recently to portray themselves as a more progressive organization, but that economic reality could keep Kirilloff off the big-league roster unless and until a more severe injury or illness problem forces the franchise’s hand. The opposite consideration could stand in Wiel’s way. When he’s not a part of the active roster, Wiel isn’t the kind of player teams like to carry on their 40-man roster. He’s not versatile, he’s already 27 years old, and he doesn’t offer much upside. The team would almost certainly wait until they had a clear and sustained need for a bench bat before calling upon the minor-league veteran. Rooker is the Goldilocks candidate of the set. The Twins used their competitive-balance pick to snag him at the tail end of the first round in 2017, liking his right-handed power and his mental approach to hitting. He’s played more in the outfield than at first base, but he might well be a first baseman or DH in the big leagues, anyway. If he approximates the level the team hopes he’ll attain, he’ll be well worth keeping on the roster even after Sanó returns at full strength, and he could easily become a candidate to replace Nelson Cruz as the DH in 2021. That said, Rooker is not likely to blossom so impressively that the Twins would have much interest in keeping him beyond 2026, which is when he would hit free agency if he debuts this year. He’s easier to call up than Kirilloff, and easier to keep around when he’s not actively needed than Wiel. According to PECOTA projections, Kirilloff is the best candidate for the job, on a sheer performance basis. 2020 PECOTA Projections Download attachment: 1BSheet.png One huge driver of these projections is that Kirilloff projects to strike out 22.3 percent of the time, about as often as González, whereas both Rooker and Wiel project to strike out well over 30 percent of the time. Rooker projects for the highest walk rate in the group, but because Kirilloff blends contact and a modicum of power, the system views him as more promising. The counterargument is simple: Rooker’s skill set is the one that truly mirrors Sanó’s. In fact, it mirrors the profiles of almost every offensive success story the Twins have generated over the last handful of seasons, and those of their top recent offensive acquisitions. If the team is as good as they appear to be at coaching up disciplined, pull-happy sluggers, then Rooker could find another gear. It’s also true that, in this shortened season, the variance inherent to the endeavor swamps almost all of the numbers, and makes good predictions next-to impossible. Given the variables in play and the long-term considerations that underlie the decision, the Twins might be well-served to give Rooker a long look at first base, unless and until Sanó is cleared to rejoin the team and has shaken off the rust. Their bevy of solid options, however, only serves as a reminder that their depth can be an advantage even during a shortened season. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article

There are four more pitchers from off of the 40-man roster who will be at camp with the Twins. Let's break them down.Earlier this week, the Twins announced their 60-man player pool for the start of MLB’s resumed training period, and I broke down how three of the pitchers who made it into that pool (but aren’t on the 40-man roster) could help the team this season. Today, let’s talk about the other four non-roster hurlers who made the early cut. Sam Clay is, perhaps, the least known of all the players announced thus far as members of the pool. That doesn’t mean he’s the least interesting, though. In fact, he’s about as interesting as a player so thoroughly anonymous can be. The tall, round-shouldered lefty was a fourth-round pick by the Twins way back in 2014, and although he’s never been more than a remote blip on the prospect radar, he’s quietly pitched his way to the top of the minor-league ladder over the last few seasons. In the past, Clay has flashed a plus breaking ball, and the team might believe they can continue to cultivate that pitch in the controlled setting of their reserve site, under the eye of their top pitching instructors and player development staff. The really compelling thing about him, though, can be summed up in one number—the number 1. Since 2018, in 189 innings of work across the top three levels of the minor leagues, Clay has allowed one home run. He naturally pronates his forearm on his fastball, giving it heavy sink. He won’t run eye-popping strikeout-to-walk ratios, but Clay’s a ground ball machine who ran significant reverse platoon splits in 2019 (something the Twins clearly value in short relief recently, for good reason). He’ll never have the power or the dominance of Taylor Rogers, but Rogers isn’t a bad stylistic comp for him, so he’s valuable to the team as insurance against an injury. Edwar Colina is four years Clay’s junior, but has matched his recent rise through the upper levels of the system. He throws hard and he has command of an above-average slider; what else does one need from a right-handed relief candidate? Seriously, though, Colina stands out from other righties who do the same things in the Twins system for two reasons. One is his ability to go multiple innings, and maybe even to start. His changeup is below-average, but he hasn’t yet had to abandon it, and as a result, he’s been a starter most of the way up the chain. That lets him serve as a fallback plan if Randy Dobnak or Zack Littell gets hurt or ill. Dobnak and Littell were, at different but overlapping times last season, linchpins for the staff. They helped hold things together when they were threatening to fall apart. It behooves the team to consider how they might weather a stretch without one or both of them, and Colina provides an answer, in terms of both workload and quality of work. The other thing about Colina worth noting is his delivery. He’s a very thickly-built, short guy, and in the past, his fastball has underperformed its velocity. Last year, he got slightly better in that regard, striding a bit longer to create more extension. His heat will still flatten out at the top of the zone, and that will necessitate improved command if Colina wants to grow into more than a fallback role, but for now, progress is encouraging. Experience is still valuable, sometimes, and Cory Gearrin has plenty of it. He slings in a Frisbee-style slider, and that makes him very tough on right-handers, but he’s still yet to find something that works with any consistency against lefties. His movement usually keeps him off their barrels, at least, so if nothing else, he could be called upon to work without runners on base and with a right-hander due ahead of any lefties. Still, unless the team suffers multiple injuries in the rotation and/or loses Jhoulys Chacín to an opportunity to start elsewhere, Gearrin’s potential utility is limited. After a sojourn in the independent American Association (with the St. Paul Saints), former Twin Caleb Thielbar has put up video-game numbers in the minors over the last two seasons. That doesn’t mean he’s likely to make it back to the majors, let alone to dominate there, but his career ERA in MLB is still a pretty 2.74, and he’s shown the same ability to throw strikes and miss bats in relief lately that he did during that three-season stint. The Twins are bringing in multiple candidates to fill the role of left-handed middle relief, including Danny Coulombe, Clay, and Thielbar. One of them seems likely to be on the initial 30-man roster when the season begins, if not to stick thereafter. Minnesota has great pitching depth. None of the seven non-roster hurlers they’re keeping around are likely to take on large roles, precisely because of that depth. All seven of these guys have interesting characteristics and/or skills, though, which only serves to underscore the depth the team has on hand. Click here to view the article

Several hurlers not currently on the 40-man roster were invited to the Twins' training camp at Target Field. Let's dig into how each could help the 2020 team.The Twins announced their 60-man player pool for the resumption of spring training and the eventual regular season Monday, including seven pitchers currently not on the 40-man roster. Today, let’s look at three of those seven hurlers, to see in which ways and under what circumstances the team envisions them helping during the truncated 2020 season. It was an easy call for the team to bring Jhoulys Chacín back, as he had yet to be released from his minor-league deal when spring training was halted in mid-March, and he could provide valuable depth in the starting rotation or the bullpen. His track record and past durability make the case that he could help if Rich Hill or Homer Bailey suffers an injury during the secondary training camp that opens Wednesday. However, there’s not much chance that Chacín will be better in 2020 than Randy Dobnak or Devin Smeltzer, unless he’s done something during this interregnum that he wasn’t doing even during spring training. When Chacín signed with the Twins in February, I wrote about his extraordinarily heavy slider usage, and how he seemed to have found the point of diminishing (even negative) returns on such usage as a starter in 2019. As I wrote then, however, while comparing him to fellow fringe pitching addition Matt Wisler, that inflection point is much higher for relievers. For Chacín, at this stage of his career, that might be even more true than it is in general. He’s no longer a hard thrower. His four-seam fastball flattens out on him a bit, and because of his age, body type, and past injury history, it’s unlikely the Twins will be able to help him get into his legs, change the way he transfers energy as he comes down the mound, and generate more power or life on the four-seamer. What Chacín could do, though, is transition into a short relief role, leaning entirely on his sinker and slider. With his funky delivery (featuring a stride opens him up early to home plate), and without the sheer power to be effective with his four-seamer and curve, he’s much better cast as a matchup right-hander than as a starter. The Twins would have to decide whether keeping a veteran with incentives in his deal is worth the upside of that role, and Chacín will probably have some agency there, but it seems unlikely he would want to become a free agent and try to latch on elsewhere for such a short and chaotic audition. He’ll be valuable in a one-inning opener or middle-relief role, if he comes to Target Field feeling good. Left-hander Danny Coulombe was another good bet to make the roster, but is a little less known and (in some sense) a little more interesting. At 5-foot-10, Coulombe is a diminutive left-hander. He’s pitched parts of five different seasons in the big leagues, but spent all of 2019 in the minors with the Brewers and Yankees. It’s important to note, though, that neither the Brewers nor the Yankees were ever hurting badly for bullpen help in 2019. Coulombe showed an ability to dominate in the minor leagues, with a 36.1-percent strikeout rate. He gets deep into his legs in his delivery and throws from a high three-quarters arm slot, which doesn’t allow him to live up in the zone. He doesn’t throw hard. However, both his slider and his curveball can be impressive pitches. They have distinct shapes and velocities, and his command of each is fairly good. The Twins, of course, lack a traditional matchup lefty. Taylor Rogers is a relief ace who will be asked to pitch based on leverage and to get both left-handed and right-handed batters out in every appearance. Smeltzer is closer to being a starter than to being a true reliever, and is likely to be needed in a bridge role early in the season, as pitchers continue to ramp up and innings need to be covered. Signing Tyler Clippard was nice, but having a right-handed pitcher with reverse platoon splits is not quite the same thing as having a lefty with multiple breaking balls who can befuddle lefties when needed. Batters drive a portion of the platoon split themselves, after all, and there will inevitably be left-hitting opponents against whom the best bet is a true lefty. In that sense, the three-batter minimum could be the biggest obstacle to Coulombe fitting into an expanded bullpen. On the other hand, as I wrote during the winter, Rocco Baldelli and the Twins might find chances to take calculated risks with that rule, since a lefty hitter coming up with two outs could end an inning, and the lefty reliever brought on to face them would not then be required to come back out for the following frame. The downside of that type of gambling is less scary, too, in a world where the 13-pitcher roster limit has been scrubbed and teams will have 28 or more active players for about half the season. Still, it will be important to use Coulombe wisely, if he’s to be used at all. Both of his fastballs have heavy action. They have plenty of spin, but don’t seem to rise or hop. They work downhill, and that will make Coulombe vulnerable against hitters who are good at elevating the ball. He’ll be at his best against flat-plane swingers, especially tall ones and guys who like the ball up in the zone. The opposite, if anything, is true of Ryan Garton, the right-handed reliever they signed to a non-roster deal way back at the end of November. Garton had spent his first eight pro seasons in the Tampa Bay and Seattle organizations, briefly pitching in the big leagues with each team. In 2019, he made just a pair of appearances with the Mariners, and was hit hard. Like Coulombe, he’s 5-foot-10, and he doesn’t have even average velocity. However, Garton comes directly over the top, and was able to improve his spin rate last year to get improved carry on his four-seamer. He uses a cutter and curveball off of that pitch, and has gotten better at disguising both secondary offerings. His fastball and curveball have almost identical horizontal movement and near-perfectly opposed spin axes, leading to a big movement and velocity differential without allowing hitters to see the difference between them well out of the hand. None of this is to suggest that Garton will be a dominant reliever at any point this year. That’s wildly unlikely. It’s better to think of him as insurance against Clippard being injured or ineffective. In the past, Garton had been considered almost a matchup righty, akin to the role for which Chacín could now be suited. In 2019, though, he dominated the few lefties he saw, and if he’s able to sustain the adjustments he’s made to his release point and arm action on the non-heaters this year, he could be a useful extra arm in the event of any emergent need. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article

Several hurlers not currently on the 40-man roster were invited to the Twins' training camp at Target Field. Let's dig into how each could help the 2020 team.The Twins announced their 60-man player pool for the resumption of spring training and the eventual regular season Monday, including seven pitchers currently not on the 40-man roster. Today, let’s look at three of those seven hurlers, to see in which ways and under what circumstances the team envisions them helping during the truncated 2020 season. It was an easy call for the team to bring Jhoulys Chacín back, as he had yet to be released from his minor-league deal when spring training was halted in mid-March, and he could provide valuable depth in the starting rotation or the bullpen. His track record and past durability make the case that he could help if Rich Hill or Homer Bailey suffers an injury during the secondary training camp that opens Wednesday. However, there’s not much chance that Chacín will be better in 2020 than Randy Dobnak or Devin Smeltzer, unless he’s done something during this interregnum that he wasn’t doing even during spring training. When Chacín signed with the Twins in February, I wrote about his extraordinarily heavy slider usage, and how he seemed to have found the point of diminishing (even negative) returns on such usage as a starter in 2019. As I wrote then, however, while comparing him to fellow fringe pitching addition Matt Wisler, that inflection point is much higher for relievers. For Chacín, at this stage of his career, that might be even more true than it is in general. He’s no longer a hard thrower. His four-seam fastball flattens out on him a bit, and because of his age, body type, and past injury history, it’s unlikely the Twins will be able to help him get into his legs, change the way he transfers energy as he comes down the mound, and generate more power or life on the four-seamer. What Chacín could do, though, is transition into a short relief role, leaning entirely on his sinker and slider. With his funky delivery (featuring a stride opens him up early to home plate), and without the sheer power to be effective with his four-seamer and curve, he’s much better cast as a matchup right-hander than as a starter. The Twins would have to decide whether keeping a veteran with incentives in his deal is worth the upside of that role, and Chacín will probably have some agency there, but it seems unlikely he would want to become a free agent and try to latch on elsewhere for such a short and chaotic audition. He’ll be valuable in a one-inning opener or middle-relief role, if he comes to Target Field feeling good. Left-hander Danny Coulombe was another good bet to make the roster, but is a little less known and (in some sense) a little more interesting. At 5-foot-10, Coulombe is a diminutive left-hander. He’s pitched parts of five different seasons in the big leagues, but spent all of 2019 in the minors with the Brewers and Yankees. It’s important to note, though, that neither the Brewers nor the Yankees were ever hurting badly for bullpen help in 2019. Coulombe showed an ability to dominate in the minor leagues, with a 36.1-percent strikeout rate. He gets deep into his legs in his delivery and throws from a high three-quarters arm slot, which doesn’t allow him to live up in the zone. He doesn’t throw hard. However, both his slider and his curveball can be impressive pitches. They have distinct shapes and velocities, and his command of each is fairly good. The Twins, of course, lack a traditional matchup lefty. Taylor Rogers is a relief ace who will be asked to pitch based on leverage and to get both left-handed and right-handed batters out in every appearance. Smeltzer is closer to being a starter than to being a true reliever, and is likely to be needed in a bridge role early in the season, as pitchers continue to ramp up and innings need to be covered. Signing Tyler Clippard was nice, but having a right-handed pitcher with reverse platoon splits is not quite the same thing as having a lefty with multiple breaking balls who can befuddle lefties when needed. Batters drive a portion of the platoon split themselves, after all, and there will inevitably be left-hitting opponents against whom the best bet is a true lefty. In that sense, the three-batter minimum could be the biggest obstacle to Coulombe fitting into an expanded bullpen. On the other hand, as I wrote during the winter, Rocco Baldelli and the Twins might find chances to take calculated risks with that rule, since a lefty hitter coming up with two outs could end an inning, and the lefty reliever brought on to face them would not then be required to come back out for the following frame. The downside of that type of gambling is less scary, too, in a world where the 13-pitcher roster limit has been scrubbed and teams will have 28 or more active players for about half the season. Still, it will be important to use Coulombe wisely, if he’s to be used at all. Both of his fastballs have heavy action. They have plenty of spin, but don’t seem to rise or hop. They work downhill, and that will make Coulombe vulnerable against hitters who are good at elevating the ball. He’ll be at his best against flat-plane swingers, especially tall ones and guys who like the ball up in the zone. The opposite, if anything, is true of Ryan Garton, the right-handed reliever they signed to a non-roster deal way back at the end of November. Garton had spent his first eight pro seasons in the Tampa Bay and Seattle organizations, briefly pitching in the big leagues with each team. In 2019, he made just a pair of appearances with the Mariners, and was hit hard. Like Coulombe, he’s 5-foot-10, and he doesn’t have even average velocity. However, Garton comes directly over the top, and was able to improve his spin rate last year to get improved carry on his four-seamer. He uses a cutter and curveball off of that pitch, and has gotten better at disguising both secondary offerings. His fastball and curveball have almost identical horizontal movement and near-perfectly opposed spin axes, leading to a big movement and velocity differential without allowing hitters to see the difference between them well out of the hand. None of this is to suggest that Garton will be a dominant reliever at any point this year. That’s wildly unlikely. It’s better to think of him as insurance against Clippard being injured or ineffective. In the past, Garton had been considered almost a matchup righty, akin to the role for which Chacín could now be suited. In 2019, though, he dominated the few lefties he saw, and if he’s able to sustain the adjustments he’s made to his release point and arm action on the non-heaters this year, he could be a useful extra arm in the event of any emergent need. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article

This weekend, the Twins have a roster deadline. Building their list of eligible players will be an interesting exercise.This Sunday, the Twins will need to submit a 60-person list to Major League Baseball. Only the players on that list will be eligible to play during the frantic 60-game season that begins late next month. That makes for a number of interesting decisions over the coming days, because even in a 162-game season, a team doesn’t usually use 60 players. The Twins will have to select some players to bring along for purely developmental reasons, yet keep enough talent on hand to fill unexpected vacancies. Of course, a large number of the decisions will be essentially automatic. There are 38 players on Minnesota’s 40-man roster, and all of them are ironclad locks to be among the 60. Michael Pineda, currently suspended, is another easy call, since he’ll finish his carried-over suspension and be eligible to return with a few weeks left in the season. Still, that leaves a lot of talented players who are important to the future of the franchise—and who could be important to the team in 2020—on the edge of the picture. Let’s run through a few more relatively easy calls. The 40-man roster features three catchers, but the team is likely to carry three more. Juan Graterol, signed as a non-roster invitee over the winter, offers veteran savvy in case of emergency. Ryan Jeffers had an impressive 2019, so much so that keeping him around in case the need arises for an everyday catcher at the last moment makes sense, especially because he’ll be able to continue working on his defense and developing his rapport with key pitchers throughout the system. Ben Rortvedt has neither as high a ceiling nor as short a path to playing time as Jeffers, but he’ll be Rule 5-eligible this winter, so the team needs to evaluate him as fully as possible over the next few months. Zander Wiel was in the midst of a very encouraging spring training before the world stopped in mid-March. He’s unlikely to hit enough to become a regular, given his lack of defensive value, but he can do so more than well enough to serve as a fallback bench bat option on a taxi squad. Wilfredo Tovar, who’s appeared in the big leagues for cups of coffee in three different seasons, is a fine good-glove, no-hit shortstop, an insurance policy and the kind of player who can facilitate action on the taxi squad via his general competence. Royce Lewis has such phenomenal upside that not bringing him along, if only on the chance that he breaks out in an unexpectedly brilliant and rapid way, would be silly. Wander Javier has had so much of his career derailed by injuries that he’s no threat to be taken in the Rule 5 Draft this fall, but that only makes it more important that the team finally get him into some form of uninterrupted, supervised, competitive development, a luxury that won’t be available in Fort Myers or anywhere else this summer. Alex Kirilloff and Trevor Larnach could well be needed, and could even become heroes, for the 2020 team. Both of their bats are MLB-ready; they’re much more desirable as potential replacements if the Twins lose a key hitter to injury than are Jake Cave or LaMonte Wade, Jr. Brent Rooker and Akil Baddoo are both Rule 5-eligible this December, so the team needs to get long looks at them, and their respective profiles make those looks especially valuable and important. On the other hand, and this is why the calculus will be especially intriguing, the team should (and probably will) keep Gabriel Maciel away from the taxi squad, despite his also being Rule 5-eligible this fall. Maciel is far enough from being big league-ready to be safe from selection, and the team doesn’t urgently need to see him in a competitive setting. Non-roster free-agent signee Lane Adams can do what Maciel would offer, anyway. Jhoulys Chacín looked unlikely to make the Opening Day roster as a member of the rotation, and looks even less likely to do so now, since Rich Hill seems quite likely to be ready for one of those jobs by the time the season begins. Nonetheless, the team should list him among their 60 eligible players, retaining him as depth and insurance for as long as possible. Four relievers whom the team signed to non-roster deals this winter look like good candidates to come in as further depth for the bullpen: right-handers Cory Gearrin and Juan Minaya, and lefties Danny Coulombe and Blaine Hardy. Other teams have already had chances to pluck southpaw Andrew Vasquez and righty Jake Reed, but they still seem like solid options to round out the relief corps for the time being. That leaves just two spots. With the hard-throwing likes of Jorge Alcala and Jhoan Duran already on the 40-man roster, and with guys like Randy Dobnak, Devin Smeltzer, and Lewis Thorpe around to soak up innings in bulk if needed, there aren’t urgent team needs to weigh for these final spots. The Twins should use those places on two hurlers who will be Rule 5-eligible after the season. Jordan Balazovic will be protected, no matter what, but the team should still keep him close. He’s the kind of pitcher who can benefit from close instruction and a competitive environment, and who could benefit the other players on a reserve squad by giving them a challenging but conventional opponent against whom to prepare for action. Bailey Ober will be tougher to squeeze onto the 40-man roster, and might not merit as much. However, he’s another hurler whom the team would do well to evaluate under the most normal conditions possible, and his ability to throw strikes with good extension and a deceptive delivery makes him potentially useful in a huge number of ways. There will be no conventional Minor League Baseball this year. There might be a dramatically expanded Fall League, but at the moment, even that feels like a pipe dream, given the trends in the spread of coronavirus in Arizona and in Florida, and given the continued fears of a second wave of the disease in the autumn. The Twins can’t count on having any way to evaluate their own talent, other than by keeping them around as part of their 60-player reserve list. That’s why they’ll need to weigh the Rule 5 Draft, but also their medium- and long-term future, as well as keeping the best possible players around in the event of injuries or illnesses that would otherwise threaten a very promising (however bizarre) 2020 campaign. Click here to view the article

With their flexible and exceptionally deep pitching staff, and in an expanded playoff format, the Twins are in better shape than ever for 2020—if they play.On Wednesday afternoon, the MLB Players Association and the league drew incrementally closer to an agreement on how to fit an MLB season into the second half of the summer. By all accounts, the schedule is likely to include about 60 games (perhaps a few more) in about 10 weeks, with an expanded 16-team postseason played thereafter. The Twins, who would suffer as much as or more than any other team if the season were canceled outright, are in great shape if such a season does materialize. In all likelihood, teams will try to combat the truncated runway to a season by demanding less of their starting pitchers this season, lightening the considerable workload of a full-fledged starter in a five-man rotation. Even with (perhaps) an extra day off or two on the calendar, it wouldn’t be surprising to see teams utilize six-man starting rotations. Some of the same teams, and some others, will also shorten their leashes with starters, going to their bullpens earlier and using them in lieu of starters on certain days. The Twins are in an excellent position to do just that. The delay to the start of the season virtually assures that Rich Hill will be ready come Opening Day (the tentative date for which appears to be July 19). That gives the team an enviable amount of rotation depth, however they elect to deploy it: José Berríos, Jake Odorizzi, Kenta Maeda, Hill, Homer Bailey, Devin Smeltzer, and Randy Dobnak. The best strategy for the team would be to use the first six on that list as their starters early on, with Dobnak acting as a long man and stabilizing the middle-relief corps. Then, when Michael Pineda finishes serving his suspension for PED use, he can slot into the rotation over the final few weeks, with Smeltzer sliding into a role alongside and opposite Dobnak. If there’s a weakness in the games of Maeda, Hill, or Bailey, it’s a lack of the arsenal depth and durability to dominate deep into games and seasons. In the frenetic sprint the proposed season figures to be, those are easy flaws to cover, especially given the depth of Minnesota’s bullpen. Taylor Rogers, who wore down slightly late last season after heavy multi-inning use and a few too many back-to-back outings, figures to be able to continue getting more than three outs at a time, with both a shorter season and the possibility of more off days involved. Trevor May and Tyler Duffey still feel like less-than-bulletproof setup men, despite their dominance late in 2019, but in this kind of season, only one needs to return at the level at which we last saw them. Sergio Romo and Tyler Clippard provide valuable variation, and Cody Stashak and Zack Littell could act as openers or as solid middle relief options. Again, for each of these pairs of pitchers, only one has to meet expectations in order for the Twins to get by. The inescapable weirdness of this season, and the extraordinary variance to which the season itself will be subject, will make pitching depth more important than ever, despite the lack of a draining final stretch after a long campaign. The Twins have that depth, and it will insure them against some of that violent variance. For many Twins fans, however, the expanded playoff bracket might be daunting. Given that the club hasn’t won a playoff series in almost 20 years, needing to win two or three series just to reach the World Series feels suboptimal. Still, there’s a way to see this as a bonus for the Twins. It’s exceedingly unlikely, even given the shortened season, that the Twins will fall short of the playoffs. In fact, even accounting for the variance inherent to this season, they remain very likely to finish with one of the four best records in the American League. That could well mean that the teams of whom Twins fans are (justifiably) afraid, come October, will have to avoid catching some bad luck against another, lesser team before they even earn the right to face Minnesota. It’s reasonable to expect that, with their experience and more top-heavy roster, the Astros or Yankees might overpower the Twins in the playoffs again this year. If they must first beat a respectable team like the Angels or White Sox, even in a best-of-three, though, that gives the Twins a slightly better chance of avoiding the juggernauts, and of either reaching the Series without facing a powerhouse or being knocked out just by bad luck. While the latter would be bitterly disappointing, it would be slightly less frustrating than getting flattened by a genuinely superior team yet again. The former, of course, would feel no less sweet for most Twins fans simply because it came without the suffering and David-versus-Goliath dynamic that their recent encounters with the Yankees have had. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article

With their flexible and exceptionally deep pitching staff, and in an expanded playoff format, the Twins are in better shape than ever for 2020—if they play.On Wednesday afternoon, the MLB Players Association and the league drew incrementally closer to an agreement on how to fit an MLB season into the second half of the summer. By all accounts, the schedule is likely to include about 60 games (perhaps a few more) in about 10 weeks, with an expanded 16-team postseason played thereafter. The Twins, who would suffer as much as or more than any other team if the season were canceled outright, are in great shape if such a season does materialize. In all likelihood, teams will try to combat the truncated runway to a season by demanding less of their starting pitchers this season, lightening the considerable workload of a full-fledged starter in a five-man rotation. Even with (perhaps) an extra day off or two on the calendar, it wouldn’t be surprising to see teams utilize six-man starting rotations. Some of the same teams, and some others, will also shorten their leashes with starters, going to their bullpens earlier and using them in lieu of starters on certain days. The Twins are in an excellent position to do just that. The delay to the start of the season virtually assures that Rich Hill will be ready come Opening Day (the tentative date for which appears to be July 19). That gives the team an enviable amount of rotation depth, however they elect to deploy it: José Berríos, Jake Odorizzi, Kenta Maeda, Hill, Homer Bailey, Devin Smeltzer, and Randy Dobnak. The best strategy for the team would be to use the first six on that list as their starters early on, with Dobnak acting as a long man and stabilizing the middle-relief corps. Then, when Michael Pineda finishes serving his suspension for PED use, he can slot into the rotation over the final few weeks, with Smeltzer sliding into a role alongside and opposite Dobnak. If there’s a weakness in the games of Maeda, Hill, or Bailey, it’s a lack of the arsenal depth and durability to dominate deep into games and seasons. In the frenetic sprint the proposed season figures to be, those are easy flaws to cover, especially given the depth of Minnesota’s bullpen. Taylor Rogers, who wore down slightly late last season after heavy multi-inning use and a few too many back-to-back outings, figures to be able to continue getting more than three outs at a time, with both a shorter season and the possibility of more off days involved. Trevor May and Tyler Duffey still feel like less-than-bulletproof setup men, despite their dominance late in 2019, but in this kind of season, only one needs to return at the level at which we last saw them. Sergio Romo and Tyler Clippard provide valuable variation, and Cody Stashak and Zack Littell could act as openers or as solid middle relief options. Again, for each of these pairs of pitchers, only one has to meet expectations in order for the Twins to get by. The inescapable weirdness of this season, and the extraordinary variance to which the season itself will be subject, will make pitching depth more important than ever, despite the lack of a draining final stretch after a long campaign. The Twins have that depth, and it will insure them against some of that violent variance. For many Twins fans, however, the expanded playoff bracket might be daunting. Given that the club hasn’t won a playoff series in almost 20 years, needing to win two or three series just to reach the World Series feels suboptimal. Still, there’s a way to see this as a bonus for the Twins. It’s exceedingly unlikely, even given the shortened season, that the Twins will fall short of the playoffs. In fact, even accounting for the variance inherent to this season, they remain very likely to finish with one of the four best records in the American League. That could well mean that the teams of whom Twins fans are (justifiably) afraid, come October, will have to avoid catching some bad luck against another, lesser team before they even earn the right to face Minnesota. It’s reasonable to expect that, with their experience and more top-heavy roster, the Astros or Yankees might overpower the Twins in the playoffs again this year. If they must first beat a respectable team like the Angels or White Sox, even in a best-of-three, though, that gives the Twins a slightly better chance of avoiding the juggernauts, and of either reaching the Series without facing a powerhouse or being knocked out just by bad luck. While the latter would be bitterly disappointing, it would be slightly less frustrating than getting flattened by a genuinely superior team yet again. The former, of course, would feel no less sweet for most Twins fans simply because it came without the suffering and David-versus-Goliath dynamic that their recent encounters with the Yankees have had. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article

Both of the Twins' incumbent frontline starters share certain traits with hurlers who have gotten historically hot.If MLB has a 2020 season, it will be no more than half the usual length. If the owners get their way, there could be as few as 50 regular-season games. For the Twins, that could pay off, because their top two starting pitchers from last season fit the general profile of pitchers who have gotten extraordinarily hot over half-seasons in recent years. As I’ve discussed at length this offseason, José Berríos and Jake Odorizzi each became more multidimensional and demonstrated improved command in 2019. However, the specific adjustment that most sets them apart from the majority of their brethren on big-league mounds was their relatively heavy use of sinkers. Berríos threw his sinker 23 percent of the time; Odorizzi threw his 20 percent of the time. Both were in the top 30 among all big-league starters with at least 150 innings pitched, in terms of sinker frequency. Equally importantly, both hurlers had multiple other pitches on which they could comfortably rely. Odorizzi joined Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove as the only pitchers who used six different pitches at least five percent of the time. Berríos didn’t throw any pitch more than 32.2 percent of the time. Historically, this is the kind of pitcher who can have a prolonged stretch in which he's truly unhittable: guys who have deep repertoires and good feel for their sinkers. The sinker is, somewhat counterintuitively, a “feel” pitch. The very reason why it’s gone out of fashion over the last half-decade is that, unlike the four-seam fastball, the sinker can’t be accurately evaluated by taking simple, quantitative readings. Neither spin rate nor sheer velocity determines the effectiveness of a sinker. In that way, the pitch isn’t exactly a fastball. Like off-speed offerings, sinkers are only as good as the command a pitcher exercises over them. In the last 100 years, the three lowest ERAs in any half (before or after the All-Star Game) have all come during the last decade. In 2015, Jake Arrieta had a 0.75 ERA in the second half. (As Twins fans might remember, his dominance began even earlier, when he threw a shutout against Minnesota at Target Field on June 21.) Just last season, Cardinals righty Jack Flaherty posted a 0.91 ERA in the second half. Back in 2012, it was the Braves’ Kris Medlen who took the world by storm down the stretch, with a 0.94 ERA. All three of those pitchers used pinpoint command of brilliant sinkers to scale those heights. All three of them also had four-pitch mixes that made them unpredictable and helped them induce exceptionally weak contact during their hot streaks. The sinker helped each keep his pitch counts under control, left batters unprepared for their four-seam fastballs, and made those hitters more vulnerable to changes of speed. The two most famous hot streaks in the history of pitching, of course, are Don Drysdale’s and Orel Hershiser’s streaks of nearly 60 innings without allowing a run. By coincidence (or not), both Drysdale and Hershiser were also sinkerballers with deep repertoires. Former Twins great Dean Chance had some of the best half-seasons of the 1960s, both with the Angels and with the Twins, and leaned toward a sinker. Johan Santana used the sinker as a fourth pitch, but still threw it at a representative rate during his reign of terror over the American League. The value of being able to throw multiple flavors of fastball for strikes, while also having command of one or more great off-speed pitches, is obvious. However, these great performances speak to just how dominant a pitcher possessed of those skills can be. Nonetheless, teams in the modern game are focused on training their pitchers to pair sliders with four-seam fastballs, and hardly ever encourage the development of repertoires as deep as those Wes Johnson cultivated from his charges in 2019. Hardly anyone is trying to create the type of pitcher who can be unbeatable for a few months. The reasons are simple. Firstly, there’s value in simplicity. Teams can more easily train many pitchers to throw two or three pitches well than train even one or two to be four- or five-pitch masters. In the modern handling of pitching staffs, that quantity-over-quality approach has to govern most decisions. Secondly, success with a four-seamer and slider can be more consistent, both because it’s less vulnerable to bad luck and because it’s easier to sustain success with those pitches. The four-seamer and slider typically induce more whiffs than even great sinkers, taking bad bounces off the table. The two pitches also require virtually no differences in throwing motion. On the other hand, the deep, sinker-centric arsenal requires the ability to make small changes from one pitch to the next; to maintain multiple release points without losing the ability to repeat one’s mechanics; and to keep the grip and feel of each pitch honed. That’s why guys with four pitches and a good sinker can be exceptionally devastating, but why they’re still not popping up everywhere in our age of pitching optimization. In a shortened MLB season, however, the guys whose inconsistency is typically a weakness could turn into the best candidates to take home a (tainted) Cy Young Award. Moreover, the short season means it’s less likely that such a pitcher would either wear down or lose their feel during the postseason. All of this assumes, of course, that the great feel the above-mentioned pitchers found during their legendary streaks can be found by pitchers laboring under unusual conditions, without the first half of the season to tinker and work through certain kinks. If this theory holds, though, the Twins could be better-positioned to catch the upside of a shortened season, at least when it comes to their starting pitching. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article