Thread: Souhan: Twins Pitching Loaded With Questions

The main difference between this year and last year is depth. Last year, the whole rotation collapsed and they had nobody with major league starting experience to pick up the slack. And they had no decent prospects available. Luckily, Diamond, DeVries and Deduno exceeded expectations to have decent years. And Hendriks got some much-needed major league experience. Two of those four are depth this year, with Gibson and Meyers waiting for an opportunity. That is significantly better than the situation we were in at this time last year.

Originally Posted by PseudoSABR

I don't mean to mock you, but I feel this post is indicative of my point about rationalizing the negative outcome. There's a perfectly reasonable line of thinking that suggests a Twins disaster, but that reason isn't necessarily probable. We can justify our negative (or positive) outlook with any number of pieces of evidence--but the average probable outcome is still the average probable outcome; taking the downside is by definition unreasonable.

That said, I believe that the Twins can get 180 innings of mediocrity from all of Pelfry, Corriea, Diamond, and Worley, which is FAR more than they got last year. Moreover, I think it's probablistically likely that one (or more) of the pitchers with health concerns or one (or more) of the prospects will emerge to eat positive innings this year.

While all of Diamond, Worley, Correia, and Pelfry might digress from there career norms--the thing is--it is still a boon to the rotation given how horrible it was last year. Moreover, I think it's silly to think that all four will digress, and more silly that some other starting pitching won't emerge.

We may scoff at the notion that our pitching depth is significantly better than last year, but it just is. While we might still have the seventh and eighth starting option in play, the Twins know significantly more about such pitchers than they did last year, and that's a boon. The Twins won't be in the position of blindly promoting the able arm in line--they will be in a much better position to use their pitching depth, because they know far more about such pitchers having seen them a year ago.

Again, we are looking at a baseline of mediocrity, but that baseline, that safety net, is held significantly higher than last year. There should be no pitcher starting a game this year that we've never heard of--that says something. Yes, we suck, but really, not as bad as last year, guys; I'm not sure why that is so hard to admit.

I'll also add, that no, the Twins didn't do everything within their payroll power or their roster means to improve the rotation, so we have every right to be bitter--but that bitterness shouldn't make us opaque to improved starting rotation depth, how thread-barren it might seem.

Its just as unrealistic to think that none of the possible negatives will go wrong, which this post seems to suggest.
And again, which prospects are going to eat innings? If you think that, you are counting way too much on Gibson. May and Meyer are not ready. If they were they would have been in the competition for the 4th and 5th spots.
One of them might come up in Sept, but by then there are not many innings left to eat.

Originally Posted by PseudoSABR

You know, it's entirely possible for me to accept that our pitching staff will suck, be mediocre across aboard, and also assert that the same pitching staff will be much better than last year's staff.

Look, we don't have much to root for but varying degrees of suck; but I'm still interested in precision or at least prudent prognosis. Taking the transitions-to-the-AL don't work, the twins don't develop pitchers, injured pitchers never heal stance for each and every case is unreasonable, silly.

I'm not sure how you got that out of my post. Thats not what I said at all.
I said that even if only SOME of the negatives go wrong (which some are going to, its simple probability), that could be enough to make it just as bad as last year.
I'm not saying they will go negative in every case.

Don't forget all the things that went right last year:

Fien, Burton, Perkins, Burnett, Diamond, Capps, DeVries, Deduno all outperformed their peripherals.

Burton and Fien were healthy for a full season. Perkins' has a history of back and shoulder problems, none of which re-curred last year.

I guess I'm not so quick to look at 2012 as some fluky deviation from the mean. In a lot of ways, we got lucky.

Originally Posted by Highabove

Lets see, Souhan has stated that he likes 90% of the moves that Ryan has made during the off Season. A few days later, Souhan writes about how the Twins pitching staff is a total mess.
I believe Ryan stated last October, Pitching was going to be his number one priority. But again, the Twins make a lot of promises during Season Ticket renewal time.

He saw the pitching in person for the first time and changed his opinion.

Originally Posted by The Wise One

Take out the games Worley pitched against the Mets and he had the same kind of season he did the year before. That would make him a perfect Twins Ace (can't win against a New York team)

Hey, that's funny, but we are really not bad against the Mets, are we? I don't know the stats, but I happened to see Johan and Scott Baker make a couple of their earliest starts against the Mets that were beautiful. Out here in New York, I decided that was best for my morale--go to games against the Mets.

Droping the team ERA from a 5.4 to a 4.8 would save about 1/2 run per game. That would add to the win column...

Originally Posted by diehardtwinsfan

Droping the team ERA from a 5.4 to a 4.8 would save about 1/2 run per game. That would add to the win column...

Then take into account we lost both two very good defensive OFs and our two table setters on offense (same guys of course). That will likely subtract from the win column.

Imagine what the Twins team ERA would have been without the top notch defense of Span and Revere...

Originally Posted by PseudoSABR

A matter of circumstance mostly. Unhealthy pitchers should get healthier, prospects should develop, the butt-ends of our depth should learn from their experience. Whether the 'shoulds' make due will be the tale of the season. But I'm not seeing any swaying evidence whether our rotation will be mostly Pollyannas or Candides.

Again, don't get me wrong we'll suck. But our starting pitching should improve as the season moves along; given the low bar, I'm not really sure how much that actually means.

True but isn't there some high injury risks on our staff in Pelfrey and Gibson? Or at least injury aggravation concerns? My issue I that most of your hope is based on the odds of being that awful again more than on the actual talent. But in my eyes last year was far from a doomsday scenario. In many ways we could have been much worse in the ways Willihammer detailed. Last year had a very low floor and I see the same problem now. It wouldn't shock me to see similar results without the aid of a catastrophe.

Going into 2012, I wouldn't have felt that a starting staff of Pavano, Baker, Liriano, Blackburn and Marquis would only give us 13 wins at the most. And they didn't. They gave us 11! You look at the lines of non-returning starters and it was a disaster: Baker injured, Marquis 2-4 8.47, Blackburn 4-9 7.30, Pavano 2-5, 6.00, Liriano 3-10 5.31. Throw in starts by Duensing 2-8 6.92 and Swarzak 0-5 8.10...don't even consider the latter two starters anymore, please. And then we have Vasquez at 0-2 5.58 who iss still in the system, and Liam Hendriks 1-8 5.59. Pretty darn dismal.

But look at the 2013 guys. Pelfrey is coming off Tommy John and only made 3 starts in 2012. But before that he was 7-13 4.74. Not great, but okay. Kevin Correia was 12-11 4.20, Worley was 6-9 4.20. If we get a complete season from ALL three of these guys with similar numbers over 30+ starts, I would be happy for 2013. Scott Diamond was...interesting. For a tough offensive team, we went 12-9 3.54, But we also had nice showings from DeVries 4-4 4.11 and Deduno 6-5 4.44. None were the disaster of the other 7 the Twins thru on the mound last season. And Walters MAY have the stuff. Remember, he did pitch well before his injuory and ended the season 2-5 5.69.

I would fell comfortbale with more sure table setters...but Baker, Pavano, Blackburn (yes), Liriano and Marquis were all proven commodities who went south, so to speak. I didn't expect that. With the current crop of place holders, can they be any better, or any worse....that is the question.

Hopefully what we see in the regular season from our starters isn't what we're seeing now or we might set a record for losses this year. Crossing fingers that they are "just working on some things" and we don't have a rotation with a 7 ERA.