FanGraphs: Duffey is shockingly interesting Twin

[Seth Stohs]

Jeff Sullivan from FanGraphs wrote an article on Twins RHP Tyler Duffey. He finds him interesting for a variety of reasons. He's relatively unknown. His back story. 

 

I liked this line: "We’ve been conditioned to mostly ignore the various Twins starters, and for the most part that’s been a pretty sound policy, but Duffey has some unusual things about him."

 

The article includes heat charts and video, making it very Parker-esque. I pretty much never read FanGraphs, but the title caught my eye on Twitter, so I clicked. It was good. What do you think? 

[70charger]

 

I decided to run pitch comps for curveballs thrown by starting pitchers in 2015. The curveball most similar to Duffey’s, on average: none other than Felix Hernandez‘s curveball. And that particular curve was arguably the best in the game. Felix has about one extra mile on Duffey, but the movements are almost identical. Now, of course, Felix also has his changeup, and he shows a slider, so he has more going on overall than Duffey does. But if Duffey is known for anything, he’s known for his hook, and it turns out it compares well to the hook of one of the elites.

 

Love this part. Be nice to see whether his changeup can actually be a useable major-league pitch.

[Mike Sixel]

This is the kind of thing FG writes all the time. My 2nd favorite sports site.......

[BK432]

 

Jeff Sullivan from FanGraphs wrote an article on Twins RHP Tyler Duffey. He finds him interesting for a variety of reasons. He's relatively unknown. His back story. 

 

I liked this line: "We’ve been conditioned to mostly ignore the various Twins starters, and for the most part that’s been a pretty sound policy, but Duffey has some unusual things about him."

 

The article includes heat charts and video, making it very Parker-esque. I pretty much never read FanGraphs, but the title caught my eye on Twitter, so I clicked. It was good. What do you think? 

 

Fangraphs is always very, very good - I highly recommend to all doing some daily reading there. As for this article, it's well done and it's fun. There hasn't been much analysis about Tyler Duffey and his modest success - it's mostly been ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

So - good read. Thanks for linking, Seth. Hard to argue with anything. I hope the curve continues to be elite-ish and he develops enough of a pitch mix. Encouraging signs are there...

[TheLeviathan]

 

This is the kind of thing FG writes all the time. My 2nd favorite sports site.......

 

I think we should all randomly speculate on what the first one is (knowing full well the truth of course).....

 

I'm going with this one.

[Thrylos]

This is great analysis, but it really has not looked into most people concerns about Duffey:

 

a. Does he have the endurance to be a starter?

b. How effective can a starter who has only 2 pitches be facing MLB competition?

 

For me the jury is still out on both.

 

Here is some data about  From here

Innings 1-3, opponents hit .150/.206/.240; he has 1.86 ERA

Innings 4-6, opponents hit .287/.374/.436; 2.52 ERA

Innings 7- opponents hit .560/.560/.760; 15.76 ERA

 

 

Before rosters expanded:  4.29 ERA, 1.619 WHIP (.339 BABIP), 8.6 K/9, 1.82 K/BB, opponents hit .280/.366/.451

 

After rosters expanded: 2.46 ERA, 1.135 WHIP (.311 BABIP), 8.0 K/9, 3.67 K/BB, opponents hit .241/.288/.343

 

Clearly he has trouble the second and third time through the order and was horrible after the first 6 innings.  Also, it is not clear how many major leaguers that curveball fooled.  That walk rate before rosters expanded, is worrisome. 

 

SSS and all, those are just red flags and he has to prove himself.  Let's not anoint him the Twins' next savior.   Worse comes to worst he could be great as a late inning in the pen.

[jimmer]

 

This is the kind of thing FG writes all the time. My 2nd favorite sports site.......

Fangraphs is my favorite sports site, no offense to this one which I enjoy as well. Fangraphs is a daily read.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

This is great analysis, but it really has not looked into most people concerns about Duffey:

 

a. Does he have the endurance to be a starter?

b. How effective can a starter who has only 2 pitches be facing MLB competition?

 

For me the jury is still out on both.

 

Here is some data about  From here

Innings 1-3, opponents hit .150/.206/.240; he has 1.86 ERA

Innings 4-6, opponents hit .287/.374/.436; 2.52 ERA

Innings 7- opponents hit .560/.560/.760; 15.76 ERA

 

 

Before rosters expanded:  4.29 ERA, 1.619 WHIP (.339 BABIP), 8.6 K/9, 1.82 K/BB, opponents hit .280/.366/.451

 

After rosters expanded: 2.46 ERA, 1.135 WHIP (.311 BABIP), 8.0 K/9, 3.67 K/BB, opponents hit .241/.288/.343

 

Clearly he has trouble the second and third time through the order and was horrible after the first 6 innings.  Also, it is not clear how many major leaguers that curveball fooled.  That walk rate before rosters expanded, is worrisome. 

 

SSS and all, those are just red flags and he has to prove himself.  Let's not anoint him the Twins' next savior.   Worse comes to worst he could be great as a late inning in the pen.

I'm also skeptical of Duffey and I'm not putting too much stock into anything he did last season. It was a pleasant surprise but baseball history is littered with pitchers who succeeded over 10-ish starts and then imploded. As you said, he needs to be better later in the game (a common weakness of young pitchers) and he needs to, well, just show me more. I'm not sold yet.

 

But I'd put even less stock into his pre/post September stats. He only made four starts before September. One was very good, one was... eh, okay but probably lucky, two were bad. He was a rookie making his MLB debut, it shouldn't surprise us if he was prone to combustion his first few times on the mound.