Comparing the Twins' Home Grown hitters and pitchers since 2004

[Vanimal46]

Tommy Reinking of Twinkie Town wrote an article after compiling research about home grown Twins players and the WAR they've produced for the team. 

 

It should be no surprise that the Twins have much better success developing hitters over pitchers. The pitching chart is pretty sad to look at. The team hasn't had a group of home grown pitchers average over 1.0 WAR per player since 2009. 

 

It's possible that the current group we're hoping for in the minors bucks that trend. But I'm sure there were other hot pitching names we've been hoping for over the last 14 years that never worked out.  

[drjim]

Average WAR for a pitcher strikes me as a poor way to measure this. Way too many pitchers will pitch just a handful of games. (Which isn't to defend the terrible record of developing pitchers).

[gunnarthor]

 

Average WAR for a pitcher strikes me as a poor way to measure this. Way too many pitchers will pitch just a handful of games. (Which isn't to defend the terrible record of developing pitchers).

Yep. The bigger problem is that the people responsible have changed over certain periods. Ryan/Radcliff from 94-07, Smith/Johnson 08-11, Ryan/Johnson 12-16, Levine/Sean Johnson 17- ?

 

Looking back at those drafts, I was surprised on how few starting pitchers the Twins actually took. They drafted only 14 from 94-07 in the first two rounds or so. 4 became solid starters, 3 became good relievers, and the other 7 more or less busted with an occasional cup of coffee.

 

They took 8 in the first two rounds of the 08-11 drafts (although I'm not 100% certain if those pitchers were drafted were college relief arms or college starters projected to be ML relievers or a mix).