Cole Sands Can Be More Than a Mop-Up Man

[Ted Wiedmann]

The team's desire for a length in the bullpen led to Cole Sands landing an unexpected spot on the Opening Day roster. While he hasn't been too impressive as a big-leaguer thus far, his pitch metrics suggest there's more than meets the eye.

Image courtesy of Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

When the Minnesota Twins announced their Opening Day bullpen on Wednesday, one member was a surprise. Many (including myself) expected Bailey Ober to fill a six-man rotation or long relief role, or maybe a reclamation project like Jeff Hoffman or WBC sensation Jose De Leon would claim the final reliever spot. Instead the Twins opted to go with their homegrown player, Cole Sands. 

2022 wasn’t inspiring for Sands as he posted a 5.87 ERA, a 4.74 FIP, and a 1.57 WHIP in just over 30 innings for the Twins. Strikeouts were not particularly high (19.3%), walks were not particularly low (9.0%), and loud contact wasn’t rare (39.4% hard-hit rate). 

So what are the Twins doing here? Sands would not have been my pick to make the team coming out of spring training, but I found some reasons they decided to keep him. Let’s look deeper into what Sands offers as a pitcher and see if we can make sense of all this. 

Sands Brings Length and Spin to the Twins Bullpen
As a prospect, Sands profiled as a reliever very early into his professional career. Despite being a full-time starting pitcher until last season, I don’t think the Twins or anyone else saw Sands realistically developing into an MLB rotation arm. 

Due in part to injuries and in part to a 70-grade breaking ball (per Fangraphs), Sands found his way into the big leagues as a spot starter and a long reliever – the same role the Twins envision for him in 2023. 

As stated previously, Sands has an elite breaking ball. On Baseball Savant, his curveball generated 18.1 inches of horizontal movement, good for second-most among all pitchers that threw at least 100 curves in 2022 and just ahead of the infamous Rich Hill bender. 

While it didn’t quite generate the swings and misses its counterparts did, the tools to do it are certainly there. According to Jeremy Maschino’s MLB Pitch Profiler, Sands’ curveball has a Stuff+ rating of 135. This metric measures a pitch’s movement and velocity compared to others around the league. It works like other comparative rate stats such as wRC+ or OPS+, where 100 is the league average, so 135 is an excellent number. 

For some context, Jhoan Duran’s curveball that generated a 49.7% swing-and-miss clip is rated at 112 Stuff+. While mostly apples to oranges here, this demonstrates what Sands could have with his curveball. Sands offers an above-average split finger at 106 Stuff+, and an above-average cutter at 110 Stuff+, enabling him to pitch effectively to left-handed hitters. 

Could Pitch Mix Tweaks Lead to Improvement?
Sands could benefit from a change in pitch selection as well. In 2022, Sands threw his fastball 48.8% of the time, much too high of a percentage given what his secondary offerings are and what his fastball is. Last season Sands’ fastball registered a 52.8% hard-hit rate against, good for 38th-worst out of 369 pitchers with at least 50 PA concluding against a four-seam fastball. MLB Pitch Profiler didn’t like his fastball any better as it has his fastball rated at a 72 Stuff+, 28% below a league-average fastball. Reduced fastball usage and increased curveball, splitter, and cutter usage could greatly benefit Sands. 

While all of Cole Sands’ success is still theoretical, he still has options, the ability to pitch multiple innings in long relief, and a decent prospect repertoire. Given the potential upside, taking this chance makes sense for the Twins.

As long as he can stay in low-leverage situations for now, this is a good opportunity for Sands to develop at the major league level and maybe realize his potential to become a dependable reliever for the Twins.

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[mikelink45]

This is curious.  Would this be Winder's position if he had been healthy?  It just seems that there are a lot of prospects with better track records (which I value more than spin metrics).  If Sands fails who is next up?

But good luck to Cole.  

[stringer bell]

13 minutes ago, mikelink45 said:

This is curious.  Would this be Winder's position if he had been healthy?  It just seems that there are a lot of prospects with better track records (which I value more than spin metrics).  If Sands fails who is next up?

But good luck to Cole.  

I think Winder and Henriquez are in the same pod as Sands. Hopefully, they will be healthy enough to replace Sands when/if he goes long or is ineffective. 

I don't share the optimism for Sands because his command is iffy. Too many pitches far enough out of the zone that won't be chased and also too many over the middle of the plate.

[NotAboutWinning]

Another RP with "stuff".... ughhhhhh

[MMMordabito]

Cole Sands is quite popular here at Twins Daily lately.  Did Getty Images have a BOGO on his likeness or something?

[PatPfund]

Sands making the Opening Day roster is a pretty clear sign the Twins overlooked the bullpen in their offseason-stack-up-quality-backups bonanza. He is the pitching equivalent of Gilberto Celestino; maybe Sands has the goods to play MLB someday, but he really hasn't shown it yet. I suspect his pitch selection has a lot to do with not being able to control his better pitches (thus the less-than-ideal walk rate), and at times having to throw fastballs to avoid walks.

With Sands and Pagán, the Twins 'pen now has two (aka a full quarter of the RPs) pitchers you just don't want to pitch with a game on the line. Hopefully Winder and Henriquez heal quickly, and too bad the Twins didn't skip signing Solano (who looks like the Archer of position players, and instead use the money on an MLB RP. Or just keep Coulombe in the role instead of bowing to the lefty/righty fetishists.

Unless he has copies of Pagán's pictures, Cole might easily be the first one dropped from the 26-man roster.

[High heat]

His pitch mix sounds a lot like a few other very solid Twins relievers who were failed starters.  Jax and Duffey.  
 

To me he seems much more like a RH Glen Perkins.  If that fastball can tick up in the bullpen and he can rely that big sweeper and split he can be very valuable out of the pen.

[Ted Wiedmann]

10 hours ago, PatPfund said:

Sands making the Opening Day roster is a pretty clear sign the Twins overlooked the bullpen in their offseason-stack-up-quality-backups bonanza. He is the pitching equivalent of Gilberto Celestino; maybe Sands has the goods to play MLB someday, but he really hasn't shown it yet. I suspect his pitch selection has a lot to do with not being able to control his better pitches (thus the less-than-ideal walk rate), and at times having to throw fastballs to avoid walks.

With Sands and Pagán, the Twins 'pen now has two (aka a full quarter of the RPs) pitchers you just don't want to pitch with a game on the line. Hopefully Winder and Henriquez heal quickly, and too bad the Twins didn't skip signing Solano (who looks like the Archer of position players, and instead use the money on an MLB RP. Or just keep Coulombe in the role instead of bowing to the lefty/righty fetishists.

Unless he has copies of Pagán's pictures, Cole might easily be the first one dropped from the 26-man roster.

I think your pitch selection speculation is correct, but at some point either the Twins or Sands need to recognize giving up walks is probably better than extra base hits. 

Sands is very likely on this team because Winder is hurt, and I would think as soon as he's back Sands is headed to St. Paul. 

You need low leverage pitchers too, not every game is going to be 3-2 and you need length to eat innings when your losing by 7. I suspect Sands and Pagán can fill those spots, especially after seeing them work multi-inning outings in spring. 

[Ted Wiedmann]

11 hours ago, NotAboutWinning said:

Another RP with "stuff".... ughhhhhh

much better than relievers without stuff, I assure you 

[y2jjj54]

I prefer Sands to retreads like Joe Smith on one year deals.  Atleast if he does get his stuff to play up in the bullpen we have a reliever under contract for a couple years.   Seemed to work well with Griffen Jax.

[PatPfund]

5 hours ago, Ted Wiedmann said:

I think your pitch selection speculation is correct, but at some point either the Twins or Sands need to recognize giving up walks is probably better than extra base hits. 

Sands is very likely on this team because Winder is hurt, and I would think as soon as he's back Sands is headed to St. Paul. 

You need low leverage pitchers too, not every game is going to be 3-2 and you need length to eat innings when your losing by 7. I suspect Sands and Pagán can fill those spots, especially after seeing them work multi-inning outings in spring. 

We probably aren't far apart (because neither really saw Sands making the Opening Day roster), but I sort of disagree with your last paragraph here assuming the Twins will be a competitive team. When you are down by 7, it really doesn't matter who comes in, any arm will do, but a good team probably has that happen once every couple weeks. 

Having a quarter of your 'pen being gas cans starts to hurt in two situations. 1. The SP struggles with control, uses a lot of pitches, but essentially needs to come out after 4 or 5, the team is down by a few, and you need a long arm to give the hitters a chance to rally (not somebody to eat innings while giving away the game). 2. A manager (let's call him Rocco for fun) gets in a habit of pulling people after 5 in competitive games, leans far too heavily on his top 4 RPs, and with them over-used finds himself forced to put 'low leverage' pitchers into high leverage situations (happened A LOT last year).

As for amping up his stuff in a relief role, that is exactly what he was supposed to be doing this spring, and opponents beat him like a drum (12 innings pitched, 18 hits, 6 BB, 7 ER, 5.25 ERA, 2.00 WHIP per baseball-reference.com). That is more a stat line to get you released than one to make the 26-man, and if the Twins don't have a better option, I repeat that it is an indictment of their skipping the 'pen in the search for depth.

[Dman]

Sands was really good through AA.  Nice WHIP, ERA and K rate and that was as a starter. There was concern with his xFIP which has proven to be a more accurate predictor than his ERA, but other that that pretty rock solid.

Once he hits AAA suddenly he is giving out hits like crazy and having trouble keeping the ball in the park.  For the Twins I guess I see the attraction.  Fangraph's gives him an elite curveball and in the pen his fastball plays up to above average as well.  He has an average changeup to go with all that so he has solid tools to be a reliever but the results to this point have not been good.

I agree with @stringer bellthat he doesn't throw competitive pitches out of the zone and then has to throw cookies around the middle of the plate to compete. I don't get the approach and it hasn't been working.  If the curve is that good he needs to use it on the edges and if he can't control it then that is an issue as well.  I have seen his fastball barreled up too many times giving up very hard contact. 

The tools are there but they need to shine through soon or else as others have said Winder and Henriquez will pass him by.  I want to be a believer but as @PatPfundstated his spring numbers are even worse than last years numbers so that doesn't give me much confidence things have changed for the better.

[Ted Wiedmann]

18 hours ago, PatPfund said:

We probably aren't far apart (because neither really saw Sands making the Opening Day roster), but I sort of disagree with your last paragraph here assuming the Twins will be a competitive team. When you are down by 7, it really doesn't matter who comes in, any arm will do, but a good team probably has that happen once every couple weeks. 

Having a quarter of your 'pen being gas cans starts to hurt in two situations. 1. The SP struggles with control, uses a lot of pitches, but essentially needs to come out after 4 or 5, the team is down by a few, and you need a long arm to give the hitters a chance to rally (not somebody to eat innings while giving away the game). 2. A manager (let's call him Rocco for fun) gets in a habit of pulling people after 5 in competitive games, leans far too heavily on his top 4 RPs, and with them over-used finds himself forced to put 'low leverage' pitchers into high leverage situations (happened A LOT last year).

As for amping up his stuff in a relief role, that is exactly what he was supposed to be doing this spring, and opponents beat him like a drum (12 innings pitched, 18 hits, 6 BB, 7 ER, 5.25 ERA, 2.00 WHIP per baseball-reference.com). That is more a stat line to get you released than one to make the 26-man, and if the Twins don't have a better option, I repeat that it is an indictment of their skipping the 'pen in the search for depth.

Perhaps 7 runs was an exaggeration. Most win probability models would show being down 3-4 runs in mid-late innings as low leverage, which even for good teams isn't infrequent. 

Spring training numbers aren't very reliable for player evaluation, too many variables for it to be reliable data and teams (every team, not just the Twins) clearly don't use them to make roster decisions. While it's better to pitch well than not pitch well I'm not concerned about it. We don't know if he was working on stuff or trying out new things. 

I would expect Sands to be in AAA by the end of April, given the role assigned, the options left, and the guys likely coming off the IL. This is Winder's spot on the team, I would assume as soon as he's healthy Sands is headed for St. Paul. 

 

[stringer bell]

9 hours ago, Ted Wiedmann said:

 

I would expect Sands to be in AAA by the end of April, given the role assigned, the options left, and the guys likely coming off the IL. This is Winder's spot on the team, I would assume as soon as he's healthy Sands is headed for St. Paul. 

 

I agree. The last report on Winder seemed pretty optimistic. Last year, Winder seemed to be a starter in waiting with long relief duties. I think if he is promoted in place of Sands this year, his role would be long relief only. With Ober, SWR and Varland all clearly in front of him, perhaps it is time to consider converting to relief, if that will keep him from impinging his shoulder.

[Major League Ready]

He is on the opening day roster because Henriguez and Winder are injured.  That situation is likely to rectify itself relatively soon and Sands will be in AAA.  I do think there is reasonable upside if he gains better command.