Has Derek Falvey Established His Pitching Pipeline?

[TwinsDr2021]

13 minutes ago, Rod Carews Birthday said:

  It seems reasonable to say that there are certainly more quality pitchers in the pipeline now than there were five years ago, even with a few trades removing some. 

In 2018 - In the majors was Berrios, Gibson, had just traded for Odo, Romero, Holdenberger, Rogers, Pressly, Stewart, Moya, Busentiz, May, Duffey, Mejia, Littell.

Top prospects were Romero, Gonsalves, Graterol, Enlow, Thorpe, Littell,

So I am not positive that you can say there are certainly more quality pitchers, We might think there is because most of those failed, but who is say we won't be saying the same things in the next 5 years.

Berrios = Ryen

Gibson = Ober

Romero = Varland

Pressly = Duran

Rogers = Jax

and then everybody else

 

[Rod Carews Birthday]

17 minutes ago, ewen21 said:

Fair enough.  Then again, in the mid 2000s we were sold on the idea that we had a pipeline of young pitching and Terry Ryan acted as if the likes of Kevin Slowey, was untouchable.  In fact, go back as far as 2006 with Garza and find me a starting pitcher who was any good outside of Jose Berrios?  Between Garza and Berrios is over a decade.  Baker, Slowey, Blackburn, Lohse, Mays all had promise and then seemingly got worse as time went on.....

 

Forgive me for this mini-rant, but it is my main bone of contention with this organization.  Mid-market organizations like ours should make raising quality starting pitching its prime focus and we have failed at doing so.  If you can do that then you aren't constantly in the market trying to find overpriced starting pitchers.  We need to raise our own starting pitchers to a reasonable extent and we can't seem to do it.  Can we do that now?  THis remains to seen,

Not sure you mean 2006, as that was the staff that had Santana, Radke, and Liriano on it.  Your point about the group that came up with Garza (whose career stats aren't that impressive either) -- Baker, Slowey, Blackburn, etc -- is well taken however.  Baker was solid for a couple of years, but none of those guys really had a long productive career.  Pitching has pretty much always been the soft spot for the Twins franchise.  I agree that the goal should be to develop quality starting pitching, but it obviously isn't a very easy task.  I'm hoping that this time, with new people in charge of it, will be different.  Time will tell.

[saviking]

I'd give the overall talent in our pitching pipeline a C or C+ right now. Time to restock through trading ageing veterans like Polanco, Kepler, Gallo for promising high A prospects and taking a higher percent of pitchers in the first 10 rounds of this years draft if the right oportunities arrive. After all, we will need to restock our relievers in a few years .. 🤣

[Minny505]

I guess I don't really care if they do it the Guardians way of draft and development or the Rays way of trade and development. Both can yield great results if executed properly.

The Twins way looks a lot more like the Rays approach to a pitching pipeline...and, for one season at least, they are out-Rays-ing the Rays with the trade-and-development approach to pitching.

[USAFChief]

23 hours ago, Rod Carews Birthday said:

Younger than Varland.  Cory Kluber, on the other hand was the owner of a 5.00+ ERA as a 26 year old.  Cliff Lee was a 5.00+ ERA at 25, the year before he broke out and became really good.  My whole point is that it can take a bit to discover what they can do and dismissing Varland already is pretty fast.

I don't think not dismissing Varland, and scoffing at the idea this front office has established any kind of "pitching pipeline" are mutually exclusive  

[DocBauer]

9 hours ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

Got to be honest with this type of definition the last FO was a pitching pipeline dream.

Berrios, Gibson, Mejia, Duffey, Pressly, Rogers, Hidenberger, Perkins, May, Duensing, Guerrier, Swarzak, Diamond, Liriano, Hendriks, Blackburn,  They had list  of studs prospects like Stewart, Jay, Thrope, Chargois, Meyer, Burdi, Romero and Gonzalez.  I mean there was a not stop list of studs that didn't turn out or last very long and a few that did well. What is different than this current FO? I mean currently it is two starters (Ryan and Ober) and few bullpen arms (Duran, Jax). I don't count minor league players as part of of a pipleline,

You aren't exactly wrong. Recency bias has a lot of forgetting at times that the Twins had some good teams and some very nice pitchers in the early 00's. They had Radke, Santana, Liriano, Silva, Perkins, Nathan and others and most of them overlapped, at least for a time. They also got a couple solid years from Baker and others during that time frame. So the TR FO, in it's first tour of duty, did some good things. Unfortunately, they never augmented their rosters enough when they had their shots.

But half the names you listed never even played with the Twins of the 1st decade I'm mentioning. 1 decent season from Diamond, a couple mediocre ones from Blackburn, nothing good from Hendricks ever until he wore about a half dozen other uniforms, and the list goes on. And none of those arms compare to the likes of Radke, Liriano, Santana, Silva, and others.  Different era, different qualities. And very few of those late 00's and TEENS arms would compare to what we've seen so far from Ryan, Ober, very possibly Varland from early results, Duran, maybe Jax and possibly Moran...as I mentioned earlier.

In no way was I using a list of names over a 10-15yr time frame. I was using a list of players either with the Twins NOW, or recently, or just getting ready for opportunity in the near future. Hence, the pipeline IS open, IMO, but not flowing fully.

The addition of lower level milb players I mentioned was not intended to reflect some amazing results from the pipeline, or some sense of immediacy from the pipeline. It was intended to re-state the pipeline is indeed open, but not yet running at full capacity.

[Rod Carews Birthday]

1 hour ago, DocBauer said:

The addition of lower level milb players I mentioned was not intended to reflect some amazing results from the pipeline, or some sense of immediacy from the pipeline. It was intended to re-state the pipeline is indeed open, but not yet running at full capacity.

Exactly.  You have to keep putting things in the beginning of the pipeline in order to get things out of the end, and they seem to be doing that pretty well.  We'll see how it all pans out.

 

[Blyleven2011]

9 hours ago, saviking said:

I'd give the overall talent in our pitching pipeline a C or C+ right now. Time to restock through trading ageing veterans like Polanco, Kepler, Gallo for promising high A prospects and taking a higher percent of pitchers in the first 10 rounds of this years draft if the right oportunities arrive. After all, we will need to restock our relievers in a few years .. 🤣

A couple of years ago the angels drafted all pitchers through the rounds of the draft in 2021 ...

All pitchers  ...

[ewen21]

19 hours ago, Rod Carews Birthday said:

Not sure you mean 2006, as that was the staff that had Santana, Radke, and Liriano on it.  Your point about the group that came up with Garza (whose career stats aren't that impressive either) -- Baker, Slowey, Blackburn, etc -- is well taken however.  Baker was solid for a couple of years, but none of those guys really had a long productive career.  Pitching has pretty much always been the soft spot for the Twins franchise.  I agree that the goal should be to develop quality starting pitching, but it obviously isn't a very easy task.  I'm hoping that this time, with new people in charge of it, will be different.  Time will tell.

I do.  Garza was called up in 2006.  I was at the game on September 30th against Chicago where he got smoked..  Kansas City saved us by sweeping Detroit.  

 

That said, I think we have a problem developing starting pitching.  That "pitch to contact" garbage is long gone, but the stench remains