The Twins, the All-or-Nothing October Effect, and How to Cure It - Caretaker Exclusive

[Matthew Trueblood]

No team in baseball hunts homers more fearlessly, or pays the price with more strikeouts, than the Twins. Does that become a bigger problem when they reach October? And if so, how should they cure it?

Image courtesy of © Rich Storry-USA TODAY Sports

It doesn't take an advanced degree in baseball to recognize the Twins as an all-or-nothing team at the plate. They might not send hitters up there looking to hit a home run in every plate appearance, but no team in the league is as comfortable with trading contact altogether in order to achieve their prime directive: hit the snot out of the ball, preferably in the air, and preferably to the pull field. Hit Bombas.

No team in baseball history has struck out in as great a percentage of their total plate appearances as did the 2023 Twins. On the other hand, the 2023 Twins hit 233 home runs, to lead the American League. They were as feast-or-famine as any team in the annals of the game, and it didn't stop them from getting to the playoffs, or even from breaking that nightmarish two-decade schneid in postseason games. The Twins overcame the Blue Jays in the AL Wild Card Series, in fact, in large part because of Royce Lewis's home-run heroics, and they struck out more than the Jays even en route to sweeping that series.

For at least the last 20 years, there has been a prevalent--even pervasive--narrative that crops up every season in October, when the national networks take over to broadcast playoff games: you need to be well-rounded and put the ball in play in the playoffs. That theory has been pretty well debunked. Regular-season team contact rate did predict the winners of playoff series pretty well over a few years at the beginning of the last decade, but that didn't prove to be a sticky effect. It was a function of transient circumstances of the game, and it faded in its predictive power.

Thus, you'll now find a lot of smart people on Baseball Twitter every autumn, loudly decrying the loud decrying of home run-centric offense. The favored stat of these counter-counterrevolutionaries is the records of teams who out-homer their opponents in a postseason game. The team who hits more home runs wins a startling share of games in the playoffs; it's something like 80 percent. A playfully troglodytic aphorism popularized by Baseball Prospectus co-founder Joe Sheehan has become the slogan of the stat-savvy baseball fan every time they have to listen to Álex Rodríguez call for another bunt, or John Smoltz bemoan another empty two-strike hack: "Ball go far, team go far."

Here's the thing: Smoltz and ARod are right, and the smart people are wrong.

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[Karbo]

If I had to put together a Pitching rotation for the playoffs I would be looking for guys in the low HR, high ground ball type, with a decent K%. Obviously, there's not a lot of those out there. Twins hitters need to work on their 2 strike approach. That not saying they always use it with 2 strikes, but there are times (think runner on 3rd or even 2nd with less than 2 outs. I got so frustrated last year to see a guy on 3rd with nobody out, infield back, and the next 2 guys K. There the guy stands on 3rd and they missed a chance to score a run.

[Jocko87]

I am not a fan of an all or nothing approach. I also don't believe that's what the Twins are trying to do, even though it was the result for most of the season. I'm still quite curious what happened with the players only meetings and Popkins adjustments after which things were much better.

The all or nothing approach and strikeouts themselves are indicators, not strategic goals. The Twins have been clear that they are not managing to the number of strikeouts and that is completely correct. The focus is a good at bat and hitting the ball hard when they do swing. If a strikeout is the result of a good at bat, nobody cares. If it's a crappy at bat, which we saw far to much of last year, the strikeout is an expected result.

The strikeout isn't necessarily the problem, the bad at bat was the issue. If a good at bat was taken it still advances the offense.

Several of the hitters classified as all or nothing are capable of good, long at bats making the pitching work. Julien can swing as hard as he wants during a 10 pitch at bat, the important part is that he has the ability to regularly have good at bats. All or nothing is the wrong term when they are more than happy to walk.

The route to postseason success is making really good pitchers work really, really hard, even if they are getting outs. Offenses score runs by keeping pitchers under stress. A well timed bunt can do that but not like a leadoff double.  This lineup can be very potent in the postseason as they have enough hitters capable of good at bats in 9 spots. They just have to take that next step.

[Jocko87]

5 minutes ago, Karbo said:

If I had to put together a Pitching rotation for the playoffs I would be looking for guys in the low HR, high ground ball type, with a decent K%. Obviously, there's not a lot of those out there. Twins hitters need to work on their 2 strike approach. That not saying they always use it with 2 strikes, but there are times (think runner on 3rd or even 2nd with less than 2 outs. I got so frustrated last year to see a guy on 3rd with nobody out, infield back, and the next 2 guys K. There the guy stands on 3rd and they missed a chance to score a run.

I'm basically on board with disregarding the RBI as an opportunity stat but I still don't understand why we aren't measuring a success rate in these situations. Regardless of approach, the hitters job is still to get that runner in. I believe it's a skill that can be developed without automatically giving up an out.

[Eris]

For me the frustrating part of the Twins season was the lack of situational hitting. Against the Astros in the playoffs how many at bats did the Twins have with the bases loaded and failed to score. It was way too many.  Sometimes a single is all that separates a W from an L. 

[RpR]

Runner on third no out, or even one out, a sacrifice fly make a strike out look like a loser.

[Eris]

45 minutes ago, Jocko87 said:

but I still don't understand why we aren't measuring a success rate in these situations.

There is a stat (kind of) that measures outcomes vs run expectancy for the 24 possible scenarios. It is RE24. In Fangraphs it is under the win probability stats. 
 

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=3&season=2023&season1=2023&ind=0&team=0%2Cts&startdate=2023-10-03&enddate=2023-11-01&sortcol=4&sortdir=default&postseason=D

[Parfigliano]

2 hours ago, Karbo said:

If I had to put together a Pitching rotation for the playoffs I would be looking for guys in the low HR, high ground ball type, with a decent K%. Obviously, there's not a lot of those out there. Twins hitters need to work on their 2 strike approach. That not saying they always use it with 2 strikes, but there are times (think runner on 3rd or even 2nd with less than 2 outs. I got so frustrated last year to see a guy on 3rd with nobody out, infield back, and the next 2 guys K. There the guy stands on 3rd and they missed a chance to score a run.

Frustrating as h#ll.

[Tibs]

I bet they could cure it by simply making contact with the baseball. I don't know, though.

[Lucas Seehafer PT]

👀

[terrydactyls]

Good call on Santana.  He's now a Twin.