This Could Be a First Real Shot in The Show for Simeon Woods Richardson

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Minnesota Twins announced Wednesday night that their Thursday afternoon starter would be rookie Simeon Woods Richardson. Is this finally the time that the up-and-down prospect gets a chance to stick around a while?

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-USA TODAY Sports

When Simeon Woods Richardson started half of a rain-necessitated doubleheader for the Twins earlier this month, it marked the third season in which he's made an appearance for the team. When they sent him back down to Triple-A St. Paul immediately afterward, it marked the third time that the visit to the big leagues had lasted exactly one outing. Woods Richardson's career has seen a lot of change and a lot of peaks and valleys already, but this time, he might stick on the MLB roster for a little while.

Earlier this week, the Twins demoted Louie Varland to St. Paul, ending a failed experiment to make him one of their back-end starters this season. Woods Richardson is taking the first start in the rotation vacancy created by that change, and he's positioned himself to be taken seriously as a candidate to keep this job for a while. 

Our John Bonnes wrote about the boost in Woods Richardson's velocity this year back in spring training. After a disappointing 2023 in which he and the Twins tried to reinvent him by giving him a very cutterish fastball and saw his velocity slip south of 90 miles per hour, he came to Fort Myers throwing freer and more naturally, and the ball started exploding out of his hand. Woods Richardson's average fastball velocity this year is 93 miles per hour, and he's touched 95 more than once. He doesn't have a radical shape on the pitch anymore, but it's still shown good cut-ride action.

This is how Woods Richardson had success against the Tigers in Detroit two weeks ago; that newfound velocity is the foundation for everything. The rest of his arsenal is also interesting, though, and could be good enough to keep him ahead of the adjustment curve for a bit as he matriculates to the majors in a more complete way.

He doesn't have an elite collection of secondary pitches. Woods Richardson's slider is a bit like a cutter, really. It's thrown 85-88 miles per hour, with some unusual lift for a slider but plenty of movement separation from the fastball. One way to see why it's unusual is to study the direction of the spin he imparts out of the hand, on all his pitches.

The idea with charts like this is to communicate the direction of spin around a clock, akin to going around a baseball. Vertical breaking balls (like Woods Richardson's curveball, hanging off the bottom of the clock) have topspin, and thus tend to have a lot of downward movement. Some sliders are basically hard curves, with spin direction almost that low. More often, they're on the side of the clock (it'd be on the left side, between 8 and 10 o'clock, for a righty like Woods Richardson), showing the sidespin that creates horizontal sweep on the pitch.

Not so for Woods Richardson. His slider has something close to true backspin, like a four-seam fastball--or, more saliently, like many pitchers' cutters. It looks more like a fastball out of the hand this way, but the movement separation between the two offerings should tend to be smaller than for a slider with notably disparate spin direction from a guy's fastball. As we've seen, though, there's a fair amount of that separation for Woods Richardson. Let's put that separation onto the same clock-style diagram, to visualize it better. (These charts are based solely on spin and/or movement direction and the frequency of pitches that move that way; don't confuse the size of a bar with the magnitude of movement.)

Because of Woods Richardson's arm slot, and thanks to the way he positions the seams as he grips his slider, the ball swerves more than the spin tells the hitter it will. That's a good thing. There's still a lack of vertical differential between the two offerings and a smallish velocity gap to consider, and those things will cap the swing-and-miss potential of the pitch, but Woods Richardson should be able to be effective with this fastball-slider tandem.

There's a bit more in the way of bad news about his curveball and changeup. The curve has a lovely, aesthetically pleasing shape, but because it sits in the mid-70s, the hitter has a lot of time to recognize it and hold back, or adjust their swing. When he deploys it well in sequence, he can and does steal called strikes with the curve, but he hasn't gotten a whiff on that pitch all year, in MLB or Triple-A.

The changeup, meanwhile, does give an opposite-handed hitter a cue right out of Woods Richardson's hand; his spin direction on the change is noticeably different than on the fastball. The best changeups either create a huge amount of movement separation or disguise themselves well by having a similar spin axis out of the hand, then tailing off the fastball's line because of seam orientation and the way the seams interact with the air. Woods Richardson doesn't have either thing going for him, so he has to sell the change with his arm action and command it finely.

I would expect the tall righty to have a hard time against left-handed batters for a while in MLB. So far, taking both levels of competition together, lefties have posted a .353 wOBA against Woods Richardson, while he's held righties to an anemic .227. He's made enough changes to give himself a legitimate chance to survive as a starter, though, and given the level of the Twins' current need, that might be enough to earn Woods Richardson a window within which to make further adjustments.

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[weneedneshek]

The 5th spot is his to take right now, if he and Martin can be valuable roster pieces it'll make the Berrios trade look a lot better. Man could we use him these days (don't look up his stats)

[DJL44]

The competition for the job is not fierce. An ERA around 5 will give him the job for the season.

[Doctor Gast]

Very interesting article. I pray that SWR does well. IMO I'd still like to have Varland up in long relief to help shore up the back end of the rotation, to limit SWR's exposure (buy time so he can make the necessary adjustments) & Paddack's innings, and have him around for spot starting. 

[$tryf4Life]

Nice article.
 

Best of luck SWR. We need to keep building the mojo. Def applaud making fast changes to under performers.

[weneedneshek]

Just now, $tryf4Life said:

Def applaud making fast changes to under performers.

Hopefully this will carry over to the position players once we get healthy

[Fire Dan Gladden]

12 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

The competition for the job is not fierce. An ERA around 5 will give him the job for the season.

This is an accurate and profoundly sad statement...

[MABB1959]

They should keep him up all year and see how he does.  One bad start should not send him down.  Time to see what we have!

[MABB1959]

1 hour ago, weneedneshek said:

The 5th spot is his to take right now, if he and Martin can be valuable roster pieces it'll make the Berrios trade look a lot better. Man could we use him these days (don't look up his stats)

Right now the Berrios trade is depressing!  He is the pitcher we have been searching for for the last 10 years

[mnfireman]

56 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

An ERA around 5 will give him the job for the season.

As it does with most MLB teams 4th and 5th starters.

[D.C Twins]

Given our SP depth... we desperately need him to be a reliable #5 type this year....

[weneedneshek]

14 minutes ago, MABB1959 said:

Right now the Berrios trade is depressing!  He is the pitcher we have been searching for for the last 10 years

He's only making $19M a year too, he keeps this up and Toronto might have the best free agent contract for a pitcher in the league

[DJL44]

33 minutes ago, MABB1959 said:

Right now the Berrios trade is depressing!  He is the pitcher we have been searching for for the last 10 years

I'm actually optimistic about the trade. Two of the members of the current team came from that trade. If Berrios had left as a free agent instead they would have nothing to show for it.

[DJL44]

27 minutes ago, mnfireman said:

As it does with most MLB teams 4th and 5th starters.

Most MLB teams miss the playoffs.

[roger]

36 minutes ago, MABB1959 said:

Right now the Berrios trade is depressing!  He is the pitcher we have been searching for for the last 10 years

Let's remember we traded what was it, two months of Berrios for SWR and Martin.  Martin is showing us he is a solid player with a very good future.  More important, he gives the Twins lineup a much different look.  

I pray that SWR takes the bull by the horn today and never looks back.  Doesn't have to become a #1 or #2 starter, but a solid middle of the rotation starter would be AOK, at least for me.

[weneedneshek]

10 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

I'm actually optimistic about the trade. Two of the members of the current team came from that trade. If Berrios had left as a free agent instead they would have nothing to show for it.

The alternative would've been signing him to a contract, not letting him walk. Also lets not pretend those 2 members forced their way onto the roster due to performance, they were the warm bodies on deck

[DJL44]

4 minutes ago, weneedneshek said:

The alternative would've been signing him to a contract, not letting him walk. Also lets not pretend those 2 members forced their way onto the roster due to performance, they were the warm bodies on deck

Why do people continue to believe Berrios would have signed a free agent contract with the cheapskate Twins?

[mnfireman]

20 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

Most MLB teams miss the playoffs.

While this is true, last years 12 play-off teams all had pitchers start at least 10 games (1/3 of the season) with an ERA of 4.50 or higher, 9 of 12 had pitchers start 10 or more games with an ERA of over 5.00 (Perez would have made it 10/12 but he snuck under with a starters ERA of 4.98).

Even good MLB teams struggle to fill all 5 rotation spots with quality starters. And remember a "Quality Start" translates to a 4.50 ERA ( 6 IP, 3 ER).

[weneedneshek]

1 minute ago, DJL44 said:

Why do people continue to believe Berrios would have signed a free agent contract with the cheapskate Twins?

The Twins have already shown they are willing to sign players to higher annual and total value contracts than what Berrios got, they just didn't think he was worth it. It's nothing deeper than that. He's proving them wrong though and it should be tallied as an incorrect FO assessment.

[DJL44]

8 minutes ago, mnfireman said:

While this is true, last years 12 play-off teams all had pitchers start at least 10 games (1/3 of the season) with an ERA of 4.50 or higher, 9 of 12 had pitchers start 10 or more games with an ERA of over 5.00 (Perez would have made it 10/12 but he snuck under with a starters ERA of 4.98).

Even good MLB teams struggle to fill all 5 rotation spots with quality starters. And remember a "Quality Start" translates to a 4.50 ERA ( 6 IP, 3 ER).

Did those playoff teams also rank next to last in offensive production? This team cannot win games with average starting pitching.

[DJL44]

9 minutes ago, weneedneshek said:

The Twins have already shown they are willing to sign players to higher annual and total value contracts than what Berrios got, they just didn't think he was worth it. It's nothing deeper than that. He's proving them wrong though and it should be tallied as an incorrect FO assessment.

It was a clear mistake at the time for the front office to not extend Jose Berrios. Once they made that bad decision, they did okay with the consequences. It appears they want to make that mistake all over again with their current young talent because they didn't offer ANY of them a team-friendly contract extension this past offseason.

[mnfireman]

4 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

Did those playoff teams also rank next to last in offensive production? This team cannot win games with average starting pitching.

Agreed, but SWR is a pitcher, not a hitter, so that is a different argument.

[TwinsDr2021]

1 hour ago, DJL44 said:

. It appears they want to make that mistake all over again with their current young talent because they didn't offer ANY of them a team-friendly contract extension this past offseason.

Question, who are the young guys? And who has played well enough to deserve it?

They have Jeffers though 2026 which I believe is age 29 (so maybe two years for him)

They have AK though 2027 which I believe is age 29, has he done enough prior to this year?

They have Ober though 2027 which I believe is age 31 ( are we really extending that?)

They have Ryan though 2027 which I believe is age 31 ( are we really extending that?)

They have Julien though 2029 which I believe is age 30.

They have Lewis though 2028 which I believe is age 29 (Looks great when healthy but that is less than being hurt)

That is the wonderful thing of not bringing players up until age 25 or later, you get their prime for controlled (or fairly known) cost. An basically don't have to extend them.

EDIT - SWR is the type of player to extend he he proves he is a MLB pitcher, because he will become a FA in his prime.

 

[laloesch]

I hope he does well, but his offspeed stuff is very hittable with the exception of the curve.  We shall see.

[TwinsDr2021]

@RpR Please enlighten us on what you didn't like about the post? Was I wrong on the control of listed players?

[DJL44]

1 hour ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

Question, who are the young guys? And who has played well enough to deserve it?

Jeffers and Duran

[PuckettProtector]

47 minutes ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

@RpR Please enlighten us on what you didn't like about the post? Was I wrong on the control of listed players?

Woof. 10 ply bud. 

[MABB1959]

4 hours ago, DJL44 said:

I'm actually optimistic about the trade. Two of the members of the current team came from that trade. If Berrios had left as a free agent instead they would have nothing to show for it.

Agree but they should have done what it takes to keep him

[TwinsDr2021]

18 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

Jeffers and Duran

Left out Duran in my list, but I can see looking into extending both, I just don't think it was necessary last year. Jeffers is proving that wrong and hopefully Duran does as well. I just don't see mid market teams extending players like the others listed. I mean with the limited research I did you don't see many extensions from guys that were not brought up super young. (22 or younger)

[Mike Sixel]

I'm old enough to remember when this was a thread about SWR....

He was between ok and good today. If he gives up 2-3 runs per start, that's more than good enough for me for a 23 year old in his rookie campaign. More than good enough.