Do the Twins Know How to Teach a Sinker When They Need To? - Caretaker Exclusive

[Matthew Trueblood]

No team in baseball throws fewer sinkers than the Twins, but behind the scenes, members of the organization insist they don't disdain or overlook the value of the pitch. They try to help pitchers throw the best form of the fastball for them.

Is that true?

Image courtesy of © Bruce Kluckhohn-USA TODAY Sports

There's a false binary, sometimes, in thinking about generalists and specialists; We all have to specialize a little, lest we end up standing in the middle of a room spinning in circles, remarking blandly on the great doings being done off in each corner. We also all have to be able to act as generalists, to some extent, or we corner ourselves into feeling out of our depth when we're really working on something we should be able to handle.

Still and all, there's validity in the distinction between the two approaches to anything, not least because they're required in different measure when attempting things of different difficulties. The Minnesota Twins are in a highly competitive field, where the things they need to do are difficult. Like most teams, they do have to choose places where they specialize, and that means emphasizing certain skills and competencies at the expense of others.

To wit: Whatever their insistence to the contrary, the Twins show less interest than any other organization in baseball in throwing the sinker. As a result of that strong preference for four-seamers and cutters when it comes to velocity-oriented offerings, they just don't seem to be very good at teaching the sinker when they do attempt to do so. That's fine, but it's an important thing to understand about what is, nonetheless, one of the better pitching development infrastructures in the league.

It's hard to overstate (and, at first, hard even to conceptualize) how much of an outlier the Twins are when it comes to abstaining from the sinker. They are the team who throws the fewest sinkers in baseball, at just 5.7% of all pitches, but that doesn't quite capture it. They're also the team who throws the fewest total hard pitches (four-seamers, cutters, and sinkers, as a group), at just 48.8% of all their pitches. So is their apparent disuse of the pitch just a product of their preference for heavy use of breaking and offspeed stuff, at the expense of all types of fastballs? Or at least, is that part of the story?

No. Emphatically, no. The average team makes the sinker about 29 percent of all their hard pitches. The Guardians are second-lowest in baseball in this regard, at 15.2%. The sinker only makes up 11.7% of the Twins' hard pitches.

Here's a chart showing each team's use of the three hard pitch types, individually and in total. They're ranked according to the share of their hard pitches taken up by the sinker.

They've chosen this as a way to maximize strikeouts--not only with all those four-seamers, but by using so much spin and changing speeds. The big question is: what happens when they do want or need to have a pitcher develop a sinker?

View full article

[Jocko87]

It's interesting how an organization, sports or business, can unintentionally drift away from something due to lack of emphasis or trends.  Then when the need arises it takes an old timer to say, hey, remember when we did xyz?  It then takes time to spin back up that old technique.

No idea what the Twins are emphasizing in Louies case, but fortunately for them this is a relatively easy issue to solve for sports teams.  We can complain about payroll all we want but that's usually only for one player. Smart money spent in the player development/support organization effects everyone at a fraction of the cost of a middle reliever.  

If Louie needs help developing a sinker, that specific coach/guru and tech is available for a very reasonable price, especially if the payoff is a controlled front line starter.  The rest of the org might benefit as well.

[bean5302]

The sinker fell out of favor with the launch angle revolution. Guys had been increasingly swinging their bats like golf clubs to try and lift balls into the seats. An improperly placed sinker can put itself directly into the "Tiger Uppercut" whereas, say, 10 years ago, the flatter swings designed to hit more line drives and put the ball into play would make weak contact against the pitch.

Obviously, putting any pitch in a location the batter isn't likely to put a good swing on it can make the pitch effective, but the sinker just became a dangerous gopher ball machine IMHO.

Of course things may be changing again with the elimination of the extreme shift. Everything goes in circles.

[Karbo]

IMO they need to put Varland in the pen. He doesn't need a sinker there. I agree with the philosophy of refining what the player does well. Varland throws hard so let him relieve where he doesn't really need a bunch of different pitches.

[LambchoP]

Seems to me the Twins have been obsessed with sliders the past few years. We've acquired a few guys and then immediately tried to have them throw way more sliders. Problem is if the location sucks, you get home runs. It's too bad the twins give up the most home runs in baseball, because if our starters could keep the ball in the park, we'd have one of the better staffs in the AL...

[CCHOF5yearstoolate]

I'm not particularly sure that Varland needs a sinker in his repertoire, but I agree that the Twins have not had success adding that pitch to anyone starter's repertoire.

It's been Pablo's worst pitch (.448/.484/.690), a bad pitch for Joe Ryan (.333/.368/.333) and Louie as detailed above.

Team wide, it's the 2nd worst pitch they throw as a staff to the cutter with a .295/.358/.397 slash against and a miniscule 10.8% K-rate. 

[bean5302]

2 hours ago, LambchoP said:

Seems to me the Twins have been obsessed with sliders the past few years. We've acquired a few guys and then immediately tried to have them throw way more sliders. Problem is if the location sucks, you get home runs. It's too bad the twins give up the most home runs in baseball, because if our starters could keep the ball in the park, we'd have one of the better staffs in the AL...

I think the Twins are obsessed with "cutting edge" stuff in general. The sweeper is the most glaring example that comes to mind right now.

[Parfigliano]

23 hours ago, CCHOF5yearstoolate said:

I'm not particularly sure that Varland needs a sinker in his repertoire, but I agree that the Twins have not had success adding that pitch to anyone starter's repertoire.

It's been Pablo's worst pitch (.448/.484/.690), a bad pitch for Joe Ryan (.333/.368/.333) and Louie as detailed above.

Team wide, it's the 2nd worst pitch they throw as a staff to the cutter with a .295/.358/.397 slash against and a miniscule 10.8% K-rate. 

So statistically they should throw even fewer sinkers.

[CCHOF5yearstoolate]

11 hours ago, Parfigliano said:

So statistically they should throw even fewer sinkers.

Fewer of these bad ones, at least.

[bean5302]

22 hours ago, CCHOF5yearstoolate said:

Fewer of these bad ones, at least.

Reminds me of a hilarious Colorado Rockies commercial from years ago.

 

[Rod Carews Birthday]

Obviously, the answer is "Yes, the Twins know how to teach a sinker."  Given the current environment and the current talent, they haven't deemed it necessary or important.  The implied incompetence of the title of the article seems a bit overblown at best, and disingenuous at worst. 

I personally tire of the "Is this true?!?!?" or "Could this be?!?!?"  headlines.  These imply that there is a crisis somewhere that needs immediate attention, and yet seldom do these things rise to that level.   We can do (and have done) better than that.