Twins Acquire Tommy Nance From Blue Jays To Bolster Bullpen

[Steve Drumwright]

 

The Minnesota Twins, who had a massive sell-off at last year's trade deadline, appear to be a buyer this year.

The Twins on Friday acquired right-handed reliever Tommy Nance from the Toronto Blue Jays in exchange for minor-league catcher-third baseman Ryan Sprock.

Nance is a 35-year-old who has appeared in 32 games this year for the Jays, posting a 4.20 FIP (3.82 ERA) in 33 innings, walking 9.4% of batters, while striking out 24.5%. Nance made his MLB debut in 2021 and has appeared in 144 games, all but two in relief, with a 3.72 FIP (4.25 ERA). He has a 9.3% career walk rate and 25.3% strikeout rate.

Nance is making $809,700 this season and is under club control for another three seasons.

Sprock, 21, was an eighth-round draft choice a year ago out of Elon. He was just promoted to High-A Cedar Rapids, where he played two games, going 0-for-7. He had been at Low-A Fort Myers, where he had a .306/.436/.441 slash line with five homers and 37 RBIs in 65 games. He also had 14 stolen bases. Sprock is not on Twins Daily's Top 20 prospects list. He made 31 starts at catcher, 18 at third base and five in left field in addition to 11 as a designated hitter.

 

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[Greglw3]

All in All, a good acquisition!

[LewFordLives]

It's a start...barely....although I hope there's more help on the way.

[ashbury]

Sticking my neck out to guess they put Banda on the 60-day IL to make room on the 40-man roster, and send Adams to AAA to open a spot on the major league roster.

[DJL44]

Nance immediately becomes one of the top 4 relievers on the team.

Are they optioning Adams or Orze?

[SteveLV]

Yech.  Like Sprock. This guy is average, which for this bullpen is, unfortunately, elite.

At least he is cheap!

[ashbury]

b-r.com has a "leverage index" that looks at the game situation when a pitcher enters the game, saying nothing about his results once on the mound.  On the Twins, for example, Rogers (1.47), Gomez (1.46), Morris (1.36) and Banda (1.35) lead the staff in highest leverage, which sort of confirms the eye test as to when they get brought in, and also perhaps attests to Shelton's strategy to spread the opportunities around instead of having a rigid setup-closer pecking order.  By contrast, Laweryson has a very low 0;70 leverage index, again conforming to what you might expect for a pitcher of his current caliber.

On the Jays this year, it's hardly surprising that Louis Varland's usage results in a very high 1.90 leverage index.  Tommy Nance?  0.53.

John Schneider apparently has had very low confidence in Nance.  Take it for what it's worth. 

Maybe Shelton/Hawkins/Maki will work some magic with him and get good performance, when the game is on the line, that Schneider didn't feel was possible.

[CRF]

This ain't movin the needle a whole helluva lot, but he's probably better than what we've been trotting out there. We got Go and Nance the last few days, so at least they're trying to get a little help. 

[DJL44]

5 minutes ago, ashbury said:

b-r.com has a "leverage index" that looks at the game situation when a pitcher enters the game.  On the Twins, for example, Rogers (1.47), Gomez (1.46), Morris (1.36) and Banda (1.35) lead the staff in highest leverage, which sort of confirms the eye test as to when they get brought in, and also perhaps attests to Shelton's strategy to spread the opportunities around instead of having a rigid setup-closer pecking order.  By contrast, Laweryson has a very low 0;70 leverage index, again conforming to what you might expect for a pitcher of his current caliber.

On the Jays this year, it's hardly surprising that Louis Varland's usage results in a very high 1.90 leverage index.  Tommy Nance?  0.53.

John Schneider apparently has had very low confidence in Nance.  Take it for what it's worth. 

Maybe Shelton/Hawkins/Maki will work some magic with him and get good performance when the game is on the line that Schneider didn't feel was possible.

Schneider also has much better options. Their bullpen is quite good with an ERA of 3.81 versus the Twins 5.45.

[Linus]

Meh. 

[ashbury]

3 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

Schneider also has much better options. Their bullpen is quite good with an ERA of 3.81 versus the Twins 5.45.

That's a fair point.  As I said, the leverage index doesn't speak to what the pitcher did once he's in the game.

But it's notable that we didn't acquire any of those "better options", probably because they weren't available.  The ceiling for what this deal does for making a pennant push is very low.