Hansel Robles Should be the Twins Closer

Wait. Robles is better than Liam Hendriks? The Twins need to sign a strong arm.

Robles might be good for the 7th inning. He isn't bad. I'm higher on Stashak and Alcala at the moment and remain hopeful of a Hendriks signing. Why not?

Ron Davis redux?

Relievers tend to be more volatile year to year than other players. Robles was very bad in 2020, of course with the usual caveats. There’s a debate to be had over how large of a red flag the season really was, but there can be no doubt that it was indeed a red flag. He could improve a lot next year, or he could be washed up. I think it would be foolish to trust him to pick up where he left off in 2019. He should have to earn high leverage innings.

If Robles pitches well there are plenty of important innings to cover.

The only way I see the Twins investing in the highest profile RPs would be if the bottom absolutely falls out of what these RPS have been paid over the past few years. “Volatile” does not quite illustrate how bad of an investment high profile RPs have been of late. Here is a summation of the top 10 RPs signed for the 2018+ seasons. 

Over the course of 2018 and 2019. None of them had a WAR above 1 for both seasons. In fact, Andrew Cashner was the only one to have a WAR above 1 in either season. 

Collectively they averaged .3 WAR in 2018 and .19 WAR in 2019. The cost per WAR in 2018 was $30M and $45M per WAR in 2019.

The top 10 RPs signed for the 2019 season fair slightly better.

Only Adam Ottovito had a fWAR above 9 at 1.3. Zack Britton was at .9 and to be fair bWAR rated them both higher. The other 8 produced a combined 0 WAR.

Over the 2 years for the class of 18 and 1 year for the class of 2019, these players produced less than .5 war in 20 of the combined 30 seasons. I sure hope they can find additions with a higher probability of success.

I absolutely will not disparage Hand, Hendricks or anyone similar. So please understand that. But we have seen a number of 30yo plus RP arms signed to multi year contracts that suddenly turn volatile. Reed, signed a couple years ago, is a slightly lower grade example. Are the Twins potentially better off with Rosenthal, a bounce back candidate in Yates or the even younger Bradley for somewhere around $5-6M?

If so, then you probably have room to bring in one additional arm like maybe Clippard for $2.5-3M to deepen the pen even further.

I hated to lose May, but if you give me FA TBD along with Rogers, Duffey, Robles, Alcala, Clippard, Stashak and Thielbar with depth options I'm very optimistic regardless of who "closes" and when.

This. I think teams are realizing that paying a premium for a "proven" closer is usually a poor use of resources, and multi-year contracts for relievers has higher levels of risk not because of the talent of the pitcher but just because of the fungible nature of the position.

It's tough to succeed as a starter without 3 effective pitches. As a reliever, you need one dominant offering and one other pitch that is effective playing off the first pitch. Which is why you're seeing starters who have that one dominant pitch and can't get their secondary stuff up to snuff continuing to have success converting to the bullpen. The secondary effect of that is you are having additional internal options for teams to develop bullpen options for the MLB club, because it's not just guys coming through as relievers. With the chain continuing to fill, what's the incentive to pay FA guys premium salaries?

The days of paying "closers" $10-15M AAV contracts is done, and so is giving guys that kind of money for 3-5 years. You're going to see a lot more guys getting non-tendered as relievers from now on I think as clubs reset the market on relief pitching. If Taylor Rogers doesn't have a great season, he's going to be non-tendered too because the team probably isn't going to pay him $8M when his FA market value is $5M or less.

Why is this?

 

I think there are (at least) two reasons to doubt outcome statistics for relievers. First, one season is a small sample size for a typical relief pitcher -- 50-70 innings. One bad/unlucky outing (4 earned runs, say) can take a month of shutout pitching to dilute down to a decent ERA. Second, more of their outcome statistics are out of their control than any other player. They often leave runners on base who may or may not score and they may end up facing clutch pinch hitters selected specifically to face them.

 

I'm a skeptic about the tendency of some to denigrate outcome-based statistics, but this seems like one area where structural performance numbers such as velocity, spin rate, and detailed location data can be most helpful and ERA is less useful, at least season by season.

This is a really great point. I haven’t thought about it this way. PDX Twin, expanding minds!

Good plan....if you have a nice lead in the 9th.

How about bring in what you need when you need it..........

Gardy drove me nuts with his "everyone has a role" B.S.