The Model for a 90-Win Twins Team This Year (Even with Injuries)

While I  totally agree that 90 wins should win the Central,  in the playoffs your opponent usually has equally good pitching if not better. The team that scores more runs in each game wins 100% of the time, hence the need for better offense which the Twins did not address.

We look good on paper, IMO Fangraph has figured in the injuries. Hopefully, injuries will have less of an impact, which should even help our chances. If we eliminate our biggest defensive problem (Julien) that should help our cause even more. If Miranda is left at 1B/ DH & kept away from 3B that will help us offensively along with if France finds himself. Last season SP depth was lacking which paid an early toll on Paddack then later Ryan on the IL. Simmy along with Festa & Matthews were over-stretched & put forth less than desired innings at the end but did not break. This season I expect a very strong Lopez, Ober & Ryan along with more seasoned rookies. Expect SWR & Paddack to start the season in the rotation but hope Festa & Matthews used a lot to spell them.  The BP is ranked the best so we'll have to see.

But reality normally doesn't agree with what's on paper. There are too many intangibles, like management, like keep on playing acquired veterans over & over again when they stink, leadership, chemistry etc. But I'm hopeful that young players like Miranda, Martin & Keirsey will take that extra step when called upon. With that I'm hopeful that management will end up making the right decisions & put forth the best team w/o bias to win the division & advance into the postseason.

Good pitching wins games but bad defense loses games. I hope the defense is better than it appears, but time will tell. Last year's September meltdown was an all around mess, but the defense cost the Twins several games (back-to-back in Tampa).

40 minutes ago, Aerodeliria said:

Good pitching wins games but bad defense loses games. I hope the defense is better than it appears, but time will tell. Last year's September meltdown was an all around mess, but the defense cost the Twins several games (back-to-back in Tampa).

I’ll add on here a little.  Good pitching means more lower scoring games where a defensive mistake is even worse.  Hopefully the defense can be competent.

Nick addresses the primary issues.  90 wins is possible IF:
1) The big 3 SP stay healthy enough to make 25 starts each.
2) The mixture of SWR, Paddack, Festa, and Matthews pitch close to SP4/SP5 quality.
3) Correa, Buxton, Lewis stay healthy enough to play 125 games each.
4) Larnach, Wallner, Castro, Jeffers, Miranda all have OPS+ over 100

There are a lot of IFs, but nothing that unattainable.  I think the Twins margin for error right now is extremely small.  If any of of the above mentioned items do not happen, the Twins chances for 80 wins (much less 90) drop exceedingly fast.

Pitching should be the strength of this team. We've got more legitimate depth than we've had in a long time, especially with near MLB ready pitchers. The offense and defense in the real question mark. If our big 3 of Buxton, Correa and Lewis can stay healthy for long chunks of the season we might be ok. I still think we need one more big bat, most likely at first base. Maybe if we have new owners by the trade deadline, and we're in a position to go for it, they make a splash and grab an impact bat. As always, healthy will be a major factor in the teams success this year.

26 minutes ago, Linus said:

I’ll add on here a little.  Good pitching means more lower scoring games where a defensive mistake is even worse.  Hopefully the defense can be competent.

The assumed starting defense is really looking spotty. Let's not forget Buxton has lost a few steps and is now merely a good CF, bookended by an atrocious Wallner and a barely adequate Larnach. 

I'll take great pitching any day. And I'm happy to see a stacked pitching corps. But the team also needs to score runs. I played with some numbers to compare the Twins, Guardians, and Tigers. 

The Twins had 61 games where they scored fewer than 3 runs and only won 21.3% of those games. The Guards by comparison had 55 under 3 games of which they won 27.3%. The Tigers, who had great pitching, were in between and had 59 games with 28.8% wins. So in both cases, not only did the other two have fewer low scoring games, but they won more of those low scoring games than the Twins. 

Looking at just 1 run games. The Twins had 15, all of which they lost. The Guardians had 11 and lost all of theirs too. The Tigers had 21 1-run games but they won 3 of theirs. Had the Twins won just one of theirs, they would have made the playoffs (EDIT... Royals tied for second, not the Twins... whoops). 

A little more shockingly, the Twins had more 2 run games than the other two (25) and lost all but one of those. Meanwhile, Guardians went 5-17 and the Tigers went 7-11. 

Interesting that the Twins had a winning percentage of 57.1% on 3 run games, indicating that they DID have good pitching when they needed it, but a full 40 of their games -- almost 25% of games -- they gave their pitchers almost zero chance of getting the win. Bob Gibson wouldn't be able to save them in most of those cases.

So... Yes, better pitching would have made the difference last year (if they were able to scrape even just one more win from a 1 or 2 run game). But had they made the playoffs, the better teams would have likely walked all them when a collapsed offense means your pitchers have to be perfect. 

It'll be an interesting year. Small market teams can't have it all. Hopefully they score a couple more runs AND have lights out pitching. 

I'll be curious to see if this team does better in extra-inning game this season? they out-scored their opponents 77-74 in extras last season but went 5-9. 

Better performance in inter-league games would certainly make a difference, and it looks like there was some bad luck there too: 18-28 record but only got out-scored by 15 runs. Need to do better against a team like Miami, where they were even on runs in the 3 game set, but lost 2 out of 3.

The pitching depth really does look good this season, and a little decent luck injury-wise will make a huge difference. there's a lot to like about this Twins team: the rotation and the bullpen both look good and deep. there's all-star talent at multiple positions. It's also a very likable bunch of players, which certainly doesn't hurt: it's very easy to root for guys like Buxton, Lewis, Jeffers, Wallner, Castro, Lopez, Ryan, Ober, Jax, etc

Hope springs eternal for baseball in February. Looking forward to talking about what the Twins are doing on the field ASAP and less about the payroll and ownership.

26 minutes ago, Muppet said:

I'll take great pitching any day. And I'm happy to see a stacked pitching corps. But the team also needs to score runs. I played with some numbers to compare the Twins, Guardians, and Tigers. 

The Twins had 61 games where they scored fewer than 3 runs and only won 21.3% of those games. The Guards by comparison had 55 under 3 games of which they won 27.3%. The Tigers, who had great pitching, were in between and had 59 games with 28.8% wins. So in both cases, not only did the other two have fewer low scoring games, but they won more of those low scoring games than the Twins. 

Looking at just 1 run games. The Twins had 15, all of which they lost. The Guardians had 11 and lost all of theirs too. The Tigers had 21 1-run games but they won 3 of theirs. Had the Twins won just one of theirs, they would have made the playoffs (EDIT... Royals tied for second, not the Twins... whoops). 

A little more shockingly, the Twins had more 2 run games than the other two (25) and lost all but one of those. Meanwhile, Guardians went 5-17 and the Tigers went 7-11. 

Interesting that the Twins had a winning percentage of 57.1% on 3 run games, indicating that they DID have good pitching when they needed it, but a full 40 of their games -- almost 25% of games -- they gave their pitchers almost zero chance of getting the win. Bob Gibson wouldn't be able to save them in most of those cases.

So... Yes, better pitching would have made the difference last year (if they were able to scrape even just one more win from a 1 or 2 run game). But had they made the playoffs, the better teams would have likely walked all them when a collapsed offense means your pitchers have to be perfect. 

It'll be an interesting year. Small market teams can't have it all. Hopefully they score a couple more runs AND have lights out pitching. 

These are interesting numbers.  Thanks for compiling them.  Of course they can be parsed a bunch of different ways like lack of situational hitting that would push them over the top.  I would also guess if we looked at those games we would find a mistake on the bases or in the field that cost us that all important run.

We got plenty of good offense, just need to stay healthy. Especially the big 3 of Lewis, Correa and Buxton.

46 minutes ago, Muppet said:

I'll take great pitching any day. And I'm happy to see a stacked pitching corps. But the team also needs to score runs. I played with some numbers to compare the Twins, Guardians, and Tigers. 

The Twins had 61 games where they scored fewer than 3 runs and only won 21.3% of those games. The Guards by comparison had 55 under 3 games of which they won 27.3%. The Tigers, who had great pitching, were in between and had 59 games with 28.8% wins. So in both cases, not only did the other two have fewer low scoring games, but they won more of those low scoring games than the Twins. 

Looking at just 1 run games. The Twins had 15, all of which they lost. The Guardians had 11 and lost all of theirs too. The Tigers had 21 1-run games but they won 3 of theirs. Had the Twins won just one of theirs, they would have made the playoffs (EDIT... Royals tied for second, not the Twins... whoops). 

A little more shockingly, the Twins had more 2 run games than the other two (25) and lost all but one of those. Meanwhile, Guardians went 5-17 and the Tigers went 7-11. 

Interesting that the Twins had a winning percentage of 57.1% on 3 run games, indicating that they DID have good pitching when they needed it, but a full 40 of their games -- almost 25% of games -- they gave their pitchers almost zero chance of getting the win. Bob Gibson wouldn't be able to save them in most of those cases.

So... Yes, better pitching would have made the difference last year (if they were able to scrape even just one more win from a 1 or 2 run game). But had they made the playoffs, the better teams would have likely walked all them when a collapsed offense means your pitchers have to be perfect. 

It'll be an interesting year. Small market teams can't have it all. Hopefully they score a couple more runs AND have lights out pitching. 

Just checked the numbers compared to the 95 Braves, which is the best pithing team in my memory (3 HOF starting pitchers all in their prime!). Interestingly, they won with fewer 1 and 2 run games (16 and 13 respectively) than the Twins (25 and 15). They did, however win 9 out of 29 of those games (9-20). They also won 15 of 25 of their 3 run games (15-10) making them an almost impossible to beat team. They both had fewer low scoring games AND they were harder to beat on those games. So in the 95 Braves case, they had better offense and better pitching than the Twins.  So for the Twins to make this a world series year, Buxton, Correa, Lewis, and maybe even Julien, Miranda, and Wallner will all be competing for AL MVP. It could happen. 

13 minutes ago, amjgt said:

Interesting.... and said a bit more simply....

The Twins only won 1 game all season where they scored less than 3 runs. 

That's actually pretty amazing.

Even more amazing is that when we add zero run games, the Twins had 50 games where they had next to zero chance of winning. That's almost 30% of games that are sure losses. I don't know how much that compares to other teams, but you'd hope to win at least 15% of 1 to 2 run games. 

Loved the article, Nick.  Also got a good smile out of a lot of the comments.  Thanks guys!

Don't have a clue whether or not they will win 90 or more.  Also don't know if that will win the Central.  What I do know is they gotta play the games for us to find out.  With the Twins being available all over our television sets this summer, its gonna be a good one.

48 minutes ago, amjgt said:

Wallner was 0 DRS last season (and -2 for his career), and right in the middle of the pack for players with more than 300 OF innings last season. Trevor Larnach was also 0 DRS

I'm not going to tell you he's a GOOD defender, but "atrocious" in inaccurate. 

Austin Martin, however, WAS atrocious. 

That's one good metric. OAA is another, but the one that I find so fascinating, probably since it's so easily understood, is outfield jump from Statcast. Thank you to which ever TD author wrote about that metric recently. Of the 180 OF last year that met a certain minimum, Wallner covered more ground than only 2 other outfielders. And that is consistent with 2023, where he was 177th out of 181. 

He must be a bit better at the catch point than some of those comparable outfielders, because he's not as quite bad as Yordan Alvarez or Kyle Schwarber. But he's definitely not covering much ground out there. 

Feet covered in 3 seconds: 

OK. One more attempt to beat the dead horse of small numbers. 

Looking at the 24 Guardians, Tigers, and Twins. Also including the LA Dodgers (WS) and 95 Braves (possibly best pitching team in modern baseball) for comparison.

I always like to think that if the team can score 3 runs, then they give their pitchers (if they are very good) a chance to win the game. So I ordered this list by games. 

So, when scoring 3 runs, the Twins actually did a pretty good job of winning coming in at just below the best pitching team in recent history. Good job Bailey, Joe, and Pablo (and Baldelli for leaving Pagan out of these games). They even beat out all of the other teams that pummeled them in the standings last season. 

So since scoring less than three runs shifts the blame to hitters rather than pitchers, I ordered these by  number of games (yellow highlighting the best win percentage and brownish highlighting the second best win pct). 

Here's where the differences that separate out the winning teams from losers start to be apparent. The Twins led this pack with 40 games with 1 or 2 runs scored. AND they won the fewest of these games. Bob Gibson would have lost a lot of these games, but not all of them... as can be seen by the 95 Braves winning 31%. For me, in these games, we can't possibly blame the pitching no matter how good it was. 

Finally, when we add 0 runs scored to those 1-2 run games it becomes clear that the way to win games is to score at least some runs. 
 

The Twins were only more pathetic than the Tigers in that the Tigers actually managed to win 10 of these games. The best pitchers in the world won the highest percent, but ultimately managed to win the world series by only getting into this situation 33 times. Same with the Dodgers. 

Great pitching only matters when your hitters aren't terrible. But after you score a few runs... that pitching makes a big difference.  A lot of numbers and spreadsheets to explain something we all probably already knew. 

Thanks to coming to my Ted Talk. I have to go work now. 

18 minutes ago, Nick Nelson said:

If all these things happen they'll win 100 games. 

You are incredibly more optimistic than I am.  Last year:

1) The big 3 SP combined for 86 starts, with Ryan ending with 23.
2) SWR, Paddack, and Festa all had positive WAR and ERA+ of 99, 85, and 83 respectively.
3) None of these 3 hit 125 games, Only Buxton played 100.
4) All of my listed names had OPS+ over 100.

Last year's team won 82 games.  You are telling me that if everyone back repeats what they did last year, 25 more games played from Buxton 40 more games from Lewis and Correa would result in an increase of 18 wins?  I am not even addressing the nearly 5 WAR lost in Santana and Kepler that was not really replaced...

 

The Twins have a good pitching staff.

The Twins have some decent bats.

The Twins don't run; they have a slow team.

The Twins are a below average team defensively.

The Twins can win 90 games if their pitchers are really good and their bats support the pitching.

Expect 83-87 wins, which could be enough to win the division.

40 minutes ago, Fire Dan Gladden said:

You are incredibly more optimistic than I am.  Last year:

1) The big 3 SP combined for 86 starts, with Ryan ending with 23.
2) SWR, Paddack, and Festa all had positive WAR and ERA+ of 99, 85, and 83 respectively.
3) None of these 3 hit 125 games, Only Buxton played 100.
4) All of my listed names had OPS+ over 100.

Last year's team won 82 games.  You are telling me that if everyone back repeats what they did last year, 25 more games played from Buxton 40 more games from Lewis and Correa would result in an increase of 18 wins?  I am not even addressing the nearly 5 WAR lost in Santana and Kepler that was not really replaced...

 

Yes