The Twins Keep Trusting the Opener, But Should They?

You can only rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic so many times.

I'm going to reject the premise that a relief pitcher "fails" any time they give up a single run in an inning. That's a ridiculously high standard that nobody meets.

Some teams seem to make it work, it hasn't worked for the Twins.

How about developing your pitchers and not be afraid of who your pitchers face.  Richardson has been here a year and a half, when do you take the training wheels off.  Last year the Guardians used an opener once and they had to throw a lot of their young pitchers out there due to injury.

My biggest fear is if it doesn't work, when will they stop using the strategy.  This organization does not like to admit mistakes because they are the smartest ones in the room and all of baseball.

Jax, Varland or Stewart maybe, big K guys who could "possibly" go 2 IP, otherwise no.

Lopez and Mathews being hurt, as well as Ober (injury??) stuck in some sort of funk, and Festa and SWR not being allowed to go through the line-up 3X does kind of handcuff the rotation at this point.   

And let's not get started about the (lack of) defense behind them, but facing extra batters and throwing extra pitches doesn't help.

Rocco is right he had the Brewers guessing. Guessing how many runs they would score.

As a former starting college pitcher I believe the opener strategy is absolutely stupid. A starting pitcher has a mental and physical routine that he goes through before every start. Using an opener disrupts that routine, especially if it is a home game. It makes it difficult to prepare physically when you are either sitting in the dugout for an inning after warming up or you are in the bullpen and trying to determine just when you will enter the game. All the naysayers will say that he is a professional and should be prepared no matter what the situation. I totally disagree. Having consistency in your preparation is important. In my opinion the opener strategy puts a starting pitcher at a disadvantage. Proof? The results speak for themselves.

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Despite the shaky outcomes, Baldelli made it clear that the club plans to stick with this approach

I feel like this is a crystallization of the Twins.

5 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

What?

A reliever who gives up a run in an inning failed. Particularly when it's this stupid "opener" thing. 

Relievers are going to give up runs, true. But when they do, thats a failure. Plain and simple. 

Limit the failures. But dont pretend they're not failures. 

So, if a starting pitcher gives up a run in the first inning, he's a failure? How about if Coulombe gives up one run but Festa would have given up more than one run in the same situation. Does that mean Coulombe is a failure for performing better than Festa?

If a reliever's worst case expectation is he occasionally gives up a single run in an inning, then he's a damned good reliever, not a failure.

This is looking more and more like a desperation attempt to further baby the back end of the rotation.  We (fans) are measuring how deep the start or appearance is by number of innings pitched and the Twins staff is measuring by the number of at bats that pitcher faces.  

If we compare the other pitchers that have been through the pipeline during their first two years at the MLB level, we seem to get similar results.  I included Joe Ryan even though he was an almost finished product when he came to the Twins and Paddack, since up until this year, he has not been a pitcher that goes deep into ballgames.

SWR  2022-2025 (1 start in both 2022 and 2023):  41 games and 18.4 AB/game

Festa 2024-2025: 21 games and 17.9 AB/Game

Ober 2021-2022: 31 games and 18.3 AB/Game

Ryan 2021-2022:  32 games and 20.0 AB/game

Paddack 2024-2025:  32 games and 20.8 AB/game

As stated above, Ryan was a nearly finished product when he was traded here.  Paddack is my control as a back of the rotation starter since he is a veteran.  As we can see, Paddack gets more run, likely because of his veteran status than the younger pitchers listed above.   IMO, Ober is the only pitcher here who has graduated the pipeline, and his AB's/game was below SWR's at a similar time in their respective careers.  The concept of never trusting a young pitcher seems to just be the Twins way.  Ober and Ryan in 2021-2022 were not the "bulk" pitcher with an opener in front of them.  They were allowed to start and figure it out.  The difference is that the team wasn't expected to compete in 2021 and 2022, especially when they faded so badly in 2022, whereas the expectation to compete in 2025 has brought added pressure to do something to save the season.

I personally think they should ditch the opener.  They don't have a reliever capable of going multiple quality innings like other teams when they use an opener.  The other issue of the opener is that when it doesn't work, as in the opener seeing 6+ batters in the inning, you're really stuck as to 1) leaving them out there to rot to get out of the inning, 2) bringing in your "starter" in the middle of an inning, or 3) waste another reliever to get out of the inning.  They also don't run into teams that suddenly turnover their lineups after the opener is out of the game (right Rocco?).  Starters just need to be more efficient with their pitches and this solution searching for a problem goes away.  When you have a batter 0-2 and then throw another 6 pitches to finally get them out, the starter is going to wear out quicker.  

There is difference in batters faced (BF) and at bats (AB) per game. Festa and Mathews both face 20 batters a game, Festa 420 BF/21 GMs, Mathews 260 BF/13 GMs. 

Joe Ryan 21-22: 22 BF/GM (704/32)

Bailey Ober 21-22: 19.5 BF/GM (606/31)

SWR 22-25: 20.7 BF/GM (848/41)

Paddack 24-25: 22.5 BF/GM (720/32)

And for the record, Paddack is 5 months older than Ryan, and has appeared in 1 more game over their careers...

I'm not a big fan of an opener, when a RP comes in & pitches 1 inning & a SP comes in & pitches to X amount of batters. Because the mindset is different between the 2. What Baldelli did made sense, but in practice, it normally doesn't work unless both are ingrained in this process for the necessary amount of time to get accustomed to it. I prefer the SP to open & go as long as possible & go with a long RP after that. If you want to interject LHRP in between, that's OK too. 

It’s working so well, so I guess do whatever the iPad in the dugout says to do.

The opener will only work if the SP or bulk innings guy can keep your team in the game and lately Festa, Ober, SWR and Paddack have been unable to do that. You also need enough quality arms in the bullpen that using one to open the game doesn't hurt your chances of having impact arms available in the late innings. I still don't understand why Adams isn't being given a chance. I would much rather see him as our long man/ opener/ piggyback starter over cast offs like Wentz and the new waiver wire pickup from MIA....