Twins 5, Angels 1: Simeon Woods Richardson and the Twins Bullpen Silence the Halos

14 hours ago, bean5302 said:

Baldelli doing his absolute best to wipe the bullpen out at record speed. SWR's last fastball was 94mph. 86 pitches. Mid inning. 3 run lead.

Guy on base and multi time former MVP coming up and SWR was living by his 4 seamer on Saturday…… not the best match-up to get out of an inning unscathed. Stewart came in and threw 6 pitches. I just do not understand the issue with the bullpen use?

Varland is on pace for 84 innings - that’s a bunch for many PEN guys but Varland has been a starter until now and is a horse……still, he is at top end usage with this approach.

Duran is on pace to throw 67 innings & Jax is on pace to throw 66 innings.

Sands - Alcala - Coulombe are on pace for 60-61 innings ……… Topa 55 innings.

Starters typically throw more innings after first handful of starts.

Where’s the abuse? Is the expectation for these guys to throw less innings than shown here? 26 weeks in the regular season …… 68 innings over the year is 2.62 innings per 7 day week………I’ve posted these same comments 4 times in last couple weeks…….I don’t get what I’m missing?

Typical for a minimum of 3 PEN arms per game……..get used to it as it isn’t changing. 2024 - 5.24 innings per start across MLB….. Twins were at 5.26 innings per start. SWR was 5.33 innings in yesterday ……… pretty standard move going to Stewart.

3 hours ago, Mark G said:

I am not sure I would use the word destroy as my choice of semantics, but I concur with Bean5302 100% as to bullpen usage.  As he stated, the number of pitches each reliever throws in each game is not the point; the point is we are playing with fire every game we use 4 or 5 (or more?) pitchers in a game, regardless of pitch count for either the pen or the starter.  

If a starter stays healthy and pitches his every 5 games, he will start 32 (give or take 1) games over the course of the season.  That is 32 times we are hoping he will have his best stuff and can keep us in the game and give us a chance to win.  When he does not have his best stuff and is getting roughed up, we take him out and hope the bullpen can keep the lid on until we can score some runs.  When he does have his best stuff we should be riding that start as long as possible, limiting the number of pitchers we have to use that game.  Again, pitch count has nothing to do with either the starter or the pen; it is counting on each pitcher in the game to have their good stuff to get us through and win the game.  A starter only pitches in 32 games; a reliever who stays healthy all year and is used as often as we use ours will enter anywhere from 50ish games to possibly 70ish, meaning we are hoping he has his best stuff approx. twice as often as any of our starters.  If any one of the guys from the pen on any given day has a bad outing, runs score and games can be lost.  Why, then, would we want to average 3-4 relievers a game all season long when our starter has his good stuff?  He will come out early on the days he does not, and stay in on the days he does; it will even out in the end, and the pen will not be taxed to the degree we tax ours.  When plan A is to use 3-5 pitchers a game, every game, there is no way around the fact the pen will be taxed beyond what would be considered desirable.  Of course we should pull the starter when he is off, but we should also ride him when he is on fire; the pitch count will even out over the course of the season.  Pitch counts don't matter for relievers, nor do innings pitched, anywhere near as much as number of games pitched in, which is the number of times he can affect the outcome of the game, good or bad.  And that is going to be high when we use the pen 40-45% of all innings pitched, which we will with Plan A.  

And round and round it goes; where it stops, nobody knows.  😉

It’s April 26th.

As you state, Team is at or higher than MLB average in starter innings in recent 2 seasons.

The point that I assume everyone understands is that a reliever’s potential to be sharp or even just “serviceable” is a much higher % since his outing is going to be an assumed 8-25 pitches based on effectiveness that day. Max effort 2-3 innings per week breeds much more success.

Other than Varland, nobody projects more than 67 innings over the season. I gotta disagree that innings for relievers are moot. If a guy throws 1 2/3 one day and another 2 innings 3 days later his potential to keep runs surrendered down is not as good as if he throws 1 inning 3 times over 7 days…….this is treating “relievers” all the same and not distinguishing long guys v. short ……. relievers that are tailored to face 3-5 guys per inning are going to have better outing to outing ERA success than guys that “pitch less often” and throw to 6-11 guys and get more outs per outing.

Look at the Guardians PEN usage. They have a potential problem with games pitched and reliever innings - 7 guys  with 60-75 appearances (5 guys at 72 innings plus and same # of potential appearances) ……. pretty different look than Rocco’s screwed up usage of his Pen.

2 hours ago, Mark G said:

My question back would be: should it be?  Should that be standard?

If the starting rotation was the weak link of the team and was simply not very good, your post would make sense, and I would be riding the train you are on, not the one I am on.  But we are being told that our rotation is strong, very good in fact, so why do we want your stats to be plan A year in and year out?  Do we really want every one of those guys pitching that often?  And I still submit it is not the number of innings, or the number of pitches, but the number of appearances; the number of times in a season they need to have their stuff going for them or it can cost us a game.  And when 3-4 pen guys a game almost every game parade in, all it takes is one to blow up a close game if they are off.  On a team with a strong rotation, is the above usage you point to the most desirable plan?  

I have said this before as well, it is a debate that is worthy of having, but it cannot be won.  I am just glad it is respectful and logical.  ☺️

If the TWINS / ROCCO were on an island with Pen usage …. whether it be appearances or pitches or innings…… then I might be swayed. Twins use their starters and relievers as well or better than a big majority of successful teams.

Checkout the Guardians Pen usage.

Our staff is solid - talent amongst the Rotation guys but not necessarily a lot of guile via experience, at this point. Festa - SWR are “becoming every 5th day guys” ……. Lopez threw 5 innings with mediocre command in his first stint off the IL - no reason to push his innings.

Our Pen, on paper, is supposed to be Top 5 or close, so not to use them as needed or as the Manager sees fit, seems like a poor approach to me. IMO, if offense was worth 2 cents and we had another 3-4 wins, nobody would be worried about Pen appearances.

Paddack is not a 32 start guy (he’s not!) so they protect him - Festa is trying to become an every 5th day, 30 start guy - SWR is trying to build to 160 innings this year. All this is in the interest of keeping guys competitive over 162 games and trying to set team up to win as much as possible. There’s no Pennant Flag for being “Top 5 in starter innings” at end of September.

15 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

Based on the "mean" not the median not the mode. The problem with mean is it distorts the most common outcomes.

MLB Rank for Starting Innings Pitched:
Tampa Bay Rays = 23rd (811 innings), 5.00 innings
Minnesota Twins = 14th (855 innings), 5.28 innings

Adjusted to remove openers.
Tampa Bay = 148 GS, 788.1 IP, 5.33 per start
Minnesota = 160 GS, 851.0 IP, 5.32 per start.

We were talking about mean vs. median. Let's compare the conventional starters and each individual mean to get an idea of the philosophy of each manager.
Tampa Bay = 5.39 (29), 5.52 (25), 5.00 (26), 5.78 (19), 5.11 (17), 5.67 (14), 5.07 (9), 4.71 (7)
Minnesota = 5.79 (32), 5.76 (31), 5.87 (23), 4.77 (28), 5.20 (17), 4.62 (13), 4.19 (9), 4.62 (7)

Bolded towards the end is the problem there. That's a WHOLE lot of commonly short starts. The Twins came out of the gate okay because Joe Ryan's early season starts were helping to get the bullpen some rest while SWR and Paddack wiped them out. But I'm going to tell you right now, over usage of the bullpen takes a harder hit on the pitchers recovery time and effectiveness than just using the mean recovery time. The Twins' bullpen was already at their limit when Joe Ryan went down, only to be replaced with guys who were making 4 inning starts.

Baldelli pulls guys too early.

I have a degree but took stats last in 1982 ……. not really sure what you are getting at with the parentheses, etc.? I can look at Baseball Reference and the number of appearances & innings for all the pitchers on the Staff are shown…….. there is nothing there regarding mode nor mean nor median…… simply appearances and innings. I see nothing in those numbers suggesting over use of the guys in the Pen………should the Guardian’s Manager be fired? Do the Guradians have some reliever superpowers?

Again, the Pen innings are an average of use across all games. If they use less Pen innings when Ober/Ryan/Lopez pitch, I would think that would be logical. MLB average in ‘23 & ‘24 for all starter innings was 5.18 & 5.24 ……… Twin’s starters were more than these (slightly) average innings per start both years.

Not sure why openers would be omitted? These starts certainly impact Pen innings greatly - maybe Twins don’t do it often & you’re leveling with Tampa specifically (for unknown reason?).

Anyway, we obviously see this issue differently. Probably not going to change.

17 hours ago, bean5302 said:

It's not about Stewart throwing 6 pitches, it's about needing a reliever for the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th innings. SWR showed signs of dead arm at 120 innings. If his limit is 86 pitches, he should be in the bullpen. We've seen Baldelli destroy his bullpen year after year with short starts and we've watched the late season collapses that come from it.

Last year’s failures were due to Ryan & Paddack not being available and thus forcing Festa & Matthews into action, neither prepared between the ears but the most talented of Team’s young group of options. The other hiccup was Varland proving (by late April) not to be valid as a starter. So, Team had a 23 year old that hadn’t thrown innings expected in the Show over season, forced into action - SWR, and Festa & Matthews. How does the Pen NOT get used regularly with these circumstances? The Manager would need to be David Copperfield to have it look any other way.

The Team’s collapse the last 6 weeks of the season in ‘24 was 90% offensive output (lack of) related……a subjective % from my viewpoint.