Twins Number One Starter? Bailey Ober.

The Twins rotation has been a pronounced strength all season despite an underperforming offense and injured bullpen dampening its results. Sonny Gray and Pablo López were both All-Stars, while Joe Ryan very well may have been if he hadn’t pitched the Sunday before the break. Kenta Maeda has pitched incredibly well in four of five starts since returning from the IL and carries a strong track record of effectiveness. But the Twins’ best starter at the moment didn’t even start the year on the active roster. I’m referring, of course, to John Bailey Ober.

That may seem like a hot take, but Ober has been truly impressive this year, posting a 156 ERA+ (meaning 56% above average) while throwing a quality start in 11 of his 16 turns in the rotation. For what it's worth, he is the only system-developed starter pitching for the Twins right now.

He also offers a unique skillset: At 6’9” his extension at release is in the 99th percentile among MLB starters, allowing his 91-92 MPH fastball to be a legitimate weapon when paired with an effective slider and changeup that he, most days, commands quite well. He walks very few hitters and has a 93rd percentile chase rate that results in a lot of weak contact. He also has the intestinal fortitude to rebound from rough innings, such as last week in Seattle (three runs in the first) or in May against the Giants (four runs in the first). In both outings he lasted at least five innings and didn't allow any further damage, saving the bullpen and keeping the deficit at a minimum. But when he's at his best, such as his start in Baltimore, he can be dominant:

But saying Ober is the best of the bunch right now isn’t all about his individual success; it’s also about the flaws of the other starters and how they have been amplified recently. Let's go through those individually.

Sonny Gray
Gray was great in April, but let's be honest, he hasn’t been great since. In broad terms, he is not only winless since that opening month, but he has had only three quality starts (out of 14). One of them, in Baltimore, happened when he exited the game after six innings, saying he was gassed (to date the only time Gray has ever agreed with a manager’s decision to remove him). That may have been a revelatory moment, as he wasn’t allowed to go back out and have his worst inning. In every start he makes, he cruises through about four of his innings, commanding his breaking pitches and confounding hitters with his vast repertoire.

Also in every start, he completely loses his command for a brief period. Sometimes he rebounds, like in his start at Target Field against the Orioles right before the break where he allowed six hits in the second inning, and none in any other inning. Sometimes he can’t get through a lineup a third time, like against Cleveland on June 3rd, where he looked dominant through six innings. In the seventh, however, he gave up his first homer of the year, and the lead, to light-hitting Will Brennan in a game the Twins eventually lost. His home run rate is elite, and that keeps his overall numbers solid (although his walk rate is an elevated 3.6 per nine innings), but it's hard to trust a pitcher who completely loses his ability to command the ball once per game.

It stems, I believe, from his refusal to give in to hitters, something Twins starters of the past didn't do enough of. During the past few decades, Twins’ starters would be so afraid to walk guys that they would seemingly rather give hitters a cookie down the middle than a free pass, which has hurt them in the playoffs and possibly in the development of pitchers like Jose Berrios.

Gray, by contrast, is so willing to walk guys rather than let them get a home run pitch, that he has given up four bases loaded walks already this year. It’s cool to see a guy paint the corners on a 3-2 pitch with men on base, but if you’re missing your spot by an inch or two, that can lead to lots of traffic, which we’ve seen over and over from Gray. I’m not sure if he is unable to get weak in-zone contact, or if he’s just too stubborn to pitch any other way. Either way, his winless streak is looking less and less like a mirage.

Pablo López
López has been average on the surface (in terms of ERA and wins), elite one level below the surface (strikeout to walk ratio, baseball savant page), and then pretty bad when it comes to combating the approaches opposing teams roll out against him. You can dink and dunk him into submission, and when he’s at that point, he can allow hard contact. Sometimes the dinks and dunks don’t fall for hits and he looks incredible, but when they do and he gets put into high stress situations, he tends to unleash his worst pitches of the day.

That was definitely the case in Oakland on July 15th when he coughed up a six run lead against a Triple-A caliber lineup. On June 24th against Detroit, he allowed three singles and a walk before a 0-2 mistake pitch to Zach McKinstry scored two on a sharp single that decided the game (it shouldn’t have, but it did). On June 1st against the Guardians, he cruised through five, saw the offense give him a 3-1 lead, and then promptly gave up six singles after a leadoff walk to blow the game. He’s good overall, and you have to love the strikeout rate, but if offenses like the Royals, Tigers and Guardians can get under his skin, that doesn't portend well for a playoff matchup.

Joe Ryan
Ryan has been legitimately good overall, but as the summer has heated up, so has his opponents’ home run rate. He has given up thirteen home runs in his last seven starts, and although we would all like to believe it was due to tipping pitches, making the change to wearing sleeves during his starts hasn’t helped much. Opponents are hitting .354 off of his sweeper/slider with four home runs, so it looks as though only one of his Driveline-sourced pitches has been worth the hype (his split-change has still been effective).

Unlike Gray and López, it seems as though working through trouble is a strength of Ryan’s, as he is the only one of the three to post an OBP under .300 with runners on (Gray at .342, Lopez at .324), which definitely passes the eye test. But he has yet to come up with a way to punish hitters who are looking to ambush him, particularly his fastball early in counts. He has a great strikeout to walk rate, amazing pitch values and a shutout against Boston, but his ERA since the end of May is 5.65 and opponents are slugging .493 against him in that time period. It's a thin slice, but he just hasn’t been that good since May outside of that shutout. Teams have adjusted to him and he needs to adjust back.

Meanwhile Ober simply has not had a bad start, and that has proven more and more valuable to a team that isn’t getting as many top-notch pitching performances as it did in April and May. It is fair to wonder if the team has an innings limit placed on Ober, as he has never pitched more than 109 innings in a season at either the college or professional level. Injuries have played a part in that, with nagging soft tissue injuries the main culprit, so it may be logical to find extra days of rest for him. Hopefully, the team isn’t considering a shutdown at a specific innings threshold, ala Stephen Strasburg in 2012.

If Ober pitches the rest of the year, he would be in line for about thirteen more starts. He is averaging nearly six innings per start, so even if you round that down to five and a half innings on average going forward, he is on pace for over 70 additional innings to the 112 he has already pitched between the majors and minors this year. It will be an interesting story to watch, as he offers the best combination of deception, command and ability to pitch through adversity of any of the Twins starting five. Perhaps a six man rotation featuring Dallas Keuchel could spread those innings out a bit.

Let's hope Ober is available in October, since he may give the team their best chance of winning game one of a playoff series.