Twins Video
Sonny Gray was the 2023 Minnesota Twins Most Valuable Player. He’s also an impending free agent, and all signs point to him not being a Minnesota Twin in 2023. He will likely reject the one-year, $20 million qualifying offer, and the Derek Falvey regime has never signed a starting pitcher to the money that Gray’s market will demand.
If Gray is not returning, he has to be replaced. However, replacing Gray could mean several different things. The answer to “How will the Twins replace Sonny Gray?” probably depends on what you personally mean by “Sonny Gray.” Here are five interpretations of what “replacing Sonny Gray” means and what it would take in free agency.
A Starting Pitcher
This one is the easiest. If Sonny Gray is gone, the bare minimum that needs to happen is that he is replaced in the starting rotation. Technically, any pitcher will do. Gray threw 184 innings in 2023—the third most of his career and his most innings since 2015. Someone needs to throw those innings.
That someone could be an internal option like Louie Varland or David Festa or any free agent pitcher, even someone in the Old Friend Kyle Gibson or Martin Perez Bin. For all of our sakes, it should not be one of them, but that’s the barest of minimums that prevents Nick Gordon from pitching every fifth day.
A Playoff Starter
Gray started two of the Twins’ six playoff games in 2023. Although he did not pitch Game 1, as the honor was given to Pablo Lopez, in many seasons Gray would have been given the ball to start the first game of the postseason. Lopez made two starts, and Joe Ryan and Bailey Ober were each given a start, though they were effectively used as openers.
Perhaps in 2024, the two younger arms will have earned the trust to be a true playoff starter, but that, again, is a role that will be necessary to fill. If Gray does not return, there needs to be another starter in the rotation that the Twins feel comfortable handling a spot in the playoff rotation.
Gray had a season that set him up to be a Game 1 or 2 starter, but someone also needs to pitch a Game 3 or 4. Hypothetically, that would be a top-40 pitcher in the league, at minimum. Eduardo Rodriguez and Michael Wacha, or someone of that ilk, would fit this role.
A Frontline Starter
Gray was not just a quality starter; he performed as one of the top starters in baseball. Every five days, he was one of the pitchers trusted to keep his team in every game he started. Although he only won eight games, the Twins had his starts circled on their calendars as winnable games, regardless of who they played.
Replacing that type of starter is increasingly more work. On the free agent market, you’re getting into the $20 million average annual value space. Replacing Gray this way would require finding another pitcher to pair with Lopez as a 1, a 1b, or a 2. At the barest of minimums, this starter would need to be better than Joe Ryan—though Ryan has shown flashes of getting to this level himself.
Bringing in that frontline starter, if not Gray, would require shopping in the Aaron Nola or Yoshinobu Yamamoto market. There are only a handful of these players, and they’re expensive. Derek Falvey, although he has courted this type of pitcher in the past, has never successfully signed one as a free agent.
A Cy Young Candidate
Gray will finish at minimum in the top three spots for the American League Cy Young Award, meaning that he performed at an elite level in 2023, doing all that the Twins could have asked of him when they traded the 2021 first-round pick Chase Petty for him.
That type of pitcher, as it stands, does not reside in the free agent list. There are no Gerrit Coles or Justin Verlanders. The moment has passed for current free agent Clayton Kershaw. The closest match is that of Blake Snell, a former winner himself, who is surrounded by questions related to his walk rate and age,
Any team hoping to sign a Cy Young-caliber starter in free agency in any year without the budget of the Yankees or the Dodgers is fighting a losing battle. Gray himself is not that guy. He probably just pitched the best season of his career, and he’s reached his mid-30s. Even re-signing him doesn’t fill that hole.
Approximately Five Wins Above Replacement
This concept was explored recently by Hunter McCall. Gray, according to both FanGraphs and Baseball Reference, was worth approximately 5 WAR. As discussed in the previous section, it’s hard to find a solution in free agency that will make up for his loss on its own. Sonny Gray probably won’t have a 5 WAR season himself.
To paraphrase Moneyball, the Twins need to replace Gray in the aggregate. It doesn’t need to a single replacement worth 5 WAR. Unless they were to trade for a player and make a year-to-year improvement with him as they did with Lopez, that WAR must come from multiple sources.
The Twins are replacing both Gray and Kenta Maeda (about 1.5 WAR) this offseason—presumably with Chris Paddack and some other pitcher. If the Twins were to sign a top-flight free agent who was worth 4 WAR in 2024, and Paddack was worth 3 WAR, they would have made up for Gray in the aggregate. If the new free agent was worth 2.5 WAR, Paddack was worth 2.5, and then Ryan and Ober each raised their own by 1 WAR, they will have made up for Gray’s absence in the aggregate. There are many ways to reach that magic number, but whatever the Twins come up with must work.
The solution and necessary work come down to the interpretation of what Gray meant to this year’s team. What is your read on the situation? What do you need to see from the Twins to believe that Gray will have been replaced in 2024? Leave a comment.
Recommended Comments
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now