Coming Soon: Starting Pitching (But How Soon?)

They're all individual cases, of course. Radke obviously did alright in his jump from AA to the big leagues, though that took a little time too.

 

My point with that paragraph is that all we have are stats and numbers and a few scouting reports... and so much more goes into evaluating when a player is ready to come up. Some of it is the "intangibles."  So, I just don't think we can look at the numbers and say "yes, he's ready," or, to be fair, "No, he's not ready." 

I agree completely.    I am not really pushing that any or all of them get promoted to the Twins.    All three appear to be pitching fantastic in their last handful of starts which kind of shouts "I can do better than Nick Turley!"    but if there are good reasons for them to be where they are then so be it.    I just don't like the idea of saying "Hey, this guy has great command, three plus pitches, has thrown 6 great starts in a row but he is not ready.   If he does the exact same thing for X number or more games, then he will be ready"   Just appears arbitrary.    If its not arbitrary then fine.   If it is arbitrary then they might as well be getting over their major league jitters period rather than Turley.

I'm a bit jaded by the lack of success from other recent SP call-ups... And don't want to rely on prospects like Gonsalves, Romero, or Jorge having immediate success while the team is trying to contend. 

I would be right with you if we hadn't given Nick Turley 3 starts.    In 2006 we promoted Matt Garza, arguably before he was ready but he still gave us a 3-6 record and a 5 ERA  but it still might have given us one win over what the next guy would have done and I don't think it did him any permanent harm.   It wouldn't have surprised me if they had said Liriano needs three more starts before he is ready for promotion but if they had we would have had three less awesome starts before he went down to injury.   

Its not a blanket statement that pitchers can't succeed right away, but what if they see some of the same things in these guys that they saw in Berrios before he came up?

I was all for keeping Berrios in the minors because he had command issues even though still successful.   Legitimate reason for not promoting.    If there are legitimate reasons and things they are working on then that is the place to do it.   No argument.     As Seth said, they are just stats.     I am not making a blanket statement in either direction.  I just don't like it to be arbitrary or formulaic.    

I would move Jorge up to AAA fairly soon and see how he does pounding the strike zone against a little more advanced hitters and keep him in the mix to be pulled up to the MLB level should he stay effective and we continue to have collapses in the rotation. The concern on him is going to be whether his stuff will play against the higher levels of competition, so it's probably going to be a good idea to see if he can move up a level before testing him at MLB.

Romero is a guy whose stuff I love, but I'd like to see him get a better handle on a third pitch, and AA is a reasonable place to do it. Getting him through a full minor league season and increasing his innings is also a good goal for someone like him so he'll be ready to operate at AAA next season and maybe compete for a MLB job. Until he gets a third pitch, he's Tyler Duffey and I'd like for him to be a starter instead of a bullpen guy.

Gonsalves is the guy I really like, but the health worries me. He lost some development time this year and I do not want to blow out his damn shoulder by pressing too hard.

I'm more on the patience approach with these guys. Keep them moving along, but I'm not seeing a compelling reason for their development to be super-accelerated by promoting them directly from AA this season.

Given that Romero will at some point be shut down due to innings, the pen actually does make sense. He may learn a thing or two and collect a major league check for a couple months. Not a bad deal.

I told him pretty much the same thing this spring training.  He had a big smile on his face and said we'll see.  From conversations with him, he'd love to stay a starter but he'd be happy as hell just to be in the big leagues.

If they are willing to move on from Hughes as a starter, then I can see adding a FA or a SP in a trade. Even w/o him....you have:

 

Santana

Berrios

Santiago

Mejia

Gibson

May

Gonsalves

Jorge

Romero

 

Assuming you let one of Gibson/Santiago go....you think they'd let them both go?......do you think they'll go get one?

Santiago's 2018 salary + Gibson's 2018 would make one very good pitcher, if signed for about $16 million a year.  Gibson should get about $5 million and Santiago should be able to get at least 10-13 million a year for 3 years.  That is the price of starting pitching now.  I would rather let both walk and sign 1 very good pitcher for the combination money, than to keep 2 OK or less starting pitchers.

Gibson is a fine pitcher at cheap value, if you are not a contending club.  Otherwise your starting pitching needs to be better(even if you do not ever plan on Gibson starting a playoff game). 

I would love to hear a straight answer from Twins player development as to what those three need to work on. It seems Twins Daily has the connections to get that answer.

Who is blocking those guys in AAA? Not Slegers and certainly not Gee, Pino, Tepesch, Melville, or Turley.

Without the player development insight, I would promote Gonsalves and Romero to AAA now. Jorge can stay where he is at and work on missing bats.

If Gonsalves pitches well in AAA, the Twins could burn an option on him this year if/when he is needed. Or he could come up and stick without burning an option. He certainly would be a consideration in September, depending on how the playoff race plays out.

If Romero pitches well in AAA, he could come up in August and stick in the bullpen for the rest of the year.

I don't put much stock in Slegers unless his velo picks up 2-3 ticks in the bullpen or he develops an out pitch like a splitter. With his control and long fingers, he could possibly develop a heck of a splitter.

We also have the forgotten prospect in AAA for the back of rotation in Sledgers. He is 7-4 with an era around 4 and he chews up innings.

Isn't this a both-and situation? The bottom three in the rotation are so bad that there will be room for Gonsalves/Jorge/Romero even if they trade for a decent starter. So they can get big-league innings. But at the same time, I think it is completely crazy to rely on any of those three to be an effective contributor in late September or in playoffs, both from a performance and workload standpoint. Going out and getting a legitimate #2-3 starter does not preclude them from giving innings to the young guys.

 

Personally, I think jerking Romero back and forth between the rotation and the bullpen is a bad idea.

Its not a choice of switching him back and forth between relieving and starting.  I'd be an innings limit thing.  Its entirely possible that with an innings limit, he only has 7 or 8 starts left this season and he would be shut down.  Would it make more sense to give him 4 or 5 more starts, then 10-15 relief appearances at the majors?  Other big time starters have gone that route (Price, Sale, Scherzer).  It wouldn't be the craziest thing in the world. 

Why would they shut down or limit Romero to 90 innings last year, just to give him more in instructs? Wouldn't they rather those innings came in actual games?

Also, if you are weighting instruct innings equally, don't you also have to weight major and minor league spring training innings? He probably had more of those in 2017 than 2016, given his late start last year.

I don't know much about instructs either, so I am not sure of the numbers or how they should be weighted.

I imagine there are a lot of reasons they'd put more in instructionals.  Maybe they wanted him working on another pitch and didn't want that happening in real games.  Maybe they wanted to give him 6, 7 or 8 days rest between pitching, which would really hamper the roster of a minor league team.  Who knows.

A quick search on limits of pitches or innings produces very little scientific evidence one way or another.     It seems that the real reason for it is CYA.     If you don't baby a pitcher and he needs surgery you can be blamed but if you do baby him and he needs surgery you can say "look at how I did everything I could to protect him".   It sure seems like a pitcher  that is shut down due to innings ends up tearing something the next Spring Training often enough any way.  

 The only scientific evidence I saw   suggested that it is not pitch count or number of starts or batters faced but rather innings worked that counts with the reasonable conclusion of sitting 10 minutes each half inning before having to go out there again being the critical factor.    This makes some sense since when I am golfing and moving I am fine but if I have to wait 10 minutes for the group ahead of me and I sit while I wait, I definitely notice the difference in my muscles and joints.    If I am active while waiting I might lose my swing rhythm but not out of stiffness.    Maybe the very best way to protect arms is as simple as having the pitcher soft toss in between innings. 

And the funny thing is that everyone on these boards were clamoring for Turley to be given a shot because of the dominance he showed in AA, and in that last start in AAA before the call up. That's why I still think that Turley can be a decent reliever. Even in his good minor league starts, his command and number of strikeouts meant he wasn't going to eat many innings. And I'm not saying that we should compare Turley's AA numbers to Romero, Gonsalves and Jorge, but it is a good illustration that it has to be more than just about the stats. 

Maybe I was unfair and definitely ignorant.   I   missed the clamoring for Turley so was thinking he was just another of the not best options put out there for other political or operational reasons.

Given that Romero, Gonsalves and Jorge have not pitched above the AA level makes any chance of a fall callup unlikely.  If they had started the year at AAA the situation would be different.