Parker Hageman

We often mistake routine for inaction. Let's stop doing that. What do the Twins do with their pitchers during spring training, and how does it get them ready for Opening Day? Image courtesy of © Jonah Hinebaugh/Naples Daily News/USA Today Network-Florida / USA TODAY NETWORK As spring training season kicks into gear, the Minnesota Twins' pitchers are honing their craft with a meticulously planned routine to optimize performance for the upcoming season. While the casual observer might only catch glimpses of players on the field during games, the behind-the-scenes regimen is organized to ensure peak physical condition and mental acuity. Let's delve into what, precisely, the pitchers' spring training schedule entails and the objectives they aim to accomplish. At the core of the Twins pitchers' spring training routine is a structured three-day throwing cycle. The cycle consists of one side day (a bullpen with just a catcher or a live session with a hitter in the box) and two non-side days. This cycle is a common practice to ensure pitchers can maintain their skills. "This is what spring training is for. It's just kind of getting us broken in," said incoming reliever Josh Staumont. Staumont, who spent his career in the Royals organization, said this program is nothing new. "A three-day kind of thing that's just the standard practice field." Staumont added that pitchers might work toward a four-day cycle later in camp, including back-to-back live side days to replicate getting called to pitch in consecutive games. However, the three-day schedule is king as arms are ramping at the beginning of spring. During "side" days, not in-game action, pitchers focus primarily on bullpen sessions or live batting practice (BP). Side days are the time for pitchers to fine-tune their mechanics, work on specific pitches, and simulate game-like scenarios under the guidance of pitching coaches. The bullpen sessions allow pitchers to concentrate on their individual needs, whether that be refining their fastball command, perfecting the break on their curveball, or experimenting with new pitch grips. These bullpen sessions also have a Fogo De Chao amount of technology involved. There are cameras, Trackman units, and biomechanical tools. Everything (seen and unseen) is measured. Collecting data is essential for pitchers working on a new pitch, or refining an existing one. When the Twins asked Pablo López to add a sweeper to his arsenal, they were looking for a precise amount of break, spin direction, and velocity. It was in spring training sides that he honed those. This process is vital in a strong pipeline of developing pitchers. "You see some of these young pitchers who have interesting pitches, interesting skills or traits, maybe velo, maybe something with the two-seamer, something with the slider. But the difference between a successful major-league pitcher with that talent and a guy who's right on the edge of that is so, so thin," Derek Falvey told reporters early in camp. "We've found that if you can find a way to get a little more consistency out of the strike-throwing or a little more consistency out of the slider, whatever you've got that separates you, all of a sudden it turns into something." View full article

With roster jockeying coming down to the last minute before pitchers and catchers report, the Minnesota Twins flipped out-of-options Nick Gordon for left-handed reliever Steven Okert from the Miami Marlins. Okert had been a fixture in Miami’s pen over the last three seasons. His ERA was an inflated 4.45 in 2023, but the underlying numbers suggest that he is better than that. His strikeout rate (29.6%) was the highest of his career, while his walk rate (9.7%) was the lowest. He had an elevated home run rate (3.9%) and a near .300 BABIP. A fastball/slider arsenal, Okert has been formidable against lefties but has fared well against either side. The Twins likely envision Okert's slider as a suitable weapon the organization can incrementally improve upon. From the far left side of the rubber, Okert's release point comes closer to the first base line than most, giving hitters a tough angle to see pitches. Combine that with a slider that has over 10 inches of horizontal movement and it is easy to see why left-handed batters have struggled. He has been in the high-end of throwing the pitch in the zone, so there is likely more chase and swing-and-miss potential available with some adjustments. He's set to make $1.1 million in 2024, which makes this move virtually a wash financially. The Marlins have much more roster space for Gordon; the Twins have more for a left-handed arm like Okert. Though he's appeared in six different MLB seasons, Okert still has three years of team control left, should the Twins want him for that long. More to come. View full article

This is definitely an emphasis of the Falvine front office. One of the first huddles Falvey did right before the 2017 season started, he talked about why they brought in the players they did: “I think we talked a lot about the culture we wanted to create in the clubhouse and how that leads to what we want on the field, guys like Matt Belisle, Chris Geminez and Craig Breslow, guys who have been around other organizations and some really successful moments in time, they know they have to hold themselves to high standards at two o’clock in the afternoon when no one is paying attention or nine oclock in the morning on the backfield in Fort Myers. That’s part of the approach here to make sure we embrace that, we wanted to make sure that we made clear it was a priority.”

I'll push back on this statement because as we've seen in recent years, the trend is to throw fastballs in the upper third and sinkers have started to follow their 4-seam brethren up there as well. While it is common to see more home runs, it also gets lower batting average in play, more swinging strikes, and more foul balls (strikes overall). Random convo here but the interesting development over the last 10 years is how the 4-seam went from a pitch that was 50/50 on upper half and lower half in 2013 to one that is now 65/35 in 2023 and the sinker went from a pitch that was 42/58 inner half/outer half to 53/47 in/out this past year. Down is now up and outside is now inside. Baseball is fun.

Yes and no. What it tells me is that Varland's late season velocity increase/command improvement has some potential to be tied to his mechanics and not just the role. Again, the Twins are very good at getting pitchers to gain more velo through tweaks like that. He seemed to have better command of the cutter as well. The question for the Twins & Varland this offseason is whether he could be able to maintain that output over 5 innings. (IMO, he still needs to find a third pitch to make that jump and he's been working on a few things this winter so far.)

While the hype and hoopla are rightfully on the native son who will enter baseball's Hall of Fame in a Minnesota Twins uniform, another St. Paul(-adjacent)-born player could play a vital role in the team’s 2024 season. It's just a matter of how. Image courtesy of © Matt Blewett-USA TODAY Sports Martial arts legend Bruce Lee has a famous quote that says people should be more like water. Water, Lee said, can be many things. Water takes the shape of whatever is required. Put it in a cup, and it's a cup. A bottle? It's a bottle. An enormous Stanley taking up a Willians Astudillo-sized space in my cabinet? It's that, too. It's formless and highly adaptable. Louie Varland needs to be water. "My biggest takeaway from this past season was the importance of always adapting," Varland said, shortly after finishing one of his offseason workouts. "The league adapts to you, and you need to be ready for that." Varland had to adapt, all right. The Twins asked him to adapt to pitching well after the start of the game. They needed an electric arm in late-inning situations. They needed someone to subdue any potential uprisings. They needed someone to hand the ball over to Jhoan Durán and give the coaching staff confidence they would still have the lead intact. It's not always easy embracing the role of wait-and-see arm. Starters know their schedule. They have the luxury of going through their mechanical checklists with the precision of a shuttle launch, fully knowing when they have go-time. And that's just the game day experience. Between outings, starters, for the most part, know when their next appearance will be. Relievers have more mystery, and that makes it more challenging to recover and to work on things. Cleveland reliever and fellow Minnesotan Sam Hentges said that one of his biggest obstacles upon his relocation to the late show was that he could no longer "blow it out" in the weight room during his workout routine. As a starter, he had time for his body to heal from an outing and the between-start regimen. Instead, he had to relearn how to go about his important off-field work to keep his body ready to appear multiple days in a row. There's a plan, a cadence to everything pitchers do, and the work done on the field is just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to the all-important conditioning routines, there are side pens that pitchers rely on to hone their stuff. These can be incredibly important for young pitchers. Starting pitchers can set their watch to them. Routine is everything. View full article

Obviously his big frame was one of the reasons he did not get the low strike but also technique-wise, he wasn’t taught was is being used now — going from underneath the pitch to bring it to the middle. Here’s an example: copy_578D4A91-5879-43E1-95A5-F48A8636C965.mov His glove comes down to the pitch and then back up. Some umpires are better than others at calling a zone but a catcher’s movements win/lose strikes at the edges.

Height does not necessarily equal extension. Sean Hjelle is 6'11" and gets 6.59 feet down the mound, which is well below average for pitchers who are 6'6" and above. There are other similar pitchers blessed with altitude that do not get down the hill well. Extension (and the improvement of) is a product of the rear leg. The Twins development has been really good at getting pitchers to use their bodies better and ride the slope down longer and that helps create extension and velocity. What's interesting to me is that the Twins' pitchers in St. Paul are often below average in this area (18 of 30 teams).

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Dammit. I always overcomplicate things.

Very tough question. Sometimes I think an early season injury can be a good thing over the course of a long season. Like I said in the post, part of that production was likely due to health (not having an additional 250 PAs in the 1st half maybe kept him fresh). That 2nd half performance was one of his best splits of his career but that .351 BABIP suggests it could come back down (although his wOBA of .393 was very close to his expected wOBA of .390 so the way he was impacting the ball could mean he's capable of continuing that). Teams will try to adjust to him and find more weaknesses. That's the game. I'd like to think he came away with something from this year but you just don't know. It's a funny game.

My response is...maybe? Hard to know exactly what is going on in a hitter's head. But the fact that he was pulling the ball more in the 1st half than the 2nd half (54% vs 43%) suggests defensive alignment wasn't necessarily a factor for his late season surge. Plus, a lot of success had to do with barreling balls to the big part of the park (33% vs 17% in 1st half and 24 hits vs 11 in 1st half). His performance on pulled ground balls post-ASB was much better than after the break (.263 vs .069 in 1st half). Big difference was that he was less one-dimensional after the break: In the 1st half he pulled 81% of his groundballs and he pulled 60% in the 2nd half. There was likely something in his mind about the defensive positioning, but his ability to give himself space and hit balls hard all over the field helps open up other areas for him to.

I realize that as a non-caretaker you are unable to see the additional analysis so let me just say, yes, health and mindset are 2 of the 3 things that helped him in the 2nd half.

I try not to label this as a mechanics thing. While he is moving differently (i.e. staying back from the plate), I don't believe it was an intentional change but something that happened while trying to fix holes, if that makes sense. In 2017 I had a conversation with him on his approach and he told me that "Pretty much the only time I'm telling myself to do stuff is when I might be in a slump or something." He's very much a guy that tries to continue to do what got him here. He's not going to make wholesale changes. But I also think his midseason numbers (i.e. slump) prompted something. I do think he has changed his mindset a bit on how to attack (he talked about that in the spring) but I also think he had the same mindset in the first half of the season as he did in the second -- only that his approach (and health!) allowed him to be successful later in the year.

In the first half of the season, if you scrolled Twins Twitter (or even our comment sections), you encountered a seemingly robust Free Max Kepler From His Current Job movement. Fortunately, the Twins did not listen. Call up someone else. Bench Kepler. Trade him. DFA him. Strap him to a rocket and fire him into the nearest black hole. Look, I've never advocated for human rocketry to address athletic shortcomings, but Kepler's performance begged for some resolution. After all, pre-All-Star break, his .207 batting average was 291st among 314 qualified players. His weighted runs created plus (wRC+) – a more telling overall performance statistic – was 88, and not the kind of 88 that actuates the flux capacitor and looses the surly bonds of time and space. Only Christian Vázquez and Michael A. Taylor, two players who play more defense-oriented positions, fared worse. For a team whose place at the top of the division standings was becoming increasingly precarious by midsummer, it would have been reasonable for the Twins to explore alternatives (space flight, time travel, or otherwise). To be fair, Kepler battled through early-season maladies that undoubtedly impacted his numbers. In April, he was sidelined with patellar tendinitis in his right knee. Then, just as he was regaining momentum and consistency at the end of April and the beginning of May (including 10 extra-base hits in 24 games), a hamstring injury to the opposite leg triggered another IL stint. It probably doesn't need to be said – particularly to this savvy audience, smart enough to pay for deep analysis – but legs are crucial to the game of baseball. As is consistency. For the better part of the first half, Max Kepler had neither. What does that do to a player's psyche? Several years ago, then-Twins manager Paul Molitor was pestered about a veteran player's putrid offensive performance. As he was wont to do, Molitor provided a very insightful response that applies to Kepler. "I think sometimes when you get off to poor starts, even as a veteran, it becomes an uphill battle. It's hard to look up at the scoreboard and see numbers that aren't very appealing. And you're trying to find ways to get it back into a more comfortable state and you end up thinking about the wrong things instead of just going out there and trusting each at bat." On July 9, shortly before the All-Star break, Max Kepler would look at the Target Field scoreboard and see the .207/.279/.409 slash line looming over him, reminding him of his ongoing struggles. So much of baseball is a mental game – perhaps as much as 90 percent. View full article

To obliterate an obdurate futility state, sometimes you have to elevate and celebrate. The Twins' top celebrity brought the levity by leveraging some vicious rotation in the exercise of his frustration. Lewis's hit tool was always a strength. But this season, we may have seen it go from hitterish to full-out lethal. Consider this: If the season lasted from only August 15 to its usual conclusion, Royce Lewis's .607 slugging average would have been the 16th-highest in baseball, better than Shohei Ohtani's .603. Ohtani, the owner of a new MVP trophy to polish, will soon receive a contract equivalent to a small island nation's GDP this offseason. (Seriously, the GDP of São Tomé and Príncipe, an island nation off the western coast of central Africa, was $526.7 million in the most recent report That’s your over/under.) Conversely, Lewis will clear around $770,000 in 2024 and live in a state with a brand-new flag. While the two players aren’t similar (yet) in terms of their off-field clout, they were highly similar in the power department for a glorious month-and-a-half. We can create just about any narrative, when we carve out small sample sizes. The takeaway is that after Lewis returned from his oblique injury, he was a monster, and more than small-sample-size flukiness may be involved. When Lewis was sidelined with an oblique injury, he worked his way back with the Saints. One might expect a player recovering from that type of injury to be protective, opting not to apply as much torque or withhold force to avoid aggravating the area. Rotation—the primary action of a swing—can easily make such injuries worse. If Lewis was trying to take it easy, though, no one could tell. View full article

Reading Lewis' quotes reminded me of the back and forth between Derek Jeter and Bruce Bouchy after the Rangers won the World Series. More often than not, great teams (across all aspects of life) focus on each other.

Their biomechanics staff is truly amazing. They have the technology and knowledge to identify a lot of inefficiencies and their coaching staff does a great job of incorporating drills/workouts to aid in getting players to move better.

Today’s start is what the Twins envisioned when they traded for Pablo Lopez. Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-USA TODAY Sports It was a steep price for them to part with Luis Arraez. After all, Arraez became a fan favorite and an excellent contact hitter. Batting Title Kings/ Short Kings get traded less often. Early in the season, many fans lamented missing out on that type of hitter, but it's hard to disagree that the Twins had a plan when they acquired Lopez from the Miami Marlins. He said so himself. "I'm extremely grateful for all the resources the Twins made available when it came to pitch developing and understanding the benefits behind why a pitch moving in that direction could give us the options we were looking for," Lopez told reporters after his final regular-season start. The right-hander said the organization gave him stats, facts, numbers, and information. These were very appreciated and embraced. The Twins have a system that has grown quite good at identifying, building, and developing pitchers. Lopez was already a reasonably outstanding pitcher from outside of the organization. He was worth about two wins each season with Miami. The Twins, however, were able to tap into more. Pablo Lopez said that with Miami, he concentrated on being a north-south pitcher, focusing on his fastball up in the zone, pairing it with his excellent changeup, and breaking ball down in the zone. The Twins offered a different path for Lopez - they saw he could be more of an east-west pitcher, getting hitters to chase on pitches running away from the strike zone. The Twins could take what was an outstanding pitcher and build on it. Let's start with the mechanics. Returning to Lopez's statement about deviating from being a north-south pitcher, we can see how he's altered his delivery to help add more east-west movement. Unfortunately, the video breakdowns are for Caretakers only. We need to reserve this deep-dive content for Caretakers because these types of stories cost more to produce, and Caretakers support them. So if you're a Caretaker, just scroll down. If you're not, maybe consider becoming a Caretaker? There are lots of other benefits, like a free Winter Meltdown ticket and early access for guests, special callouts on the site, and lots more inside or in-depth content like this. So please consider joining our little club. The money is going to a site you love, to support coverage you love, and writers you value. Thank you so much. View full article

Today’s start is what the Twins envisioned when they traded for Pablo Lopez. Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-USA TODAY Sports It was a steep price for them to part with Luis Arraez. After all, Arraez became a fan favorite and an excellent contact hitter. Batting Title Kings/ Short Kings get traded less often. Early in the season, many fans lamented missing out on that type of hitter, but it's hard to disagree that the Twins had a plan when they acquired Lopez from the Miami Marlins. He said so himself. "I'm extremely grateful for all the resources the Twins made available when it came to pitch developing and understanding the benefits behind why a pitch moving in that direction could give us the options we were looking for," Lopez told reporters after his final regular-season start. The right-hander said the organization gave him stats, facts, numbers, and information. These were very appreciated and embraced. The Twins have a system that has grown quite good at identifying, building, and developing pitchers. Lopez was already a reasonably outstanding pitcher from outside of the organization. He was worth about two wins each season with Miami. The Twins, however, were able to tap into more. Pablo Lopez said that with Miami, he concentrated on being a north-south pitcher, focusing on his fastball up in the zone, pairing it with his excellent changeup, and breaking ball down in the zone. The Twins offered a different path for Lopez - they saw he could be more of an east-west pitcher, getting hitters to chase on pitches running away from the strike zone. The Twins could take what was an outstanding pitcher and build on it. Let's start with the mechanics. Returning to Lopez's statement about deviating from being a north-south pitcher, we can see how he's altered his delivery to help add more east-west movement. Unfortunately, the video breakdowns are for Caretakers only. We need to reserve this deep-dive content for Caretakers because these types of stories cost more to produce, and Caretakers support them. So if you're a Caretaker, just scroll down. If you're not, maybe consider becoming a Caretaker? There are lots of other benefits, like a free Winter Meltdown ticket and early access for guests, special callouts on the site, and lots more inside or in-depth content like this. So please consider joining our little club. The money is going to a site you love, to support coverage you love, and writers you value. Thank you so much. View full article