Ted Wiedmann

There's half a season of tangible data that says he's better than Derek Law and Trevor Megill, and he has better stuff than either of them. Expected numbers are always going to underrate sinkerballers, even guys that have been good. Looking at data with Jax and Lopez are two different situations, trusting numbers with Jax is seeing he's been performing well on a per batter basis, Lopez it's trusting that when his stuff is as good as it is it's hard to be as bad as he's been. While maybe he never reaches 2022 again, I why he can't be a league average reliever. At the same time relievers are wildly unpredictable and maybe we've seen the end, I just trust Lopez's stuff more than what we've seen so far.

Not huge on soft-tossing reliver prospects, even less so if they don't have elite secondaries. I would be curious to see his extension and his FB IVB, can't ignore those swing and miss numbers.

Don't think it's fair to compare his innings as a starter to his innings as a reliever. I think a lot of cooked dogs come from lack of stuff, guys like Andrew Albers who have immediate success but are later exploited for not being MLB caliber arms. I have plenty of confidence in Lopez's stuff, while maybe he doesn't reach the level he was at in 2022 I think it's fair to think he'll be at least an average Major League reliever.

I think the most encouraging part of this is he might not even need to be an 8th inning guy. Jax has been great and with the emergence of Brock Stewart (who I very much believe in) his role can be significantly reduced from preseason expectations. If he regains 2022 form that would be great but he doesn't need to get all the way back.

Just being back on a Major League mound is a victory for Lopez, but he has more to offer than a feel-good story. Image courtesy of © Nick Wosika-USA TODAY Sports July 4th was a great night for Twins fans, not just because of a win that involved all parts of the team, but in particular because Jorge Lopez made his return to the Twins. The outing itself wasn't anything to celebrate, and from a pure baseball standpoint, maybe the opposite, but on a much bigger scale, it was one of the best moments this season. Those with experience with mental health struggles, whether your own or someone close, know the impact they can have on life. None of us knew the exact extent of what was happening, but it must have been challenging for things to come to the point of stepping away from his profession. I think this took tremendous courage from Lopez, and I'm happy he seems to have received the needed help and will continue to address his ongoing mental health issues. Jorge Lopez made his return in blazing fashion. Although he only threw eight pitches, four were sinkers, averaging 97.8 MPH and topping out at 98.5 MPH. As stated before, the outing wasn't spectacular, as he allowed a run and only generated one swing-and-miss. Still, the return of his velocity was encouraging, especially since it declined dramatically right before his IL stint. So why should we believe Lopez will turn things around? He was brilliant in April but faltered in May and June, and it seemed like his season was declining, as was his stuff. Two things make me optimistic about Jorge Lopez: pitch usage and Stuff+ numbers. It was written about before on Twins Daily, but Jorge Lopez had been throwing an unusual amount of four-seam fastballs this season, 20.4% of his pitches after only using it 4.5% of the time last year. Hitters are currently hitting .438 with a .875 SLG against his four-seam fastball. While 89 pitches might seem too small of a sample for judgment, Lopez's four-seam has never performed well in any season. I think part of the successful transition to the bullpen was lowering the pitch's usage. Lopez also significantly increased his slider usage from 10.7% in 2022 to 20.6% this year. While not as bad as his four-seamer, the pitch still hasn't garnered quality results. Of pitchers with at least ten plate appearances against the pitch, Lopez's slider ranks 272nd out of 358 pitchers in xwOBA at .345 and 236th out of 358 in whiff% at 29.2%. Not great. However, Jorge Lopez's curveball in the same qualifier ranks 69th out of 198 pitchers in xwOBA at .252 and 28th out of 198 in whiff% at 41.4%. His curve has also generated a .203 xBA and .333 xSLG, in addition to its excellent swing and miss capability. Fewer four-seam fastballs and sliders with more sinkers and curveballs could help Lopez regain some form. Even without adjusting his pitch distribution, I still believe in Jorge Lopez's improvement this season; as mentioned before, Lopez rates highly in Stuff+. If you are unfamiliar with Stuff+, it essentially measures the characteristics of a pitch, its speed, vertical and horizontal movement, release, spin rate/efficiency, etc. The league average for Stuff+ is 100. I will link an article by Owen McGrattan on Fangraphs that explains Stuff+ and how it can be used in more detail. It also details how stuff+ can be more predictive than standard metrics like ERA, K%-BB%, RA/9 and when a sample size becomes large enough to use. Back to Lopez, among qualified relievers on Fangraphs, his 114 Stuff+ ranks tied for 47th out of 170 relievers. This doesn't guarantee above-league-average production from Lopez. Still, it certainly indicates that a very projectable metric has Lopez in a similar Stuff+ range as other elite relievers such as Devin Williams (118 Stuff+), Brusdar Graterol (116 Stuff+), and Michael King (113 Stuff+). Stuff+ also helps explain why the Twins wanted to experiment with a four-seam fastball and slider. Lopez's four-seam grades at 106 Stuff+ better than his sinker at 103 Stuff+, and his slider grades at 138 Stuff+ higher than his curveball at 127 Stuff+. While current results have not been as hoped, the reasoning for trying makes sense. I believe Lopez can conquer his struggles in Minnesota. He has shown the ability to overcome difficulties in his career and has just returned from maybe the biggest hurdle he'll face. More than just the numbers, Lopez has my support as a player and as a person. He has endured something that could have destroyed his career, and I am rooting for him regardless of how he pitches and for his career to be successful, even if not in a Twins uniform. View full article

It took decades and decades, but finally, the Twins can compete with the firepower in the Bronx. Image courtesy of Nick Wosika-USA TODAY Sports We've all heard about the New York Yankees' dominance over the Twins, but times are changing. For years and eras, the Yankees have been able to mash their way through the American League and buy their way past the Twins' homegrown talent. But no longer. For the first time in generations, the Twins are neck and neck in offensive rankings with the Yankees. Regardless of which metrics you look at, traditional, advanced, or expected, the Twins and the Yankees have performed almost identically offensively in 2023. The Twins rank 19th in wRC+ at 98, and the Yankees 21st at 95 wRC+. The two teams are 22nd and 23rd in wOBA, with the Twins at .309 and the Yankees at .306. The Yankees edge out the Twins in hitter fWAR at 7.8, with the Twins one spot behind at 7.6. Those WAR totals rank 20th and 21st in MLB, respectively. Not into advanced numbers? No problem, let's compare more traditional statistics. Batting average, the Twins are 25th at .231, and the Yankees are 27th at .229. The Twins carved out a more significant gap in OBP, ranking 23rd at .308, with the Yankees only producing a .297 team OBP, placing 28th in baseball. As tradition follows, the Yankees are out slugging the Twins, with the SLG at 14th in MLB and the Twins being 19th. Adding OBP and SLG together, the Twins are precisely one point better than New York, with the 22nd-best OPS at .706 and the Yankees having the 23rd-best OPS at .705. We've heard from numerous places that the Twins should be hitting better than they are, given their exit velocities, barrel rates, and hoopty hoopla. They must hear the same thing in New York because the Twins and Yankees have produced a near identical batted ball profile. Barrel rate, balls hit at least 98 MPH with an expected batting average of at least .500; the two teams are both at 9.8%. Hard hit%, batted balls hit 95 MPH or harder, the Twins are at 40.8% hard hit%, with the Yankees edging them at 40.9%. Lastly, looking at sweet spot%, batted balls hit at 95 MPH or harder with a launch angle between eight and 32 degrees, the Twins are third in MLB at 36.1%, and the Yankees are sixth at 34.8%. The lowly, small-market Minnesota Twins are now offensive rivals to the legendary New York Yankees. Jon Heyman is probably having a stroke about it. There has been so much negativity surrounding the offense, but I don't understand why. The Twins have equaled the gold standard of offense in all of baseball for the last century, something they have failed to accomplish since the induction of the franchise. This should be celebrated! View full article

If your're referring to players I'm not really sure what your're referring to either. Outside of Max Kepler, who has the largest wOBA/xwOBA difference over the last three years and that can still be explained fairly easily, who has underperformed based on batted ball and plate discipline data? On the pitching side I think the misses in the recent years have not been due to incorrect data, I would attribute them mostly to emphasizing the wrong characteristics in pitchers. But the data shows that their process of thinking was wrong. I think the team coming to the wrong conclusion based on the data is different than the data being invalid, and I think that might be what your're saying. I could be misinterpreting.

I think I get what you're saying, and if I do then we found our point of disagreement. I don't think many hitters have control over the direction of a batted ball, just making contact is difficult enough as it is. There are a select few in history that had/have the ability, but I believe for the most part it is random. I also think this has also gotten more difficult with the continuing development of pitching. If batted ball direction is random, then hit the snot out of it and hope for the best. On the flip side, I believe for a pitcher a strikeout is the best possible outcome for an at-bat, therefore pitchers should maximize their best possible outcomes. With each out being so precious, I think pitchers should be uncomfortable leaving outs up to chance. Two different ways of thinking.

By definition expected outcomes that fail to materialize are outliers. While sporadic, they do happen from time to time. You're also calling math and physics mythical in this statement.

Lopez is tied for 13th most innings per start in baseball with Joe Ryan, Bryce Elder, Shohei Ohtani, Marcus Stroman and Clayton Kershaw

What would you consider underlying metrics and what is invalid about them?

Forgive me if I misunderstand you, But I think you answered your own question. If the ERA were high and there is lots of hard contact being allowed, that would make sense. However, Lopez is both striking out lots of hitters and also not allowing much hard contact but still holds a high ERA. The conclusion is then Lopez must be allowing runs on soft contact, which is not a sustainable way to score runs offensively. Therefore if Lopez continues to disallow hard contact, the amount of runs he allows decreases. To your Buxton example, if he were to have half the hard contact rate he does but still a high batting average, I would say unless he starts hitting the ball harder it is likely his batting average decreases.

I appreciate the kind words, it's a much needed pick-me-up to some of the other comments received. I'm not one to tell you how to watch baseball but perhaps explaining my thinking in more traditional terms may help. Let me ask you, if a pitcher gets lots of strikeouts and soft contact, is he doing his job? And if he is creating ideal outcomes as a pitcher ie, whiffs and soft contact, would you anticipate him giving up a lot of runs in the future?

I would point to his LOB% in this case. It's briefly addressed but not very thoroughly explained. He is pretty substantially underperforming in runners left on base, that can be taken two different directions, one, Pablo struggles with runners on, or two, he's had bad luck. Given that Lopez with runners in scoring position actually increases his K% to 36.3%, allows SLG of .353, but has a BABIP of .452 tells me he's getting unlucky since the swing and miss is still there and there doesn't seem to be an extra base hits problem. Also the defense has been terrible that's certainly part of this.

This isn't the same as Kepler or Pagan I don't think. As far as I understand, Pagan's case has never been results based, it's always been a stuff+ projection. Looking at Pagan's fastball IVB it ranks among the elite in baseball, but hardhit% and BB% have been problems for Pagan. Kepler has never had consistently good hardhit% or barrel%, he doesn't strike out and takes walks but doesn't have a very good batted ball distribution, which you already referred to, and his avg EV aren't great, they're only slightly above average. The reason for Lopez optimism are that he's improved on his K% and whiff%, his BB% and HR/FB% are the same, and his xwOBA and his wOBA are both career bests. When I see things that tend to be stable year over year improving and things that are volatile like ERA and LOB% are career worsts, I interpret that as those numbers are more likely to change since year over year studies show those are more likely to change.

I did mention that his LOB% is a lot lower than what is has been throughout his career. I think those "blowup" innings are what you're referring to when there's a walk, then a couple bleeders and bloops and all of a sudden there's 2 runs on the board. Personally I tend to chalk those up to variance, I don't think anything changes with Pablo in those innings, just some batted balls that find grass. I think those generally even out over time. Aaron Nola is having the same thing happen to him right now too. He doesn't get worse for one inning, sometimes baseball just does its thing.

I'm not sure how this pertains to anything I wrote, but the intention wasn't to say the Twins are more than what they are or to discount anything Luis Arraez has done this year.

We don't have any insight on internal matters like clubhouse impact or leadership, however there seems to be a consensus among both Twins and Marlins reporters that Pablo is a fantastic person, much like Arraez is. Which isn't the best indication of things but also all we have to use. Also interesting, Arraez is at 2.7 fWAR this season and Lopez is at 2.2. As for Ober vs. Lopez, personally, Lopez is probably two tiers ahead of Ober for me, even if we're factoring money.

The difference between Marlins Pablo Lopez and this year is he's been able to greatly increase his K% while simultaneously keeping his career HR/FB% and BB% the same. He's also allowing a lot less hard contact and added almost 2 MPH on his fastball. xwOBA in 2022 was .301 versus .279 this season and his xERA was 3.75 in 2022 versus 3.11 this year. The swing and miss and quality of contact numbers he currently has are representative of a pitcher with a ERA in the low 3s rather than mid 4s. Expect the ERA to come down if he continues this level of pitching.

Glad I could help

Not sure I'd go that far, but Ober has been good this season. My concern with Ober is it's tough to be an extreme fly ball pitcher and maintain as low of a HR/FB% as he is. If that number creeps toward league average at all his number could see significant regression. Low walk totals help a lot but it's something to monitor. Also, we probably shouldn't assume health for any pitcher, but Ober in particular has had a real tough time with injuries.

Yes

If you think 17 million per is top tier starter money I'm not sure what to tell you. He's significantly changed his pitch arsenal from when he was with the Marlins, he's striking out hitters at elite levels while maintaining low walk and home run rates. Again, the point of the piece is that his ERA will likely come down closer to pitchers that he performs similarly to in per batter metrics.