James Richter

Another problem with the rigidity of the "pitch to contact" mentality is that it's success is heavily dependent upon the quality of the defense. When you've got Span & Gomez in the OF and Adam Everett & Nick Punto in the middle IF, sure, put it in play. But when the defense has all sorts of plodders & guys playing out of position, maybe it'd be a better strategy to have the pitchers try to get guys to chase... I'm hoping the new coaching staff will have a better idea of how all the pieces fit together.

From what I looked up last night (Googled "Hyeon-Jong Yang"), it sounds like KBO has always had smaller parks, but they moved to a juiced ball this year, in addition to a league-wide focus on importing hitters. The year-over-year increase in scoring was pretty crazy - the league had an OPS over .800 in 2014. That Yang was able to weather that without seeing a big increase in H/9 or HR/9 is somewhat encouraging. His BB/9 are basically average for the league, but his K/9 are way better. Getting consistent control sounds like the key to his future - good project for the new pitching coach.

I wish I'd caught the earlier correction - looks like my accounting was spread over too many bleary, late nights. In my mind, I was giving Duensing extra demerits for his failure to get Alex Gordon on 8/27. Though technically not allowing any inherited runners, he was supposed to get the last out of that inning (lefty vs. lefty), and, because he didn't, an extra 4 runs scored. I should have said something like, "because those guys didn't get the outs they were brought in to get, the Twins gave up 20 extra runs, most charged to other pitchers." Not my strongest point. But those 3 gave up too many of their own runs, too. The team would be better off without them next year, wouldn't you agree?

The extreme wins are sort of the point. They got way more runs than they needed a couple of times, and came up 1 run short more than their share. Score the same runs in a different game and some losses turn into wins. The Aug. 22-24 series with the Tigers is a perfect example. The Twins outscored the Tigers 42-31 over the 4 games, but only managed to go 2-2 . In the double-header, they scored 12 in one game and 6 in the other. They allowed 8 and 4. Instead of sweeping 12-8, 6-4, they split. If Pino had started the 2nd game, they'd have gotten an extra win for the same number of runs. It didn't really matter which pitcher started which game in terms of rest and the rotation. It was just unlucky it worked out the way it did, wasn't it? A quick check of the schedule results looks like 17 games in that wretched 41-game stretch where they scored 5 or more runs, and they only won 8.

Aug-Sept run differentials the last 4 years: 2011: -94 2012: -44 2013: -120 2014: -17 To me, that's not exactly the same thing. I chose not to address roster needs in this post (it was already pretty long, eh?), but I'm basically on the same page with you here. If they stick with Duensing and Swarzak, and the current SP depth, and sign somebody like Torii Hunter, they're going to have a lot of balls in play that are going to drop in and contribute to big innings. But, if they sign a SP with mid-rotation upside, replace Duensing and Swarzak with even league-average relievers, and acquire at least one OF with elite defense, I think all the other ingredients are there for an 80-something win total. That Duensing & Swarzak are still on the 40-man and the Twins are reportedly pursuing Hunter is definitely discouraging.

I'm focusing on how much offense to expect next year relative to the offensive surge in August-September. For example, for all of 2015, I'm expecting career-average Suzuki + Pinto to provide "quite a bit more" offense than slumping Suzuki + Fryer (+ a tiny bit of Pinto) provided in Aug-Sept. Overall, I expect Suzuki to put up lower numbers than 2014, but probably better than he had in the 2nd half. Basically just pointing out that, even though the runs were coming in big bunches, not every position in the lineup was searing hot the last 2 months.

At the All-Star break, the Twins were in decent shape, just 6 games under .500 and on pace to finish with a win total in the mid-70s that would have demonstrated clear progress in their rebuilding efforts. But at the beginning of the second half they faltered, dropping 9 of 13, the first 10 of which were at home, to finish July. Now 11 under .500 and 11 games out of first place, it was time to sell the veterans and turn to youth.Out with Kendrys Morales, Josh Willingham, Kevin Correia and Matt Guerrier, in with Kennys Vargas, Jordan Schafer, Trevor May, and Ryan Pressly. The newly reconstituted roster quickly descended into the most wretched stretch of the season, going 14-27 from the beginning of August through mid-September, outraging the fan base and costing Gardy his job at season’s end. But I’m OK with beginning 2015 with about 80% of the players who were on the field for those last 2 months, and you should be, too! Here’s why: The offense was better After a surprisingly high-scoring April (fueled by a sky-high OBP) the pendulum swung the other way in May. The average of those two months corresponded pretty well with the .690-ish team OPS the Twins put up in the two months ofJune & July. Through the first two-thirds of the season, the offense averaged a tick over 4 R/G. But in the final 55 games, they exploded for 280 R, increasing the per-game average by over a run. Over a full season, 90% of that scoring rate would have produced the #4 offense in baseball. And 90% of the extremely good BABIP the Twins put up over those final two months would be more or less the league average. There will certainly be regression from some players, most notably Santana. But there were several positions that provided below average production in the final months, too. Not only did Suzuki’s all-star first half not carry over, but his second half results were beneath his modest career averages. Mauer, though much better than he was in the spring, was still well short of his career average OPS of .860 or so. Dozier continued to get on base, but didn’t sustain the HR and SB pace he established over the early part of the season. That the baserunners accumulated nearly as many SB (49) in 68 second half games as they did in 94 first half games (50), with little contribution from Dozier, is an indication of how much more baserunning can be a weapon for the Twins next year. All told, when looking at the rates the hitters put up in August & September, I’d expect a lot less (upwards of .100 OPS) from Santana, a bit less from Plouffe, Schafer, & Escobar and about the same from Arcia & Vargas. Also, a bit more from Dozier and Hicks, and a quite a bit more (upwards of .050 OPS) from Mauer and the catchers, especially with Pinto getting the PAs that were going to Fryer A repeat of 2014’s 714 runs scored seems like a pretty safe floor for this offense. The starting pitching was better Seriously: First half: 5.8 K/9, 2.4 BB/9, 8.7% HR/FB, .319 BABIP, 4.86 ERA, 4.21 xFIP Second half: 7.2 K/9, 2.4 BB/9 9.8% HR/FB, .333 BABIP, 5.35 ERA, 3.89 xFIP And the prospects for 2015 are even better than that. 25 rather horrendous second half starts were made by pitchers who will not be starting games for the Twins next year: Kevin Correia (4 GS, 4.79 xFIP), Anthony Swarzak (4, 4.86), Yohan Pino (6, 4.02 – he deserved better), Kris Johnson (1, 4.57), Logan Darnell (4, 3.38 – but so many HRs), weirdly awful Tommy Milone (5, 5.27) and the MLB debut of Trevor May (1, 16.10(!)). It’s possible that Darnell could see some spot starts next year, though I’d expect him to be well down the depth chart. Whatever was going on with Milone in August, it was unprecedented in nearly 80 prior career GS. Should he be asked to start in 2015 I’d expect to see that guy (4.22 xFIP) rather than the doppelganger who made such a poor first impression in Minnesota. The Twins quietly finished the second half of the season with an effective front four: Phil Hughes (13, 3.20), Kyle Gibson (13, 3.76), Ricky Nolasco (9, 3.71) and not-making-his-MLB-debut May (8, 3.77). Each of those xFIPs was league average or better, and Hughes can afford a ton of regression in his walk rate before he would fall below that standard. Gibson’s growth should be expected of a high-pedigree prospect with 25+ career GS under his belt, and post-DL Nolasco was essentially the guy they signed to the biggest FA contract in team history. That the starters’ ERA for the most part drastically overshot their xFIP is the result of a complex cocktail whose ingredients include bad luck on balls in play, bad defense, bad pitching with men on base, and bad work from a bullpen that failed to strand inherited runners. Of those factors, the pitching with men on is the only thing the starters can really control and should be a matter of focus for them as they prepare for next season. The Bullpen sucked! As alluded to above, the bullpen didn’t do the starters any favors. They couldn’t strand runners, couldn’t protect leads, couldn’t consistently get the outs they were brought in to get. They were last in the majors in second half K/9 by a large margin, and as a group were below replacement level. I believe a league average relief squad would have netted the Twins at least 5 additional wins in 2014 and lessened a lot of the hysteria related to four straight 90+ loss seasons. So why am I OK with that performance? Because it’s a result of a multitude of failures that are very unlikely to be repeated. Relievers are the most fungible asset in baseball, as demonstrated by the Twins scooping up Casey Fien and Jared Burton off the scrap heap before the 2012 season. Even elite FA relievers with extensive track records cost much less per season and demand shorter-term contracts than starters and position players. The Twins have already declined Burton’s services for 2015, and I expect them to pass on Brian Duensing and Anthony Swarzak, too. That trio combined to allow 21 inherited runners to score just in the awful quarter of a season from August 1st to mid-September. Replacing them with average or better relievers will make a huge difference. Some of those replacements might already be under team control. AAA Rochester’s bullpen was excellent all season. Michael Tonkin and Aaron Thompson were pretty effective in their September call-ups, and Lester Oliveros completed the season with five straight scoreless appearances totaling 5.2 IP, 5 K, 1 H and 1 BB. And, close behind them, the upper minors are loaded with high-velocity arms that could find their way onto the team by the second half of 2015: Nick Burdi, Zach Jones, Jake Reed… The days of the Twins bringing up the rear in bullpen K% may already be behind us. Better Luck Next Year In 2014 the Twins allowed a very poor BABIP for the second consecutive year and it will take some improvements to the defense (especially the OF) to get that back into the average range. But that OF defense was similarly bad 2013, and yet the BABIP was a few points worse last year. All of the negative difference came in the second half, when the pitchers suffered a .328 BABIP despite having two of Schafer, Santana and Hicks in the OF most of the time. Certainly, there was some very bad pitching after the All-Star break. There was also a lot of OK to good pitching with some very bad luck. Look back through some of the game logs in which the Twins allowed huge crooked numbers. In many cases those innings were prolonged by one or more infield or bunt hits. I can never fault a pitcher for giving up a hit because he induced a batter to hit a GB too slowly, or in the perfect spot. It’s maddening, but those results are fairly random, and the wheel tends to swing back the other way as time goes on. The group we saw in August and September, given average luck on their balls in play, might have erased their 17 run deficit and finished with an even or better run differential over those two months. And there’s one other wild swing of luck we need to consider – when the runs were scored. Over the first four months of the season, the Twins’ record corresponded perfectly with their pythagorean record – the estimated winning % derived from the total scores of their games. The total scores they produced after the trade deadline should have been good for a 26-29 record, but instead came up well short at 22-33. Isolate it further by separating the final 14 games of the season and you find that the Twins’ entire shortfall in expected wins occurred within that disastrous 41-game stretch from August 1st-September 13th. The most obvious place this shows up is in games decided by 1 run. Within this late-summer stretch, the Twins were 1-8 in 1-run games. In the other ¾ of the season, they were 20-16. Had they continued to win those closest games at the same rate as they had been doing, they would have gone 5-4 in those 9 games. There’s your 4 extra wins. Losing very close games is not an unexpected byproduct of having everybody in the bullpen fail at the same time. Focus on the Finish A lot of people had understandably stopped paying attention to the Twins by mid-September, when things finally stabilized. The offense continued to score about 5 R/G. The pitching - excepting 13 dreadful spot start IP from Swarzak – put up a 3.70 ERA and 1.18 WHIP. Half of those 14 games came against a very productive Tigers lineup that was fighting for playoff position. We saw that some of these guys can be pretty good. May had two quality starts and a 20/3 K/BB ratio. Nolasco also had two quality starts in three starts with a 16/4 K/BB ratio. Vargas broke out of his early-September slump by re-adding walks to his game – eight BB in the final week, where he’d had just four in the previous seven! Dozier rediscovered his power, Mauer got his average back over .300. Much of the fans’ sour impression of the Twins comes from the terrible results of that awful late-summer run. There was plenty of bad baseball there, to be sure. There was also a lot of absurdly bad luck, and several performances that are unlikely to be repeated – whether because of changing personnel, better health, or the maturation of young players. When you think about what the Twins need to do to improve in 2015, remember those caveats, and build from the final days of September instead of the first days of August. Click here to view the article

He's also a plus baserunner and a plus arm. Will the pop show up? It's been there in the minors. Frustrating, slow progress... but even with his present shortcomings, he's not really a liability at the bottom of the order.

There are a lot of teams interested in Anderson - a minor-league deal isn't going to cut it. He should get a guaranteed $7-8M because he so good that he only needs to pitch about 50 innings to be worth that. Hire him expecting to get 50 excellent IP. If he stays healthy beyond that, hey - jackpot! The Twins almost always hire a FA pitcher, but usually it's Livan Hernandez, or Sidney Ponson, or Jason Marquis. They don't give the Twins 200 IP either, because they get dropped mid-season, because they're crappy. Not getting 200 IP from Anderson instead would represent progress.

The average hitter in the AFL this year had an OPS of around .720. Also, Rosario went 4-5 with a 2B & HR in the championship game. When you add that in to his stats, he winds up with an .832 OPS. He was clearly one of the better hitters in the AFL, which is ostensibly comprised of the cream of AA. Which does not mean he's ready for MLB, but AAA would be reasonable.

By my calculations, that makes Rosario's overall slashes in 485 minor league PA this year .268/.305/.406. Good enough for AAA, or should he contribute to the stacking of Chattanooga?

He's an ideal bench guy for next year. His strengths (baserunning, OF range) dovetail nicely with Arcia's weaknesses. He's a great guy to PR late in a game when they need to give themselves the best possible chance of bringing that runner on 1st around to score. He'll enable Molitor to sub out Arcia and vastly upgrade the OF defense when they're trying to protect a lead. But yeah, they need to bring somebody in to force him down to #4 on the depth chart.

At the All-Star break, the Twins were in decent shape, just 6 games under .500 and on pace to finish with a win total in the mid-70s that would have demonstrated clear progress in their rebuilding efforts. But they faltered out of the gate in the 2nd half, dropping 9 of 13 to finish July (the first 10 of which were at home). Now 11 under .500 and 11 games out of 1st place, it was time to sell the veterans and turn to youth. Out with Kendrys Morales, Josh Willingham, Kevin Correia and Matt Guerrier, in with Kennys Vargas, Jordan Schafer, Trevor May, and Ryan Pressly. The newly reconstituted roster quickly descended into the most wretched stretch of the season, going 14-27 from the beginning of August through mid-September, outraging the fanbase, and promptly costing Gardy his job at season’s end. But I’m OK with beginning 2015 with about 80% of the players who were on the field for those last 2 months, and you should be, too! Here’s why: The Offense was better After a surprisingly high-scoring April (fueled by a sky-high OBP) the pendulum swung the other way in May. The average of those 2 months corresponded pretty well with the .690-ish team OPS the Twins put up in June & July. Through the first 2/3 of the season, the offense averaged a tick over 4 R/G. But in the final 55 games, they exploded for 280 R, increasing the per-game average by over a run. Over a full season, 90% of that scoring rate would have produced the #4 offense in baseball. And 90% of the extremely good BABIP the Twins put up over those final 2 months would be more or less the league average. There will certainly be regression from some players (most notable Santana). But there were several positions that provided below average production in the final months, too. Not only did Suzuki’s All-Star 1st half not carry over, but his second half results were beneath his modest career averages. Mauer, though much better than he was in the spring, was still well short of his career average OPS of .860 or so. Dozier continued to get on base, but didn’t sustain the HR and SB pace he established over the early part of the season. (That the baserunners accumulated nearly as many SB (49) in 68 2nd half games as they did in 94 1st half games (50) with little contribution from Dozier is an indication of how much more baserunning can be a weapon for the Twins next year.) All told, when I look at the rates the hitters put up in August & September, I’d expect a lot less (upwards of .100 OPS) from Santana, a bit less from Plouffe, Schafer, & Escobar, about the same from Arcia & Vargas, a bit more from Dozier & Hicks, and a quite a bit more (upwards of .050 OPS) from Mauer & the catchers (especially with Pinto getting the PAs that were going to Fryer). A repeat of 2014’s 714 RS seems like a pretty safe floor for this offense. The Starting Pitching was better Seriously: 1st Half: 5.8 K/9, 2.4 BB/9, 8.7% HR/FB, .319 BABIP, 4.86 ERA, 4.21 xFIP 2nd Half: 7.2 K/9, 2.4 BB/9 9.8% HR/FB, .333 BABIP, 5.35 ERA, 3.89 xFIP And the prospects for 2015 are even better than that. 25 rather horrendous 2nd half starts were made by pitchers who will not be starting games for the Twins next year: Kevin Correia (4 GS, 4.79 xFIP), Anthony Swarzak (4, 4.86), Yohan Pino (6, 4.02 – he deserved better), Kris Johnson (1, 4.57), Logan Darnell (4, 3.38 – but so many HRs), weirdly awful Tommy Milone (5, 5.27) and MLB debut Trevor May (1, 16.10(!)). It’s possible that Darnell could see some spot starts next year, though I’d expect him to be well down the depth chart. Whatever was going on with Milone in August, it was unprecedented in nearly 80 prior career GS. Should he be asked to start in 2015 I’d expect to see that guy (4.22 xFIP) rather than the doppelganger who made such a poor 1st impression in MN. The Twins quietly finished the season with an effective front 4: Phil Hughes (13, 3.20), Kyle Gibson (13, 3.76), Ricky Nolasco (9, 3.71) and not-making-his-MLB-debut May (8, 3.77). Each of those xFIPs was league average or better, and Hughes can afford a ton of regression in his walk rate before he would fall below that standard. Gibson’s growth should be expected of a high-pedigree prospect with 25+ career GS under his belt, and post-DL Nolasco was essentially the guy they signed to the biggest FA contract in team history. That the starters’ ERA for the most part drastically overshot their xFIP is the result of a complex cocktail whose ingredients include bad luck on balls in play, bad defense, bad pitching with men on base, and bad work from a bullpen that failed to strand inherited runners. Of those factors, the pitching with men on is the only thing they can really control, and should be a matter of focus for them as they prepare for next season. The Bullpen sucked! As I alluded to above, the bullpen didn’t do the starters any favors. They couldn’t strand runners, couldn’t protect leads, couldn’t consistently get the outs they were brought in to get. They were last in the Majors in 2nd half K/9 by a large margin, and as a group were below replacement level. I believe a league average relief squad would have netted the Twins at least 5 additional wins in 2014, and lessened a lot of the hysteria related to 4 straight 90+ loss seasons. So why am I OK with that performance? Because it’s a failure that is very unlikely to be repeated. Relievers are the most fungible asset in baseball, as demonstrated by the Twins scooping up Casey Fien and Jared Burton off the scrap heap before the 2012 season. Even elite FA relievers with extensive track records cost much less per season and demand shorter-term contracts than starters and position players. The Twins have already declined Burton’s services for 2015, and I expect them to pass on Brian Duensing and Anthony Swarzak, too. That trio combined to allow 21 inherited runners to score just in the awful ¼ season from August 1st to mid-September. Replacing them with average or better relievers will make a huge difference. Some of those replacements might already be under team control. AAA Rochester’s bullpen was excellent all season. Michael Tonkin and Aaron Thompson were pretty effective in their September call-ups, and Lester Oliveros completed the season with 5 straight scoreless appearances totaling 5.2 IP, 5 K, 1 H and 1 BB. And, close behind them, the upper minors are loaded with high-velocity arms that could find their way onto the team by the 2nd half of 2015: Nick Burdi, Zach Jones, Jake Reed… The days of the Twins bringing up the rear in bullpen K% may already be behind us. Better Luck Next Year The Twins allowed a very poor BABIP for the 2nd consecutive year in 2014, and it will take some improvements to the defense (especially the OF) to get that back into the average range. But that OF defense was similarly bad in both 2013 & 2014, and yet the BABIP was a few points worse last year. All of the negative difference came in the 2nd half, when the pitchers suffered a .328 BABIP despite having 2 of Schafer, Santana and Hicks in the OF most of the time. Certainly, there was some very bad pitching after the All-Star break. There was also a lot of OK to good pitching with some very bad luck. Look back through some of the game logs in which the Twins allowed huge crooked numbers. In many cases those innings were prolonged by one or more IF or bunt hits. I can never fault a pitcher for giving up a hit because he induced a batter to hit a GB too slowly, or in the perfect spot. It’s maddening, but those results are fairly random, and the wheel tends to swing back the other way as time goes on. The group we saw in August & September, given average luck on their balls in play, might have erased their 17 run deficit and finished with an even or better run differential over those 2 months. And there’s one other wild swing of luck we need to consider – when the runs were scored. Over the 1st 4 months of the season, the Twins’ record corresponded perfectly with their Pythagorean record – the estimated winning % derived from the total scores of their games. The total scores they produced after the trade deadline should have been good for a 26-29 record, but instead came up well short at 22-33. Isolate it further by separating the final 14 games of the season and you find that the Twins’ entire shortfall in expected wins occurred within that disastrous 41-game stretch from August 1st-September 13th. The most obvious place this shows up is in games decided by 1 run. Within this late-summer stretch, the Twins were 1-8 in 1-run games. In the other ¾ of the season, they were 20-16. Had they continued to win those closest games at the same rate as they had been doing, they would have gone 5-4 in those 9 games. There’s your 4 extra wins. Losing very close games is not an unexpected byproduct of having everybody in the bullpen fail at the same time. Focus on the Finish A lot of people had understandably stopped paying attention to the Twins by mid-September, when things finally stabilized. The offense continued to score about 5 R/G. The pitching - excepting 13 dreadful spot start IP from Swarzak – put up a 3.70 ERA and 1.18 WHIP. Half of those 14 games came against a very productive Tigers lineup that was fighting for playoff position. We saw that some of these guys can be pretty good. May had 2 quality starts and a 20/3 K/BB ratio. Nolasco also went 2/3 in quality starts with a 16/4 K/BB ratio. Vargas broke out of his early-September slump by re-adding walks to his game – 8 BB in the final week, where he’d had just 4 in the previous 7! Dozier rediscovered his power, Mauer got his average back over .300. For me, much of the fans’ sour impression of the Twins comes from the terrible results of that awful late-summer run. There was plenty of bad baseball there, to be sure. There was also a lot of absurdly bad luck, and several performances that are unlikely to be repeated – whether because of changing personnel, better health, or the maturation of young players. When you think about what the Twins need to do to improve in 2015, remember those caveats, and build from the final days of September instead of the first days of August.

How they fill this position is the most crucial personnel decision of this offseason. If they get it right, they have the potential to upgrade half the roster with one move: LF + 12 pitchers. Of the 13 guys who threw 30+ IP for the Twins last year, 11 had ERAs higher than their FIPs. That's a pretty strong indication that there's a systemic weakness in the defense that isn't doing the pitchers any favors. Almost all of the Twins' poor defensive ratings can be attributed to the OF. Until they correct that, I'm skeptical that any pitcher they bring in could be as successful as we'd hope. Arcia's going to be out there again, and is probably going to be at least a -10 defender. Hicks and Schafer have thus far graded out as a bit below average in CF, but I'm sure either would be no worse than average in LF. The guy they bring in needs to be an obvious defensive upgrade over those guys. To me, that means a plus defender in CF. The best guy available is Peter Bourjos, who has a 19.9 career UZR/150 as a CF. That's more than enough to make up for Arcia, and with average at worst contributions from Hicks/Schafer in LF would give the Twins a slightly above average OF defense. It seems that the Cards view Bourjos as a somewhat pricey 4th OF, even with their tragic loss of Taveras. I don't imagine the trade would cost the Twins too much, and the payoff for the pitching staff would be tremendous, whether or not Bourjos, Hicks & Schafer hit.

Thanks for the link - I've been wondering what happened there. I was checking the Bravos' box stores every day, and I can tell you that even during the slump, Hicks was getting on base somehow just about every day. He also had a couple OF assists. Effectively, he had one really good week, one really bad week, then they cut him. That isn't enough time to settle anything about his abilities, and nobody should be satisfied with it. Especially Hicks.

The Pittsburgh Pirates. The market collectively values these guys correctly - whether because of injury or inconsistency they can only safely be projected to be worth 0-2 WAR. These pitchers bet on themselves to have 1 or 2 good seasons and hit FA again while they're still not too old. The inefficiency is treating them all the same, when one or more of them might have a very correctable deficiency. Recent history suggests the Pirates are doing something right there. 1. He'll only be 27 next year - he could be as much a part of the future as Gibson. 2. Throughout his career, he's accumulated WAR at a rate of about 1 every 50 IP. He only needs to make 8-9 starts to be worth a 1/$8M deal. 3. A healthy Anderson would immediately become the Twins' 2nd best starter, a legit #2. 4. His career lows in GB% and K/9 would make him equivalent to a LH Gibson. That's his floor. 5. His injuries the last 2 seasons have not been arm-related. Specifically, he missed about 3 months last season with a broken finger suffered on a HBP. Since he wouldn't be batting so much in the DH league, that one doesn't trouble me. Hell, let's sign him for 2-3 years.

Precisely. Vargas had accumulated a little over 8 WAR over 150 or so starts, so the market valued him as about a 1.5 WAR pitcher per season, expecting him to provide 6 WAR over the life of the deal. That's a #4-#5 starter. Phil Hughes provided that much value last year alone. Imagine if Hughes' deal had been a 1/$8M instead of 3/$24M - he puts up 4x the value he was paid for, and either comes back as a front-end guy on a 1/$15M - impossible to get on the open market - or he opts for free agency and gives us a sandwich pick. That return - while unexpectedly good for Hughes - would be impossible for a guy like Vargas - his stuff simply isn't good enough, and it's not getting any better as he gets deeper into his 30s. Hitting on a Hughes effectively pays for taking the gamble another 3-4 times. How often does one of those hit? Seems like once a season, somewhere. How often does a 4-year deal tank at some point in the 4 years? One other reason I'd rather have a different upside guy 4 straight years than 4 years of a safer bet at the same price: the upside guy is always 28, but the safe guy gets older and older...

Great list - the Twins should try to get somebody in this vein every single offseason, regardless of their projected rotation. If you hit on these guys, not only do they make the team better by pushing lesser options down the depth chart, they also provide future value, either because their contracts are so easy to trade or because you can pick up a sandwich pick by giving them a QO at the end of the deal. If they bust, you're only out $8M. The potential payoff is always going to be worth that minimal risk. My favorites are Anderson and Masterson because of their ability to miss bats & extreme-GB tendencies. Any additions to the pool of starters should be geared toward minimizing opportunities for the OF to fail to make catches. Happily, Meyer fits into this category, too.

TD community, please, stop fixating on W-L record. The Twins should have been a 100-loss team in 2013, and they should have won 75 in 2014. They improved the total scores of their games by over 100 runs between the 2 seasons. That's huge. The fact that it netted them only 4 more wins is a quirk of run distribution that is beyond unlikely to be repeated next year. If they can manage to improve their run differential by another 2/3 of what they did in 2014, they'll have a winning record. The dramatic improvement in baserunning metrics listed above certainly suggests that Molitor's influence on the offense was a big positive. Now let's keep working on that pitching & defense.

Is playing through the injury going to cause long-term damage to the player? Good for Radke for finding a way to succeed with his injured shoulder, but that effort also ended his career. The Twins know they'll be paying Mauer a lot of money for the next 4 years whether he takes the field or not. They've got a huge incentive to try to keep him from suffering any permanent damage. Is the diminished performance resulting from the injury still a net gain for the team compared to the healthy sub? Part of the frustration with injuries the last few seasons is how much they've weakened the team thanks to the near total lack of depth the Twins have had at the upper levels. When people got hurt in 2006, they sent them to the DL and the guy they called up plugged into the lineup and kept the machine humming along and everyone was happy. But when injuries to the starters means lots of PAs for Drew Butera or IP from Cole DeVries, people can start to wish that the front-line guy would just tough it out. Lessening the gulf between the starters and the next couple spots on the depth chart might help.

Let's not forget how much damage has been inflicted on recent Twins teams by allocating large amounts of playing time to replacement-level or worse guys when something went wrong with Plan A. Personally, I'm expecting an OPS drop on the order of .100 points for Santana next year, and we never really got to see whether his mistake-prone SS defense was going to be evened out by better maintained MLB fields. And Escobar isn't just the backup for Santana, but probably Dozier and Plouffe, too. If all 3 of those guys stay healthy and perform over 150 games apiece, maybe in retrospect we'll wish the Twins had traded Escobar for a piece they used more. But if anyone does break down in the IF, we're going to be very glad we have a real big-leaguer ready to step in.

The bullpen really hurt the team, especially in the 2nd half. Bringing in a FA stud to set up Perkins and send Fien back to the 7th inning would really help. MLB median for relievers is about 8.5 K/9. Absolutely no reason to keep Swarzak and Duensing around when they have no chance of achieving that rate.

There is a shift in personnel already underway which is improving the Twins' strikeout numbers. If you look at the starters full-season K/9, the Twins' staff is 29th. In the 2nd half, though, they were 21st. Nolasco's rate improved (back toward his career norms) after his DL stint, Gibson's rate improved (the result of his increasing MLB experience, perhaps?), exchanging Correia for May made a huge difference, and introducing Meyer will continue the trend. The upper minors is littered with hard-throwing, bat-missing relievers who can contribute to higher K rates in the bullpen. The piece I think a pitching coach might be able to improve is the 2014 Twins' ghastly strand rate. Across the board, Twins pitchers seemed to be susceptible to big innings. Improving the numbers out of the stretch and for the 1st hitter the relievers face would have made an incredible difference in staff ERA, especially in the 2nd half. Whoever they hire, I hope he has a plan to make the pitchers better with men on base.

I also wonder how differently the new manager and coaches might evaluate the catchers. Pinto supposedly worked hard and noticeably improved his catching by September, yet Gardy still didn't give him much of a look. He's one of the players I'm most hopeful will benefit from the internal change of scenery.