Matthew Trueblood

José Berríos became a full-fledged four-pitch pitcher in 2019. That makes him more well-rounded, and it might allow him to be better than even advanced models forecast him to be.José Berríos threw more changeups in 2019 than in the previous two seasons, combined. He’d had a good change when he first reached the majors in 2016, but lost confidence in it, and his lack of a second reliable off-speed pitch had been a lingering problem. In 2019, he developed more confidence in using the changeup as a swing-and-miss pitch against right-handers, and used it as a replacement for his sinker against lefties. Despite his struggles late in the season, Berríos made a major breakthrough when he rediscovered the changeup, and that improvement could vault him to ace status in 2020. Adding (or increasing the usage of) a pitch is one of the key ways in which a pitcher can find a new gear. In Berríos’s case, that would be an especially welcome development, because his projections aren’t overly optimistic, and they don’t even come with especially wide error bars. His metronomic consistency over the past three years, in terms of final, full-season numbers, belies both his real development and struggles as a pitcher, and fools projection systems. Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA system generates not just one projection for each player, but a dozen of them. A player’s median projection is the default, but the system spits out projected values for each decile from 10 through 90, plus a couple of even more extreme possibilities. That allows us to look at the range of plausible outcomes for a player, rather than just a single, most likely one. The longer and more consistent a track record a player has, the less those decile projections differ from one another. For young players who have had uneven careers, however, they tend to vary widely. It’s a bit surprising, then, to note just how little the projected outcomes for the 25-year-old Berríos vary. His median projection includes a 4.20 ERA, 98 DRA- (meaning he’d be slightly above-average, relative to all big-league pitchers), and 1.6 wins above replacement player (WARP). In 184 innings, he projects for 190 strikeouts and 63 walks. In his 20th-percentile projection, he’d have a 4.90 ERA, a 105 DRA-, and be worth 0.9 WARP, with 185 strikeouts and 70 walks. His 80th-percentile projection would only nudge him to a 3.58 ERA, a 91 DRA-, 2.3 WARP, 195 strikeouts, and 56 walks. To see a real, significant chance of Berríos becoming the dominant starter for whom Twins fans have so often hoped, then, one has to believe he can do something the system can’t foresee. Because pitch types and pitch usage are two things PECOTA does not include in its modeling, Berríos throwing a changeup more frequently and strategically would be just such a blind spot. He’s now deftly using his four-seamer, curve, sinker, and changeup, blending them relatively evenly against batters who stand on each side of the plate. That keeps batters guessing, in a way PECOTA is only beginning to understand that Berríos can do. More importantly, perhaps, Berríos can command the sinker and the changeup really well when pitching to the third-base side of the plate. He can do the same with his four-seamer and curve to the first-base side of the dish. It’s great when a pitcher can command a given pitch to all quadrants, and to some extent, Berríos can do so with his four-seamer. In a huge majority of cases, though, a given offering is effective mostly when thrown to one side of the plate, because of the way its movement and the pitcher’s mechanics interact. That’s why it’s tremendously valuable for Berríos to have improved his feel for and confidence in the change; it gives him two pitches that are excellent on each side of home plate. Even if a batter decides to cut the plate in half in a given situation and lay off anything else, they have only a 50-percent chance of being right about what they’re swinging at. The Twins and Berríos have worked hard to ensure that he’s prepared for the long haul of baseball’s long season this year. He’s changed the way he recovers and is working to maximize flexibility, the better to promote his chances of staying healthy. If all of that works, he might emerge this year as the best pitcher in the American League Central, thanks to an improvement he’s already made. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article

The industry-leading projection engine has made its pronouncements about Twins players, and about the teams' likely record. What does it tell us about who should bat where?Signing Josh Donaldson as a free agent was the biggest offseason move in the history of Minnesota baseball, and it’s one of the great moves in recent memory in another category, too. An abiding joy of the hot stove league, one that long predates free agency, is the building of lineups on napkins and envelopes. Donaldson’s addition to an already stacked 2020 Twins lineup makes for some truly delightful dream-weaving, and surely set off a frenzy of such scribbling. Now, however, spring training has begun, and reality is rushing forward to blend into (if not overrun) our dream worlds. We have players in uniform, nagging injuries lurking, and projection systems spitting out hard, cold numbers that forecast each player’s 2020 season. Let’s shake off our dreams and memories of 2019, then, and use PECOTA projections to build the optimal Twins lineup for the year ahead. Neither Richard Rodgers nor Oscar Hammerstein II ever made it to the top step of a big-league dugout, but “start at the very beginning” is still salient advice, so let’s follow it. According to PECOTA, the Twins’ rightful leadoff hitter for 2020 is Luis Arraez. While the system doesn’t entirely buy into Arraez’s .334 average or .399 on-base percentage from 2019, it boldly projects the sophomore to post the highest OBP of any Twin, and the only others even in the same range as Arraez hit for too much power to slot them in at the top of the order. Arraez’s excellent contact rate could be a minor liability elsewhere in the order, because of the risk of hitting into double plays, but at the top of the order, it’s just one way to drive an opponent’s pitch count up and give teammates an early look at their stuff. Of the 304 batters who swung at least 500 times in the majors last year, Arraez had the seventh-highest rate of foul balls per swing. That’s not necessarily indicative of a great hitter; much depends on the way they get there. In Arraez’s case, however, it’s more feature than bug, keeping him in at-bats and perhaps giving the offense an early look at a starter’s third or fourth pitch. Second in the order, where he’s batted frequently and comfortably in the past, would be Donaldson, whom PECOTA projects to nearly match Arraez’s OBP despite a strikeout rate roughly two and a half times higher. The system expects Donaldson to make up for a strikeout rate just north of the league average with a gaudy 13.9-percent walk rate, highest among Minnesota regulars. Donaldson projects for less power than Nelson Cruz or Miguel Sanó, but the patience and on-base skills he provides fit best in the two-hole. Because of his extraordinary power (but less sterling walk rate), Nelson Cruz would be the optimal third hitter, according to PECOTA. The system forecasts a team-high .590 slugging average and a .304 isolated power that runs just behind Sanó for the team lead. The third spot in the order, because it is the most likely of any slot to come up with two outs and no one on base, should feature a batter who gets most of their value from their ISO, and shouldn’t feature someone who relies on walks. Cruz is just the right type of hitter for the job, and is especially perfect for it on this particular team. Though Cruz has the best overall offensive projection, Sanó is projected to lead the team in WARP, and would be the optimal cleanup hitter, based on PECOTA. His projected 37.1-percent strikeout rate is less than ideal for a cleanup guy, which could steer one toward an argument for batting him second and Donaldson fourth. However, the system projects such majestic power from Sanó—and the top of the order has such a good expected OBP—that sliding him down to fourth (to maximize the results from having men on base when he bats) makes more sense. Mitch Garver and Max Kepler have a nearly identical overall projection, in terms of production. The system forecasts Garver to be a slightly better hitter, on balance, thanks mostly to a higher forecasted batting average on balls in play (an area in which Kepler has always struggled), but it pegs Kepler for a considerably better strikeout rate. The raw data nudges things in Garver’s direction, but in acknowledgment of the fact that the three hitters above them will all be right-handed, Kepler should bat fifth. Though neither has as strong a projected OBP as the four guys at the top of the order, both Kepler and Garver do project to walk often. That could make the seventh slot in the order an effective second cleanup hitter—a hitter who sees a huge number of runners on base when they step to the plate and is tasked with driving them in. That makes it a cozy fit for Eddie Rosario, whom the system projects to slug .506 and be solidly above-average, despite (surprise, surprise) a very low projected walk rate. Conspicuous in his absence, to this point, has been Jorge Polanco, whom PECOTA projects to be the eighth-best hitter on the 2020 Twins. Even so, the system views him as a very well-rounded hitter, with a solid walk rate, very good strikeout rate, modest power and a solid BABIP. Almost any other team in the league would be thrilled to have a batter of Polanco’s quality, with his balanced skill set, even at the top of its order. Of course, all signs (from last season, and from the team’s remarks this winter) point toward Polanco hitting much higher than this, but if the lineup were constructed purely to maximize expected runs scored, he’d bat eighth. That leaves Byron Buxton, for whom batting ninth will be neither a surprise nor an insult. PECOTA only foresees an 86 DRC+ for Buxton, making him the weak link in a lineup that otherwise ranges from 152 down to 106. Given his power (when Polanco is on in front of him) and his speed, however, Buxton can be a dynamic weapon, even without being an overall monster. Having his speed at the bottom of the order, especially, could catalyze the lineup for the next round—though PECOTA projects just a .288 OBP, which is why he has to remain down there. A few caveats are necessary here. Firstly, of course, there is friction to some of these potential decisions, and that friction is likely to prevent them all from coming to pass. It’s hard to imagine Rosario and Polanco as the seventh and eighth hitters. Secondly, PECOTA does not code for or build its projections around handedness, so it can’t help us shake up the lineup based on the handedness or skill set of opposing starters. The projections are also vulnerable to error if the usage pattern of a particular player changes in an important way, for the same reason. It’s worth noting, in addition to all of that, that batting order doesn’t matter all that much, so fans shouldn’t take up torches and pitchforks if Kepler or Polanco break up the top of the batting order in some way not captured here. Finally, we have to acknowledge that (like many old and beloved baseball practices and customs) the back-of-the-envelope lineup has been rendered somewhat obsolete. Modern lineups are typically highly fluid and modular, and the Twins’ lineup fits those descriptors even better than most. Marwin González, Alex Avila, and others will rotate into the lineup often, changing the optimal alignment of it, even without accounting for injuries or slumps. However, especially with Donaldson on board, it’s still great fun to dream on the set lineup this team could run out on a regular basis throughout 2020. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article

I think there's something there, yet, but the team got an extra option year on him, and that puts him at a disadvantage in terms of getting consistent run in the bullpen at the big-league level. Still, yeah, it's still a big arm, it's a newly motivated person, and if the slider plays up in relief the way we thought it would going into last year, he could end up being this year's Littell.

Trading Brusdar Graterol for Kenta Maeda didn't become a possibility overnight. It took years of methodical, successful pitching development and investment. The Twins nailed it, and need to keep it up.As pitchers and catchers report to Fort Myers, the biggest Twins storyline is still the trade that landed them Kenta Maeda in exchange for Brusdar Graterol. That move put the finishing touches on their offseason, and whether you like the deal or not, it’s clearly solidified the team’s starting rotation for 2020 in a very positive way. Had it not been for the team’s overall advancements and successes in the development of pitchers over the last two years, however, the trade would have been impossible to pull off. Graterol is, himself, one success story of the team’s pitching development infrastructure. Many hard-throwing teenagers undergo Tommy John surgery shortly after turning pro; very few have as quick and smooth a path to the big leagues as Graterol has had. The team managed his workloads and helped him hone his mechanics to keep him healthy, and while the results were mixed on that front, every bit of uninterrupted competitive action helped, and Graterol’s command and feel for the slider came along much faster than is typical of pitchers whose careers begin the way his did. By this offseason, the team had come to the realization that Graterol belonged in the bullpen, but his upside there is considerable. His development has been a victory for the organization. Without other, even greater successes, though, that win wouldn’t have positioned the team to trade him for Maeda. In 2018, the team helped Taylor Rogers build a slider, and his career took off. Where they’d had little more than a matchup lefty, they now have one of the league’s best relievers, capable of stretching out beyond a single inning of work and dominant against both left-handed and right-handed batters. They also helped both Tyler Duffey and Trevor May re-engineer their mechanics, reshape their breaking stuff, and recalibrate their pitch mixes, leading to their twin 2019 breakouts. That made for a beefed-up back end of the bullpen, one that needed little help even from an electric arm like Graterol’s. Those achievements came at the big-league level, which made them highly visible, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Cody Stashak and Zack Littell contributed impressively in 2019, thanks largely to development and direction they undertook in the minor leagues. Devin Smeltzer and Randy Dobnak seemed unlikely to ever reach the major leagues as recently as 2018, but now, both look like credible swingmen who can eat innings when the team’s depth is tested and provide high-quality short relief work when they’re rolling. The club salvaged the development of Lewis Thorpe, after Thorpe’s long saga of elbow trouble forced him to evolve a lot in a short time, and now believe he’s a solid backend starter. Jordan Balazovic, Jhoan Duran, and Blayne Enlow all offer varying degrees of promise and a surprising amount of polish, given their profiles. Populating the back end of their rotation, for now, are low-risk, low-profile additions Homer Bailey and Rich Hill. Those gambles come on the heels of wildly successful similar investments in Jake Odorizzi and Michael Pineda. The team has demonstrated an ability to allow its pitchers to find their own paths to success, without feeling unable to step in when they can offer a new insight or tool to a particular hurler. As a result, they’re more confident in their ability to go bargain-hunting, and there’s a stronger foundation for that confidence. All of these wins set the stage for trading away Graterol. High-octane, high-profile pitching prospects are fun, but they’re a risky luxury. Because the Twins accrued such depth in their rotation, they could afford to view Graterol strictly as a reliever. Because they so successfully augmented the development of their key relievers, they could afford to view Graterol as a non-essential reliever. Because they had so little urgent need for him, and so much confidence in their processes and their number of options, they could afford to trade Graterol for Maeda. In the big leagues, every small victory of player development has a positive knock-on effect. Teams who commit to being good at the still-difficult science of player development, and who then pounce on any opportunity to capture and maximize those aftereffects when they have success, begin to enjoy the kind of persistent advantage that keeps windows open longer and builds dynasties. For every pitcher to whom the Twins successfully add a new pitch, or for whom they find some hidden mechanical key, they take another step toward winning a whole bunch of AL Central titles in a row. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article

The Red Sox saw something in Brusdar Graterol's medical information that made them balk. But is there any real value in the kinds of assessments that lead to such reversals?The way the Boston Red Sox interpreted and evaluated medical information about Brusdar Graterol cost the Minnesota Twins something tangible. Now that the terms of the Mookie Betts megadeal are more or less set, we can assess exactly what that cost was. Instead of getting Kenta Maeda in exchange for Graterol in a straight-up exchange, the Twins are now getting Maeda and $10 million from the Los Angeles Dodgers, but giving up Graterol, outfielder Luke Raley, and the 67th pick in the 2020 MLB Draft. The change in marginal value for Minnesota is small, but it’s real, and it’s not really fair. The Red Sox shouldn’t have had the right to hold up the deal on this basis, and MLB should modify its rules to avoid similar situations in the future. At first, this might seem an extreme position. No team should be expected to take on damaged goods, and any rule that reduces the discretion a team can exercise when reviewing otherwise privileged information before giving a trade final approval would be met with dismay. There are relevant, recent precedents for teams withholding key information about a player when trading them to another club, and that can’t be allowed to happen. However, there’s a marked difference between truly damaged, injured baseball players—especially pitchers—and merely risky ones. I would argue the difference is one of kind, not of degree, and that the ability of one team to apply their own prognoses to subjective medical data after a trade has been agreed upon is unfair to the other party in said trade and to the player himself. We’re very bad at predicting injuries in baseball, but that should come as no surprise. We’re pretty bad at predicting, and even diagnosing, much more simple, straightforward medical conditions, across much more robust and similar populations than big-league pitchers. In numerous studies, when shown them far enough apart to minimize awareness of the subject at issue, radiologists have been shown to draw almost diametrically opposite conclusions and make dramatically different diagnostic proclamations of two scans, only to be told afterward that the two scans were actually identical. Representativeness, available mental energy, halo effects, and a half-dozen other external factors and cognitive biases affect the way medical professionals assess patients, even in much higher stakes situations and with more time available for the review. It’s easy to imagine that the Red Sox drew different conclusions from Graterol’s medical history and private health information than did the Twins, or even the Dodgers. That doesn’t mean they’re right. In fact, they’re probably wrong. Graterol is most likely to be a reliever, in both the short- and the long-term future. His build, his delivery, his repertoire, and his movement profile all point in that direction. So does his health history, though the tea leaves are much less clear there, because it’s not at all clear that pitching in relief poses less risk to a pitcher’s arm or allows him to stay healthier than he would as a starter. However, he’s healthy right now. He’s pitched at a very high level as recently as the MLB postseason, and his offseason workouts have been uninterrupted. By declaring his medicals unsatisfactory, the Red Sox were able to renegotiate their deal with the Dodgers, and they got better talent in the process. The Twins, however, had to decide whether to go forward with a deal that lost some of its original simplicity and desirability. The Dodgers, though willing to take on Graterol, were in a position to apply leverage to the Twins, because of the public reports about the newly questionable health of their flamethrowing pitcher. If the Twins had elected to back out of the deal, they’d have had an even more damaged asset on their hands, because (unfairly) the outside view would have been that Graterol was also rejected, to one extent or another, by the Dodgers. For Graterol, this is all patently unfair. It will, if only tacitly, affect his future earnings. It will color the global perception of him. Again, the risky elements of his body, background, and skill set were already public knowledge, but this assigns a false sense of objective reality to one of those elements. If a player can be shown to be injured (in a way that prevents him from taking the field) at the time of a trade, and if that injury was not known to the acquiring team when the trade was agreed upon, the league should step in, certify as much, and nullify the deal. In all other cases, once an agreement has been reached, it should be final. If teams want to run risk analyses around injury precursors on a given player, they should have to do it using publicly available information, and they should have to do it before agreeing to acquire that player. A smart front office employee can map out the injury risk of a given pitcher using that pitcher’s age, workload, documented injury history, and average velocity, with purely statistical data, repertoire, and qualitative information about their delivery baked into the assessment. They can do so just about as reliably as a doctor, a biomechanics expert, and another front office employee can by viewing old scans of a shoulder strain or measurements of the length of the player’s ulnar collateral ligament, and the simpler method also avoids trafficking in divination. It wards off overconfident assessments that also hurt the reputation and earning power of players, and it provides a fairer foundation for trade negotiations. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article

Kenta Maeda doesn't have a reputation to compare to the top free-agent pitchers of this offseason, but he might be better than several of them, and the best pitcher on the Twins' entire staff.José Berríos is a more traditional workhorse. Jake Odorizzi has a deeper repertoire. Taylor Rogers is a relief ace. In the right mix, however, new acquisition Kenta Maeda can be better than any of them, and the erstwhile Los Angeles Dodgers swingman has landed on a Minnesota Twins team that suits him just as well as his old one did. While other pitchers might be more valuable in a vacuum, the specific context of the Twins pitching staff makes Maeda the most valuable hurler they have. That’s a bold claim, and the advisability of trading Brusdar Graterol for Maeda partially hinges on its viability, so here are five numbers to support it. Of the 104 pitchers who threw at least 2,000 pitches in 2019, Maeda induced the sixth-highest whiff rate on swings. Opponents made contact on a lower percentage of their swings against Maeda than against Lucas Giolito, Chris Sale, or Jacob deGrom. Despite a fastball that averages 92.3 miles per hour, Maeda misses bats at an extremely impressive clip. When he threw a slider to right-handers in 2019, they whiffed 25.2 percent of the time—not on swings, but on all sliders. Left-handed hitters whiffed at his changeup 21.5 percent of the time. Those numbers are eye-popping. Maeda has five pitches, but really, he throws just two against each type of batter. Righties see his slider 53.4 percent of the time and his fastball 33.2 percent of the time. To lefties, he throws 41.2 percent changeups and 34.6 percent fastballs. Because of that, of hurlers who threw at least 2,000 pitches, Maeda induced the seventh-highest swing rate on pitches outside the zone. Against batters of each handedness, Maeda is more likely to throw his primary non-fastball pitch than his heater. His fastball only remains his most-used pitch because he throws it as a secondary offering against all batters. He’s highly unpredictable, and that draws hitters into chasing bad pitches. That unpredictability makes him hard to square up, too. His fastball has above-average spin, adjusted for its velocity, and while his spin doesn’t generate extraordinary movement, it does seem to help him limit hard contact. Of 152 pitchers who allowed at least 250 batted balls in 2019, Maeda yielded the fourth-lowest average exit velocity. It’s not a coincidence that opponents have a .280 batting average on balls in play against Maeda over his 589 big-league innings, which is well below the typical .300. Nor has Maeda simply gotten lucky. He gets tangibly worse contact even when batters aren’t swinging and missing. He’s a fly-ball pitcher, but is one of the best pitchers in baseball at limiting exit velocity on those flies, which only makes him an even better fit for the Twins: their outfield defense is far better than the gloves on the infield. Finding pitchers with both strikeout rates and contact management skills this far above average, while throwing more than one inning at a time, is virtually impossible. Yet, Maeda manages it, partially because he’s been used very strategically. In all situations other than facing batters a third time in games as a starter, Maeda held opponents to a batting line of .199/.264/.343. The Dodgers’ plan with Maeda, for reasons both performance-centered and financial, was to minimize his exposure to opponents for the third time in any game. That prevented Maeda from running into trouble as batters grew accustomed to his two-pitch combinations. He only faced batters on a third trip through the order 104 times in 2019, less than half as many such plate appearances as he had facing them a second time. When restricted to that role, Maeda was dominant. The Twins, with such great bullpen depth in place, can afford to carry forward that strategy, which gives Maeda a chance to remain nearly unhittable. The way Maeda slides between roles (however unhappy he might be about it), and the way he both punches batters out and makes things easy on his defense when they do put the ball in play, makes him a darling of the most advanced pitching metrics. Baseball Prospectus uses Deserved Run Average (DRA) to holistically capture a pitcher’s contribution to run prevention, and DRA- puts that contribution on a simple scale, where 100 is average and (for example) 80 is 20 percent better than average. Maeda’s 68 career DRA- is better than the same number for the best seasons of Berríos, Odorizzi, or Pineda. Among possible Twins starters, only Rich Hill has ever been better than Maeda, and Hill is unlikely to reach that level again at this late stage of his career. It’s unlikely that Maeda will be as inexpensive as his contract first appears, because he’ll probably start for much of the season, and that will trigger a number of significant incentives. However, even at triple his base salary, Maeda is a bargain. He could be the Twins’ ace, especially because of the deep and highly modular group around him. His pitch mix is a perfect fit for the Twins’ evolving pitching philosophy, and his strengths match up with those of the team in ideal fashion. Click here to view the article

The best reason to believe in and take note of the Twins' latest pitching addition is the trait he shares with their first one of the winter: a heavy (and potentially damaging) reliance on sliders.For the second time in three winters, the Twins have signed a Venezuelan right-hander in his early 30s, with an impressive MLB track record but nightmarish recent results, to a late-winter minor-league deal. I don’t expect Jhoulys Chacín to be with the organization much longer in 2020 than Aníbal Sánchez was in 2018, because the Twins already have a number of potentially solid starting pitching options. However, one thing about Chacín should stand out for Twins fans: his slider usage. Like the first pitching acquisition of Minnesota’s offseason (Matt Wisler), this final one seems to reflect the Twins’ confidence that a good, heavily-used slider is a solid foundation on which to build success. Chacín came up with the Rockies in 2009, and had impressive seasons with them. From 2014-16, however, he ran into a lot of trouble, especially with injuries. In that three-year span, he had a 4.81 ERA, in just 234 total innings. He was worth -0.4 WARP, according to Baseball Prospectus. Between March 2015 and the end of 2016, he belonged to five different teams. His career on life support, Chacín signed with the pitching-starved Padres for $1.75 million for 2017—but found something there that (briefly, anyway) changed the course of his career again. After never having thrown his slider even a quarter of the time, he threw it 34 percent of the time that season, stayed healthy, topped 180 innings, had a 3.89 ERA, and racked up 2.2 WARP. That earned him his two-year deal with the Brewers prior to 2018. Here’s where his slider usage has gone since. Download attachment: Brooksbaseball-Chart.jpeg In 2018, Chacín had a season fully in line with his early brilliance in Colorado. Using his slider as his primary pitch, he befuddled and frustrated opposing batters. They couldn’t get him to throw anything straight, and that left them hacking away at stuff they had no chance to drive. He made 35 starts during the season and another three in October, as the Brewers pitched him virtually every time he could be said to be on full rest. Their strategy was to get him out of the game before opponents could see him a third time, thereby giving them a chance to find the range on his slider and square it up. Then, in 2019: disaster. As Chacín leaned more and more heavily on the slider, batters started taking its measure. His whiff rate (as a percentage of all sliders thrown) tumbled to a career-low 11.5 percent, not because it flattened out or he stopped commanding it, but because batters started sitting on it. They still didn’t exactly obliterate the pitch; they did most of their damage when he gave in and threw a sinker. However, the attempt to push his slider usage up to 50 percent while still starting was a failure. He found the point of diminishing returns for that pitch, in his particular repertoire, in the role he was asked to fill. That point is higher, of course, if you’re a short-burst reliever. Opponents have far fewer chances to see and adjust to the pitch, and they can’t make you the focal point of their preparation for any particular game. Matt Wisler threw his slider 45 percent of the time even in 2018, but that wasn’t anywhere near the red line for slider use, because (although he began his big-league career in the Braves’ rotation) he’s a pure reliever. In 2019, though, he really pushed the envelope. Download attachment: Brooksbaseball-Chart (1).jpeg It backfired, though in a different way than Chacín’s strategy did. (That shouldn’t shock us; they’re very different pitchers and pitches.) Wisler still induced whiffs on a very impressive 20.9 percent of all his sliders, which is why the Twins liked him enough to claim him on waivers and slot him into the bullpen plans. By Baseball Prospectus’s advanced metrics (where 100 is league-average and lower is better), he had an 85 DRA-, a 93 cFIP, and was worth an impressive 0.7 WARP in just 51 innings last year. His ERA, however, was 5.61, because batters cracked 10 home runs against him in that relatively small body of work. The problem wasn’t that Wisler’s slider lacked bite, or that batters began gearing up and swinging out of their shoes against him. Nor was it (solely) the aeroball that victimized him. The problem was simple: most pitchers’ sliders are prone to occasional slips, and some of those slips lead to balls in dirt, and some lead to balls left fat in the center of the zone. By throwing so many sliders, Wisler opened himself up to a few too many of those slips, and too many of them landed in hittable areas. Pitch mix is always a delicate balance. Every pitcher must calibrate and tinker with their pitch interactions in their own, unique way. However, there are certain thresholds that should raise one’s eyebrows, and they can make for easy adjustments, especially for teams with ample confidence in their pitching infrastructure. That last modifier definitely describes the Twins, which is probably why they were happy to take their chances with Wisler and Chacín. If Wes Johnson can help them each hone their pitch balance the way he did with multiple Twins last season, these small investments could pay big dividends. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article

Michael Pineda is a big guy with a power pitcher's reputation, but quietly, he's become much more dependent on command and control. Luckily, there's evidence that he has some of the best of each in all of baseball.The Twins re-signed Michael Pineda to a two-year deal worth $20 million back in December, on the premise that he had regained his pre-Tommy John form down the stretch and proved himself as a viable mid-rotation starter. Despite the suspension that will steal a quarter of his 2020, Minnesota’s front office believes he can provide stability and upside for the balance of the season, based on last year’s progression. Pineda is a very tough pitcher to figure out, though, and whether or not the team made a good bet depends heavily on whether his good command can continue to outweigh his pedestrian stuff. By most of the currently popular pitching metrics, Pineda is somewhat unimpressive. His cFIP (a Baseball Prospectus metric that isolates factors over which a pitcher has the most control, but which does not fall victim to some of the oversmoothing tendencies of other fielder-independent statistics) was 105 in 2019, marking him as worse than an average hurler. Statcast has six buckets into which it sorts tracked batted balls. Pineda gave up the two most damaging types—Barrels and Solid Contact—in a higher percentage of opponent plate appearances than all but 14 other pitchers. His average fastball velocity has dipped over the years, and is now lower than the average for a right-handed starter without exceptional durability. His spin rate on the fastball is in the fifth percentile among all qualifying pitchers, which leads to heavy movement on the pitch—but because it’s still relatively straight, batters are able to lift it consistently. His slider once had considerable movement separation from the heater, but that’s become muted over the last two seasons in which he’s pitched, leading to fewer grounders on the slider, too. Indeed, Pineda was once a reliable ground-ball guy, but last year, 114 of the 130 pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched had higher ground-ball rates than he had. Pineda’s always been vulnerable to hard contact, and even during his strong finish to 2020, he gave up a fair amount of that, with opponents’ average exit velocity against him in the upper quartile of the league. Even worse, now that he’s not getting grounders, Pineda also allows a lot of that contact within the launch-angle band in which batters have the most success. Of the 129 pitchers who allowed at least 300 batted balls in 2019, Pineda allowed the 24th-highest Sweet Spot percentage. His changeup isn’t great, either, which makes containing left-handed batters and getting through opposing lineups for a third time a constant struggle for Pineda. However, he did throw his fastball and changeup more (and his slider less) against lefties in 2019 than ever before, and that led to more success than usual in those situations. When it comes to sheer whiffs per pitch or swing, Pineda is impressive, fitting into the top quartile of the league. However, he’s not even in the top tertile of the majors in actual strikeout rate. It seems as though, because Pineda’s repertoire remains limited, batters are able to guess along with him in certain counts and situations, minimizing the value of his granular, pitch-for-pitch numbers. Despite all that, however, Pineda had a 4.01 ERA, in a league that averaged 4.60. The only AL hurlers who topped 100 innings and allowed a lower walk rate were Mike Leake and Ryan Yarbrough. Without sexy stuff or a deep arsenal, Pineda was very good for most of 2019, and projects relatively well for 2020, because he does a simple and vital thing very well: he fills the zone with fastballs, and expands it with breaking stuff. Over 400 pitchers threw at least 200 four-seam fastballs in 2019. Among them, Pineda ranked in the 97th percentile for Called Strike Probability—in essence, the average likelihood that fastballs he threw would have been called strikes, if batters didn’t swing. Some 245 pitchers, meanwhile, threw at least 200 sliders. Pineda’s Called Strike Probability for that pitch ranked in the seventh percentile. An average fastball from Pineda had a 59-percent chance of being called a strike, and given the lack of either extreme velocity or rising action on the pitch, that made hitters very eager to attack. However, if they saw fastball but got a slider, they were likely to find themselves waving at a pitch that otherwise had a 36-percent chance of being called a strike. Unlike more straightforward, quantitative stats, Called Strike Probability is an extremely nuanced characteristic. It’s captured in a single number, but it’s hard to say what the optimal number is for any individual pitcher or pitch, except by understanding the pitch’s place in the pitcher’s repertoire and the constellation of characteristics that make up that hurler. For Pineda, however, it’s pretty easy to see how this works. Fastballs have to be strikes consistently, or else a pitcher starts racking up far too many walks. Breaking balls, and especially sliders, need to end up consistently outside the zone. Pineda did that better than ever in 2019, burying the slider not only more consistently, but further below the zone, reducing the chance that a hitter would even happen to reach down and golf a shin-high pitch somewhere. His lack of power or strikeout skill gives Pineda a thin margin for error. He has to repeat the command gains he made in 2019, especially since he’s unlikely to get back the velocity he once had. However, the Twins made multiple bets on command over stuff this winter, suggesting that they trust Wes Johnson and their support staff to help pitchers maintain that trait. That makes the deal to which they signed Pineda a reasonable risk, even if it seems a bit old-fashioned. Click here to view the article

With the Astros, stolen signs helped González fake improved plate discipline. He wasn't purely a creation of Houston's systematic cheating, however, and the Twins taught him some new tricks of their own in 2019.Marwin González probably profited from the Houston Astros’ systematic sign-stealing efforts in 2017 and 2018, in ways we can clearly identify using advanced data. After he signed with the Twins last winter, however, González also profited from Minnesota’s hitting philosophy and instruction. Thus, while you shouldn’t expect him to repeat or approximate his gaudy 2017 numbers in 2020, there are reasons to believe he can be a similarly valuable (though different) super-utility slugger. Early in his career, González battled persistent problems recognizing and laying off non-fastballs outside the strike zone. He did good work against heaters, but was too easily exploited by pitchers who could command secondary stuff. In 2017, however, his chase rate on junk outside the zone dropped sharply, and González’s production surged accordingly. Download attachment: Chase Rate MG.jpeg In hindsight, thanks to the information that has come to light since, it seems safe to assume González was getting help from Houston’s banging scheme. Since that year, and particularly after leaving Houston for Minnesota, he’s been unable to replicate that improved plate discipline. His walk rate in the two seasons prior to 2017 was just north of 4 percent. His walk rates in 2017 and 2018 were just south of 10 percent. In 2019, he walked just 6.7 percent of the time. However, it’s not fully clear that González solely shored up his plate discipline in those seasons as a result of sign stealing. He was at an age and in a situation that encouraged a maturing, increasingly selective approach, and might have simply made that conscious decision. Then, in coming to the Twins, he both faced pressure to live up to a multi-year deal and was immersed in a team whose baseline hitting mentality is more aggressive. He might have swung more often in 2019, not because he forgot how to be patient or lost his secret edge, but because he simply felt more pressure and was trying to tailor his approach to that of his new club. In any case, González also got something valuable in return for his increased aggressiveness: more pop. Despite leaving Minute Maid Park and coming to Target Field, which is a tough park on his power tendencies, González nearly matched his extra-base hit rate from 2018, and his underlying batted-ball data support that. In fact, those numbers suggest that he could have seen even better results. Download attachment: unnamed.jpg That forward leap, in both average exit velocity and hard-hit rate, is very significant. A player in his 30s adding three miles per hour to that average exit velocity figure within a single season is nearly unprecedented. By tapping into his aggressiveness again, González found a lot more hard contact. He saw particular improvement in his ability to drive the outside pitch, as a left-handed batter, and in staying on top of pitches up in the zone, as a right-handed one. Twins fans shouldn’t expect González to rebound to the kind of numbers he put up in 2017. That was probably a career year, sweetened by his team’s systematic sign-stealing. Still, there were drawbacks to hitting the way the Astros trained González to hit, including drawbacks to the banging scheme itself. The Twins have helped González realize his potential for avoiding the weakest and least valuable forms of contact, and for thumping the ball more consistently, even when an opposing pitcher executes well. On balance, he’s still a good player, likely to produce better in 2020 than he did in 2019, and having signs relayed to him did not turn him from some fringe big-leaguer into the fine utility player he is now. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article

Love this list but propose this amendment to the first entry (sacrilege, I know): https://youtu.be/1P2HSPaF3cI Also, what about Clapton’s “Let It Rain”?

It's easy to guess that Jorge Polanco's erratic arm would force him to position himself differently at shortstop, but with modern databases, we don't have to guess. It's true, and it's crucial to understanding how Polanco can be a better shortstop.In the latest Gleeman and the Geek, John posited that Jorge Polanco’s arm might be a compound problem for him as a defender if his lack of confidence in making long throws led him to play a step shallower than stronger-armed shortstops. Despite his good sprint speed, and despite hands deft enough to generate one of the highest contact rates in the majors when at bat, Polanco is a poor defensive shortstop. His range is deficient, but in particular, he has a weak and erratic arm. Thirteen of Polanco’s 22 errors in 2019 came on throws. Since the start of 2018, Baseball Info Solutions counts Polanco as four plays to the good when it comes to positioning-adjusted range and playing balls in the air, but 13 plays to the bad on throws alone. However, we have tools that can tell us for certain whether Polanco is also giving away range because of that arm. According to Baseball Savant, 25 shortstops played in a shifted infield with a right-handed batter at the plate at least 200 times in 2019. (That makes for convoluted reading, but those qualifiers help ensure that we’re comparing apples to apples.) Of them, Polanco played the second-shallowest, an average of just 142 feet from home plate. Perhaps, however, that had something to do with the dramatic way the Twins deployed shifts against right-handers last year, with Polanco so far into the hole that it only made sense for him to pinch down, toward a traditional third baseman’s starting spot. The same database showed 28 shortstops as playing at least 100 times in what it coded as “Strategic” alignments against righties—what previous generations would have called shaded, but not shifted. Among those 28, Polanco played fourth-shallowest. Finally, among 31 shortstops who played at least 1,000 plate appearances against right-handed batters in “Standard” alignments, Polanco played seventh-shallowest. The last list provides the cleanest data. The guys who play deepest, on average, are ones like Nick Ahmed, Javier Báez, Francisco Lindor, and Fernando Tatis, Jr. — the shortstops renowned throughout the league for their cannon-strength arms. Polanco isn’t hedging as much as some of the game’s most inexperienced and undertooled shortstops, but he’s definitely striving to cut batted balls off a half-step sooner, when he’s able, in order to shorten the throw across the diamond. Yes, his arm is costing the Twins outs, not only when he’s unable to turn a double play or throws away a routine groundout, but by making it harder for him to create angles and give ground in order to make tough, ranging plays. As has been enthusiastically and repeatedly mentioned since the signing of Josh Donaldson, the Twins are aware of this problem. Their frequent and drastic shifting in 2019 was, in part, an attempt to hide Polanco. Donaldson makes that easier, because he can cover dramatically more ground (including and especially in the hole between third base and shortstop) than could any of the team’s previous options. In the long run, the solution to this problem is to successfully develop Royce Lewis or Keoni Cavaco as a shortstop. Given Lewis’s documented struggles with mechanics both at the plate and at shortstop, however, and given that Cavaco played more third base than short in high school, neither fix is a sure bet. In the meantime, then, the Twins need to keep Polanco plugging on some of the small ways he can shore up his fielding, and (especially) improve the utility of his arm. Recall that he just revamped his throwing motion last year, but that was done on the fly, in-season. The dropdown in throwing motion implemented by third-base coach Tony Díaz did seem to help Polanco’s accuracy, but it cost him in terms of both timing and getting zip on his throws. Polanco needs to work this spring to develop a throwing motion that allows him to transition more fluidly from fielding the ball to throwing it, and that gives him a chance to fire the ball across with more urgency. That should be more easily done under the more flexible practice conditions of spring training. His footwork is another potential path to improvement: Too often, he receives relatively routine grounders in positions that force unnecessary stutter-steps, or doesn’t reach a ball because his first step is too hesitant. If Polanco can make any of these small adjustments, the effect will compound in a positive direction. He’ll be able to play deeper and open up more options for the team’s defense against ground balls. If he can’t, the Twins will have to hope they can continue to outhit and mitigate the damage done by having him at short on an everyday basis. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article

The Minnesota Twins will never be the same. This is a transformational signing. This is that first statement signing a team needs, when it matures into the kind of organization that can compete for top talent with those in bigger markets. At the plate, in the field, and on the books, Donaldson is just perfect for this team, at this moment.The Washington Nationals signed Jayson Werth for seven years and $126 million prior to 2011. Unlike these Twins, those Nats weren’t ready to win, but they needed to announce themselves as serious about acquiring stars and about winning games. The Twins, despite their 101-win 2019, needed this signing to do the same. However, the serendipity of this match runs much deeper than that. No contending team needed a defensive upgrade on the left side of its infield more than the Twins did. I wrote about this right after they were eliminated in October. Donaldson is a massive upgrade for them. He was second in Defensive Runs Saved at third base in 2019, and has been great throughout his career, but the particular way in which he saves those runs makes him a particularly perfect fit for Minnesota. Defensive Runs Saved breaks down how players perform on balls they field straight on (including charging weakly-hit balls), to their right, and to their left. Of Donaldson’s 15 runs saved, 10 of them came on balls to his left, toward the hole between third base and shortstop. Donaldson is great ranging to his left, picking the ball smoothly and throwing accurately on the move, across his body. He’ll not only be an upgrade of about 20 runs over Miguel Sanó at his own position, but help minimize the impact of Jorge Polanco’s defensive deficiencies at short. At the plate, the big problems the Twins face in 2020 are the risk of regression from some of their breakout bats and the departure of hitting coach James Rowson. Donaldson’s arrival softens both of those blows. The Twins’ trademark last season was their unrelenting focus on the goal of driving the ball in the air to the pull field. No team did it as often as they did; no team came close. Few hitters agree as readily with that mentality, or execute it as methodically and faithfully, as Donaldson does. Teams and players who make that their objective can set themselves at different points on a spectrum of approaches, however, tinkering with the means they believe can most consistently achieve that end. Some prefer to emphasize plane, launch angle, and timing. Others emphasize maximizing exit velocity, even if it means using the big part of the field at times and having to command the strike zone better. The Twins fall into the latter bucket, and so does Donaldson. Rank the 342 batters who had at least 150 tracked batted balls in 2019 by average exit velocity, and the Twins now have the second-, third-, and sixth-hardest hitters, in Sanó, Nelson Cruz, and Donaldson. Rank the group by average exit velocity solely on fly balls and line drives, and they have the first-, third-, fifth-, and seventh-most powerful sluggers, with those three in the same order and Mitch Garver sliding into the picture. If you were worried about a brain drain, or about the team being (on the whole) pretty aggressive and susceptible to junk, the addition of a guy like Donaldson, who walks about 15 percent of the time and will not shut up about leg kick and launch angle even if you ask him to, should be a source of comfort. Cost certainty can be a hard asset to assess, but it’s clear that the Polanco, Max Kepler, and Sanó extensions have delivered tangible value here. With those three and Donaldson locked in for at least the next four seasons for an average annual total of $45 million and change, the team has a ton of flexibility. They can afford to pay Garver, Byron Buxton and Luis Arráez, even if they have big seasons that put them in position to demand huge paydays. They have time and leverage to seek long-term deals with Royce Lewis, Trevor Larnach, or Alex Kirilloff, should any of them come up and perform in a way that makes that kind of investment seem wise. They’ve replaced Cruz’s massive power and reliability, a year before they even needed to do so. They have a solid offensive core under control for relatively little money, which gives them the season to assess some internal starting pitching candidates they like very, very much, and which will allow them to bid handsomely on starters next winter if those internal candidates don’t assert themselves. Jeff Passan tweeted that the Twins were the sneaky favorites to sign Donaldson from the outset of the offseason. In hindsight, perhaps that should have been obvious. No team and player were better matched, even including the Twins and certain free-agent starters for whom they elected not to pay a premium. This move feels perfect. Click here to view the article

There’s a “Josh Donaldson or Bust” vibe hanging over the Twins’ offseason. The superstar third baseman would tie this winter together neatly. Missing out would create frustration. Naturally, there have been efforts to cook up alternatives. One of them: free agent Nicholas Castellanos as a first baseman.It’s important, as we gain ever greater insight into the game through statistics and quantitative evaluation, not to get lost in them. In the age of Big Data. It’s more important than ever to sift signal from noise, and to recognize when non-objective, qualitative sources are providing more valuable information than the hard, cold numbers. Baseball is still a game nicely suited to statistical measurements, and anyone who ignores those measurements in the modern environment is lost. On the other hand, one must know when to look around and through the numbers in order not to get tangled up in their traps. Defensive statistics, especially, can be nasty snares. Decades ago, Bill James codified the Defensive Spectrum, using broad-spectrum historical study to identify the hierarchy of positional difficulty for defenders. He made important discoveries that way, and the hierarchy he sketched is still, more or less, the one we use today. From hardest to easiest, the stations go: ShortstopSecond BaseCenter FieldThird BaseRight FieldLeft FieldFirst BaseThat order tends to predict the way players change positions throughout their careers (sliding down the spectrum), and it has become especially relevant as versatility and position changes have become more important elements of defense in the last 15 years. Over the same period, we’ve gone from having almost no credible defensive metrics (that is, ones other than fielding percentage or raw assists and putouts) to having three or four of them. As a result, the modern default in evaluating players as potential additions to a defense is to check their Defensive Runs Saved total, project that figure to hold steady if they remain at their current position, ponder a move down the defensive spectrum where appropriate, and call it close enough. Sometimes, that works. In cases like that of Castellanos, though, we can and should do better. In September 2017 I wrote the following about Castellanos, then playing third base for the Tigers, as part of my ranking of all 30 teams’ starting third basemen in the field. (Castellanos ranked dead last on that list.) [Castellanos] doesn’t use his speed well at the position. His lateral movements are robotic and his hands are stone. There was a reason why Detroit was willing to make this kid wait while Miguel Cabrera manned third base just a few years ago, and now that he’s learned to run and can access his full speed potential, they ought to move him back to the outfield for good. The day after that article ran, Castellanos played his first game of the season in right field. He played two more games at third at the end of the season, but otherwise, has never returned to the dirt. He’s played over 2,500 innings in right field since September 2017. At first, he was a total butcher out there, too. However, his numbers improved considerably from 2018 to 2019: Download attachment: NCChart.png Given that, and given that Castellanos stands 6-foot-4, with improved athleticism, it’s easy to imagine a world in which he slides on a first baseman’s mitt, comes back to the infield at the cold corner, and continues to rake the way he has over the last two seasons. That’s the narrative the numbers want you to believe; it’s the trap his body and the data have conspired to lay. Go back, though, and watch video of Castellanos playing third base. It wasn’t a dearth of athleticism that held him back when he played there. Nor was it an erratic arm. Rather, it was the fundamental skills required of any infielder—nimbleness, smooth motion, soft hands, and an underlying comfort with the ball coming in one’s direction—that were simply missing. Castellanos was drafted as a third baseman. He played there, with only a brief sojourn in the outfield, for seven professional seasons. If he had the instincts or the feel for the infield, it would have shown up by now. Instead, he’s quickly becoming a viable outfielder, because his athleticism plays better there. As he gains experience, he can use his speed to make up for poor jumps and reads. In the infield, there’s no such margin for error, so Castellanos should never return there. The Defensive Spectrum, in this sense, does not apply. Castellanos also isn’t what the Twins need at the plate. Donaldson would bring an approach consistent with everything the Twins already emphasize, and he’d add a dimension (extraordinary plate discipline) that was the only missing ingredient at times in 2019. Castellanos is a fun, enthusiastic, unorthodox hitter, but he’s an inveterate hacker. He swung at 40.2 percent of pitches outside the strike zone last year. He is, in a number of ways, a right-handed Eddie Rosario, and while Rosario is unfairly maligned at times, there are few times when Twins fans find themselves wishing they had two of him. After Castellanos signs, the Twins should call up whoever failed to get him and see whether that team would cough up something useful for the next best thing. Other than that, though, Castellanos’s free agency is irrelevant to the Twins’ winter. MORE FROM TWINS DAILY — Latest Twins coverage from our writers — Recent Twins discussion in our forums — Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email Click here to view the article