Month: December 2022

Where is that pitching that Falvey was going to fix?

Falvey and Levine with credit to MN Twins

Doing a little research on the state of Minnesota Twins pitching under the Derek Falvey & Thad Levine regime from 2017 to current. These gents were brought in because they were supposedly going to turn around the Twins pitching woes. Let’s see how they are progressing.

There is never any “perfect” way to compare players or teams but I use WAR for other comparisons and I will use it again here. Here is how the Twins pitching staff compared to other pitching staffs across MLB. Keep in mind we are ranking entire pitching staffs and not starting rotations here.

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Top 20 pitching seasons by a Twins pitcher

Bert Blyleven

The Minnesota Twins have played baseball for 62 seasons and they have had 273 different pitchers start one or more games for them. The number drops to 26 pitchers having started 100 or more games, just six having started 200 or more, three at 300 or more and only Jim Kaat started over 400 or 422 to be exact.

Pitching has not exactly been the Twins strength over the years, the team has been known for producing hitters. But the Twins have had a number of very good pitchers with Bert Blyleven and Jim Kaat in the MLB Hall of Fame. The Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame includes pitchers Blyleven, Kaat, Frank Viola, Rick Aguilera, Brad Radke, Jim Perry, Camilo Pascual, Eddie Guardado, Johan Santana and Joe Nathan. Three of the inductee’s were relievers.

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Twins acquire new strikeout king

Joey Gallo

The Twins are in agreement with outfielder Joey Gallo on a one-year deal that will pay him $11MM. The two-time All-Star is represented by the Boras Corporation. Apparently when one of Boras’s players is having a tough time getting signed, they turn to the Minnesota Twins for some reason. Either Boras has something on the Twins FO dynamic duo that they don’t want the public to know or they are just easy to convince that the player will be good and might sign a long term deal with them.

Twins fans were disgusted with Miguel Sano and his strikeouts and they couldn’t wait for him to be run out of town. The Twins FO obliged and didn’t tender Sano. But if Twins fans didn’t like Sano, they are really in for a treat in their new outfielder Joey Gallo. Sanó has the second-highest career strikeout rate in MLB history at 36.4 percent. The only player to whiff more often is Gallo, who sits atop the all-time career list at 37.3 percent, including 39.8 percent last season for the Yankees and Dodgers.

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Twins get their catcher in Christian Vazquez

Christian Vazquez with mandatory credit: Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports

With the catching market hot of late the Minnesota Twins jumped in and filled one of their holes by signing 31-year-old free agent Christian Vazquez. Vazquez was drafted by the Boston Red Sox in round nine of the 2008 MLB June Amateur Draft from Puerto Rico Baseball Academy. Vazquez worked his way up through the Red Sox system and debuted in the big leagues on July 9, 2014 going 0 for 3 against the Chicago White Sox. The deal, which is pending a physical, will guarantee him $30MM.

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A look at Twins Quality Starts over the years

According to WikipediA, in baseball a quality start is a statistic for a starting pitcher defined as a game in which the pitcher completes at least six innings and permits no more than three earned runs. The quality start has effectively replaced the ‘complete game’ as a meaningful measure of a starting pitcher’s performance.

The quality start was developed by sportswriter John Lowe in 1985 while writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Nolan Ryan has used the term “High Quality Start” for games where the pitcher goes seven innings or more and allows three earned runs or fewer, which baseball columnist and formber BBWAA president Derrick Goold referred to as “Quality Start Plus.”

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