It seems like a generation ago, but the Twins were sort of a model franchise in the recent past. Between 2002 and 2010, the team won the American League Central six times in nine years, with a losing record only once (and that year, 2007, they were 79-83, which isn't that bad). They achieved this success despite being a small-market team with a payroll that ranked in the top half of the league only twice during that nine-year span.
In the four seasons since then, they've lost 99, 96, 96, and 92 games. The latter record, which landed the Twins in last in the division for the third time in four years, cost manager Ron Gardenhire his job. The Twins enter 2015 with Paul Molitor, St. Paul native and Hall of Famer, at the helm. He's never managed before, but he was the Twins' minor league baserunning and and infield coordinator in 2003 and 2005-2013 (he was Seattle's hitting coach in 2004) and was a coach for the major league team last year.
What's gone wrong? Here's a chart showing the team's rank in OPS+ (that's on base percentage plus slugging, adjusted for home park) and ERA+ (similarly adjusted earned run average) over the past thirteen years. Keep in mind that there were 14 teams in the American League until 2013, when the Astros switched leagues. In the Twins' last pennant season, 2010, represented by the horizontal line below, they were second in OPS+ and sixth in ERA+. They haven't come close to those levels since:
The rankings have bounced around, but what stands out is the collapse of the Twins' pitching beginning in 2011. They've finished second to last, second to last, fourth to last, and last in park-adjusted ERA since their last playoff appearance. The offense hasn't been great, but the problem's been an inability to prevent runs, not to score them.
So what's gone wrong with run prevention? Well, you know how fans and commentators are upset about risking strikeout rates? Say what you will about the team, the Twins pitchers have stayed clear of that controversy. Here's the team's strikeout rate (percentage of batters struck out) for its starters compared to league averages:
Again, the solid line corresponds to the Twins' last pennant. As you can see, after hovering around league averages, the Twins' starters' strikeout rates have plummeted. They improved some last year--welcome the the Twin Cities, Phil Hughes!--but they're still way below average.
How about the relievers? Same thing:
This, I think, explains a lot of why the Twins have run into trouble. Their pitchers don't miss bats. In the modern game, that's important. For the 30 major league teams last year, the correlation coefficient between strikeout rate and park-adjusted ERA is 0.60, which means that strikeouts are a significant component of run prevention. The more batters you strike out, the fewer runs you allow. The Twins aren't striking out enough batters to have an effective pitching staff.
Gardenhire's pitching coach, Rick Anderson, wanted Twins hurlers to "pitch to contact and trust your defense, throw strikes and minimize walks to pitch deep into games." Pitching to contact means trying to induce batted balls rather than strikeouts. That's at odds with the trend of rising strikeouts, but I don't think you can assign all the blame on Anderson. As the charts above illustrate, Twins pitchers apparently didn't listen to him much during the Twins' winning years under Gardenhire; the team's strikeout rates weren't out of line with league averages. The Twins' collapse in the standings has corresponded to a collapse in team strikeout rates. That's not a product of just what's going on at the major league level, it's a reflection of an organizational philosophy that has guided both drafting and player development. Twins pitchers don't strike guys out because, well, that's not what they do. The problem is, it simply isn't the way you win ballgames.
In a somewhat notorious case, Gardenhire and Anderson tried to convince pitcher Francisco Liriano to pitch to contact. Liriano was a sensation as a rookie in 2006, going 12-3 with a 2.16 ERA (less than half the league average of 4.56) and striking out 30% of the batters he faced. Unfortunately, that season ended early for him, when Liriano blew out his ulnar collateral ligament, and he missed 2007 after undergoing Tommy John surgery. He pitched only 76 innings in 2008 and was shaky in 2009, going 5-13 with a 5.80 ERA. He had a pretty good year in 2010, though (14-10, 3.62 ERA) and his strikeout rate rose from around 20% in 2008-9 to 25% in 2010. Yet at the beginning of the 2011 season, Gardenhire and Anderson had their talk with Liriano, who responded with a 9-10, 5.09 ERA record as his strikeout rate fell to 19%, the lowest of his career. The Twins gave up on him in 2012, trading him in the middle of a 6-12, 5.34 ERA season to the White Sox in July. He's had a career renaissance since signing with the Pirates before the 2013 season: 23-18, 3.20 ERA, 25% strikeout rate over the past few seasons.
Now, it's not entirely fair to blame Liriano's problems with the Twins, nor his success with Pittsburgh, on the Twins' pitching to contact philosophy. It's true that he had his worst year, from a strikeout perspective, in 2011, after he got Gardenhire and Anderson's pitch-to-contact lecture, but his 24.9% strikeout rate with the Pirates in 2013-14, when he's been good, isn't that much different from his 24.1% strikeout rate with the Twins and White Sox in 2012, when he stunk. As I've written, his turnaround in Pittsburgh is largely due to an overhaul of his pitch selection, junking his fastball in favor of a sinker that generates lots of ground balls. Those grounders get gobbled up by Pittsburgh's infielders, who have aggressively employed shifts in order to position themselves where the ball's likely to be hit, as I wrote in 2013. As the article to which I linked pointed out:
Shifts are only as effective as the number of groundballs hit into them. The second prong of the Pirates' comprehensive run prevention strategy was tied to increasing their pitchers' groundball rates. Defensive change began on the mound.
So that's how pitching to contact can work: Get the pitchers to generate grounders, assemble a strong defense, and shift the infielders a lot. It's worked for Pittsburgh. How about Minnesota?
If anything, the Twins have gone the other way. Twins pitchers yielded ground balls on 42% of batted balls last year, 12th in the 15-team American League. They were eighth in 2013, 5th in 2012, and eighth in 2011, so they've gotten worse. Not only don't they have pitchers who generate strikeouts, they don't have pitchers who generate grounders. Again, that's an organizational thing, not just a major league level thing.
How about employing defensive shifts? The Twins shifted 85 times in 2013, second fewest in the league. They increased to 478 shifts in 2014, but that moved them up to only 12th in the league. The average American League team shifted 590 times. So they haven't employed shifts, which, as I pointed out, decrease opponents' batting averages on ground balls and soft liners by 30 points, as much as other teams.
As for defense, I looked at the team's defensive efficiency ratio, or DER. DER is a calculation of the percentage of balls in play that get turned into outs. It's useful because it looks that the defensive performance of the entire team. During the Twins' successful run from 2002 to 2010, they ranked eighth or better in the American League every season except 2009. In other words, they were pretty consistently at or, more often, above average. Since then, they've been 13th in 2011, 13th in 2012, 12th in 2013, and 15th in 2014.
So let's put it together: The Twins have emphasized a pitching philosophy, pitching to contact, that's of questionable merit in a strikeout-driven environment. The three tenets of pitching to contact are ground balls, defensive shifts, and fielding. The Twins don't generate ground balls, they don't shift, and the defense stinks.
This isn't a matter of a manager or a pitching coach. The Twins have been building the wrong kind of team. They've botched drafting, player development, and/or roster construction, resulting in a team that's not positioned for success. General manager Terry Ryan, who held the position from 1994 until after the 2007 season, and again beginning in November 2011, and Bill Smith, who was the team's GM in the interim four years, bear the blame for creating a roster of pitchers who can't miss bats and fielders who can't catch balls. They appear to have been way late to the game of using advanced metrics to position Twins fielders in order to increase outs. It's true that the Twins have a highly-regarded farm system--ESPN's Keith Law ranks them second in baseball--but their two top prospects played only 31 games between them in injury-riddled 2014 seasons. They've been bad for four years because the manager's been given a team that has the wrong type of players for contemporary baseball.
But by all means, blame Gardy. Gotta be his fault, right?
When I started this series last month, my intent was to review each team's performance over the past 30 days, alphabetically. I got through Arizona, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, the Cubs, and Cleveland before I realized that I was going to run out of time and that it'd be more timely to focus on the teams that are in contention for postseason play. That's what I've done next, hopscotching among the Tigers, Brewers, A's, Angels, Cardinals, Pirates, Dodgers, and Giants. Let's take a day off from good teams, though, and instead discuss one of the most interesting teams of the year: The Minnesota Twins.
How Are They Doing Lately? Terrible. The Twins are 8-19 over the last 30 days, the worst record in the American League, and tied with the Diamondbacks for the worst record in the league. That's a 114-loss pace over a full season.
So why write about them? Well, put it this way: After the Tommy John surgery epidemic, replay, and that Yankee shortstop retiring, what's the biggest story this year? The decline of offense. Teams are scoring an average of 4.08 runs per game this year. That's the lowest average since 1980. and a run per game down from the highs of 1999 (5.08) and 2000 (5.14).
Take the American League. Since the All-Star Game, American League games are featuring 8.05 runs per game, scoring 4.06 runs and allowing 3.99. (The discrepancy is due to interleague games.) But if you exclude the Twins from the total, that figure drops to 7.91 runs per game, 4.03 scored and 3.88 allowed. Twins games have featured 10.02 runs! How's this: The last time the American League averaged less than eight runs per game, as it's done excluding the Twins since the All-Star break, it was 1972, and the league responded by instituting the designated hitter. The last time the league averaged 10.02 runs per game, as the Twins have since the All-Star break, the league batted .276 and Pedro Martinez was the only pitcher with an ERA below 3.70; this year the Tigers are the only team batting above .276 (by .001), the league ERA is 3.83, and there are 24 pitchers with ERAs below 3.70. The Twins have been a throwback to the Steroid Era!
Actually, the pitchers have been more throwbacks than the hitters of late. Over the past 30 days, the Twins are scoring 4.3 runs per game, fifth in the league, while giving up 6.1. No other team has allowed more than 4.7 runs per game.
What's Going Right? The Twins are batting .263 over the past 30 days, fourth in the league, with a fifth-best .399 slugging percentage and a sixth-best .316 on base percentage. Their .329 batting average on balls in play, compared to a league average of .297, indicates that they've probably been a little lucky, since wide deviations don't usually persist. They strike out a lot (23% of plate appearances, third in the league), but their walk rate, 6.8% of plate appearances, isn't much off from the league average of 7.2%. sixth;hey'be been good at getting on base (.284 batting average, .336 on base percentage, both second in the league) over the past 30 days. Their .421 slugging percentage is fifth, as they've hit only 20 homers, which is tenth in the NL. Their batting average on balls in play is .330 compared to a league average of .303, suggesting that their batting average and on base percentage have been a little lucky, but only 7.5% of their fly balls have gone over the fence compared to a league average of 9.6%, suggesting that their slugging percentage and home run totals have been a little unlucky. The Giants have been the toughest team in the NL to fan, striking out in only 17% of plate appearances compared to a league average of 21%. They've had problems with their bullpen, as I'll explain below, but the starters have been best in the league at getting hitters to swing at pitches outside the strike zone (33%), they've struck out the most batters (23% of batters), and walked the fourth fewest (6%).
What's Going Wrong? The Twins pitchers have been remarkably consistent over the past 30 days: 5.78 ERA overall, worst in the league; 5.78 starters' ERA, worst in the league; 5.77 relievers' ERA, worst in the league. You know the On The Field Of Play pitching mantra, It's good to throw strikes, but it's better to get strikes? As it turns out, the Twins have been pretty good at throwing strikes (51% of pitches in the strikes zone, third most in the league) and getting strikes (batters swinging at 32% of pitches outside the striek zone, fourth highest in the league). So why haven't they been successful? Because the pitches they've thrown, inside and outside the strike zone, have been hittable. Twins pitchers have the third-slowest fastball in the league (91.6 mph average), the third-slowest slider (83.0 mph average). They've allowed the highest batting average on balls in play (.334, league average is .293), the second highest percentage of fly balls going over the fence (11.7%, league average is 9.2%), and the most baserunners to score (35%, league average is 27%). Those three figures, widely different from the league averages, probably indicate some bad luck, but that's not all of it. You throw hittable pitches, you get hit.
This shouldn't be blamed exclusively on the pitchers, though. The Twins fielders have converted 67% of balls in play into outs this year, the lowest percentage in the league, and the team does poorly in advanced defensive measures.
Who's Hot? The Twins have managed to compile those awful pitching numbers despite having Phil Hughes, who'll get a few Cy Young Award votes. Over the past 30 days, he has a 3.44 ERA to go with 33 strikeouts and just one walk over 36.2 innings. His strikeout to walk ratio is 11.3, which is the highest in baseball history, topping Brett Saberhagen's 11.0 in 1994 and Cliff Lee's 10.3 in 2010. (h/t: D.J. Short at Hardball Talk) He's making me look smart when I wrote in December
Hughes isn't an elite pitcher. But he's probably better than what he was last year, and the move out of the Bronx should help him keep more balls in the park. By the end of the year, I wouldn't be surprised if his numbers were better than league average.
Actually, that isn't all that smart, because he's been a lot better than league average, 21st in ERA, eighth in WHIP, and a 15-10 record for a team that's won 61% of the games that he's started (99-63 pace) but only 38% of games started by others (61-101 pace).
The Twins also acquired Ricky Nolasco over the winter, and while he's been OK over the past 30 days (3.93 ERA), he's been a disappointment, going 5-12 with a 4.29 ERA, making me look not-so-smart when I wrote back in November
I'd expect an average or slightly better-than-average ERA and 200 or so innings, but nothing spectacular.
The league ERA 3.83 and Nolasco's pitched 153 innings.
No hitter has been really outstanding, though rookie centerfielder Danny Santana has hit .290 and is seven-for-eight as a basestealer over the past 30 days.
Who's Not? Rather than name names, let's just say that Twins starters not named Hughes or Nolasco have an 8.00 ERA over the past 30 days, giving up more homers in their 77.2 innings pitched (16) than the Indians (15), Padres (15), Rangers (13), Royals (12), Braves (11), and Diamondbacks (11) have hit. No reliever has been particularly good, and closer Glen Perkins had more blown saves (three) than saves (two) and more than twice as many home runs allowed (five) than strikeouts (two) to go with a 12.27 ERA before revealing a season-ending nerve injury.
Rookie DH Kennys Vargas leads the team with five homers and 15 RBI over the past 30 days, but otherwise has looked kind of lost at the plate, striking out in 29% of his plate appearances (the league average is less than 21%) and failing to draw a single walk. Rookie right fielder Oswaldo Arcia is batting .228 with an even higher strikeout rate than Vargas's, 32%.
What's the Outlook? You'll note that every hitter I mentioned is a rookie. The Twins also have two of the most highly-rated prospects in the game, consensus No. 1 Byron Buxton, an outfielder, and third baseman Miguel Sano. Sano is 21 and Buxton's 20, and they both missed all (Sano) or almost all (Buxton) of the 2014 season with injuries, so they won't be headed up to Minnesota until sometime next year at the earliest. But there are bats on the way.
The pitching this year has been terrible, of course, but there are plenty of young arms in the farm as well. I could see the Twins being an exciting team at the plate in coming years, but my jury's still out on the pitching staff. The Twins have had a pitch-to-contact focus in recent years, while the rest of the league's gone for strikeouts. The idea is that the Twins's approach holds down pitch counts, preserving pitchers' arms, and lets the players in the field turn batted balls into outs. Well, it hasn't worked. The fielders aren't that great, and the Twins will finish the season with by far the lowest strikeout rate in the league (16.5% of plate appearances, league average is 20.1%). They were last, by far, in 2013, 2012, and 2011 as well. They weren't in 2010, which is also the last time they played in the postseason. I've heard Twins fans called for manager Ron Gardenhire's head, as this will be the team's third last place finish in the past four years, but it seems to me that someone in player development--specifically, pitcher development--is more to blame. The Twins aren't drafting, or aren't developing, or both, the type of pitchers who are successful in contemporary baseball. The Twins have used 23 pitchers this year, and the only ones with above-average strikeout rates are Hughes, Perkins, and 27-year-old rookie Aaron Thompson, who's pitched only 6.1 innings. Until the Twins embrace Ks for their hurlers, it's hard to see them competing, even in the generally weak American League Central. But their efforts to single-handedly keep run production across the league alive, I suppose, is admirable.
