Minnesota Twins 2017 Season Review: Starting Pitchers
With the season completed, it’s time to look back on the 2017 Minnesota Twins season. Let’s take a look at the team, position-by-position, moving today to the guys who started on the mound.
The Minnesota Twins have completed their season, and it’s now time to take a look back at what was an exciting ride for Twins fans!
Puckett’s Pond staff are reviewing the 2017 Minnesota Twins season. We started with the season by month, and you can find April, May, June, July, August, or September by clicking on those months.
We’ve now moved on to our positional review series on the 2017 series. So far we’ve looked at catchers, infielders, and outfielders. Today, we’ll take a look at the guys who took the ball to open the game on the hill:
“Ace”: Ervin Santana
At age 34, Ervin Santana had arguably his best season. By Baseball Reference’s WAR, only 2008 was a better season for Big Erv, according to Fangraphs WAR, he was much worse, with 2017 rating as only his 4th best season. By Baseball Prospectus’ WARP, 2017 was Santana’s 2nd best season. When it comes to pitching valuation, I tend to trust Baseball Prospectus and their DRA method.
No matter how you measure it, Santana had an elite season, one that likely will earn him some Cy Young down-ballot votes. Santana went 16-8 over 33 starts, with 211 1/3 innings thrown, posting a 3.28 ERA and 1.13 WHIP, tallying a 61/167 BB/K, leading the league with 5 complete games and 3 shutouts.
Santana started the season on fire, with a 0.77 ERA in 5 April starts and 2.57 ERA in 6 May starts. He fell back some in June and July, but he finished strong, with a 2.95 ERA in 6 August starts and a 3.31 ERA over 6 starts in September.
The reason Fangraphs’ system rates Santana poorly is due to his home run rate. Santana did allow 31 home runs in 2017, though one thing that he did seemingly well this season, from the eye test, was keeping home runs only to when the bases were empty. The stats actually bear this out, as 20 of his 31 home runs came with the bases empty.
Santana has one more season on his contract with the Twins that is guaranteed at $13.5M. After that, the Twins have a $14M option on Santana with a $1M buyout.
Future Ace: Jose Berrios
One of the top-rated pitching prospects in all of baseball the last few years, Berrios was a top-20 overall prospect coming into the 2016 season, though after an impressive half-season with Rochester, Berrios had significant struggles in the major leagues, posting a 2.51 ERA and 0.99 WHIP over 111 1/3 innings with a 36/125 BB/K ratio in the minor leagues, but then seeing that balloon to 58 1/3 innings of an 8.02 ERA, 1.87 WHIP, and 35/49 BB/K ratio at the major league level in 2016.
In 2017, the Twins had Berrios open the season with Rochester, where he simply blew away the competition, posting a 1.13 ERA, 0.81 WHIP, and a 8/39 BB/K ratio over 39 2/3 innings in 8 starts. Berrios was recalled to the major leagues on May 13th.
Berrios had what should have been a rough introduction back to the major leagues, facing two 2017 playoff teams in his first two starts, both with a highly rated offense. In 2017, the Colorado Rockies ranked 3rd in runs scored, and the Cleveland Indians ranked 6th in runs scored in the entire league. However, Berrios introduced himself back to the league with an exclamation point, going 15 1/3 innings between the two starts, allowing just one earned run with a 2/15 BB/K ratio.
Berrios did struggle some down the stretch as he seemed to tire, losing the snap on his breaking pitch and a tick of velocity. Berrios’ curveball is one of the most impressive pitches in the major leagues in its movement.
https://twitter.com/PitchingNinja/status/912016494250401792
Overall, Berrios posted a 14-8 record over 26 games, 25 of them starts, throwing 145 2/3 innings with a 3.89 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, and a 48/139 BB/K ratio. He showed some brilliance and also had some moments of difficulty on the mound, but he showed enough that Twins fans should be very, very excited about his future.
Resurgence: Kyle Gibson
Not only did Kyle Gibson surge from his previous few seasons in the second half of 2017, he surged from his miserable first half!
Gibson was on the track to becoming a very solid mid-rotation starter after showing solid improvement in 2014 and 2015 in his first two full seasons starting at the big league level, and many were expecting another step forward for Gibson in 2016. Instead, he fell backwards, posting a 5.07 ERA and a 1.56 WHIP, with a 55/104 BB/K ratio over 147 1/3 innings.
If you looked just on the overall season numbers, you would think not much changed with Gibson in 2017. He threw 158 innings, with a 5.07 ERA and 1.53 WHIP, posting a 60/121 BB/K ratio.
However, if you dig deeper, you see much, much more there. Through May, Gibson had 8 starts, throwing just 36 2/3 innings, with a 7.85 ERA, 1.96 WHIP, and a 21/25 BB/K ratio. He was optioned to the minors for just shy of 3 weeks in May, but it didn’t seem to affect him when he came back as he had another struggling performance to close out May.
Gibson had two months of fairly solid performances in June and July both that were thrown off by one brutal performance in each month. If you remove Gibson’s June 13th start against Seattle and his July 9th start against Baltimore, his middle two months of the season look much different:
- June/July raw: 10 starts, 58 innings, 4.97 ERA, 1.55 WHIP, 24/37 BB/K
- June/July sans those 2 starts: 8 starts, 48 innings, 3.56 ERA, 1.40 WHIP, 22/32 BB/K
After an excellent start on July 22nd, where he threw 7 1/3 innings, Gibson was optioned to the minors to make room for a new acquisition. He returned on August 5th, and his run to finish the season was some of the best pitching the Twins have seen out of him in his career, regardless of what the stats would say, but the stats also bear it out, as he made 11 starts between August and September, posting a 3.55 ERA, 1.26 WHIP, and a 15/59 BB/K ratio over 63 1/3 innings.
Gibson is in his second season of arbitration this offseason. He will be an interesting arbitration case for the team, with MLB Trade Rumors projecting a $5.3M salary, a $2.4M increase from 2017.
Other starters: Adalberto Mejia, Bartolo Colon, Hector Santiago, Phil Hughes, Dillon Gee, Nik Turley, Aaron Slegers, Adam Wilk, Felix Jorge, Jaime Garcia, Dietrich Enns, Tim Melville, Nick Tepesch
The Minnesota Twins gave the ball to 16 different pitchers to open a ballgame. For a playoff team, that’s a pretty incredible number. For reference, here are the starting pitchers used by 2017 playoff teams:
- Cleveland Indians 7
- Colorado Rockies 8
- Chicago Cubs 9
- Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, Arizona Diamondbacks 10
- New York Yankees, Houston Astros, Washington Nationals 11
None of these mentioned on this page threw over 100 innings for the Twins in 2017. Mejia came the closest with 98 innings, posting a 4.50 ERA, 1.57 WHIP, and a 44/85 BB/K ratio in those innings.
Colon showed to be a quality pickup for the Twins, making his first start in July. He wasn’t elite by any means, posting a 5.18 ERA and a 1.44 WHIP, but he did eat innings, throwing 80 over 15 starts.
Santiago got off to an excellent start, posting a 2.76 ERA and 1.16 WHIP over his first 7 starts of the season. However, injuries caused him to struggle mightily, finishing with a 5.63 ERA and 1.44 WHIP.
Hughes struggled with injury again, making just 9 starts and 14 appearances overall, with a 5.87 ERA and a 1.58 WHIP, with a 13/38 BB/K. Dillon Gee was picked up after the Rangers released him, and after some time in the minor leagues, he became a valuable piece of the pitching staff, making 14 appearances, 3 of them starts, throwing 36 1/3 innings with a 3.22 ERA and 1.27 WHIP.
Slegers, Jorge, and Enns gave Twins fans a glimpse into their future, with mixed results. Turley, Wilk, Melville, and Tepesch were career minor leaguers that ended up showing well enough in the minor leagues to earn a run in the major leagues.
Garcia made just one start before being traded to the Yankees for their playoff run in exchange for two pitchers that very well could factor into the 2018 plans for the Twins. Speaking of those plans…
2018 in the rotation
The easy start to reviewing the 2018 look ahead is that, barring a surprising trade, Santana, Berrios, and Mejia are locks for the 2018 rotation. Santana for his veteran presence and ability to eat innings, Berrios for his tremendous upside, and Mejia for his ability to throw quality innings with his left arm.
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From there, things get interesting. The team may decide that Gibson’s price tag will be more than they believe he is worth and put him out on the trade market. He would certainly draw interest based on the way he finished his season as a back-end starter, but he also may not draw the level of trade return that the team would like in order to make the move.
The Twins saw a number of young pitchers make an appearance in the major leagues from their minors in 2017, and guys like Felix Jorge or Aaron Slegers could do very well eating up league average innings as a 4th/5th starter. The team also saw a number of young pitchers make strides in the minor leagues that could jump to the major leagues in 2018.
Next: Twins top 100 prospects complete list
Looking to the future
Don’t tell the Tennessee Smokies announcers this, but the reason the Chattanooga Lookouts were one of the best teams in the minor leagues last season had little to do with hitters that were older than league average (seriously, each game viewed against them had a multi-inning diatribe about this on the Tennessee broadcast). The reason Chattanooga was so good was their elite starting rotation.
Felix Jorge made a couple of starts with the 2017 Twins, and he could be an option at the back of the rotation. However, Stephen Gonsalves and Fernando Romero each have higher upside, with mid-rotation upside from each, and both could challenge for a rotation spot in Minnesota at some point of 2018. Zack Littell and Lewis Thorpe pitched to AA, but they both started at high-A, meaning they’ll likely open at AA/AAA in 2018. Dereck Rodriguez has made progress as a guy who would fit well as a long reliever/5th starter type as well while Kohl Stewart seemed to take yet another step backward in his attempt to progress toward the major leagues.
Beyond that, the Twins have some very impressive young prospects to consider that are in the lower levels of the minor leagues, the most impressive of which to me is Brusdar Graterol, who threw between GCL and Elizabethton in 2017 and is one to watch in his first full-season league in 2018.