Minnesota Twins: Should Twins be done with bullpen additions?

No, the Minnesota Twins are not done adding bullpen arms as they currently rely too much on youth

That same youth for some (and possibly the team) could be TOO much reliance on young, unreliable arms. Currently, the Twins bullpen is projected to have just Rodney and Duke over 30.

Even more intriguing, those two are the only two on the entire 40-man roster that are over 30 projected for the bullpen. While that’s not terribly surprising for a young team like the Twins have, the amount of youth in the late innings could be a concern.

Just taking a look at some of the relievers available on the market this offseason, the ages of a few stand out. Neftali Feliz, Jeanmar Gomez, and Drew Storen, are all 30, and each have posted at least one 30-save season, but also are coming off of a negative-value fWAR season in 2017.

Young pitchers, and especially those young pitchers with such premium velocity and hard breaking stuff, have difficulty controlling their stuff initially at the big league level until they get a feel for the league and either the ones that stick find their way or the ones that won’t stick fail their way out.

While that process is something that needs to happen, having 2-3 spots in the bullpen likely dedicated to pitchers who are likely in this mode of their career is a concern for a team that is looking to compete with a manager that showed better bullpen usage in the second half of 2017, but still, with all of those arms that were going well, chose to send out Tyler Duffey for 11 1/3 innings in September as the team was striving for a playoff spot, in spite of Duffey posting a 5.14 second half ERA and a 7.15 ERA in ten September appearances.

All of those things can lead to concern with having too many young arms with spots on the roster.

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