Minnesota Twins: Paul Molitor's resolutions for 2018

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As 2018 opens, what sorts of promises should Minnesota Twins employees make to improve on their 2017?

The Minnesota Twins had an amazing 2017 season, but they weren’t perfect. What could the 2018 Minnesota Twins resolve to do in order to improve?

Molitor’s positives

Before we discuss those things that the man needs to change in 2018, it’s certainly wise to reflect on the fact that Molitor is coming off of a Manager of the Year campaign with the Twins.

Technically, Molitor has two .500+ seasons in his three seasons at the Twins helm, but he’s still got a sub-.500 managerial record due to the horrid record of 2016 dragging down his 2015 and 2017 records.

Molitor is highly regarded for his relationship with his players. He works well to give players the space they need to be a major leaguer, but he also has a good feeling of when to step in with a word or two to help get a guy back on track if needed.

The other thing Molitor has been well-regarded on is his hands-off approach with his coaches, giving them the space to work with their players. This worked tremendously well for James Rowson in his work as hitting coach with a young team in 2017, and it likely will fare very well with pitching coach Garvin Alston in his first year in the organization in 2018.

Finally, and most importantly for this exercise, the Twins front office lauded Molitor for his willingness to learn modern analytics and methods within the game. That should make some of these resolutions much more feasible in 2018.

Next: Reliever Use

Bullpen Management

In the modern game, teams have 12-13 player pitching staffs. With a 5-man starting rotation, that leaves 7-8 pitcher bullpens. With that many arms in the bullpen, certainly no arm should get tired or over-used.

Of the pitchers to pitch most of their innings out of the bullpen in 2017 for the Minnesota Twins, only one threw 70 or more innings on the season. However of the 18 pitchers who threw at least 5 times in the bullpen in 2017, only 2 did not pitch on back-to-back days, which is an odd occurrence, based on the number of available arms for the Twins.

One of the most concerning parts was the overload that many pitchers faced. Brandon Kintzler was traded at the end of July, and he had already thrown 45 games and 45 1/3 innings. In 18 of those games, he was pitching without a day’s rest, including one point where he threw three days in a row.

The most obvious example of this was lefty Taylor Rogers. He made 69 appearances on the season, 19 of them on back-to-back days. However, early in the season, Molitor drastically overused his left arm, using him for three days in a row 3 times and five days in a row once all before the All-Star break.

Predictably, Rogers had a rough time coming out of the All Star break, making 6 appearances between July 22nd and August 5th, throwing 4 innings, with a 22.50 ERA, 3.00 WHIP, and allowing 3 home runs (he allowed only 6 on the ENTIRE season).

Unsurprisingly, Rogers got back in line by giving him more days off between appearances and then intentionally ensuring he had a day or two off after a back-to-back. From that August 5th game until the end of the season, he threw in 21 games, tossing 14 1/3 innings, with a 0.63 ERA.

This season, the Twins will be leaning on the (by opening day) 41 year-old arm of Fernando Rodney and 34 (35 soon after opening day) year-old left arm (recently surgically repaired) of Zach Duke in their bullpen as key members. Being more intentional about dolling out innings in the bullpen throughout the various bullpen arms will be quite important, and with multiple bullpen arms on the 40-man roster that can be brought up in the case that the team runs into a number of long games in a row, there should be no need to overuse any one guy on the season.

Next: Bunting

Sacrifice the Sacrifice

We all know that Dozier’s masterpiece last season was a fluke. He was trying to drag bunt, popped the ball in the air, happened to hit it to a rookie third baseman who should have just pocketed the ball but instead chose to throw it down the line, allowing for the rest of the oddity.

Minnesota sacrificed 53 times in 2017, the second-most times in the American League. It was such a high amount that it drove Twins fans on social media to utilize the hashtag #NeverBunt:

Molitor makes a GREAT decision not bunting Rosario, then Escobar bunts first pitch...STOP#NeverBunt
— Ted (@tlschwerz) September 24, 2017

All American League teams combined for 272 sacrifice bunts, which is the lowest total since the league implemented the designated hitter rule, and down by almost half from Molitor’s first season of managing, when there were 453 sacrifices in the American League.

The game has changed drastically, and the Twins being nearly 1/5 of all sacrifice bunts in the AL is not a direction the team can still continue to pursue. With players working with their hitting coach to maximize their launch angle and get the best trajectory on the ball, continued bunting would be a misuse of the talent in Minnesota.

One crazy fact unearthed by Tom Froemming of Twins Daily that I pushed a bit farther. Tom found that Jorge Polanco, who led the Minnesota Twins in sacrifice bunts, hit quite well with a man on first and no outs. I took that farther and checked out a few things for Polanco specifically:

Runners in scoring position: .288/.331/.489
Any men on base: .292/.332/.476
Man on first, regardless of outs: .298/.333/.457
Mon on first, less than two outs: .304/.315/.441

Essentially, Jorge Polanco was an elite-hitting shortstop in all of the typical bunt situations, but he was the guy who was asked to bunt most often, in spite of only being successful 7 out of 10 attempts that he laid down.

The Minnesota Twins were one of the top run-scoring teams in the league, and the team hit the fourth-highest rate of fly balls (37.3% of all balls in play) in the major leagues. The team is not made to bunt, and Molly needs to leave that tendency in 2017.

Next: Lineup construction

Consistency of lineup

On the season, the leadoff spot was manned by Brian Dozier in 151 of 162 games. Joe Mauer hitting 2nd 86 times out of the 162 games was the most consistent lineup spot after Dozier, however, and from 4-9, no batter hit in any spot 50 times in the entire season, so no player really had a set spot in the lineup.

Constructing the lineup with Dozier and Mauer at the top makes sense as the two are very productive and produce .350+ on base consistently. From there, the lineup was a mosh. Miguel Sano had the most games at both the 3rd AND 4th spots.

The 5th spot in the lineup epitomized the inconsistency that the team saw in the lineup, with 5 players having at least 20 games in the lineup spot. Both the 4th and 5th spot each had 6 players who had at least 15 games in the spot.

The thing that was roughest is how it put the young hitters in inconsistent positions. Max Kepler had at least 25 games hitting in each of the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th spots. Eddie Rosario had at least 10 games at the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th spots in the order.

While this won’t completely hurt a young player as long as he’s getting consistent at bats, it does add a level of comfort to know your line up spot.

For a bit of evidence, let’s look at players’ OPS in their spots with at least 30 games vs. overall OPS:

Jason Castro, 8th: .719, overall: .720
Joe Mauer, 2nd: .820, 3rd: .806, overall: .801
Jorge Polanco, 3rd: .844, 7th: .766, overall: .723
Miguel Sano, 3rd: .791, 4th: .988, overall: .859
Eddie Rosario, 6th: .806, overall: .836
Byron Buxton, 9th: .643, overall: .728
Max Kepler, 2nd: .846, 5th: .768, overall: .737
Robbie Grossman, 2nd: .758, overall: .741

There are a few outliers, like Rosario and Buxton, but in general a guy will hit best in a spot that he’s in consistently. Of course, Buxton’s can be explained away with the fact that he was stuck at the 9th spot while he slumped through the first half, and the minute he was hitting well in the 2nd half, he was bumped up in the lineup, so he didn’t really have time to rectify that number.

With a lineup in 2018 that will have more players under 25 than over 30, Molitor should play to those young players’ comfort levels and leave behind the seeming dartboard lineups of 2017.

Next: Trust the youth

Trust the young guys, play the young guys

The Minnesota Twins were tagged with having a no-name bullpen going into the playoffs, but the bullpen that the Twins brought into the postseason was not the same bullpen that had the 22nd ranked bullpen ERA for the full season.

Even with the team’s closer traded at the end of July, the bullpen was actually significantly better in the 2nd half, the 12th best in the league. Heck, in the month right after the Twins made their midseason trades, they sported the league’s 7th-best bullpen.

A great example of this of this was Alan Busenitz. Brought up in June, he pitched to a 2.08 ERA in six appearances…and was promptly sent down to the minors to bring up another reliever?!

Busenitz was then brought up July 24th and not sent back down, but in the first 20 days he was up, Busenitz was used just 3 times. For a bullpen sorely lacking in power arms, a guy who could reach 98 with his four-seam fastball and has a curve that gets over 50% ground balls when put in play would seem to be an ideal arm to utilizing.

Similarly, a guy like Aaron Slegers was given two September starts, 24 days apart. How exactly is a guy supposed to stay in a starter’s game mode with that usage? At the very least, Slegers could have been a ground ball machine used out of the pen all month rather than Tyler Duffey, who put up a 7.15 ERA in September, yet somehow was run out there 10 times and given 11 1/3 relief innings in the month as the team attempted to lock down the 2nd Wild Card spot.

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John Curtiss‘ usage was odd as well. Along the lines of Busenitz, with one of the few arms that could legitimately threaten triple digits on the radar gun with a killer slider, he had two back-to-back pairs of appearances, along with one 5-game break, 2 6-game breaks, and an 8-game break.

Trying to stay in game-ready shape as a reliever with that much time between appearances will wear on a guy mentally and physically. Notably, a pitcher that touched 99 MPH frequently last fall in the Arizona Fall League was maxing out at 97 with the Twins. Much of that could be attributed to rust on the arm, yet he only had 2 walks in his 9 appearances, both of them coming in one appearance.

On the hitting side, Twins fans were excited to see catching prospect Mitch Garver come up. He was one of the best-hitting catching prospects in all of the minors before he came up, with power and good contact ability. However, he consistently got multiple days in between getting a plate appearance.

Even when Garver would get a plate appearance, he was not getting full game work. In September, Garver played in 16 games, but he started only 5.

For a team that needs right-handed power, especially in September as Miguel Sano was out, Garver could have spent time at DH, 1B, and C to get starts, meaning he wouldn’t have had to displace just one normal starter to get his at bats.

In 2017, those young guys coming up got stung in playing time, and even the young players in the lineup were the most apt to get shuffled in the lineup based on how they were hitting from one day to the next, seemingly. For 2018, Molitor needs to resolve to trust his young players and play them!

Next: Starting Pitcher Rumors

That’s our list of resolutions for Molitor. Do you have any more that you would add?!

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Minnesota Twins: Paul Molitor’s New Year’s Resolutions