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

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:

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