Minnesota Twins positional recap and predictions, part 7: Starting rotation
Almost there! Tune in to the second to last part of a position by position recap of the 2018 Minnesota Twins season while we check out the starters.
In case you’ve missed any previous articles in this ongoing series, here are links to what we’ve previously covered, as we go position by position recapping the Minnesota Twins’ 2018 season and looking forward to 2019:
The Minnesota Twins used 16 different starting pitchers this season- Jose Berrios, Kyle Gibson, Jake Odorizzi, Lance Lynn, Fernando Romero, Kohl Stewart, Gabriel Moya, Trevor May, Tyler Duffey, Stephen Gonsalves, Ervin Santana, Adalberto Mejia, Zack Littell, Chase De Jong, Aaron Slegers, and Phil Hughes. That’s a lot of names, but we’ll try to break it down and work through in enough detail to get a solid idea of how things went both on an individual and team level.
2018 recap
Rather than work through the season in a chronological order as I have with past positions, I believe it’ll work better to group similar players together and go over their seasons together before moving on to the next group. We’ll start off with the core of the rotation, Berrios, Gibson, and Odorizzi.
The trio anchored the rotation for the season, totaling 553.1 innings between them. For the first time in quite a while, there is some debate over who had the best season in the rotation. Berrios took another step forward, becoming just the 8th pitcher in Twins history to total 200 strikeouts in a season. He faded a little bit down the stretch, posting ERAs of 4.74 and 4.40 in August and September respectively, but to that point, he had shown more consistency and continued to display why he could be the next top young pitcher in the game.
José Berríos, Ridiculous 83mph back foot Curveball. 😱 pic.twitter.com/q3FtBJSQYc
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) July 25, 2018
Gibson, meanwhile, broke through in a big way, posting career bests in innings pitched, ERA, strikeouts, and many more. While he didn’t strike out as many batters as Berrios, he finished with a better ERA and finally rewarded the Minnesota Twins for their patience. He had shown brilliance at times throughout his major league career but had always struggled to find the consistency that would help him be a higher quality major league pitcher. Gibson finally found it in 2018 and was arguably the best pitcher on the team.
While Jake Odorizzi still provided some quality innings, it was a disappointing season by his standards. After coming over in a trade with the Tampa Bay Rays, Odorizzi struggled a bit in going deeper into games, oftentimes running out of gas before the 6th inning. Still, he provided consistency for a Minnesota Twins rotation that has been anything but consistent for the past decade.
In fact, 2018 marked the first time three Twins starters pitched more than 160 innings in the same season since 2010 when Carl Pavano, Liriano, Scott Baker, and Nick Blackburn all topped the mark. At 28 years old and with 1 year of team control left, Odorizzi will be back in the rotation next season and attempt to get back closer to his career averages.
Let’s shift our focus a bit to an all-too-familiar theme of Minnesota Twins starters that don’t live up to their expectations, with Lance Lynn, Phil Hughes, and Ervin Santana.
Lynn joined the rotation in early March after becoming one of several free agents to sign very late in the year. He agreed to a 1-year, $12 million contract and slotted into the middle of the rotation. Things didn’t quite work out. He totaled about 100 innings and a 5.10 ERA before the Twins were (somehow) able to send him to the New York Yankees for a package including Tyler Austin. The front office deserves props for trying him out, as he was one of the top free agent SPs on the market last year, but his tenure with the Twins didn’t go as planned.
The oft-injured Phil Hughes was another Twins pitcher that departed in 2018. Following two “meh” starts and a handful of bullpen appearances, the team traded him to the San Diego Padres in which ultimately was a salary dump. Hughes was owed around $13 million in 2018 and 2019 each before becoming a free agent in 2020. Minnesota ate his 2018 salary, but was able to get the Padres to pick up $7.25 million of his 2019 salary, leaving the Twins responsible for just under $6 million next year. Hughes would go on to pitch just 20.2 innings for the Padres in 2018, again totaling an ERA above 6.00.
There were high hopes for Ervin Santana following his stellar 2017 season, but he didn’t come close to reaching any of them. After a lingering finger injury kept him out of action until late July, Santana lasted just 5 starts before being shut down for the season. None of those 5 starts were very inspiring either, as he totaled a 8.03 ERA over 24.2 innings. Unsurprisingly, the Minnesota Twins announced in late August that they would not pick up Santana’s 2019 option, instead buying out the remaining year of his contract for $1 million.
By this point, we’ve covered 123 of the Minnesota Twins’ 162 starts in 2018. The remaining starts were covered by 10 different starters, most all of which are young and still getting their feet wet in the MLB. We won’t touch on all 10 guys here as there’s not a whole lot to say about a few of the guys that only got a start or two, but I do want to mention a couple more, starting with Fernando Romero.
Romero was called up early on in the season and got his MLB debut on May 2nd against the Toronto Blue Jays. He pitched great, giving up just 4 hits in 5.2 shutout innings. He followed that up with a dominant outing against the St. Louis Cardinals in his second career start, striking out 9 and allowing just 3 hits in 6 shutout innings. A 1.2 inning, 8 run outing against the Kansas City Royals would ruin what had been a stellar first month in the MLB, and his numbers tapered off a bit in June before being sent back down to the minors, only making 1 more spot start for the Minnesota Twins in the remainder of the season, but it was an exciting introduction to Romero for Twins fans everywhere.
While Stephen Gonsalves had received the majority of the attention given to prospect pitching, Romero was the first to debut this year and showed why he has the highest upside of any of the team’s pitchers to make their debut this season. He had reached his innings limit by September, preventing him from getting another call up for the final month of the year, but he should be back in the running for a slot in the rotation in 2019.
Lastly, I want to spend a short time talking about a new strategy the Twins tested out this year, the opener. After Gonsalves and Kohl Stewart made their first MLB starts and had limited success, the team decided to try out the opener strategy for both of them. The change in production was stunning. Without an opener, Gonsalves posted an 11.90 ERA, while Stewart totaled a 6.70 ERA. With an opener, their ERAs dropped to a minuscule 1.48 and 1.34 ERA respectively. While the small sample size is important to note, this difference is incredible.
The Tampa Bay Rays were the first team to embrace the strategy this year, and the Twins were rewarded for their willingness to try it out as well. It remains to be seen whether or not the team will use an opener in 2019, their immediate results from doing so this year are a sign that they should give it a shot.
For a more in depth look at the opener strategy and how the Twins fared with it, check out an article I put together a while back with much more information!
Ok, that was a lot to go through, so let’s recap a bit. While Lynn, Hughes, and Santana all didn’t do much to contribute, this was still a pretty successful season for the Minnesota Twins’ starting pitchers. Berrios and Gibson put together 1a and 1b seasons, and while Odorizzi didn’t quite reach expectations, he still had decent numbers for a back end arm. After that, the Twins were able to test out a wide variety of their talented youngsters, several of which showed reasons to be excited for the future.
Looking forward
All in all, the Twins starters posted a 4.54 ERA this season, good for 9th in the AL and 22nd in the MLB. That may not sound all that impressive, but considering the team is just 2 years removed from totaling a league-worst 5.39 ERA from their starters in 2016, things are clearly moving in the right direction, which is the biggest point I want to highlight here. With Berrios and Gibson both taking big steps forward, the addition of a solid veteran in Odorizzi, getting rid of some excess weight in Lynn, Santana, and Hughes, plus introducing the world to some talented youth, the Minnesota Twins’ pitching is going the right way.
Let’s talk about a few individual players again. Berrios will be looking to take another step forward and become the true #1 pitcher that he has the talent to be. His ERA sat at 3.56 heading into August before 2 poor months would raise his final ERA by about 0.30. Berrios will be 25 early on in the 2019 season, and this is where I think he can really accelerate and become one of the best pitchers in the league. He now has about 2 full season’s worth of experience in the MLB and has shown improvements each year. As he continues to make adjustments and cut out some poor starts here and there, I think he could be even better in 2019.
Gibson took a huge step forward as well. It might be optimistic to expect a repeat of his 2018 performance next year, but he certainly has the skills to do so. He’s been brilliant at times since just about day 1 in his MLB career, his problem has just simply been consistency. He finally found that this season, and if he can keep it under control, he could be another solid option for the team again next year.
Odorizzi is someone that I expect will improve next year. He wasn’t horrendously behind his career averages, but he was enough so that I think there should be some inherent improvement just through the form of regression to his mean next year. Odorizzi doesn’t really have the upside of a #1 or a #2, but he doesn’t need to on this team. As a #3 or #4, he’ll be great even with just a slight improvement from his 2018 numbers.
After those three, the Twins have a lot of options in house. Just about all the young starters that got a few innings in 2018 will be competing for a spot in the rotation out of spring training- Romero, Gonsalves, Stewart, Mejia, Littell, and others will all get their shot. Michael Pineda will also be back in action after missing the 2018 season rehabbing from surgery. Even for the guys that don’t make the initial cut, there will inevitably be the need for spot starts and short term solutions after injuries and the like throughout the year.
There’s so much in quantity here that the Twins shouldn’t be worried about the ability to cover the number of innings. The bigger thing will be allowing this many young pitchers to keep getting reps that will continue their development. Given how many options the Minnesota Twins already have in the majors, some guys will be forced to get their work in at AA or AAA. But again, I would expect most all of the guys listed in this section to get at least a few starts in the big leagues over the course of the season.
With all that said, the Twins could also look to improve their rotation through trades or free agency. I personally think that the lineup actually needs more work than the rotation does at this point, but as any Twins fan that has watched the team in the 2010s knows, too much pitching is never a bad thing. However, there aren’t a ton of good matches for the Twins this year, in my mind. There’s not really any true, safe aces out there this season, and that’s really all that this team needs.
It doesn’t do the team any good to add another back half of the rotation guy since there are already so many back half guys in the organization. Gibson should probably be a #3, and Odorizzi should probably be a #3 or #4, and Romero, Gonsalves, Stewart, Mejia, Littell, Pineda, and so on all fit the mold of a #3 to #5 starter at this time. A few guys, namely Romero, have #2ish potential, but for the time being are probably realistically closer to a #4.
My point here is that unless the Minnesota Twins are able to add a true #1 or #2 to the team, it really doesn’t do a whole lot of good. There is already a minimum of 6 guys competing for 2 slots in the rotation (Berrios, Gibson, and Odorizzi are all pretty safe bets already). Between those 6, we should be able to get solid production out of the #4 and #5 slots in the rotation. It may not be the first or second guys, but with so many options, odds are that we have a few guys that can pitch well enough to cover it.
So what good does it do to add another arm or two to that mess? Although starting pitching has long been an Achilles’ heel to the Minnesota Twins franchise, this appears to be one offseason where the front office should either go big and acquire a true front-line starter, or just go home and be content with what we already have.
Matt’s predictions
As I’ve alluded to, I don’t think there’s a big need to make much noise in the starting pitching free agency pool this year. Last offseason, I was a big advocate for trying to get Yu Darvish, who appeared to be a true #1 and would be a big boost to the rotation (yeah, that didn’t quite turn out to happen. Oops). This year, I just don’t see any free agent starter out there as being good enough and safe enough for the Twins to risk signing.
We could go out and pay big money to someone like Dallas Keuchel or Patrick Corbin, but both are fairly risky (Keuchel is aging and appears to be starting a decline, while Corbin just doesn’t have a long enough history of being a high quality pitcher for me to be able to justify paying him big money). Minnesota is a franchise that can’t afford a big contract to backfire on them, and I just don’t see the rewards outweighing the risk in this situation.
Similarly, I don’t see the point in signing a back end of the rotation guy. There’s a handful of free agents out there that would probably pitch well in a #3 or #4 role with the Twins, but I just don’t see the point. We already have so many guys that can fill those slots just fine, and there’s much bigger holes elsewhere in the team (i.e. the bullpen and basically half of the infield).
Plus, guys like Romero, Gonsalves, and Mejia are fast approaching the point where they will no longer benefit from getting more time at AA or AAA. It would be best for both those individual players and the Twins to let them get some reps in the MLB and improve there, rather than paying a free agent significantly more money to come here and probably get about the same level of production out of them.
I think this year or next year would, however, be a good time to start seriously looking at adding a true ace via trade. The Minnesota Twins have a ton of assets in the minor leagues that could be available for a young, controllable, top tier starter. This year might be a little bit early to pull the trigger, but if we are in serious contention at the trade deadline this year, it could make sense to pay up for a good pitcher that has a few years of control left. I don’t predict the Twins land any big names this offseason, but I do think they should (and will) start testing the trade waters a bit to start prepping for a trade a year or so down the road.
So, my prediction is that the 2019 rotation will built entirely in-house. I could see the Minnesota Twins signing a back half of the rotation arm via free agency, despite my wishes, but at this point I would venture to say they’ll be content to roll with what they have. Berrios, Gibson, and Odorizzi will almost certainly fill up the first 3 slots in the rotation. After that, it’s really hard to say who it will be since there are so many different options. As previously mentioned, Romero, Gonsalves, Pineda, Mejia, Littell, Stewart, and others are all reasonably in the running.
More from Puckett's Pond
- Minnesota Twins: You Spin Me Right Round, Right Round
- Minnesota Twins: What happens next at Shortstop?
- Minnesota Twins: Grading the Twins’ Joey Gallo signing
- Minnesota Twins: 4 Possible Trade Chips not named Kepler or Arraez
- Minnesota Twins: After missing out on Correa, what comes next?
Ultimately, I think it’ll come down to a good old-fashioned spring training battle for the final 2 slots in the rotation. It’s nearly impossible to say who will win it because it really could be any combination of that group.
My personal hopes are that Romero and Pineda win the battle. I think Romero has the most upside of any starter the Twins have had since Berrios joined the big leagues, and Pineda was a quality pitcher before going through Tommy John surgery. I would like to see more from Gonsalves and Mejia in 2019, but I think we will regardless. There’s always the need for temporary fill-ins through spot starts and injuries, so I’m not too worried about each guy getting their shot.
No matter what, the team will likely be left with 3+ starters on the outside looking in. To circle back a bit, this could be a good trade opportunity. While it’s certainly nice to have pitching depth, and the Minnesota Twins shouldn’t get rid of all of it, there isn’t a need to have 4 extra guys ready to step into the rotation. If whoever the Twins go with first as the #4 and #5 to start the year are pitching well, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see whoever is left out between Gonsalves, Mejia, Stewart, and Littell shipped off for an area of need. It’s all speculation at this point, but the Twins could wind up in a good spot to trade away a position of strength to bolster a position of need.
Next. Tyler Jay from first rounder to Rule 5 exposed. dark
In summary
After nearly a decade of poor starting pitching, we seem to finally be entering a new era of Minnesota Twins baseball. Jose Berrios is primed to become the league’s next ace, Kyle Gibson has finally found the consistency he’s always been looking for, Odorizzi is a nice fit in the middle of the rotation, and the team has multiple options with good upside to fill out the rest of the rotation. There are so many options after Berrios, Gibson, and Odorizzi that it’s difficult to say who will earn the last 2 slots in the rotation, but it’s a good spot to be in for the Twins after years of lackluster starting pitching options.