Minnesota Twins: How Rich Hill and Homer Bailey help improve the Twins’ rotation

What makes Homer Bailey successful?

Homer Bailey’s career began in Cincinnati where he was greeted with massive expectations after being selected by the Reds with the seventh overall pick in the 2004 MLB Draft. As Bailey rose through the system, the hype grew and with the right-hander checking in as a top-ten prospect in 2006 and 2007, he made his debut for the Reds at just 21 years old.

While his backstory traced the path of an emerging phenom, Bailey’s major league career hasn’t gone according to plan. He has a career ERA 4.57 and while he’s thrown two no-hitters in his career, he never became the ace that the Reds envisioned and hit rock bottom thanks to Tommy John surgery in 2015 and bone spurs in his elbow which led to a 1-14 record and 6.09 ERA in 20 starts in 2018.

Fed up with his injuries and ineffectiveness, Bailey was shipped to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a deal that sent Matt Kemp and Yasiel Puig to Cincinnati last offseason and the Dodgers sent him to the unemployment line before he even threw a pitch. That led Bailey to sign a minor league deal with the Kansas City Royals where he would go on to have a solid bounce-back year.

Bailey’s 2019 marked his most wins (13) since 2013 and his lowest ERA (4.57) since 2014. As Bailey pitched well enough to be a mid-season trade acquisition by the contending Oakland Athletics, it’s hard to pinpoint what made him have a renaissance as many of his analytics ranked in the bottom percentiles of the league.

One thing that has gone right has been the introduction of his splitfinger fastball. Statcast showed that Bailey started using the pitch in 2017 and the usage of the pitch has jumped all the way up to 26.4%, the second-best usage rate behind his four-seam fastball (48.1% in 2019).

The splitfinger has brought a new level of effectiveness to Bailey as he limited opposing hitters to just a .182 average against the pitch in 2019 with a .214 WOBA. The pitch also recorded a 38.2% whiff rate (highest among his four pitches) and was used as a put-away pitch 21.2% of the time according to Statcast.

The biggest change with the pitch was the amount of movement on the splitter, which increased four inches from 2018 to 2019. With added movement on his four-seamer and curveball as well, Bailey was able to go 4-1 with a 2.25 ERA in his final eight starts for the Athletics last season.

That kind of hot and cold performance should remind Twins fans of an old friend as Baseball Savant used Kyle Gibson‘s 2018 season (10-13, 3.62 ERA) as a comparison for Bailey. While Bailey throws more strikes and has less of a chase rate, Bailey has the potential to do enough to soften the blow of losing Gibson to the Texas Rangers.

What makes Rich Hill successful?

While Bailey projects more as a back-end rotation filler, Hill has the upside to give the Twins a high-end pitcher they desperately needed toward the end of 2019.

Hill’s game has the look of an analytics god as he was in the 95th percentile in curveball spin, 98th percentile in exit velocity and 91st percentile in fastball spin last season. While those numbers are from a smaller sample size with Hill only pitching 58 2/3 innings with elbow issues, they should be enough to make the analytics-crazy duo of President of Baseball Operations Derek Falvey and General Manager Thad Levine slobber over their calculators.

For a majority of Hill’s career, he was used as a long reliever as a member of the Chicago Cubs and Baltimore Orioles. Outside of an 11-8 campaign in 2017, Hill wasn’t effective when given the chance to start, but got a full-time opportunity in 2016 with the Oakland Athletics. When he was shipped to the Los Angeles Dodgers, he found another gear and has posted a 39-19 record with a 3.00 ERA over the past four seasons.

Much like Bailey’s improvement, Hill’s was centered on a reliance of his four-seam fastball and curveball. The curve has been Hill’s best pitch, holding hitters to a .211 average and a .269 WOBA last season according to Baseball Savant. The key for Hill has been his movement on the pitch which has elite movement both vertically (4.1 inches above average was 23rd in MLB among pitchers with 250 pitches) and horizontally (7.4 inches above average, fourth in MLB).

Equally as effective has been his fastball, which only checks in at 90.3 MPH, but also generated a 29.3% whiff rate. The effectiveness of both the fastball and changeup has made his lesser-used secondary pitches even more effective.

It’s that kind of effectiveness that made other teams such as the Boston Red Sox interested in Hill’s services, but he doesn’t come without risk. After undergoing “primary revision surgery” on his pitching elbow, Hill won’t be available to pitch until late-June or early-July. If all goes well, he could give the Twins an upper-level starter at the trade deadline without the Twins having to give anything up.

How do Hill & Bailey help the Twins?

All of these numbers are nice, but it’s still tough to tell what this really means when it comes to how this helps the Twins rotation. The Twins are still left without a true ace and with no sign of a trade in sight, it appears that Minnesota will be left with the same “cross your fingers and hope for the best” approach that saw its rotation collapse a year ago.

But believe it or not, the Twins rotation is in a better spot than it was this time last year when you compare this year’s projected version with last year’s version.

                       2019                                                                                                2020
1. Jose Berrios (14-8, 3.68 ERA)                                            1. Jose Berrios
2. Jake Odorizzi (15-7, 3.51 ERA)                                           2. Jake Odorizzi
3. Michael Pineda (11-5, 4.01 ERA)                                      3. Michael Pineda*
4. Kyle Gibson (13-7, 4.84 ERA)                                             4. Homer Bailey (13-9, 4.57 ERA)
5. Martin Perez (10-7, 5.12 ERA)                                          5. Rich Hill (4-1, 2.45 ERA)**
* Serving suspension for first 38 games
** Recovering from elbow surgery, out until at least June

While the Twins still have two holes to fill at the back end of their rotation thanks to suspension and injury, they have many options to do it. The Twins can either go out and trade for a starter to help fill the void and pencil in Hill or Pineda when they are ready to return, or they can use some of their internal options such as Devin Smeltzer (2-2, 3.86 ERA) or Randy Dobnak (2-1, 1.59 ERA) to fill in when needed.

The Twins also have younger options in the lower levels of the system that could rise faster than expected. Brusdar Graterol will likely return to being a starting pitcher after a late-season cameo in the bullpen and fellow prospects Jhoan Duran and Jordan Balazovic will likely begin the season at Double-A Pensacola but aren’t expected to make their major league debut until 2021.

It’s not the perfect scenario Twins fans dreamed of heading into the winter, but if the Twins are unable to make another move, the rotation is better than it was a year ago and can be improved as needed.