Do the Minnesota Twins have enough starting pitching?

Conclusion

There are a couple of ways to measure if the Twins have done enough over the offseason to consider their moves this offseason a success. While they failed to land the big fish, they’ve done enough to improve their rotation last year if Hill and Bailey can outproduce Perez and Gibson and an assumed jump inconsistency from Berrios.

If Pineda and Odorizzi can return in their 2019 form, this is a rotation that is good enough to win the American League Central even with the Cleveland Indians’ stable of young pitchers (Shane Beiber, Mike Clevinger, Carlos Carrasco) and the Chicago White Sox free-agent shopping spree to compliment their rotation (Dallas Keuchel, Lucas Giolito and the returning Carlos Rondon).

The question is whether the Twins can compete with some of the teams they’ll be running into come playoff time. The New York Yankees got significantly better with the addition of Gerrit Cole and the Houston Astros still have Justin Verlander and Zack Grienke. Even Tampa Bay has some prized young arms (Tyler Glasnow, Blake Snell) and Oakland (Jesus Lazardo, Frankie Montas, Sean Manea) could be a sleeper team that has better arms.

This will make the first couple of months imperative for the Twins. If Minnesota can get off to a good start and wait to see what they have in Pineda and Hill, they could have a stable of quality arms that could get better as the season goes along. There’s also the chance that some teams will be willing to part with a piece that could make for an interesting trade deadline acquisition.

The starting pitching staff for the Twins is far from complete, but for the start of the season, they’ll have to ride it out and let the chips fall where they may.