The Twins agreed to terms with left-handed pitcher Danny Coulombe on Tuesday, reuniting the club with a left-handed reliever who pitched parts of three seasons — spanning just 49.1 innings — from 2020-22.
The deal is for one year and $3 million, according to MLB.com's Mark Feinsand and likely signals the end of any real money the Twins are going to spend on bringing in pitching from the outside (short of making a trade of some type).
Eric Cole has a nice breakdown of the signing here at Puckett's Pond.
Where I find Coulombe most appealing is that he's virtually without risk at his price tag. Caleb Thielbar, the pitcher more or less getting replaced in this scenario, was demonstrably worse last season and signed for just $250,000 less. No, he's not as good as A.J. Minter or Tanner Scott, but it should not be difficult at all for him to be worth his salary — especially relative to those two.
In an era where relievers are forced to face three batters or finish an inning, Coulombe has still managed to throw just 81.0 innings in 94 outings over the last two seasons with the Orioles. That's not to say the rule can be manipulated, but if you bring in a reliever with two outs and a lefty up, and that reliever gets the job done more often than not, it's not difficult to get an 'attaboy' and a quick trip to the showers with just one-third of an inning thrown.
Here's where it gets interesting.
Over the last two seasons with the Orioles, Coulombe has pitched to a 2.56 ERA (2.83 FIP) with 90 strikeouts (10.0 K/9) and 17 walks (1.9 BB/9). That's worth plus-2.1 WAR on Baseball Reference and 1.9 on Fangraphs, and while WAR is hardly a strong metric for relievers, just keep in mind we're painting a picture here, so it can be a little abstract.
He's a good reliever. Nothing more needs to be said about his quality of relief work.
But let's dig into those numbers a little bit. Lefties, whom you'd expect Coulombe to handle well, hit him for a slash of .230/.282/.246 with 30 strikeouts and eight walks (131 plate appearances). Meanwhile righties hit him at just a .183/.227/.343 slash over that span with 60 strikeouts and nine walks (186 plate appearances).
That comes out to a strikeout rate of 32.3 percent against righties (elite) and 22.9 percent against lefties (acceptable, but not great). The trade-off is that all seven homers he's allowed in this span have come to righties (including one to new teammate Harrison Bader), so while he's not striking out left-handed hitters, he's keeping them in the yard.
In today's game, this is particularly valuable because he's already an opposing manager's built-in counter move.
For instance, if the Twins bring in Coulombe to face Kerry Carpenter, and A.J. Hinch counters with, let's say, Spencer Torkelson off the bench or something, the Twins have not only gotten Carpenter out of the game and started the chess match with Hinch, but still have a far more capable pitcher against right-handed hitters than some right-handed pitchers are.
Would a manager rather have Carpenter or Riley Greene face a lefty or a right-handed bench bat face the southpaw? The answer is almost always to favor the platoon — and this is something Hinch and Rocco Baldelli do quite often — but when it doesn't tip the favor against the pitcher that much, to me that's already a built-in win for the Twins' probability in that big spot.
By comparison, Thielbar faced 100 lefties and held them to a .244/.320/.333 line. That's solid, but nothing world-beating. Righties, however, hit him like a souped-up Michael Cuddyer — a .286/.365/.480 slash — in a division that I feel is becoming increasingly more right-handed. Josh Naylor is out. The days of left-handed dominant hitters in the Central aren't as strong as they used to be.
The sample sizes are small, but pitching in the AL East has led to Coulombe facing and dispatching some pretty good hitters over the last two seasons (not all play in the East, by the way):
- Masataka Yoshida (0-for-6)
- Randy Arozarena (1-for-6)
- Rafael Devers (1-for-5)
- Jose Ramirez (0-for-3)
- Riley Greene (0-for-3)
Further, the list of hitters to homer off Coulombe the last two years is kind of a funny one:
- Bader
- Tyler Nevin
- Kevin Pillar
- Jose Abreu
- Danny Mendick
- Connor Wong
- Connor Joe
All of this is probably a needlessly complicated way of saying the Twins added a lefty who can get hitters from both sides out, which not only scratches their implied itch for a left-handed reliever but also protects them against righties.
In today's game, you can easily spend $3 million on worse things.