We’re closing in on the quarter-season mark on the 2023 MLB schedule, and the Twins are off to a first-place start. Sure, that’s thanks in part to a sluggish performance of the rest of the sorry AL Central – the second-place Tigers are the fifth team out of a Wild Card spot at the moment – but Minnesota looks just about poised to run away with the division, and the team has its arms to thank. By ERA, FIP, xFIP and WAR, the Twins have one of the top three pitching staffs in baseball to this point, and despite an offense that has yet to really find its rhythm, the Twins’ run prevention efforts – led by a slew of impressive right-handed starters – have been something of a revelation.

Sonny Gray has had perhaps the sunniest start of all, allowing no more than one earned run in each of his first six starts and showing flashes of his vintage All-Star form. Newcomer Pablo López had a pair of starts he wishes he could take back at the end of April, but for the most part looks as advertised. With early injuries to Kenta Maeda and Tyler Mahle – who the Twins just announced will undergo Tommy John surgery – the depth is already being put to the test, but Bailey Ober has looked fantastic in his three outings and Louie Varland has handled his call capably, most recently allowing a single run in six frames against the Padres on Tuesday.

Then there’s 26-year-old Joe Ryan, who seems to have taken a step forward after a respectable 2.1-WAR rookie season last year. Through seven starts, the right-hander has a 2.45 ERA, 2.87 FIP, and 3.31 xFIP with 47 strikeouts and just six walks in 44 innings, leading Minnesota to a 5-2 record in those games. He’s one of just nine pitchers in the majors with as many as six quality starts; he’s allowed 1 or 0 earned runs four times and three or fewer hits four times. In just his second full season in the majors, Ryan looks as though he’s been there for years. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s something we all know about Joey Gallo: He’s got power to spare. Even before he was a big leaguer, tales of his top-of-the-charts power made the rounds among talent evaluators and fans alike. The question was never whether his power would play in the majors, it was whether the strikeouts that came with that power would drag his production down. Those discussions didn’t stop when he made the majors for good in 2017. In fact, it’s 2023 now, and most of the same positives and negatives are still up for debate.

To wit: Through Tuesday’s games, Gallo has hit .189/.326/.541, which works out to a 137 wRC+. He’s also striking out 32.6% of the time – and that would be the lowest strikeout rate of his career. In just 89 plate appearances, he already has seven home runs. By most accounts, it would appear that Gallo is Galloing as hard as ever.

Plot twist: Gallo has made a big adjustment this year, one that seems to have steered him out of the rut he fell into in recent seasons. See, Gallo had a second carrying tool offensively, beyond the power. His thump made opposing pitchers so afraid of him that he ran up massive walk totals merely by being passably selective. In 2019, the season that saw him post his best batting line, he walked 17.5% of the time. In 2021, his second-best, he walked 18% of the time. It’s not so much that he had a perfect batting eye; rather, he just started swinging less in 2019, and pitchers avoided the zone against him to such an extreme degree that he drew piles of walks. He kept it up for a few years before starting to swing more again in 2022. Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to stealing bases, the Central division leaders couldn’t be more different. The Pirates rank first in baseball with 44 steals in 53 attempts; the Twins rank last with six steals in 11. But for the past ten games, these two teams have been taking a similar approach. Since the end of April, both have been ramping up their efforts, stealing far more often than they did over the first few weeks of the season. To be fair, that means something completely different for either club: for Pittsburgh, it means stealing at a rate we haven’t seen in years; for Minnesota, it means simply stealing at all. In both cases, it warrants a closer look.

In 2022, the Twins ranked last in baseball with 38 steals and 55 stolen base attempts. Their team leaders in stolen bases, Byron Buxton and Nick Gordon, had just six steals apiece. The Rangers, who led the league in steals, ran more than three times as often as the Twins:

Part of the problem was the lineup Minnesota was working with. Of its top five players by plate appearances, the fastest runner was Carlos Correa, who had a sprint speed in the 44th percentile and hasn’t been a stolen base threat since his age-21 season. Luis Arraez, Gio Urshela, Jose Miranda, and Gary Sánchez were the only other Twins with more than 450 PA, and none of those guys is winning a footrace, to put it kindly.

Even the fastest players in Minnesota were hesitant to run, however. Buxton was only on pace to add another four or five steals had he remained healthy; a player with his skills could have easily stolen 25–30 bags, at least. Presumably, he was staying put out of an abundance of caution for his physical safety, yet if that were the only explanation, it’s odd he was running as often as he did. He stole enough bases to put himself in harm’s way, but he wasn’t running enough to maximize his value on the basepaths. Other Twins who stole less than you’d expect included Gordon, Jorge Polanco, and Max Kepler. All three had above-average sprint speeds and above-average OBPs, but they attempted significantly fewer steals than in 2021. In other words, speed wasn’t the only problem. By all appearances, the Twins were discouraging their players from taking extra bases. Read the rest of this entry »

Sonny Gray has been one of baseball’s best pitchers so far this season. Over five starts, the Minnesota Twins right-hander has fanned 34 batters and allowed just 20 hits and two runs in 29 innings. His ERA is a Lilliputian 0.62.

Gray is no flash in the pan. Now 33 years old and in his 11th big league season, the Vanderbilt University product is a two-time All-Star with a 3.50 ERA and a 3.54 FIP over 252 career appearances, all but nine as a starter. Originally with the Oakland Athletics, he subsequently pitched for the New York Yankees and the Cincinnati Reds before coming to the Twins Cities prior to last season.

How as the veteran hurler evolved over the years? Gray addressed that question when the Twins visited Fenway Park last week.

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David Laurila: How have you evolved as a pitcher? Outside of being older, are you basically the same guy that broke into the big leagues in 2013?

Sonny Gray: “I would say no. As far as pitch types, I still throw the same curveball, that hasn’t changed, but everything else has kind of evolved and adapted.

“For the first four to five years, it was kind of, ‘Go out there and do it.’ At the time, 95–96 [mph] was a lot of velo, and you could just beat guys with that. If you had any type of breaking pitch, all the better. So for those first four to five years, it was kind of just that. I threw a two-seam and a four-seam and then a curveball.

“Everyone would say that one of the reasons my fastball was so hard to hit is that they didn’t know which way it was going to go. My four-seam tended to cut a little bit, and the two-seam would go the other way. Then I got traded to New York [in July 2017]. That was the first time I tried to change a little bit. I’d always lived down and away, bottom of the zone, and now I was hearing, ‘Hey, throw your four-seam at the top of the zone.’ That was a little foreign to me. I tried it, I did some things, and didn’t have immediate success with it.

“That’s the first time I was adapting. It was the first era of the spin stuff. It was new to everyone back then, and we were figuring out that spinning four-seams were good [pitches]. I don’t think everyone had it together that everyone’s four-seam is different. At the time, it was just ‘Spinning four-seams at the top are great.” My four-seam tends to cut a little bit, it doesn’t have that [ride], so while I had some success, overall it didn’t go well.” Read the rest of this entry »

Mark Gubicza was a good starting pitcher. Making all but two of his 384 big-league appearances with the Kansas City Royals, the big right-hander logged 132 wins to go with a 3.96 ERA, 42 complete games, and 16 shutouts. His best season came in 1988 when he went 20-8 with a 2.70 ERA and finished third in A.L. Cy Young balloting.

Gubicza also had two saves, both of them in 1993. That was the year he gained a true appreciation for how challenging it is to protect a late-inning lead for a teammate. How he came work out of the bullpen — something he did sparingly outside of that one season — was a matter of circumstance.

“We didn’t have a bridge to get from our starters to Jeff Montgomery,” explained Gubicza, who now serves as a TV analyst for the Angels. “The year before, my shoulder was a little sketchy, so [manager] Hal McRae asked me if I could be the bridge. At first I was hesitant, because I liked starting. But I was building back my arm strength, so I said, ‘You know what? I’ll do whatever it takes to win games. I’ll be that bridge to get to Jeff Montgomery.”

The transition was initially bumpy. Gubicza’s heart would start racing when the bullpen phone rang, and once he began warming, he would be throwing as hard as he could. Moreover, while adrenaline was telling him that he was ready, his stuff wasn’t ready. Much for those reasons, he took his lumps before figuring out what worked for him in the unfamiliar role. Read the rest of this entry »

Pablo López is off to a good start in his first season with the Twins. Acquired by Minnesota from Miami as the centerpiece of an offseason deal that sent defending American League batting champion Luis Arraez to the Marlins, the 27-year-old right-hander has a 1.73 ERA and a 2.70 FIP over 26 innings. Moreover, he’s fanned 33 while surrendering just 15 hits and issuing six walks.

Trading in his cutter for a sweeper has played a part in that success. López has thrown his new offering 82 times — all against same-sided hitters — over four starts, and only twice has the result been a base hit. His Whiff% on the pitch is an eye-opening 50%.

The repertoire tweak was made at the behest of López’s new team, but the idea of a sweeper preceded his arrival.

“I first got the concept at Driveline in the offseason,” explained López, who logged a 3.75 ERA in a career-high 180 innings last year with Miami. “But I was only there for a short visit, so I couldn’t really capitalize on the concept of it. Then, in spring training, it was brought up again. From there we sat down and worked on it.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Twins and Pablo López agreed on Monday to a four-year contract extension worth $73.5 million, ensuring that the team’s newest starting pitcher will stay in the Twin Cities through the 2027 season. López has been dynamite in his first four starts for Minnesota, allowing only five total runs and holding the current league crown in strikeouts, edging out Gerrit Cole and Jacob deGrom.

It’s not a surprise to find out the Twins are big fans of López. Otherwise, they would not have traded three years of a cost-controlled Luis Arraez, who is coming off a batting average title, a Silver Slugger award, and an All-Star appearance, in order to acquire his services. The extension would have made sense on the day of the trade; it makes even more sense with the very real chance that López has found another gear. Read the rest of this entry »

After I wrote about Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran last month, consider this the next installment of my highly unrelated, only-for-the-joke “Duran Duran” series; today we take an entirely separate look at 25-year-old Twins closer and velocity king Jhoan Duran. This Duran was one of baseball’s best relievers as a rookie in 2022; this year, he returned to the Twins’ bullpen with a lot less to prove after his impressive rookie campaign. Nevertheless, he has made some significant tweaks to his already devastating arsenal, and he’s bringing more heat in his sophomore season than ever before.

Duran arrived on the scene in Minnesota last year at a rather uncertain time in his prospect journey. After registering on our Top 100 prospect lists as a high-velocity starter in 2020 and 2021, a forearm strain (and a global pandemic) limited the right-hander to all of five appearances across the river with Triple-A St. Paul in the last two years. The uncertainty around his health obscured his future outlook and called his potential as a starter into question. But he did enough in just seven Spring Training innings last season to show he was healthy and earn one of the final spots in the Twins’ bullpen, then made the absolute most of his first big league opportunity. In 57 relief outings, he allowed just 14 runs and limited hitters to a .251 wOBA, .187 xBA, .269 xSLG, and .232 xWOBA, all of which were in the top 10% of the league. His 34.7% whiff percentage was in the 94th percentile, and his 33.5% strikeout rate was in the 96th. Thanks in part to the trust he quickly earned from Twins manager Rocco Baldelli, he finished second among big league relievers with a 4.56 WPA. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an evaluation of the prospects in the Minnesota Twins farm system who readers should consider “imminent big leaguers,” players who might reasonably be expected to play in the majors at some point this year. This includes all prospects on the 40-man roster as well as those who have already established themselves in the upper levels of the minors but aren’t yet rostered. I tend to be more inclusive with pitchers and players at premium positions since their timelines are usually the ones accelerated by injuries and scarcity. Any Top 100 prospects, regardless of their ETA, are also included on this list. Reports, tool grades, and scouting information for all of the prospects below can also be found on The Board.

This is not a top-to-bottom evaluation of the Twins farm system. I like to include what’s happening in minor league and extended spring training in my reports as much as possible, since scouting high concentrations of players in Arizona and Florida allows me to incorporate real-time, first-person information into the org lists. However, this approach has led to some situations where outdated analysis (or no analysis at all) was all that existed for players who had already debuted in the majors. Skimming the imminent big leaguers off the top of a farm system will allow this time-sensitive information to make its way onto the site more quickly, better preparing readers for the upcoming season, helping fantasy players as they draft, and building site literature on relevant prospects to facilitate transaction analysis in the event that trades or injuries foist these players into major league roles. There will still be a Twins prospect list that includes Emmanuel Rodriguez, Marco Raya and all of the other prospects in the system who appear to be at least another season away. As such, today’s list includes no ordinal rankings. Readers are instead encouraged to focus on the players’ Future Value (FV) grades. Read the rest of this entry »

With Opening Day on the horizon, three teams are planning to enter the season with exclusively right-handed rotations: the Guardians, the Twins, and the White Sox. As I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, that’s not the only thing these clubs have in common; they’re also the three contenders for the AL Central crown. An all-righty rotation isn’t unheard of, but it is uncommon, and it’s particularly unusual to see three within the same division. Here’s how they each stack up:

Around this time last season, there were likewise three teams planning to deploy all-righty rotations: the Guardians, the Twins, and the Mets. The Mets, however, had lefty in David Peterson at Triple-A, and it was only a matter of time before they needed him. Indeed, he was called up two days into the season and made his first start a week later. As for the Guardians and Twins, they also had lefties waiting in the wings. Konnor Pilkington was the first man called up when Cleveland needed a sixth starter; Devin Smeltzer wasn’t the first call-up for Minnesota, but he was soon to follow.

This year, the White Sox have joined the all-righty ranks. In fact, they haven’t had a left-handed starter since releasing Dallas Keuchel last May. Meanwhile, the Guardians and Twins have more right-handed depth than last season. Pilkington is still around for Cleveland, but he had a poor showing this spring, and several right-handed prospects are moving their way up the depth chart. As for Minnesota, Smeltzer elected free agency in October, and every new starter the team acquired this offseason has been a righty. Read the rest of this entry »