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First-Year Twins Are Officially Struggling

At the conclusion of Monday’s game, the Minnesota Twins’ season reached its halfway point. The first half, in pretty much every case, was a major disappointment.

Heading into the season, no one guessed the Twins would be 11 games under .500 and hovering around double digits games out of a playoff spot at this point in the year. A lot of that positive thinking was due to the additions the Twins made over the winter.

New players Logan Morrison, Zach Duke, Addison Reed, Fernando Rodney, Jake Odorizzi, and Lance Lynn all had a chance to bring the Twins to new heights. Expecting all six to succeed may have been unreasonable, but so was expecting all six to struggle.

Now that the season is halfway over, it’s time to see how much they have helped and hurt the team.

Starting with starting pitchers. The rotation was the part of the team most felt needed the most improvement over the offseason. When Odorizzi and Lynn were added, via trade and free agency respectively, people felt good. In 2017, 18 teams had better starter ERAs than the Twins’ mark of 4.73.

By adding Jake Odorizzi, who had a 4.14 mark in ’17, and Lynn, whose number was 3.43, the Twins figured they would bring the rotation’s collective ERA down.

The number is better, 4.42, but not thanks to the two new starters. Both starters are well above the team ERA, meaning they have brought it up. Improvement in the rotation is entirely due to the efforts of José Berríos, Kyle Gibson, and Fernando Romero.

In the bullpen, things are only slightly better. The signings of Duke, Reed, and Rodney were the biggest moves the Twins made over the winter months. All three came with pretty solid track records and expected to bolster an inexperienced, but improving, relief squad. And they’ve helped, as unlike the new starters, all three have lower ERAs than the bullpen as a whole does.

The problem is that that is not saying much. The team’s bullpen ERA is 24th in the league, so Reed having a 4.19 ERA is only good by comparison. Rodney’s ERA was the only one below three heading into the 81st game, but his blown save moved it up to 3.18. Clearly, none of them have been lights out. They haven’t made the bullpen worse, but they certainly haven’t made it formidable.

Lastly, the lone major addition on the offensive side, Logan Morrison. Morrison’s rate stats are all significantly worse than they were in 2017. His .191 batting average the most frustrating of the bunch. And Morrison was brought in to hit homers. He could be hitting an acceptable .191 if he was hitting balls out of the park, but he has yet to hit his 10th home run this season. Simple math tells you that he is on pace to hit fewer than 20 dingers this year. That’s a total most middle infielders are capable of reaching in this era of baseball.

In short, everyone has been a disappointment. But it doesn’t mean they will remain that way. Not only would strong second halves mean their seasons look good, but great second halves will make them heroes. The Twins need someone other than Eddie Rosario to put up good numbers, and all six of these newish players are capable of contributing them. If they put up big enough numbers to guide the Twins back to October, we’ll be having a much different conversation after the second half.

Charlie Gillmer

Charlie Gillmer is a lifelong Twins fan who spends most nights dreaming of learning a knuckleball and pitching them to a World Series victory.

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