Twins Week in Review: 5/2-5/8
Where do the Minnesota Twins rank in myriad statistics over the last week?
Welcome to The Minnesota Twins Week in Review. On Access Twins, we’ll take a deep dive into the week that was for your Twins. We will post on Mondays, and look back from the previous Monday to Sunday since that’s how MLB lines up its schedule.
If you have any ideas for stats to be added, please feel free to let me know in the comments, on Facebook or on Twitter!
And now, let’s talk to it:
General Team
Record: 5-2, .714 (7th) — 3-0 at home, 2-2 on the road
Current Fangraphs Record Projection: 85-77, .526 (1st place, +1 win)
Current Fangraphs Division Chances: 42.2 percent (-8.4 percent)
Current Fangraphs Playoff Chances: 60.5 percent (-0.9 percent)
Baseball Prospectus PECOTA Record Projection: 88-74 (1st place)
Baseball Prospectus Division Chances: 57.1 percent (-11.9 percent)
Baseball Prospectus Playoff Chances: 67.2 percent (-7.0 percent)
FiveThirtyEight Record Projection: 88-74 (1st place, +1 win & no longer tied for division lead)
FiveThirtyEight Division Chances: 44.0 percent (-5.0 percent)
FiveThirtyEight Playoff Chances: 65.0 percent (+1.0 percent)
Baseball Reference Record Projection: 84-78 (1st place, no change)
Baseball Reference Division Chances: 26.5 percent (-5.6 percent)
Baseball Reference Playoff Chances: 42.3 percent (-3.1 percent)
Breakdown: I’m not terribly bright, but it seems to me this is largely due to the fact that the White Sox played well last week, rather than the Twins falling behind despite going 5-2. The White Sox were one of three teams to go undefeated last week — along with the Dodgers (5-0) and the opponent the Twins will face starting Tuesday at Target Field, the Astros (7-0).
I still feel pretty good about where the Twins are right now.
Hitting (with MLB rankings)
Batting Average: .257 (7th)
On-Base Percentage: .327 (7th)
Slugging Percentage: .413 (8th)
OPS: .739 (9th)
Strikeout Percentage: 19.6 percent (8th)
Walk Percentage: 7.8 percent (17th)
wOBA: .330 (9th)
wRC+: 122 (7th)
Runs Per Game: 3.29 (t-20th)
Batting Average (w/ RISP): .239 (12th)
Avg Exit Velo: 90.9 mph (2nd)
Breakdown: This looks to me like a team that crushed the baseball and did enough to score runs process-wise, but just wasn’t able to get over the hump. Over a larger sample size this might be a bit more troubling, but over a week it just kind of is what it is. One would also think over a larger sample size, things would shake out a bit differently as well.
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Starting Pitching (with MLB rankings)
IP: 30.0 (t-18th)
IP/GS: 4.29 (28th)
Pitches/Start: 73.3 (26th)
ERA: 5.10 (27th)
FIP: 3.35 (9th)
xFIP: 2.97 (2nd)
SIERA: 2.99 (4th)
Groundball Rate: 38.2 percent (24th)
HR/9: 1.20 (19th)
K/9: 10.20 (4th)
K%: 28.6 percent (3rd)
BB/9: 1.80 (7th)
BB%: 4.6 percent (6th)
K-BB%: 21.4 percent (4th)
WHIP: 1.40 (24th)
Opponent Batting Average: .300 (28th)
Opponent On-Base Percentage: .336 (t-24th)
Opponent Slugging Percentage: .467 (27th)
Opponent OPS: .803 (26th)
Avg Exit Velo: 89.5 mph (18th)
Breakdown: So there’s a lot to unpack here. Part of the shortage of innings can be chalked up to Chris Archer not going deep into his starts, and another part of it can be attributed to Chris Paddack leaving a start early with elbow issues.
But there are some troubling factors here — .803 OPS against is one of them — which are counteracted by a ridiculous FIP/xFIP/SIERA trifecta, which is to say there were some errors that didn’t help pitchers out, and also that their batted-ball mixes and that sort of thing (including strong K and BB rates) weren’t reflective of an ERA above 5.00.
I generally trust the nerds here, but this will be something to monitor moving forward as well.
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Relief Pitching (with MLB rankings)
IP: 31.0 (2nd)
Innings Per Game: 4.43 (5th)
Pitches Per Game: 60.7 (t-11th)
ERA: 0.87 (3rd)
FIP: 2.66 (6th)
xFIP: 2.51 (4th)
SIERA: 1.88 (1st)
Groundball Rate: 41.5 percent (18th)
HR/9: 0.87 (16th)
K/9: 11.03 (16th)
K%: 34.2 percent (1st)
BB/9: 1.74 (4th)
BB%: 5.4 percent (6th)
K-BB%: 28.8 percent (1st)
WHIP: 0.58 (1st)
Opponent Batting Average: .117 (2nd)
Opponent On-Base Percentage: .180 (2nd)
Opponent Slugging Percentage: .233 (5th)
Opponent OPS: .413 (3rd)
Inherited Runners: 8 (t-13th)
Inherited Runners Scored: 2 (t-11th)
Inherited Runners Scored Percentage: 25.0 percent (t-10th)
Breakdown: Here are the heroes of last week, as Twins relievers really answered the call. Not only did they answer it in the sense of pitching well, but they’ve used multi-inning relievers like Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax to help patch up roles that would otherwise need multiple relievers to handle. Add into this Tyler Duffey’s continued return to form, which counteracts the relative struggles of Emilio Pagan, and this looks like a unit that should be able to hold up under duress — though hopefully not as much as this week, moving forward.
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All research is done via Sportradar’s r360, Baseball-Reference or Fangraphs unless otherwise noted.
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