Written By Brandon Warne
It’s been a while since we last talked, so here’s a few things that we should catch up on.
Expectations for Santana
The Twins signed Ervin Santana at the Winter Meetings, signaling an aggressive change of course that has been in the works the last two offseasons, really. Santana’s contract is the biggest the Twins have handed to a free agent, and should likely help solidify a rotation that was still a bit on the sagging side last season.
If you’re expecting an ace with Santana, though, that’ll be disappointing. Santana has ace-type stuff, but certainly doesn’t fit that bill. In an ideal world, he’s probably a low-end No. 2 or high-end No. 3. That is, certainly valuable and something the Twins have not had much of in the past couple seasons, but again, definitely not an ace.
Santana is a very nice marriage of two concepts the Twins are hoping to fuse: innings quality and innings quantity. The club signed Kevin Correia two offseasons ago because they felt he could give them a lot of innings for not a lot of money. Now at a different point in their evolution, the Twins were, and perhaps still are, looking for guys that are part of the semi-long-term future but won’t simply just soak up innings.
Since 2010 — a span of five seasons — Santana ranks ninth in innings pitched across the MLB with 1036.1. Take a look at who he is in front of:
Mark Buehrle
Hiroki Kuroda
Jered Weaver
Jeremy Guthrie
Max Scherzer
Dan Haren
Zack Greinke
Cliff Lee
Some of those are the preeminent innings guys of that duration, suggesting that the right-handed slider specialist has in fact been very durable over recent seasons.
In that same time frame, Santana is No. 64 among pitchers with at least 500 innings pitched — winnows out most short-inning relievers — in strikeout rate at 7.1 per nine innings. That’s about a league average rate, considering the trends we have observed over the past five seasons. Strikeouts continue to take on helium, and that’s a trend the Twins are hopefully keeping an eye on. With the Santana signing, it seems to be so.
Several Braves people have told me that when on, Santana’s stuff is downright nasty. The numbers back that up, too. Santana ranked eighth among qualified starters last year in SwStr% at 11.7 percent. That is, swinging strike percentage — a good barometer of if a guy has swing-and-miss stuff.
And again, here’s a list of the pitchers Santana beat in that respect:
Scherzer
Stephen Strasburg
Madison Bumgarner
Jeff Samardzija
Garrett Richards
David Price
Johnny Cueto
Again, basically a who’s who of pitchers who can strike people out. Santana’s go-to strikeout pitch is the slider, where he ranks 10th among pitchers in Fangraphs’ pitch-type value statistic who have a gradable slider in their arsenal. Santana’s slider resulted in a SwStr% of 21.9 percent last year. A typically solid breaking pitch will check in well over 10 percent, but Santana’s was elite. Opponents hit just .175/.224/.299 against Santana’s slider, though 17 of the 27 hits against it went for extra bases (10 doubles, seven home runs). Still, a .523 OPS on a pitch he threw 1,007 times last season is nothing to shake a fist at.
It can be, however, a bit troubling that Santana threw over 1,000 sliders last year and has done so for six of the seven seasons he’s had it at his disposal. The slider is believed to be notoriously tough on the arm, and that kind of mileage can pile up quickly. Clearly there’s no evidence that he’s seeing any negative effects, but it’s certainly a trend to monitor.
Santana may not be an ace, but with Phil Hughes on the staff and a possible emergence from Kyle Gibson — more on this later — and a few young pitchers on the farm, this has the makings of a really nice rotation moving toward the future for the Twins.
Arcia’s outfield carousel
One interesting dynamic I have observed this offseason is that the Twins were willing to move Oswaldo Arcia out of right field to accommodate Torii Hunter. On the surface, that feels a bit odd, as Arcia’s best tool — his arm — is neutralized in left field (shorter throws to third base, for instance) while he still has ample ground to cover. More confusing yet is that the commitment to Hunter is just one year, leaving yours truly to wonder what the long-term plan is. If Hunter moves on after the season — he says he doesn’t plan to, but plans change — do the Twins move Arcia back to right? Do the Twins eventually move Aaron Hicks and his prodigious arm and possibly solid range to right, and leave Arcia in left? Is Arcia the future designated hitter, with an outfield of Eddie Rosario, Byron Buxton and Hicks? These are just questions I ponder when I see the Twins move a young player around like they did with Michael Cuddyer.
Even Hunter, in his youth, played right field while Jacque Jones — ultimately an inferior but still solid outfielder — played center for a brief spell in 1999 and 2000. Jones bounced all over the outfield before settling in left, which was the best fit based on the arm he showed.
Gibson could be coming around
Don’t be surprised if Kyle Gibson is on the cusp of a breakout year. I broke it down in detail here, but the tall right-hander showed a much better slider and changeup to go with his heavy sinker last year. It appears as though the further he gets from Tommy John surgery, the better his feel is for the slider — a key pitch to keep hitters off his bowling-ball sinker that gets a ton of grounders. He may not be the second-coming of the good version of Justin Masterson, but that’s sort of the ideal-world situation for him. With Neil Allen coming over from Tampa, Gibson’s changeup — which the Rays LOVE to throw — could be featured. Opposing hitters batted just .242/.260/.341 against it last year.
Brandon Warne is a sportswriter for SportsData LLC in downtown Minneapolis and covers the Minnesota Twins for Cold Omaha and 105 The Ticket. Previous stops for Brandon include the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Twinkie Town of SBNation. Follow him on Twitter @Brandon_Warne for further insights.