By Brandon Warne
An early trend worth monitoring this season has been the pace of play measures that Major League Baseball has put into place to keep the games moving along more quickly. Among the rules in place are that batters must keep one foot in the batter’s box barring exceptions conceded in the release, as well as 2:25 and 2:45 breaks between innings for locally- and nationally-televised games, respectively. Marc Normandin over at SBNation.com has a really nice breakdown of it here, actually.
The league offices in New York won’t get down to the nitty gritty with players until May 1, when players will be eligible for fines for playing outside these guidelines. But for now, Minnesota Twins GM Terry Ryan has said it’s still something that’s very much a front burner issue. “They’re serious about it,” Ryan said in a recent media session at Target Field. “I’m glad because last night (Wednesday) for instance, that game was two hours and 25 minutes. All of us watch a lot of baseball games and feel the crispness and rhythm to it more than we did recently. Last year I suspect that game would have been three hours.”
Ryan’s supposition isn’t terribly far off. With data assistance by Baseball Reference’s Hans Van Slooten, it appears as though the Twins have already shaved 15 minutes off the average game time from last season, from three hours and seven minutes to two hours and 52 minutes through Saturday’s action. And while that may not be an apples-to-apples comparison yet, simply due to small sample size, the Twins have already played eight games in under three hours so far this season out of a possible 12 with Sunday’s action included — a 66.7 percent rate. Just 68 of 162 games for the Twins last year were played in under three hours — a 42 percent rate.
Through 12 games last season, the Twins had played five such games as well, or a 41.7 percent rate that’s just about in line with what the entire year in 2014 looked like. Perhaps that suggests the early-season sampling is right in line with what’s to come? We’ll have to see.
That doesn’t mean Ryan — who gets emails from the league regarding violations — is completely pleased with what he’s seen so far. Or maybe more accurately, what the league has told him so far. “No, we haven’t,” Ryan said when asked if the Twins have avoided email notifications from the league office regarding violations. “We’ve gotten too many. We’re one of the faster clubs, and we graded out well in spring training. We were one of the most efficient teams, because I got the summation. We’ll eventually catch up to this, but once the season starts things slow down because there’s more at stake. We’re going to have to realize this, or like every other club we’re going to start getting nailed (with fines).”
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A fun storyline — at least to the writer here — thus far this season is that some of the best pitching performances have come from players who either barely made the team (Tommy Milone as the No. 5 starter), or guys who either outright didn’t make the squad (Trevor May) or weren’t expected to (Aaron Thompson).
Milone has been solid for the Twins out of the back end of the rotation, winning both of his starts while allowing just three earned runs over 13 innings (2.08 ERA). And maybe the best thing he’s done all season isn’t stymying the White Sox the first time out, but keeping the Twins in the game after digging a couple small but early holes against the defending American League champions last time out at Target Field. Milone gave up a two-run home run to Lorenzo Cain before stranding a pair of runners to end the first, and gave back the lead on a Salvador Perez double that scored Cain — who had a ridiculous series — in the third after a Kennys Vargas home run tied it up the half-inning before. Those would be the last runs Milone would give up all day — and all season, so far — as the crafty lefty got the Twins into the sixth before giving way to …
… none other than Thompson, who tossed a couple more scoreless frames on Sunday to bring his season ERA down to 0.87. Now, he hasn’t been quite that good — 2.61 FIP/4.34 xFIP — but through 10.1 innings he’s faced 36 batters and allowed just six to reach. In other words, he’s held opposing hitters to a .107/.138/.148 line so far on the strength of a fastball that been on average 89.3 mph. Thompson is also fond of his slider — he’s thrown more of them than any other pitch this season including that fastball.
May’s performance on Sunday was a nice bounceback to getting dusted up a bit in the home opener, though most of the problems in the latter came due to shoddy defense behind him. May threw 97 pitches Sunday afternoon, again heavily leaning on the two- and four-seam fastballs. The four-seamer reached as high as 96.7 mph and sat comfortably in the 93-94 range, with the two-seamer checking in as high as 95.2 and sitting at 93. That’s pretty good velocity, even before accounting the team’s struggles with that sort of thing in recent years. May’s best pitches were the four-seamer and the changeup, on which he combined for all 11 of his swing and misses on the day. All told, it’s an encouraging couple of starts for May, even though his ERA sits at 4.76 (2.99 FIP/3.79 xFIP) and his K/9 at just 6.4.