Dear Twins: It’s The Pitching, Stupid

OK. All right. Pop the champagne. We did it. We got him.

Sorry. I am excited about the Twins’ signing of Mauer. I really am. But, in a way, the inevitable hoopla surrounding the extension for our hometown hero only serves to underscore the absolute lack of priority the home team has given to an entirely overlooked part of the team.

I mean, I try to be a realistic yet optimistic fan, and even for me, a guy who has never looked at the Twins and seen a probable World Series contender before, things are looking good. We’ve got incredible hitting depth, our defense is sound, most of our assets are locked in, and our bullpen is solid even without the venerable Joe Nathan. This year, to use perhaps the most overused trope in all of sportsdom, could be our year. There’s just one problem, niggling and nagging away under the surface: the starting pitching staff.

Now, it may be slightly less than true that “pitching and defense wins ballgames.” Even the smallest of tykes knows that some rounding of the bases is involved. However, it may be more accurate to state the converse of that tried and true baseball proverb: the lack of pitching and defense loses ballgames.

As I said before, our defense is pretty good – perhaps not as much of a shining ballpark on a hill as it was during the days of Hunter and Mientkiewicz, but nobody’s perfect. Our pitching, on the other hand, has been a problem since 2008, our first year sans Johan and the year that Livan Hernandez was our opening day starter. Yeah. That actually happened.

Fortunately, the Twins quickly put Livan behind them, but a quick look at the pitching roster on baseball-almanac.com shows that not much else has changed (save the departure of Boof Bonser … sigh). While the Twins certainly gained on their 2008 performance last year, that was due more to the maturation of our hitters than it was the development of the pitchers.

And yet, it seems like I’m one of the only people who noticed. Certainly there aren’t too many people within the organization who seem to have it figured out, because this spring we’re stuck with the same old cast of characters, and nary a serious word about picking up pitching talent outside of the organization was uttered during the offseason. Want proof? Let’s take a look at our lucky contestants: the eight most likely contenders for the Twins’ five-man rotation.

1. Scott Baker

Age: 28
Years with the big club: Around five.
The “I can’t believe they’re still holding on to him!” factor: Four and a half out of five balls.

Let me start simply with this: Scott Baker will be our number one pitcher, our proverbial “ace.” His 2009 ERA? 4.37. Not likely for one of the longest tenured Twins currently in the organization and a man who some have rather improbably toyed with labeling a franchise player.

Some argue that Baker provides stability to the pitching staff, a sense of consistency, as it were. From my view of things, the only aspect of his game that is truly consistent is its inherent inconsistency. In his five seasons of outings with the Twins, he’s managed a record of 43-33 – not exactly a reassuring win percentage. Also, it’s worth noting that Baker arguably played worse in 2009 than he did in 2008. His ERA went up by 0.92, and while he won more games last year than two years ago, his win percentage was also better in ‘08. And yet the Twins continue to hang their hat on him time after time.

That’s perhaps the most frustrating thing about Baker. The Twins are known for providing second and third chances to their players (see Rondell White), but Baker’s stay has begun to border on the ridiculous, particularly in light of how the Twins treated prospect Matt Garza, who had a slightly worse record but a much better ERA than Baker when both men played for the team. Rather than giving Garza (who was touted immensely before his arrival at the big league clubhouse) a second chance, they shipped his sorry butt off to Tampa Bay as soon as they could. He then had a bad year followed by the 2009 season, where a lack of run support hampered his success, but for my money I wish the Twins had spent a little more time on him than on Baker.

2. Nick Blackburn

Age: 28
Time spent with the big club: Just over two years, but he only pitched in relief in 2007.
The “I can’t believe they’re still holding on to him!” factor: One half out of five balls.

I like Nick Blackburn a lot. Out of all of the regular starters last year, he had the best ERA (4.03), and he really seems to give it his all when he goes out on the mound. Unfortunately, he’s plagued with a longevity problem.

Before the All-Star break last year, he was 8-5, compared to 3-6 afterwards (in fact, 2009 saw a sort of perfect symmetry record for Blackburn, as he received 11 wins, 11 losses and 11 no-decisions). His 2008 stats are not as pronounced, but there’s a fadeout there, too. It’s clear that Blackburn does have some good stuff, but he won’t do the club much good in the stretch if he keeps hitting the wall mid-August. If it happens again this year, the Twins need to start reconsidering things.

3. Carl Pavano

Age: 34
Time spent with the big club: Two months.
The “I can’t believe they’re still holding on to him!” factor: One out of five balls.

I think I shared the sentiment of many a Twins fan when I saw that the club had signed Pavano from the Indians last August: “How is he going to help?” The man was 9-8 with a 5.37 ERA with Cleveland in 2009, and while he had some fleeting moments of quality – most notably the 2004 season, where he went 18-8 with a 3.00 ERA for Florida – you were still looking at a guy who wasn’t too impressive. That’s why it was a pleasant surprise when he put up some relatively decent numbers for the Twins down the stretch – except that they weren’t actually that great.

True, when Pavano was on, he was on, like the October 11 playoff game where he struck out nine Yankees and gave up only two runs over seven innings (granted, we still lost, but it wasn’t really his fault). However, while his age did provide a measure of experience for the younger pitchers to learn from, his stats with the Twins – 5-4 with a 4.64 ERA – were nothing to write home about. His re-signing with the club might be a pretty good thing… or it might not.

4. Kevin Slowey

Age: 25
Time spent with the big club: Just over two years.
The ICBTSHOTH! factor: One half out of five balls.

Kevin Slowey makes sense. He rose rapidly through the minors and was one of the team’s top prospects (noted particularly for his control) for quite some time. He’s really only been around for about a year and a half because of his season-ending wrist injury, but it’s been quite an interesting time.

In 2008, he went 12-11 with a 3.99 ERA – not great, but not bad for a rookie pitcher playing for a struggling team. Last year, his season was cut short (and an All-Star appearance had to be canceled) because of the injury, which sidelined him on the fourth of July. His record at the time? An impressive 10-3.

The dirty little secret, however, was Slowey’s run support. The pitcher sneaked through those 16 starts last year with plenty of help from the home team hitters, enough so that had other pitchers had his luck, it would have been their records that would have been improving instead of his. Need proof? His ERA was 4.86, pretty high for an All-Star. In five of his starts in which he wasn’t the losing pitcher he gave up five or more earned runs. That’s a little disconcerting.

However, as I said, he makes sense. Plenty of stuff he threw last year was great, and he even pitched a shutout in 2008, his first full major league season. However, if he can’t get the run totals down on a regular basis (and if he can’t keep the two surgically-installed screws in his pitching wrist [Yikes!] from bothering him), we could be in for some trouble.

5. Francisco Liriano, Brian Duensing, or Glen Perkins

Ages: 26, 27, and 27, respectively
Time spent with the big club: FL – Not counting the Tommy John surgery, off and on for just over three years. BD – Off and on last year. GP – Too long, otherwise known as off and on for just over three years.
The ICBTSHOTH! factor: One half out of five balls, Zero out of five balls, and Five out of five balls, respectively.

Now, here we have an interesting bunch. Liriano, Duensing and Perkins are competing for the fifth starting spot, and all three of them can make the case for why the Twins need outside help.

The leader in the competition right now is Liriano, who, as everyone knows, has struggled through far more than his fair share of drama since 2007, when the then rising star and strike-throwing menace was shelved for the season while he recovered from Tommy John surgery. However, word is that he finally got his slider back, and apparently the fear of throwing hard that has plagued him since his return is long gone. If he’s truly back, he’ll be the definite bright spot of the rotation, but nothing’s for sure with him yet.

Duensing had a decent rookie year in 2009, going 5-2 with a 3.64 ERA (some of his innings were in relief). In his five wins (all of them when he was starting), he gave up two runs only once, with the rest of the games showing either a one or a zero in the ER category. That’s solid, enough so that he was tagged to start Game 1 of the ALDS against the Yankees (which ended up being one of his worst starts of the season, but oh well). It’s not surprising that he’s back, but he’s currently untested.

Last and least of all is Perkins, who some reports indicate is only still around because the front office likes him. The field managers, however, do not, and they can count Ron Gardenhire in their camp. Though he had a good record in 2008 (12-4) Perkins was mediocre last year, and his ERA was even higher than Slowey’s – a rather fantastical 5.89. What makes it worse, however, is his bad attitude, which many suspect was the root of his “injury” toward the end of last year, when he claimed soreness in his shoulder. The people actually in charge of managing the team want him gone, and I agree.

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OK. There you are. Eight pitchers. Most of them have some good things going for them, and with a few of them, it’s mostly upside. But “a few of them are mostly upside” does not make for a pitching staff that has hitters quaking in their cleats. “So none of them matches up to C.C. Sabathia all that well,” you may say. “Big deal!” Well, I might agree (although if they end up facing the Yanks in the playoffs again this year, then it does become a big deal), but I would argue that we don’t even have a pitcher who matches up all that well against a Buehrle, a Carpenter or a Beckett. What we have is a pitching rotation full of players you’d be happy to have as your team’s third or fourth starter.

I understand why the Twins signed who they signed. Locking up Mauer goes without saying, and the move to keep Span was good, and I certainly appreciate the additions of Thome, Hardy and Hudson (word is that reliever Clay Condrey, however, is practically pitching batting practice in Florida). But would it have killed them to get a starter from outside of the organization?

I know the 1987 Twins won the Series with a lackluster record, but that’s not how Major League Baseball works anymore. Think of the 1991 Twins without Jack Morris. We need someone like that. Someone who can come in from the outside and carry the rest of the rotation, someone who can truly mentor these other pitchers and help them improve, someone like, like…

Well, like someone who the Twins don’t have.