Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 03, 2008
Rotation Evaluation, Minnesota Twins

The series looking at team pitching rotations using the Marcel the Monkey projections continues with the Minnesota Twins. Their starters posted 4.33 ERA in 2007, sixth in the American League.

Note that in figuring ERAs, I'm using Marcel's mIP and mER columns. The ERA listed in the spreadsheet uses the average of mER and bsrER. I wanted to avoid posting 1/2 runs in the table. Pitcher order is taken from the CBSSportsline depth chart.

Francisco Liriano

Francisco Liriano
Photo: Icon SMI

Liriano shows his violent delivery in the photo to the right. This made him effective but also blew out his arm.

Marcel predictions for the Minnesota Twins top five starters for 2008.
StarterInningsERERA
Francisco Liriano57223.47
LIvan Hernandez184974.74
Kevin Slowey88444.50
Scott Baker139714.60
Boof Bonser156814.67
Totals6243154.54

Like the Athletics, this is a rotation in flux. The Twins are depending on an injured ace to return to form and a group of very young pitcher to mature into a solid unit. Unlike the Athletics, however, the Twins hired a veteran pitcher, Livan Hernandez, to take up some of the innings slack. Still, this rotation goes into the season with four question marks and an older pitcher who will give them innings but not necessarily good innings. I expect the rise the Twins starter's ERA to be real this season.

The good news is that the four youngsters project to post good strikeout and very good walk numbers. Keeping free passes at a minimum is the hallmark of the Twins organization. If these inexperienced starters can execute that game plan, they'll be in good shape eventually.

Previous posts in this series:

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Posted by David Pinto at 08:48 AM | Team Evaluation | TrackBack (0)
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