Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful Team Preview: Minnesota Twins
Baseball is almost here! With an eventful offseason in the books and spring training underway, it’s time to preview all 30 teams in Major League Baseball. With the help of RotoGrinders PlateIQ Premium, DFS ownership trends from Chris Gimino, and our resident Premium MLB guru Dave Potts (aka CheeseIsGood), we take a look at some information that is definitely interesting and possibly helpful for the upcoming 2019 MLB season.
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Minnesota Twins Preseason Overview
— Vegas Win Total O/U: 83.5
— World Series Odds: 30/1
— Key Additions: Marwin Gonzalez, Jonathan Schoop, Nelson Cruz, Martin Perez
Other Noteworthy Players for DFS: Marwin Gonzalez, Lucas Duda, Tyler Austin, Mitch Garver, Ehire Adrianza
— Outlook: The Twins look very interesting for DFS this season, even if they don’t have the look a real life contender in the American League. The most obvious name that jumps off the page when you see their new lineup is Nelson Cruz. Exactly one player (Aaron Judge) had a higher average exit velocity in 2018 than Cruz, and he isn’t showing signs of decline at age 38.
C.J. Cron also joins this team after his first full time season in the show. All he did with that opportunity was smash 30 HR with a .240 ISO in Tampa. PlateIQ advises us that he had some poor plate discipline traits, but in DFS stacks we’ll gladly take the power upside at the right price.
Minnesota has also added Jonathan Schoop and Marwin Gonzalez to their mix of options, providing sporadic upside but even more K upside for opposing pitchers. In fact, they will be strutting out six to seven high strikeout hitters every single game. They will likewise have 6 or 7 guys who are threat to take an errant pitch deep. The overall profile is that of a lineup we will stack up when a high contact pitcher is on the mound, and attack against with a high strikeout pitcher.
Jose Berrios headlines a Twins rotation featuring a few new faces. He’s coming off a 12 win season in which is flashed some upside but also demonstrated inconsistency. PlateIQ measures a pile of key metrics, and likes his overall ability. For DFS the most important ability is Strikeouts, and he checked in with a 25.4% rate last season. Kyle Gibson did a nice job getting ground balls and even a sprinkle of strikeouts in 2018. He had 10 games with 7 strikeouts or more, and he might not be done ascending if he can optimize his pitch selection. Jake Odorizzi figures to see another season of spot duty in our DFS rosters, but only when he’s necessary.
Welcome back to DFS, Michael Pineda! Pineda is progressing on schedule from Tommy John surgery, and is hitting 92-93 on the radar gun according to reports. It’s not wise to make any strong forecasts on him yet, but once upon a time he had a 27% strikeout rate.
Last and absolutely least we have Martin Perez. He’s a full scale jabroni with a 13% strikeout rate and a .390 wOBA allowed. His ground ball style will surely play better outside of Texas, but the fact of the matter is that he just isn’t very good. There is a lot to unpack with the Twins rotation, but the truth of the matter is that we aren’t looking at one of the better staffs in baseball. It’s a middle of the road group at best with downside.
— DFS Ownership Trends: It’s hard to take away much from 2018 batter ownership in Minnesota, since they traded Brian Dozier and have a bunch of new hitters. One of those guys was the 29th most popular batter Nelson Cruz, and I doubt he’ll be getting less popular by leaving Safeco field. On their pitching staff, Martin Perez was the 6th most targeted starting pitcher last season. That will decline now that he won’t be under the sweltering Texas heat all summer, but rest assured we will still see more than our fair share of stacks against him in Minnesota.
Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful Notes
— If you had to guess which pitcher in MLB got the second-most swings and misses on his slider (knowing that Patrick Corbin gets the most, at 30.1%, which is why he throws it every single time), who would you guess? Max Scherzer? Carlos Carrasco? Noah Syndergaard? You’d be wrong (and a bad guesser – I mean, you’re reading a Twins preview). “(player-popup #kyle-gibson)Kyle Gibson”:/players/kyle-gibson-15867’s slider induced 27.4% swings and misses, second-best in MLB. He’s still only a league-average strikeout guy, but it’s an elite pitch, so the upside is there for more.
— Nelson Cruz has hit 203 home runs…since his age 33 season. That’s 18th-most all time for a player from age 33 on. With 29 home runs this year, a number that seems almost assured as long as he stays on the field, he’ll vault past Jim Thome into the ninth spot on the all-time list, just behind David Ortiz (252 homers after his 33rd birthday). Stay tuned to my “10 Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful Notes” column this year for stats that are actually actionable for DFS purposes. This one was just too interesting to pass up.