Twins takeaways: 'No Country' for sinking wild-card hopefuls and inherited problems

MINNEAPOLIS My favorite movie is No Country for Old Men and my favorite character is sheriff Ed Tom Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones.

(You may recognize him as my longtime Twitter/X avatar .) Theres a scene where Bell and his much less experienced deputy, Wendell, arrive at the aftermath of a deadly ...

something.

In the moment, they cant quite be certain what theyre even looking at, which leads to this exchange: Wendell: Well its a mess, aint it, sheriff? Ed Tom: If it aint, itll do till the mess gets here.

pic.twitter.com/2oelPApsZe Aaron Gleeman (@AaronGleeman) June 2, 2021 Anyway, that has nothing to do with baseball, but I keep thinking about that scene while watching the Minnesota Twins struggle for the past month.

They had a 70-53 (.569) record on Aug.

17, reaching the high-water mark of the season at 17 games above .500.

Since then, the Twins are 9-17 (.346) for the third-worst record in baseball during that span, better than only the Los Angeles Angels (7-19) and Chicago White Sox (5-21).

Advertisement Its certainly a mess, but even after losing two of three at Target Field to the sub-.500 Cincinnati Reds over the weekend, its not the mess as long as the Twins remain in playoff position.

And, somehow, the Twins still hold a 2 1/2-game lead for the American Leagues third and final wild-card spot.

Of course, that lead will likely vanish if the Twins continue to play as badly as they have for the past month, which reminds me of another No County for Old Men scene in which a discouraged Bell talks to his uncle, Ellis: Ellis: What you got aint nothin new.

This countrys hard on people.

You cant stop whats comin.

Aint all waiting on you.

Thats vanity.

Despite how underwhelming the Twins and their competition for the No.

3 wild-card position may look, some team is going to make the playoffs in the leagues final spot.

And the Detroit Tigers , Seattle Mariners and Boston Red Sox wont all just stand back so the Twins can stumble their way in.

Thats vanity.

And if the Twins dont turn things around over the remaining 13 games starting Monday with a four-game series versus the Guardians in Cleveland the real mess will get here.

Inherited problems Evaluating relievers can be tricky.

ERA is the most common statistic used to do so, but its only up to the task some of the time because it fails to account for an essential aspect of a relievers job: inherited runners.

For example: Twins starter Simeon Woods Richardson was removed from Saturdays game with the bases loaded and no outs in the fourth inning.

He was replaced by reliever Louie Varland , who allowed all three of those base runners and six additional runs to score.

Varland was charged with allowing six runs in one inning, inflating his ERA from 6.05 to 8.57.

But in evaluating his performance by ERA alone, Varland bears no responsibility for allowing the three runs he inherited from Woods Richardson to score.

Those runs are rightfully assigned to the starter.

Advertisement However, in looking at Varlands performance strictly by ERA, its as if he wasnt even involved in those first three runs scoring.

In reality, he pitched poorly to allow them to score, and a different reliever, pitching less poorly, could have prevented some or all of them from scoring.

Thats one of the reasons why ERA falls short in fully evaluating relievers.

And its a frequent issue that pops up, too.

One day earlier, for instance: Twins starter Bailey Ober was removed from Fridays game with two runners on base and two outs in the seventh inning.

He was replaced by reliever Jorge Alcala , who allowed those two base runners and two additional runs to score before recording the final out.

It should be noted reliever Ronny Henriquez escaped starter David Festa s bases-loaded, two-out jam in the fourth inning Sunday, and that plus big days from Brooks Lee and Carlos Santana may have been the difference between a desperately needed win and a sweep-completing loss.

It matters.

"Elly De La Cruz does not yet have a grand slam in his career." Now he does! pic.twitter.com/9wsbpqKQPd MLB (@MLB) September 14, 2024 Starters shouldnt be let off the hook for runners they leave on base.

If you leave a mess for someone else to clean up, you take your chances with how its going to look.

But relievers also need to be evaluated for their ability to prevent the runners they inherit from scoring, and ERA does not do so.

On back-to-back days, the Twins starters exited a 3-1 game and a 1-1 game while leaving a total of five runners on base.

All five of them scored, turning close, winnable games into blowout losses, with zero effect on the relievers ERAs.

And unfortunately for the Twins, thats been a season-long story for their bullpen.

Twins relievers have allowed an MLB -high 45 percent of inherited runners to score this season.

No other team has allowed more than 40 percent and the league-wide rate is 33 percent.

Its the highest rate of inherited runners scoring in Twins history and the highest by any MLB bullpen since 2003.

Advertisement There are so many statistics in our game, and thats one that hurts you because it hurts us when it comes to winning games, manager Rocco Baldelli said.

It hurts our starters, who are coming out of games, and every base runner they leave out there, it feels like at times, is scoring.

Thats hard.

Its frustrating.

Its difficult to wrap your head around.

Relative to league average, Twins relievers have allowed an additional 20 inherited runners to score, often in game-changing situations.

Of their eight relievers to inherit more than five runners, only Alcala (29 percent) hasnt allowed them to score at a rate higher than the 33 percent league average.

Steven Okert was the biggest culprit, allowing a team-high 52 percent of his inherited runners to score before being designated for assignment in late August.

Jhoan Duran is next-worst at 50 percent, followed by Griffin Jax , Caleb Thielbar , Kody Funderburk and Josh Staumont at 47 percent each.

Of course, volume matters, too.

Duran is at 50 percent, but thats just 3-of-6, whereas Okert inherited 21 runners and 11 scored.

Compared to the league average, Okert (+4.1), Thielbar (+2.7), Funderburk (+2.7), Staumont (+2.4) and Jax (+2.1) have allowed the most inherited runners above expected totals.

And for now, Varland (2-of-2) joins Diego Castillo (4-of-4) in the 100 percent inherited runners scored club.

In a small sample, theyve combined to allow four more runs than the league average.

Of the 16 Twins pitchers to inherit at least one runner, 11 have allowed more to score than the league-wide rate.

No shortage of Twins weaknesses have been exposed during their dreadful last month or so, yet the bullpens inability to strand inherited runners has the biggest gap between negative impact and attention because traditional stats like ERA dont measure it fully.

But its been a huge problem.

(Photo of Brooks Lee and third-base coach Tommy Watkins: Jordan Johnson / MLB Photos via Getty Images).

This article has been shared from the original article on theathleticuk, here is the link to the original article.