Are the Twins good or bad? We will see
For what I believe is the second time in Cardinals history, the Cardinals are facing an American League team on Opening Day. The first time was two years ago, against the Toronto Blue Jays. That… season did not go well. The game didn’t either. They did win that series though.
The 2024 Minnesota Twins finished with an 82-80 record, completely collapsing down the stretch. On Sunday August 18th, they were attempting to sweep the Texas Rangers. They were 70-54. They were sitting two games behind the Guardians in the AL Central, 2 games ahead of the Royals, and 10.5 games ahead of the Tigers. They lost that Sunday game in extra innings and went 12-26 to finish out the year, which included a series loss to the Cardinals. They lost 7 of their last 8 to finish the year. The Royals didn’t finish particularly strong, but the Tigers sure did and the Twins ended up being 4 games behind both teams.
My first inclination for a collapse like that would be that the team underperformed their expected record. That’s not what happened though. Their pythag record was exactly 82-80. But that’s what runs scored and runs allowed tell us. They were 5th in baseball in pitching fWAR and 10th in baseball in position player fWAR. Their bullpen had the 5th best fWAR, but the 4.12 ERA was the 19th best. But even still, they only blew 19 saves, tied with four other teams for the 5th fewest.
What they lost
Mostly on the back of a fluky defensive season, Carlos Santana provided 3 fWAR at 1B. And yes, Twins fans reading this, I am aware Santana is probably actually elite at defense, but +14 defensive seasons at 1B just don’t happen, and he hasn’t done better than +3 since 2017 aside from last season. Throw in that he is 40-years-old and the 2025 expected version of Santana is pretty replaceable. But that’s still 3 fWAR they’re losing in comparison to last season.
They also lost long-time starter Max Kepler, who is basically an older Lars Nootbaar. A guy who you always hope would take that next step into being a star, but constant IL trips and in his case, really low BABIPs kept him as a solid regular. 38-year-old Caleb Thielbar, who had only ever been a Twin in the majors, was your standard left-handed reliever.
They declined the option on utility man Kyle Farmer, who had a perfectly fine season as a bench player, and on Manuel Margot, who was below replacement level. And, formerly promising prospect Alex Kiriloff.. retired at 27-years-old. He couldn’t stay healthy.
What they added
To replace Thielbar, they signed 35-year-old left-handed reliever Danny Coloumbe, who appears to be quite a bit better than Thielbar. He is not exactly the symbol of reliability however if you take a gander at his career. On the other hand 1.9 of his 2.4 career fWAR – spread across 10 MLB seasons – was in the past two seasons. To replace Margot, they signed Harrison Bader! His splits aren’t as pronounced as they once were though – he was better against RHP in three of the past four seasons.
To replace Santana, they have decided to go with Ty France. It’s interesting, because France should actually approximate what Santana was expected to do in 2025. It’s just that, on the surface, you’re replacing a 3 fWAR performance with a -0.9 fWAR performance. So it’s risky to say the least!
Because of Kepler’s (and Buxton’s) injury issues, they sort of already built around him missing games. So the direct replacement of Kepler is actually Matt Wallner, already in the organization, but he played half the year in AAA last season. So he’s got a more secure job. To replace Kiriloff, they traded for a player named Mickey Gaspar, who is 29 and has 23 career PAs. But his ZiPS is insanely good for some reason with a 120 wRC+. Not that it’s a large sample, but he was very bad in those 23 PAs (but did walk 17% of the time). I am shall we say dubious of that projection, but they’re not expecting him to start, so it’s not a risky bet.
What’s the same
The entire starting rotation is the same. We’ll cover the pitchers the Cardinals will face in the individual matchups. The bullpen is pretty much the same too. They swapped out left-handed relievers. Jhoan Duran will probably take the bulk of closing opportunities again. His velocity has been down in spring “by design” and that may carry into the regular season which… is not something I would want to hear as a Twins fan.
Griffin Jax is a groundball and strikeout machine, which is how you get a 2.03 ERA in a season. Cole Sands had an unbelievably good K/BB ratio last year (29.1 K%, 4.1 BB%). This bullpen has four very strong options, but their other four options are not particularly good. Of course, with a good starting pitching, you might only need the four great relievers for any individual game.
Royce Lewis is still here.. and also injured. Do the Twins have the market cornered on position players who cannot stay healthy or something? Speaking of, Buxton is actually healthy at the moment. Willi Castro is taking over at 3B for Lewis, but the real ramifications are that Edouard Julien, who followed up a promising rookie season with a replacement level season, starts at 2B. (I assume Castro, who plays all over, would be at 2B with a healthy Lewis). Carlos Correa, another player with injury concerns, is at SS.
Ryan Jeffers provides all offense, no defense while Christian Vazquez provides all defense, no offense at catcher. (Jeffers will surely play some games at DH). Lastly, the limitless amount of position player prospects the Twins seem to have had one kind of break out last year in Trevor Larnach taking over the third outfield spot.
Pablo Lopez (4.08 ERA/3.65 FIP/3.36 xFIP) vs. Sonny Gray (3.84 ERA/3.12 FIP/2.82 xFIP)
Well, aren’t these two just peas in a pod. Lopez was worse than Gray, but they had remarkably similar 2025s. Both had higher ERAs than their FIPs would suggest and higher FIPs than their xFIPs would suggest. Lopez actually has a higher ERA than FIP over his entire career, and it’s actually pretty similar to the difference he posted last year. The home run difference was new, however.
I don’t think the difference will be as extreme this year, but it is worth pointing out that Gray at Busch Stadium had much better results than on the road, mostly due to not allowing as many homers. He allowed just 11 less homers at home than on the road while throwing 20 more innings, which is just insane. He only allowed 5 homers at Busch all year, which led to a 2.79 ERA.
Joe Ryan (3.60 ERA/3.44 FIP/3.44 xFIP) vs. Erick Fedde (3.30 ERA/3.86 FIP/4.12 xFIP)
This is a difficult matchup to grade, because a lot of it is dependent on how for real Fedde’s 2024 was. Due to a long history of not being a very good pitcher, Fedde’s projection is not great. By that metric, Ryan is easily the favorite of this matchup. If Fedde actually did turn a corner, Ryan’s 3.71 FIP projection probably is pretty close to where to expect Fedde.
Bailey Ober (3.98 ERA/3.82 FIP/3.83 xFIP) vs. Andre Pallante (3.78 ERA/3.71 FIP/3.89 xFIP)
For the record, I am using Roster Resource’s pitching rotation order. ESPN at least does not have whoever the Twins plan to use after Lopez. I would assume Ryan and Ober are a pretty safe bet to follow Lopez in some order though. They are a clear step above Simeon Woods Richardson and Chris Paddack.
I’m actually pleasantly surprised how well the Cardinals match up with the Twins, who I will remind you had the 5th best pitching fWAR last season. Now, if the Cardinals had to face the Twins in a 5-game series, there would be a more noticeable separation between the next two pitchers.
