TheGoldSeat

With the Twins struggling to win 3 of their last 10 I thought I’d dive into some AL stats.

As a team the Twins rank 3rd in batting avg and 4th in runs in the AL. But they rank 12th in ERA and 14th in both opponent batting avg and OPS. There is no doubt the Twins posses the greatest collection of singles hitters in baseball. But it may be time to forget hitting and start building pitching. Pitching wins games, pitching wins championships.

The Texas Rangers are an offensive juggernaut year after year yet never win anything. This year the Rangers have the #1, #4 and #8 AL batting avg leaders. They have the #1, #2, #3 and #6 AL run scorers. They are 1 game under .500. When the year started everyone was picking Detroit to do major damage. One problem - no pitching.

On the flip side, the division leading Chicago White Sox have the #6, #7 and #8th ranked AL ERA pitchers. No other team has 3 pitchers in the top 20, the White Sox have 4. Minnesota has 1, Nick Blackburn at #17 with a 3.87 ERA.

Potential Reason? The Twins have a draft policy of taking High School players. They always try to draft HS talent. There is no doubt this strategy has worked in finding some great singles and doubles hitters, defensive players, all around great athletic players. But the strategy has failed miserably when it comes to finding home run hitters and pitchers.

Two of the great pitching finds (Santana, Liriano) came from the collegeless Latin America. Is it possible that projecting pitching talent in High School might be too difficult? We know projecting power hitting is. I think it’s an important question to ask. Is the draft strategy or coaching to blame?

One other small market team with no lack of finding and developing pitching is Oakland. Over the last 10 years Oakland has been a pitching powerhouse although they can only afford to keep their pitchers for a couple years. Oakland’s draft strategy? College Players.