This story was excerpted from Matthew Leach’s Twins Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. – The World Series is almost here, getting started on Friday night at American Family Field in Milwaukee. I know there’s a certain segment of fans for whom that’s an especially bitter pill, given the regional rivalry.
But it’s also potentially a series full of inspiration for Twins fans. As you’ll no doubt hear excessively over the coming days, the Brewers and Rays are neither big-market nor mega-spending clubs. They’re franchises that have built sustainable success, winning regularly rather than putting all their chips in on a single season.
I’ll save the business side for others to discuss, though. I wanted to take a look at a few things from the baseball side that might be gleaned from this year’s Fall Classic participants. One reminder: nearly anything can happen in a week or even a month of baseball, so it’s dangerous to try to extrapolate too much from small sample sizes. That’s why I’m going to look at not only postseason numbers, but in some cases regular-season numbers as well.
1. Defense matters
The Twins know this, by the way. You saw it with the multiple in-season position changes they carried out. We’ve heard both manager Derek Shelton and general manager Jeremy Zoll acknowledge that the team’s defense needs to get better.
Want evidence? Look at the World Series, which features two of the best defensive teams in baseball. The Rays led MLB in defensive efficiency rating, which is a very simple but very effective means of measuring team defense. It is, simply, the percentage of batted balls in play that a team turns into outs. The Brewers were sixth. The Guardians were the only team with a DER worse than the MLB average that won even one round in this year’s postseason.
Minnesota ranked 21st. That’s a number that should get better with Brooks Lee at third for a full season, Kaelen Culpepper at short for a full season and a younger and more athletic outfield. It’ll have to.
2. It really, really helps to have at least one Dude in your rotation
Postseason baseball is a very different animal in a lot of ways, and one key difference is the off-days. Teams can set their rotations aggressively and avoid using their weakest pitchers in key moments – or at all.
And while Milwaukee has been extremely aggressive in its bullpen use, it still starts with ace Jacob Misiorowski, the prohibitive National League Cy Young favorite. Tampa Bay counters with Drew Rasmussen, who likely will get plenty of votes in the AL Cy balloting. Once again, seven of the eight teams that won at least one round in this year’s postseason had at least one ace-caliber starter. Besides the two World Series teams, you had the Guardians (Gavin Williams), Dodgers (Tarik Skubal and Yoshinobu Yamamoto), Braves (Chris Sale), Yankees (Cam Schlittler), and Padres (you can debate Michael King, but he sure pitched like one this month).
The good news for the Twins is they have three guys capable of pitching at that level: Joe Ryan, Taj Bradley and Pablo López. None of them have yet done it for a full season, or in October, but it’s a very good starting point.
3. Ball go far, team go far
Small ball can be great, but it’s not everything. You’re going to hear a lot about how the Brewers and Rays put pressure on defenses by putting the ball in play, and there’s something to that – though I’d note that Milwaukee actually only had the 17th lowest strikeout rate as a team in the regular season.
But to win in October, you absolutely have to hit home runs. Milwaukee leads the postseason with 10 in eight games. Tampa Bay is tied for third with seven homers in nine games. They’re first and fourth in the postseason in slugging. Yes, it’s absolutely good to put pressure on the defense. But postseason defenses – see above – tend to be very good, and so do the pitchers. It’s hard to scratch out singles.
As for the Twins, they could probably use an infusion of power this offseason, especially if Ryan Jeffers departs via free agency. They ranked 12th in the Majors in home runs and 10th in slugging. That’s not bad at all, but it would help to have – or develop – a real masher or two.