2015 In Review

On August 5th of last season, the Minnesota Twins were 54-52, a wild card contender amidst a tight American League race. After already dropping the first two games in a four game set with the surging Toronto Blue Jays, the Twinies called upon Tyler Duffey to try and salvage the series in his first career start in the Bigs. Duffey, promoted from Triple-A, had shown much promise in the minors, specifically his knack for keeping the ball in the yard; relinquishing only two goners in 132 minor league innings prior.

The Twins jumped on Drew Hutchinson in the first inning, putting up a three spot in front of a rowdy 27,000 Toronto faithful. Duffey took the mound in the bottom half, already with a comfortable lead, but was quickly welcomed to the Show in unfamiliar fashion; smacked with a reminder that he wasn't in Rochester anymore.

After leadoff hitter Troy Tulowitzki drew a walk, the future MVP of the 2015 campaign, Josh Donaldson, launched a shot to deep left center, a 416 foot blast. Nice to meet you. In the next inning, Duffey loaded the bases on two hits and another walk, this time drawn by Donaldson, with the formidable Jose Bautista digging in. Bautista had just missed following Donaldson with a homer of his own to center in the first inning. But Joey Bats looked at his ribbie-counterpart sitting at first and simply said: anything you can do, I can do better. Bautista's grand salami traveled 423 feet to the deepest part of Rogers Centre.

Duffey was tagged for six runs on five hits in two innings. The Twins wound up dropping the next two as the Blue Jays completed the sweep, and now questioned if Duffey deserved another start. Although ten days later, Duffey took the mound once again and his nightmarish debut was quickly forgotten about, left in Toronto.

The Twins went 8-1 in Duffey's next nine starts, keeping their playoff hopes alive. The sole loss came against the Houston Astros and Dallas Keuchel, where Duffey nearly matched the future Cy Young winner, allowing only two runs over 6.2 innings pitched, striking out eight batters. In his final five starts in September, Duffey lasted six or more innings in each, posted a 3-0 record and a 2.35 ERA, dishing out zero home runs. Duffey finished his abbreviated stint in the Majors with a 5-1 record, a 3.10 ERA, a 1.31 WHIP, allowing less than a hit per inning, and averaged close to a strikeout per nine; a performance that answered some future questions for the ball club.

 
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2016 Outlook

Minnesota has still entered spring training with five pitchers competing for the fourth and fifth spot of their pitching rotation. Duffey is one of them. However, Twins manager Paul Molitor expects Duffey to be in the rotation come Opening Day.

“I would imagine that it would probably something fairly significant to get him bumped out of [the rotation],” Molitor said, according to ESPN.com. “We haven’t locked in all five spots. Our expectation is he’s going to take hold of one of them.”

Despite the vote of confidence, there is still a couple of things to be cautious about with Duffey. He reached close to 200 innings pitched between the minors and Majors combined last season, so it will be interesting to see if the Twins enforce an innings limit with their second year potentially rising star. He was given an extra day off during his last five starts, which did result in dominance. The Twins aren't necessarily known for having a top offense, which questions how much run support Duffey will get in 2016, but the Twins were ranked 12th in runs scored and they averaged 6.9 runs in Duffey's starts in 2015. Duffey has only really established two pitches as part of his repertoire, a fastball and curveball. Although, his fastball is either used as a two-seemer or four-seemer. Only one pitch out of the 908 he threw in 2015 reached 94 MPH, according to MLB's pitchf/x system. Yet, Duffey recently told Star Tribune that his arm feels alive and that he has entered this season even stronger.

It's fairly easy to counter each reservation mainly because Duffey enters the season with a ton of upside. A majority of the fly balls he allows, 38.5%, are to center field, the deepest part of the ball park, which partly explains how he is able to limit the home runs allowed. He posted a 49.7% ground ball rate and tallied 86 ground balls opposed to his 83 fly balls. He also registered a 63.6% first strike rate and a 63.8% O-contact rate, contact outside of the strike zone. This resulted in a ton of those previously mentioned ground ball outs considering it's obviously tougher to get good wood on a ball outside the zone, combined with low velocity from a pitcher who throws 58.1% fast balls. (All data from FanGraphs.)

Conclusion

Duffey's ceiling is definitely high, making himself a sleeper candidate with potential to break out in his second year similarly to his first. It would definitely be wise to keep an eye on the Twins rotation race before rostering Duffey, but with the high praise from Molitor and everything he has already proven, there appears to be more reward than risk in drafting the young right hander late in deeper leagues. Our experts at RotoBaller have him ranked 101 among starting pitchers.

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