Cloning a Rotation

The Minnesota Twins success this decade has never been attributed to an explosive offense. Rather, their defense and pitching have been highly regarded as the main contributors to their division championships in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2006.

While the pitching rotation for this season has only been speculation, a quick glance at the primary candidates to fill each slot shows a strong resemblance to the rotations of previous successful seasons. Using the rotation posted yesterday (Liriano, Baker, Hernandez, Bonser, Slowey), let us compare to the 2006 rotation of Santana, Radke, Silva, Loshe and Baker.

After Liriano’s immediate dominance during his rookie campaign, it was no wonder that comparisons were quickly made to Santana. Both showed to be dominant southpaws, at least for the time being (we don’t know how Liriano will come back from injury) and both could be deemed power pitchers.

Baker is certainly no Liriano, at least in terms of power and dominant hitters. Instead, Baker relies on his control to be an effective pitcher. This showed true, especially last season, as it was obvious when Baker was hitting his spots and when he was not. Without control, Baker was simply not an effective pitcher but when the control was there, he showed the ability to be a very solid MLB pitcher. Remind you of someone from recent past? Yes, this would be the same type of pitcher as Brad Radke.

While the Twins certainly like to lean on the youth of their strong pitching development in the farm system, they have always looked to have at least one solid veteran around each year. Some have little success (Sidney Ponson and Ramon Ortiz are the most recent examples), while others, such as Carlos Silva fill the roll nicely. This strategy seems to play a prominent role in overall team success as obviously Silva had more success than Ponson or Ortiz. With Silva leaving for Seattle and a ridiculous contract, Livan Hernandez has been brought into seemingly fill his shoes. Can Hernandez be the consistent but not spectacular inning eater that Silva was? If Hernandez can produce good results, he might play to be more of a key to success for the Twins than many think.

Bonser is similar, at least in terms of success (not so much in the size department) to that of Kyle Loshe from his days as a Twin. With outings showing brilliance on start to the next start being a complete disaster, it’s all about consistency. Both pitchers had their days and showed solid talent at times, but consistency has been the problem. This spot in the rotation is usually the biggest wild card in the rotation and seems to be once again.

Finally, Kevin Slowey has been labeled to be an up-and-coming Brad Radke type control pitcher. Scott Baker was that same prospect just emerging in the majors just a couple years ago. Given how it took Baker a couple years to adjust, I don’t expect huge things from Slowey, should he make the rotation. However, if he can be consistent and show control, we have good things to look forward to from this young pitcher.

The 2002 – 2004 rotations, while a little different in construction from the 2006 team, did have strong similarities as well with inning-eating veterans like Rick Reed and Terry Mulholland, inconsistent pitchers such as Joe Mays and wildcards like Eric Milton, the blueprints are still there, despite evolving slightly. While the 2008 Twins rotation is not nearly as refined as the recent past, the similarities can surely give Twins fans hope.