MINNEAPOLIS — My favorite movie is “No Country for Old Men” and my favorite character is sheriff Ed Tom Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones. (You may recognize him as my longtime Twitter/X avatar.)
There’s a scene where Bell and his much less experienced deputy, Wendell, arrive at the aftermath of a deadly … something. In the moment, they can’t quite be certain what they’re even looking at, which leads to this exchange:
Wendell: Well it’s a mess, ain’t it, sheriff?
Ed Tom: If it ain’t, it’ll do till the mess gets here.
— Aaron Gleeman (@AaronGleeman) June 2, 2021
Anyway, that has nothing to do with baseball, but I keep thinking about that scene while watching the Minnesota Twins struggle for the past month.
They had a 70-53 (.569) record on Aug. 17, reaching the high-water mark of the season at 17 games above .500. Since then, the Twins are 9-17 (.346) for the third-worst record in baseball during that span, better than only the Los Angeles Angels (7-19) and Chicago White Sox (5-21).
It’s certainly a mess, but even after losing two of three at Target Field to the sub-.500 Cincinnati Reds over the weekend, it’s not the mess as long as the Twins remain in playoff position. And, somehow, the Twins still hold a 2 1/2-game lead for the American League’s third and final wild-card spot.
Of course, that lead will likely vanish if the Twins continue to play as badly as they have for the past month, which reminds me of another “No County for Old Men” scene in which a discouraged Bell talks to his uncle, Ellis:
Ellis: What you got ain’t nothin’ new. This country’s hard on people. You can’t stop what’s comin’. Ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.
Despite how underwhelming the Twins and their competition for the No. 3 wild-card position may look, some team is going to make the playoffs in the league’s final spot. And the Detroit Tigers, Seattle Mariners and Boston Red Sox won’t all just stand back so the Twins can stumble their way in.
That’s vanity. And if the Twins don’t turn things around over the remaining 13 games — starting Monday with a four-game series versus the Guardians in Cleveland — the real mess will get here.
Inherited problems
Evaluating relievers can be tricky.
ERA is the most common statistic used to do so, but it’s only up to the task some of the time because it fails to account for an essential aspect of a reliever’s job: inherited runners.
For example: Twins starter Simeon Woods Richardson was removed from Saturday’s game with the bases loaded and no outs in the fourth inning. He was replaced by reliever Louie Varland, who allowed all three of those base runners and six additional runs to score.
Varland was charged with allowing six runs in one inning, inflating his ERA from 6.05 to 8.57. But in evaluating his performance by ERA alone, Varland bears no responsibility for allowing the three runs he inherited from Woods Richardson to score. Those runs are rightfully assigned to the starter.
However, in looking at Varland’s performance strictly by ERA, it’s as if he wasn’t even involved in those first three runs scoring. In reality, he pitched poorly to allow them to score, and a different reliever, pitching less poorly, could have prevented some or all of them from scoring.
That’s one of the reasons why ERA falls short in fully evaluating relievers. And it’s a frequent issue that pops up, too.
One day earlier, for instance: Twins starter Bailey Ober was removed from Friday’s game with two runners on base and two outs in the seventh inning. He was replaced by reliever Jorge Alcala, who allowed those two base runners and two additional runs to score before recording the final out.
It should be noted reliever Ronny Henriquez escaped starter David Festa’s bases-loaded, two-out jam in the fourth inning Sunday, and that — plus big days from Brooks Lee and Carlos Santana — may have been the difference between a desperately needed win and a sweep-completing loss. It matters.
“Elly De La Cruz does not yet have a grand slam in his career.”
Now he does! 😎 pic.twitter.com/9wsbpqKQPd
— MLB (@MLB) September 14, 2024
Starters shouldn’t be let off the hook for runners they leave on base. If you leave a mess for someone else to clean up, you take your chances with how it’s going to look. But relievers also need to be evaluated for their ability to prevent the runners they inherit from scoring, and ERA does not do so.
On back-to-back days, the Twins’ starters exited a 3-1 game and a 1-1 game while leaving a total of five runners on base. All five of them scored, turning close, winnable games into blowout losses, with zero effect on the relievers’ ERAs. And unfortunately for the Twins, that’s been a season-long story for their bullpen.
Twins relievers have allowed an MLB-high 45 percent of inherited runners to score this season. No other team has allowed more than 40 percent and the league-wide rate is 33 percent. It’s the highest rate of inherited runners scoring in Twins history and the highest by any MLB bullpen since 2003.
“There are so many statistics in our game, and that’s one that hurts you because it hurts us when it comes to winning games,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It hurts our starters, who are coming out of games, and every base runner they leave out there, it feels like at times, is scoring. That’s hard. It’s frustrating. It’s difficult to wrap your head around.”
Relative to league average, Twins relievers have allowed an additional 20 inherited runners to score, often in game-changing situations. Of their eight relievers to inherit more than five runners, only Alcala (29 percent) hasn’t allowed them to score at a rate higher than the 33 percent league average.
Steven Okert was the biggest culprit, allowing a team-high 52 percent of his inherited runners to score before being designated for assignment in late August. Jhoan Duran is next-worst at 50 percent, followed by Griffin Jax, Caleb Thielbar, Kody Funderburk and Josh Staumont at 47 percent each.
Of course, volume matters, too. Duran is at 50 percent, but that’s just 3-of-6, whereas Okert inherited 21 runners and 11 scored. Compared to the league average, Okert (+4.1), Thielbar (+2.7), Funderburk (+2.7), Staumont (+2.4) and Jax (+2.1) have allowed the most inherited runners above expected totals.
And for now, Varland (2-of-2) joins Diego Castillo (4-of-4) in the 100 percent inherited runners scored club. In a small sample, they’ve combined to allow four more runs than the league average. Of the 16 Twins pitchers to inherit at least one runner, 11 have allowed more to score than the league-wide rate.
No shortage of Twins weaknesses have been exposed during their dreadful last month or so, yet the bullpen’s inability to strand inherited runners has the biggest gap between negative impact and attention because traditional stats like ERA don’t measure it fully. But it’s been a huge problem.
(Photo of Brooks Lee and third-base coach Tommy Watkins: Jordan Johnson / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
