This is a series of evaluations that will be done this offseason on every player that closed the season on the 40-man roster for the Minnesota Twins, with one appearing every weekday from now until each player has been evaluated. The plan is to start with Mr. Albers and move all the way through the pitchers, then to the catchers, infielders, outfielders and finally those listed as designated hitters on the club’s official MLB.com roster. That means we’ll wrap it up with Miguel Sano sometime in the first week of December.
- Name: Trevor May
- 2016 Role: Expected to lock down back of bullpen featuring him, Kevin Jepsen and Glen Perkins. By the time the dust settled, May was the last man standing before back issues took him down as well. May likely would have closed for the Twins if not for back issues.
- Expected 2017 Role: May is planning to ramp up for a chance to start next season, as the back issues were related to core instabilities exacerbated by max-effort pitching on irregular schedule. May is spending the offseason fixing those with yoga and pilates, but ultimately wants to get back into the rotation.
- MLB Stats: 5.27 ERA (3.80 FIP) in 42.2 innings, 12.7 K/9, 3.6 BB/9, 1.31 WHIP and 0.3 fWAR.
- MiLB Stats: 2.45 ERA and 6-1 K/BB ratio in 3.2 rehab innings with Triple-A Rochester.
- Contract Status: Arbitration eligible after next season, eligible for free agency after 2020.
2016 Lowdown:
Things got off on the wrong foot for the Twins rather quickly, but it’s also fair to say that the season went sour on May pretty early too. Not so much results-wise, as May carried a sub-3.00 ERA into May, but rather that he was disqualified from the competition for the team’s No. 5 starter spot rather quickly in spring training. May dutifully went to the bullpen, where he was to help Jepsen set up for Perkins, which lasted all of less than a week, before the latter went down with a shoulder injury that cost him his season and quite frankly probably threatens his career.
Jepsen was shuttled into the closer’s role, and he faltered — badly. But Jepsen’s ouster from the closer’s role happened in early June, as his last save came on June 3 and on June 8 it was announced he was no longer the closer. That would have naturally lined up May as the third in command to close out games, but that came at a bad time for the big right-hander. May’s 10 previous appearances before June 8 resulted in a solid 13-2 K/BB ratio in 7.1 innings, but also a stunning 11 earned runs (13.50 ERA) with four home runs allowed.
Sometime on the homestand in early June, I noted to other reporters that I had seen all the relievers go out for stretching, and I spotted May back near the cafeteria area. I mentioned it to the other reporters, since May had gone a week between outings (June 1 to June 8), but nothing much came of the conversation. May worked two more times in June — a scoreless outing where he threw two pitches and got one out against the Marlins before a blow-up the next day (June 9) where he gave up three runs and didn’t record an out — and then he didn’t pitch again until July 5. It turned out that my sleuthing proved true, as May went on the disabled list the next day with back spasms — the beginning of a season of myriad back issues that cost the righty probably about half the season based on expected innings pitched.
May worked his way back in just short of a month, as he was activated from the disabled list in time to pitch on July 5. The early returns were promising, as May threw five straight scoreless outings to start his second stint with the team before the Red Sox got to him for four runs on July 21. Undeterred, May again started another solid streak, as he went from July 24 to Aug. 6 with 9.2 innings while allowing just one earned run. Ultimately, May’s second stint resulted in a 2.87 ERA and 19-6 K/BB ratio in 15.2 innings, but again back issues cropped up and forced him to the DL on Aug. 10. This time, May went to visit a specialist at the Mayo Clinic, who said the issues in his back were “mostly muscular” with a bone scan coming back clean. Basically speaking, May told Cold Omaha he had muscular imbalances between his front and his abs, and in using his max-effort relief delivery he had been compensating for a weaker core by tweaking his back more, to the point where the back couldn’t take it anymore.
LISTEN: Trevor May joins Midwest Swing Podcast
May again worked his way back from the disabled list, but made just one appearance on Sept. 11 before another flare up shut him down for the season. This time the diagnosis came back that he had a stress fracture in his lower back. May told the Midwest Swing podcast right after the season ended that he was going to take it easy for a while — his most strenuous exercise would be going for a walk — to let everything heal before he hit it hard with yoga and pilates, including specialized instruction from teachers just for him, so he could attack the imbalances between his core and back and come into spring training amped up.
This time though, he wants to grab a spot in a rotation that ranked dead last in ERA. May told Cold Omaha that he’s going into his final pre-arbitration year, and he’d be lying if he said financial implications didn’t play into it a bit, but ultimately he would like to be a starter and he’s going to fight for that role with everything he has.
…it’s clear he’s got the head, repertoire and command to be a starter, and a team with this bad of a rotation has no reason not to give him that chance. It’s unclear if that’ll happen, but he’s going to fight like hell to make sure he gets a fair shot.
Frankly it makes sense, as he shouldn’t have been removed from the rotation in the first place. The Twins did so with the return of Ervin Santana off a 100-game suspension in 2015, but the fact of the matter is that May was drastically outpitching Mike Pelfrey, who was a free agent to be and had virtually no chance of re-signing with the Twins anyway.
At the time May was moved to the bullpen, here’s a look at their comparative numbers:
- May – 4.37 ERA, 71-18 K/BB ratio in 80.1 innings, .753 OPS against
- Pelfrey – 3.81 ERA, 42-29 K/BB ratio in 87.1 innings, .745 OPS against
You can argue that Pelfrey had the better ERA, but it was pretty easy to see who was more projectable. Instead, the Twins opted to let Pelfrey make 15 more starts, and the results couldn’t have been more predictable: 4.77 ERA, 44-16 K/BB ratio in 77.1 innings, .800 OPS against.
Nevertheless, May gave the Twins some really good innings out of the bullpen — 4.36 ERA as a reliever between 2015-16 with 11.7 K/9 and an OPS against of .737 — but it’s clear he’s got the head, repertoire and command to be a starter, and a team with this bad of a rotation has no reason not to give him that chance. It’s unclear if that’ll happen, but he’s going to fight like hell to make sure he gets a fair shot.
Looking at May’s repertoire from 2015, it’s clear there was a velocity difference between the rotation and the bullpen. May’s averages were 93.2 mph on his four-seamer, 92.4 on his sinker, 85.6 on his changeup, 85 on his slider and 77.4 on his curve as a starter. As a reliever that season, he was 95.9 on his four-seamer, 94.5 on his sinker, 87.1 on his change, 86.5 on his slider and 79.6 on his curve.
As a starter in 2015, his usage patterns were as such: 45.6 percent on the four-seamer, 15.6 percent on the sinker, 14.4 percent on the curve, 6.1 percent on the slider and 18.3 percent on the change. As a reliever, he basically scrapped the sinker (2.9 percent) and slider (2.7 percent), and went four-seamer (54.6 percent), change (20.4 percent) and curve (19.3).
All of which is to say that he did what most pitchers do when they move to the bullpen — simplify their repertoires and throw the hell out of the ball. Still, that he has and uses a sinker with his fly ball rate is smart, and he still maintains plenty of velocity to make it as a starter. As a starter, the sinker (49 percent), change (45.1 percent) and slider (66.7 percent) were all solid groundball offerings, so it might make sense for him to lean on them a bit more heavily as a starter, given his 36.9 percent career groundball rate and penchant for home runs (1.1 HR/9, 10.3 percent HR/FB rate). The velo on the sinker is still plenty good enough for it to be a difference-making pitch for him, I think.
Grade: B-. When health allowed, May had some very solid stretches. Unfortunately for the Twins and May, that wasn’t often enough. Here’s to hoping he gets a legitimate shot at the rotation out of spring training, where he has the potential to make a bigger difference than out of the bullpen.
