The Minnesota Twins have avoided arbitration with the last four players they had eligible prior to going to trial. According to Mike Berardino of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, right-hander Ryan Pressly’s deal was hammered out just after the noon deadline, while the other three players signed prior to that.
The Twins have not gone to trial since doing so with Kyle Lohse in February of 2006. Some teams — such as the Blue Jays, Mets and Orioles — have adopted a “file-and-trial” method in recent years. In that event, the teams view the noon deadline as a hard one, and instead pit their figure against the players in a trial as opposed to still working past the deadline, like the Twins did with Pressly and his agent.
Here are the four players signed by the Twins, with the reported amounts they’ll make in 2017:
Pressly is getting a sizable bump from the $520k he made last season. Pressly became a trusted late-inning option for manager Paul Molitor in 2016, as 68 of his 72 appearances saw him throw at least one pitch in the seventh inning or later. Pressly set a career-high with 8.0 strikeouts per nine innings and paired that mark with a solid 2.7 walks per nine. He also was four outs shy of tying his career-high in innings pitched, which is quite a feat considering the lat injury that cost him a large chunk of the 2015 season.
Pressly’s stuff also spiked in 2016, as he threw harder than ever (95.1 mph average on his fastballs) with whiff rates in excess of 18 percent on both his slider and curve. Another step forward could put him among the elite in setup men in the game. Pressly is not eligible for free agency until after the 2019 season.
Santiago gets a $3 million boost from the $5 million he made last season, which he split between the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and the Twins. Santiago gets the boost despite posting the worst numbers of his career. In 33 starts between the Angels and Twins, Santiago posted a career-worst 4.70 ERA (5.58 with the Twins) with career-lows in strikeouts per nine (7.1) and home runs per nine (1.6). Despite the unsightly numbers with the Twins, Santiago was clearly better down the stretch when he went back to his old mechanics. Santiago had a 10.89 ERA in his first four starts after the Aug. 1 trade, and a 3.19 ERA over his final seven outings.
Santiago is eligible for free agency after the 2017 season.
Gibson will get getting a fairly large raise from the $587,000 he made last season despite having a disappointing year. After taking a step forward with a 3.84 ERA in 2015, Gibson fall back further than before, posting a 5.07 ERA in 25 starts while battling back issues. Gibson regressed in every possible meaningful way in 2016, as his strikeout rate sagged, his walk and home run rates increased and he induced fewer grounders than ever. If he can locate his sinker-slider repertoire moving forward, there’s no reason he can’t be a solid mid- to back-end rotation guy with an ERA under 4.00 and lots of grounders with a few strikeouts mixed in. For his career, Gibson has a 19.6 percent whiff rate on his slider and a 17 percent rate on his changeup.
Gibson will be eligible for free agency after the 2019 season.
Kintzler gets a more than two-time salary bump after saving 17 games for the Twins last season. He had made $1.075 million in each of the last two seasons. After battling a leg injury that led to the ineffectiveness which ended his time with the Brewers, Kintzler was fully healthy in 2016, and threw 54.1 innings for the Twins after tossing 15.1 frames for Rochester to start the season. The Twins got plenty of a return on their minor-league contract investment in Kintzler, as he posted a 3.15 ERA in 54 appearances while inducing grounders at a rate of 61.9 percent — the ninth-best rate among 326 MLB pitchers who threw at least 50 innings in 2016.
Kintzler is eligible for free agency after the 2017 season.
