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: Pat Light
- 2016 Role: Worked the late innings for the Red Wings after coming over in the Fernando Abad trade, then was promoted to the big leagues where he did a little bit of everything in a sagging bullpen.
- Expected 2017 Role: Not very likely to make the team out of spring training, but at 26 next March, the onus is on Light to get command under wraps so he can help the MLB club, or get taken off the 40-man roster.
- MLB Stats: 11.34 ERA (7.41 FIP) in 16.2 MLB innings between Red Sox and Twins, 8.6 K/9, 8.6 BB/9, 2.28 WHIP, minus-0.4 fWAR.
- MiLB Stats: 2.37 ERA in 38 Triple-A innings between Pawtucket and Rochester, 9.9 K/9, 4.5 BB/9 and 1.18 WHIP.
- Contract Status: Free agent after 2022 at the earliest.
2016 Lowdown:
The Twins drafted but did not sign Light out of Christian Brothers Academy in the 28th round of the 2009 MLB draft, so they’ve clearly been aware of who he is for quite some time — especially considering the continuity in the front office department for the club over that time frame. Light was coming out as one of the finest pitching prospects from the Jersey Shore area, as he went 20-0 as a high schooler, but instead went to Monmouth University for three years rather than signing with the Twins. Those three years paid off, as Light went 37th overall to the Red Sox as a supplemental pick for the loss of Jonathan Papelbon in free agency when he signed with the Phillies after the 2011 season.
The MLB Network coverage of the draft the year Light was taken likened him to Jeff Niemann, who stood four inches taller and 40 lbs. heavier than the listing for Light on Baseball Reference right now (6-foot-5, 220 lbs.). Niemann was the fourth overall pick out of Rice for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays back in 2004, but his career was cut short by major issues with his shoulder, including surgery to repair his labrum and rotator cuff. Still in many ways, it was a lofty comparison that analysts were looking to Light to live up to — and at first he did.
In the New York Penn League right out of the chute, Light was dominant. He made 12 starts, posted a 2.37 ERA and fanned 30 batters in 30.1 innings with just five walks and only one home run allowed. But if Light’s first year in short-season ball was a rousing success, his first taste of baseball at the next level was a rude awakening, as he was hit to the tune of a 8.89 ERA in 28.1 innings in full-season A-ball with Greenville in the South Atlantic League. That was in 2013, and was probably the beginning of the end for Light as a starter. The Red Sox had Light make 25 starts across two levels of A-ball in 2014 but the results again weren’t great: 4.83 ERA, 5.2 K/9 and a WHIP of 1.41.
Instead of trying to jam a round peg into a square hole, the Red Sox had Light shift to relief, where his strikeouts bounced back to more than one per inning in 2015, though the walks jumped from 2.5 per nine as a starter the year before to 5.2 per nine as a reliever. With Light though, it sure seems like as he gets acclimated to a role and a place, he takes a step forward. That’s not a new thing; in 2010 as a freshman at Monmouth, Light had a 6.12 ERA in 57.1 innings with just 33 strikeouts and 19 walks. By his third and final year with the Hawks, Light had sliced his ERA to 2.40 over 101.1 innings with 102 strikeouts and just 16 walks.
The same thing can be said for his 2016 season, as he cut the walks a little, bumped the strikeouts a bit as well and cut his WHIP from 1.37 last season to 1.18 this season at the Triple-A level.
Then the big-league carnage happened. Light only got into two games with the Red Sox — one in late April, the other in early July — and was crushed in both, allowing seven earned runs over just 2.2 innings for an ERA of 23.63. Things were only slightly better with the Twins, as he threw 14 innings with as many earned runs, and had a 14-15 K/BB ratio. It’s really hard to know how to read Light, because there’s just so much that is conflicting without enough evidence or sample size to fairly mitigate it.
There’s definitely something here with Light, but unlocking it is going to be a hell of a challenge.
On the good side, Light only allowed an opponents’ batting average of .259, and while he allowed a staggering .411 on-base percentage, opposing batters still slugged just .379. As one might expect, a 54.4 percent groundball rate played into that quite prominently. At Light’s height, he gets a good downward plane and that is reflected on his batted balls. For instance, in 2015 he had a groundball rate of 58 percent. Like we’ve noted elsewhere, with strikeouts and grounders he’s two-thirds the way to the holy trinity of pitching.
The command is a huge question of course. But as we’ve noted, Light has shown the ability to adapt and improve after extended periods at a level, and it would be foolish to believe he couldn’t do the same in the big leagues. After walking 4.9 batters per nine innings with the PawSox over 31 innings, Light walked two batters in his seven innings (2.6 BB/9) with the Red Wings before the Twins called him up. And while that is too small of a sample size to draw a definitive conclusion from — especially in light of his command in the big leagues — it again fits the pattern of a pitcher who gets better the more comfortable he gets at a level. The Twins should have the luxury of being able to do that next year if they so choose with Light in the big leagues, but it seems unlikely he’ll make the Opening Day bullpen.
Still, for a team in desperate need of flamethrowers moving forward, Light is a justifiable risk for the Twins. He averaged 95.3 mph on his four-seam fastball and 86.7 mph on his split. PITCHf/x and Brooks Baseball will both tell you he throws a slider; he doesn’t, and that’s straight from the mouth of Light. When Light’s split has its mojo working, it’ll either cut like a slider or drop straight down, and when it isn’t as good as it’s supposed to be or Light’s arm action falls off, it gets glove-side fade to it, and in the words of Light it “gets hit — HARD.” The split should be a fairly good pitch for Light if he can iron it out, as it carried a whiff rate in the mid-to-upper teens — numbers hazy because of classification issues — while both the split and his four-seamer induce grounders at a rate in excess of 50 percent.
There’s definitely something here with Light, but unlocking it is going to be a hell of a challenge.
Grade: F. There might be something here, but it came and went quite frequently. Without command, he’s going to be Jim Hoey, 2.o. With command, he’ll be a late-inning, nasty power reliever. That’s quite a chasm.
