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: Ryan Pressly
- 2016 Role: Worked higher-leverage spots as the season wore on, and found added velocity as well.
- Expected 2017 Role: He’ll pitch as late in games as the team needs him too. Has the stuff to close, but needs to clean up baserunners allowed to be a real asset.
- MLB Stats: 3.70 ERA (3.74 FIP) in 75.1 innings, 8.0 K/9, 2.8 BB/9, 1.35 WHIP, 0.8 fWAR.
- MiLB Stats: N/A
- Contract Status: Eligible for arbitration for the first time this winter, free agent after 2019.
2016 Lowdown:
It might not seem like much, but the fact that Pressly threw 75.1 innings for the Twins this year was remarkable. It wasn’t a career-high for Pressly, who threw 76.2 innings after the Twins made him their Rule-5 pick back in the 2013 season, but there are a couple of factors at play here. In 2013, Pressly was coming off having thrown more than 100 innings between High-A, Double-A and the Arizona Fall League. In fact, it was the AFL where the Twins became smitten with Pressly, and it’s easy to see why. He had a 3.86 ERA, but fanned 18 batters in 14 innings with just one walk.
But still, Pressly was coming off a fairly steady workload that had included making 12 starts at High-A. He was more than prepared for the Twins to work him pretty hard in 2013. Flash forward to 2015, and a severe lat injury — the words from Terry Ryan and Paul Molitor on multiple occasions this past season — ended his season on July 4. In a lot of ways, 2015 was fairly big for Pressly, as he not only finally showed at least some penchant for strikeouts (7.2 K/9 after 4.4 the season before), but on the negative side got hurt, and as a result only threw 27.2 MLB innings. Overall, Pressly threw just 37.2 innings between Triple-A and the majors that year.
You get the sense that he’s on the cusp of something special, and is really just searching for consistency.
The other interesting thing about Pressly’s workload this season is that he finished 15th among 135 relievers in innings and 21st in appearances. That’d be a big deal to anyone, let alone someone who had a serious injury the year before. He could have been even higher on the rankings as well, but Molitor backed off on his usage in September.
Here’s a look at Pressly’s month-by-month usage patterns:
- April – 11 appearances, 14.1 innings
- May – 14 appearances, 14.1 innings
- June – 14 appearances, 13.2 innings
- July – 12 appearances, 11.2 innings
- August – 11 appearances, 12.2 innings
- September – 10 appearances, 8.2 innings
Nobody will look at Pressly’s numbers and come away all that impressed. His ERA and FIP are middling, and in this era of increased strikeouts, he’s not even at league average for a reliever (8.7 K/9). He was mighty close in the first half (8.5), but tailed off after the beak (7.1). Still, what’s so exciting about Pressly? It’s in small bits here and there. In June he had a 1.98 ERA, 0.81 WHIP and 14-1 K/BB ratio. Those are legit closer numbers. In his first three months, his lowest K/9 is 8.8. At home he had a 2.41 ERA, and though he struggled on the road (4.97), he had more strikeouts away from Target Field (8.5 K/9). He neutralized lefties (.659 OPS), but struggled against righties (.767 OPS thanks to all eight of his home runs allowed coming from that side of the plate).
You get the sense that he’s on the cusp of something special, and is really just searching for consistency.
It shows up in his measurables in terms of pitches, too. Pressly’s velocity spiked in 2016, as he was sitting at 96 mph with his four-seam fastball for the first time in his MLB career. He’s always had a fairly good heater, but it was more 93-94 when he first joined the Twins before he found 95-96 this time around. In fact, he was just getting going by averaging 97.2 mph in July 2015 before getting hurt, and he averaged north of 96 mph in every month but April in 2016, which makes sense given the number of cold-weather games he likely pitched in that month due to Minneapolis and other AL Central cities that time of year.
The slider and curve were big pitches for Pressly this year, as he got a 17.4 percent whiff rate on the slider and a 21.4 percent rate on the curve. As previously noted, all eight of Pressly’s home runs allowed came against right-handed hitters this season. Six came on four-seam fastballs with one each on the slider and the curve. The four-seam fastball was the most concerning, as right-handed hitters batted .317 against it with a slugging percentage of .582. On the plus side, Pressly did spread the home runs out rather judiciously; after allowing three in April — including two in one outing in Milwaukee — the right-hander allowed just one in each month the rest of the way.
Ultimately, my conclusion with Pressly is this: the stuff and command and total package is there for a power, late-inning reliever. If he can keep the ball in the yard against righties, there’s no reason he shouldn’t be in the mix for eighth- or ninth-inning work next season for the Twins.
Grade: A-. Pressly wasn’t perfect, but threw hard and answered the bell every time he was asked. After missing a large chunk of 2015 with a serious lat injury, Pressly gave the Twins all they could have expected in 2016. With a little tweaking, he could be a legit set-up man or closer.
