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: Tyler Duffey
- 2016 Role: Starting pitcher.
- Expected 2017 Role: Will be in the mix to start in 2017, but may end up a back-of-the-bullpen reliever with his two-pitch mix.
- MLB Stats: 6.43 ERA (4.73 FIP) in 133 innings, 7.7 K/9, 2.2 BB/9, 1.50 WHIP, 1.0 fWAR.
- MiLB Stats: 2.93 ERA (4.41 FIP) in 30.2 innings, 7.3 K/9, 3.5 BB/9, 1.17 WHIP with Triple-A Rochester.
- Contract Status: Free agent after 2021, arbitration-eligible after 2018.
2016 Lowdown:
Duffey was a surprise omission from the Opening Day rotation, as a rough spring left him behind the curve in the eyes of Twins evaluators. The primary reasoning from Duffey’s side was that he spent the spring working on secondary things — his curve and changeup — and while the results weren’t what had been hoped for, the idea was that he was working on making himself a more well-rounded pitcher than the one who finished with a 3.10 ERA in 10 starts with the Twins in 2015.
Nevertheless, Duffey finished the spring with a 7.30 ERA, a 1.62 WHIP, as many strikeouts as walks (six each) and a one-way ticket to Rochester, N.Y. to get his season underway. It took Duffey a couple starts to hit the reset button, but his third one with the Red Wings was excellent, as he tossed seven solid innings with just one earned run on seven hits with a 6-1 K/BB ratio, and that was enough for the Twins to give him a call-up back to the big club, where he made his first start in Washington D.C. against the Nationals on April 24.
The expectation was that Duffey would make just a spot start as Ervin Santana battled early-season back issues, but Santana ended up missing 16 games, and as a result Duffey settled into that spot in the rotation. When Santana returned, the Twins opted to outright Tommy Milone — who with Ricky Nolasco beat out Duffey for one of the five spots in the season-opening rotation — to Triple-A Rochester to keep Duffey’s rotation spot secure. After all, Duffey had made two starts to that point, and despite leaving the Nationals start early after getting hit by a comebacker, had an ERA of 1.74 after that outing and a solid one against the Tigers.
It looked like Duffey was back and ready to move forward.
It didn’t stay that way for long.
Duffey’s first two starts in May went off without a hitch, as he shut the White Sox and Indians down for a combined three earned runs — all against Chicago — with 15 strikeouts and just three walks over those 14 innings. But that ended the most positive stretch of Duffey’s season, as he had a 1.85 ERA in those first four starts with a .646 OPS against and a 23-5 K/BB ratio (24.1 innings), and a 7.42 ERA and .921 OPS against in the subsequent 18 starts before he was sent back to Triple-A.
The biggest issue for Duffey in that stretch was the longball, as he allowed 20 in that 91-inning, 18-start stretch. Sure, he was far too hittable over that time frame — .317/.362/.559 line against — but he still carried respectable peripherals (73-24 K/BB ratio, 8 percent whiff rate) outside of an obscene 28 percent line-drive rate.
The knock on Duffey as a big leaguer has been that he’s struggled with a two-pitch repertoire, and for the most part that rings true. He has a four-seamer and a sinker according to Brooks Baseball, but if you lump those two pitches together as one — not unreasonable — he threw a fastball or a curve 97.5 percent of the time in 2015. He mixed in more changeups in 2016, but he was still around 93-94 percent fastball-curveball, and based on his opponents’ slash line against, that’s just not enough to keep hitters off balance.
It’s easy to see why Duffey hasn’t fallen in love with his changeup, for what it’s worth. Fangraphs’ PITCHf/x gives it a decent enough 10.2 percent whiff rate, but it also says opponents have hit .333/.333/.538 on it over the last two years as well. It’s a pitch batters have elevated a ton (meager 26.5 percent groundball rate), and it’s not a pitch he’s located particularly well either. The curve — Fangraphs says it’s a knucklecurve — is pretty darn good, for what it’s worth. It carried a .688 OPS against in 2016, though the whiff rate on it dropped from around 17-18 percent to about 13 percent, based on the corroboration from a couple different sources.
Losing swings and misses on the offspeed is going to put more pressure on the fastball, and no matter how you slice it, Duffey’s heater got absolutely peppered in 2016. Brooks has Duffey allowing a .683 slugging percentage on his four-seamer and a .594 on his sinker. Basically speaking, they hit Duffey’s four-seamer like Babe Ruth and his sinker like peak Mike Trout, which is obviously not a good recipe.
Without a commitment to developing a changeup, he’s destined to be a reliever — but probably a really good one.
The one place a changeup won’t really help Duffey however is against righties, whom teed off on him to the tune of a 1.038 OPS. So while developing a better changeup is a clear need, finding out how to combat same-sided hitters is another that probably isn’t really interrelated.
The Twins have the luxury — if you can call it that — of giving Duffey some more time to figure things out in the rotation. As much as moving him to the bullpen seems like an obvious solution, they’re also coming off a year with the worst rotation ERA in baseball. And while Duffey was a huge contributor to that deficiency, he’s also one of the few that’s still young enough (26 in December) and talented enough to be a mainstay in the rotation. From a pure talent standpoint, maybe only Jose Berrios and Ervin Santana are better than Duffey among current Twins starters. You could make an argument for Kyle Gibson, Trevor May or a healthy Phil Hughes, but at the very least he’s in the grab bin for a team desperate for help from its starting staff. It can’t turn a blind eye to someone who feasibly could help, especially since a move the the bullpen is a pretty easy one to make later down the road.
Most likely, Duffey will be part of a huge group of pitchers who sees their fate decided rather quickly by new boss Derek Falvey. It’s clear Duffey isn’t in the same category as guys like Pat Dean, Alex Wimmers or Ryan O’Rourke, but with his future role in question, it might become pretty clear pretty quickly how Falvey views him, whether it be directly via a public pronouncement or indirectly based on who and what types of players/pitchers the team pursues in trades and free agency this winter. It wouldn’t be a shock to see Duffey as a reliever moving forward — and a damn good one at that — but the smart money is that he’s not done starting for this team. Not yet, anyway. There are too many holes to patch up and not enough spackle available this offseason.
Grade: D. The 2016 was a huge step backward for Duffey, who had decent enough peripherals in some respects, but got absolutely crushed all season long. Without a commitment to developing a changeup, he’s destined to be a reliever — but probably a really good one.
