As far as we can tell, history was made on Saturday as the Minnesota Twins agreed to sign right-handed reliever Addison Reed to a two-year deal. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic had the first report, and as far as the crack research team of yours truly and Mike Berardino of the St. Paul Pioneer Press can tell, it’s the first-ever contract multi-year deal the team has ever handed out to a free-agent reliever.
It’s the third addition the Twins have made to their bullpen this offseason after right-hander Fernando Rodney and lefty Zach Duke, but it’s certainly the most substantial. While Rodney is expected to open the season as the closer, Reed has ample experience in the role — 125 career saves, three years with at least 25 — and is coming off closing 19 games for the New York Mets before being traded to help the Boston Red Sox for the stretch run.
Consistency hasn’t really been the name of the game for Reed, who came up as a very well-regarded relief prospect in the White Sox system — seriously, Baseball America, MLB.com and Baseball Prospectus all had him as a top-100 guy, which is almost unheard of for a pitcher with no chance of working as a starter — before being traded to Arizona for third baseman Matt Davidson, who at the time was a good prospect.
Reed’s thrown just over 400 innings in his career, and the numbers are really, really good: 3.40 ERA (3.18 FIP), 9.5 K/9, 2.3 BB/9, 0.94 HR/9 and a WHIP of 1.16.
But as previously noted, there isn’t a ton of consistency with Reed — and maybe this is just a reliever thing — but these are his year-to-year ERA marks since debuting:
2011 – 3.68 (just 7.1 innings)
- 2012 – 4.75
- 2013 – 3.79
- 2014 – 4.25
- 2015 – 3.38
- 2016 – 1.97
- 2017 – 2.84
It’s not just ERA that jumps up and down for Reed, who turned 29 just two days after Christmas. His FIP has jumped year-to-year as well — though for his career (3.18) is lower than his ERA — and he’s vacillated at times between being a fly ball pitcher and a groundball pitcher. What has also vacillated — and somewhat correlated — with his change in grounder reliance is that he runs the gamut as far as being home-run prone. Last year he allowed 1.3 homers per nine innings, which was on the high side. The AL average last year was 1.31, but not surprisingly, relievers were quite a bit lower (1.17) than starters (1.4).
But the two years before that? Reed allowed 0.48 and 0.46 homers per nine, which are minuscule rates no matter the run environment. And the year prior to that? He was a 1.67 per nine, which is downright awful, again, no matter how you slice it.
What’s been relatively stable for Reed are the strong strikeout and walk rates — both of which are good when considering how quickly innings can snowball on a reliever with spotty control, and how little strikeout potential the Twins have had in the bullpen and pitching staff on the whole in recent years.
As far as repertoire goes, don’t expect Reed to come in throwing flames. In his early White Sox days, Reed threw three pitches and could hit 95 mph with ease on his heater. He’s scaled back to being just a two-pitch guy — four-seam fastball averaging 92.3 mph last year — and a slider which he throws about one-third of the time.
Even with just two pitches and a fastball that doesn’t blow people away, the swinging-strike rate for Reed is quite good. He’s got a career rate of 11.5 percent — for comparison’s sake, the AL average last year was exactly that — and last year he set a career-high mark with a 13.7 percent whiff rate.
The peak velocity for Reed’s fastball according to PITCHf/x last year was 95.9 mph, so he can still reach back for some extra if he needs to. But as he’s dialed back the velocity on the fastball — be it intentionally, or thanks to Father Time — it’s come with an increased swinging-strike rate. Last year it was 12 percent on his four-seam fastball. That would be a respectable rate on a breaking ball, but for a fastball that’s very, very good. On the slider it was 17 percent last season, and has been in that vicinity for pretty much his entire career.
In short, he can get swinging strikes with what he’s got — even though it’s just two pitches and isn’t high-90s cheddar.
The ZiPS projection — run by friend of Zone Coverage and contributor to ESPN and Fangraphs, Dan Szymborski — on Reed with the Twins is really strong:
The Marcel projection — which can be found on Baseball Reference — is really good, too:
The Steamer projections — housed on Fangraphs — aren’t too bad, but they aren’t great either. They don’t forecast any home-run rate regression (1.3 per nine) and they see a 4.09 ERA, 8.9 K/9 and 2.6 BB/9. Nevertheless, all of these projections are indicative of a reliever who can definitely help the Twins, whether it’s ultimately closing or even as part of a really great bridge to Rodney with Trevor Hildenberger, Duke and others.
The upshot is this: The Twins wanted to go into next season with some help at closer. They’ve doubled down on that, and still have some intriguing in-house options — Hildenberger, John Curtiss and a few others come to mind — besides.
This isn’t going to make anyone forget about the Yankees bullpen that blew everyone, including the Twins in October, away, but relatively speaking, this is a vastly improved unit. If the Twins can still add a starting pitcher before the season starts — and there’s little reason to believe they won’t — this team has to be taken seriously in the rear-view mirrors of the Cleveland Indians.
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