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: Tommy Milone
- 2016 Role: Milone made 12 forgettable starts and 19 appearances overall in a bad season for him that was somehow still worse for the team. Besides struggles on the mound, Milone battled injuries that cost him a fairly large chunk of time late in the season as well.
- Expected 2017 Role: He’ll head to camp with someone else looking to carve out a role. He might make sense as a Brian Duensing type out of the bullpen moving forward.
- MLB Stats: 5.71 ERA (5.54 FIP) in 69.1 MLB innings, 6.4 K/9, 2.9 BB/9, 2.0 HR/9, minus-0.2 fWAR.
- MiLB Stats: 1.66 ERA (2.86 FIP) in 48.2 Triple-A innings, 7.6 K/9, 0.7 BB/9 and 0.8 HR/9.
- Contract Status: Was outrighted off the 40-man roster, and has officially declared free agency.
2016 Lowdown:
These report cards have been long — in most cases, probably unnecessarily so. So we aren’t going to sugarcoat things with Milone, a 29-year-old lefty who struggled badly this season. The Twins designated Milone for assignment in early May as a part of a cavalcade of moves that included J.R. Graham also getting the boot and John Ryan Murphy getting sent to Triple-A, where he spent the bulk of the season hitting only marginally better than he did with the Twins.
Due probably exclusively to his $4.5 million salary, Milone cleared waivers and went to Rochester, where he dominated for the second season in a row. When the Twins DFA’d Milone, he had a 5.79 ERA. They brought him back in late June, and he made 14 more appearances (eight starts) and pretty much nothing changed, as he posted a 5.67 ERA the rest of the way, all but cementing there was no way he’d be brought back via another year of arbitration eligibility. That already carried slim chances coming into the season, and his performance cemented it.
Even in a so-so 2015 season (3.92 ERA), Milone didn’t offer a ton. Opposing batters hit .260/.307/.424 against him, which basically gave the notion that he was working on a razor thin margin. Any blip on the radar in terms of command or balls in play meant things were about to blow up on him. Righties had a field day against Milone in 2015 to the tune of a .772 OPS, while he held lefties in check to a .603 mark. Essentially, it wasn’t hard to see a possible role where he could have some utility out of the bullpen, perhaps as a long guy or as a lefty specialist, if starting stopped working for him.
Well, everything stopped working for Milone in 2016. Opposing batters pasted him to the tune of a .299/.349/.590 line and it wasn’t strictly limited to righties (.859 OPS) or lefties (.851) as Milone seriously regressed in both respects.
Strangely, Milone posted his best career groundball rate — a better-than-average mark of 45.7 percent — and still gave up basically two home runs per nine innings, a rate that’d make even mid-90s Twins pitchers blush.
If he can find 91-92 mph out of the pen and refine his cutter, I still believe he can carve out a career as at least a left-handed specialist and long guy. That’d give him another decade in the game. Not a bad gig if you can get it.
Repertoire-wise, nothing seems to have changed too drastically much. His four-seamer dipped from 88.5 mph to 88.1 from last season to this season, which might account for some of the issues but still, not all. Of course, someone with subpar velocity will always have a line where they cross and that’s just it. Milone allowed a .529 slugging percentage against his four-seamer in 2015, and a .621 mark in 2016. Frankly, both are getting thumped pretty well no matter what.
Where Milone saw the sharpest drop-off results-wise was on the curve, where batters had slugged .254 on the offering in 2015, and a ridiculous .594 this season. To Milone’s credit, he did dial the usage back a bit — from 13 percent to 11 percent — but that was still his bugaboo. Every pitch across the board with the exception of the cutter saw a big jump in slugging percentage against, which basically leaves more questions than answers as far as where Milone goes from here.
Milone will be 30 during spring training next season and might need a move to the bullpen to prolong his career. If he can find 91-92 mph out of the pen and refine his cutter, I still believe he can carve out a career as at least a left-handed specialist and long guy. That’d give him another decade in the game. Not a bad gig if you can get it.
Grade: F. This year was a disaster. Milone didn’t get righties out, he didn’t get lefties out and he didn’t last very long on the 40-man roster after the season ended. He might have to settle for a minor-league deal from someone this offseason, even in a weak pitching market.
