Twins: Taylor Rogers snubbed from All-Star Game.
The 2021 All-Star Game is right around the corner and Nelson Cruz will be representing the team in Colorado. However, Taylor Rogers wasn’t voted in, despite having a terrific season.
Congratulations to Cruz for earning a trip to the All-Star Game for the seventh time in his career. Minnesota goes as far as Cruz takes them and he’s made a large impact both on and off the field. His leadership has been important for Twins’ development, regardless of this season’s results.
This season he’s batting .306 with 18 home runs and 45 RBIs. His wins above replacement is 2.2, which for a designated hitter, shows just how valuable he is. It’s pretty incredible how good he is at 41 years of age.
While it’s great to see Cruz make the team, Rogers has been just as dominant and deserving of an ASG nod.
Rogers has been without a doubt the Twins best relief pitcher and one of the best in all of baseball this season. Despite his efforts, Minnesota’s bullpen has been abysmal.
The Twins’ relief pitching ranks fourth in the league in runs given up with 196. They’re 13-21 as a unit and hold the fifth worst ERA at 4.98. Heading into the offseason, Minnesota has a lot of work to do in revamping their bullpen.
Rogers has only given up 12 runs (10 earned runs), which is only about six percent of the team’s season total. He’s currently 2-3, with an ERA of 2.52 and a WAR of 0.9. He’s also crushing left-handed batters, giving up nine hits in 52 batters faced — good for a .180 average.
The former Kentucky Wildcat is having a career year strikeout rate, striking out 34.7 percent and walking 4.9 percent of the batters faced.
Rogers relies heavily on his slider and is elite at getting players to chase pitches. He currently ranks in the 100th percent tile in pitches chased.
Rogers should have been nominated to the All-Star game and stats back that up. But who would he replace? Aroldis Chapman.
The most likely reasons for Chapman making it over Rogers can be chalked up to the market his team plays in, name appeal and the New York Yankees basically just playing better baseball. Regardless of those factors, if he’s not pitching well, then it should go to the player who has had a better season.
This season Chapman has a 5-3 record, an ERA of 4.71 and a zero WAR. Before June 10, he was arguably the most dominant relief pitcher, up until the Twins had that incredible walk-off home run game.
Before this game, Chapman’s ERA was 0.39 and had given up just one home run all season. In June, he went 1-2, with an ERA of 11.42 and gave up 12 runs — tied for as many as Rogers’ has given up all season.
At the end of the day, Rogers has been consistently the better pitcher this season, with a better ERA and higher WAR.
