Arizona Diamondbacks, Minnesota Twins Headline Week One Surprises

Both the Arizona Diamondbacks and Minnesota Twins completed the first week of the 2017 regular season with one loss, which is not exactly what any of us were expecting from either believed-to-be-rebuilding club.

The first question we have to ask is how they’ve each done it. For the Arizona Diamondbacks, the charge has been led by their offense. According to FanGraphs, their bats have accumulated an fWAR of 1.9 and an MLB-high 138 wRC+. In layman’s terms they’ve scored the most runs (48), eight more than their closest competition in the Dodgers. They’re crushing the ball.

This offensive output has helped lead the D-Backs to the highest run differential in the early going at +19, one more that the Dodgers and just two ahead of the Twins.

While typical statistics aren’t quite as high on the Arizona pitching staff, there does appear to be room for improvement. They rank t-8th in overall fWAR as a staff at 0.6 while their cumulative ERA sits at 20th (4.17, just higher than league average) and their FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) ranks 10th at 3.67. Archie Bradley and Jorge De La Rosa have been racking up the strikeouts out of the bullpen, and if they can continue to get solid relief help coupled with better performances from Zack Greinke, Shelby Miller and newly acquired Taijuan Walker, they could become a team to be dealt with in what is shaping up to be a very deep NL West.

We posed this question on Twitter, and so far the responses have been pretty split.

As for the Minnesota Twins, they have had an easier schedule and have one less win overall, but they are in a division that should allow them to rack up some wins with the rebuilding White Sox and soon-to-be rebuilding Royals.

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Like the D-Backs, the Twins have been getting some solid relief help, but the Minnesota bullpen has been what’s leading to their early surge. Of the eight arms used out of the bullpen, only Justin Haley has allowed an earned run to score. At the same time five of those eight arms have K/9 rates over nine. The starting trio of Ervin Santana, Hector Santiago and Phil Hughes has really helped out the bullpen by going relatively deep into their starts, and the highest ERA of the three is Santiago’s 1.80.

The Twins’ staff ERA of 2.92 ranks fifth in baseball, but their fWAR is a bit further down at number 19, more in line with their FIP of 4.62, which ranks 20th.

Offensively the Twins rank 8th in WAR at 1.0 as a team with a cumulative 113 wRC+. The alarming stat here is that Jason Castro is the masher that’s leading the charge, accumulating 0.6 of that 1.0 WAR. I’m not a betting man (that’s a lie) but I would bet that he won’t keep this up for more than a couple of weeks, let alone hold that pace for the rest of the season. The good news is that right behind him is Miguel Sano, who could definitely provide some thump for the entire season.

The other bright side for Minnesota, although not at the moment, is that Byron Buxton is not hitting–at all. If he can figure things out like he did at the tail end of 2016, then the Twins could legitimately become an offensive force to be reckoned with and should help offset a pitching staff that won’t be able to keep their current pace.

So can the Twins and Diamondbacks keep it up?

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Of the two I’d definitely pick Arizona. They’ve faced the stiffer competition in San Francisco and Cleveland (although the Giants did also lose two of three to San Diego over the weekend) and have pitched fairly well at home. The real challenge for them begins today when they start a series with San Francisco in the Bay Area with Walker taking the mound. He has already faced the Giants this season and the quick turnaround could prove detrimental, while their vaunted offense will be playing in a pitcher’s paradise.

While we won’t find out if Walker is about to break out and whether their offense is built for the road in the next three games, we could get an idea as to whether or not the Arizona Diamondbacks are for real this season starting this afternoon. As for the Minnesota Twins, it’s going to take some extra convincing.