A. J. Minter

Minter is 4-1, the White Sox are 3-22.

Even weirder, Minter's lone loss came against the White Sox!

His results have been terrible. We've all seen the ERA. But, amazingly, unbelievably, it really is all just luck. I know that sounds hard to believe, but here's the evidence.

Minter's wOBA in save situations since 2020 is an abysmal .369. His xwOBA in those same situations is a very good .286. Based on the quality of contact allowed, he should have an ERA in save situations somewhere in the high 2's, rather than somewhere in the high 10's. If someone can explain how the pressure cooker of the ninth inning causes Minter to have worse batted ball luck, then I'll agree that he's a bad closer. Until then, I'm trusting the numbers.

Some other numbers for you: Minter has an above-average 27.1% K-rate in save situations. He also has a 1.7% walk rate, the second lowest walk rate among any closer in baseball over the last five seasons (Drew Steckenrider somehow walked literally nobody in 50 PA of save situations). That 25.4% K-BB% is absolutely elite, and forecasts excellent results. It's also worth noting that this stat is more predictive than any other pitching metric, which would suggest that Minter's .286 xwOBA (again, high 2's xERA) is probably underselling it.

As for Minter being the unluckiest closer in all of baseball, that gap between his wOBA and xwOBA in save situations is a whopping 81 points. The next highest among closers that faced at least 50 batters over the last five seasons is Daniel Hudson, underperforming his expected results by 61 points. He's in a stratosphere all his own when it comes to bad batted-ball luck.

I understand that save situations are different. I get that. Psychologically, it's a whole other thing. If one of you can explain to me how the psychological pressure of the ninth inning makes the ball move differently after it comes off the bat in Minter's games, then I'll hop right into line and demand he only be a setup guy from now on. I just don't really believe that there's some higher power hexing Minter, though, and if that isn't the case he's a great choice to close.

We need to recognize that AJ Minter has arguably been the best reliever in what has been one of the best pens in baseball and confirmed it last night. In a game in which our starter got blown up, and Luke Jackson was unable to stop the bleeding, Minter pitched a perfect 1.2 IP with 4 Ks to stop the Phillies rally. Since July 27 against the Rays, he has pitched 10.2 IP, 0 R, 5 H, 2 BB, 12 Ks. And it's not like he's been in mop up duty. Snitker is trusting him more and more in high leverage situations. After last season, I think a lot of us were questioning whether AJ Minter had a future in Atlanta. He has proven himself this season.

AJ Minter has a 7.78 ERA. That's the most surface-level view you can get of a pitcher; for every nine innings he pitches, he allows almost 8 runs. Obviously, really bad. But we know that ERA rarely, if ever, tells the whole story, and there's a whole lot outside of a pitcher's control that can influence ERA, especially in the span of a month and a half. It's a purely descriptive stat, without much predictive value. It just tells us what it is, not what's going to be.

AJ Minter has a 4.12 xERA. xERA is a Statcast metric. They just take xwOBA allowed and scale it so it matches the scale of standard ERA. xERA tells us where ERA is going if Minter allowed precisely the sort of contact he's currently allowed so far. If batters hit the ball with exactly the same frequency, exactly as hard, with exactly the same launch angle for all of June, his ERA in June would, on average, be 4.12. It wouldn't be exactly that every time; we got an unlucky roll of the dice and it turned up 7.78. But purely on quality of contact allowed, he's a 4.12 ERA reliever. That's the exact median for all pitchers, by the way.

AJ Minter has a 3.09 FIP (and a 3.64 xFIP and 3.29 SIERA, for that matter). These are the predictive measures. Just because Minter's allowed a certain quality of contact so far doesn't mean that he's going to continue to do so; that 4.12 xERA is influenced by a series of underlying factors, and the theory behind these three stats is that you can boil those factors down to the following: strikeouts, walks, and fly balls. xFIP hates all fly balls, FIP only hates the ones that go over the fence, and SIERA is somewhere in the middle. All three of them really like Minter so far, and suggest that the quality of contact allowed, which usually results in a 4.12 ERA but has resulted in a 7.78 ERA so far, is unsustainably high. He's going to allow less, because he strikes out a ton of guys and walks only a few.

AJ Minter has a 21.2% K-BB%. They've developed a lot of crazy metrics over the years, but in the end, when we do the regressions, this is the most predictive of all. I can't tell you exactly why, except to say that pitchers have amazingly little control over how hard the contact they give up is. Strike out a ton, walk only a few, and you're golden. MLB average: around 12%. Minter's nearly doubled it.

None of this is new for Minter, except the high ERA. He's lost a bit of his K% from last year, and he's been more like the very very good reliever he was in 2020 and 2021, but in as small a sample as we have right now, it could easily be a blip. His CSW% is exactly what it's always been, the underlying metrics are all extraordinarily similar. He's just gotten unlucky so far, it's as simple as that. The numbers suggest he's due for a cascade of "regressions to the mean" which result in an ERA somewhere in the low-to-mid 3's. That's a very good reliever, and one any team would be lucky to have.

They flipped the coin before the kickoff of Newcastle and Chelsea for the premiere league summer series game

I've seen a lot of talk on here about how 1) A.J. Minter is not a true closer and 2) We need to pursue Craig Kimbrel this offseason so we have a closer. I wanted to post a side by side comparison of their 2018 stats to generate some discussion.

Craig made $13,000,000 this year. AJ made $555,000. I love Craig, he's one of my all time favorite Braves. However, we already a damn good closer in his own right. You can make that argument that Craig would be worth the money he would cost, and from a pure enjoyment standpoint, having those two in the 8th and 9th would be incredibly fun. I personally think the money is better spent in other places and Craig is simply not worth the money he would demand. No matter what though, AJ is fully capable of being a closer and has already proved as much.