No, AJ Minter doesn't have a closing problem
The pillar of Atlanta's bullpen is incredibly unlucky in save situations. Let's not confuse that with skill or performance.
AJ Minter has had a rough few weeks as the backup closer. After getting tagged for a leadoff single and walk-off home run against the Mariners, Minter copy-pasted that outing against the Mets. The “Minter can’t close” narrative has been festering for a while and its proponents came out in full force on Monday night, with even beat writers getting in on the act:
The conclusion many fans have drawn from these facts is quick and brutal: “Minter’s a great setup guy, but he lacks the stones/guts/winning spirit to close games out! There’s no shame in that, but give that job to [insert reliever du jour].”
Because I’m a skeptic when it comes to using ERA, AVG, or OPS to quantify pitcher performance (I don’t like to measure pitchers by any statistic that treats a swinging bunt and a hard line drive as equally good or bad outcomes) - and because my starting assumption is that Minter, like other major league relievers, is a mentally strong athlete who’s no more prone to ninth inning jitters than eighth inning jitters, I did some digging.
AJ Minter has given up a lot of hits in save situations
Since 20201, AJ Minter has allowed a .360 wOBA in save opportunities (58 PA) despite allowing a .270 wOBA overall (896 PA). So you’re not crazy to think that Minter has dealt with a lot more traffic in save situations. Teams are accumulating bases against Minter at a 2023 Austin Riley pace in save situations and a 2023 Nicky Lopez (still love you, Nicky) pace in non-save situations.
So how are teams getting all these baserunners? I’ll tell you how they’re almost never getting them: walks. Minter has a perfectly good 7.0 percent walk rate since 2020, but in save situations, that shrinks to 1.7 percent. 1.7 percent is a ridiculous number. For perspective, of all 82 relievers who have faced at least 50 batters in save situations since 2020, Minter had the second-lowest walk rate entering Monday night’s game.
Remember, in multi-run save situations when the tying run isn’t yet at the plate, walks and home runs are basically equally damaging. Nursing a two- or three-run lead in the ninth, you want a pitcher who throws competitive strikes by the truckload. Minter has been absolutely elite at this. And with a 27.6 percent K rate in these situations, batters aren’t exactly dealing with easy stuff to hit.
But Minter is giving up a lot of hits in save situations anyway. Which leaves one question: are those hits mostly well-deserved? Because there’s no honor in giving up a ton of hard contact.
The answer: absolutely not.
AJ Minter has been the single unluckiest closer in baseball over the last four years
Quick wOBA vs. xwOBA refresher: wOBA looks at walks, strikeouts, and balls put in play but doesn’t consider contact quality at all. In the eyes of wOBA, a hard-hit double and a bloop double are the same. On the other hand, xwOBA does look at contact quality. xwOBA frowns at a pitcher who gives up a barreled flyout that’s caught at the wall; it murmurs, “That pitcher got lucky.” It smiles at a pitcher who induces a weak ground ball, even if his defense can’t turn it into an out.
So with that, here’s a leaderboard of relievers with at least 50 PAs as closers since 2020, sorted by wOBA-xwOBA gap. In other words, this is a list of the unluckiest closers in baseball - the ones who see weak ground balls and fly balls turn into hits the most often.
Minter is number one, and number two isn’t even really close. The difference between Minter and second-place Unluckiness Contest participant Daniel Hudson is the same as the difference between tenth and twentieth place.
I like to visually illustrate what I mean by ‘bad luck’ when I write articles like this, so here are examples of a few base hits that xwOBA tells us were unlucky.
Minter throws a pitch bearing in on the hands and generates a weak pop fly. If Acuña makes this catch, the runner at third likely doesn’t tag up, and Minter has earned the critical first out. This is a pretty classic bad luck bloop hit; you can’t really get mad that a pitcher gave up a 71.8 mph batted ball at a 42-degree launch angle.
Game on the line and Minter gets Juan Soto to swing at a pitch on the inside edge of the zone. Soto, dropping to a knee, can only hit a soft liner (83.7 mph, 24-degree launch angle) to right and hope for the best. Luckily for Soto (and extremely unluckily for Minter), a Ronald Acuña Jr. defensive disasterclass - weird positioning, weird route - keeps the game alive. Minter promptly gets Josh Bell to ground out and end the game, but alas, Minter’s wOBA takes a hit.
And if you’re wondering if AJ Minter is a serial xwOBA underperformer, since 2020, he has an overall wOBA of .270 and an overall xwOBA of .264, good for a mere .006 difference. The weird stuff is just happening in save situations.
Some concluding thoughts
I’ve now gone through the nuts and bolts of proving that Minter’s woes as a closer are better explained by bad luck in a small sample. 58 PAs is the equivalent of two or three outings for a starter, and nobody respectable reaches hard conclusions off of those
So I want to talk about something that frustrates me. A lot of fans seem overly comfortable reaching judgments about a player’s mental toughness or makeup when there are simpler explanations available. The data I pulled for this article is publicly accessible for free, takes about two minutes to look up, and pretty comprehensively separates ability from randomness. If you’re the kind of person who believes there’s no such thing as luck in baseball and that all earned runs and non-error baserunners are attributable to pitcher skill deficits, you’re probably not reading this article (or at least making it this far) anyway.
It’s wrong to attribute to mental fortitude what can be explained by skill, and it’s wrong to attribute to either what can be explained by luck. AJ Minter started an NLCS game and pitched the outing of his life; he’s handled key innings in World Series contests. If you think Minter has given up baserunners in the ninth because he starts shivering when he has to wrap up a May 12th contest, you’re not only contradicting hard evidence (if he’s so nervous, how is he so good at finding the zone, and why is the contact he’s allowing mostly very weak?) but also stretching to find something intrinsically wrong with a player who has served this team extremely well for the last four years. Even putting aside that it’s wrong on the facts, that’s not a kind or fair way to reflexively judge professional athletes, and if that was your viewpoint before you read this article, I hope that I’ve convinced you to rethink it.
I was thrilled that Brian Snitker gave Minter another chance to get a save on Monday night against Chicago, and while Minter immediately dealt with the same awful batted-ball luck and then issued an uncharacteristic walk, he then locked it down. In my view, Minter remains at least tied for the second-best save option in this bullpen (with fair arguments to be made for Pierce Johnson and Joe Jiménez). A small run of bad fortune doesn’t change that.
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I’ll use 2020 as a starting point throughout this article since Minter spent most of 2019 in the minors and has been a pillar of the bullpen pretty consistently since then - save for a weird stint when he got sent down in 2021 despite his under-the-surface numbers being fine.