Over the next few seasons, the Twins' best young players will begin appearing on the covers of magazines and media guides, perhaps even playoff game programs, but the smiles of Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano may never be as emblematic of the franchise's progress as the grimace of Ricky Nolasco.
The Twins planned to enter the season with Nolasco as a long reliever and spot starter. He beat the odds by beating out Tyler Duffey, one of the Twins' more effective pitchers down the stretch last year, for the fifth starter's job in the rotation.
That Nolasco's role is so minuscule tells you more about the team's stability than the improbable arc of a Sano home run.
Terry Ryan returned as Twins general manager before the 2012 season. Ryan's successes in that position in the 2000s were born of patience, organizational stability and pitching depth.
After the first two years of his second stint on the job, he assessed the pitching throughout his organization and realized he needed help. He discarded two of his beliefs — that winning organizations develop their own pitching, and that spending big money in free agency is often counterproductive — and signed Nolasco to a four-year contract worth $49 million.
Even at that relatively low price on the free-agent market, Nolasco has been a disaster. His signing offers lessons and reminders.
When the Twins signed Nolasco, he became their de facto ace. The Twins' big-league pitching was so hopeless that Nolasco, who always had been an average to above-average starter in the National League, would be asked to lead.
Nolasco has compiled ERAs of 5.38 and 6.75 for the Twins. They are hoping he can do what they signed him to do — deliver about 200 decent innings a season — but now are asking him to do it from the other end of the rotation.
