FanGraphs, one of the great places to fall down a baseball advanced statistics rabbit hole, lists 1,133 different pitchers who have worked in relief from the start of the 2021 season until now.
Of those pitchers, Alex Colomé— the Twins' disastrous closer in 2021 — ranks 1,133 in a stat called "win probability added" during that time. Yes, dead last.
Not far ahead of him? Emilio Pagán, whose nightmarish 2022 season doomed the Twins in much the same way as Colomé's the year before and who, against all odds, was brought back in 2023 with all-too-familiar results. He's sixth from the bottom at No. 1,128.
(Trevor Megill, a Twins reliever who worked 39 games in 2022, is sandwiched between them at No. 1,130, by the way.).
On the bright side? Jhoan Duran is No. 4 on the list, even though he didn't pitch at all in 2021.
Duran's excellence compared to the putridity of other relievers in high-leverage situations is as dramatic as the losses that Twins can't seem to shake — something Patrick Reusse and I talked about on Monday's Daily Delivery podcast.
I'll back up for a moment in case Win Probability Added needs further explanation. In plain terms, it is the percentage by which a player's performance in a game either raises or lowers his teams' overall chance of winning.
Pagán largely has been used this season in games where the Twins are either trailing or ahead comfortably. So game-by-game, his impact is minimal — generally only increasing or decreasing the Twins' chances to win by a few percentage points even though 18 of his 23 outings have been scoreless.