Twins pitcher Bailey Ober knows to put the bad starts behind him — way behind

FORT MYERS, FLA. – The day after Bailey Ober’s shockingly awful 2024 debut in Kansas City, when he lasted only four outs and surrendered eight runs to a Royals lineup that had scored only twice in the season’s first two games, Twins pitching coach Pete Maki delivered a history lesson to the tall righthander.

“Pete gave me Pedro Martinez’s 1999 game log — basically the greatest year of all-time for a starting pitcher,” Ober said. “He showed me [Martinez] had a blowup game that year, against [Florida].”

Perhaps it’s the ironic byproduct of pitching really well, that your occasional failures loom more memorable than your consistent successes.

Ober recorded 18 quality starts last summer, more than any Twins pitcher in this decade except Pablo López’s 20 in 2023. Yet he says he gets asked more about his two bizarre hiccups last year — nine runs spread over two innings by the Braves in late August was the other — than the otherwise rotation-best season he turned in.

“It bugs you for a little while. The first one hurt a little bit, but knowing I had 30 more starts [helped],” said Ober, whose season ERA would have been 3.18, not 3.98, if he had called in sick those two days. “I told myself it wouldn’t define my season, and it didn’t.”

In fact, in each case, Ober rebounded by giving up just one run combined over his next two starts.

“He’s such a strong-willed guy. I remember we sat down and talked about it, but there wasn’t [any flaw] to find, just bad results,” said Ryan Jeffers, who caught the rough game at Kansas City. “He wouldn’t do anything differently. It’s just part of this game, the cruel nature of baseball.”

It’s Ober, now established along with López and Joe Ryan as one of the three cornerstones of the Twins rotation, who has become gradually more cruel to hitters. Last season, he had five starts where he gave up no runs, most on the Twins, and five more giving up one run. And in August, he pitched the Twins’ only complete game of the season, retiring the final 17 Athletics hitters he faced.

“A lot of guys don’t have the level of feel that he does, the ability move and mix and have good deception, but also being able to sprinkle in all of your pitches in different counts,” Jeffers said. “That any-pitch-any-time mentality, it keeps guys off-balance, nonstop.”

Particularly when he throws his offspeed stuff, a remarkable evolution for the 29-year-old North Carolina native. Ober arrived in the majors in 2021 as a fastball pitcher, throwing his four-seamer nearly 60% of the time. Now he uses his fastball 38.1%, for good reason: Opposing batters managed only a .154 average on his changeup last year, and a paltry .095 when they put his slider in play.

“Guys think fastball when they see someone so tall,” catcher Christian Vázquez said of the 6-9 pitcher, the tallest current big-leaguer except for Giants reliever Sean Hjelle, a Mahtomedi product who stands 6-11. “He’s getting that fastball down and away to get strikeouts, but he can pitch up in the zone with his changeup too. Being that tall is a look that hitters don’t see much.”

Said Ober: “Just another step in the direction I’m hoping to keep going. I want to improve again this year. Each year, we see what’s working best and take advantage of that, make adjustments to keep guys off-balance and keep runs off the board.”

As those numbers go down, his value goes up. Ober has earned the MLB minimum salary in each of the past four seasons, buttressed by more than $800,000 over the past two years from MLB’s annual pool of bonuses for the most successful pre-arbitration players. Now arbitration-eligible for the first time, Ober’s salary has more than quintupled, to $3.55 million this season.

That’s plenty of motivation for Ober to continue his improvement. “One-year contracts mean every season is a fight for the next one,” he said.

And those “hiccup” games are plenty motivational, too, as Vázquez points out. “They’re good for you. They keep you humble, keep you working. It pushes you to get better,” he said.

Which is why Ober’s goals for 2025 are to make at least 30 starts, and “a quality start every time out,” he said. “And no more of those bad ones.

“Hopefully.”