Twins Fans, Meet Ricky Nolasco

The Twins have signed Ricky Nolasco to a four-year, $49 million contract, the largest in team history. Twins fans may be unfamiliar with a pitcher who's toiled for fairly anonymous Marlins teams most of his career. Here's what you need to know.

What's Good About Him? A few things:

• He was pretty good last year: 13-11, 3.70 ERA split between the Marlins and the Dodgers.
• He's durable. Over the past six seasons, he's started 186 games, which ties him for 19th among all pitchers.
• By some key measures, he's been pretty effective. He's struck out 17.1% of the batters he's faced over the past three seasons, walked 5.4%, and allowed homers to 2.2%. Last year the Twins' ratios were 15.7%, 7.3%, and 2.7%. So he's likely to get more strikeouts and allow fewer walks and homers than the typical Twins pitcher last year (granted, a low bar).

What's Not So Good About Him? Over the past three seasons, there have been only eight pitchers with 475+ innings who walked fewer than 2.2 batters per nine innings, struck out 6.6 or more, and gave up fewer then 0.9 homers. Here they are:

Player	ERA	BB/9	SO/9	HR/9	BAbip	IP	GS	W	L	H	R	ER	BB	SO
Clayton Kershaw	2.21	2.18	9.15	0.54	.266	697.0	99	51	23	508	191	171	169	709
Jered Weaver	2.77	2.15	7.11	0.89	.253	578.2	87	49	21	468	186	178	138	457
Cliff Lee	2.80	1.38	9.01	0.89	.298	666.1	93	37	25	597	222	207	102	667
Jordan Zimmermann	3.12	1.80	6.91	0.77	.287	570.1	90	39	28	532	212	198	114	438
David Price	3.13	2.16	8.31	0.78	.289	622.0	92	42	26	543	234	216	149	574
Cole Hamels	3.15	2.02	8.46	0.88	.285	651.1	95	39	29	564	242	228	146	612
Doug Fister	3.30	1.81	6.78	0.61	.301	586.2	89	35	32	578	240	215	118	442
Ricky Nolasco	4.29	2.07	6.61	0.83	.321	596.1	97	35	36	653	307	284	137	438

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used

Generated 11/29/2013.

Do you see the problem? Those are six All-Stars, a solid if unheralded pitcher in Fister...plus Ricky Nolasco. His ERA is almost a full run higher than everybody else's. More than two runs higher than Kershaw's.

Note that I added a column, BAbip. That's batting average on balls in play: how he does on at-bats that don't end in a strikeout or homer. Nolasco's .321 is the worst on the list. It's also worse than the NL average of .297. So while Nolasco does a good job keeping the ball in the park and avoiding free passes, when batters make non-homer contact, they get hits off him. That's why he's had such a lackluster ERA.

So What Should Twins Fans Expect? Nolasco has given up too many hits (9.9 per nine innings over the past three years, 1.2 more than the NL average) and runs to be a top pitcher, negating his fine control and anti-homer skills. Having strong up-the-middle defense should help him some, though he doesn't get an above-average number of ground balls that the double play combo of Florimon and Dozier will turn into outs, nor fly balls that Aaron Hicks will chase down. I'd expect an average or slightly better-than-average ERA and 200 or so innings, but nothing spectacular.

For a more detailed analysis, check out Twins blogger Aaron Gleeman's take.