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Who is John Gant?
(Sorry, I read "Atlas Shrugged" a long time ago and couldn't resist the "Who is John Galt?" parallel).
Of the seven players the Twins acquired near the trade deadline, Gant is the only one with MLB experience — and a lot of it, actually. Now that he's already pitched twice for the Twins in relief, it might be a good time to think about how he might fit into the roster not just the rest of the year but potentially in 2022 as well.
Gant, a right-handed pitcher who will turn 29 on Friday, is interesting to me for a few reasons.
He debuted in 2016 with Atlanta but spent most of his career-to-date with St. Louis. He has 161 career appearances and 42 career starts — much of which has been successful. He began this season in the Cardinals' rotation and had a 1.60 ERA in his first 10 starts — the sorts of numbers that would get him a contract extension in Minnesota (only half-joking).
In St. Louis, after three rough outings in his next four trips through the rotation, he was demoted to the bullpen — where, again, he has done fine.
For his career, Gant has a 3.71 ERA (including a respectable 3.92 as a starter). So why would a team like the Cardinals, who sit on the very fringe of the playoff race at 53-53, want to trade him for a struggling starter like J.A. Happ?
My best guess is that Gant might not be in their long-term plans because he is the type of pitcher whose numbers seem to overperform what is expected. He doesn't have overpowering stuff. He walks way too many batters (4.9 per nine innings) and doesn't get a lot of strikeouts (7.7 per nine), and as a result his career FIP (fielder independent pitching, which aims to take a true measure of a pitcher's contribution, is more than half a run higher than his career ERA.
Almost every advanced number on Gant via Baseball Savant is below average this season, and some are very poor. Yet he is excellent at avoiding the barrel of hitters' bats, ranking in the 81st percentile among pitchers this season. He's a classic pitch to (soft) contact guy.
Pitchers like Gant, whose fastball sits around 92 mph and who throws changeups more than 20% of the time, rely on mix and command. When those are off, he can get pounded. When they're on, he can frustrate hitters. But it's a delicate balance, and it's not often pleasing to the eye test. A lot of deep counts and baserunners, minimizing damage with medium-deep fly ball outs.
But the sum of it has been relatively effective. And Gant, making just $2.1 million this season, is under team control next season as well in his final year of arbitration. His numbers don't suggest he would be due for a huge raise even though they suggest he is useful.
The Twins have used him twice in relief so far, including 1.2 scoreless innings in Tuesday's win. I'd be curious to see him get stretched out again and used as a starter down the stretch, just to see if he might be a low-cost end-of-the-rotation candidate in 2022.
He doesn't have the upside of a lot of the other pitchers the Twins acquired. But Gant does have results to lean on. That should have some value, even in baseball's boom-or-bust economic landscape.
