Digging a little deeper, finding out the whole story

Emilio Pagan has a reputation that is hard to shake here in Minnesota. He had a tough year last year, one that was so rough that it's hard to look past in order to see how good he has been this year. There is more to it than performance, I believe. Taylor Rogers, the closer that was dealt to the Padres as part of the deal was fairly popular. Pagan already had a bit of a hill to climb to get into the good graces of Twins fans, and his performances against Cleveland didn't help.

A cursory look at Pagan showed he broke out with the Rays and Padres, both organizations with smart front offices and the ability to delve tactfully into the international market, and the initial perception of Pagan is that he is another Hispanic wunderkind that the Rays dredged up. Digging even a little bit shows that Pagan started in the Seattle organization, bounced to Oakland and eventually went to Tampa. And while he is Puerto Rican, he is actually from the Charlotte area. He sounds like this:

When you hear the name, especially given the number of Latin American players in the league, you might initially think you know what to expect, and it probably isn't Carolina southerner.

Not until you dig deeper. That's what the Twins did with him too. Pagan's raw numbers were inexcusably bad last season, but the Twins liked his stuff. They also saw that some of his peripheral numbers were out of whack. Home runs per fly ball, batting average on balls in play, and his walk rate, were all very bad by any standard, even versus his career numbers.

2023 seems like a correction. Certainly, some of those same categories are now even better than his career figures. The walk rate is encouraging, and he should be even better with strikeouts than he has been this year. Digging deeper, as the Twins did, would show that this is closer to the Emilio Pagan we should know. 

The Carolina righty with an electric fastball.