KANSAS CITY -- When the Twins selected the contract of Scott Blewett from Triple-A St. Paul and designated Darren McCaughan for assignment on Monday, it marked the second time this young season that Minnesota added a reliever to the 40-man roster who did not make the team out of Spring Training.
On some level, that’s a credit to Blewett and McCaughan, who earned the opportunities to pitch in the Major Leagues. But also, it’s an indicator that some things are not working as intended. Most notably, entering Monday, the Twins rotation had only one start longer than five innings this year, and in five of nine games the starter has not gotten an out in the fifth inning.
Simeon Woods Richardson gave them a little welcome length in Monday’s 4-2 loss to the Royals at Kauffman Stadium, lasting 5 2/3 innings. It was the second-longest outing by a Twins starter this year.
Still, those kinds of demands put strain on a bullpen. And it leads to the kind of shuffling the Twins have done. The situation is made more difficult by the fact that Brock Stewart and Michael Tonkin, both of whom would be on the roster if healthy, have been injured since Spring Training and are unavailable. The injuries, combined with the short starts, have led to a string of transactions to make sure that Minnesota has enough pitchers to cover all the needed innings.
“You’d prefer to not have to make those moves,” said manager Rocco Baldelli. “That is true. But it’s also part of the game. A lot of the times, the fewer moves you have to make, the better -- the more helpful it is as you build out really good quality depth in your organizational pitching structure. I would like it if we didn’t have to do that, but sometimes when the games have to be played and the innings have to be covered, you need to do it.”
The string of moves actually began before the season started. The Twins elected not to keep Rule 5 Draft pick Eiberson Castellano and were unable to add a reliever from outside the organization at the end of camp. Those two factors, combined with the injuries to Tonkin and Stewart, led them to add right-hander Randy Dobnak to the roster for Opening Day.
Dobnak pitched 5 1/3 innings in the season’s third game after an ailing Bailey Ober could last only 2 2/3. He was designated the next day, with McCaughan taking his roster spot. McCaughan pitched quite well, but after the Twins asked for five innings from their bullpen on Saturday and again on Sunday, another move was needed. Enter Blewett, while the club risks losing McCaughan. And if they need to add another reliever, they likely will have to risk losing Blewett.
As Baldelli said, at some point virtually every team deals with these issues. But they’ve come early and pressingly for the Twins, who expected their rotation to be one of the strengths of their team. Until the starters start giving more innings, though, the bullpen crunch won’t just disappear.
“It does start with starting pitching,” Baldelli said. “You could probably say all the time. Everything starts with starting pitching. And we have quality guys that we run out there every day. And trust me, nobody wants to go out there and give six or seven shutout innings more than those guys, and that’s what they work towards every day.”
Woods Richardson may have gotten it started on Monday, and Opening Day starter Pablo López takes the mound Tuesday coming off a strong seven-inning showing in Chicago last week. Then it’s Joe Ryan, who has two of the other three five-inning starts. They’re in position to start turning the numbers around, but they need it to start happening soon.