Prodded by a caller on his weekly radio show, Minnesota Twins manager Paul Molitor admitted the club was exploring their options with regards to the rotation spot of right-hander Mike Pelfrey. A number of factors make the situation difficult, including the shutdown of Jose Berrios, the presence of Tyler Duffey, and the current situations surrounding Phil Hughes and Trevor May.

To be clear, the presence of Duffey is simply just that he’s already promoted, and thus not a candidate to take Pelfrey’s rotation spot. May is not stretched out, as he’s worked as a reliever almost exclusively for over two months. There isn’t time, or really a place — short of using him during Chattanooga’s playoff run — to get him lengthened back out. Hughes isn’t healthy enough to return to the rotation yet either, otherwise he might be the natural choice to take Pelfrey’s rotation spot.

A possible wild card in the situation is left-hander Logan Darnell, whom the club recalled after his last start with Rochester on Thursday. And if Darnell’s usage is any indication — he threw just 4.2 innings and 45 pitches in that start — he might in fact be the man for the job. A Rochester-based source indicated he was removed for reasons other than ineffect, and his spot to start lines up quite nicely with Pelfrey — who pitched (poorly) on Friday. Darnell has also been a man on fire of late. While he hasn’t pitched at all in the big leagues this year, Darnell took strongly to a late-season move to the rotation. Darnell started in his final five appearances of the season for Rochester and posted a 0.83 ERA and 28-7 K/BB ratio. Opposing batters hit just .185/.228/.210 off Darnell in that stretch, and he’s been especially stingy against left-handed hitters all season, allowing just one extra-base hit (a double) as they’ve collectively batted just .265/.327/.275.

Opposing batters haven’t been as kind to Pelfrey, who has allowed a triple-slash line of .298/.354/.404. For context, just 27 of 154 qualified batters across baseball (17.5 percent) have a batting average that high across MLB in this depressed offensive era. Despite starting off well enough even with shaky peripherals, the wheels have come off for Pelfrey since his 2.28 ERA at the 11-start mark of the season. To that point, opposing batters had hit .254/.321/.331 against Pelfrey, which made up for the fact that he had just a 34-19 K/BB ratio through those 67 innings. It’s truly odd that a pitcher with good velocity and a solid splitter still gets barreled up to that extent, but it’s just the truth.

Anyway, since mid-June it’s been rough for Pelfrey. Sure, there have been good starts here and there, but the aggregate numbers tell a pretty definitive story: 5.76 ERA, .331/.378/.459 slash against and just 42 strikeouts in 79.2 innings. Pelfrey’s groundball-heavy tendencies (No. 7 in AL at 51.9 percent) keep him from being an unmitigated disaster (just six home runs allowed), but there’s still way too much contact and damage being done. An enterprising team is going to put him in their bullpen, where he’ll turn into a very nice back-end option with a velocity uptick, grounders and what’ll likely be a strong jump in strikeouts. It just doesn’t appear that’ll be the Twins.

UPCOMING

The Twins are fortunate enough to miss ace Johnny Cueto in the series with the Royals, but won’t be as lucky with the White Sox series that follows. As it currently stands, the Twins are slated to face Chris Sale and Jose Quintana — two of the finest lefties in the junior circuit. And while the Twins have strangely owned Sale all season long — 6.30 ERA versus the Twins, 2.68 against everyone else — this is a guy who’d probably be the AL Cy Young if it weren’t for the fact that his team around him has been a huge disappointment. There is a silver lining here in the series, though: John Danks is slated to start one of the games as well. The Twins have absolutely obliterated Danks through the years (5.76 ERA), and that is even more magnified this season (1.188 OPS, 9.39 ERA).

ALLEN vs ANDERSON

It’s only the perception of the writer, but it appears that Twins fans have been far more supportive of current pitching coach Neil Allen than his deposed predecessor, Rick Anderson. Whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter or even in sports bars, it seems as though fans have really bought into Allen, despite the fact that stats show a pretty interesting story.

Here are the numbers for the 2014 rotation:

5.06 ERA/4.03 FIP

6.4 K/9

2.4 BB/9

1.0 HR/9

And now, 2015:

4.23 ERA/4.19 FIP

6.2 K/9

2.4 BB/9

1.1 HR/9

Even if you don’t want to buy FIP’s argument that this rotation is actually worse, it’s not as though you could pick out one or the other out of a crowd of numbers. And I’m not saying you have to believe this year is as bad as last year, but it’s pretty close. It’s just a simple exercise to see if perception mirrors reality. In this case, not really.

This article was originally posted at Cold Omaha here; please click through to support the content.