With today's appearances, Jepsen and May have worked back, to back, to back days. May is on pace for 94 appearances, Jepsen 81.

 

How is this supposed to work?

I couldn't quite figure this out, either. Right now, you can trust the entire bullpen. But with Fien not getting a whole inning (it seems) and Tonkin wasn't trustworthy (until today). Thought May was a long man. Jepsen is somewhat understandable now that he is the closer. I would assume that he would get one of the next two days off. Maybe the Twins do need that extra pitcher rather than a bench guy.

And Pressly has more innings than any of them. Tonkin's emergence, if we can call it that yet, could really take the pressure off of those three. Having Rogers and O'Rourke on the roster hurts too because they should only be used as LOOGYs. Getting Abad back, a lefty who can get righties out, should help in that regard. 

Basically every game so far has been close late. I think their appearances will start to go down once the Twins start blowing teams out...

 

But really, hopefully Chargois will be up eventually to take some of the late game innings when the three main guys have been overworked. Another option could be Michael Tonkin. He helped himself out in a big way today. Hopefully we see that from him consistently.

This is why Michael Tonkin's great performance today was so important. Tonkin dominated in AAA, and now we finally saw why. The guy can really crack the whip with his fastballs, when he goes for it. After trying to steer two awful pitches, suddenly Tonkin appeared to say, "screw it, I'm gonna cut loose," and he proceeded to blow away about six batters in a row. 

 

This is the Tonkin we heard about in AAA. If he starts doing this on a regular basis, the Twins have a star reliever.

You hope Twins can get some blowouts, so the pitch appearances go down.  Otherwise you need Perkins back or get another reliever up(one of the kids, hopefully). It may be both, if this is how the team is constructed and the year goes. 

Eleven of the twelve games have been close throughout. That isn't going to continue forever. I don't expect the bullpen to remain unchanged all year and at some point, it would be nice to have a guy capable of going through 3-4 innings. Specifically to May, Jepsen and Pressly, two on and one off seems to work. Pressly got his day yesterday and hopefully they can stay away from both May and Jepsen today.

MLB.com has started awarding teams honors for "Bullpen of the Week", based on a formula for effectiveness.  The Twins won the award this week, ending yesterday with a run of 14 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings.  No runs scored against the bullpen since last Monday.

 

Nice job, guys.

 

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/172982402/twins-bullpen-honored-after-shutout-streak

 

 

One would hope the blowouts are because the Twins are hitting rather than the starters throwing BP

Why the hell did it take so long for Michael Tonkin to decide to challenge major league hitters with that stuff?  Guy walks out and mows down the heart of the order and then strikes out 2 of the next 3 the following inning, where the hell has that been?!!

I do hope they decide to use more guys.......so no one gets burned.