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The Twins have a number of hard-throwing relievers in the pipeline, such as Nick Burdi, Jake Reed and Michael Cederoth, but the team can afford to patiently bring these young arms along. That's not necessarily true of Graham, who they must keep on the 25-man roster all year long or else ship back to the Braves.
The Twins could work around this stipulation by hammering out a trade to keep him in the organization, as they did with Scott Diamond a few years ago, but one way or another Graham must make an impression over the next several weeks in order to force the club's hand. He'll have plenty of competition.
For all intents and purposes, the Twins have committed to five relievers in the bullpen -- Glen Perkins, Casey Fien, Tim Stauffer, Brian Duensing and Caleb Thielbar -- so locking down one of those final slots will be no easy task.
Graham is a rather unique specimen. While Minnesota's system is now stocked with pitchers who can touch the upper-90s, those guys all check in at well over six feet. Then you have Graham, who stands at about 5'11" but was hitting triple digits as a junior in college.
It's rare to find a pitcher who can generate that kind of velocity from such a small frame, and perhaps that helps explain Graham's durability issues. Since being drafted, he has dealt with somewhat chronic shoulder pain, which substantially reduced his velocity, contributed to his shoddy results at Double-A in 2014 (5.58 ERA, 1.48 WHIP) and prompted the Braves to leave him unprotected and available to the Twins.
It could be that his struggles to stay on healthy have been partially due to the Braves' decision to transition him from college reliever to pro starter. He reverted to relief duty late last season (though with little initial success) and the Twins intend to keep him on that path.
If Graham can manage to shake off the injury woes, he offers no shortage of ability. Prior to the 2014 season, he had been ranked by Baseball America as the third-best Braves prospect, and was pegged as having the best control of any pitcher in the organization.
Graham's brutal season last year as a 24-year-old in Double-A certainly lowered his stock considerably, and the most troubling part is that he saw no performance boost after moving to the bullpen in the final two months, allowing a .378 batting average with seven strikeouts and five walks in eight appearances. This differentiates him from Ryan Pressly, who had similarly switched from starting to relieving shortly before the Twins snagged him in the Rule 5 draft but had experienced far better results with that transition.
Of course, with Graham, it all comes back to health, so the condition of his shoulder will be closely monitored in Ft. Myers. If he can keep his arm in shape and regain his velocity by pitching in one-inning stints -- as the Twins are hoping -- he offers more upside than Pressly ever did, and could end up being a major success story for Terry Ryan and Co.
If nothing else, he'll go down as another example of the Twins getting creative in their efforts to add some power to the pitching staff.
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