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Frequently in baseball, we break up starters and relievers into separate, distinct groups; both types of pitchers exist in their sphere outside of the influence of the other. But such a view is myopic and inaccurate. Baseball is a team sport, after all, and the actions of one player reverberate among every player in this game and into future matches. Take it from a former soccer goalkeeper; sure, it’s the keeper's fault when they allow a goal, but why did an opposing player have the opportunity to score in the first place? What happened amongst the defense? Is it fair to blame a streaking striker on the keeper? Previous actions influenced the future.
To lay this out in baseball terms, we must consider the workload the game flow demands of each party; a starter unable to collect a few extra, precious innings places more strain on the bullpen. A team can adjust for a series or even a month, but the wear-down will hit at some point; the Pied Piper always earns his due. As of Thursday, Twins starters have thrown the 11th fewest innings in MLB, while their bullpen has tossed the 4th most innings; the team is 4th overall in total innings.
By itself, this isn’t necessarily a sign of an unhealthy pitching ecosystem; the Rays bullpen has thrown the most innings of any team in MLB, and they are probably okay with that given that their crew owns a 3.18 ERA.
But the Rays are a unique beast; the Twins are a different animal entirely. The Rays want their relievers to pitch those innings; they have melted down titles like “starter” and “reliever” until a pitcher is merely an “out-getter” precisely until they aren’t, whether that ends with three or 12 outs. Kevin Cash mixes and matches his assorted pitchers until the team nets their allotted nine innings, and everyone goes home. The Twins perhaps had some mildly similar plan on hand when the season began, but they lacked the preparation.
Chris Archer pitched four innings on Thursday, a standard fare for him these days. Knowing that Archer would not be suitable for more than five innings, the Twins decided to back him up conventionally; no pitcher after him netted more than five outs. Rocco Baldelli—a manager already working with an exhausted bullpen—called on Jovani Moran, Tyler Duffey, and Tyler Thornburg to end the game. He had no choice; he had already used five relievers the day prior. Moran and Duffey did their job, but games are not seven innings long, and suddenly a player signed earlier this month pitched the final two frames. It went as well as you expected. This situation would not have happened if the starter had pitched six innings, if they had a true multi-inning pitcher available, or if the bullpen wasn’t horribly gassed.
You can blame Baldelli—he absolutely threw the game by keeping Thornburg out an extra inning—but his options were slim. You can blame Thornburg—he was the man on the mound in the situation—but he’s not supposed to be an 8th-inning reliever. The problem is that the Twins bullpen is constantly tired due to a shortage of effective arms mixed with a starting staff that has failed to pitch deep into ballgames.
This shortcoming falls squarely on the front office, but luck is also at play. Derek Falvey and Thad Levine knowingly ran headfirst into the season with a pitching staff low on starters that can pitch deep into the game combined with a bullpen missing their ace reliever, Taylor Rogers. Instead—and again, they knew that pitchers like Archer, Dylan Bundy, and Bailey Ober are dead-to-right five-and-fly guys—traditional single-inning relievers who can occasionally stretch an extra out or two populated the bullpen. That plan worked fine when everyone was healthy, but injuries combined with Archer and Bundy failing to bounce back have strained the relief core to exhaustion.
Of course, when the baseball gods sense weakness, they’ll painfully expose it. A team ill-prepared for an overwhelming amount of innings has been fed them like slop in the trough; their 690 2/3 innings looks monstrous compared to Cleveland’s MLB fewest 641.
Perhaps, to play a little Devil’s Advocate, this is an extreme consequence of a plan gone awry; the team primed Winder for the swingman role, but his injury left a void no pitcher could fill. Devin Smeltzer could have done it, but the team needed him in the starting rotations; Cole Sands could have done it, but he lacked major league polish. Jorge Alcala, Joe Smith, Trevor Megill, Danny Coulombe, and Cody Stashak are all trustworthy arms to varying degrees; none of those relievers are currently healthy. The answer could just be to wait.
The situation isn’t impossible to climb out of; the Twins will get Ober and Kenta Maeda back at some point, they’ll run into a few extra off-days soon, and the team will pick up extra arms before the trade deadline. Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax are a good 1-2 punch already; adding two more competent relievers knocks everyone down the totem pole until pitchers like Cotton and Thornburg are early-game/mop-up arms like they should be. An extra stud starter—Tyler Mahle, Frankie Montas, and the such—can move a rotation member like Bundy or Archer into the missing long relief role, making them the aid in an emergency, not the cause. Solutions to the problem do exist; we will just have to see which ones the team chooses.
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