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When the Minnesota Twins hired Derek Falvey to lead their baseball operations department after the 2016 season, they were enticed by the successful pitching pipeline that he helped foster in Cleveland. His former team had just won the American League pennant on the backs of star pitchers Corey Kluber, Trevor Bauer, and Carlos Carrasco, as well as depth starters Mike Clevinger, Danny Salazar, and Josh Tomlin.
Six years later, that type of pitching pipeline is still taking shape in Minnesota. Many expected to see that door fully opened heading into year number seven, but instead, it appears to be hanging off of two hinges.
Those hinges are Simeon Woods Richardson (Twins Daily’s No. 5 prospect) and Louie Varland (No. 7 prospect).
That doesn’t mean that the team will require two rookies to lead them to the World Series in order to be successful. But if they fall flat in 2023, or break down, the entire door comes down with them.
Two factors work in the Twins’ favor when taking this into account. First, as of today, neither Woods Richardson nor Varland is penciled into the opening day starting rotation. The club isn’t relying on them to make an immediate impact, so they should be able to fine-tune their stuff in Triple-A St. Paul until the club deems them ready. However, there should be an expectation that they play an integral role with the big league club by the second half of the season if all goes well.
Second, both pitchers are coming off of very successful and healthy seasons in 2022.
Starting with Varland, expectations started to rise last off-season after he was named the organization’s Minor League Pitcher of the Year. He went on to dazzle at Double-A Wichita and Triple-A St. Paul, twirling 126 innings of 3.06 ERA ball before getting the call to the major leagues.
With the Twins, he made five starts, most of which were quite promising. The lone hiccup was a five-inning effort against Cleveland where he allowed four earned runs on nine hits and two walks. The other four starts were enough to deem his debut cup of coffee as a very promising start to a hopefully long career with the Twins.
Woods Richardson wasn’t the centerpiece of the trade that sent Jose Berrios to the Toronto Blue Jays at the 2021 trade deadline, but he was a significant selling point. Austin Martin had more prospect shine at the time, but Woods Richardson’s inclusion pushed the deal across the finish line. This past season was his first full campaign in the Twins’ organization, and he made a really solid impression with his new club. In 23 appearances (22 starts) between Double-A and Triple-A, the tall righty pitched 107 innings with a sterling 2.77 ERA and 115 strikeouts. That earned him a call to the major leagues in the season’s final week, where he allowed two earned runs across five innings in his MLB debut.
So what are reasonable expectations for these promising young starters as we head into a pivotal season for this front-office regime? According to Baseball Savant, Varland’s pitches shared many of the same characteristics as Cleveland’s breakout starter, Cal Quantrill, albeit with a slightly adjusted repertoire. The Guardians’ righty had a terrific 3.38 ERA across 32 starts last year.
Does that mean that Varland should be a lock for these results? Of course not. But it’s interesting to see the comparison to somebody currently producing at the end of the pitching pipeline that the Twins are trying to emulate.
So in that same vein, is there another pitcher in the Cleveland rotation that could be a possible comparison for Woods Richardson? One of the biggest breakout pitchers in 2022 was Triston McKenzie, who dazzled in 30 starts, pitching to the tune of a 2.96 ERA across 191 innings. It’s hard to expect anything like that out of Woods Richardson in 2023, but he could continue to develop into that caliber of pitcher as his career progresses. Steamer projects him to have a 4.69 ERA, with a 7.6 K/9 and 3.6 BB/9 in 2023. His strikeout projection feels low seeing as he had a 9.6 K/9 in the minors just last year, but aside from that, this projection looks rather similar to McKenzie’s first full season at the MLB level in 2021. That year, he had a 4.95 ERA across 24 starts, with a 10.2 K/9 and 4.3 BB/9. While rather unexciting on the surface, that comp feels far more fitting for the 23-year-old rookie.
Sure, the Quantrill and McKenzie comparisons are far from perfect, but if Varland and Woods Richardson can prove that they are in a similar mold, it could convince many that the door to an effective pitching pipeline still works.
These two are hardly the only promising arms in the Twins’ system. Players such as Jordan Balazovic, David Festa, and Marco Raya all offer different levels of hope that they could turn into contributors at the big league level. But Varland and Woods Richardson are on the cusp of tightening the screws and solidifying themselves in the club’s pitching corps. If they fall flat or succumb to significant injuries much like Josh Winder and Bailey Ober, the door may just fall off the frame.
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