Minnesota Twins: 5 Goals for the Twins as the Season Winds Down

Minnesota Twins September Goal No. 5: Keep the Pitch Counts Low on the Young Arms

This one pains me to write about, but the Twins are doing the right thing by limiting Bailey Ober and Joe Ryan’s pitch counts this season. Both of the young arms have a lot of mileage on them (991.1 IP combined through college, the minors, and the MLB), so the Twins are doing their very best to make sure they are fully healthy going into 2022.

It’s always hard to see young talent being taken out of the game early, but this time it’s actually for the best. Keeping the pair under 90 pitches allows them to stay fully well-rested and be prepared for next year when they will likely be the workhorses of the rotation.

Falvey and Levine have built a pipeline of pitching talent that the team will be able to draw from for a while, but it’s for the best to keep the first to products of that pipeline healthy for a season when they are likely the only sure things in next year’s rotation.

The other thing the Twins have going for them is a bullpen that has rebounded nicely in the second half of the s. Caleb Thielbar, Tyler Duffey, Juan Minaya, Danny Coulumbe, and Luke Farrell are all having solid seasons. Even Alex Colome has rebounded into form. The Twins have a solid bullpen for a team out of contention, so the team is okay without Ober and Ryan going deep into games.

Though the team is out of contention, the Minnesota Twins still have several things that they they can do the rest of the way to keep the fans happy and set themselves up for a good beginning to 2022.