3 questions Minnesota Twins need answered heading into Spring Training
After an offseason that saw the return of Carlos Correa and the exit of Luis Arraez, the Minnesota Twins have more than a few questions left to answer as Spring Training arrives.
Losing Arraez opens up a bit of a hole at first base, where the onus now falls on Alex Kirilloff. The problem there is Kirilloff is coming back from wrist surgery after an injury that ended his 2022 season in early August. If he’s not healthy, or if he re-injures his wrist, the Twins are in an instant bind with what to do at first without Arraez to rotate in.
Then there’s the quesiton of what to do with the pitching staff. Minnesota has as many as seven potential starters to fit into the rotation, and could carry six starters into Opening Day. It seems clear who is at the top of the rotation but things get a little murkier on days where Sonny Gray, Joe Ryan, and Pablo Lopez aren’t on the mound.
Speaking of pitching, the Twins bullpen remains a massive question mark heading into the season. While FanGraphs ranks it among the best in the league based on potential, fans have an easy arguement — and a lot of trauma — to the contrary. Most of the bullpen’s woes were heavily influenced by the inability for starters to make it deep into games, but there’s still the question of whether Minnesota will add an arm to the pen before the season starts or roll with the unit as it is.
In fact, let’s start there.
Will Twins add a reliever to the bullpen, and do they need to?
A two part quesiton, but one half that informs the other.
There’s a lot of anxiety among fans about the bullpen heading into the season, but there are some capable arms who could be in for bounce back seasons.
Jhoan Duran is a stud, but Griffin Jax is still young and developing, as are Jovani Moran and Cole Sands. There’s much hope that Jorge Lopez can tap back into being the All-Star closer he was with the Orioles, and all is not yet lost with Emilio Pagán. There still seems to be something missing from the Twins bullpen, which could be fixed by adding Matt Moore (who remains available as a top veteran option).
Given that the team passed on Andrew Chafin, Alex Reyes, and Michael Fulmer on reasonable deals it begs the question of whether the team thinks it needs to add anyone.
Then again, the Twins could essentially be adding a reliever by getting more out of one they already have. Jorge Alcalá stepping up as a key member of the bullpen would be a huge addition without needing to add to the payroll by bringing in someone like Moore.
Alcalá is coming off elbow surgery, but he gave the Twins almost 60 innings of relief work in his first true season with the team in 2021. He wasn’t lights out like Duran was, but there was enough there to think Minnesota has another potential star reliever if he Alcalá can develop this season.
What’s the situation at First Base?
It might not appear as the most obvious question to outsiders, but Twins fans have been spending a lot of time wondering what the situation at first base will be once Spring Training ends.
Ideally, Alex Kirilloff is healthy and able to command a majority of the starts there. That’s no sure thing, though, as he’s been hampered by a wrist injury that isn’t getting better fast enough to know how much of an impact he’ll have in April.
To be fair, the Twins need him to be at his best in late-summer when they’re hopefully making a push for the AL Central crown. The flip side of that is his wrist acts up around then and the house of cards that appears to be the situation at first begins to fall.
So how do the Twins avoid that situation?
There’s talk that Joey Gallo could get starts at first but he hasn’t started a game there since 2018. Max Kepler was kicked around as an option at first a few years ago but he seems better suited as part of a corner outfield platoon (along with Gallo). Jose Miranda has spent time at first, but he’s slotted in as the Twins everyday third baseman next to Carlos Correa — who has played third but will probably stay at shortstop.
It doesn’t take much to see the connundrum Minnesota has at first. A move of Miranda to first, Correa to third, and Royce Lewis at shortstop works in theory but it’s a plan that is probably a few years away from being put in place.
Minnesota needs the situation at first figured out for 2023, and a lot of that rests on the strength of Kirilloff’s wrist. Best case scenario is he’s healthy enough to start a majority of his time at first with Kyle Farmer taking some starts here and there.
Spring Training will help the Twins not only determine the health of Kirilloff but who — if anyone — on the roster can help form a platoon at first this season.
Who will be in the starting rotation on Opening Day?
Here’s what the rotation will probably look like on Opening Day, if nothing massive happens in Spring Training as far as injuries or trades:
Pitcher | Proj. W-L | Proj. ERA | Proj. IP/Game |
|---|---|---|---|
Sonny Gray | 8-7 | 3.69 | 5.3 |
Pablo Lopez | 9-9 | 3.60 | 6.4 |
Joe Ryan | 10-7 | 3.64 | 5.0 |
Tyler Mahle | 8-7 | 3.98 | 4.9 |
Kenta Maeda | 5-5 | 4.33 | 5.4 |
This is really more of a question of who will slide in as a fifth starter for the Twins, and whether or not they decide to go with a six-man rotation to start the year. That’s something the teams has indicated it’s not interested in doing, but there’s a lot of starting power for Rocco to play around with in Spring Training as the rotation settles.
The likeliest candidates to land that fifth slot are Kenta Maeda, Chris Paddack, and Bailey Ober but they all have strings attached.
Maeda is coming off Tommy John surgery, which wiped out his entire 2022 campaign. However, he was the Cy Young runner-up the last season he was healthy and was a key piece of some really phenomenal Dodgers rotations before coming to Minnesota.
Paddack is also coming of Tommy John surgery, but it’s the second time since 2016 that he’s needed the procedure done. He wasn’t as dominant as Maeda while with the Padres but has shown enough that the Twins felt confident giving him a three-year extension this winter.
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Ober seems to be the odd-man out in this trio, as he was part of the Twins rotation in 2022 almost out of default. That’s an unfair characterization of his potential, but it’s evidence that he might be best suited coming out of the bullpen to start the season or begin the year at AAA with the Saints.
At least on paper, a rotation of Gray-Ryan-Lopez-Mahler-Maeda feels a winning combination. This is, of course, the Twins we’re talking about which means even the best pitching outlook means nothing until it’s proven on the mound.
That being said, if Minnesota is faced with going into a must-win series in September like it did last year against Cleveland, rolling out any three of those pitchers versus what it had to trot out last year feels like an instant improvement.