Rocco Baldelli provides Joe Ryan injury update after early exit vs. Cubs

Let’s spare hyperbole: Wedensday afternoon at Wrigley Field was a nightmare for the Minnesota Twins.

It’s not the 8-2 loss that stings the most, rather the brutal journey the team took to get there. Nothing was more devestating than watching Joe Ryan leave the game in the third inning with a right arm injury, but what happened after was the worst kind of chaser.

Ryan signaled to the Twins dugout after delivering a pitching the third inning, one that turned out to be his last on the afternoon. He left the field with trainers and was later evaluated with what the team is calling right tricep tightness.

It’s yet to be seen whether or not he’ll need a stint on the IL, but all of those fears were compounded when Trevor Richards took the mound and absolutely imploded in Ryan’s stead.

Richards became the first pitcher in Twins history to walk five or more batters in less than a half inning. He added two wild pitches and three earned runs to his day before getting yanked for Cole Sands prior to the third inning ending.

It was a sick twist of the knife that the Twins losing Ryan to an injury was followed by the team’s lone trade deadline acquisition imploding in less than a half inning of work. For as bad as that was, all eyes are on what happens next with Ryan and it seems manager Rocco Baldelli isn’t too worried.

Latest Joe Ryan injury update suggests Twins might have avoided a disaster

After the loss, Baldelli gave an update on Ryan that wasn’t exactly comprehensive but also didn’t seem very gloom-and-doom.

“Joe has some right tricep tightness, that’s all I know,” Baldelli said. “It doesn’t seem like some type of large scale issue, but he wasn’t going to be able to continue pitching in the game. Let’s give him a couple of days and see what he feels like.”

Baldelli made sure to note that any speculation is useless at this point since nobody knows enough to make any definitive calls. That being said, he mentioned that he spoke with Ryan after the game and didn’t get the sense that he was devestated or that he was concerned about a long term injury.

“When you look at someone in the eye and you can have a conversation with them after the game and they seem disappointed but relatively at ease, normally it tells you it’s not something that seems worse than not,” Baldelli said.

Again, to assume that means Ryan is going to be fine falls under the speculation that Rocco warned everyone to avoid. It still offers some sort of relief that the clubhouse vibes aren’t way down.

Even if Ryan avoided a serious injury — which we’re not out of the woods yet with — it’s likely he’ll get shut down to ensure he gets healthy. That puts a ton of pressure on Minnesota’s already thin starting pitching group, one that the team frustratingly failed to address.

We’ll see what updates drop in the next few days, but the Twins might have already experienced the worst of Wednesday’s nightmare.

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