Simeon Woods Richardson hypes up David Festa ahead of his first MLB start

As we hit the middle of the summer schedule, the Minnesota Twins remain both strangely mediocre yet brimming with 100-win potential.

Minnesota has truly been an enigma this season, as the streakiest team in baseball is capable of ripping off 12-game winning streaks as much as it can bookend such a thing with five game slumps. If there's one ray of hope it's that the rust we saw on the team earlier in the season seems to have been almost entirely shaken off, something we've seen in the Twins' ability to claw back into games it otherwise would have bowed out of.

Tuesday's loss to the Diamondbacks was an example of that. The Twins stormed back from down 4-1, eventually losing by a single run but displaying the type of fight that had been missing this time last year. Something that helped pull Minnesota out of a funk then was an injection of youth into the lineup, which is happening again on Thursday with the promotion of top pitching prospect David Festa.

His debut comes with a ton of anticipation, as Festa has experienced a Brooks Lee-ian rise through the farm system. After reaching Triple-A last summer, Festa pitched his way into being a Top 100 prospect for the Twins and has now earned a promotion after the team placed Chris Paddack on the 15-day IL.

If fans haven't already heard the Festa hype, his former rotation-mate in St. Paul is ringing the bell loud and clear.

David Festa gets hyped up by Simeon Woods Richardson ahead of his MLB Debut

After his start on Wednesday, and after news of Festa's promotion became official, Simeon Woods Richardson spent part of his postgame chat hyping up his new (and old) teammate.

"He’s the Slim Reap, man," Woods Richardson said. "If people don’t know about him, he’s the Slim Reap."

That might seem like subtle hype, but Woods Richardson has always been on the soft spoken side. If anything, the fact that Festa already has a nickname -- and a badass one at that -- goes to show just how much of an impact he made at Triple-A.

It might seem silly to fuel the hype train on a nickname alone, but there's nuanace to it. The Twins have called up plenty of pitchers in the past, some of them multiple times, but it's hard to remember a time when there was the type of anticipation there is around Festa's debut.

He lived up to the Slim Reaper nickmane in St. Paul. So far this season he has a 1.291 WHIP and nearly 90 strikeouts in 14 games, and had an insane 36.8 percent strikeout rate through his first ten games.

Festa quickly seperated himself from the pack with the Saints, and joins to the Twins with a chance to secure a permenant spot in the team's plans. He was added to the 40-man roster, the final step any prospect needs to take, and could give Minnesota a sixth starter option moving forward.

It's unclear exactly how Festa will fit into the immediate future, but the Slim Reaper can give Minnesota a glorious problem to solve by living up to the hype on Thursday afternoon.