7:36pm: The Twins have created a 25-man roster spot for Heston by placing southpaw Hector Santiago on the 10-day DL with a shoulder strain. Santiago has a 5.26 ERA, 6.5 K/9 and 1.68 K/BB rate over 65 frames for Minnesota this season. His career-long issues with the home run ball has been an even larger issue than usual, as Santiago has already allowed 14 homers over his 65 IP.
5:18pm: The Twins have claimed right-hander Chris Heston off waivers from the Dodgers, Phil Miller of the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. In a corresponding move, righty Nick Tepesch has been released to create room on the 40-man roster. Minnesota will still have to make another 25-man roster move to accommodate Heston.
It’s been a busy six months for Heston, who will join his fourth different organization in that span. After spending his first four seasons with the Giants (which included a no-hitter in 2015), Heston was dealt to the Mariners in December and then claimed off waivers by the Dodgers two weeks ago after Seattle designated him for assignment.
Heston will now look to stabilize his career with the Twins, not to mention simply pitch well enough to stay in the majors. Heston has only pitched 10 big league innings in 2016-17, to the tune of an ugly 15.30 ERA with more walks (11) than strikeouts (six). Never one to miss many bats, Heston has somewhat less margin for error, though he showed a good ability to keep the ball on the ground during his one full big league season in 2015 (53% grounder rate), and in the minor leagues.
If he can get himself on track, he could find an opportunity within a Twins rotation that is short on stability behind ace Ervin Santana and impressive rookie Jose Berrios. Minnesota could also potentially use Heston as a reliever to help a relief corps that has a league-worst (5.32) bullpen ERA.
Tepesch signed a minor league deal with the Twins last winter and made one appearance for the team, allowing seven runs (but only one earned) over 1 2/3 innings in a losing start on May 6. After breaking into the league as a starter with the Rangers in 2013-14, Tepesch missed all of 2015 recovering from thoracic outlet syndrome surgery and spent 2016 pitching for four different organizations, including a cup of coffee in the bigs with the Dodgers.
Wow
After last nights clunker, Randy Rosario will probably be the guy who gets sent down.
ABOUT TIME!!! This is their THIRD shot at this guy. How often do you get a guy that can pitch a no hitter for the price of a waiver claim? Heston never got a fair shot with the Giants due to their lack of trust in young guys and their ill-advised love of veterans – especially when it comes to young arms. Continually trading off young players for vets in an effort to remain competitive eventually catches up with you As a result, the Giants are imploding: shaky starters, inconsistent offense, injuries, tapped out farm system, ineffective bullpen, under-performing veterans, and youngsters that can’t “step up”. Looks like the bottom is falling out in SF. About time the Twins took advantage of their First in Line status based on their awful 2016 to do some roster maneuvering to try to improve.
Your Buster Olney-esque assessment of the Giants aside, I don’t think Chris Heston is the pitcher you think he is. Yeah, he threw a no no, but he’s 29 and has yet to really put it together.
Philip Humber threw a perfect game. Armando Galarraga basically threw a perfect game. Scooter Gennett hit four homers in a game. Don’t let single-game sample sizes fool you.
You beat me to it. Well said.
agreed but it’s not like the twins have better options
While I agree that Chris Heston isn’t a front line starter and he got lucky with the no hitter; I also think the way the Giants handled him at the end (and how the Mariners and Dodgers handled him as well) contributed a lot to his fall off. His numbers as a starter (both in the majors and the minors) aren’t that bad. His biggest struggles come when they’ve tried to use him out of the bullpen. There’s a mental aspect to pitching and some players need to know that they’ll be used on a particular day so that they can go through their routine and get mentally ready. Sometimes they just can’t adapt to life in the pen, where you don’t know in advance if you’ll be used that night and you have to get yourself mentally prepared quick while you’re warming up.
In a good rotation Heston probably doesn’t have a place besides as a 5th starter, maybe a 4th; but with the weakness of the Twins staff I think he could be an improvement if they stick with him as a starter.
Wow, he wasn’t even with the Dodgers long enough to get photoshopped into Dodgers cap.
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What’s fuci?
noun, plural fuci [fyoo-sahy] (Show IPA), fucuses.
1.
any olive-brown seaweed or alga of the genus Fucus, having branching fronds and often air bladders.
Not sure how that relates to a Triple-A pitcher. But there it is.
Well that clears everything up. Haha. U just made my day. Thanks for the research.
Not even mad he No-Hit the Mets anymore. Now I know, he got lucky and we had one of it really bad 2015 Days.