The Twins are placing right-hander Chris Archer on the 15-day injured list due to a pectoral injury, per Do-Hyoung Park of MLB.com. Fellow righty Jharel Cotton will have his contract selected to take Archer’s place on the active roster. The club already had a vacancy on their 40-man roster.
Archer, 33, started yesterday’s game but was removed after two innings and 40 pitches due to this pec issue. Park relays that Archer is confident he can return after the 15-day minimum, though it’s still a noteworthy development for the club. With just over three weeks remaining in the season, even a minimum stay on the IL will keep Archer out of action until there’s only about a week remaining.
With Tyler Mahle also landing on the IL about a week ago, the club’s rotation has taken a couple of blows at a crucial time of the year. The Twins are 3 1/2 games behind the Guardians in the AL Central race, with the White Sox in between. Minnesota will be trying to play catch-up in the home stretch with a diminished pitching staff. Josh Winder was recalled today and will take a spot in the rotation next to Dylan Bundy, Sonny Gray and Joe Ryan. That four-man crew will need reinforcements as the club has an off-day on Monday before embarking on a stretch of 14 games in 13 days, with a doubleheader on September 17.
Archer is taking on a significant workload for the first time since 2019, as he missed the 2020 season entirely and only logged 19 1/3 innings last year. Through 102 2/3 frames this season, he has a 4.56 ERA, though his 19.2% strikeout rate and 11% walk rate are both career worsts. He’s likely returning to free agency this winter, as his deal with the Twins has a mutual option for 2023, with those rarely being executed by both sides.
Cotton, 30, has already been designated for assignment by the Twins three times this year, each time accepting an outright assignment to St. Paul and getting selected back to the roster later. He’s pitched well when called upon, registering a 2.83 ERA in 35 big league innings on the year. A .182 BABIP and 89.7% strand rate are likely putting a little shine on that, however, with advanced metrics like FIP and xFIP pushing over 5.00.
This will give him a good opportunity to sharpen his draw
Flex Seal is back!!!!
I don’t see how Cotton passed through waivers multiple times without being claimed. 35 innings of below 3.00 ERA is nothing to slouch over. People are so caught up in the peripherals and analytics they lose focus on the results. A saying we used back in the day still holds true even today, “the book don’t lie”.
Maybe the 4th time will be a charm for Cotton.
He will give them more innings out of the pen than Archer did in the rotation
Expected Archer to be better than a bust.
Then you haven’t been paying attention to the last 4 years
I don’t ever recall Archer being a big hype prospect. He’s put together a decent career.. Ha, definitely a bust if you’re a Pirates fan though 🙂
We may discuss this a bit on tomorrow’s podcast with in studio guest Lil Baby.
No way… another injury following continued dud performances!?!?
I didn’t see this coming at all.
If the Twins can’t stomach these guys playing in the future just cut them already.. stop with the fake injuries and IL manipulation and excuses to sell to fans.
That sounds like a more likely scenario to you than a pitcher getting hurt?..
Yep.. doesn’t seem to happen to contending teams.. but our losing team seems to have freak and unknown injuries after every start for pitchers and about once a week for position players. Guys play all the way through their whole careers being hurt once or twice over 20 years – all of a sudden millions of dollars and performance is in the equation and guys get hurt if they have a bad performance.
You really think Dobnak is injured for 2 years?
The dude is fading into the sunset with his millions while the team collects their insurance write offs paid by the rest of us chumps in the rat race
That’s some theory you have there.. the Twins are intentionally losing and foregoing millions of dollars in playoff revenue, for some reason… but it has something to do about collecting insurance on Randy Dobnak’s contract (which is right around the league minimum). Well done.
Very few players make it through a career with only a few stints on the IL anymore. No doubt the Twins have had a lot of injuries.. but they are far from the only team. Look at the White Sox.. they are pretty much in the same exact scenario this season.
MLB is a business… it always will have narratives and agendas. Owners all meet and greet and have coffee and donuts together while all the fans think its team vs team.. its more like elites vs us chumps.. what makes the org as a whole the most money.
Twins being winners won’t do anything for baseball as a whole.. thus investment wont flow to MN.
Remember when Chris Archer was great? Yeah, me neither.