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Twins Sign Isaac Mattson To Minors Contract

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The Twins signed right-hander Isaac Mattson to a minor league deal, as initially reported by Tom Reisenweber of the Erie Times-News (Twitter link).  Mattson has been assigned to the Twins’ Double-A affiliate in Wichita.

Making his return to affiliated baseball for the first time since last July, Mattson spent part of last season pitching in the independent Frontier League, and has spent the 2023 season pitching in the independent Atlantic League.  Over 19 relief innings with the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs this year, Mattson looked pretty sharp, posting a 3.32 ERA and 32.43% strikeout rate.  His 10.81% walk rate is on the high side, but it’s still a big improvement from the extreme control problems Mattson had with the Orioles’ Triple-A affiliate in 2022.

Mattson was originally a 19th-round pick for the Angels in the 2017 draft, and he was dealt to the Orioles in December 2019 as part of the four-player trade package that brought Dylan Bundy to Anaheim.  Mattson’s time with the O’s included his first stint in the majors, which consisted of 4 1/3 innings over four appearances during the 2021 season.  However, Baltimore outrighted him off its 40-man roster in April 2022, and then released him in July after his struggles with Triple-A Norfolk.

The 27-year-old Mattson has pretty consistently posted high strikeout totals throughout his minor league career, even prior to his full-time move to relief pitching in 2019.  Despite lacking the velocity traditionally associated with a high-strikeout bullpen arm, Mattson is an interesting depth arm for the Twins to explore, particularly at the no-risk cost of a minor league contract.

Best Deadline Rental Returns In Recent History, No. 1: Twins Land A Rotation Cornerstone

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With the trade deadline now less than two months away, we at MLBTR are setting our sights backwards for a bit to highlight past trades of rental players to provide a loose guideline of what sort of returns fans can expect with their teams’ current rental players. With an arbitrary cutoff point of 2017-21, we’re counting down the top 10 returns that a team got when selling a rental player. We’ve already published some honorable mentions as well as entries No. 10, No. 9, No. 8, No. 7, No. 6, No. 5, No. 4, No. 3. and No. 2. If you disagree with our rankings, let us know! It’s all part of the subjective fun! Now for the top spot in our series…

The 2021 season was a disaster for the Twins. Fresh off a division title in the shortened 2020 season, they entered the year as the team to beat in the American League Central but faceplanted with a 9-15 showing in the season’s first month and never recovered. Offseason signings of Andrelton Simmons, J.A. Happ, Alex Colome and Matt Shoemaker all flopped. Top prospect Alex Kirilloff, expected to be a key contributor, was limited to 59 games thanks to a torn ligament in his wrist. Kenta Maeda followed up his Cy Young runner-up season with an injury-shortened year that ended with him undergoing Tommy John surgery. Jose Berrios was the only pitcher who even reached 110 innings on an injury-ravaged Twins staff.

Berrios was also one of several veterans the Twins wound up trading once they waved the white flag on their 2021 season. After years of failed extension efforts, he was traded to the Blue Jays in exchange for prospects Austin Martin and Simeon Woods Richardson. That trade was one of the headline moves of the entire 2021 trade deadline, but it wasn’t the defining move of the summer for the Twins.

That distinction goes to the first trade they made, jumping the market to send designated hitter Nelson Cruz to the Rays in a trade that brought back a pair of pitching prospects: the since-DFA’ed Drew Strotman and a near-MLB-ready right-hander by the name of Joe Ryan. The Twins also sent minor league righty Calvin Faucher to the Rays as part of the deal — he’s since made his debut but hasn’t pitched particularly well — so it can be argued that this wasn’t a pure rental, but the heart of the trade was a half season of Cruz for the aforementioned prospects.

Regardless of how things play out with Faucher, there’s no getting around the fact that the trade didn’t work out as the Rays hoped. Cruz was hitting .294/.370/.537 with 19 homers in 346 plate appearances at the time of the trade, and Tampa Bay hoped they were acquiring a heart-of-the-order slugger who could deepen their lineup and provide some needed thump in the postseason. Cruz kept hitting for power (13 homers, 238 plate appearances), but his strikeout rate spiked as his walk rate plummeted.

The end result was a .226/.283/.442 slash, plus a 3-for-17 showing in an ALDS loss to the Red Sox. One of those hits was a solo home run, but Cruz’s well below-average OBP and dramatic rise in strikeouts (from 18.2% in Minnesota to 26.5% in Tampa Bay) fell shy of expectations. Cruz hit free agency following the season and went on to sign a one-year deal with the Nationals.

The now-26-year-old Strotman’s time with the Twins lasted barely a year. He was hit hard in Minnesota’s Triple-A rotation following the trade and moved to the bullpen the following year, which did little to quell his long-running command issues. He’s since bounced to the Rangers and Giants via waivers, the latter of whom was able to pass him through waivers unclaimed. He currently has a 6.54 ERA in Triple-A Sacramento. Strotman was an upper-level pitching prospect who had a chance to debut in the Majors in relatively short order, but his half of the trade (quite clearly) hasn’t panned out.

The other half of the Twins’ return is another story entirely.

At the time of the trade, Ryan had only just begun to sneak onto the back-end of top-100 prospect rankings around the industry. He was in the midst of a strong season with Triple-A Durham, pitching to a 3.63 ERA with a 34.9% strikeout rate against a 4.7% walk rate. Ryan’s lack of velocity — he averages under 93 mph on his fastball — perhaps created some skepticism about his ability to continue missing bats at that level in the big leagues, but his atypical release point has allowed him to continually befuddle hitters despite his pedestrian velocity.

Ryan’s time in the minor leagues with the Twins was brief, to say the least. Minnesota had the right-hander make just two starts in Triple-A following the trade before summoning him for his Major League debut. In his next four starts, Ryan held opponents to a 2.45 ERA with a 25-to-3 K/BB ratio in 22 innings. He was hit hard in his final outing of the year, finishing out the season with a 4.05 ERA and 30-to-5 K/BB ratio in 26 2/3 innings.

The Twins had seen enough to not only pencil Ryan into their 2022 rotation, but make him their Opening Day starter after just five big league appearances. Ryan’s 2022 campaign, his age-26 season, marked a significant step forward. The right-hander made 27 starts, pitched to a 3.55 ERA and fanned a quarter of his opponents against a tidy 7.8% walk rate. If there was any doubt about his status as a surefire big league starter, it’d largely been eliminated.

Continuing on at that pace would’ve made Ryan a clear building block for the Twins, but he’s taken his game to another new level so far in 2023. Long an extreme fly-ball pitcher, Ryan has added a splitter that’s helped him up his ground-ball rate and further neutralize left-handed opponents. Ryan’s 35% ground-ball rate is still lower than average by nearly 10 percentage points, but it’s a huge increase from the 27.7% mark he posted in 2022. Lefties weren’t effective against him in the first place, hitting just .202/.288/.348 in 2022, but they’ve flailed away at a .199/.242/.281 clip in 2023. The addition of that splitter has helped out against righties, too; they’re hitting just .225/.257/.373 against Ryan this year. Statcast credits the newly implemented splitter with a .196 “expected” opponents’ batting average and a .283 expected slugging percentage.

Ryan entered play today with a 3.30 ERA, 27.1% strikeout rate and 4.5% walk rate in 84 1/3 innings. After averaging just over 5 1/3 innings per outing last year, he’s been given a longer leash by the Twins in 2023 and averaged a bit better than six innings per start. The mustachioed righty has already surpassed his 2022 total of 2.1 FanGraphs wins above replacement, and his 1.8 WAR over at Baseball-Reference is rapidly approaching last year’s mark of 2.3. He’s a candidate for a 2023 All-Star bid, and if he can sustain this pace, he’ll likely find himself on the periphery of Cy Young voting later this season.

Because Ryan fell well shy of a full year of service time in 2021, he didn’t accrue a full year of service until the completion of the 2022 season. He’ll finish the 2023 campaign with two-plus year of service and won’t be eligible for arbitration until after the 2024 season. The Twins control him all the way through the 2027 season, though his performance through his first 46 career starts certainly makes him a logical extension candidate for the Twins if the two sides can find a palatable middle ground.

It’s difficult for teams marketing rental players to command any degree of highly ranked prospects, let alone a near-MLB ready arm who can step into a big league rotation just weeks after the swap is completed. The Twins’ willingness to jump the sellers’ market — Cruz was traded more than a week before the deadline — and his status as perhaps the top bat available on the market created the right circumstances for Minnesota to strike gold and set a new benchmark for modern-day rental returns.

It’s probably not realistic for fans hoping their teams can cash in on a high-end rental player to expect a return this good, but the Twins surely don’t mind Ryan’s status as a best-case scenario for a return in this type of swap. Their decision to re-sign Cruz for a third year netted them a half season of excellent offense and, quite possibly, six-plus years of a pitcher who’s increasingly looking like a front-of-the-rotation arm. It’s the type of return any GM or president of baseball operations dreams of every July but the type that is rarely achieved.

Images courtesy of USA Today Sports.

Twins Sign Dallas Keuchel To Minor League Deal

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10:49am: Twins manager Rocco Baldelli confirmed the signing, tweets Do-Hyoung Park of MLB.com. “We’re glad to have him in the organization and to give him an opportunity to go out there and pitch and show all the things that he’s been working on,” said Baldelli.

9:43am: The Twins have agreed to a minor league deal with left-hander Dallas Keuchel, reports Jon Heyman of the New York Post (Twitter link). The WME client has recently been working out with Driveline Baseball and, as Driveline director of pitching Chris Langin recently noted (Twitter thread), has restored some of the velocity on his heater and movement on his sinker and revamped sweeper. He’ll presumably wind up with the Twins’ Triple-A affiliate in St. Paul, though he might first require a tune-up at a lower-level affiliate.

The 35-year-old Keuchel’s past two seasons have been a nightmare, as the former AL Cy Young winner was shelled for a 6.35 ERA in 222 2/3 innings between the White Sox, D-backs and Rangers. That includes a particularly calamitous 2022 campaign in which he was tagged for 62 earned runs on a whopping 94 hits and 31 walks in just 60 2/3 frames. Keuchel’s fastball averaged a career-worst 87.8 mph in 2022, and his 10.2% walk rate was his highest since a 10.3% mark as a rookie way back in 2012.

That said, Keuchel had strong results back in 2020 (1.99 ERA in 63 1/3 innings) and from 2014-20 was a high-end starting pitcher for the Astros, Braves and White Sox. During that time, the lefty piled up 1126 1/3 innings of 3.25 ERA ball (3.55 FIP, 3.63 SIERA). Keuchel has long posted below-average strikeout rates but, at his best, will offset them with excellent command and one of the top ground-ball rates in the Majors. Opponents have averaged just an 87.4 mph exit velocity against him since Statcast began tracking it in 2015, and even in his recent disastrous seasons Keuchel was only slightly below average in terms of limiting hard contact.

Certainly, it’s beyond optimistic to expect Keuchel to recapture his 2015 Cy Young form. The Twins would likely be thrilled if the lefty were able to even emerge as a viable back-of-the-rotation starter or perhaps a multi-inning reliever. Langin notes that Keuchel has been sitting 89 mph with his fastball and 88.9 mph with his sinker in workouts — down slightly from peak levels but roughly in line with Keuchel’s 2016-19 seasons, when he posted a 3.77 ERA over 102 starts.

Fortunately for the Twins, they can look at Keuchel as a pure depth option rather than someone they’ll realistically need to turn to before long. Minnesota recently optioned fifth starter Louie Varland to Triple-A, but the expectation is that Kenta Maeda will be returning from the injured list in his place. Sonny Gray, Pablo Lopez, Joe Ryan and Bailey Ober give the Twins a strong top four in their rotation anyhow, and the club is hoping for Chris Paddack to finish off his rehab from Tommy John surgery later this summer as well.

Keuchel will merely add to that stockpile of rotation options. If he looks to be in pre-2021 form in Triple-A, that’ll be a major bonus for the Twins, but if he continues to struggle as he has over the past two seasons, they can move on without feeling they’ve placed a major strain on their rotation depth.

AL Central Notes: Buxton, Crochet, Tigers

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Twins outfielder Byron Buxton has dealt with many injuries throughout his career, which has led the Twins to use him exclusively as a designated hitter so far this season. However, it seems that was not simply a choice they made about protecting him from future injuries. “From the beginning of the year, he has not been physically able to play in the outfield,” manager Rocco Baldelli tells Do-Hyoung Park of MLB.com. “If he was, he would be out there. If we even thought that it was possible that he could play in the outfield right now, he would be out there.”

Buxton underwent arthroscopic surgery on his right knee in September of last year and seemingly recuperated enough to play but not enough that the Twins want him out on the grass. “Nothing has really gone up or down on that scale since the beginning of the year,” Baldelli said. “It hasn’t gotten closer. It hasn’t gotten further away. It’s basically in a similar spot. He is basically in a similar spot as he was in the beginning.”

Of course, the Twins could have opted to have Buxton start the season on the injured list and then activated him once he was 100% healthy, but it seems they preferred to have his bat in the lineup even without any defensive contributions and with diminished capabilities overall. Buxton’s sprint speed of 29.3 feet per second this year is roughly in line with last year’s 29.1 figure, though he has been steadily declining since hitting 30.9 in his rookie season. That seems to line up with the assessment that his knee hasn’t gotten fully healthy.

It might also be impacting him at the plate, as he’s hitting .209/.313/.428 on the year. That translates to a 106 wRC+, indicating he’s still been above average but below his own typical output. He hit .258/.316/.558 from 2019 to 2022 for a 136 wRC+. His .259 batting average on balls in play might point to some bad luck but his hard hit rate and average exit velocity are also down from last year. He’s also been struggling more of late, slashing just .149/.273/.266 since May 5. All hitters go through slumps, of course, but whether or not the knee is hampering him will be an interesting situation for the Twins to monitor as the season progresses.

Some more notes from the AL Central…

  • The White Sox put left-hander Garrett Crochet on the injured list yesterday, retroactive to June 17, due to left shoulder inflammation. Right-hander Jimmy Lambert was reinstated from his own IL stint in a corresponding move. Crochet was drafted in 2020 and was quickly launched into the majors just a few months later. He’s since been able to post quality results out of the bullpen with a 2.69 ERA thus far, though injuries have also been an issue. He went on the IL in 2021 due to a back strain and then had his 2022 wiped out by Tommy John surgery. He returned this year but is now back on the IL after 10 outings. There hasn’t been anything to suggest this current injury is especially concerning but it’s yet another roadblock to him building up his workload. He has expressed a desire to return to starting pitching someday but has only been able to log 70 1/3 major league innings in his career thus far.
  • The Tigers have faced a number of challenges in their rotation this year, which each of Eduardo Rodriguez, Casey Mize, Tarik Skubal, Matt Manning, Spencer Turnbull, Alex Faedo and Beau Brieske currently on the injured list. Given all of those absences, it’s hardly surprising that the club’s starters have a collective 4.91 ERA that places them 25th out of the 30 clubs in the league. Things could be on the verge of improving, however, with most of that group nearing returns. Chris McCosky of The Detroit News takes a look at the different hurlers and their rehabs, with Skubal and Manning seemingly the closest since they are already on rehab assignments at the Triple-A level. The Tigers are just 32-41 coming into today’s action but are only 3.5 games off the lead in the weak division. Getting some young starters back in the mix would surely help them stay afloat in that wide open competition. Manning had a 3.43 ERA last year but has been limited to just two outings so far this year due to a fractured fifth metatarsal in his right foot. Skubal had a 3.52 ERA last year but has been out of action since undergoing flexor tendon surgery in August.

Twins, Mark Kolozsvary Agree To Minor League Deal

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The Twins have agreed to a minor league deal with catcher Mark Kolozsvary, as first reported by Darren Wolfson of 5 Eyewitness News and SKOR North Radio (Twitter link). He’ll head to Triple-A St. Paul to serve as catching depth. He rejected an outright assignment with the Orioles in favor of free agency late last week.

Kolozsvary, 27, made his big league debut with the Reds last summer and won a Silver Medal with the United States Olympic team a year prior. He went 4-for-20 with a homer and a pair of doubles in last year’s brief MLB cup of coffee but was removed from Cincinnati’s 40-man roster following the season. The Orioles claimed him off waivers and eventually succeeded in outrighting the catcher themselves. Baltimore selected Kolozsvary back to the big league roster eight days ago, but he appeared in just one game and didn’t make a plate appearance before being designated for assignment.

In parts of six minor league seasons, Kolozsvary is a .211/.320/.339 hitter, including a tepid .172/.250/.299 slash in 96 plate appearances between Double-A and Triple-A in the Orioles’ system this year. He’s thwarted 31% of stolen base attempts against him in the minors, and his framing has improved throughout his career, per Baseball Prospectus’ framing runs metric. Baseball America ranked Kolozsvary 26th among Reds prospects a year ago, labeling him as a good defender, framer and blocker whose offensive skill set still needed refinement.

The Twins don’t have an immediate need for catching help on the big league roster, where Christian Vazquez and Ryan Jeffers have handled the entirety of the workload. Kolozsvary will join veteran Tony Wolters and 23-year-old Jair Camargo as catching options on the Saints’ roster in St. Paul for the time being.

Twins Select Oliver Ortega, Designate Kyle Garlick For Assignment

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The Twins announced today that they have selected the contract of right-hander Oliver Ortega. Fellow righty Louie Varland was optioned to Triple-A in a corresponding move while outfielder Kyle Garlick was designated for assignment to open a spot on the 40-man roster.

Ortega, 26, pitched for the Angels in each of the past two seasons, registering a combined 3.95 ERA in 35 outings between those two campaigns. He was designated for assignment in the offseason and claimed by the Twins, though the latter club passed him through outright waivers a few weeks later.

He’s been putting up good numbers in Triple-A so far this year, posting a 2.42 ERA through 22 1/3 innings. He’s struck out 31.8% of opponents while walking just 8% and getting grounders on 36% of balls in play. That strong work has got him back to the big leagues again, where he’ll provide a fresh arm for the Minnesota bullpen. He also has a couple of option years remaining, giving the club a bit of roster flexibility.

Varland has been working out of the club’s rotation, posting a 5.30 ERA over 10 starts. His option today seems to point towards the imminent return of Kenta Maeda, who has been on a rehab assignment of late. He had a rough start to the year, with an ERA of 9.00 through four starts before landing on the injured list with a triceps strain. He’ll hope to get in a better groove going forward, jumping into the rotation next to Sonny Gray, Joe Ryan, Pablo López and Bailey Ober.

As for Garlick, he has had some success in the past, primarily as a right-handed platoon specialist. He’s hit .240/.288/.510 against southpaws in his major league career, good enough for a 115 wRC+. However, he hasn’t been hitting in the majors or the minors this year. He’s hit just .210/.308/.427 in 143 Triple-A appearances for the season, including a dismal .160/.263/.300 against lefties. Those struggles surely contributed to nudging him off the roster.

The Twins will now have a week to trade Garlick or pass him through waivers. He has a previous career outright and over three years of service time, which means he could reject an outright assignment in favor of free agency. However, since he has less than five years of service time, he would have to forfeit the remainder of his $750K salary in order to do so. That’s just barely over the $720K minimum for a major league player but it’s surely much better than what he would get in Triple-A, where the minimum salary is just $35.8K.

For any clubs weighing a claim, Garlick is in his final option year, meaning he could be kept in the minors as depth for the rest of the year. He isn’t hitting much here in 2023 but has had some past success that could appeal to another club that has some question marks in its outfield.

George Frazier Passes Away

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Former major league player and analyst George Frazier has passed away, according to an announcement from the Rockies. He was 68.

After playing at the University of Oklahoma, Frazier entered pro ball as a ninth-round pick of the Brewers in the 1976 draft. While still in the minor leagues, he was traded to the Cardinals in a swap that sent catcher Buck Martinez to Milwaukee. Frazier made his MLB debut with St. Louis in May 1978, eventually appearing in 14 games as a rookie. He bounced on and off the active roster for the next two seasons.

Midway through the ’81 campaign, the Cards dealt Frazier to the Yankees. He pitched 5 2/3 scoreless innings to help the Yanks past the A’s in that year’s AL Championship Series. He was charged with a trio of losses in their World Series defeat at the hands of the Dodgers, though, allowing seven runs in 3 2/3 frames over three outings.

Frazier put that rocky World Series showing behind him to establish himself as a key reliever by the following season. He surpassed 100 innings with a sub-3.50 ERA in each of the next two years. Over the 1983-84 offseason, New York dealt him to the Indians alongside outfielder Otis Nixon for All-Star infielder Toby Harrah. Frazier didn’t spend much time in Cleveland. Before the ’84 deadline, the Indians moved him to the Cubs with Rick Sutcliffe (who’d go on to win the NL Cy Young award that year) and Ron Hassey in a blockbuster that netted Cleveland Joe Carter and Mel Hall.

The right-handed Frazier tossed 63 2/3 innings for Chicago down the stretch to help them to the NLCS. He struggled over the next couple seasons but intrigued the Twins enough that they acquired him at the 1986 trade deadline. Frazier spent a season and a half in Minnesota to wrap up his MLB playing career. The ’87 Twins went on to win the World Series; Frazier’s last MLB outing was a two-inning scoreless appearance against the Cardinals in that year’s Fall Classic.

After his playing career came to a close, Frazier embarked on a lengthy run as a broadcaster. He worked as a color analyst for the Twins for a time before joining the Rockies’ booth for the 1998 season. He’d spend nearly two decades in Colorado, calling games there through 2015.

Frazier spent upwards of four decades in the game. As a player, he pitched in 415 big league contests. He posted a career 4.20 ERA through 675 2/3 innings, striking out 449 hitters. He was credited with 35 wins, finished 193 games and picked up 29 saves. He added six playoff games with three different franchises and won a World Series to close his career.

MLBTR joins others around the game in sending condolences to Frazier’s family, friends, former teammates and loved ones.

Twins Place Jorge Lopez On 15-Day Injured List

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2:02PM: In an updated announcement, the Twins moved Lopez to the 15-day IL due to mental health reasons.

1:17PM: The Twins announced that right-hander Jorge Lopez has been placed on the team’s restricted list.  Right-hander Jordan Balazovic has been called up from Triple-A to take Lopez’s spot on the active roster, as Balazovic will be looking to make his Major League debut.

As per league rules, Lopez won’t collect salary or Major League service time while he is on the restricted list.  The circumstances behind Lopez’s placement aren’t yet known, so it is impossible to gauge how long the righty might be absent.

After posting uninspiring numbers for much of his career, Lopez suddenly caught fire early in the 2022 season, posting a 1.68 ERA and 19 saves over 48 1/3 innings with the Orioles.  This performance earned Lopez his first All-Star selection, but even though the O’s were still in the playoff race at the deadline, they chose to sell high on Lopez by swapping him to Minnesota for a package of four pitching prospects.  That deal is already looking like a win for Baltimore since one of the four pitchers was Yennier Cano, who is looking like an All-Star this year after a superb first half.

The magic seemed to wear off for Lopez after the trade, as he posted only a 4.37 ERA in 22 2/3 innings for the Twins over the remainder of the 2022 season.  Those struggles have carried into this season, as Lopez has a 5.00 ERA over 27 innings.  Apart from an 8.1% walk rate that is slightly above the league average, there isn’t much to like about Lopez’s Statcast metrics, as he is allowing a ton of hard contact and his strikeout rate has dropped considerably from 2022.  The right-hander’s old problems with home runs have resurfaced, as he allowed six homers over his 27 frames.

Lopez has been a weak link in an otherwise pretty solid Twins bullpen, but Balazovic will now get an opportunity to show what he can do at the MLB level.  A fifth-round pick for the Twins in the 2016 draft, he emerged on the top-100 prospect radar prior to the 2020-22 seasons, but he battled some injuries last season and was struggled badly in his first stint at Triple-A.

After posting a 7.39 ERA over 70 2/3 innings with Triple-A St. Paul last year, Balazovic has performed better this year, though a 4.79 ERA isn’t exactly eye-popping.  His 35 2/3 innings have consisted of 11 relief appearances and three starts (after working mostly as a starter throughout his career), and Balazovic has a strong 31.1% strikeout rate but also a high 13% walk rate.  Just before Spring Training this year, Balazovic was also involved in an off-field incident that resulted in surgery for a broken jaw, as he claimed to have been sucker-punched by an unknown person.

It remains to be seen how long Balazovic might last in Minnesota’s bullpen, as regardless of performance, he might be sent back to Triple-A if Lopez is on the restricted list for only a brief period of time.  Still, Balazovic has potential as a multi-inning reliever for now, and possibly still as a starter down the road.

In other Twins transactions from earlier today, the club activated Gilberto Celestino from the 60-day injured list and optioned the outfielder to Triple-A.  Celestino has yet to play in the majors this season after undergoing thumb surgery in early March, as he had to first rehab his injury and then make up for his lost month of Spring Training.  Celestino has played nine minor league games to date, and he’ll now get a longer stint at Triple-A to ramp up and be ready if the Twins call him back to the Show.

To accommodate Celestino’s return to the 40-man roster, the Twins moved Jorge Alcala to the 60-day injured list.  Alcala went on the 15-day IL in mid-May due to a stress fracture to the radius bone in his right forearm, and since it isn’t known when he might return, the 60-day placement seemed inevitable.

Central Notes: Contreras, Naughton, Buxton

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The Pirates recently moved right-hander Roansy Contreras to the bullpen, but he’s hoping to follow in the footsteps of his teammate Mitch Keller and return to the rotation stronger than ever. “I want to find a point where I feel comfortable again,” Contreras said, with major league coach Stephen Morales translating to Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I’m going to do my best out of the bullpen, but I feel like I belong in the starting rotation. I’m going to do my best to get back to it.”

Keller was a second-round pick and top 100 prospect but struggled in his first few seasons in the majors, having a 6.02 ERA by the end of 2021. Last year, he had a 6.61 ERA in the middle of May when he was moved to the bullpen. He made just a couple of relief appearances before being put back in the rotation and eventually posted a 3.22 ERA as a starter the rest of the way. He now has a 3.41 ERA for the Bucs here in 2023.

Contreras was also a top 100 guy on his way up through the minors and seemed to solidify himself last year when he posted a 3.79 ERA over 95 innings. However, he’s taken a step back here in 2023 with a 6.55 ERA in 11 starts and a couple of relief appearances. There’s probably a bit of bad luck in there, considering his .328 batting average on balls in play and 61.3% strand rate, but his 17.2% strikeout rate and 10.5% walk rate are both worse than last year’s marks of 21.1% and 9.6%.

The Pirates are barely above .500 at 34-32 but that’s enough for first place in the National League Central at the moment. Their current rotation consists of Keller, Rich Hill, Luis Ortiz, Johan Oviedo and the recently-recalled Osvaldo Bido. If Contreras could turn things around, it would be a huge help for their postseason push, especially with other options like Vince Velasquez, Mike Burrows and JT Brubaker out for the year. There would also be long-term benefits to the Bucs, since Contreras isn’t slated for free agency until after the 2028 season.

Some other notes from the Central divisions…

  • Cardinals left-hander Packy Naughton has been on the injured list for most of the season, making just four appearances in early April before a left forearm strain put him on the shelf. He recently began a rehab assignment but was still experiencing pain. Now he’s traveling to Texas to get a second opinion and it seems season-ending surgery is on the table, per John Denton of MLB.com. Denton relays that Tommy John surgery could still be avoided but it’s nonetheless an ominous development for Naughton and the Cards that it’s being considered, particularly at this time of year. Given the typical recovery period of 14 to 18 months, Tommy John surgery would not only wipe out the rest of 2023 for Naughton but also put his 2024 in jeopardy. In 59 2/3 career innings, he has a 4.98 ERA.
  • The Twins reinstated Byron Buxton from the injured list today, optioning outfielder Trevor Larnach in a corresponding move. Buxton has long been one of the most talented athletes in the sport but has struggled to stay healthy. He managed to play 140 games in 2017 but hasn’t topped 92 contests in any subsequent season. The Twins have kept him exclusively in the designated hitter slot this year in an attempt to reduce the chance of injury. That plan hit a snag a couple weeks ago when Buxton took a pitch from Tanner Bibee in the ribs. He landed on the IL due to a contusion but is now back after a brief absence. He’s hitting .220/.325/.445 so far this year for a 114 wRC+, stealing six bases in 50 games.

Twins Acquire Taylor Floyd From Brewers

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The Twins have acquired minor league right-hander Taylor Floyd from the Brewers.  The move completes the late-April deal that sent Trevor Megill to Milwaukee, as Floyd will act the player to be named later that was owed to Minnesota.

Floyd was a 10th-round pick for the Brew Crew in the 2019 draft, and the Texas Tech product has spent his entire pro career in Milwaukee’s farm system.  Working exclusively as a reliever, Floyd has missed a lot of bats (30.68% strikeout rate) over his 147 1/3 innings in the minors, but his walk rate rose drastically when pitching at high-A and Double-A ball in 2022.  As Fangraphs’ Eric Longenhagen explains, an unusual offseason training quirk altered Floyd’s normal submarine delivery heading into the 2022 season, which probably accounted for his lack of control.

Longenhagen still ranked Floyd as the 39th-best prospect in the Brewers’ system even in the wake of that shaky 2022 campaign, and it seems like Floyd has stabilized things in 2023.  In 23 2/3 innings at high-A, Floyd has a 3.04 ERA, 34.8% strikeout rate, and a much more palatable 7.6% walk rate.  The right-hander also has a 49.1% grounder rate, continuing his career-long trend of keeping the ball on the ground roughly around half the time.

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