Twins Select Oliver Ortega, Designate Kyle Garlick For Assignment
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.
Twins Option Louie Varland, Recall Brent Headrick
Per a team announcement, the Twins have optioned right-hander Louie Varland to Triple-A following his spot start against the Yankees yesterday. In a corresponding move, the club recalled left-hander Brent Headrick.
Varland, 25, pitched effectively against the Yankees yesterday, turning in a quality start of six innings and three runs allowed, each of which came on a solo home run. Those were the only hits allowed by Varland, who walked one and struck out eight. Varland also made five starts for the club in 2022, posting a solid 3.81 ERA in 26 innings of work. With six successful big league starts under his belt and a career 2.59 ERA in the minor leagues, Varland figures to continue to be a top option for spot starts in the future for the Twins, though their deep group of potential rotation options leaves him unlikely to get a longer look this season without multiple rotation injuries. Varland is the Twins’ #10 prospect, according to MLB.com.
As for Headrick, the 25 year-old lefty has been added to an MLB roster for the first time in his career and appears poised to make his big league debut in the near future. A ninth round pick in the 2019 draft, Headrick has a 3.52 ERA in 184 innings of work in the minors. The club’s #25 prospect, per MLB.com, Headrick is a soft-tossing lefty who has added velocity in recent years, leading to something of a breakout at Double-A in 2022 where he impressed by striking out 31.9% of the batters he faced. Most of his work in the minors has come as a starter, but Headrick did pitch four innings of relief in his first Triple-A appearance this year.
Twins Designate Aaron Sanchez For Assignment
The Twins announced Friday that they’ve recalled right-hander Louie Varland from Triple-A St. Paul and designated fellow righty Aaron Sanchez for assignment in order to open a spot on the roster.
Sanchez, 30, has appeared in seven games with the Twins this season and pitched to a 4.00 ERA with a 21.6% strikeout rate and 6% walk rate in 27 innings. The right-hander was an All-Star in 2016 and led the American League with a 3.00 ERA that season but has seen that promising career derailed by a series of injuries, most notably including 2019 shoulder surgery.
Sanchez logged a career-high 192 innings back in that 2016 season, but he’s only managed 366 big league innings since that time, pitching to a 5.24 ERA along the way. The Twins will place him on outright waivers or release waivers in the next few days.
Varland, 24, will get the start for the Twins in tonight’s game. It’ll be the third of his career, as he made a pair of appearances earlier this month, pitching well through 5 1/3 innings at Yankee Stadium in his MLB debut before struggling in a five-inning outing in Cleveland.
A Minnesota native whom the Twins selected in the 15th round of the 2019 draft out of Division-II Concordia University in St. Paul, Varland skyrocketed through the system in 2021. He’s had a strong followup showing between Double-A and Triple-A this year, logging a combined 3.06 ERA in 126 1/3 frames. He’ll be in the mix for a rotation spot for a pitching-needy Twins club next year, making his late-season audition well worth monitoring for Twins fans.
Twins Select Louie Varland, Designate Jake Jewell
TODAY: The Twins designated right-hander Jake Jewell for assignment, as Varland’s selection is now official. Jewell had just been claimed off waivers from the Guardians three weeks ago,
SEPTEMBER 6: The Twins are calling up one of the top pitching prospects in their system, as they’ll select the contract of right-hander Louie Varland to make his big league debut Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium, per Patrick Reusse of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (Twitter link).
Varland’s call to the Majors continues a nice development story for a North St. Paul native who’ll now suit up for his hometown club. He’s one of just four players ever to be drafted out of Division-II Concordia University in St. Paul — older brother Gus Varland, currently in the Dodgers’ system, is another — and the Twins grabbed him well down the board, in the 15th round. (The Varland brothers, just one year apart in age, faced off against one another earlier this season, when both started the same game for their respective teams’ Double-A affiliates.) The younger Varland pitched just 8 2/3 innings in the Twins organization in 2019 after being drafted and didn’t pitch in 2020, when there was no minor league season.
A D-II 15th-round pick with 8 2/3 professional innings (all coming in Rookie ball) obviously isn’t going to carry much prospect fanfare, but Varland erupted with a 2021 breakout that saw him named the Twins organization’s minor league pitcher of the year. Beginning the season in Class-A Fort Myers, Varland came roaring out of the gates with a 2.09 ERA and a massive 38% strikeout rate before being promoted to High-A Cedar Rapids, where he largely repeated that success. In 55 2/3 frames with the Kernels, he posted a 2.10 ERA with a 29.9% strikeout rate. Varland walked just 7.1% of his opponents between the two levels, and by the conclusion of the ’21 season, he featured prominently among Twins prospect rankings.
It’s been more of the same for Varland in 2022 — this time between Double-A (105 innings, 3.34 ERA, 26.4% strikeout rate) and Triple-A (21 1/3 innings, 1.69 ERA, 32.1% strikeout rate). The right-hander explained to FanGraphs’ David Laurila this time last year that despite throwing just 90-92 mph during his college days, he’s now sitting 94-95 mph and peaking in the upper 90s after working with the Twins’ development staff.
“I would put it to our pitching coordinators and the pitching coaches with my teams,” Varland told Laurila. “But also Martijn [Verhoeven], our [motion performance] coach. He really cleaned up my mechanics so that I could pitch with an efficient arm path. That was really the root of it all; everything has stemmed from that.”
The results speak for themselves, as Varland has ascended from obscurity to the Major Leagues in short order — and with a career 2.61 ERA, 30% strikeout rate and 7.6% walk rate in the minor leagues. MLB.com ranks him 10th among Twins prospects, while Baseball America has him listed 16th and FanGraphs at No. 25. Varland complements a high-spin four-seamer that now draws plus grades with a trio of offspeed offerings: a changeup, a slider and a seldom-used curveball. Both the changeup and slider have potential to be above-average pitches, per that group of scouting reports, with MLB.com suggesting the changeup is already there. He’ll be controllable through at least the 2028 season.
Once he’s formally selected to the roster — which may not happen until tomorrow, if he is indeed slated for a Wednesday debut — Varland will immediately join the Twins’ rotation mix for the remainder of the season and for the 2023 campaign as well. He’ll have a full slate of three minor league option years, meaning he could be moved up and down on an as-needed basis for awhile he doesn’t immediately seize a starting job. And, with the reworked arm slot and mechanics unlocking some additional velocity, it remains possible that Varland could eventually end up a hard-throwing bullpen piece, should a role in the rotation not pan out.