KANSAS CITY, MO. – The events of Friday night have led to sweeping changes on the Twins pitching staff.
Injuries cut deeply into Twins pitching staff
August 23, 2020 at 3:15AM
Righthanders Jake Odorizzi and Zack Littell, who both left the game because of injuries, where placed on the 10-day injured list.
It did not stop there. Righthander Homer Bailey, who was trying to return to action from a sore biceps, was moved from the 10-day injured list to the 45-day list and will be unavailable to the team until at least Sept. 13.
The Twins now have seven players on the injured list. Four have been added since Wednesday.
The injuries just keep coming.
"We're not sitting here feeling bad for ourselves," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "We have a good group in there. Guys that can go out there, perform, play well and ultimately get us where we want to be. If we thought we were not going to deal with something like this, we were lying to ourselves.
"We talked about it from the very beginning of the season, of our depth being one of the most important parts of this group, one of the best traits that we have going."
Odorizzi, who left Friday's game in the fourth inning after being struck in the abdomen by a 103.2-miles-per-hour liner off the bat of Alex Gordon, underwent a CT scan Saturday that came back normal.
Littell, who left the game in the seventh with elbow inflammation, has not undergone imaging exams but is not expected to pitch for several days.
Bailey, on the IL since Aug. 2, tried to throw Saturday.
"Homer's throwing session didn't go perfectly as planned," Baldelli said. "But I would say it's not like he had a major setback. He just didn't feel 100 percent out there throwing. And if he doesn't feel 100 percent, he's already been out this amount of time, the additional few weeks off really doesn't change the timetable too much."
The Twins will need someone to take Odorizzi's spot in the rotation while he recovers. They already were planning for a bullpen game Sunday.
They will be happy to see righthander Michael Pineda on Aug. 31 when he's completed his suspension for performance-enhancing drug use and can rejoin the team.
Fresh arms
Bailey's move to the 45-day IL freed up a spot on the 40-man roster to add lefthander Danny Coulombe, a minor league free-agent signing during the offseason who was last in the majors with the Athletics in 2018. His fastball is 88-90 mph and he throws a slider and curve.
Coulombe has appeared in 153 major league games with the Dodgers and A's.
Also added to the roster was righthander Sean Poppen, who has given up one run on four hits over three innings in a previous stint with the club. Poppen and Coulombe were added from the taxi squad, so they already were on the trip.
Gerrit Cole gave up his opt-out right on Monday and will remain with the New York Yankees under a contract that runs through 2028 rather than become a free agent.
