Max Kepler did some running in the outfield a couple of hours before Saturday's game to allow the Twins to evaluate the condition of his sore right knee.
Twins give Max Kepler extra time to heal; Matt Wallner joins team
With the regular right fielder still experiencing soreness, the team put him on the injured list made a move to replace his lefthanded bat in the lineup.
April 9, 2023 at 4:38AM
Matt Wallner was wearing a Twins uniform by game time, a walking symbol of how Kepler's workout went.
"He didn't have a setback, but he still feels, when decelerating, some pain," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said of Kepler, whom the Twins placed on the 10-day injured list late Saturday morning. "So instead of continually saying 'day-to-day' and having an inactive 'active' player, on the roster but not available to do much, he's going to have another week to get this thing right."
Kepler tweaked his knee while running out an infield single during Monday's win in Miami. The injury isn't serious, Baldelli said, but he needs time to "rid himself of the inflammation and the pain. Hopefully he's back soon."
He'll be eligible, assuming the Twins backdate the move the maximum three days, next Saturday while the Twins are in New York.
Until then, Wallner, the Forest Lake native who appeared in 18 major league games last season, will be available to play the outfield.
"We're going to mix and match our guys right now, [but] he's going to see some action," particularly against righthanded pitching, Baldelli said. "I don't see us running one lineup out there against righthanders right now."
Especially not if Joey Gallo remains sidelined. The outfielder/first baseman had treatment for what the Twins term "right-side soreness" on Saturday. They also had some imaging done of the injured area, and got some "good news," Baldelli said without elaborating.
Oliva remembers DH homer
Jordan Alvarez's grand slam off Joe Ryan on Saturday was the 16,456th home run by a designated hitter in MLB history.
The man who hit the first one — 50 years ago this week — was on hand at Target Field to see it.
"I remember it. It was a lot of fun," said Hall of Fame outfielder Tony Oliva, who connected for the Twins in Oakland during the first inning on April 6, 1973, the first day that American League pitchers were no longer required to hit for themselves.
Oliva didn't realize he had made history by delivering the first home run under the newly adopted DH rule, but he remembers the at-bat vividly. He remembers taking advantage of a fellow Hall of Famer's knowledge of his tendencies.
"Catfish [Hunter] was the pitcher, and he knew I always used to take the first pitch, especially in my first at-bat. He knows I'm taking," Oliva recalled. "So the first pitch he throws, it's right there [in the middle], so I swung. And I smoked that ball. I hit that ball so far, it was unbelievable — into the second deck of the [Oakland Coliseum]."
The homer may have been a bigger landmark for Oliva than for baseball history. It was the first time he had homered in 20 months, since Aug. 28, 1971, due to the career-crippling knee injury he had suffered earlier that season. Oliva remembers wondering if he would be a Twin much longer.
"I was thinking maybe Minnesota was going to release me. In those days, if you made some money and weren't able to play, you're hurt, it was easy to release you. Who knows?" Oliva said. "I went to spring training, and I still couldn't play that much in the spring because I wasn't able to run."
Fortunately, the American League had responded to the leaguewide decline in offense by instituting the designated hitter rule that spring. It probably saved Oliva's career.
"People make a big deal about the first home run, but [the rule] helped me. I couldn't play the outfield, so they gave me a chance to keep playing," said Oliva, who batted .291 with 16 homers and 92 RBI as the Twins' first DH. "I wasn't the same ballplayer. I was still limping. But I had a great year."
From error to hit
The Twins had an extra celebration in their player's lunchroom on Saturday, when Baldelli informed Gallo that his first at-bat of the season — a ground ball that Royals right fielder MJ Melendez bobbled just behind the infield — had been ruled a hit by MLB.
After it was originally ruled an error on Melendez, Baldelli said, "we put together a good case" for an appeal, and Gallo, who hadn't had a ground-ball hit into a shifted defense since 2021, was excited to learn of the change.
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.
