Nearly eight seasons after leaving Cleveland to lead the Twins baseball operations department, Derek Falvey finally has starting pitching talent flowing to the majors.
Neal: Festa. Matthews. Woods Richardson. Varland. Can the Twins count on them down the stretch?
The good news is that Derek Falvey has created a pipeline of young starters. The bad news? They’re being thrown into the fire.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
August 18, 2024 at 3:00AM
Simeon Woods Richardson, 23, bailed out the rotation when Louie Varland was sent to the minors early in the season.
David Festa, 24, hasn’t been in the majors two months; Zebby Matthews, 24, hasn’t been in the majors a week. Both have shown they have potential to thrive at this level.
Don’t forget about Varland, 26, who was given another chance and pitched effectively on Wednesday against Kansas City.
These young arms should elicit strong feelings among Twins fans:
Excitement that the Twins have the right infrastructure in place to produce such talent.
Optimism that the pipeline will keep them competitive in the future.
And absolute horror that they have been thrown into a pennant race.
Falvey, the Twins president of baseball operations, arrived with an acumen in pitching development from a franchise known for solid starting staffs. He agreed it has taken a little longer than he wished to implement something similar with the Twins.
“I think back to when I first got here and, you know, kind of figuring out what the what the construct was in the minor leagues, what we were doing to develop, how we were syncing that up with what we’re doing in scouting,” he said, “and making sure that we were looking for certain types of traits, knowing what we could do developmentally in the minor leagues, knowing what we were good at, and making sure that we leaned into that. That takes a lot of time, you know.
“That took me over the course of years in Cleveland with a whole group of people there. A handful of years to even build up the infrastructure to get to a place where we could really start to hum. That was true here, too.”
To come up with a batch of promising starting pitching prospects, you need to begin with about a dozen of them. Some won’t be good enough. Some will succumb to injuries. Some, like Griffin Jax and Jhoan Duran, will end up as relievers. Guiding them up the minor league ladder isn’t simple.
The Twins aren’t willing to spend market value for quality free agent starters, and they deserve criticism for not being more flexible at times. Consequently, they must be better than most of their opponents at scouting and developing pitching prospects.
The Twins’ setup is beginning to click.
They no longer have Fall Instructional League, opting for a series of offseason minicamps in which they drill deeply into growth and development. There’s a power development program during which prospects like Festa and Matthews have added velocity to their fastballs. And there are more pitching prospects in the queue.
Righthander Andrew Morris, recently promoted to Class AAA St. Paul, was on the radar of multiple teams during pre-deadline trade discussions. He’s allowed just four homers in 105⅓ innings while posting a 1.97 ERA at three different levels. Righthander Charlee Soto is 18 and pitching at Class A Fort Myers, hitting 96 mph on the gun with an 88-90 mph change-up. Righthander Cory Lewis, the Twins minor league pitcher of the year last season, has a hard knuckleball (low-to-mid 80s) as part of his repertoire as he develops at Class AA Wichita.
The future looks tantalizing. The near future looks promising. The present: Troubling.
The Twins are trying to catch Cleveland for the AL Central division title while holding off Kansas City. Pablo López and Bailey Ober are two reliable starters, followed by rookies. They are tasked with continuing their development while pitching their team into October baseball. That’s being thrown into the fire. The bullpen is short on depth because of its own injury issues, so it can’t always be leaned on.
There will be times when the kids show how talented they are — and times when they show how inexperienced they are.
Conclusion: The offense must come to the rescue. Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton can’t get off the injury list fast enough. There will be plenty of suspense on the mound over the final weeks of the regular season.
The Tampa Bay Rays will play their 2025 home games at the New York Yankees’ nearby spring training ballpark amid uncertainty about the future of hurricane-damaged Tropicana Field, Rays executives told The Associated Press.
