Twins' Rocco Baldelli, Sonny Gray at ease over Thursday's early pull

Rocco Baldelli and Sonny Gray have reached a truce in their disagreement over whether Gray was removed from Thursday's start too early, the Twins manager said a day later. That doesn't mean either one was convinced by the other, though.

"When you sit down with someone," as they did in Baldelli's office after the game, "it doesn't mean everyone is going to be in total agreement on all aspects of what happened," Baldelli said. "I thought [the discussion] was good. I don't know if Sonny's going to be overly happy and pleased over the next few days, but ultimately, he's going to be just fine, and he's going to be ready for his next start."

Baldelli decided to go to his bullpen after Gray completed only four innings, in part because Gray needed 35 pitches, and had thrown 79 overall, to retire the Tigers in the fourth inning. Gray objected to the move and had an animated discussion with Baldelli in the dugout over it. It was the third time in four starts that Gray, whose 2.37 ERA is fourth-best in the American League, had been lifted before reaching 80 pitches.

At least one of Gray's teammates was impressed with his intensity and desire.

"It's that bulldog mentality to keep going out there and fighting for your team," Byron Buxton said of Gray's objection. "Everybody in here, that's what we keep reiterating — be a bulldog. I don't care if you're 0-for-20 with 20 [strikeouts] or 20-for-20 with 20 homers, every day you step in the box or get on the pitcher's mound, be your bulldog. That's all that matters."

Baldelli said he understands Gray's point, one that starting pitchers feel particularly fierce about.

"They gear themselves up mentally for days. They prepare and they do everything that leads up to their game. A lot of times they think, 'This is my game,'" Baldelli said. "And that's OK. It's what allows them to compete and to desire the success they need to have for us to be good. They need to have that kind of mentality, where they are just solely focused on what they need to do."

His job, however, is to decide what's best for the team, not the pitcher, Baldelli said. Even though Thursday's decision didn't work — the Tigers scored three runs off reliever Jovani Moran in the next inning — he said he would make it again.

"You can understand why they get wound up or why they get excited or why they feel strongly about something. Totally understandable. If you can't handle that as a staff or as a manager, having those kinds of conversations, then you're going to make a lot of bad decisions by simply doing what the easy thing is all the time," Baldelli said. "That wasn't an easy decision in yesterday's game. I can't sit here and say I thought it was. But you still have to do what you think is right sometimes, even when it's the most challenging possible scenario that you're picking."

Righthander José De León, whose most recent MLB start came on April 11, 2021, while with the Reds, will start Saturday's game against the Tigers. Why? The Twins have decided to give the starting rotation a day off, Baldelli said, since the schedule doesn't give them one for almost two more weeks.

"As the season goes on, if you can grab them an extra day, it gives them an extra day to recover, an extra day mentally," Baldelli said. "As pitchers' [velocity] has continued to climb, workload-wise, that extra day helps."

The Twins have started a pitcher who has had only four days of rest just 15 times in 70 games. But that doesn't mean the Twins are completely abandoning the standard five-day schedule for their pitchers, he emphasized. "Guys are still going to have to be prepared to go on five days," he said. "They're going to be going on five days, probably, sometime soon."

Twins righthander Kenta Maeda gave up a run on two hits and four walks in the Class AAA Saints' 8-3, 10-inning victory at Louisville on Friday night, striking out four in his fourth rehab start. Maeda threw 81 pitches, 46 for strikes. Matt Wallner hit his eighth home run of the season for the Saints, who scored seven runs in the top of the 10th after the Bats left the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth.