The impacts of the lockout are still showing throughout baseball nearly two months into the regular season.
In March, baseball fans rejoiced when MLB announced that the season would start only one week behind the initially scheduled Opening Day and that teams would play a full 162-game schedule. Baseball’s owners and executives were happy because they could still get the revenue from a full season while the players agreed to get their full salaries for this season.
It was important for baseball not to miss time and keep the full 162-game slate intact. However, the compromise required some trade-offs to make it work logistically. Regular season games started a week later than initially planned. MLB rescheduled the first handful of games to later dates throughout the season while they built others in as doubleheaders. MLB also added another series beyond the first weekend in October, which usually was baseball’s final weekend of the regular season.
These changes prevented the league from overhauling the entire schedule after a lengthy lockout. Another post-lockout wrinkle? MLB scrapped the rule that made doubleheaders only seven-inning games in the new CBA, reverting to the standard nine-inning game.
Even if these issues may seem small to the casual fan, this change is essential for the players and managers around baseball. All 30 clubs will deal with the conflicts that stem from the schedule. Right now, though, the Minnesota Twins are in the middle of navigating this issue.
Minnesota had five scheduled off-days through the first two months of the season. Last season, the Twins had seven off days at this point, which would be like adding an extra off-day each month. That doesn’t seem like much of a difference. But the day off allows the Twins better prepare for their next stretch of games by allowing them to reset their bullpen pitchers and give their hitters an extra day to make adjustments.
MLB scheduled 20 off-days throughout the 2022 campaign, compared to 22 total off-days in 2021. The calendar seems to even out a little more during the second half of the season. However, there is the extra series tacked on at the end. Remember that the off-days don’t count the three built-in doubleheaders this season.
It’s not just the number of off-days or doubleheaders that play a part in Minnesota’s scheduling troubles this season. MLB penciled in an increased number of stretches with 10-plus games between off-days. There are currently seven periods where the Twins will play 10 or more games between off-days this season, up from the five stretches they had one year ago. Minnesota is currently in the middle of an 18-game stretch, which they started with five straight wins. But lately the team has been fading, with a 3-4 record since then and multiple players missing time, including Carlos Correa and Royce Lewis.
Also, consider that last season was unconventional because it was the first full regular season following COVID-19. MLB was moving games around when outbreaks occurred, which could have caused scheduling conflicts, with multiple games becoming bunched together. However, Minnesota could sidestep most of those issues during the season outside of last April.
Load management has to be Minnesota’s primary theme throughout the 2022 season. Byron Buxton is the most prominent example. He has an injury history, and the Twins are committed to spacing out his appearances to keep him healthy all season. But Buxton isn’t the only case.
Think about how Rocco Baldelli has leaned heavily on his bullpen. Starters like Dylan Bundy and Chris Archer rarely, if at all, push past the sixth inning, where other teams might be more willing to let them pitch through the order a third time. Baldelli would lean heavily on the bullpen early in the season to prevent all of his starters from being stretched out too much early in April. He also created a fluid bullpen hierarchy. Jhoan Durán, Emilio Pagán, and Joe Smith earned high-leverage innings, and Baldelli didn’t shoehorn anyone into specific roles.
Another way to combat this problem could be to tap more into the organization’s overall depth. Lewis and José Miranda highlight the position players who can be called upon to come up and give the veterans some time off. That’s what the Twins did when Correa missed time on the injured list, and Lewis provided a spark that softened the blow of Correa’s absence.
The Twins have slowly built a pipeline of pitchers in the upper levels of the minors, including Durán, Josh Winder, Cole Sands, and others. They’ve leaned on Devin Smeltzer for more innings than other starters like Archer or Bundy. Smeltzer has excelled. He pitched a much-needed six-plus innings in Game 1, a doubleheader on Tuesday, to set the bullpen up in a better position for the nightcap.
Leaning on depth seems like something the Twins could use to their advantage. The issue is that depth has been getting increasingly thinner due to those injuries.
- Lewis is on the injured list with a bone bruise in his knee after crashing into the center-field wall.
- Gilberto Celestino and Joe Ryan are on the COVID list.
- Winder has also spent some time on the IL.
Leaning on younger players to come up and contribute is great in theory. Still, only so many players in Triple-A are ready to come up and regularly contribute on a first-place team. The depth option may be more useful later in the season. However, it’s tough to use right now because of injuries and longer game stretches that could force more players to spend time on the shelf.
That depth could potentially get even thinner by the end of the week. The Twins will be playing a series against the Toronto Blue Jays trip north of the border. Playing in Canada will require all players entering the country to be vaccinated for COVID-19. That could mean the Twins will need to stretch some players out further than the team would like. They also may have to bring up players who wouldn’t be as advantageous in a series against Toronto, one of baseball’s hottest teams. Right now, it’s unclear how much of an impact vaccination status will have on the Twins, but it could create more problems for Baldelli.
Ultimately, the condensed schedule means the Twins need to use load management. Buxton and Correa have already been getting this treatment, but we have seen Baldelli extend it to other starters like Jorge Polanco and Max Kepler.
I know it isn’t fun paying money for a ticket and not seeing Buxton in the lineup. I wish he could be available every night. It’s frustrating when he’s healthy and sitting on the bench due to load management. The Twins have legitimate superstars and rising stars on their team. Fans rightly want to see them play as often as possible.
In the short term, it can feel like they are putting themselves in a tough spot by not leaning more on their veterans. However, Baldelli and the Twins front office have leaned more into the long-term approach to a season. Lewis, Miranda, and Celestino are young players who need big-league at-bats. Baldelli is juggling trying to win games while also putting the young guys in a spot to succeed. And they have to do that on a first-place team.
The major league baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint. Baseball doesn’t have the same “ride or die” mentality with every win or loss as football does. Just like a marathon, a runner needs to get into a rhythm. They need to find a steady pace that allows them to try and give themselves the most consistent performance throughout a race without wasting too much energy in one stretch or losing ground in another.
The naked eye might not always notice the scheduling conflicts, but they also matter a great deal to a team’s rhythm. It matters to teams like the Twins, especially when they are in the middle of one of their 10-plus game stretches. Every team will find its way to navigate through these stretches for the rest of the 2022 season. With 112 games remaining, the Twins need to find their balance soon.
