September is almost here, and the Minnesota Twins are in a favorable position for a playoff push. With a six-game lead over the Cleveland Guardians in the AL Central, FanGraphs has given them a 96 percent chance to win the division.
Ensuring everyone is healthy and acclimated by the end of September is an important part of getting a team ready for the postseason. A strength for most of the year, Minnesota’s pitching is showing some signs of fatigue. People outside the organization have suggested they use a six-man starting rotation. The Twins have the depth to do it, but their decision to send Bailey Ober down indicates that they are looking at another option. The Twins could “piggyback” some starters on top of each other in the same game to supplement their innings.
We may have already gotten a glimpse of Minnesota’s plan for pitching the rest of the season and potentially into October. Ober started Sunday’s game against the Texas Rangers, and Dallas Keuchel pitched five innings of relief. Ober only went four innings and gave up five runs, including a grand slam. Keuchel finished by tossing five shutout frames and allowed the Twins to win 7-6 in extra innings.
Rocco Baldelli mostly piggybacked Ober and Keuchel to avoid overworking the bullpen. It’s only one game, but it’s hard not to get excited about the possibility of the Twins flexing their biggest muscle with their starting pitching depth by piggybacking their starters on top of each other. By piggybacking, Minnesota can rest their starters while not overtaxing their bullpen in the postseason.
Minnesota’s starting rotation has been a strength this season. The Twins’ starters have a 3.84 ERA, fifth-best in the AL, while ranking third in the league with an average of 5.6 innings per start. Pitching deep into games has benefited the Twins throughout the season. However, it might be time to start scaling back on innings to fully prepare for a postseason stretch.
The Twins can’t overwork the starting rotation before the postseason. Sonny Gray has thrown 150 innings already, which puts him on pace for his most innings since 2015 (208). It’s already been the most innings Gray has thrown since 2019. Ober never pitched this many innings in a single season in his career before. The 122.2 innings by Ober in 2023 is well above his previous high of 92.1 innings in 2021. Fatigue was enough of an issue that the Twins sent him down on Monday.
Kenta Maeda is still navigating his first season back from Tommy John surgery and has cooled off in August with a 5.04 ERA in 25 innings over five starts this month. Joe Ryan recently came off the IL following a groin injury. Keuchel’s comeback attempt also likely doesn’t warrant a huge workload of innings because of his higher likelihood to blow up during starts compared to the other Twins pitchers.
Therefore, a six-man rotation might benefit the Twins by giving every starter at least one more day of rest between starts. It also alleviates any starter’s concern that they’d be joining the bullpen, only to have to start again. The idea of a six-man rotation has gained steam with Ryan’s return and Keuchel’s successful outing.
However, teams generally don’t want to rely on six-man rotations because they like to have more options in the bullpen instead of burning that roster spot on someone who only pitches once a week. Piggybacking can help balance the innings, with the main starters staying in their rhythm and the back-end starters still getting their innings.
With a Twins bullpen that’s struggled lately outside of Jhoan Duran and Emilio Pagán, they should leave more innings for Minnesota’s better arms. Minnesota’s 4.03 bullpen ERA ranks 16th in baseball and fifth out of the six American League teams holding onto a playoff spot.
The volume of innings pitched by starters for the rest of the season or postseason won’t be high. Instead of a 6- or 7-inning start, a Twins starting pitcher can go 4 to 6 innings with the piggybacker coming in to pitch anywhere from 2 to 4 innings. It would give everyone who can pitch multiple innings more opportunities and prevent the starters from having to face opposing lineups a third time through the order.
The Twins pitching staff has a .693 team OPS the first time through the order. However, it increases to a .717 OPS when the lineup rolls over a second time through. The Twins have an incredible .670 team OPS the third time through the order. However, the sample size in that instance is nearly twice as small as in the other two situations.
So who would become the starters, and who would be the “piggybackers” in the three-game Wild Card series? Pablo López and Gray have the first two spots locked up. Kenta Maeda and Ryan seem to be battling for the final spot. Given Maeda’s past few starts and his previous experience as a long relief option in the playoffs, the Twins will probably move him to the bullpen in October. Maeda has a 2.87 playoff ERA in 37.2 innings over 25 postseason appearances with only two playoff starts.
Keuchel proved his ability to pitch in long relief last week, albeit in a one-game sample size. Plus, the playoff experience from a World Series champion in Keuchel could help the Twins in October. Other options for the Twins include Louie Varland or Chris Paddack, if he’s healthy. Varland’s fastball could become even more of a weapon because he could optimize it in a smaller inning size, as long as he can reduce his 2.25 HR/9 a bit. Paddack would be the biggest uncertainty coming off of Tommy John Surgery last season. There’s no guarantee he could pitch in 2023, let alone pitch well. Also, there is still a possibility of Ober returning if he can rest and pitches well over the next few weeks.
Expanded rosters can also help the Twins for the rest of the season. They can add an additional pitcher when the roster expands from 26 to 28 players for the remainder of the regular season. It allows the Twins to add another pitcher to help out the bullpen. So they may not piggyback until the postseason.
As Minnesota’s playoff strategy will start to enter the minds of Twins fans in September, handling the pitching staff may be the most important task. As constructed, the bullpen certainly isn’t as daunting as other teams. However, the Twins can make up for that by using their starting pitching depth to their advantage in a non-traditional way to put themselves in a position to finally win that first playoff game since 2004.
