The 2023-24 off-season has been slow for Minnesota Twins fans, but the team has been busy acquiring as many relief pitchers as possible.
When the off-season began, the Twins had enough names on their 40-man roster to fill the back end of their bullpen. But the seventh and eighth spots were up for limited debate on whether Josh Winder, Cole Sands, or Kody Funderburk would fill those roles.
Now there’s seemingly an endless number of names to fill not only the last two spots in the bullpen but also the entire bottom half as the Twins have added five relievers to the 40-man this off-season and another four non-roster invitees.
Between players on the 40-man and non-roster invitees, the Twins have 25 pitchers in camp who could all play a role, big or small, in the bullpen next year.
If everything stays healthy for these guys in camp, Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax, Caleb Thielbar, Brock Stewart, Justin Topa, and Steven Okert should be on the Twins Opening Day roster. These six veterans were reliable relievers last year.
Twins fans already know what Duran, Jax, Thielbar, and Stewart can bring out of the bullpen. They were the four projected to be in Minnesota’s top half of the bullpen as the off-season began. Now they’ll be shuffled around with the two relievers acquired via trade.
Topa was the headline reliever the Twins acquired. He pitched for 75 games for the Seattle Mariners and posted a 2.61 ERA in 69 innings. His workload last year was a massive increase from the previous three seasons of his career; he only pitched a total of 17 games across three years with the Milwaukee Brewers.
Adding Topa alleviates the workload of fellow right-handers Jax and Stewart, and the three can strike a better balance of innings thrown to avoid being overworked. Topa also has the least strikeout pitches among this trio. Fans will harken back to the days of former pitching coach Rick Anderson when the Twins exclusively had pitch-to-contact arms.
Okert is an intriguing addition to the bullpen and the first left-handed reliever the Twins have acquired for the bullpen since signing Zach Duke in 2018. I’m not alone in admiring Okert as someone who would be a strong secondary lefty to balance matchups alongside Thielbar.
He only throws a slider and fastball against all hitters, but he dominates with the slider. Opposing hitters only had a .194 batting average in 150 at-bats. Okert’s slider boosts his strikeout percentage, which ranks in the 89th percentile of relievers in baseball. The balance of having Okert doesn’t put the weight of all late-inning, lefty vs. lefty matchups on Thielbar as it was for most of last season.
Topa and Okert are the new names headlining the bullpen options among many more relievers battling for the final two spots on Opening Day. The Twins signed Jay Jackson and Josh Staumont to one-year deals, and they could fill those two spots depending on how their Spring Training goes.
Jackson has had an intriguing career. Taken in the ninth round of the 2008 draft by the Cubs, Jackson bounced around in the minors for four organizations before debuting with the San Diego Padres in 2015. He didn’t pitch again until 2019 with the Brewers when he threw 30 ⅓ innings in 28 games.
Jackson had the best season of his brief career with the Toronto Blue Jays last year. He had a 2.12 ERA, 0.91 WHIP, and 202 ERA+ in 29 ⅔ innings. Jackson’s season is nearly equivalent to what they saw from Stewart in 2023. Jackson and Stewart will likely pitch in the same role of getting the three out minimum, then handing it off to the next guy.
Jackson would fit best as one of the first guys out of the bullpen, even if it’s only 35-40 times in a season, and can be one of the better late-bloomer relievers seen in recent memory.
Staumont is returning from thoracic outlet syndrome, one of the hardest injuries any pitcher has to recover from. But Staumont has told reporters that he’s entering spring training at 100%.
Unlike Tommy John surgery, there isn’t as much of a pool of pitchers who have had success after undergoing the thoracic outlet syndrome surgery. Alex Cobb had the surgery in 2011 and is still pitching. Kenny Rogers (not the gambler) underwent the surgery in 2001 when he was 36 and continued pitching until he was 43.
Cobb and Rogers are starters, though. Staumont will not have nearly as large a workload in innings as these two. That could be an advantage in his recovery. But first, he’ll need to prove a healthy track record in Spring Training following a 5.40 ERA in 20 innings with the Royals last year.
The Twins could start their bullpen this season with these eight guys alone. But players like Louie Varland, Simeon Woods Richardson, Josh Winder, Cole Sands, Zack Weiss, Jorge Alcala, Matt Canterino, Kody Funderburk, and Brent Headrick will be fighting for one of those open spots.
Injuries will trickle out some of the decisions Falvey and Levine must make as spring training takes shape along with more transactions. Watching the names get etched into the bullpen spots for Opening Day will be a fun part of camp. But as the reality of a baseball season has shown us, there’s no such thing as having too many arms for the bullpen. It’s a good problem the Twins have created for themselves.
