St. Paul – Over the last decade or so, teams across Major League and Minor League Baseball have taken more precautions with pitchers’ workloads and pitch counts in April.
The 2025 St. Paul Saints are no exception to this rule.
The Saints have three of the Minnesota Twins’ top pitching prospects in their starting rotation: Zebby Matthews, Andrew Morris, and Marco Raya. Matthews has pitched five innings in each of his starts and thrown no more than 80 pitches.
During his most recent outing on April 15, Matthews only threw 71 pitches to get through five innings and hand the ball off to long reliever Travis Adams for the rest of the game. The St. Paul Saints won that game 2-1 over the Iowa Cubs. St. Paul’s bullpen needed rest following a bullpen game on Friday, April 11, and had nine combined innings between their last homestand’s Saturday and Sunday games.
“Our bullpen put up a lot of work this weekend, with the starters going up and the stuff we had,” said Saints manager Toby Gardenhire after the last homestand. “So it was good for those guys, it was awesome, they pitched their butts off against every single batter, which is great.”
RHP Alex Speas was one of St. Paul’s bullpen game standouts on April 11. Speas went 2 ⅓ scoreless innings with five strikeouts in the Saints’ 6-4 win that Friday. Speas hadn’t recorded an outing with over two innings pitched since he was in High-A Ball in the Texas Rangers organization in 2018.
“Honestly, those outings are one of the ones where not much is going on in the brain, and I’m just being in the moment,” said Speas. “Then the momentum and rhythm of telling myself to work slowly, not be overaggressive, and today was one of those days where everything just felt good and was in the zone.”
“Speas was electric,” added Saints pitching coach Jonas Lovin. “He throws a low effort 99 MPH if I’ve ever seen it. When he can be smooth and fluent, it’s impressive. That was really fun to see from Alex, we hadn’t seen it yet, but obviously he’ll keep getting the ball.”
While in Iowa, the Saints avoided having to play another bullpen game. Their series finale was rained out on Sunday, and Twins starter Pablo López made a rehab start the day before. Still, Saints relievers pitched 27 ⅔ innings, including position player Anthony Prato, who pitched 1 ⅓ innings in their 20-6 loss on Wednesday. Meanwhile, they got 17 ⅓ innings from their starters during their road trip, which put more strain on relievers’ workload much earlier than they’d like.
“This early in the year, guys aren’t always built up to handle that workload,” said Lovin. “We did our best to navigate it, but ultimately, it was then executing when they needed to execute. Honestly, not just to get the win but to keep pitch counts down enough to get through the game.”
Darren McCaughan will fill a role similar to Caleb Boushley‘s last season, make starts in the Minors, and pitch long relief in the Majors. McCaughan re-signed with the Twins organization after they DFA’d him from the major league roster on April 7. His first appearance was an April 13 start with the Saints, and they put McCaughan on a 65-pitch limit.
He threw 68 pitches through four scoreless innings in his Saints debut and made another appearance out of the bullpen following López’s start on Saturday. McCaughan has been a starter for most of his career. However, at this point, it doesn’t matter what point of the game he’s throwing.
“I think at this point in my career, I’m just a pitcher,” said McCaughan. “Whichever the team needs me to be ready for. But I’m ready for multiple innings, so whenever it’s time for me to start, and I think there could be times where I pitch out of the bullpen, too.”
Gardenhire saw McCaughan plenty in spring training and liked what he had to offer on the mound. He knows that whenever he gets back to the big leagues, it will most likely be as a reliever. Still, he will be a valuable asset to the Saints’ pitching staff either way.
“I saw him in spring training a lot,” said Gardenhire. “He’s got good stuff, he throws the ball over the plate, he attacks. [McCaughan has] a really good mix. I like the way his arm looks, so it’s fun. He’s a good, good pitcher.”
The Saints will have to reconfigure their starting rotation after their first game of their upcoming homestand against the Pittsburgh Pirates Triple-A squad in Indianapolis. Matthews will start the day game on Tuesday. However, there will be doubleheaders on Wednesday and Friday to make up for their rained-out games from Opening weekend.
Morris is lined up to make one of the starts on Wednesday, and Raya is lined up to start Thursday’s game. However, with Randy Dobnak on the IL with a right ankle sprain, one of McCaughan, Cory Lewis, or Travis Adams must make a start in his place.
Not to mention, López is expected to return to the Twins on Thursday, and they could option David Festa back to the minors. However, Festa is expected to start for the Twins on Wednesday. That would make him ineligible to pitch Sunday and set up Matthews for two starts in a series for the first time this season.
Mapping out how the Saints’ rotation will look this week, it’s all but certain that one of the doubleheader games on either Wednesday or Friday will end up being a bullpen game. They will have to hope for strong outings from Matthews and Morris to get them deep into the games so that when the bullpen games land, their relievers can be at their best and far from overworked.
“When you have those bullpen days, there’s a little bit of weight on your shoulders when you come in,” said Speas. “So you just do your best for your team to get the job done.”
