St. Paul – Tony Oliva has made a habit of visiting the St. Paul Saints clubhouse once or twice a season since they became the Minnesota Twins’ Triple-A affiliate in 2021. He had to put the visit on hold this season due to health issues that arose earlier in the year. Still, Oliva found time in his schedule to attend CHS Field during the Saints’ final homestand last week.
Oliva spoke with several of the Saints players and coaches, but he spent over half an hour with fellow Cuban Kendry Rojas pre-game on Wednesday, September 10. Rojas joined the Twins organization on July 31 as part of the return from the Toronto Blue Jays for Louis Varland.
The start to his Twins tenure hasn’t been all that spectacular. He’s made seven starts for the Saints and allowed 19 earned runs off of 33 hits and 21 walks in 24 innings. Rojas, 22, is still adjusting to life at Triple-A as he only made one start for the Blue Jays affiliate in Buffalo before the trade. But one of the perks he gets from being in St. Paul that he wouldn’t have anywhere else is the easy access to a Cuban baseball legend like Tony O.
“This is an opportunity to meet some of these players and meet them in person,” Oliva said last Wednesday after his visit with Rojas. “I met Rojas, a fellow from Cuba, too, who is here. Yeah, I wanted to talk to him to tell him, ‘Welcome to the club, welcome to Minnesota.’ I hope he has a long career here. I hear he has a good arm.”
Rojas has a good arm, as he’s demonstrated in the lower levels of the minors, posting a 2.43 ERA and 1.11 WHIP in 55 ⅔ innings at High-A last year. Rojas has stuff. It’s just execution of pitches and their location that have been causing him a ton of trouble at Triple-A, where he owns a 7.76 ERA in 29 innings between Buffalo and St. Paul.
“Well, I’m feeling good, and I have a couple of teammates I feel like I’m getting help from them, and they are helping me to find the way back,” said Rojas after his start last Sunday. “I’m just working on fighting through all the toughness of this season, so I’m focusing on that right now and getting back on track.”
Rojas’ latest start during the final game at CHS Field this year showed small, but promising steps in his turning things around. The first two innings were not stellar. He allowed four runs on three walks, four hits, and a hit batter. In the third and fourth, Rojas still allowed three singles but struck out half the batters he needed for outs and didn’t allow any runs to score.
It was the first time in three starts that Rojas made it past the third inning. He’s hoping to build on the momentum from his last two outings to secure a strong start to the 2025 season in Memphis.
“I just focused on executing the pitches and just forgot about the bad happening, and just focused on the positive side,” he said.
“Before we got him, he only had one outing at Triple-A,” said Saints manager Toby Gardenhire. “He’s been kind of pushing through the system fast, but he’s extremely talented, and he’s going to be very good for a very long time. So these little bumps in the road, he’s going to get through them, and he’s going to be a good one.”
Rojas features a slider, sinker, and changeup in addition to his fastball. The pitch locations have been most challenging for his sinker and changeup, which most commonly land outside the strike zone. Rojas will emphasize refining his mechanics with those two pitches so they are not as wild next season, believing he can use them as strikeout pitches to righties and lefties.
“The most important part is going to be working on my command, getting my pitches going in the right way,” said Rojas. “Add an extra two pitches in the mix and just command it better. Just work on the command and the execution of the pitches I have and the ones I want to work with.”
“He’s got great stuff; he’s just got to figure out how to get through it,” Gardenhire said. “That’s going to be the big thing for him, but the good news on him is that he’s young and he’s playing at Triple-A.”
However, Rojas will most cherish his time with Oliva. He and Oliva are forever bonded as fellow countrymen. Whenever Rojas makes his MLB debut with the Twins, he’ll be the first Cuban-born player on their roster since Kendrys Morales in 2014. It’s something Oliva is excited about for next year.
“He told me to just keep a positive mind, just keep working hard, follow what the coaches say,” Rojas said. “They’re always going to work hard for you to be the best, and especially the most important recommendation he said is always listen and work hard.”
“I tell them to listen to what the coach has to say, you have to work hard, and the most important for the players is to believe in who you are, first,” said Oliva. “You have to find out what you can do to help yourself and become a better ballplayer.
“That’s one of the things I tell these kids. And not just to work hard, but work smart because everyone is saying, ‘Work hard, work hard,’ but they don’t know what it’s about. There’s a lot of things you can work on to make yourself better and help the ballclub to be better.”
