St. Paul – Triple-A pitching staffs face some of the hardest challenges in baseball. They’re dealing with a constant shuffling of arms moving back and forth from the majors, prospects getting their first call-up, and, like any other team, their fair share of injuries.
The St. Paul Saints are no exception to this, but they’ve had a college of their own of late. They have only one pitcher who’s operating as a typical starter, Ryan Gallagher, Minnesota’s No. 17 prospect per MLB Pipeline.
To balance the rotation workload, the Saints are shuffling their arms, using the pitch-four-innings-every-four-days plan to make starts even if the rotation isn’t their home for the long term.
“We have a situation where you have guys in many different situations, and I don’t know if I would say I have one general strategy,” said Saints former pitching coach Ryan Ricci, who is now a coach at Grand Canyon University. “I think you kind of just look at the grand scheme of the week, and you can work backwards off of that for each reliever.”
Ed. note: This interview with Ricci was conducted on June 18, prior to his leaving the Twins organization for a coaching position at Grand Canyon University.
With a shortage of pitchers, the Saints have their starters on a four-day plan, which includes Aaron Rozek, John Klein, Ty Langenberg, Kendry Rojas, and Ricky Castro. However, Castro landed on the 7-day IL with a right rotator cuff strain on Sunday.
With the Saints shuffling their pitchers’ roles in any given week, it’s benefited them to have a veteran of the Twins farm system, such as Rozek, who has been thrown in almost every situation a minor-league pitcher can have and has adapted well to it this season.
“I’m throwing the ball well. I don’t really care what role I’m in, as I’ve said in the past,” Rozek said. “I just care about getting innings and competing out there with the team. Obviously, yeah, it’s not traditional, but right now it’s working. That’s all we can do is trust the process and see where it leads us.”
“We’ve got a lot of traditional starters now. We have guys that are on the three- or four-day rotation, multiple innings out of the bullpen each day,” said Saints manager Brian Dinkelman. “We have enough arms to find ways to get guys in there and get through multiple innings that kind of just help bridge the gap to the next guy.”
Players are frequently up and down from Triple-A and the Majors, and veteran arms have opted out of minor-league deals for other opportunities. Still, the Saints have had to have the occasional game or two in a series where they’ve used a reliever to pitch the first or second inning before handing it over to the bulk guy.
Trent Baker was one of the relievers who started last Sunday, June 21, in St. Paul’s crushing 15-12 loss to Omaha. Marco Raya had done the same before his call-up to the majors last Wednesday. Even though the relievers on the four-day plan offer more stability, the Saints still have to get creative from time to time on how they use their pitchers, especially in high-scoring games.
“It definitely gets tricky, and I think like, you can kind of look at the grand scheme of the week, figure out what’s best for each guy,” said Ricci.
“Sometimes we get creative, use guys in dirty innings, like maybe to just clean up an out or two to make sure they’re getting some consistent work. Whoever gets consistent work today, the guys realize we’re tight on coverage, so we had some bullpen guys throw higher intensity and touch and feels in pens so they’re still getting some high-intensity work.”
Relievers making starts have become less common for the Saints as the season has progressed. St. Paul has also gotten some stability with a rotation of Rozek, Gallagher, Langenburg, Klein and Rojas. Rozek is the only one in the group on the four-day plan and has been pitching above five innings lately, going six full in two of his last three starts.
Still, the Saints can’t lock in that rotation for long. The Twins had Bailey Ober start a rehab assignment at High-A Cedar Rapids this past Sunday. They could move him up to St. Paul and fill in a rotation spot there. Even with player development a top priority for Triple-A, teams still go out every night to win, and five years ago they were still rolling out as close to a traditional rotation as they could.
The Saints aren’t worried about a traditional rotation because they are ensuring their pitchers adapt to the roles best suited to them and become as MLB-ready as possible. It’s seemed to work for plenty of guys who could be in the Twins bullpen plans long term in 2027 and beyond.
“I typically feel good enough to throw on that fourth day in a five-man, six-man rotation, so it’s not a big change,” said Rozek.
“Obviously, throughout the course of a year, we’ll see how it goes. A lot of guys have had success, and I think just in general it ebbs and flows throughout the year, kind of where your soreness happens throughout the year, versus a traditional five-man rotation or six-man rotation. So it’s always a learning curve, and it’s fun.”
“Well, I think that’s part of the beauty of that role, is those guys still get structured work,” said Ricci. “I think those guys, they get a few different things: They get exposure in the bullpen experience so they’re not always starting. Sometimes they get brought into dirty innings; they can get used to coming into innings out of the pen. And we still get that touch and feel in between outings.
“We get them off the mound, we get them some quality work and get some reps in. So it’s kind of like it’s the best of both worlds, where they are technically are on a schedule, so we can almost treat them like a starter, with just less volume between outings.”
