The struggling Minnesota Twins bullpen isn’t going to fix itself.
Can a few members of the current group step up and become usable pieces? Of course, but it’s unreasonable to dream of contention when you’re hoping for mere passability.
As a group, Twins relievers rank 27th in baseball with a 5.03 ERA and a 65.2% strand rate, and dead last with a .266 opponents’ batting average allowed. Opponents have a miss rate of just 21% against the Twins bullpen (lowest in baseball), and even with the count stacked against them with two strikes, they’ve found a way to get on base at a league-best .309 clip against this beleaguered group.
The numbers under the hood aren’t much prettier. Minnesota’s relievers have the third-worst Win Probability Added (-2.07) and a 4.74 expected ERA.
The relief corps was the clear weak spot of the team after the trade deadline and into the offseason last year, and the club mostly added along the fringes instead of making meaningful additions to the back end. Now the club is seeing the inaction come back to bite them in the early going.
Some internal reinforcements could be on the way in the form of rotation depth turning to relief ringers. However, those types of decisions usually happen in the offseason or later in the summer rather than in April and May. So until that becomes a realistic possibility, what can the team do to plug the holes at the bottom of their bullpen boat before the whole thing sinks their season?
The near-term answer might come from a scrap heap as other teams drop arms from their respective groups. Is it a fool-proof solution? Of course not, but neither is sitting on your hands while the season sunsets itself before school lets out.
With that said, here are a couple of recently waived relief arms who could help shore up Minnesota’s bullpen.
Jordan Romano
I’m not suggesting that a guy who was rocking a 10.13 ERA before the Los Angeles Angels released him is going to come in and solve Minnesota’s bullpen woes. He had an extended stretch as one of the premier relievers in the American League from 2021 to 2023, where he had a sterling 2.37 ERA and 95 saves. I’m certainly not calling for them to bring him aboard and immediately throw him into high-leverage situations.
But Romano does possess some interesting qualities that might interest the Twins. Despite the unsightly results with the Halos, his underlying numbers suggest he was hit by some bad luck, including a .414 batting average on balls in play, a not-horrible 4.35 expected ERA, and a 4.39 FIP. The strikeouts are still there (28.3% K rate), but so are the walks.
Now that he has been officially released, he is free to sign with any team. Maybe the Twins can help refine his repertoire, which saw his breaking-ball offerings completely demolished, in hopes of finding a decent middle relief option.
Albert Suárez
A veteran of five MLB seasons and five years in NPB and KBO, the 36-year-old finds himself looking for a new opportunity after the Baltimore Orioles designated him for assignment this week. He has never had big strikeout numbers (18.5% K rate in MLB), but the veteran continues to find ways to get outs. Even this year, he has a respectable 3.45 ERA in 15 innings pitched.
Suárez’s pitch mix is that of a starting pitcher, but each offering has something to like, which makes me think that he could still offer something to a big league bullpen. His fastball averages around 93 MPH, which isn’t exciting by any means, but he mixes it well with a curveball and cutter that both get a good amount of swinging misses.
At this point, it might be a relief (no pun intended) to get another veteran in the mix, even if only to help give the young pitchers another perspective on how to get outs without a high-octane heater.
As I said, neither of these arms is going to come in and save a bullpen that is bleeding runs on a near-daily basis. It’s going to take the continued development of higher-ceiling youngsters, many of whom are still in the rotation at the big league and Triple-A level. But until the front office decides to pull the trigger on transforming some of them to relief weapons — just as they did for guys like Griffin Jax, Jhoan Duran, and Louie Varland — they’re going to need a bridge that keeps this thing somewhat afloat.
