How many closers do the Minnesota Twins have?
Well, they have 11 pitchers who have recorded at least one of the team’s 17 saves, and now the Twins have decided to add to that melange after they picked up another reliever who was designated for assignment.
And why not?
The Twins’ have the sixth highest bullpen ERA in all of baseball, according to MLB Trade Rumors, and they struggled in a recent series loss to the Kansas City Royals, including back-to-back one-run defeats. So the team went out and grabbed right-hander Taylor Rashi who was let go by the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Rashi’s numbers don’t exactly jump off the page — he pitched to a 5.40 ERA across 13 major league games, MLB Trade Rumors reports — but he did show better form at Triple-A Reno where he posted a solid ERA of 1.03 across 26-plus innings.
The question, of course, is: Will Rashi actually help? I guess the answer is he won’t necessarily hurt the team, but it does feel a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Why are the Twins even in this position? In a cost-cutting move, 10 players were traded last year, including the team’s best relievers: Jhoan Duran, Louis Varland, Griffin Jax and Danny Coulombe.
Extra innings…
–Outfielder Max Kepler, who spent 10 seasons with the Twins before moving on to the Philadelphia Phillies as a free agent, has found a new home after he signed a one-year deal with the Diamondbacks. However, he currently is still serving an 80-game suspension for taking performance enhancing drugs.
Kepler’s best season was in 2019 when he was a card-carrying member of the Twins’ Bomba squad, a team that clubbed a major league record 307 home runs. Kepler hit 36 of them.
–The Twins’ designated Simeon Woods Richardson for assignment and he was later picked up by the Toronto Blue Jays. SWR on Monday pitched four scoreless innings in a 5-2 loss to the Phillies. He allowed just one hit with three strikeouts on 48 pitches, 30 of them landing for strikes.