Twins Minor League Report (8/3): Louie Varland Just Might Be Back!!

[Seth Stohs]

Louie Varland appears to have figured some things out and should soon be back with the Twins soon. Our Minor League Hitter of the Month celebrated with another big home run on Saturday. Lefties Aaron Rozek and Jordan Carr were terrific. Connor Prielipp was back on the mound for the Kernels. Check out Saturday's Minor League Report. 

Image courtesy of Rob Thompson, St. Paul Saints

 

CURRENT W-L Records
Minnesota Twins: 60-48
St. Paul Saints: 54-52
Wichita Wind Surge: 42-59
Cedar Rapids Kernels: 55-44
Fort Myers Mighty Mussels: 51-46
FCL Twins: 27-31 (season complete)
DSL Twins: 23-19 

TRANSACTIONS
Poncho Ruiz was promoted from Fort Myers to Cedar Rapids. Isaac Pena transferred from Fort Myers to the FCL Twins roster. 

2024 draft picks Kyle DeBarge (Comp), Billy Amick (2nd), Khadim Diaw (3rd) and Jaime Ferrer (4th) have been added to the Fort Myers roster and will be starting their professional careers. 

Cedar Rapids C Dillon Tatum has been released by the Twins organization. The Twins also released RHP Matt Helwig from the Mighty Mussels. 

SAINTS SENTINEL
St. Paul 5, Iowa 1
Box Score
The Saints put a couple of crooked numbers on the scoreboard, and Louie Varland put together arguably the best start of his season, to gain a nice win in Des Moines.

Let’s start with Louie! The St. Paul native tossed six shutout innings. He gave up five hits and one walk, and he had eight strikeouts. All five hits were singles. 70% of his 86 pitches were strikes. It’s really hard to ask for anything more than that.   

With one out in the top of the third inning, Edouard Julien got things started with a single. Yunior Severino followed with a single as well. A wild pitch put runners on second and third. Julien scored on a Jair Camargo ground out. Rylan Bannon walked. That brought Wynton Bernard to the plate and he drove in two runs with a double. 

The score remained 3-0 Saints until the bottom of the sixth inning. With one out, Payton Eeles triples to right and scored on a Dalton Shuffield double. With two outs, Shuffield scored on a single by DaShawn Keirsey that made it 5-0. 

 

Josh Winder had two strikeouts in a perfect seventh inning. Matt Bowman was charged with an unearned run in the eighth inning. Diego Castillo came in for the ninth. He gave up two hits, but no runs, to end the game with a 5-1 lead. 

The Saints notched eight hits and five walks. DaShawn Keirsey went 2-for-5 with an RBI. He also stole his 25th base of the season. Six other Saints had at least one hit. The two Saints starters that didn’t have a hit? Camargo still had an RBI, and Bannon walked twice.  

WIND SURGE WISDOM
Wichita 1, NW Arkansas 4
Box Score
The Wind Surge got another very solid start from lefty Aaron Rozek on Saturday night, but the offense was just unable to provide the offensive support needed. 

 

The southpaw from Burnsville gave up two runs on five hits in 5 2/3 innings. He had eight strikeouts to go with no walks. Travis Floyd came on and gave up two runs (1 earned) on two hits and a walk in 1 1/3 innings. Kyle Bischoff came on and gave up just a walk and two strikeouts over two scoreless, hitless innings. 

Wichita went scoreless until the eighth inning. Jorel Ortega led off the inning with his eighth home run of the season. 

 

 Two flyouts and a groundout ended that inning. In the bottom of the ninth, Aaron Sabato walked with two outs. But that was it and the Wind Surge fell 4-1. 

The Wind Surge had just six hits. Along with Ortega’s home run, Ben Ross’s 14th double of the season was the only other extra base hit. 

KERNELS NUGGETS
Cedar Rapids 1, Great Lakes 6
Box Score
Not much offense for the Kernels on Saturday night. The team managed just three singles and two (Nick) Lucky walks. In the game. 

Connor Prielipp was back on the mound for his second start with the Kernels. He gave up six runs on five hits and two walks in 2 2/3 innings. He had five strikeouts. Juan Mendez came on with two runners on and allowed both to score before getting the final out of the third inning. C.J. Culpepper came out of the bullpen for his second appearance since returning from the Injured List. Jordan Carr came in and tossed four shutout innings. He gave up three hits, walked none and had four strikeouts. 

That was the story of the game. Great Lakes scored their six runs all in the third inning. The Kernels got on the board with a run in the eighth frame. Nick Lucky scored on a sacrifice fly off the bat of Walker Jenkins. 

If you want, you can replace the word "Kernels" with the name "Oat Milkers," if you really want to. I couldn't do it. 

 

MUSSEL MATTERS
Fort Myers, St. Lucie  (PPD, rain)
Box Score
Postponed by Rain. Game will be made up as part of a doubleheader on Sunday afternoon. Then, hopefully, those 2024 draft picks will be able to make their professional debuts. All for were in in the top six of the Mussels scheduled lineup for Saturday.  

Of note, with Tropical Storm (or maybe Hurricane) Debby's rain hitting Fort Myers starting tonight and through the weekend, it will be quite interesting to see if they play on Sunday, and if so, how?! Sounds like the "hurricane" will make landfall up in the "Big Bend" area of Florida. 

 

DOMINICAN DAILIES
DSL Twins 3, DSL Tigers 2
Box Score                                                                                                                                                                                                        Down 1-0 after a half-inning, the DSL Twins came to the plate. With one out, Daiber De Los Santos was hit by a pitch and stole second. Eduardo Beltre, the Twins Daily Minor League Hitter of the Month for July, hit his eighth home run of the short season to give the Twins a 2-1 lead. 

For most of the rest of the game, it was all about pitching. Melvin Rodriguez gave up two runs (1 earned) on six hits and a walk in 4 2/3 innings. He had five strikeouts. Sebastian Pulido gave up three hits over 2 1/3 scoreless innings. He had no walks or strikeouts. Aiberson Ventura pitched a perfect eighth inning to earn the win. 

That’s because, in the bottom of the eighth, Merphy Hernandez started the inning at second base. He reached third base on an interference call on the shortstop on a pickoff attempt to second. Soon after, Hernandez scored the winning run on a wild pitch. Not exactly the most exciting way to win a walkoff. 

The Twins had six hits and two walks, a far cry from Friday’s 21 run, 17 hit, 11 walk (14 wild pitch) performance. Victor Leal and Lis Fragoza each had a single and a walk. 

TWINS DAILY MINOR LEAGUE PLAYERS OF THE DAY
Pitcher of the Day – Louie Varland (Saints) - 6.0 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 8 K.
Hitter of the Day – Eduardo Beltre (DSL Twins) - 1-for-3, HR(8), R, 2 RBI, HBP,  K

 

PROSPECT SUMMARY
Check out the Prospect Tracker for much more on our recently-updated Twins Top 20 prospects after seeing how they did on Saturday. And, be sure to note the new, updated Top 20 rankings.

#1– Walker Jenkins (Cedar Rapids) – 0-for-3, RBI SF 
#2 – Brooks Lee (Minnesota) – 2-for-4, 2 RBI.
#4 – Luke Keaschall (Wichita) – 1-for-4, 2 K
#7 – Gabriel Gonzalez (Cedar Rapids) – 1-for-3. 
#19 - C.J. Culpepper (Cedar Rapids) - 2.0 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 K. 28 pitches, 18 strikes (64.3%)
#20 – Connor Prielipp (Cedar Rapids) – 2.2 IP, 5 H, 6 ER, 2 BB, 5 K. 45 pitches, 31 strikes. (68.9%) 

SUNDAY’S PROBABLE STARTERS
St. Paul @ Iowa (1:08 PM CST) – RHP Caleb Boushley, 4.47 ERA)
NW Arkansas @ Wichita (1:05 PM CST) – RHP Travis Adams (4-6, 4.83 ERA)
Great Lakes @ Cedar Rapids (1:05 PM CST) – RHP Ty Langenberg (3-0, 4.70 ERA)
St. Lucie @ Ft. Myers (DH @ 11:05 AM CST) – LHP Cesar Lares (2-3, 4.40 ERA), RHP Charlee Soto (0-4, 5.64 ERA)

Please feel free to ask questions and discuss Saturday’s games.

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[FlyingFinn]

Nice to see Varland pitching well. Just nice to see Prielipp on the mound.

@Seth Stohs - Emmanuel Rodriguez went for rehab, what seems like weeks ago. Now he is MIA. Any news about his whereabouts and when he is returning.

[Doctor Wu]

Rough start for Prielipp, although the number of strikeouts in that short outing was encouraging. It will be exciting to have all these new draft picks debut in Fort Myers this week. Good luck to them all!

[Doctor Gast]

Very encouraging for Varland, despite many contrary opinions Varland is very valuable to this team & should be up with the main team as spot starter/ long relief. But they'll give every opportunity for Topa to prove himself in the short relief role 1st. Until then Varland'll waste bullets in AAA.

I don't see Olivar any longer in the top 20, after he was promoted & raking in AA. What happened? Is Doncon hurt? He hasn't been playing.

[Doctor Gast]

7 hours ago, FlyingFinn said:

Nice to see Varland pitching well. Just nice to see Prielipp on the mound.

@Seth Stohs - Emmanuel Rodriguez went for rehab, what seems like weeks ago. Now he is MIA. Any news about his whereabouts and when he is returning.

Some injured Twins players seem to have entered the Twilight Zone some time after going on the IL where they are not heard of. Baffling

[Blyleven2011]

14 minutes ago, Doctor Gast said:

Some injured Twins players seem to have entered the Twilight Zone some time after going on the IL where they are not heard of. Baffling

Any word on canterino  ????

[tony&rodney]

Tuned in to watch Connor Prielipp last night after watching his dominant two innings last week. In the first two innings Prielipp totally overmatched the batters. He looked, similar to last week, like he was misplaced in Hi-A ball as Connor dominated in those two innings. Then, he looked completely different right away in inning three. The fastball did not have the same movement (flat) and his breaking pitches just seemed to spin without the crispness. It was surprising to see the difference and unsurprising that those pitches found the bats. Prielipp is a big strong guy but he looked like he was gassed. Patience will be needed with him, apparently.

[FlyingFinn]

1 hour ago, Doctor Gast said:

I don't see Olivar any longer in the top 20, after he was promoted & raking in AA. What happened?

They were just updated and we, the voters, must have dropped him from the top 20. Odd as he has been hot lately.

[Dman]

1 hour ago, tony&rodney said:

Tuned in to watch Connor Prielipp last night after watching his dominant two innings last week. In the first two innings Prielipp totally overmatched the batters. He looked, similar to last week, like he was misplaced in Hi-A ball as Connor dominated in those two innings. Then, he looked completely different right away in inning three. The fastball did not have the same movement (flat) and his breaking pitches just seemed to spin without the crispness. It was surprising to see the difference and unsurprising that those pitches found the bats. Prielipp is a big strong guy but he looked like he was gassed. Patience will be needed with him, apparently.

Yeah getting tired early makes some sense given he is just coming back from TJ and hasn't pitched much in the last three years.  I had high hopes he might just dominate his way up, but looks like the process is just gonna take more time.  Have to say I was surprised they left him out there as long as they did in the third for an arm they are supposedly being careful with that was a fair amount of pitches..

[roger]

1 hour ago, tony&rodney said:

Tuned in to watch Connor Prielipp last night after watching his dominant two innings last week. In the first two innings Prielipp totally overmatched the batters. He looked, similar to last week, like he was misplaced in Hi-A ball as Connor dominated in those two innings. Then, he looked completely different right away in inning three. The fastball did not have the same movement (flat) and his breaking pitches just seemed to spin without the crispness. It was surprising to see the difference and unsurprising that those pitches found the bats. Prielipp is a big strong guy but he looked like he was gassed. Patience will be needed with him, apparently.

Thanks for those comments, tony.  After seeing the score, went to the recap to see how he did.  Noticed he dominated the first two innings with 4 K's.  Seemed like he ran out of gas approaching and then going over 40 pitches.  There also was a balk in that third inning.  Was thinking he both ran out of gas and was losing his mental focus when it hit the fan.  Considering how little he has pitched in his professional career, outings like this aren't a surprise.

[roger]

Just when you start thinking it is time to move Varland to the pen, he has a game like last night.  See that Julien had a nice hit to get involved in the scoring.  Also saw he struck out 3 times.  

[Mike Sixel]

52 minutes ago, roger said:

Just when you start thinking it is time to move Varland to the pen, he has a game like last night.  See that Julien had a nice hit to get involved in the scoring.  Also saw he struck out 3 times.  

He's providing no value to the Twins right now. But their bullpen is short. He should be up. If they need one start, someone else can make it. If there is a long term injury, he can be stretched out. 

[roger]

1 hour ago, Mike Sixel said:

He's providing no value to the Twins right now. But their bullpen is short. He should be up. If they need one start, someone else can make it. If there is a long term injury, he can be stretched out. 

Could not agree more, Mike.  Move him to the pen for a week or ten days, then bring him up.

Adding Louie and Topa would make that pen look awfully nice.  Now if Stewart could only get healthy?

[bean5302]

Ahhhh, Varland. He had a great start for sure, but the 5.33 FIP last month isn't inspiring to me in the least. The sooner he moves to the bullpen, the better. He's not needed in the rotation with Dobnak and Plutko as back end rotation options, and guys like Andrew Morris ready to move up.