At a Moment of Stormy Seas, the Twins Can Feel Safe With Cole Sands

[Eric Blonigen]

The Twins are beset by problems on all sides. Their two best hitters? Injured. Their best defenders up the middle? Injured. The rest of the lineup? Mostly not hitting. The defense? Not defending. Their most consistent pitcher? Injured. Their stud closer? Missing velocity, and not bats. Most of the rest of the bullpen? Leaky. Offseason pickups? Mostly not working out. The lone trade deadline acquisition? Terrible, even at Triple-A. The manager? Big mad. Teams like the Red Sox, Tigers, and Mariners? Catching up. With fewer than 20 games left, the Twins have 99 problems--but Cole Sands ain’t one.

Image courtesy of © Raymond Carlin III-Imagn Images

With the Twins in the doldrums as they desperately try to cling to a postseason that’s slipping away from them, most fans are justifiably somewhere on the continuum between frustrated and apathetic. The baseball season is a grind, with significant peaks and valleys, and we are currently witnessing a deep valley. However, if the season ended today, the Twins would still make the playoffs.

While things feel grim on a daily basis, let’s not get lost in despair. Instead, let’s find the joy in an unexpected player turning into a key bullpen arm for the next few seasons. Let’s take a minute to appreciate how great Cole Sands has been, and the impact he has made for the Twins. Given the sheer number of relievers the Twins were expecting to contribute this season who have either been injured or ineffective, Sands’s emergence as a dominant late-inning arm may have almost single-handedly salvaged the bullpen this season.

So far in 2024, despite making the team as a mop-up arm, Sands has pitched 63 innings of 2.98 ERA ball across 51 appearances. His FIP is an even shinier 2.88, suggesting that there’s little smoke-and-mirrors behind his results. He’s been consistently good, to the point that he’s pitched his way into a late-inning role and may be the second-most reliable reliever currently on the roster. He’s striking out about 10 guys per nine innings, and has discovered elite command and control, to the point that he’s walking just 1.14 per nine innings. Looking at his Savant page, check out all that sweet, sweet red.

Prior to this season, he had given fans little reason for optimism. Debuting as a starter in 2022, Sands gave up 13 earned runs in 12 1/3 innings across three starts. Hitters posted a .951 OPS against him, and he had a WHIP over 2.00. The Twins had seen enough, and converted him to relief. He was a little better, but not noteworthy. With a 3.44 ERA but an xFIP of 4.70, he didn’t strike many out and walked a few too many. In 2023, the Twins had him raise his arm slot, but despite that tweak, he was downright bad, nearly pitching himself out of the future plans. In 22 innings, he walked an untenable 14% of batters and finished the season with a 5.53 xFIP. You saw his 2024 savant page, now here’s his 2023 page for contrast.

How did he get to this point? It comes down to velocity, location, and pitch mix. Matt Trueblood wrote an excellent caretaker article last month digging into specifics. If you haven’t signed up yet, now’s a great time to do so.

In conjunction with the Twins' coaching and analytics departments, Sands has learned how to be a major-league pitcher. He's for real, and his performance is likely sustainable. In short, it sure looks like he’s a setup-caliber reliever moving forward.

One of the best parts of baseball fandom is when guys who have been nearly written off go on to perform well enough to write themselves into the team’s future. Whatever happens with the Twins over the next three weeks, Cole Sands joins Simeon Woods Richardson as unexpected 2024 success stories. Counting on him to be part of a 2025 bullpen that features Griffin Jax, Jhoan Durán, Brock Stewart, Jorge Alcalá, Louie Varland, Justin Topa, and perhaps Jovani Morán (yeah, that dude still exists!) gives reason for bullpen optimism next season and beyond. Good for Sands for putting in the work, and for giving fans someone to root for even in a tough stretch.

Should the Twins make the playoffs — and as of right now, they still have better than a 75% chance to do so — a playoff pen of Jax, Sands, Durán, Varland, and Alcalá should get the job done. While this isn’t necessarily the bullpen the Twins expected to begin the season, it’s still likely to be one of the top playoff relief groups among the teams the Twins could face. Without Sands, and the progress he has made, the Twins might be in a completely different situation and on the outside looking in at the playoff race.

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What do you think? Have you been pleasantly surprised by Cole Sands turning into a setup man? Think he keeps it up? Comment below!

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[LambchoP]

Sands has been just like Brock Stewart last year. Not a lot of confidence going into Spring training, but has become one of our go to guys in the pen. I think we have a solid relief core group to build on next year. If all are healthy, we have

Duran, Jax, Alcala and Sands

Stewart, Varland and Paddack should be here

Henriquez, Topa, possibly Canterino

All we really need are a couple lefties. Maybe Headrick, Funderburk and a free agent signing who can step in as number 1 lefty. Looks like a great group to me. Of course we all know injuries happen and relievers are volatile year to year, so we'll need some good depth too. Hopefully they don't repeat last year's plan of minor league signings and waiver wire guys. Not a single one worked out this year.

[NYCTK]

At the same time, he is tied for the team lead in meltdowns, an occurrence of the team's chances of winning being significantly less when he leaves a game than when he enters. His Win Percentage Added on the season sits below Randy Dobnak and ahead of Trevor Richards:  -0.11 WPA

[Karbo]

2 hours ago, LambchoP said:

Sands has been just like Brock Stewart last year. Not a lot of confidence going into Spring training, but has become one of our go to guys in the pen. I think we have a solid relief core group to build on next year. If all are healthy, we have

Duran, Jax, Alcala and Sands

Stewart, Varland and Paddack should be here

Henriquez, Topa, possibly Canterino

All we really need are a couple lefties. Maybe Headrick, Funderburk and a free agent signing who can step in as number 1 lefty. Looks like a great group to me. Of course we all know injuries happen and relievers are volatile year to year, so we'll need some good depth too. Hopefully they don't repeat last year's plan of minor league signings and waiver wire guys. Not a single one worked out this year.

I still expect to have Paddack starting.

[Doctor Gast]

Sands has a healthy arm & could at times be extended over 1 inning yet with Alcala he's still isn't that far removed from the IL so I'd limit him to only 1 inning. I don't trust anything beyond that. Varland has a lot of possibilities to finally help the BP. The rookies are on fumes, it'd be hard for them to make it to 5 innings .