Starter or Reliever? Louie Varland Needs to Be Water

“Regardless of where Varland goes from here, the Twins have an electric arm capable of filling multiple roles, which is a champagne problem.”

THIS.  Exactly.  Varland appears to be a good pitcher who is young and adaptable, and all teams need more of those.  I could definitely see him as a starter this year who transitions to the bullpen come September, or if he’s not needed in the rotation, as a 7th/8th inning guy all season.  

It would be great if he could stay a starter and effectively cover 130+ innings lost by Gray and Maeda leaving.  Stats in this article say his true value is probably in a relief role.  However things break it seems like a good way for the Twins.

Holding his glove hand a certain way, to unlock more velocity or whatever, seems independent of whether he's starting or relieving.  I'd still like to see him start (in both senses) at St Paul, and demonstrate he can dominate AAA batters (which he did not do in 2023) for a handful of games, and then come up when a rotation opening inevitably presents itself.  Starters are too valuable.

If it looks like more of the same, at age 26, then the reliever option remains open.  Note that his 12 innings of relief in 2023 had results built on an absurdly low BABIP of .191 so don't expect the same stellar results in larger samples. (Louie's battle against Chapman in the Blue Jays postseason series was heart-pounding, and not in a good way.)

Getting anything at all out of a 15th-round draft pick remains an achievement by itself, but that's in the past and it's not greedy to want more.  Good starting is "more" than great relieving, if those indeed are our lucky choices.

7 hours ago, Parker Hageman said:

Yes and no. 

What it tells me is that Varland's late season velocity increase/command improvement has some potential to be tied to his mechanics and not just the role. Again, the Twins are very good at getting pitchers to gain more velo through tweaks like that. He seemed to have better command of the cutter as well. The question for the Twins & Varland this offseason is whether he could be able to maintain that output over 5 innings. (IMO, he still needs to find a third pitch to make that jump and he's been working on a few things this winter so far.) 

 

And it makes me wonder what he learned in the pen that can be brought back to starting. 

I've long been a fan of getting starter prospects ML innings in the pen, for the same reason i want kids to play all the sports rather than specializing on one at 12 or 13.  The muscles used are different and a stronger overall body should portend a more durable athlete once a specialty is chosen.  Learning how to let it fly in relief may or may not translate. 

I certainly want to see what he can do as a starter.  Even if he doesn't quite show that he is ready for a post season start this year, he can still make progress towards that mark.  A trade at the deadline instead of now helps this all develop.  Putting him in the pen because they trade for another starter would be disheartening because it would indicate what they feel his starter upside is.   I'd like them to keep him in AAA starting in that case.