With Each Passing Day, Playoff Cole Sands Becomes a More Real and Important Part of Twins' Future

Chris Paddack (you know, probably) isn't walking through that bullpen door. Louie Varland isn't walking through that door, except before games begin, because the team needs him as starting pitching depth. Brock Stewart isn't walking through that door, unless someone holds it for him, because it's a pain to open a bullpen door with your arm in a sling. The Twins are one high-leverage relief arm short of a quorum, for a team hoping to make a deep run in October--unless this Cole Sands is the real deal.

The thing is, he probably is. He could always break, the same way Paddack, Stewart, and Joe Ryan have broken, but Sands collected a save this weekend in Texas, and it wasn't like his three saves from early in the season--two of which were glorified mop-up work, and one of which was an April emergency. This one was certainly a factor of the availability of more famous, decorated relief teammates, but it was also a concrete acknowledgment: Cole Sands is a dude now. He's not headed for regression, because he's not the same pitcher as last year, with different numbers. He's a whole new pitcher.

The Twins have a clear-cut approach to their pitching development. It's not one-size-fits-all, but it follows certain patterns. They know a pitcher's fastball shape is "like a fingerprint," to quote one front office member who plays a key role in pitching development, so they don't target pitchers with the idea of changing that or try to force a change in the guys they already have. Rather, they dedicate themselves to tinkering with pitch mix and breaking ball shape, which is much more manipulable, and the cherry on top is when mechanical changes can beget velocity gains.

Most of the recent publicity has gone to the exciting cases in which they've done this with players brought in as amateurs, who are then flung quickly up the organizational ladder. David Festa and Zebby Matthews are the notables of the moment, but before them, Simeon Woods Richardson came to camp this spring with much better velocity than in previous seasons. There are other hurlers showing the same signs of progress throughout the farm system.

Before them, though, there were Griffin Jax, whose stuff took off in a way not fully explicable by his switch to a relief role; Joe Ryan, who went from an underpowered arm to one who occasionally touches 96 miles per hour; and even Pablo López, who was already an established big-league starter when the Twins got ahold of him and added a couple ticks of velocity for him. Partly through their ties to Driveline, but partly also through their own proprietary infrastructure, the Twins specialize in boosting pitchers' raw stuff--and it doesn't stop when they reach MLB.

Now, Sands is the new exemplar. In 2022, he sat 91 and touched 93 only very rarely. Last season, he trended upward as the year went on, and ended up sitting 94, while touching 95 and scraping 96.

All of that was just a warmup. This season, he's sitting 96, with plenty of 97s mixed in. His 90th-percentile velocity by month tells the tale. This summer, he's not just brushing the mid-90s. He's a full-fledged flamethrower.