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

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.

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