How Cole Sands Could Turn the Corner in the Twins Bullpen

Cole Sands got more than a cameo during his rookie year in 2022. Working 30 2/3 innings split between three starts and eight relief appearances, he posted an ugly 5.87 ERA. Last year, he made the Opening Day roster and worked 21 2/3 innings, with a much better 3.74 ERA. You’d be hard-pressed to find many outings remembered fondly, though.

The problem for Sands last season was the free passes. He was constantly walking a tightrope, with a pedestrian 21:13 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He also allowed four home runs in the limited action, and with traffic on the bases, they burned him (and the Twins) even more than that number might imply. Below the surface of his seasonal numbers, though, there’s a path to a nice leap forward in 2024.

The Twins optioned Sands to Triple-A St. Paul three different times in 2023, and a rehab assignment made it four distinct stints for him there. With CHS Field just a few miles away from Target Field, he had to have a constant feeling of not knowing to which ballpark he would need to report from one week to the next. Beyond that, his role was constantly in transition. Kept on the roster out of Rocco Baldelli’s desire for a long reliever, he worked multiple innings a handful of times, but was often lifted after just three outs. Later in the season, he’d also go weeks with minimal usage.

Despite the uncertainty, Sands kept things consistent on the farm. Across 30 2/3 innings for St. Paul, he maintained a dazzling 1.47 ERA with a 12.0 K/9. He gave up just two home runs, walked 10, and allowed a paltry 5.0 H/9. To say that would be a usable major league arm is putting it lightly.

Sands can be a high performer, and it doesn’t have to happen on Opening Day. He settled in quickly at Triple A last season, and although that success doesn’t always translate to the big leagues in a straightforward manner, it's a reminder that there's something here worth mining. Giving him a routine and sticking to a plan could help Sands tap more fully into his potential.

Finding more success may require tweaks in his arsenal or pitch usage. As a former starter, Sand has more than just two pitches at his disposal. With his four-seamer and sinker each sitting south of 94 miles per hour, he might need to start leaning more heavily on other options. His curveball plays well off his heat, thanks to the spin mirroring you can see above. The curve presents like his fastball before dropping off fairly sharply. The cutter and splitter utilize seam-shifted wake to generate deception, with similar spin axes to his sinker and fastball out of the hand but divergent actual movement.

Last season at Triple A and in the big leagues, Sands threw the four-seamer and sinker over 45% of the time, and against lefties alone, he went with the mediocre fastball nearly 50% of the time. On the flip side, the curveball and cutter were used a total of 30% of the time. The splitter was thrown heavily against left-handed hitters, but the cutter got used only 6.7% of the time. There's an opportunity to take away a lot of that fastball usage and put it into the cutter. 

It seems as though Sands has been given enough information to suggest that his traditional fastball isn't a terribly useful pitch in the big leagues, if only in the form of hitters teeing off on it. Finding a way to use tunneled and paired pitches that play off of each other, while keeping hitters off balance, could help to push him through the current ceiling holding him back.

There are mental and emotional hurdles to clear, too. For a guy who gets animated and shows plenty of emotion on the mound, figuring out a way to be more even-keeled is part of the process. Never allowing himself to get too high or low can keep him locked in on a pitch-by-pitch basis. The environment of a minor-league stadium can help with that, but plenty of the work can also be done internally.

It was never a given that Sands would be a starter as he started to show his arm talent on the backfields in Fort Myers, but it was clear his stuff was MLB-caliber. If that now comes to fruition in relief, then Minnesota will have another high-quality option at their disposal out of the bullpen.