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Through the Twins' first 14 games this season, Rocco Baldelli called Jorge Alcalá in from the bullpen six times. That’s despite Alcalá being unavailable for a couple of games, while he was dealing with a bout of soreness, and he wasn’t even on the roster for Sunday's contest. To put it mildly, the Minnesota reliever has been a key part of their pitching staff.
Throwing 8 1/3 innings this season, Alcalá has already accumulated nearly half of the total innings he threw for the Twins a season ago. He's spent far too great a share of his Twins tenure unavailable due to injury. He pitched just 2 1/3 innings during the 2022 season, and it was really only in 2021 that he was consistently available.
Alcala’s injury history is why the Twins have options with him--literally. Despite being a 28-year-old with more than four years of service time and six big-league seasons under his belt, he still has a minor-league option year remaining. Although a perennial candidate for the Opening Day roster, he's spent long stretches on the 60-day injured list, only technically a big-leaguer.
After rehabbing to be an option late last year and coming to camp healthy, Alcalá competed on a consistent enough basis during spring to earn a job. That meant throwing strikes, getting ahead in counts, and generating outs from the opposition. His 31% strikeout rate is a career high, and his 10.3% walk rate is acceptable if he's missing that many bats. To date, he looks like a credible high-leverage reliever for a team badly needing them.
So when the bullpen doesn’t have Jhoan Durán, Justin Topa, or Josh Staumont, why was it Alcalá sent out in favor of the returning Caleb Thielbar? Well, that answer gets more confusing after Baldelli’s pregame comments Sunday.
If we’re taking Baldelli’s comments at face value, they're little more than eye wash. Maybe that’s what the manager is ok with saying to the media, but in reality, Alcalá was doing all of that and then some. More realistically, the assignment to St. Paul should be about getting the reliever a breather after being used so heavily.
Alcalá threw 22 pitches for Minnesota on Saturday, and had thrown three of the past five days for the Twins. He wasn’t going to be available for Sunday’s game, and with Bailey Ober starting, Thielbar could be brought back as a fresh arm. With Matt Bowman as the only other reliever without big-league pitches on him, the pen had been relatively tapped out.
Earlier this week, Thielbar completed his rehab assignment with Triple-A St. Paul, and once he was ready to go, reinstating him was a no-brainer. That could have come at the expense of Kody Funderburk, had the team opted against keeping three lefties (with out-of-options Steven Okert as the other). Funderburk doesn’t have the injury history, though, and there is less worry about protecting his arm. The Orioles are also a heavily lefty-swinging lineup, which incrementally increases the value of that third southpaw.
We’ll see how often Alcala is used with St. Paul over the next week or so. It stands to reason that it will be sparingly, and although we saw him in multi-inning roles for the Twins, that’s not something he should ever do on the farm. Letting him reset (de-load, they would call it in spring training) could help him stay ready deep into this season.
Minnesota’s best bullpen unquestionably includes Alcalá at this point, and he should be back as soon as he is eligible. Bowman will be exposed to waivers when he is jettisoned from the roster; he’s just a warm body they needed to have fresh for the immediate future.
This has been the year for Alcalá thus far, and keeping him healthy is the top priority for him and the team as a whole. If they need to give his arm some rest and let him work on things in a controlled setting for a couple of short stints, so be it. Let's just not pretend it's purely about performance, and the fine margins over small samples therein.
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