Louis Varland Has Got That Closer In Him

If the Twins are considering anything at the deadline, trading Jhoan Duran or Griffin Jax has become the obvious route for the team. Joe Ryan would require a package that would rival the haul the Nationals got for Juan Soto. Rental pieces like Harrison Bader or Willi Castro might bring a couple interesting picks but nothing to cement the team’s future. But two ace relievers with multiple years of team control? That haul could change the team's future.

As most fans known, relief pitchers are fickle beings. It was only a few years ago that Cole Sands existed primary to mop up blow ups. Derek Falvey grabbed Brock Stewart as a minor league pick up in the middle of rehabbing from Tommy John. And on the negative side for the Twins, somehow the Red Sox have found the Jorge Alcala magic. The idea that Duran or Jax will remain commanding relievers (not to mention pricey for a team whose budget next year remains a black box) has already been tested this year to an extent. 

But what do you do when you lose the top of your bullpen? Trading these two would require multiple new arms to take their place. But if it comes to it, there is no reason Louis Varland cannot elevate himself to the closer role.

Twins fans (not to mention the front office) have valiantly attempted to peg Varland into several different roles in his years with the team. Many of them on trying to unlock a starter’s potential. Even this offseason, Varland spent his time in limbo as the team decided how to build its rotation. When I met him briefly in December, he said he was working on a “depthier” slider. That pitch has turned out to be one of his weakest and rarely used (it has a 30% whiff rate but lands too much in the zone). 

But if Varland has the time now to know he’s the head of the bullpen, that will finally give him the runway to develop a closer’s arsenal. For some pitchers, it doesn’t take much to be a closer; Emmanuel Clasé does it throwing a single, unhittable pitch. Varland still has a starter’s arsenal, but only his knuckle curveball has developed into a workhorse alongside his fastball.

But there’s a case to be made that Varland has been the team’s most valuable reliever. He might carry a lower strikeout rate than Jax and Duran, but he also walks fewer batters than them. That's while being a multifaceted choice for the team, whether as fireman, set up man, and sometimes double inning relief. Varland has thrown more innings than any other relief pitcher and holds the highest WPA for the core. Before this week against the Dodgers, Varland hadn’t allowed an inherited runner to score since May. He’s also cemented himself as the most…acrobatic pitcher among the relief corps.

The case for closing becomes evident when you start to put Varland among other closers in the game. I pulled a number of the game’s current top closers alongside the Twins core and looked at various +Stats (where 100 is league average), and color coded them based on their general rank against each other—all of them have elite stuff, but red is marked where they are closer (or in some cases, below) league average. At the end, I took averages of all these markers, treating them relatively equally, to produce a sense of how Varland stacks up against elite pitching in the game (GAME-, where lower is better): 

If there’s one story that stands out, it’s that Louis Varland needs more strikeouts to enter that elite echelon. In fact, the most league average FIP- and xFIP- are essentially that story; a few more strikeouts would easily put him in the green. Some of that is where Varland comes in the game, where Baldelli has called upon him for 11 appearances with runners already on base. For Varland, that has meant treading with caution: fewer pitches in the zone, inducing more walks, and striking out less (ironically, runners on base dramatically increases his whiff rates, but he cannot seem to put them away). Varland needs to get aggressive to become a serious contender.

But what happens this offseason as Varland focuses on that command and building out those off-speed pitches? What does his ceiling look like as he builds a clear role for the future? Varland probably needs one more pitch to enter that next echelon. But the velocity is already there—hitting close to 101. 

But given he doesn’t he begin his arbitration until 2027, there is no doubt that Varland could be a cornerstone closer until the next decade begins.  We all know that Varland has got that dog in him. Maybe it’s time to see if he’s got a closer mentality too.