This Strategy Could Fix Simeon Woods Richardson's Starts

Simeon Woods Richardson had his best start of the season on Sunday, throwing five scoreless innings and allowing just one hit in Houston. It was a sharp, efficient outing that gave the bullpen a bit of a breather and kept the Twins in a tight game against a quality opponent.

And yet, encouraging as the performance was, it reinforced a key truth: the Twins don’t trust SWR to face a lineup three times.

Despite being at just 53 pitches, Woods Richardson was pulled after five innings because he had gone through the Astros’ order exactly twice. That is not a fluke. It is a plan. The Twins are telling us, with their actions, that Woods Richardson is a two-times-through-the-order pitcher. On Sunday, those two times happened to take him through five full innings. More often, that will mean three or four.

That is why the solution is not just celebrating this outing. It is using it as a template.

Woods Richardson has become a real problem in the Twins rotation. His results have been poor, his outings have been short, and the ripple effect on the bullpen has been increasingly difficult to manage. Still, despite all of that, the Twins have no real choice but to keep sending him out every fifth day. That means the solution cannot be replacing him. It has to be finding a better way to support him.

Since late last season, Woods Richardson has thrown 88 innings and posted a 5.83 ERA with 16 home runs allowed. He does not just struggle with results. He also struggles with stamina and consistency, often failing to pitch deep into games. Since the start of the 2023 season, he is averaging just 4 ⅔ innings per start. That lack of length puts a heavy burden on the relief corps, a problem made worse by the rest of the rotation offering little relief. Chris Paddack has not been pitching deep into games. David Festa rarely works past the fifth. Bailey Ober has been wildly inconsistent. The Twins are getting far too few innings from their starting pitchers, and Woods Richardson is at the center of that issue.

The problem is that the Twins do not have any better options. They have already cycled through just about every starter on the 40-man roster. There is no one in Triple-A clearly banging on the door. So Woods Richardson will continue to start. But instead of asking him to do what he cannot do, the Twins might be better off structuring his starts differently.

One solution is to use a piggyback strategy. This means pairing Woods Richardson with another pitcher, allowing him to face the lineup once or twice before handing the ball off to someone else who can carry the game into the later innings. It is not a new concept, but it is one that makes a lot of sense given his current profile.

The numbers support this approach. In his career, batters hit .246 with a .673 OPS the first time through the order. That is manageable and even solid for a starting pitcher. The second time through, those numbers climb to a .264 average and a .750 OPS. The third time through, the average drops slightly to .237, but the OPS stays high at .755. That drop in average appears to be driven by an unsustainably low .239 batting average on balls in play, well below his career BABIP of .300. In other words, the third-time-through results might look better on paper than they actually are.

By capping his exposure to the lineup at one or two times through, the Twins could avoid the damage that tends to come later in his starts. He could pitch more aggressively, knowing he does not need to stretch himself out. That could lead to better results, and it could help the bullpen by bringing more structure and predictability to those outings.

Of course, this plan only works if there is another pitcher available to cover the next chunk of the game. Fortunately, the Twins have some options. One is Joey Wentz, a recent pickup who is already on the roster. Wentz has 113 big league innings as a starter and has shown the stamina to work multiple innings. He also throws left-handed, which could create matchup problems for opponents if they stack a lineup full of righties to face Woods Richardson. Using a righty-lefty combo forces teams to make pinch-hitting decisions early in games, which can drain their bench and limit their flexibility later on.

Another option is Travis Adams, who was recently called up but never got into a game. He has a background as a starter and could be stretched out to provide multiple innings as well.

There are trade-offs to this approach. Pairing two pitchers for one game means you are effectively using two roster spots on one rotation turn. If Wentz is the piggyback arm, you are taking him out of the bullpen mix for several days between outings. But right now, the Twins are getting poor results from Woods Richardson and still requiring their bullpen to cover multiple innings. If a piggyback setup gives them a better chance to get through six innings without a blowup, it is a trade worth making.

The Twins are not in a position to replace Woods Richardson. But they might be able to reimagine how they use him. Sunday’s game in Houston was the blueprint. Giving him help and reducing the strain on his arm and the bullpen could pay dividends as the season rolls on.

What do you think? Should the Twins give the piggyback method a shot to help Woods Richardson and stabilize the rotation? Leave a comment and start the conversation.