Three Arms. Two Months. One Big Opportunity.

I am expecting Matthews to be optioned at some point. If he’s in the minors 2 more weeks, the Twins gain a year of service time.

Festa seems like his stuff is good enough for closer material. He can air it out, has a decent pitch mix, and a good strikeout ratio. For the youngens out there, kind of compares to Rick Aguilara.

14 minutes ago, The Great Hambino said:

I mentioned this elsewhere, but I think they have an opportunity to get more information on the young guys if they use some rotation slots to pair them up in a piggyback scenario.

Let Ryan, Ober, and SWR do their thing.  For the other two slots, pair up, say, Festa with Bradley and Matthews with Abel.  Have them each go 4 innings.  Maybe a 5th if the situation dictates.  It's not like they'd be letting these guys go any more than that in a traditional setup anyway.  Now you can gather information and build experience for four young starters instead of two.  Could be a creative way to steal some development time.  If Pablo returns, or there's injuries, you can reshuffle as necessary.  Maybe Adams or Ohl can be a partner if an opening emerges or you think SWR belongs in this group.  Maybe Festa kills it for a few turns and you give him a chance to be a big boy starter.  You have a lot of ways to play this.

Doing this would shorten the bullpen by two members, but it would also save them collectively about 6-8 innings per time through the rotation that it would be required to cover.  Given the emptiness of that bullpen cupboard, counting on fewer guys I think is a good thing.

I dunno.  To me, this would be better than constant bullpen games with a bullpen you don't have

I like this idea too. I mean, at this point in a lost season why not experiment a bit and try a few new ways to see how these pitchers can perform? Maybe one of these so-so starters becomes a new bullpen weapon like other "failed" starters such as Jax and Duran. Let's be creative!

Bradley and Abel need to get their starts too, to see what they have. Abel seems to have an untapped upside, and hopefully he stakes a big step forward for this trade to be acceptable. 

So let's review things as they set up for the 2026 season:

We have Ryan, Lopez and Ober.  We also have Taj Bradley and Mick Abel.  We ALSO have Festa, Matthews and SWR.  That's eight possible SP's.  That's tremendous depth, and we know injuries happen, but we can only deploy 5 at a time unless some of them are deployed as relief pitchers of some sort...long relief, set up man or closer. 

At least long relief maintains an innings workload that is close to a SP.

We also have some other arms at various levels in the minors who have either fallen off this year, maintained their status or improved their stock.  Some of these arms "could" pitch for the Twins in some capacity in 2026, some are a few years away.  Think of Marco Raya and Dasan Hill as a couple of candidates.

With Jax, we had a closer in waiting, but we traded him away for a 24 year old SP who has been more SWR than Joe Ryan in his major league performance so far, but has the "potential" to be MORE than SWR has shown to this point.  I was fine with all the moves, even Correa, until the Jax and Varland trades.

Jax is somewhat understandable given the acquisition of Bradley.  The trade that really kind of crushed any hope for next year was Varland.

Varland was also a closer in waiting.  He had taken so well to the role of high leverage, late inning reliever.  And yet, nonsensically, Falvey traded him away, essentially for Alan Roden, a LH hitting OF.  We already HAD a full cupboard of LH hitting OF.  Once Varland went out the door, we had a paucity of CLOSERS (unless Michael Tonkin is fine with you).  Ty France for Kendry Rojas would have been fine with me. 

But I don't think it was necessary to put Varland together with France to get Roden and Rojas.  In other words, moving Varland just to off load France wasn't needed.  I have read many opinions by baseball commentators and insiders who are STILL trying to figure out what the plan was (if there ever WAS a plan other than cutting as much salary as possible) of the Twins ownership and FO.  

Varland was eminently affordable for several years.  Jax may have gotten expensive, but not Varland.  Ask a Twins fan today if they would feel a whole lot better about the trade deadline if Jax and/or especially Varland had been retained.  I'll bet over 90% would feel better with at least Varland still with the Twins.  

Trading a reliever midseason makes some sense.  Don't be surprised, though, if the Twins trade someone like Ryan this offseason.  In some ways he'll command a better return than anything offered at the deadline.  The Red Sox got attention by leaking their interest in Ryan at the last seconds, but they weren't offering anything (just the Password), and I'm sure the Twins had gotten lots better talent in offers or at least in discussions.

But one thing teams couldn't do was offer anybody already in their lineup.  That won't necessarily be a holdup in the offseason.

6 minutes ago, Danchat said:

I could see Festa ending up as a high leverage reliever... question is, are they going to wait it out and keep him as a starter for depth? They have to start moving some starters to relievers.

Morris, Raya, Prielipp, Culpepper

Coulombe said Matthews is going to be a star.  So he has that going for him, which is nice.

The Twins find themselves with a ton of Mlb ready/ near ready arms.

 Ryan/ Pablo are established top of the rotation guys with years of control.  Neither is really an ace.  

Ober is somewhere in the 3-5 range figuring himself out.

SWR is a 4-5 or maybe interesting reliever.

Festa/ Zebby are mlb ready and need the experience to grow.

Bradley needs to grow in the mlb.

Abel looks ready to get a shot, I like his stuff he could really be a piece.

Prielipp is getting close.

That is all before guys like Lewis/ Raya/ Morris/ Rojas can make their own push. 

Either established arms are getting traded, or starter prospects are going to start getting put in the Mlb bullpen.  I think they will use this time to promote the bulk role.

I think it's very possible you see some pitching get traded this off season.  Whether it's a BIG piece like Ryan or Lopez or a younger, yet still valuable piece like Zebby, SWR or Festa.  The guy I would keep an eye on is Ober.

If he can string some nice starts together from now until the end of the season, he will build a lot of his value back.  He's the in-between guy.  Not our #1 or #2, not our #4 or #5, but a solid #3.  

According to BBTV, at the beginning of this season, Ober's value was 54.7.  It fell to around 45.4 and I imagine it has fallen further (help me out here Doc. Gast).  If Ober is able to build his value back to a level where he's worth a Jaren Duran type position player that's the kind of value the Twins are looking for to upgrade their lineup.

They could easily replace Ober with Taj Bradley or Mick Abel, or one of Festa, Matthews or SWR.

Bradley, Able, SWR, Matthews, Festa. Don't forget Raya. Add in Ohl and Adams. The Twins suddenly have a roster full of guys who can easily pitch 3 innings, maybe consistently four, and some who can get into the fifth. 

They have been piggy-backing rotation arms in the minors. Maybe do the same in the majors, with the ability to pitch guys every third day if necessary.

What it leaves is a bullpen of around four arms. The Twins have two right now, who will probably be back next year, in Sands and Topa. Both can pitch multiple innings, too. Sadly, they need a bonafide closer. A situational lefty would be fine, too.

I picture, perhaps, Ohl and Festa being developed as relief arms.

But none of this matters if you can't field a team of batters that will keep you in the game. Otherwise, it is just pitchers getting innings.

Festa...closer?