Because of recent injuries to Pablo López and Zebby Matthews, the Minnesota Twins find themselves in a pitching pickle.
The Los Angeles Dodgers just showed Twins manager Rocco Baldelli a way to get some relief. All the Twins have to do, when the time comes, is give up a little harder.
The same night the Texas Rangers blew out the Twins 16-4 at Target Field, the Dodgers got thumped by 10 runs by the San Diego Padres. Once things got out of hand in each game, managers from the trailing teams gave up actually trying to win and instead used less-conventional means to cover what innings remained. They both put position players on the mound to finish up.
But only Dodgers manager Dave Roberts fully committed to his surrender, using utility man Enríque Hernández for SEVEN OUTS. Roberts threw in the towel in the SIXTH INNING. Not to shout.
Except it wasn’t really giving up, throwing in the towel, or surrendering, because the Dodgers had nearly zero chance to win the game. Roberts was being pragmatic, allowing the staff to regroup and fight another day while rested. If Sun Tzu played baseball, it’s how he’d do it.
The Dodgers trailed the Padres by nine runs and, already having used right-hander Lou Trivino as an opener for bulk guy Matt Sauer, Roberts didn’t want to waste any more pitches by actual relief pitchers in what amounted to a hopeless cause.
And it was hopeless: The Padres had a 99.9% win probability, per MLB Statcast. Historically, since 1884, the Dodgers have never mounted a successful comeback after trailing by at least that many. They once overcame an eight-run deficit (in 1950, when the Dodgers played home games in Brooklyn, N.Y., USA). But Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese weren’t coming through the door. The Dodgers have never had any nines up their sleeve.
Plus, it’s a matter of health. The Dodgers have 14 pitchers on the injured list, and that is not an exaggeration. Roberts was being safe. How much attrition can one team attrish?
Minnesota’s outcome against the Rangers was even more of a lost cause. According to MLB Statcast, once Wyatt Langford homered in the eighth inning, the Twins literally had zero percent chance of winning. So, with no 12-run comebacks in his own team’s history, Baldelli used infielder Jonah Bride to finish up against the Rangers.
Bride performed well enough with his three-pitch array of changeup, curveball (for some reason), and knuckleball. After allowing a single and hitting a batter, he got three outs. Statcast also reported that Bride got two swings-and-misses.
You know who only got one swing-and-miss in the same game? Jorge Alcala.
His performance must have been the final straw for the Twins and Alcala, because they traded him to the Boston Red Sox on Wednesday night. But it’s not even really about how poorly Alcala has been pitching, or even how Bride happened to get some outs by accident while mopping up. It’s about those games where the starting pitching didn’t give the Twins a chance, and how Baldelli should live to fight another day.
So when there’s a next time for Bride covering on the mound in a blowout, he should go two or three innings, if necessary, like the Dodgers with Hernández. Lean into it, Rocco. Eat those lost innings. It’s better than using Bride to hit.
Minnesota must proceed like nobody is coming to rescue them with a trade for a starting pitcher, because it’s really unlikely to happen. The way the Twins have stayed mostly silent the past two trade deadlines, and the way the sale of the club is going, or not going, there’s not going to be an opportunity to add, unless you count bargain shopping on the waiver wire. Left-hander Joey Wentz might be someone. Minnesota added him Thursday, but he’s not a leverage guy right now, if ever.
Resorting to surrendering some games might sound distasteful. The whole “give it your best effort” thing. But remind yourself: The outcome of these Jonah Bride Games, as they should now be called, has been determined. How much the Twins will lose by is just a matter of degrees. Roberts is doing the right thing with the Dodgers. He doesn’t look at the regular season like it’s 162 individual games long, but instead he sees the entirety of it as one big game, played over 162 little games.
Although Roberts didn’t use a position player to pitch in the World Series this past year, he even resorted to punting Game 4 by loading up on relievers he typically wouldn’t use with the outcome at stake. He’s already taken it “too far” by staining the World Series with this.
However, if even the financially bustling Los Angeles Dodgers resort to those kinds of sacrificial tactics to win, the cash-challenged Minnesota Twins need to do it, too.
Twins down nine? Here comes the Bride!