It’s all roses and butterflies for the Twins right now. Unless you’re Jose Berrios, who remains stuck at Triple-A Rochester despite an opening available for Saturday’s Twins-Red Sox game at Target Field.
Instead of calling up the reigning International League Pitcher of the Week, multiple reports say the Twins are giving the Saturday start – and maybe more starts – to right-hander Nick Tepesch.
He’s getting the call over Berrios because the Twins don’t want to rush Berrios back to the majors.
“It’s a development thing for him, and we want to make sure more so than in the past when we’ve needed to call him up, we didn’t have any better options,” Twins assistant general manager Rob Antony said in a recent interview with Darren Wolfson. “And that might not have even been fair to him. But now we have some depth and we have some guys that are doing well, so we can leave him there until we believe he’s ready to be one of our five starters and go from there.”
In 14 starts with the Twins last season, Berrios posted an ugly 8.02 ERA and struggled with his control. It led to 74 hits and 35 walks allowed in just 58.1 innings.
Tepesch is 3-0 with a 2.00 ERA at Triple-A Rochester.
