The Twins beat the Athletics 6-4 Wednesday night and Jhoan Duran pitching in the seventh inning and Dallas Keuchel working out of the bullpen late in the game were potential cues for how Minnesota is thinking ahead to the playoffs next week.
Minnesota has secured the AL Central championship and is now just waiting to find out if they’ll host a best-of-three Wild Card series against the Astros, Blue Jays, Mariners or Rangers. In the meantime, it appears the Twins are tinkering with bullpen ideas.
In Wednesday’s game, Pablo Lopez was pulled after just 4.1 innings. It was a planned early exit for the Lopez, who is scheduled to start Game 1 in the playoffs on Oct. Lopez finishes the regular season with a 3.66 ERA and 234 strikeouts in 194 innings.
Baldelli elected to go with left-hander Caleb Thielbar for the final two outs of the fifth inning and then swapped arms the rest of the way as follows:
- Emilio Pagan pitched the 6th inning
- Duran pitched the 7th inning
- Keuchel got the next five outs
- Griffin Jax got the final out and the save in the 9th inning
Duran struck out the side in the 7th. That’s nothing new for the Twins’ closer, but perhaps Badelli thought it a good idea to get his most dominant reliever an opportunity earlier in the game just in case a situation that demands his arm in the seventh inning comes about in the playoffs.
Keuchel coming out of the bullpen is an indication that he’ll make the postseason roster as a reliever. If so, that could spell bad news for rookie left-hander Kody Funderburk unless the Twins want to have three lefties in the ‘pen: Thielbar, Keuchel and Funderburk.
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Keuchel cruised through a 1-2-3 eighth inning and then got the first batter he faced in the ninth before walking and hitting the next two batters. With two on and one out he struck out Ryan Noda looking before Baldelli brought Jax into the game for the last out.
Maybe Baldelli was giving Jax a pressure situation – two runners on and a save situation – to prepare him for late-game pressure situations in October. As we wrote earlier Wednesday, Jax is tied for the team lead with 10 losses and has a tendency to have blow-up innings. When he’s on his game, however, he’s dominant.
