MINNEAPOLIS — MLB managers are notoriously reluctant to reveal any of their plans, big or small, before they’re absolutely obligated to do so, and Rocco Baldelli certainly subscribes to the tight-lipped approach even more than most.
Which is why it was a surprise when the Minnesota Twins skipper dropped the covert facade Sunday and publicly revealed the team’s worst-kept playoff secret: Pablo López and Sonny Gray will sit atop their rotation for the opening-round series with a yet-to-be-determined opponent that begins Oct. 3 at Target Field.
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“I’ll be honest, Pablo and Sonny are going to throw the first two games for us in the playoffs,” Baldelli said before noticing all of the ears in the room perk up. “I don’t think there’s any reason to not say that. I think it’s pretty obvious one way or another.”
He’s right to view that information as “pretty obvious,” but that’s never stopped Baldelli and the Twins from being secretive with their pitching plans before. In fact, when asked just a few hours later to confirm he meant specifically López would start the first game and Gray would start the second game, Baldelli was no longer in quite the same candid mood. Old habits are tough to break.
But the dots are simple enough to connect: López last pitched Friday, and his final start of the regular season is scheduled for Wednesday versus the Oakland Athletics. Gray last pitched on Saturday, and his final start is slated for Thursday.
That means, without any unexpected last-minute tinkering by the Twins, the rotation is already lined up for López to start Game 1 of the playoffs on Oct. 3 and Gray to start Game 2 on Oct. 4, each with one extra day of rest.
And that same dot-connecting logic would also suggest Joe Ryan is the Twins’ choice to start a potential Game 3 of the playoffs on Oct. 5, since he’s lined up behind López and Gray all month and will make his final regular-season start Friday against the Colorado Rockies.
A 10K experience, Joe. Cool. pic.twitter.com/gR2EoWTVDS
— Minnesota Twins (@Twins) September 25, 2023
Baldelli stopped well short of confirming, or even strongly hinting at, Ryan as the No. 3 playoff starter, but the Twins swapping out Kenta Maeda for Bailey Ober as Tuesday’s scheduled starter against the A’s removes most of the remaining mystery.
Maeda has exclusively been a starter for the Twins since they acquired him in 2020, but Baldelli indicated he’s expected to pitch as a reliever at some point this week, seemingly in preparation for a playoff bullpen role similar to the one in which he thrived for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
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Maeda has a 1.64 ERA and a 27-to-5 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 22 innings as a playoff reliever. That strong track record, and the 35-year-old impending free agent’s stated willingness to shift back to the bullpen for October if the Twins feel it’s best for the team, may have served as something of a tiebreaker in the No. 3 starter competition.
Whatever the case, it looks likely that the Twins’ playoff rotation will be López, Gray and Ryan, in that order, with Maeda switching to the bullpen, where he’ll be joined by fellow career-long starters Chris Paddack and Louie Varland.
Deciding between Ryan and Maeda as the No. 3 starter may have been a tough call for Baldelli and the front office, but it’s also a great problem to have. Some past Twins playoff teams had such underwhelming rotation options that Maeda or Ryan would have been easy choices to start Game 2 or perhaps even Game 1.
Even accounting for Johan Santana’s dominance in the early 2000s, this is the Twins’ best on-paper playoff rotation since 1991, when the front three of Jack Morris, Kevin Tapani and Scott Erickson started all 12 games on their World Series-winning run over the Toronto Blue Jays and Atlanta Braves.
López, Gray and Ryan have combined for a 3.54 ERA with 598 strikeouts in 526 1/3 innings, and all three rank among the American League’s top 10 starters in expected ERA and expected FIP, two prominent metrics with more predictive ability than raw ERA.
| STARTER | IP | ERA | xERA | xFIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
189 2/3 | 3.61 | 2.98 | 3.33 | |
180 | 2.80 | 3.67 | 3.66 | |
156 2/3 | 4.31 | 3.46 | 3.76 | |
101 | 4.28 | 3.75 | 4.00 |
Nothing is guaranteed in October, but the Twins have undeniably come a long way from the days of relying on Randy Dobnak, Boof Bonser, Carlos Silva and Brian Duensing to start playoff games when moving Maeda to the bullpen is a logical choice despite his posting a 3.39 ERA with 98 strikeouts in 85 innings since returning from the injured list in mid-June.
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López and Gray were both All-Stars in July and will receive Cy Young Award votes. Ryan’s overall numbers suffer from his misguidedly hiding a groin injury from the team for seven mostly awful midseason starts, but he has a 3.19 ERA and 139-to-23 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 124 1/3 innings spanning his other 21 starts this season.
“He’s thrown enough to this point that we have a pretty good idea of how he’s doing and his current stuff,” Baldelli said. “It’s one thing to look at a season’s worth of outings, but sometimes April and May are not the same as what a guy is doing in September. You’re looking for what the guy can give you in a burst right now, or over the next couple of weeks. I think Joe is in a good place.”
Because of the extreme small-sample nature of a best-of-three series, the No. 3 starter either won’t be needed at all because there’s a sweep or will be needed to carry the weight of an entire season in a do-or-die game.
Nothing or everything. That’s what awaits Ryan next week. We think. There’s still time for Baldelli to reclassify the entire playoff rotation as Top Secret.
(Photo of Pablo López celebrating a complete game shutout against the Royals in July: Brace Hemmelgarn / Minnesota Twins / Getty Images)