Although free agency hit the Minnesota Twins especially hard during the off-season, manager Rocco Baldelli believes his team is strong enough to keep the American League Central title.
“It really does,” he said Sunday when asked about the impact of free agency on the Minnesota roster.
Speaking before an exhibition game against the Washington Nationals at Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers, Baldelli refused to bemoan the fact that nine players, including top starting pitcher Sonny Gray, left the team, presumably for greener pastures.
“I don’t generally sit and dwell and think about the good players we’ve lost,” he said. “Virtually all of my energy and the team’s energy is spent on what we’re going to do next, how we’re going to go out there and win ballgames with a different team.
“A lot of our team does look similar, minus a few faces. But we have a new pitching staff, a new rotation, and a new bullpen.”
Baldelli, at 42 one of the youngest active managers, spoke at length about his 2024 pitching staff.
“We all need five starters at the beginning of the season plus two or three quality names behind them who you know will come and help you and that you’re prepared to use,” he said.
“I don’t necessarily look at it and think we have to replace Sonny Gray and all the things he brought to the table. “Our staff is going to look different. The guys we do have are going to pitch differently potentially and hopefully better than they pitched last year.
“I look at Chris Paddack rejoining our group after his second Tommy John surgery. He’s a great strike thrower and he’s looked very good. He’s a very good ML starting pitcher who should be in the prime of his career. He came back in the playoffs for us last year and has thrown the ball exceptionally well. We’re really excited about him.”
Paddack figures to fit into a starting five that will also include Pablo Lopez, Joe Ryan, Louie Varland, and 6-foot-9 Bailey Ober. According to Baldelli, Varland can either start or relieve.
“We moved him to the bullpen in the playoffs but he’s a starter at heart,” said Baldelli. “He has a tremendous amount of potential and his collection of pitches is different this season.
“In general, we’re looking for improvement from the guys we have. We have a quality bullpen. I never sit here and think ‘we’re the same team minus a couple of guys’ but we do have adjustments to make. I want us to be different, I to be better than we were last year. We need to identify ways to do that.”
Jhoan Duran led last year’s bullpen with 27 saves while averaging 12.7 strikeouts per nine innings. He’ll get strong set-up support from Griffin Jax and Brock Stewart.
The Twins won 87 games last year but that was enough to give the club its third AL Central crown in the last five seasons. That streak started in 2019, when the Twins blasted their way into the post-season with 307 home runs, a major-league record tied last season by the Atlanta Braves.
“We have a team that can hit home runs right now,” the manager insisted. “No one expected us to hit those home runs at the rate we did. It was pretty incredible to be a part of and to witness. We’ll talk about that forever.
“Right now we have mostly different names from that team, strong guys who hit the ball hard, who do a lot of things and get on base.
“I really like our offensive group. I think we have a chance to score a lot of runs. And that’s really the name of the game. We have a team that has the ability to show explosiveness. We have a good collection of young position players who are talented so I think they are ready to take the next step.”
Keeping everyone healthy has been a spring training concern for Baldelli in the past but not this year, he said.
“We have a lot of guys that are healthy right now, strong, coming into camp ready to perform. That’s a very positive thing and you can feel it in our camp right now. In years past, several of our main contributors were just not ready.”
An offense led by comeback candidates Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa could receive considerable support from a cast Baldelli believes is up-and-coming.
“I personally don’t even know the definition of a rookie these days,” he said. “We had some guys come up last year with only a couple of hundred plate appearances who are good offensive players. Eddie Julien, Royce Lewis, and Matt Wallner haven’t played very long but they’re already good.
“A couple of those guys are going to hit near the top of our lineup. We’re going to trust their abilities, their work ethic, and what they can do for us.
“Those are the guys who came on in the second half last year for us, did a great job, and they’ve followed up with a good camp. There are some younger names who are on their way but those are the names who are most relevant for Opening Day.”
Lewis, the top pick in the 2017 amateur draft, showed enormous promise last summer with five grand-slams and four home runs during post-season play.
Outfielder Max Kepler led the Twins with 24 home runs and 66 runs batted in last year, while Willi Castro topped the team in stolen bases with 33. But it was Julien whose 2.8 WAR (wins against replacement) led the ballclub.
“We don’t have the fastest team,” Baldelli admitted, but we have a team of good instinctual players who can put pressure on the opposition.
“I want us to score any way possible. You want guys to get on base and you want guys to hit the ball over the fence on occasion. But the skill-set of the players we’re going to work with, whatever it is our guys do well, we’re going to try to accentuate it, and try to score.”
According to Spotrac, the Twins have a projected 2024 payroll of $114,103,690, ranking 19th among the 30 clubs.
The same site reports that Correa, the 29-year-old shortstop, is the highest-paid Minnesota player at $32,000,000, part of his six-year, $200 million deal.
The Twins open the 2024 season in Kansas City on March 28.
“Our division is going to be highly competitive,” Baldelli predicted. “Multiple teams have made real changes to their organizations and their rosters.
“Kansas City brought in a lot of good talent. Detroit played us exceptionally tough last year and has some good pitching they’re going to lean on.
“The Guardians are always a team that makes life very difficult. You have to work very hard every time you take the field. They continue to turn out young pitching, guys with good arms and good stuff. They have a really good idea of what they’re doing. It’s a machine that continues to turn out players.”
Baldelli, a former outfielder, is a bundle of energy who looks forward to the season starting later this month.
“I’m always excited about the season,” he said. “If I wasn’t excited about the season, I wouldn’t be sitting here and doing this. I love Opening Day and the early-season optimism. I love working through the early-season questions and challenges that come up because regardless of what you think is going to happen and regardless of what it looks like on paper, the way it plays out is always different than what you first believed.”
“Working through that is always something that I find part of my job, a really compelling part of my job, something I try to spend a lot of time on and think about a lot.”
Fielding a young team is hardly mandatory for the Minnesota manager.
“I prefer to have a winning team,” he said. “I could care less, young, old, pitching strong, hitting strong, it doesn’t matter to me. If we think we put together a club that can win games and go to the playoffs and go to the World Series, I’ll work with that club any day of the week. We have that right now.”