Twins rotation suddenly looks wobbly after Simeon Woods Richardson shelled in loss to Rangers

New York Times

a day ago

MINNEAPOLIS — The surest sign a baseball game has gone off the rails is when a position player is forced to pitch.
The second appearance of Jonah Bride's career, which resulted in a scoreless ninth inning, occurred Tuesday night in a contest started by Simeon Woods Richardson.
Both of Bride's outings have taken place in the last week in blowout losses started by Woods Richardson and David Festa, two pitchers whom the Minnesota Twins are once again in a position to depend upon for valuable innings as they deal with key injuries in the starting rotation.
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Similar to Festa's outing Thursday in Sacramento, Woods Richardson surrendered a bunch of hard-hit contact, and his defense did him no favors, either, as the Texas Rangers crushed the Twins 16-4 in front of 24,765 at Target Field on Tuesday night.
Woods Richardson — who yielded nine hard-hit balls — lasted only 4 2/3 innings, allowing seven runs (six earned), seven hits and three walks.
'We didn't do ourselves any favors on a lot of fronts,' Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. 'The game got away from us.'
The Twins already found themselves in a difficult spot last week when they promoted Festa to replace Pablo López, who suffered a devastating Grade 2 teres major strain June 3, which could keep him sidelined for three months.
Though he's extremely talented, Festa, who is set to start again Wednesday after allowing eight runs in his most recent outing, has pitched more than five innings only once in 18 career appearances. He's tasked with filling in for a frontline starter in López who produced a combined 7.8 wins above replacement, according to FanGraphs, and the eighth-most innings pitched in baseball (379 1/3) the last two seasons.
Then Sunday, Matthews, who originally placed Woods Richardson in the rotation after he struggled earlier in the season, was placed on the 15-day injured list with a Grade 2 subscapularis strain in his right shoulder. Though team sources said the injury isn't nearly as serious as the one suffered by López, Matthews will be shut down from throwing and won't be re-evaluated for roughly two weeks.
Both injuries are significant losses to a rotation that produced the fourth-most fWAR in the majors as of June 4.
Tuesday, the Twins recalled Woods Richardson, who was one of their most consistent starting pitchers and the club's rookie of the year in 2024.
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But Woods Richardson struggled to get ahead in the count against a Rangers offense that entered Tuesday with the third-fewest runs scored in baseball. He threw first-pitch strikes to only 13 of the 26 batters and worked in deep counts after throwing strikes on only 53 of 98 pitches.
Throw in defensive misplays by Royce Lewis and Byron Buxton, and another hot shot that Carlos Correa couldn't handle, and you had all the makings of a long night.
After Buxton's two-base error in the fourth inning and a walk of Evan Carter with no outs, Woods Richardson yielded three runs.
The Twins scored twice in their half to make it a 3-2 game, but Woods Richardson couldn't take advantage. He issued a leadoff walk to Corey Seager in the fifth and uncorked a wild pitch in the middle of allowing three consecutive two-out hits as Texas broke it open.
I don't wanna stop til the groove gets right!
Royce kept it going pic.twitter.com/U7fnkTB4kS
— Minnesota Twins (@Twins) June 11, 2025
'I also didn't do my part as well,' Woods Richardson said. 'I didn't throw as many strikes, it didn't help (the defense). It was a combination of everything. There's gonna be days like that.'
With 96 games left on the Twins' schedule, Baldelli indicated there would be similar days ahead when he must lean on his starting pitchers to work deep into outings.
Tuesday, the Twins manager asked Woods Richardson, who recorded at least an out in the sixth inning 12 times in the first 36 games (35 starts and one bulk pitching appearance) of his career, to carry the load. The Twins were down only a run with reliever Justin Topa warming up when Woods Richardson yielded a two-out single to Carter in the fifth. Josh Jung followed with a two-run single before Adolis Garcia doubled to end Woods Richardson's night. Topa surrendered two hits as Texas jumped ahead 8-2.
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'I wanted to give (Woods Richardson) an opportunity to pitch through it,' Baldelli said. 'There's going to be times where we push our starters, all of them. There might be times where we have to go to our good bullpen and let them go out and help us win a game, too. You might go to them a tick earlier in some games. We're not even halfway through the season. We're not going to be going to the bullpen early in most games. … It's going to be baseball decisions at that point.'
Though he originally felt his shoulder strain during a bullpen session in Tampa last month, Matthews decided to push through it. He pitched seven innings in Seattle on May 30 and earned a victory with five one-run innings in Sacramento on Wednesday.
The team's minor-league pitcher of the year in 2024, Matthews hopes his shoulder will respond quickly.
'We're hoping the time on the IL is short-lived,' Matthews said. 'We're going to take a little bit of time off. There is not like an exact date or amount of days. It's just dependent on how I feel. If I feel better in the next couple of days, we'll start playing catch again.'
Depending on how their young arms respond, the Twins might eventually have to make a trade for a veteran starting pitcher. But that isn't likely to happen any time soon as teams typically aren't open to making deals in early June, preferring to wait until closer to the trade deadline to increase the number of suitors pursuing their players and driving up the price.
Even if a team was willing to trade a starting pitcher, there's no telling whether the front office of the Twins, who are up for sale, would have the ability to add salary. For now, the Twins will have to make the best of it and lean on what they have, a group they entered the season believing offered plenty of depth for situations like this one.
'It was a good time to stretch him a little bit and let him pitch,' Baldelli said. 'We haven't done that a ton with him, and I think it's something that is good. There's a lot of things to be taken from longer outings and pitching further in the game. With Sim, we're going to talk about working ahead of hitters, controlling the at-bats in that manner. The changeup is something we talked about before the game, too. That pitch was just OK for him. He probably needed a little bit more command-wise from that pitch. But there's ability in that pitch. It certainly can be a weapon for him.'
Otherwise, there could be more work ahead for Bride.