The Minnesota Twins have eight players with at least 10 big-league starts under their belts (or at least piggyback bulk outings): Pablo López, Joe Ryan, Bailey Ober, Simeon Woods Richardson, Taj Bradley, Zebby Matthews, David Festa, and Mick Abel. There has been much handwringing this offseason about how that lot will be sifted and sorted.
The team hasn’t shown any openness to rolling with a six-man rotation on Opening Day, even when that meant leaving a good pitcher on the outside looking in, as was the case with Ober in 2023. In fact, they’ve been more likely to open the year with a four-man rotation, given the number of off days MLB schedules at the beginning of the year. In 2019, for instance, they used Martín Pérez out of the bullpen for the first couple of weeks.
By contrast, in the bullpen, the Twins lack options. As opposed to the starting rotation, which has eight names for five spots, the bullpen is closer to having five spots for eight names. There are Anthony Banda, Cole Sands, Taylor Rogers, Justin Topa, Kody Funderburk, and Eric Orze, who seem earmarked for the pen, and Travis Adams threw a few dozen innings for the Twins last season. Veteran non-roster invitees to spring training—like Dan Altavilla, Liam Hendriks, or Julian Merryweather—could factor in as well.
But it’s all still very up in the air. Those other two spots (or three, depending on your opinion on Orze) could also be taken by starting pitching prospects like Connor Prielipp, John Klein, or Marco Raya—or, maybe, some of that work can be taken by whoever of the top eight starters doesn’t make the rotation.
There has been talk of starters being moved to short relief. Festa is probably the name most bandied about on this topic. But what if we aren’t talking about short relief?
The Twins have, in the past, attempted to carry a designated long reliever. It’s almost become a hackneyed cliché to bring up how poorly that plan worked in 2021 with Randy Dobnak or how Cole Sands spent half the year in the majors in 2023 while only throwing 21 innings. But in 2025, they rolled out a new scheme.
The long relievers were on a schedule, similar to the starting pitchers. They did this in the minor leagues with a handful of pitchers, such as Adams, Pierson Ohl, Cory Lewis, Trent Baker, and Darren McCaughan. Instead of starting every fifth or sixth day, these pitchers would pitch in relief every fourth day, on three days’ rest, throwing about 60 pitches (if it was going well).
It may well have been an experiment, or simply a way to keep arms on the farm stretched out when the minor-league teams had an abundance of starting pitchers on the roster. It should be noted that the premium pitchers were not asked to fill this bulk, piggyback role. Matthews, Festa, Abel, Bradley, and Kendry Rojas started in every one of their appearances at St. Paul, and Andrew Morris only relieved twice.
But it was a strategy that the Twins seemed pleased with. After the trade deadline selloff, they introduced the pitching plan to the major leagues. Adams and Ohl both pitched piggyback bulk days, as did veteran Thomas Hatch, and Abel piggybacked twice. This wasn’t a long-term setup, as Adams and Ohl eventually settled into short-relief roles, but it may have been a proof of concept for the team.
So, what if the solution to having too many starters and not enough relievers is solved with the same move? Instead of sending a starting pitcher to the minors to lie in wait, what if the Twins designated one of their younger arms as a scheduled bulk reliever? There are some real benefits to this.
First, as stated, the Twins would be able to keep their best pitchers out of the minors. If everyone is healthy, they can only keep two of Woods Richardson, Bradley, Matthews, Festa, and Abel in the rotation. Even if someone like Festa were converted to short relief, that would still require two of those other names to be stashed in St. Paul—wasting bullets, as the kids say. And there are already plenty of starting arms in Triple-A, including Prielipp, Klein, Raya, Morris, Lewis, and Kendry Rojas.
Second, it fills one of the eight bullpen spots—and with someone who will rack up innings. A designated piggyback pitcher throwing two to four innings every four days likely leads the bullpen in innings and would be one of the better performers on a rate basis as well. With a six-man rotation, the bullpen has to cover the same number of innings with fewer pitchers, but with a designated piggyback reliever, the other seven relievers are likely throwing fewer innings than they would otherwise.
Third, it keeps the next line of defense stretched out. The sixth starter, if pushed into regular bulk relief, is always ready to step into the rotation should any injury occur. If they were instead throwing short relief, it may take time for them to prepare to throw five innings in a start—which is part of the reason the sixth arm often starts in Triple-A. If they are throwing 60 pitches every four days, though, they’re ready to step in immediately.
Fourth, it also probably keeps the rotation a little fresher. The scheduled bulk reliever’s presence allows the regular starters to go a little shorter when they’re being piggybacked, reducing wear and tear.
This is all well and good, and could be a perfectly viable way to keep someone like Matthews or Abel in the majors if they don’t make the rotation, but it’s not a sure bet to work. There are some practical issues—the biggest being in-game decision-making.
If Ryan is rolling through five frames on a low pitch count, but it’s his scheduled bulk day, should manager Derek Shelton pull him to hand it off to Abel? If it’s a one-run game, should López be removed and the game be turned over to Matthews in the sixth? How long should he throw? Would it be better to turn the seventh inning over to a setup man, or would Woods Richardson pitch the fifth, sixth, and seventh innings, since that’s what the schedule said?
It’d take some real commitment to the philosophy to see this play out in practice. A minor-league team or a team out of contention can more easily commit to such a plan, because its wins and losses are less meaningful. But what about a team that (at least by the claims of their owner) expects to be competitive?
For decades, analysts have asked what the future of pitching structure is. In 2009, Dave Fleming suggested a three-three-three rotation in which three pitchers each pitch once through the lineup in each game, for a total of three innings each. (Tony La Russa even tried to implement a version of this in 1993, when he was managing the A’s.) Bullpen games and openers are not as popular as they once were, but they have still altered the way we think about divvying up innings. The Rockies briefly tried to carry us back to the days of the four-man rotation (but with hard limits on pitch counts at around 75), in 2012. As we move ever closer to whatever the next age of pitchers is, the Twins seem primed to take one of the first steps toward truly shaking up the four-day rest paradigm, whether it works or not. Could we see them implement it this season, and become the next trailblazers?