Anthony DeSclafani ended last season on the injured list with an elbow strain, so the Minnesota Twins knew the 33-year-old right-hander was a health risk when they got him from the Seattle Mariners as a secondary piece of the Jorge Polanco trade. With ownership slashing payroll by $30 million this offseason, he appealed to the Twins because they had to take on just $4 million of his $12 million salary.
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DeSclafani may never throw a pitch for the Twins after being shut down earlier this week with an elbow injury that could require season-ending surgery. It’s fair to think they should have anticipated more elbow problems for DeSclafani and behaved accordingly, but what the Twins could not have predicted was a modest $4 million investment being enough to sign a decent free-agent alternative.
Normally, that type of money isn’t even enough to shop for a free-agent starter in the scratch-and-dent aisle, but this has been anything but a normal offseason across MLB. One day after news of DeSclafani’s setback and just a week before Opening Day, starter Michael Lorenzen — ranked by The Athletic as the No. 40 free agent — signed a one-year, $4.5 million contract with the Texas Rangers.
Lorenzen was said to be holding out for a multiyear deal all offseason, and he certainly wouldn’t have accepted $4.5 million in January, when the Twins added DeSclafani. But with time running short, Lorenzen settled for one year and less than he made in 2023 ($8.5 million) and 2022 ($7 million) despite coming off a season in which he threw a career-high 153 innings as a first-time All-Star.
To be clear, Lorenzen is far from an impact arm. He’s a 32-year-old with a 4.11 ERA and his own checkered injury history, and even last season’s 4.18 ERA was more befitting a back-end starter than an All-Star. Of course, back-end starter was DeSclafani’s planned role. And if the Twins hadn’t traded for DeSclafani in January, they could have used that $4 million to sign Lorenzen in March.
Unfortunately, they didn’t have the benefit of hindsight. It’s similar to outfielder Michael A. Taylor taking $4 million from the Pittsburgh Pirates last week after previously turning down larger offers from the Twins. By the time Taylor’s price came down into their range, the Twins had already pivoted to trading for his replacement, Manuel Margot, who coincidentally also cost them $4 million.
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Should the Twins’ front office have waited even longer for Taylor’s price to drop and for the free-agent starter market to play out rather than trading for Margot and DeSclafani? Maybe, but those are the types of compromised, budget-driven decisions a front office is forced to make when the team’s ownership takes away $30 million in spending room. Their options shrink and are often flawed.
Without the drop in payroll and penny-pinching, the Twins could have avoided DeSclafani entirely, not needing to take on so much risk for savings. And even if they still would have traded for DeSclafani, they could have responded to his injury now by out-bidding Texas for Lorenzen. There are still a few useful free agents looking for work, but it’s not clear the front office has any money left.
Louie Varland was throwing heat yesterday, topping out at 98.3mph, in his first Spring Training start ⛽️ #MNTwins pic.twitter.com/ti37JxIUe4
— Twins Player Development (@TwinsPlayerDev) February 25, 2024
Fortunately for the Twins, they have Louie Varland ready to take over as the No. 5 starter. There’s an argument to be made that Varland was always a better option than DeSclafani, and a similar case that he’s a better bet than Lorenzen or other cheap veterans. But the Twins didn’t trade for DeSclafani due to a lack of faith in Varland, they did it because they lacked faith in the depth behind Varland.
No team should ever expect to make it through a six-month, 162-game season with its five-man rotation intact. The last time the Twins had fewer than seven pitchers make at least five starts in a full season was in 2010. They needed five or more starts from eight pitchers last season, nine in 2022 and 11 in 2021. And that doesn’t even include shorter-term fill-ins and spot starters.
This time last year, much was made of Bailey Ober being the odd man out in the rotation and beginning the season at Triple-A St. Paul. Yet he was back in the Twins’ rotation three weeks later and ended up making 26 starts for them. They also needed 10 starts from Varland, who began last season at No. 7 on the depth chart, and six starts from 35-year-old midseason signing Dallas Keuchel.
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DeSclafani was acquired in the hopes of buying time before inevitably dipping into minor-league depth, enabling the Twins to have Varland on call as the No. 6 starter in St. Paul, like Ober last year. Now, with DeSclafani out and Varland needed right away, the next-in-line starters are untested prospects David Festa, Simeon Woods Richardson and Brent Headrick, who may not be quite ready.
At the very least, the front office should be trying to stretch the budget enough to sign a veteran free agent to a minor-league contract, so they can be stashed in St. Paul as the No. 6 starter and buy the prospects a little more time to develop. Odds are, over the course of 162 games, the young arms will be needed eventually, but it would be nice for that to come in July instead of April.
There are multiple things to question surrounding the regrettable DeSclafani acquisition, but at the very top of the list should be how much more the front office could have done to reinforce the 2024 rotation, then and now, if the options weren’t limited by ownership gutting the payroll by 20 percent. It’s hard to know for sure the impact of those decisions until the rotation’s in-season depth is tested. And it will be.
In the meantime, Varland has the opportunity to step up, grab hold of a full-time rotation spot and never give it back, which would be a great outcome for the Twins this season and beyond. He’s proven himself in the minors, winning Twins minor-league pitcher of the year in 2021 and 2022, and he’s held his own in 15 big-league starts, posting a 4.83 ERA. Varland is ready for the chance.
(Photo of Louie Varland: Brace Hemmelgarn / Minnesota Twins / Getty Images)
