When it was all over, and the Twins’ All-Star Game-bound ace righty had bested Pittsburgh’s All-Star Game-bound ace righty in Friday night’s classic pitchers’ duel, Minnesota starter Joe Ryan could joke about his heavy early workload.
Ryan escaped the first inning of an eventual 2-1 win without allowing a run, but only after the Pirates loaded the bases with two outs, and the Twins’ starter needed 34 pitches to get back to the dugout. He joked after the game that 34 pitches is fine for the first three innings, but a bit much for the first inning alone.
It became a rousing story, with the season’s first sellout crowd at Target Field seeing Ryan’s last appearance before he is part of the American League roster at Tuesday’s midseason festivities in Atlanta. But Twins manager Rocco Baldelli admitted a day later that he almost brought an early end to Ryan’s evening, as his pitch count reached the 30s.
“I think he was very happy with the way he went out there and competed. The way he got through that first inning, made it work. Got the outs when he needed to. That took a lot,” Baldelli said prior to Saturday’s rematch versus Pittsburgh. “That outing could’ve ended in about five more pitches. And instead of going five (innings), you end up going 2/3. It takes a toughness to get through those types of situations. And Joe continually finds ways to get big outs and get through games. So that’s where it kind of started for him, and then he settled in and threw great. That’s not surprising, to see him have a really good outing.”
Having watched many, many pitchers, both as a player and as a manager, Baldelli said he was prepared to make a change if Ryan would have approached the 40-pitch mark in Friday’s first inning.
“No one’s fine after throwing 40 pitches in an inning. Nobody’s fine. We can say they’re fine, but they’re not fine. The players might say they’re fine, but they’re not fine,” he said. “So that’s a lot of work. That’s two and a half innings worth of work in a really compressed time frame. So all that said, he wasn’t going to throw too much longer. He might have had one more hitter in him, and that would have certainly been it for Joe. And that’s just probably just too many pitches, we’re just calling it what it is.”
Instead, Ryan’s 34th pitch coaxed a pop-up out of Pirates infielder Ke’Bryan Hayes, and he needed 52 more pitches to get through the next four innings. Improving to 9-4 on the season, Ryan allowed five hits and struck out five.
With the head-to-head matchup versus Pirates righty Paul Skenes, who will start the All-Star Game for the National League, Ryan said the key was escaping that rocky first inning without a Pittsburgh player reaching home plate.
“You know there’s not going to be a ton of runs scoring that day. So you just want to minimize as much as you can and I think we did a very good job of that early,” Ryan said. “And then the bullpen locked it and did an outstanding job, so that was great to just hold it and get a team win.”
Matthews headed east
The team announced prior to Saturday’s game that Twins right-hander Zebby Matthews will report to the St. Paul Saints to begin a rehab assignment on Sunday.
Matthews has been on the team’s injured list since early June with a strained right shoulder. He has a 1-1 record this season as a starter but has been unavailable for the past 33 games.
His last win came on June 4 in a 6-1 victory over the Athletics in Sacramento.
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