KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Twins plan to promote right-hander David Festa from Triple-A St. Paul on Friday to face the Detroit Tigers at Target Field, manager Rocco Baldelli said.

Festa would take Pablo López’s roster spot once the Twins officially put him on the 15-day injured list because of a mild strain of his right hamstring.

“We’re going to call up Festa and give him the ball and let him go,” Baldelli said.

Zebby Matthews is a good bet to get a promotion from the Saints to start the opener of the next series at Target, against the New York Mets, on Monday night. It would give the Twins a six-person starting rotation until López returns.

Using both young pitchers this way would give others in the Twins’ rotation an extra day of rest between starts. The Twins are in the middle of a 12-day stretch without a break. Baldelli said this plan had been in the works before López’s injury Tuesday night.

“It’s something that’s a forward-looking, get-ahead-of-things move for our starting pitchers,” Baldelli said.

Festa comes in with a 5.40 earned-run average in two starts with eight strikeouts in 8 1/3 innings at St. Paul.

He posted a 4.90 ERA in 14 appearances, making 13 starts with the big-league team in 2024. In his five-year minor-league career, Festa has a 3.53 ERA with 336 strikeouts, 108 walks and 25 home runs allowed in 273 innings.

Festa’s own turn in the rotation at Triple-A otherwise would have come Friday, and Matthews was aligned with López, who would have gone Sunday if not for the injury.

It will be the first time López misses a start with the Twins. He could miss as many as three starts while on the IL, but the Twins hope the extra pitcher in the rotation, plus upcoming days off over the next two weeks, will make it just two starts missed.

López would rather miss none.

“I don’t like it. I hate it,” López said. “But it makes sense.”

López and head athletic trainer Nick Paparesta both said they have gone over reams of medical data looking for a reason the injury happened. It does not appear there was anything López did wrong, or could have done differently, to prevent it.

“We have not found anything, or uncovered any secret diamond, that was causing the issue or did cause the issue,” Paparesta said. “I think it’s just the competitive nature of this game, the repetitive stress upon the body that this game puts on people.”

Paparesta praised Carlos Correa for noticing that López wasn’t right and bringing his teammate to an understanding that it was time to get off the field.

“Pablo made the right decision, and it’s going to help him come out of this better off,” Paparesta said.

Lee to try nine

Paparesta said infielder Brooks Lee will play a nine-inning game with St. Paul on Friday as the next step in rehabbing a lower back strain.

Lee, who injured his back in spring training, started his assignment at Fort Myers, Fla., on Sunday before quickly ascending to the Triple-A squad. He has played parts of two games for the Saints, and was scheduled to rest Thursday before returning to the lineup.

Lee probably would need to play multiple full games before the Twins bring him to the big league team.

Paparesta said they wouldn’t let Lee play unless he said his back was feeling up to it.

“Once we get them out to a rehab assignment, the question of the injury in our mind is pretty much solidified,” Paparesta said. “We try to make the rehab as hard as possible so that the games are as easy as can be.”

Baldelli said that third baseman Royce Lewis was still several weeks away from being ready to play. Lewis is not quite midway through what was said to be a possible eight-week stint on the injured list.

“When he’s a lot closer, then I’ll start following it on a day-to-day basis,” Baldell said.

Buxton returning

The Twins didn’t have outfielder Byron Buxton available for the past two games because he went home to Georgia to attend a personal matter, said to be a friend’s funeral. Putting him on the bereavement list would have meant the Twins would have been without him for three games, so instead they played short for two games.

Buxton, who played the first 11 games of the season, is batting .171/.209/.293 with a home run, 16 strikeouts, one walk and two stolen bases in 41 at-bats.

A state trooper responding to reports of a crash involving a wrong-way driver in central Minnesota crashed into one of the vehicles at the scene, according to the State Patrol.

The incident occurred Wednesday night on U.S. 10 in Clear Lake.

Five people were injured in the twin collisions, including a juvenile who suffered life-threatening injuries, according to the State Patrol. The other four people had non-life-threatening injuries.

“We are deeply saddened by the tragic events that occurred last night on Highway 10 in Clear Lake. Multiple people were injured in an incident involving a wrong-way driver, a second vehicle that included juvenile occupants, and a responding Minnesota State Patrol trooper. Our thoughts are with those affected, and we recognize the profound impact this has on everyone involved,” the State Patrol said in a statement.

According to initial information, a trooper was responding to reports of a wrong-way driver when the errant driver collided with another vehicle with juvenile occupants.

“As the trooper approached the crash scene, he collided with at least one of the vehicles involved. Assisting troopers provided immediate medical care until EMS arrived on scene,” the State Patrol said.

The Sherburne County Sheriff’s Office will investigate the incident.

“Our troopers work across the state each day to keep Minnesota roads safe. Our hearts go out to all of those involved and their families during this difficult time,” the State Patrol said.

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The U.S. Forest Service will not log in designated wilderness areas like the Boundary Waters, federal officials clarified, days after issuing an emergency order intended to boost logging on national forest land throughout the country.

The order, issued last week, declared an emergency on some 113 million acres of national forest land, citing wildfire risk or damage by insects and diseases, and called for an increase in timber production on those lands to reduce wildfire risk.

Wide swaths of several wilderness areas, like the Boundary Waters, were included in that acreage total, and a map accompanying the order made no distinction between wilderness areas, where logging is banned, and non-wilderness national forest land, where logging is allowed but regulated. Locally, that caused concern that the order would lead to logging within the BWCAW.

But a U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson said in an email to the Duluth News Tribune this week that logging wasn’t planned in designated wilderness areas. Instead, the spokesperson said other actions, like prescribed burns, would be used in those areas instead. The Forest Service oversees the Superior National Forest and BWCAW and is part of the USDA.

The 1964 Wilderness Act significantly limited logging in the Boundary Waters, and the 1978 Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act banned it.

“The clumsy map that they put out shows how poorly planned this whole order was,” said Kevin Proescholdt, conservation director for Wilderness Watch. “Because the map showed logging would occur in all kinds of wilderness areas across the national forest system, not just the Boundary Waters. And I think, for me, it’s indicative just a slap-dash way in which the Trump administration is approaching this.”

The order was made in USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins’ April 3 memorandum titled “Increasing Timber Production and Designating an Emergency Situation on National Forest System Lands,” which itself was a response to President Donald Trump’s March 1 executive order “Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production,” which urged the reversal of “onerous” and “heavy-handed” regulations and policies that Trump said “prevented full utilization of these resources and made us reliant on foreign producers.”

Rollins’ memo does not mention wilderness areas or prescribed burns, but in addition to authorizing the “removal” and “salvage” of trees, it promotes the more general “removal of hazardous trees” and promotes proposals that “reduce” fuels like vegetation.

Even if logging remains outside the BWCAW, it could still cause disruptions, like noise, in the wilderness, Proescholdt said. He added that additional large-scale prescribed burns within the wilderness could bring activities like chainsaws to cut firelines and the landing of helicopters, which are illegal under the Wilderness Act except in emergencies.

The order encourages “expedited compliance” with the Endangered Species Act, National Historic Preservation Act, and Clean Water Act, citing authority from emergency provisions  in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. A news release said it seeks to “increase timber outputs, simplify permitting, remove National Environmental Policy Act processes, reduce implementation and contracting burdens, and to work directly with states, local government, and forest product producers to ensure that the Forest Service delivers a reliable and consistent supply of timber.”

“It’s in part to make up for the expected loss of wood products from Canada because of Trump’s stupid tariff war,” Proescholdt said. “But the essence of the order is that it’s trying to accelerate logging in the national forest and seeking to bypass or skirt around the environmental regulations that have been in place for decades.”

The Department of Commerce planned to increase import taxes on Canadian softwood lumber from 14% to more than 34%, Bloomberg reported Monday.

Acting Associate Chief of the Forest Service Chris French instructed regional foresters and deputy chiefs throughout the agency in an April 3 letter to boost timber volumes by 25% over the next four to five years.

“Today, we enter a new era marked by pressing issues like a growing demand for domestic lumber and wildfire resilience. … To address these challenges, we need to increase our active forest management to improve both the prosperity of rural America and the health of our forests,” French wrote.

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Former St. Paul Park City Council member Jeff Haggerty is once again back on the council.

Undated courtesy photo, circa November 2023, of St. Paul Park City Council member Jeff Haggerty, who was appointed to the council on Monday, April 7, 2025. (Courtesy of Jeff Haggerty)

Haggerty, who served on the council from 2021-23, was appointed to the council on Monday. He fills the seat that was vacated when former city council member Bruce Zenner resigned last month for personal reasons.

Five residents applied for the position, and the council voted 3-1 to appoint Haggerty. Council member Tim Conrad was the lone dissenter.

“It was a tough decision,” said Mayor Keith Franke. “We had a lot of good, qualified people apply, but Jeff’s previous council experience really stood out. Former council members, a former mayor and staff reached out to me on his behalf. His application was, like, five or six pages long. Compared to everybody else, he really paid attention to the details.”

Haggerty, a lifelong resident of the city, was sworn in on the spot, Franke said.

Haggerty, a senior manufacturing engineer at Abbott, will fill the remainder of Zenner’s term until the November election.

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