Saints starting pitcher Louie Varland is a reluctant interview these days.

The 26-year-old right-hander’s responses to questions are as brief as they are guarded. No offense should be taken. Nor, for near certainty, is any offense intended.

The St. Paul native simply is more interested in finding answers in a season with more than its share of ups and downs, and spending a lot of time talking about it in the media probably doesn’t seem to him to be a good use of his time or energy.

Varland enters Thursday’s start at CHS Field with a 3-6 record and an earned-run-average of 6.56. He’ll make his 11th start of the season for the Saints with some momentum, having blanked the Iowa Cubs over five innings in his last start.

His last start at CHS Field, however, was a disaster. He gave up 11 earned runs on 11 hits in 2 1/3 innings against Toledo on June 23. Varland left the ballpark without making any comment and acknowledged on Wednesday prior to the Saints’ 21-6 loss to the Gwinnett Stripers that the rough outing indeed weighed heavily on him.

“It sucks; it’s not what you want at all,” Varland said. “Any competitive baseball player, it’s going to weigh a lot on them.”

Varland said he entered his start against Iowa with the mindset that he couldn’t wait to put the previous outing behind him. His success raised the question of what he changed from one start to the next.

“Nothing,” Varland said, adding, “That’s baseball.”

What made the start against Toledo all the more surprising was that Varland was coming off two solid outings with the Twins — one as a starter and one out of the bullpen. Once again, he chalked it up to, “That’s baseball,” but Varland knows he will be well served to find some consistent success.

The best way to do that, he said, is to learn from the bad and stay focused on doing the things needed to allow him to continue to improve.

Varland has worked with coaches this season and last to develop new pitches while fine-tuning others. His current repertoire includes five pitches: cutter, four-seam fastball, changeup, curveball and an occasional two-seam fastball.

Varland said he doesn’t have a pitch he considers his best, although his fastball reaches the high 90s. He said he typically throws his fastball 30% of the time.

“I’m going to throw every pitch every game,” Varland said. “It depends on the lineup and what the hitters struggle with.”

Varland has made 28 career appearances with the Twins, including 20 starts. It remains to be seen if his future is as a starter or a reliever.

“I think what’s best for the Twins (right now) is backing up starting pitching,” Varland said. “That’s why I’m at Triple-A, to be built up as a starter. I think everybody knows what I can do out of the ’pen,” referring to last year.

“So that can happen at any time. But the most important thing to help the team is starting pitching.”

It will be a win-win if he can get himself straightened out. He might even have something to say about it.

Briefly

Saints pitchers gave up a season-high 24 hits after allowing 20 on June 23. Infielder Diego Castillo pitched the ninth and gave up a grand slam.

The Stripers started the fifth inning with six consecutive hits against Saints starter Caleb Boushley and reliever Scott Blewett en route to a five-run inning.

Left-handed reliever Aaron Rozek, a Burnsville native, was called up from Double-A Wichita.

 

Wednesday night’s game promised to offer the Twins a glimpse at two of their brightest prospects.

Infielder Brooks Lee’s major league debut couldn’t have gone much better. Starter David Festa’s second game, well … that was a different story.

Lee, called up before Wednesday night’s game, collected his first two major league career hits and drove in a run. But Festa was knocked around for seven runs in the Twins’ 9-2 loss to the Detroit Tigers in the middle game of the series at Target Field.

Festa, who debuted last week in Arizona, had a start that mirrored in first in many ways. Only in this one, he didn’t have the same run support that earned him his first career win last time out.

After two scoreless innings, Festa ran into trouble in the third, allowing six hits — and five runs — before he was able to escape the frame. He had a similar inning that spiraled in his last start, giving up four runs in the fourth inning last Thursday.

The big blow in the inning was a Carson Kelly grand slam, sinking the Twins (48-38) into a hole from which they could never recover. The very next batter, Wenceel Pérez, went back-to-back with him.

Festa would pitch five innings in his start, giving up two more runs in his final inning of work as Colt Keith and Riley Greene began the frame with a triple and home run respectively.

The starter has now given up 12 runs in his first 10 innings of work in the major leagues since being added to the rotation in place of Chris Paddack, who is out with shoulder fatigue.

While his rough outing was enough to send the Twins to a blowout loss, they did see plenty to like from Lee, who got word of his call up earlier in the day on Wednesday while preparing for a game with the Triple-A Saints.

Though he started his night by looking at strike three, Lee’s second and third at-bats each ended with him standing on first base.

Lee lined a pitch past diving shortstop Zach McKinstry in the fourth inning, bringing much of the Target Field crowd to its feet for an ovation. As he stood at first, a big smile on his face, the rookie raised his hand to the crowd in acknowledgement.

In his next at-bat, he singled, bringing home a run. He finished the day 2 for 4.

The Twins’ only other run came in the third inning when Christian Vázquez hit a solo home run, his third of the year. That extended their streak to 21 straight games with a home run, a club record.

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Minnesota United is stress-testing the jurisprudence of Murphy’s Law.

Amid a stubborn and growing list of absent players, the Loons’ play early in Wednesday’s game against Vancouver Whitecaps further pushed the adage of what can go wrong, will go wrong.

Loons captain center back Michael Boxall made a ghastly error in the opening four minutes to concede a goal and MNUFC were immediately chasing the game in a 3-1 loss at Allianz Field.

MNUFC (8-8-6, 29 points) have now lost five straight matches, setting a new club record for worst skid in its MLS era.

To twist the knife, Vancouver (8-7-7, 31 points) joined Portland with recent wins over Minnesota leading to them leaping over the Loons in the Western Conference standings.

Boxall under-hit a back pass to goalkeeper Alec Smir. Whitecaps forward Ryan Gauld pounced and passed to Brian White for the opening goal.

On a Vancouver corner kick in the 16th minute, Boxall had Mathias Laborda get in behind for a header into the back of the net.

The Loons had two chances to get a goal back in the 24th and 27th minutes. Goalkeeper Yohei Takaoka came far out of goal, but Robin Lod’s shot was blocked by a Vancouver defender. Then Vancouver was called for a handball in the box, but surprise penalty kick taker Joseph Rosales’ poor shot was saved by Takaoka.

Rosales got some redemption on a corner kick on the 30th minute. His service was headed by Hassani Dotson to the back post and Bongi Hlongwane got his left foot on it to make it 2-1.

Goalkeeper Alec Smir made his MLS debut in net for the Loons; the 25-year-old MNUFC2 player got the start with Dayne St. Clair away with Canada and Clint Irwin injuring his groin after the Portland loss Saturday.

Smir said he learned about his start earlier this week and first called his parents to share the news.

“It’s been a wild couple days,” Smir said on the 1500 ESPN pregame show.

Smir gave up three goals, including a quality long-range strike for Sebastian Berhalter in the 60th minute. None of the three concessions should be chalked up as Smir’s fault.

Briefly

The Loons had 16 shots to Vancouver’s six, but only five of Minnesota’s attempts were on frame. … With eight players out, Alejandro Bran was thrust into the starting lineup after being away from the Loons for weeks and just coming off the bench for Costa Rica in Copa America on Tuesday night in Austin, Texas. … The Loons signed goalkeeper Oscar Herrera to an MLS NEXT Pro contract and a short-term loan to the first team for Wednesday’s match. Herrera of Madison, Wis., played at Augsburg through 2023 and has been training with MNUFC’s first and second teams this year. … Midfielder Franco Fragapane made his 100th appearance for the Loons on Wednesday.

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The Rev. Jo H. Campe III, who overcame addiction and revived the Central Park United Methodist Church in St. Paul, died June 24 from a respiratory illness. He was 79.

Rev. Jo Campe

In 2000, the United Methodist minister decided to center St. Paul’s oldest Methodist congregation around the 12-step recovery process, which Campe knew would help people like himself.

A driving factor for that decision was Campe’s relationship with a janitor at the church who struggled with his recovery. The janitor couldn’t stay sober and eventually died from alcohol poisoning.

Campe got angry at addiction, according to a friend, Bob Swoverland.

“He became a warrior, if you will,” Swoverland said. “He was willing to go anywhere, in front of anyone, and share the hope of recovery.”

Campe also helped establish the Minnesota Recovery Connection, an organization led and governed by representatives of local recovery communities.

Campe used to hold classes at the Christ Recovery Center in St. Paul, where men can come off the streets to get clean and sober, staying as long as they need, said Ted Garner, a friend and sponsor.

Campe had a sense of humor, according to friends. He’d often open his sermons with a joke, many of them either “in poor taste” or “just bad”, said Swoverland.

“He’s going to be missed by a lot of people,” Garner said. “A lot of us, myself included, have gotten conditioned to losing people. This one is hard to take.”

Campe was born Jan. 11, 1945, in Minneapolis. He is survived by two adult children, Joey and Molly, as well as grandchildren Kai and Ruby, siblings Chris and Annette and a golden retriever, Cedar.

He was also known for his love for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. At age 14, he and a friend spent a few weeks in the boundary waters alone, without a tent, according to daughter, Molly Campe. When Molly was just 3-years old, Campe brought her up to the boundary waters for the first time, igniting her love for the wilderness.

A celebration of life will take place at 1 p.m. Sunday, July 21, at the Recovery Church in St. Paul.

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