FORT MYERS, Fla. — Anthony DeSclafani is trying to remain optimistic. When he travels to Texas next week to visit with noted orthopedic surgeon Dr. Keith Meister, with whom he has a long-standing relationship, maybe he’ll get some good news.

But when it feels like a stabbing pain every time he throws the baseball, he knows he has to brace for all possibilities, the worst of which would be Tommy John surgery to reconstruct a torn ulnar collateral ligament.

The Twins have called DeSclafani’s injury a forearm strain, but they’ll know much more in the coming days.

“This thing can only pop up so much before something has to be fixed,” DeSclafani said. “I’m going to hold out optimism. You always want to try and avoid going under the knife. Maybe the MRI will show I can keep going. I don’t know. We’ll see.”

The Twins starting pitcher has never had the surgery — which would take him out of action for the entire season — but he has dealt with recurring flexor and elbow issues.

DeSclafani, 33, did not pitch for the San Francisco Giants after July 23 last season, dealing with the same injury that has led him to this place. He received plasma-rich platelet and stem cell injections back then and subsequently spent the offseason getting his arm into a good spot physically before reporting to camp.

But it’s hard to imitate the stress put on the elbow during the offseason throwing at an indoor facility, he said, and upon his arrival to camp, after throwing live batting practice, he started to feel that pain once more. After taking some time off to let it calm down and strengthen it, DeSclafani ramped back up to the point where he was throwing in a minor league game on Saturday. It was pretty clear to him that something wasn’t right.

He felt relatively good in his first inning of work, touching 94 mph and throwing strikes. By the second inning, the pain had increased to the point he didn’t want to throw the ball because it hurt so bad. Next week, he will finally get some answers from a doctor who has looked at his elbow throughout the course of his career.

“I know he’s going to give me the right thing to do here,” DeSclafani said. “I know I’m getting older, but I’m still hoping I can play baseball for years to come so I want to do what the best is for my future, as well.”

Varland ready for rotation spot

Wednesday was “just one of those days” for Louie Varland.

A few walks, a single here, a single there and suddenly the Detroit Tigers had put up eight runs in a hurry. It was the first sub-par start for Varland this spring, who has looked impressive in his quest for a rotation spot.

“I felt fine,” Varland said. “I mean, I felt good stuff-wise.  Wasn’t doing exactly what I’d like, I guess.”

With DeSclafani sidelined, Varland is set to break camp with the team he grew up rooting for as a child in the St. Paul area, something he called “a dream come true” and his goal since 2019, the year the Twins selected him in the 15th round of the draft.

“Shoes need to be filled, innings need to be thrown, and I think I’m ready to do that,” Varland said.

Briefly

Max Kepler was scratched from Wednesday’s lineup with left pectoral tightness. “Hopefully it’s just precautionary more than anything, but we’ll see,” bench coach Jayce Tingler said. … Reliever Jorge Alcala left Wednesday’s game alongside a trainer after being hit on the fingertips by a comebacker. Tingler said the reports seemed to be positive postgame. … Byron Buxton, who was scratched from Monday’s lineup because of his back, was in the lineup on Wednesday.

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FORT MYERS, Fla. — Jhoan Duran felt his side begin cramping on Sunday while throwing warm-up pitches. A day later, magnetic resonance imaging revealed a moderate oblique strain.

“It’s something that happened (and it’s) frustrating,” Duran said through interpreter Mauricio Ortiz. “But it’s something I’ll recover from.”

The Twins expect to have further clarity on the length of their closer’s absence in the next week or so, but he could be out a month or so. For reference, left-handed reliever Caleb Thielbar missed about a month with an oblique strain last season. He returned very briefly and then was out for seven weeks with another oblique strain.

Thielbar will start the year on the injured list while dealing with a hamstring strain, and while he and Duran recover, others in the bullpen, which has been projected to be a major strength of the Twins, will need to step up.

“It feels great to know there’s guys that can do the job,” Duran said. “I just hope that it’s not for a long time that I’m out.”

When it comes to who will pitch the ninth inning in Duran’s absence, manager Rocco Baldelli and president of baseball operations Derek Falvey mentioned Griffin Jax and Brock Stewart as options.

“I’ll be ready if the team asks me to handle it. I think Brock will be ready,” Jax said. “I don’t necessarily know what direction the team is going to go in terms of like it be one guy versus two guys, three guys, whoever they view fits that matchup well, but I’ll be ready for sure.”

Jax finished last season with a 3.86 earned-run average — a particularly tough stretch early in the season inflated his season numbers — and was one of the Twins’ most reliable arms out of the bullpen.

He primarily pitched in the eighth inning last season, serving as a setup man for Duran. He had some save opportunities himself, finishing with four saves on the season. There’s a huge difference, he said, between pitching in the final two innings of a game.

“After pitching the eighth and pitching the ninth a couple times, I understand why closers make a lot of money,” Jax said. “It’s an awesome job, it’s a lot of adrenaline and just to know that the team’s giving you the ball to stop the game at the end, it’s pretty cool. I mean I try not give it too much more weight than any other inning, but at the same time, I know internally it’s a big deal.”

Stewart, who was lights out during his breakout season in 2023, earned himself plenty of late-inning trust, as well. While he started the season in Triple-A and was limited to just 28 major league games because of injury, he posted a 0.65 ERA in those games, striking out 12.7 batters per nine innings.

“I view them as the same,” Stewart said of the eighth and ninth innings. “Just trying to get three outs, one pitch at a time, one out at a time. Just try to go out there and do the same thing I would do in the eighth inning or the seventh inning. Just try to get that hitter out.”

It’ll take a lot more than just Jax and Stewart to cover the losses of Duran and Thielbar.

The Twins brought in a number of relievers in the offseason — including Justin Topa, Jay Jackson, Steven Okert and Josh Staumont — and have three open spots in the bullpen to fill between now and Opening Day next Thursday.

“It’s going to take the depth. We’ve got good guys, even guys that maybe were slated to start in Triple-A,” Stewart said. “I think we’re confident in our group. This is the deepest bullpen the Twins have had in maybe ever — for sure a long time —so we’re just going to use the depth and try to go out there and get outs and help the team.”

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Cretin-Derham Hall’s Miles Bollinger was 1 for 8 shooting from the field and 0 for 4 from 3-point range in the final minute of the boys basketball state tournament’s tied-up Class 4A quarterfinal game Wednesday at Target Center.

But with the shot clock winding down to its final ticks and the Raiders without their leading scorer — Joe Mitchell, who fouled out late in the second half — someone had to fire something up.

So as Bollinger came curling up toward the top of the arc, he caught a pass from Anthony Knight and, while drifting to his left, fired up another triple.

Bang.

His shot put the Raiders up three points, and they held on from there to secure a 57-56 victory over fourth-seeded Farmington.

Fifth-seeded Cretin-Derham Hall will meet top-seeded Wayzata at 6 p.m. Thursday at Williams Arena in the Class 4A semis.

“The golden boy!” Mitchell said. “The chosen one. Miles Bollinger is the chosen one.”

The golden boy?

“Did they call me that?” Bollinger asked.

Yes. Do they usually?

“Yeah, they do,” he said. “I don’t even know. It started this year early, and I haven’t been able to shake it. I take it as a compliment, I guess.”

He lived up to the name Wednesday.

“You see what he just did? Big shot when we needed it. He comes through every time,” Raiders forward Manteff Dixon said. “That’s what he does, even if he wasn’t hitting early.”

Bollinger’s confidence will never wane, that much is for certain.

“I like to let it go. Great athletes, short memories. I always tell these guys, ‘I’m feeling it,’ even if it’s not going in,” Bollinger said. “I was in a rhythm, I caught it up at the top, and I like that spot, so I let it go. I was kind of off balance, but it went in.”

That make was one of just two buckets Cretin-Derham Hall scored in the final 7 minutes, 58 seconds of the game. Mixon scored to put the Raiders up by six at that time mark. And, from there, everything became hyper-difficult.

Mitchell was the offensive engine for much of the afternoon, with 17 of his 23 points coming in the first half. But Farmington’s Jonah Ask did an admirable job taking away his space in the second half.

“He was right in his hip pocket making life miserable, and that’s how we kind of crept back,” Farmington coach Tharen Johnson said.

But even as Farmington (23-7) generated stops, it, too, struggled to get buckets on the other end. Defense is what Cretin-Derham Hall (25-4) hangs its hat on, and that end of the floor carried the Raiders on Wednesday. They held Farmington to just 38 percent shooting.

And while Farmington had a noticeable size advantage, the Tigers’ advantage on the glass was just 36 rebounds to Cretin-Derham Hall’s 34.

“I would just say grit, like try to fight,” Mixon said of mitigating the size differential. “They’re clearly bigger than us, we’re going to have to put a body on somebody and just find a way to get the ball. They out-sized us a lot, but we just fought hard to get the ball.”

Farmington managed to erase what was a 12-point second-half deficit to take the lead with four minutes to play before a triple from Aidan Macke put Cretin-Derham Hall back in front.

The score was then tied at 54-54 before Bollinger’s heroics.

Still, after a pair of free throws from Brandon Hrncir, who had 12 points and nine boards for the Tigers, trimmed the Raiders’ advantage to one, Farmington had a shot to take the lead in the closing seconds. But standup defense from Knight forced a missed shot that essentially ended the game.

“All season, we’ve been saying defense is going to win us games,” said Mixon, who finished with 10 points and eight rebounds. “And, clearly, at state, defense won us this game. Because offense is going to be hard sometimes on these big stages, but Coach (Jerry Kline) said before the game, defense will help us in these games when the shots aren’t falling. We have to rely on defense. We’ve been doing it all season, so this wasn’t a surprise that we got a stop and we won the game.”

The Tigers were making their first state tournament appearance in 87 years. They certainly delivered a strong showing.

“Credit to that Bollinger kid for hitting that shot. Still had an opportunity,” Johnson said. “During one of those timeouts, I told our guys, ‘Hey, we’ve got to fight back in this thing, give ourselves a shot at the end,’ and we did that. Unfortunately for us, it didn’t go in, but that’s basketball. That’s sports.”

The Raiders said they have been doubted all year. Those doubts will continue to exist heading into Thursday’s date with the defending champions. Fine by them.

“It’s been that way the whole season, no matter who we took down. We never get our respect,” Mitchell said. “We’re a private school, we get that, but we’re some dogs.”

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