{"id":280852,"date":"2024-03-25T09:40:36","date_gmt":"2024-03-25T14:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=280852"},"modified":"2024-03-25T09:40:36","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T14:40:36","slug":"topa-left-knee-tendinitis-latest-arm-to-land-on-il","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=280852","title":{"rendered":"Topa (Left Knee Tendinitis) Latest Arm To Land On IL"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

FORT MYERS, Fla. – The Twins\u2019 quickly thinning bullpen depth took another hit on Sunday, when president of baseball operations Derek Falvey announced that reliever\u00a0Justin Topa<\/a>\u00a0will begin the season on the IL with left knee tendinitis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That makes three members of the projected leverage core at the back end of the bullpen — Jhoan Duran<\/a>, Caleb Thielbar<\/a> and Topa — who will open the season on the shelf<\/a>, all of a sudden very fortuitous that the Twins bolstered their bullpen depth as much as they did over the course of this offseason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what to know about how this could impact the Minnesota bullpen and roster plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How bad are the injuries?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Topa (left knee tendinitis) actually wanted to pitch through the soreness, Falvey said, which he sustained when he jammed his foot a bit while backing up home plate, but the Twins chose to get out ahead of things. They\u2019re giving him roughly a week off his feet before building him back up according to how he feels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want tendinitis to track through the year if we can knock it out ahead of time, so we\u2019re going to knock it out now,\u201d Falvey said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duran (right oblique strain) needs to wait until he has no more symptoms before he can start ramping back up, and oblique injuries are typically treated with an abundance of caution because of how they can flare up and linger at times. He was shut down on March 16 when it flared up ahead of a live batting practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thielbar (left hamstring strain) threw a bullpen on Sunday and is said to already be moving better and responding with better strength, according to Falvey. He had also maintained his bullpen progression throughout the spring, so it doesn\u2019t seem as though he\u2019ll be too behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does the leverage corps look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Griffin Jax and Brock Stewart will get the highest-leverage situations — it\u2019s unclear which will be given the ninth inning, or if the Twins will even have a consistent \u201ccloser\u201d in Duran\u2019s absence — and the bridge roles will go to Jay Jackson<\/a> and Steven Okert<\/a>, both offseason acquisitions, due to their relative seniority and their greater exposure to such situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to answer some questions that we haven\u2019t had to answer in a while,\u201d manager Rocco Baldelli said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be getting through one inning at a time and then getting the next best option out there to get the next three outs. \u2026 We\u2019re going to have to find some new ways to answer the same questions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does this impact roster decisions?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This seems to consolidate a spot on the roster for young left-hander Kody Funderburk, who got a cup of coffee in the big leagues down the stretch last season and is well-regarded in the organization coming off a 2.36 ERA in the Minors last season and an 0.75 ERA in 11 MLB appearances with a fantastic 19 strikeouts and five walks in 12 innings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jorge Alcala\u2019s stuff has played up this spring, with his fastball again playing in the 96-98 mph range in the Twins’ 8-3 loss<\/a> to the Orioles on Sunday, and despite some inconsistency in his results, he seems to be in better position for the roster due to all this attrition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that, really, the only other two pitchers remaining on the 40-man roster for the final two bullpen spots are Josh Staumont and long relief option<\/a> Cole Sands, with Daniel Duarte standing out most prominently among the Twins\u2019 non-roster options — barring any external additions, of course. Staumont\u2019s velocity is back up following a bout of food poisoning, though his control numbers have been shaky this spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Twins were hoping to get Duarte more in the strike zone with some adjustments this spring, and that\u2019s largely been successful, as the control-challenged right-hander has dealt 11 strikeouts without a walk. But due to some roster considerations, it\u2019s sometimes advantageous for a team to keep an NRI-type pitcher in Triple-A instead of breaking camp with that player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are the Twins looking outside the organization?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is always a busy time of year for monitoring the waiver wire and players who are becoming available around the league due to the cascade of contract stipulations and cuts that trigger as camps get trimmed down — and Falvey said the Twins simply remain in a monitoring stage, given they\u2019re happy with some in-house non-roster options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would say that we are monitoring the opt-outs and guys who are around and available, and having conversations with different people,\u201d Falvey said. \u201cMore just as we continue to build up depth, we have guys in camp who we think can do some of this, certainly fill some of these roles. It never hurts when you’re down a few to keep an eye on how to add to that depth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FORT MYERS, Fla. – The Twins\u2019 quickly thinning bullpen depth took another hit on Sunday, when president of baseball operations Derek Falvey announced that reliever\u00a0Justin Topa\u00a0will begin the season on the IL with left knee tendinitis. That makes three members of the projected leverage core at the back end of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":275699,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=280852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280853,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280852\/revisions\/280853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/275699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=280852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=280852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=280852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}