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Saints manager Toby Gardenhire: New pitching rules will mean busy base paths

john shipley, pioneer press
·3 min read

Get ready for some action on the base paths, Toby Gardenhire said. There’s the addition of the pitch clock and new limits to the times a pitcher can disengage from the rubber during a single at-bat. That would be two reasons.

“You’re going to see a lot more stuff in the big leagues that you’ve never seen before,” the St. Paul Saints manager said Wednesday as his Triple-A team congregated in advance of the team’s first series this weekend in Toledo.

Because a pitcher must disengage from the rubber in order to throw the ball to a base other than home plate, that means he has only a pair of throws to hold a runner at first — or elsewhere.

Triple-A teams played under the rule, and the new pitch clock, last season, and the Saints’ stolen base totals went from 76 in 2021 to 136 in 2022. That’s a 78.8 percent rise.

“This year in spring training,” Gardenhire said, “they were going way up.”

Last April, Saints shortstop Royce Lewis drew two throws from a pitcher before stealing second base. The pitcher balked Lewis to third when he stepped off the rubber a third time, then balked the Twins’ top prospect home when Lewis started down the third-base line and the pitcher stepped off again.

That won’t happen in the majors because under MLB rules, the disengagements will reset if a runner advances. Still, it should be interesting. Even if a pitcher doesn’t spend his two disengagements, Gardenhire said, they’ve been wary of wasting one — and because of the pitch clock they can’t just hold onto the ball as they were previously taught. As a result, many teams have started base runners early.

“These guys are all doing this,” he said. “Some teachers call it a ‘vault steal.’ We call it a ‘momentum steal,’ where basically they’re creeping out before the pitcher throws the ball.”

With the new rules, the Twins are encouraging players at all levels to be more aggressive on the base paths to put pressure on defenses. Asked about the momentum steal on Wednesday, second baseman Edouard Julien — starting the season in St. Paul after an impressive spring training camp — smiled.

“The ‘couple shuffle’ before going?” he said. “I’m going to try it out. We’ll see what happens. You tell me how I do, yeah?”

Likely rotation

Gardenhire said he has a “pretty good idea” of what his roster is going to look like for Friday’s 3 p.m. season opener at Toledo, adding “but every day it changes a little, it seems like.”

Barring an injury on the big league club, the Saints’ starting pitching rotation likely will be Bailey Ober — a late cut in Fort Myers — Aaron Sanchez, Simeon Woods-Richardson, St. Paul North’s Louie Varland and left-hander Brent Headrick.

Headrick, 25, went 10-5 with a 3.32 earned-run average between High-A Cedar Rapids and Double-A Wichita last season. “He’s pretty good, too,” Gardenhire said.

Gardenhire said Randy Dobnak, who was at CHS Field on Wednesday, will likely start in the bullpen with Jose De Leon and Dereck Rodriguez. All eight of those pitchers, however, will be stretched out enough to pitch multiple innings if called up to the Twins, the manager said.

Briefly

Varland was not in St. Paul on Wednesday. The Twins let him go to Chicago to watch his brother Gus pitch for the Milwaukee Brewers against the Cubs at Wrigley Field. … Ober is scheduled to meet the team in Toledo on Saturday.

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