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Twins’ Carlos Correa nears return; Joe Ryan likely to make rehab start

betsy helfand, pioneer press
·3 min read

Carlos Correa went through a full workout on the field on Tuesday ahead of the Twins’ night game. Joe Ryan threw a bullpen. So did Josh Winder. Things went well for all three of them.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that while the Twins await their returns, they have to play the New York Yankees and then the Tampa Bay Rays.

Correa’s return is the most imminent. The Twins are hopeful that the star shortstop, who tested positive for COVID-19 while on the last road trip and was sent home, will be ready to play on Wednesday.

What could change that?

“If I wake up feeling like (expletive), that would be it,” Correa said. “But besides that, I should be good to go.”

Correa said he dealt with a massive headache, chills, sore throat, runny nose and cough while out. Those symptoms have subsided, but he still has some fatigue, he said, which is why the Twins held off on activating him immediately.

Correa said the first two days back at the ballpark working out were tough on him, but he felt better than he thought he would on Tuesday, leaving him optimistic about returning soon.

Ryan, who also just recently recovered from COVID-19, said he now has thrown three bullpens, the last coming on Tuesday.

“No fatigue in the ‘pen,” Ryan said. “It felt good. Changeup was good, slider was good, curveball was good. Got some good work in there and the fastball was good.”

Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said the plan right now was for Ryan to make a rehab start, though he cautioned that the plans could change and they would wait to see how he recovered over the next couple of days.

Winder (shoulder impingement) also felt good about his bullpen and the progress he has made over the course of the last week. Winder was placed on the 15-day injured list with a right shoulder impingement on May 21, and he said initially he was trying to get a grasp of what was going on and what hurt his shoulder, as well as what kind of workload he could manage. Over the past week, he said he has been throwing consistently as he worked toward getting back on the mound.

“I think the plan right now is to slowly build back and see where that goes,” Winder said. “Nothing is set in stone yet. There’s still some conversations to be had. Today was the big day for me, so I wasn’t really looking past this bullpen. We’ve got to get this out of the way first, and then we can kind of think about the rest later on.”

Fellow starter Bailey Ober joined Ryan and Winder on the injured list on Monday with a groin strain, a recurrence of an issue that landed him on the injured list earlier this season. Baldelli said it was his understanding that Ober had not been pitching through injury, but had recovered to 100 percent before reinjuring his groin.

The Twins are also missing Sonny Gray (pectoral), and their starting pitching depth has been stretched thin in recent days — rookie Cole Sands was added to the roster to make the start on Tuesday in place of Ober.

To make room on the roster for Sands, the Twins put yet another player on the injured list — Kyle Garlick, who strained his left hamstring in Toronto.

“Once we can finally pencil them back in, regardless of who we’re talking about, once you get past the first name and the second name and the third name and they start coming back … I think it will be a pick-me-up for the rest of the group,” Baldelli said. “There’ve been some guys out there who’ve been pushing through this, and a few that have been healthy and have played the entire time. It’s not easy to do when everyone else kind of drops off or gets hurt.”

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