Why the Twins nearly had to pull Joe Ryan after one inning Friday

When it was all over and the Twins All-Star Game-bound ace righty had bested Pittsburgh s All-Star Game-bound ace righty in Friday night s classic pitchers duel Minnesota starter Joe Ryan could joke about his heavy early workload Ryan escaped the first inning of an eventual - win without allowing a run but only after the Pirates loaded the bases with two outs and the Twins starter needed pitches to get back to the dugout He joked after the championship that pitches is fine for the first three innings but a bit much for the first inning alone It became a rousing story with the season s first sellout crowd at Target Field seeing Ryan s last appearance before he is part of the American League roster at Tuesday s midseason festivities in Atlanta But Twins manager Rocco Baldelli admitted a day later that he almost brought an early end to Ryan s evening as his pitch count reached the s I think he was very happy with the way he went out there and competed The way he got through that first inning made it work Got the outs when he needed to That took a lot Baldelli explained prior to Saturday s rematch versus Pittsburgh That outing could ve ended in about five more pitches And instead of going five innings you end up going It takes a toughness to get through those types of situations And Joe continually finds tactics to get big outs and get through games So that s where it kind of started for him and then he settled in and threw great That s not surprising to see him have a really good outing Having watched a multitude of a great number of pitchers both as a contestant and as a manager Baldelli reported he was prepared to make a change if Ryan would have approached the -pitch mark in Friday s first inning No one s fine after throwing pitches in an inning Nobody s fine We can say they re fine but they re not fine The players might say they re fine but they re not fine he explained So that s a lot of work That s two and a half innings worth of work in a really compressed time frame So all that explained he wasn t going to throw too much longer He might have had one more hitter in him and that would have certainly been it for Joe And that s just apparently just too multiple pitches we re just calling it what it is Instead Ryan s th pitch coaxed a pop-up out of Pirates infielder Ke Bryan Hayes and he needed more pitches to get through the next four innings Improving to - on the season Ryan allowed five hits and struck out five With the head-to-head matchup versus Pirates righty Paul Skenes who will start the All-Star Competition for the National League Ryan announced the key was escaping that rocky first inning without a Pittsburgh contestant reaching home plate You know there s not going to be a ton of runs scoring that day So you just want to minimize as much as you can and I think we did a very good job of that early Ryan reported And then the bullpen locked it and did an outstanding job so that was great to just hold it and get a club win Matthews headed east The band revealed prior to Saturday s championship that Twins right-hander Zebby Matthews will account to the St Paul Saints to begin a rehab assignment on Sunday Matthews has been on the association s injured list since early June with a strained right shoulder He has a - record this season as a starter but has been unavailable for the past games His last win came on June in a - domination over the Athletics in Sacramento Related Articles Joe Ryan survives early struggles as Twins beat Pirates ace Paul Skenes Baldelli says marquee pitching duel is must-see TV Twins prep for all scenarios ahead of Sunday s first round of the MLB Draft Twins can t complete sweep as Cubs bats conclusively wake up Byron Buxton misses Cubs series finale with hand bruise Will he be back this weekend