Varland off to good start as reliever

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Oddly enough, the person who seems to be least intrigued by Louie Varland having thrown 100.2 mph in one bullpen outing and having hurled 2 1/3 scoreless innings on Tuesday -- including striking out the side in an inning -- seems to be, well, Varland.

“Not much of an adjustment, no,” Varland said. “It’s pretty easy going.”

Though the Twins have used Varland in multi-inning stints in two of his three appearances since they called him up to watch his stuff play up as a bullpen arm, they want him to be ready for absolutely anything -- and the last two and a half weeks of the regular season could serve as a pressure test, of sorts, to expose him to various situations and continue his adjustment.

The velocity is up, for one. Varland’s cutter averaged 90.6 mph -- up 1.5 mph from his season average -- on Tuesday, and his four-seamer averaged 97.5 mph, up 2.4 mph from where he’d been as a starter.

“He is a different pitcher coming in in shorter stints, throwing 99 miles an hour with a 91-mile-an-hour cutter,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “When his stuff is doing different things, you’re going to have to rearrange it, so I think that’s probably a goal of getting more comfort in just how to pitch with this new arsenal over the next couple of weeks.”

And though Varland can boast a full starter’s arsenal of the four-seamer, cutter, slider and changeup, perhaps that usage on Tuesday provided some indication of what Varland at full effort as a reliever could look like: primarily cutters and four-seamers, with Baldelli noting that the cutter in particular had really emerged as a weapon.

Not that Varland seemed all that impressed by that, either.

“It’s the same pitch I left here with, so it didn’t go anywhere,” Varland said with a shrug.

Matter of fact as Varland is about this transition, the Twins stand to benefit a lot from anything they can get from him as a full-effort reliever down the stretch. Behind Jhoan Duran, the Twins have had to put a lot of pressure on Griffin Jax and use Caleb Thielbar for lefty matchup portions of opposing lineups and Emilio Pagán as a late-innings bridge man.

But down the stretch and into the playoffs, the Twins will have to supplement that at times -- whether due to usage or because of matchup situations that may arise earlier in key games -- so any additional depth will help. They believe Varland is one of the key pitchers who could have the quality of stuff to do that.

“If there were days where Jax or Thielbar are down, these guys have to move around and fit in different places,” Baldelli said. “So [Varland is] going to be the guy, or one of them, that clearly is going to move from throwing in the fourth inning to throwing in the sixth inning to throwing in the eighth inning. He’s going to have to be ready for all of that.”

Homers had, at times, been an issue for Varland as a starter, and that tendency flared up again in his Sept. 9 relief outing against the Mets, when he allowed blasts to Pete Alonso and DJ Stewart.

But Baldelli noted that he wasn’t worried at all about the homers flaring up again, because their focus remains for now on helping Varland get used to this new stuff and how to harness it -- and the results are secondary to that.

And in that regard, they’re already quite impressed -- and they’re enjoying the show.

“He can attack hitters and go right at them with everything he’s got,” Baldelli said. “He should feel confident. He looks really good right now, and I think we’ve found a real nice way to use him throughout the rest of the season, using him one-to-three innings. And he handles it well.”