Report: Twins choose to run it back with Emilio Pagan
Emilio Pagan's 2022 season was bad, but not bad enough to have the Twins trade him or let him become a free agent. On Friday, the deadline to non-tender players, the Twins offered a contract to the 31-year-old right-hander, according to Dan Hayes of The Athletic.
That means Pagan will be back with the Twins in 2023, serving as an important arm in a bullpen that was often slaughtered when Caleb Thielbar and Jhoan Duran weren't pitching late in games.
Twins relievers served up 78 home runs in 2022, the fourth most in the American League and the eighth most in all of baseball. Pagan was dinged for 12 homers and a stunning 1.7 long balls per nine innings.
Since 2020, the only reliever in the big leagues to allow more homers than Pagan (32) is Miami's Caleb Smith (37). Griffin Jax of the Twins is third on the list (30).
But what Pagan has that many relievers don't is electric stuff. When he's good, he's really good. Evidence of that can be seen in Pagan's 12 strikeouts per nine innings.
If he can figure it out and stop getting rocked, he could help Minnesota form a formidable bullpen.
Heard Emilio Pagán drew far more interest from other teams than Gio Urshela did ahead of tonight's non-tender deadline. Pagán's stuff and 12 Ks per nine had a lot of teams asking.#MNTwins
— DanHayesMLB (@DanHayesMLB) November 18, 2022
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Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.