MINNEAPOLIS -- Whenever a team has a bullpen game -- meaning a reliever makes a spot start and the rest of the bullpen backs him up -- it's always a roll of the dice. The reliever may get shelled in the first inning, or he may get deeper into the game than initially expected.
Twins right-hander J.R. Graham's outing Saturday against the Brewers fell somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. The hard-throwing Rule 5 pick made his first career big-league start as Minnesota needed a spot starter for Saturday's game. Graham fit the bill as a former starter in the minor leagues.
Graham gave the Twins four innings and allowed just one run in the process. He kept his team in the game and gave Minnesota a chance to win. Unfortunately for he and the Twins, the bullpen couldn't contain the Brewers as Milwaukee took the second game of the series by a 4-2 final.
It's hard to fault Graham for the way things went Saturday. The only run he allowed came on a first-inning fastball he grooved to Brewers right fielder Ryan Braun, who crushed it for a solo homer. Other than that, Graham's first career start was a decent one, albeit brief.
"We got out of him what we had hoped to," said Twins manager Paul Molitor. "I wasn't sure how long he was going to go. They got the home run there by Braun in the first inning and hit some balls hard, but he got through four innings and gave us a chance, coming out of the game with a 1-0 deficit. Overall, I'm sure he was excited and amped up a little bit."
Graham is in his first season with the Twins after they took him from the Braves in the Rule 5 draft. As such, he has to stay on Minnesota's 25-man roster for the entire season or else the Twins have to offer him back to Atlanta. Minnesota has tried to protect Graham at times already this year by not exposing him in high-leverage situations.
As a minor leaguer in the Braves' system, Graham was almost exclusively a starter until the latter part of the 2014 season when he was transitioned to a bullpen role. As of late the Twins have used him in multi-inning outings, including three innings in each of his last two appearances prior to Saturday.
Graham admitted to having some nerves before his first big-league start but insisted he tried to approach it just like any other relief outing.
"Before the game, I was kind of trying to figure out when to start stretching and start throwing," Graham said. "I talked to (pitching coach) Neil (Allen) and he said, 'Don't treat it any differently. You're coming in from the bullpen, except you don't actually have to jog in from the bullpen. You come from the dugout.'"
Graham did get into some trouble in the third inning but was aided by a base-running blunder by Milwaukee's Carlos Gomez, who was thrown out at second base after rounding the bag too far on a single by Jonathan Lucroy. A two-out single by Braun gave the Brewers two baserunners, but Graham struck out Adam Lind looking to end the inning. It was one of Graham's three strikeouts in his four innings, as he also fanned Aramis Ramirez and Shane Peterson.
By the time Graham completed a 1-2-3 fourth inning, his pitch count was at 63. Molitor initially said Graham might have the chance to throw 70 to 75 pitches but opted to replace Graham with right-hander Ryan Pressly in the fifth inning.
That didn't start so well for Pressly, who walked the first three batters he faced on 12 pitches. But Pressly eventually settled down and got out of the fifth inning without allowing a run. After the game, Molitor stood by his decision to take Graham out after just four innings of work.
"We talked about it briefly. There were some balls hit pretty hard in the fourth," Molitor said. "I think he probably could have tried one more inning, but looking at what we had available and a one-run deficit, I wanted to start Pressly off with a clean inning -- which didn't start particularly clean. But 1-0, I was ready to turn it over."
Graham exited the game with the Twins trailing by a run. Minnesota tied it in the bottom of the sixth on a base hit by Joe Mauer. The Twins' bullpen surrendered three more runs after that, though, and Graham's short-but-effective start eventually became an afterthought.
Though Graham will now return to the bullpen, he'll do so with a bit more confidence. He now has more than two months of big-league experience under his belt, and as of Saturday that includes a start.
"I tried to slow the game down a little bit," Graham said. "I'd say it was a good step in the right direction from the beginning of the season."
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