Twins plan to start Tim Melville on Monday, NOT Stephen Gonsalves

Remember yesterday when I wrote that the Twins were considering calling up pitching prospect Stephen Gonsalves to start one of the games in Monday’s doubleheader against the White Sox? And I said they were also considering having Dillon Gee start? And then I ended it with the following sentence:

The Twins could also do something crazy like call up Tim Melville to start which oh my god that’s probably going to happen isn’t it?

About that...

Yeah.

By all accounts, Stephen Gonsalves will make his start in Triple-A on Sunday as originally planned, meaning he will not be called up to start for the Twins on Monday. Though several reporters stressed having Melville and Gee start Monday was just the tentative plan, I honestly have no idea what else the Twins would do. Basically every other option is either injured or just recently pitched: Aaron Slegers and David Hurlbut pitched Thursday; Felix Jorge pitched Friday; Fernando Romero is pitching today (Saturday); and Gonsalves is pitching Sunday.

So basically, yeah. It’s going to be Tim Melville and Dillon Gee Monday, unless the Twins have some sort of meltdown in Saturday or Sunday’s games and they end up having to use Gee. If that happens then, um... Chris Gimenez? I don’t know.

Now, if you’ve been reading all this wondering “Who the hell is Tim Melville?” you’ve made it to that portion of the blog post! Congrats!

Melville is a 27-year-old journeyman minor leaguer who has bounced around a number of organizations, including the Royals, Tigers, Reds, and Pirates. Okay, I lied—Melville isn’t just a minor leaguer, he actually pitched in three games for the Reds last year and it went pretty horribly (think eleven runs in 9.0 total innings combined, and two of those appearances were supposed to be starts).

Meville actually started this year playing for the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League of Professional Baseball, whom you may be aware of because former Twin Lew Ford has spent a lot of time there. Anyway, the Ducks apparently released Meville (lmao) and the Twins picked him up on a minor league contract in mid june.

To his credit, Melville has actually done pretty well for the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings since being signed. He’s posted a 2.70 ERA with a 1.07 WHIP over 66.2 innings.

Good for Melville. He worked hard and stuck with it, and now he’ll be back in the major leagues. Heck, who knows? Maybe he’ll surprise everyone and throw like a one-hit, complete game shutout.

But probably not.