Twins cut two pitchers, roster down to 49

According to Dustin Morse, the Twins have made a couple roster moves.

I can’t say that these moves actually provide much more clarity to the ongoing roster battles—neither guy was going to have a chance of going to Milwaukee for opening day. That still doesn’t mean that the Twins aren’t moving toward their final roster, because they certainly are, its just that Shaun Anderson and Devin Smeltzer are both about three guys below the cut at their respective positions.

Smeltzer is one of the top-10 starters in the organization, and that depth will be used, but the opening five is pretty well set with the veterans the Twins signed this winter in JA Happ and Matt Shoemaker joining the established top trio of Jose Berrios, Kenta Maeda, and Michael Pineda. If anyone was going to challenge that status quo, Randy Dobnak is ahead due to both his past performance and his showing this spring, so moving Smeltzer to the minor league side makes sense.

Anderson is a pitcher the Twins like, and they grabbed him from San Francisco in exchange for LaMonte Wade Jr. Anderson has a history of being a wild thrower, but has a slider that showed potential, and fits into the Twins style of pitching. He is, however, a project pitcher, and since he has options it appears the Twins have decided to work on the project from across the river.

The Twins now have 23 players left to cut. A number of those will be no-brainer moves, but there will be a few interesting battles left to be decided, and we will keep you up to date at that time.