“Tough not having my car quite yet, so I haven’t really gotten a chance to go out and explore that much,” smiled new St. Paul Saints starting pitcher Mick Abel.
Abel is in new territory. He is a former first-round, 15th overall draft pick by the Philadelphia Phillies. The Minnesota Twins acquired him two weeks ago in the trade that sent closer Jhoan Duran to Philadelphia.
“When it happened, I was like, ‘Oh wow.’ It kinda hit me like a ton of bricks,” said Abel. “It was hard saying ‘see ya’ to a lot of the staff and a lot of my teammates, just because I’ve been with them for so long. You build that many relationships over a five-year span, and in the snap of your fingers, they’re gone.”
The Twins traded a whopping 10 players ahead of the July 31 deadline. Abel will always be tied to that landmark day. Derek Falvey, president of baseball operations for the Twins, says the goal is not to bottom out, but reload for next year. If that works, guys like Abel will be key.
“In some cases, some of these guys were up in the big leagues, sent down to the minor leagues and have a plan for some adjustments they wanna make,” said Falvey. “We wanna make sure they’re settled, they’re on the right track, that we all align on a plan. And hopefully we’ll see more of them as the season wears on.”
Abel made his big league debut earlier this season. He was sent down on the Fourth of July carrying a 5.04 ERA.
“It was really formative, just to who I am right now,” said Abel. “I go up and I think I got a little too curious, dove a little too deep into what I should be doing every week. I kind of got away from my strengths. So, when I got sent back down, the message was, go back to doing what you do well.”
Expect to see Abel get called up later in August or in September. The Twins want to see what they got.
“Their biggest message to me was, ‘Let’s get you acclimated,'” said Abel. “Let’s get you working on a couple different things and go from there.”
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