The Twins have signed left-hander Locke St. John to a minor league deal, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. He’ll presumably receive an invitation to major league Spring Training.
St. John, 30, has eight major league games on his track record thus far, with seven of those coming with the 2019 Rangers. He posted a 5.40 for Texas that year in a small sample size, getting outrighted off the roster in September. In 2021, he signed a minor league deal with the Tigers and had a strong season, though never got called up to the big leagues. He tossed 59 1/3 innings for the Triple-A Toledo Mud Hens with a 2.58 ERA, striking out 29.2% of opponents and walking 9.7%.
2022 was a less of a success for St. John, however. He began the year on a minor league deal with the Cubs, eventually getting selected to the big league roster. He made one appearance for the Cubs but allowed three earned runs in two innings of work. He was claimed off waivers by the Mets but they kept him in the minors and later outrighted him. Between the two organizations, he threw 49 Triple-A innings with a 5.88 ERA, striking out just 18.7% of hitters while giving free passes at a 12.6% clip.
Despite that down season, the Twins will give him a shot to see if he can get back to the solid form he showed in 2021. The Twins have a couple of lefties likely to be in their bullpen in Caleb Thielbar and Jovani Moran but the only other southpaw on the 40-man is starter Brent Headrick. St. John will give the club another non-roster option in that department, alongside Danny Coulombe and various other depth arms. If St. John can earn his way onto the roster, he still has a couple of option seasons and less than a year of MLB service time.
Twins need to fill the low minors.
Looks like a MiLB depth signing. Basically, a replacement for Drew Strotman or something like that. It gives the Twins more flexibility to shuttle realistic options for relievers while they figure out who belongs in the MLB bullpen.
Based on Falvey’s comments regarding the bullpen, I suspect they’ll be relying on Josh Winder and Bailey Ober to round out their best arms with guys like Alcala and Moran fighting for a spot on the 26 man.
Locke St John always sounded like a villain on a soap opera. Like you expected him to hire someone to kidnap the other team’s right fielder before the series.
With a name like Locke St. John, I fully expect him to be either an expert yachtsman or polo player or both.
I was going to say—in the unlikely event he gets substantial major-league time in 2023, he has to win WASPiest Name when the team does their awards after the season
I came here to say he sounds like John Locke’s nephew. No doubt a treatise on the nature of government and its application to the human condition is in the works 😛
St. John gonna lobby Jesus who gonna lobby God so that he can make the roster and have the Twins win the WS. Very smart pick up on behalf of the Twins.
I’m just here for the Enlightenment Philosophy jokes
What about ‘Lost’?
The Island demanded this signing.
His full name is apparently Kenton Locke St. John.
Well, either his mother or grandmother’s maiden name was Locke or his parents had a sense of humor.
Pretty much a Locke he’ll get a DFA
sometime this season. That being said, I hope he Lockes up a slot on a major league roster. I’ll hand it to guys who pursue their dream.
A+ name
I hope he finds success in St. Paul. It’s a nice town. He’ll make a great Saint!
Well, not really. We’ve learned that Ramsey County jail is overflowing with reprobates and needs to purge “less serious” offenders for the safety of others.
Off topic, but welcome to the United States where being “tough on crime” resulted in the quintupling of the prison population since 1980. Politicians, ever interested in scaring people into voting proposed ever longer prison sentences and harsher punishments. The jails and prisons overflowed, so we built more jails and prisons. Then they filled again so we just doubled up the rooms. They overflowed again. The prison system became so expensive the government auctioned off the administration to private companies who cut corners to charge less and the governments turned to The Freedom of Information Act and civil systems creating de-facto punitive measures for people who ever get out of the jails and prisons to placate the ever vindictive and judgmental public in an attempt to make every conviction a “life sentence” which led to high recidivism, putting further pressure on the incarceration load. Finally, the latest trend towards encoding laws which criminalize the act of being mean or causing a subjective amount of emotional distress (being mean is the worst thing a person can do in the social media driven US today) and it becomes impossible to incarcerate people convicted of violent crimes. Thus, your car jackers walk free and the guy who screams a slur at a religious group gets incarcerated.
St. Paul is about average for violent crime and property crimes.
Take it to court
Even when you do and you are exonerated, you’re still ruined. See: Bauer, Trevor. Exonerated not only criminally, but also civilly (preponderance of evidence) where the judge made some extraordinary statements regarding the lack of credibility from the complaintant. Bauer definitely has issues and I wouldn’t want him dating any of my friends, but accusations of almost any crime can ruin people’s lives in this country. Even search engines like Google elevate criminal records searches (complaints, arrests, charges, convictions, appeals, etc) because people just really want to be able to destroy each other. Instead of debating the material or position, Americans debate the other person. Wipe the person out and nobody had to listen to anything from the opposing viewpoint. It’s scorched Earth tactics and highly effective right now.
Not as good as Bacon St. Francis but a bit better than Hobbes St. Thomas
But not better than David St. Hubbins, especially considering St. Hubbins is the patron saint of quality footwear.