Jhoan Duran lives up to billing in Twins debut with 'closer' stuff

Six pitches into his major league career, Jhoan Duran was on the cusp of failure. The 24-year-old rookie had allowed back-to-back singles, then threw a cutter to the backstop that allowed Seattle's runners to move up a base.

Fortunately, Duran had a solution, one that had worked before.

"I have a little mechanism," he said. "I close my eyes and start taking deep breaths."

Ten pitches later, it was the Mariners who needed a breather.

Duran blew sinkers, cutters and curveballs past Mitch Haniger, Eugenio Suarez and Jarred Kelenic, the heart of Seattle's order, and struck out all three, leaving the runners stranded. It was as loud an announcement of his arrival as a Twins rookie pitcher has made in a while.

"He was fantastic," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "Settled in after the first couple of hitters and then, I mean, everything we got after that was just fire."

That fire reached temperatures of 100 mph six different times in his two-inning debut. There's a chance that Duran develops into the hardest-throwing pitcher in Twins history. And considering that none of the seven hitters he faced could get the ball into the outfield, it's not too bad already.

"Duran is as nasty as it comes with that sinker, and what he's got going," Mariners manager Scott Servais said. "He shut the door on us."

Gary Sanchez caught Duran in the bullpen on Wednesday, and came away grateful.

"I'm glad we're on the same team and I'm not facing that kind of pitching and velocity and movement," Sanchez said. "His pitches, they all move. His velocity, his command— I think he's going to be a key part of our bullpen for us to go deep in the playoffs."

The triple-digit sinker is a pitch that is going to make Duran famous, Baldelli said, especially if he can keep it in, or near, the strike zone.

"He's been pitching at 99-101 [mph]. A pitch he's throwing for a strike at times, and below the zone at times, getting swings and misses," Baldelli said. "That pitch is very different from maybe anything in baseball."

Baldelli said the Twins' plan is to keep using Duran in the middle innings while he adjusts to the majors, but Carlos Correa doesn't think that plan will last long, especially now that Taylor Rogers is a Padre.

"That guy's got some closer stuff," Correa said. "As good as it can be."

Perhaps the most noticeable change to Target Field this season isn't actually inside the ballpark. Two large cranes loom several hundred feet over the ballpark, just beyond the left field fence.

The cranes are the most visible signs on the construction of the North Loop Green project just across the light-rail tracks from Target Field's left-field entrance. Construction is expected to take two years, and when completed, the main residential tower will rise 36 stories above the street, or two stories taller than the RBC Gateway Building visible a few blocks behind center field. The new building will include 350 residential units, many of them with balcony views of the playing field, plus another 100 units for short-term rentals.

As construction goes on, the Twins plan to commission a study to determine the effects the large structure will have on wind currents in the ballpark, and whether the team needs to consider any action to counteract the effect.

When Chris Paddack came to the Twins late Thursday from the Padres, he wanted a fresh start. And one way to do that is to take a new jersey number.

Paddack isn't one to be sentimental about an integer. He wore No. 59 previously because that was the number assigned to him at his first big league camp in 2019, and he just stuck with it. The No. 20 he'll wear with the Twins also was decided by an outside source.

"I've got to give a shout out to my little nephew. Sent him a couple of numbers that we had available here and let him pick," Paddack said. "So of course he picked kind of a middle infield number. Make me look like an athlete out there. … Correa might have to move over to second, because this looks like a shortstop number."