Neal: We don’t need to see Jonah Bride pitch anymore, Twins

By the end of the Twins’ 17-6 implosion against the Brewers on Friday night at Target Field, both teams had a position player pitching.

This is not the way the game was meant to be played. But it is the way managers run pitching staffs in this era. So both the Twins’ Jonah Bride and Milwaukee’s Jake Bauers, position players by trade, were on the mound in the ninth inning, getting hit hard as batters on both teams padded their stats. Bride gave up five runs and Bauers four.

“Not something that I want to see. I don’t want our position players pitching,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We do it when we have to do it. When we’re forced to do it.

“Jonah is a very good teammate and is willing to contribute by helping out our bullpen. But that’s obviously not the sign you’re looking for when your position players are being entered into the game. You want to avoid that at all costs. We can’t allow ourselves to be put in that type of spot, where we have to do it.”

Bride must be a very good teammate, as he has now been called on to pitch four times over the past 15 games, a stretch in which the Twins are 3-12. They have given up double-digit runs four times during that stretch, and they nearly made it five with Saturday’s 9-0 loss.

In each of the four games Bride has pitched, the Twins have given up at least 14 runs. His major league ERA sits at 15.00 — 10 earned runs over six innings pitched, all this month, on 14 hits, three walks, two hit batsmen and two strikeouts, all from pitching this month.

Position players pitching is nothing new, but it especially seems to be more common nowadays, given the roster rules Major League Baseball has had in place since 2022. Teams can carry only 13 pitchers on their 26-player roster, and position players are only allowed to pitch in the first nine innings of a game when a team is down (or up) by at least six runs. (The rule changes were initially meant to begin in 2020, but COVID changed all that.)

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts might have pushed position players pitching to a new level a couple of weeks ago. On June 10, he brought in infielder Kiké Hernandez with two outs in the sixth inning and Los Angeles trailing San Diego 9-0. Hernandez ended up pitching the final 2 ⅓ innings, getting eight outs on 36 pitches.

Still, there must be a way to curb this. Penalize the team that uses a position player to lose the designated hitter the next game? Allow teams to add a 14th pitcher and ban position players from the mound?

That’s not my solution for the Twins. My suggestion: Better performances.

Don’t get blown out so often and you won’t need to keep watching Bride pitch batting practice.

The St. Paul Saints coaching staff has been trying to get Edouard Julien back to where he was a couple of years ago, when he could pound fastballs in the strike zone.

One at-bat on Tuesday suggested a turnaround is possible.

In the bottom of the first inning against Toledo, Julien got ahead 3-1 against righthander Troy Melton, fouled off a pitch to fill the count then blasted a curveball over the right-center field wall at CHS Field for a two-run home run.

Julien followed that with a homer on Wednesday, and he homered again Friday as part of a 3-for-5 night. That put him at 7-for-15 in the Toledo series with six RBI entering Saturday.

He also was batting .306 with a 1.014 on-base-plus-slugging percentage in June.

For a team that can use as many capable hitters as possible, Julien might be an option if someone with the major league club gets injured or if the Twins want to shake up the lineup.

All eyes are on Wild General Manager Bill Guerin as he enters NHL free agency in search of a center. But is that all he should be looking for?

The Wild need more scoring depth, regardless of position. We saw the drop-off last season when Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek were on the shelf at the same time.

From a scoring standpoint, bringing winger and Burnsville native Brock Boeser home can be part of the solution.

Boeser, at 28, is in his prime. He had 25 goals and 50 points last season but is a year removed from scoring 40 goals for Vancouver. He can boost the power play. The Wild need someone who can put the puck in the net, and Boeser does just that.

It could cost more than $8 million a season to lock Boeser up. But looking ahead, the NHL salary cap is increasing from $88 million to $95.5 million next season. By 2027-28, it will be $113.5 million. There’s room to make this work.

Regardless of what Guerin seeks at center, Boeser is an upgrade.

• The Twins will split four games against Seattle at Target Field this week but drop two of three at Detroit to finish out a tough month of June.

• The Lynx will win three of their next four games before facing Indiana for the Commissioner’s Cup championship on July 1.