St. Paul Saints rained out more than any team: ‘Never seen anything like this’

Minor league baseball is all about player development, preparing guys for the major leagues, but the biggest lesson for Class AAA St. Paul Saints players has been in time management.

No team, in all the minor leagues, has dealt with more rainouts this year.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said pitcher Kody Funderburk. “It’s nuts.”

The Saints had 13 games affected by weather (11 postponements and two cancellations) during the first two months of the season, which matches Class AA Portland for the most in the minors. By comparison, St. Paul totaled 19 postponements or cancellations over the last four seasons combined.

Ask players about all the rain, and they shake their heads as they think about their two road trips to Columbus, Ohio. In the first series, at the beginning of April, they had two rainouts. They played a doubleheader to make up one game — fittingly, the first game started after a 95-minute rain delay — and the other game was postponed until the second series at the end of April.

When St. Paul returned to Columbus, the make-up game from the first series was rained out on a Tuesday, again on Thursday, again on Friday and finally canceled on Saturday. The Saints lost two games in Columbus that won’t be rescheduled this year.

“I hear Columbus is, like, a great city,” Twins pitcher Zebby Matthews said. “I hear nothing but good things about it. But the two times we were there, it rained, and it was cold. You want to go out, walk around, go eat and find some restaurants, but you get done playing or the game is rained out, and it’s just pouring rain. You’re like, ‘Ah, I don’t know if I want to go anywhere now.’”

Shortstop Ryan Fitzgerald added: “That’s the place you want to go, too, because it’s a good ballpark to hit in.”

There are real consequences besides all the extra time sitting around in a cramped clubhouse. Doubleheaders in the minor leagues are only seven innings, so there are fewer innings to hand out to relievers with starters handling most of the game. Funderburk had a stretch where he threw five pitches, facing one batter, in 11 days because of two rainouts.

Andrew Morris, one of the Twins’ starting pitching prospects, had a full week between his first six starts of the season because starters kept being pushed back because of the rainouts. If he reaches the big leagues, he’ll likely be required to start every five days.

“It made it tough to start out,” Matthews said. “I don’t know if any of us had a consistent schedule for the first month of the season. ... We want to throw and get our innings in. Missing games, pushing starts back, it’s been all over the place.”

Kyle Bischoff, a righty reliever, didn’t pitch at all in Columbus because of all the rain, but the Saints needed him to make three relief appearances in a five-day span a couple of weeks later when they ran through all their pitchers in high-scoring games.

“In AAA, the pitching is going to get messed up anyway because you send guys up and down to the big leagues,” Saints manager Toby Gardenhire said. “But when you get all these rainouts and doubleheaders, there is no happy medium with it. You’re either getting crushed, or guys aren’t throwing enough. That’s just a part of it.”

Position players are less affected by the rainouts because they can still work on their swings in the indoor batting cages and remain on a somewhat normal schedule.

“The truth is that it has been a little harder because we had to play [seven] doubleheaders,” outfielder Emmanuel Rodriguez said. “The days are longer, but we’ve been adapting.”

All the Saints players emphasize rainouts are part of the game. They expect them when playing in the Midwest during April and early May.

But the amount of rain they’ve endured is a unique experience.

“None of the grounds crew wants to let us out there to throw [on bullpen mounds] in the rain,” Matthews said. “We had a couple of guys throw inside in Columbus when we were there. Definitely a lot of catch play in the rain, that’s for sure.”

Said outfielder Carson McCusker: “It was crazy. Kind of used to it now, which is good.”