The St. Paul Saints lost 11-2 to the Iowa Cubs on Sunday afternoon at CHS Field, but for those with a rooting interest not on hand to view the gory details, a check of the box score provided at least a sigh of relief when it comes to 22-year-old starting pitcher Simeon Woods Richardson.
Woods Richardson took the loss, but not the brunt of the Cubs’ 12-hit onslaught, and his six strikeouts in less than four innings of work offer proof that his outing was not as bad as it may have appeared to be at first blush.
Woods Richardson left the game with two outs in the fourth with the Saints trailing 3-0. After getting the Cubs out in order in the third, including two on strikeouts, he appeared to be settling into a groove after giving up an unearned run in the second. But he gave up a long leadoff homer in the fourth when he hung a slider to the Cubs’ cleanup hitter.
After retiring in the next two batters, he gave up a walk and an RBI double to end his day.
For Woods Richardson, the best part of his first start is that it’s behind him.
“I feel like I didn’t give my team the best chance to win,” he said. “I feel like I could have executed better when I needed to. But at the end of the day we’re still working, still developing and there’s plenty of baseball left.”
A focus for Woods Richardson and the coaching staff during spring training was to develop a better slider, which would give him a hard breaking ball to go with what at times has been a devastating changeup. The home run came on a slider that stayed up in the strike zone.
“It was the right pitch,” Woods Richardson said. “It wasn’t the right location. So you go back to the lab.”
Overall, he is confident his “new” slider is better than the one he had, and expects it to only get better.
“We’re a muscle memory-based sport,” Woods Richardson said. “So it is about repetition. It’s fun, because it puts another book in front of my face that I can study and try to be the best I can be at it.”
Woods Richardson said he took time in the offseason to reflect on what equated to a storybook season in 2022, which began with a strong start of the season at Double-A Wichita, led to a promotion to St. Paul and ultimately ended with a chance to pitch for the Twins before season’s end. He got the start for the Twins on Oct. 2 in Detroit and took the loss despite pitching well, allowing two earned runs on three hits over five innings.
His coaches say the well-grounded Woods Richardson is mature beyond his years, which might best be exemplified by the fact that he said he pushed himself harder physically this offseason than ever before.
“You get your dreams to come true, you make your major league debut,” he said. “But on the other hand, OK, you made your big league debut — what are you going to do from there? Because it doesn’t stop. Time doesn’t stop.
“It was fun it, was great, but there’s still work to do and you still have room to grow. Just like today, you’re going to have to prove yourself again. You have to go out there and put in the work. I can say I was a big leaguer, but it’s about staying there.”
Acquired from Toronto in July of 2021 in the deal that sent Jose Berrios to the Blue Jays, Woods Richardson mentioned upon his arrival in St. Paul last summer that his goal is to make sure the trade ends up to be a favorable one for the Twins. That hasn’t changed.
“There’s no pressure,” he said. “As long as I do what I’m supposed to do, as long as my game holds up, that’s what I try to do. People try to compare people, but at the end of the day you are your own individual. You can’t try to be someone else.”
