Manager Ron Gardenhire said Wednesday that he'd be a proponent of baseball increasing rosters to 26 players, saying if he could have just one more player, his roster would be "ideal."
Gardenhire said he wishes he could have kept Matt Tolbert after spring training, saying the high-energy infielder would have given him a speedy option off the bench. Instead, the Twins went with Brendan Harris and Brian Buscher as their utility men in the infield. With teams favoring more and more pitchers on their active rosters, Gardenhire said a 26-man roster simply would make sense.
"It used to be 10 pitchers, then 11, probably when (in the past) it was probably eight pitchers," Gardenhire said. "Now it's 12 and sometimes 13, so you would like to have another player."
Gardenhire said with modern-day pitch counts and the need to protect starters from overextending themselves, teams need to bolster their bullpen even if it's at the expense of depth in position players.
