Sands, who shifted to the bullpen full-time last year, was crushed by lefthanded hitters in 2023, yielding a .914 on-base-plus-slugging percentage. He refined his cutter to combat them this year, a pitch he threw sparingly last season and almost exclusively to righties, and now he’s holding them to a .693 OPS.

“I wouldn’t say I’ve dominated them, but it’s improved,” said Sands, noting the advanced scouting reports have been important.

Sands came into spring training throwing harder than ever, and it boosted his confidence when he faced the Los Angeles Dodgers at the start of the season and struck out All-Stars Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith during an outing in which he relied on his cutter.

“Obviously, the stuff is better, but you still have to be able to execute a lot of pitches,” he said. “Velo helps a lot, but at this level, it seems like anybody can turn around 97 mph. You have to be in good counts. You have to show different looks, different pitches.”

Joe Ryan will pitch Wednesday’s finale against the Chicago Cubs on regular rest with the Twins bypassing the option to hold him until Friday for their home doubleheader against the first-place Cleveland Guardians.

“I wouldn’t say there was really too much debate over what we were going to do,” Baldelli said. “We’re not going to rearrange everything we have going on right now because of a series that we have coming up. I don’t think that’s the right thing to do. This is not the last week of the season. We have a long way to go, and a ton of games to play against good teams coming up.”