FORT MYERS, Fla. — Randy Dobnak has a clear memory of the most recent Twins game in which he was engaged. It was last April against the Rays in St. Petersburg.
"My wife and I and some friends drove up and sat in the stands," the 28-year-old righthander said. "We got tickets near the bullpen, and I was chirping at all the guys out there. It was fun."
Just not as much fun as actually pitching, something Dobnak has done in a Twins uniform only once in the past 20 months. But it's something he believes will happen again this season, once he proves he's healthy and effective again.
"I have all the confidence in the world. I know what I'm capable of," Dobnak said. "Just having the opportunity again kind of fuels me."
His once-promising career — "Just two springs ago, he broke camp throwing the ball about as well as anybody we had," recalls Derek Falvey, the Twins president of baseball operations — has been derailed by the tiniest of injuries, to the point where Dobnak isn't even on the 40-man roster anymore.
Two minuscule ligaments called pulleys in his right middle finger, the tissue that anchors the tendons close to the bone, have ruptured over the past two years, an injury common among rock climbers, but exceedingly rare in ballplayers. The result was a sharp pain when he put pressure on that finger — for instance, when throwing a baseball.
"I've watched rock climbers online have it happen, and it sounds like a rubber band snapping," Dobnak said. "Mine didn't do that, but it just started hurting worse and worse."
He couldn't throw his heavy sinker, his best pitch, as effectively in 2021, and finally couldn't pitch at all. Last spring, after a winter of rehabbing the injury, he showed up at spring training camp feeling healthy, "and on the first day, it started hurting in a different spot. We got an MRI on it, it showed nothing wrong, and I was like, 'Damn, they'll think I'm lying,' " Dobnak said. "I played catch again and said, yeah, it does not feel right. We got another MRI, and it was completely ruptured. 'Oh, now it's completely gone.'"
That cost him another entire season, though the pain eased enough by mid-August for him to make 11 appearances in the minors, though with significant control problems. And his finger, though not as flexible or strong as it once was, has been pain-free all winter.
"I think we're way over the hump now. I've been down here for a month. I threw live Friday, that was probably my 10th bullpen," Dobnak said. "I've been slinging it fine."
He's learning to compensate for the damaged finger, and has found a way, for instance, to create more horizontal break on a slider than before, which could be useful. His sinker "is still a work in progress," he said, "but the numbers show it's coming along."
The Twins like those numbers, Falvey said, and expect Dobnak to start the season in St. Paul, re-establishing himself as a viable option for the Twins.
"We're cautiously optimistic that this is a real opportunity for him to get it going again. Right now, the goal is less about getting back to the big leagues right away, and just getting healthy, getting his pitches to do what they did before."
Until then, Dobnak lives with the irony of avoiding common pitching injuries — but succumbing to a rare one.
"At first, I told myself, 'good thing it's not my elbow or shoulder.' But now I wish it was my elbow — [doctors] know how to treat Tommy John [injuries]," he mused. "Maybe I'll get back and they'll name this one after me. 'That guy's hurt, he got the Dobnak last year.'"
