These Cedar Rapids Kernels not close to being the same Kernels of a week ago

CEDAR RAPIDS — You last saw the Cedar Rapids Kernels a week ago.

They lost to Fort Wayne at Veterans Memorial Stadium, then began a two-week road trip to Michigan. They completed a six-game series Sunday at Lansing, have Monday off and play six games beginning Tuesday at West Michigan.

Cedar Rapids returns home for a six-game series against Quad Cities that begins Aug.12. Once it finally gets back to town, you won’t recognize a lot of the team: over a third of it.

Moves have been plentiful, some of them coming after the parent Minnesota Twins conducted the fire sale of all fire sales during Thursday’s Major League Baseball trade deadline. Minnesota jettisoned 11 players off its roster, acquiring mostly minor league prospects in return.

Probably the most highly touted of those prospects has been assigned to the Kernels. Eduardo Tait is an 18-year-old left-handed hitting catcher from Panama acquired from the Philadelphia Phillies in a trade that involved big league closer Jhoan Duran.

Tait was considered by www.mlbpipeline.com to be Philly’s No. 4 prospect. He made his Kernels debut Saturday night.

Pitchers Garrett Horn and Matt Mikulski also were acquired by the Twins and assigned to Cedar Rapids.

Horn is a 22-year-old left-handed starter picked up from the Texas Rangers in a trade for MLB reliever Danny Coulombe. He was a sixth-round draft pick of Texas out of Liberty University last year.

Matt Mikulski is a 26-year-old lefty reliever acquired from the Houston Astros in the surprising trade that sent all-star shortstop Carlos Correa back to Houston. Mikulski originally was a second-round draft pick of the San Francisco Giants in 2021 but was released by the organization in spring training and eventually picked up by the Astros.

Minnesota had to call up eight players to fill out its roster after all of the bloodletting, which caused a ripple effect in the minors. The Kernels saw reliever Eston Stull moved up to Double-A Wichita and reliever Gabriel Yanez to Triple-A Saint Paul.

Stull was just re-assigned back to Cedar Rapids on Monday. Reliever Logan Whitaker was promoted to Wichita earlier last week, as were starter Alejandro Hidalgo and reliever Hunter Hoopes.

Last week’s transactions also included pitcher Jeremy Lee, catcher Luke Napleton and outfielder Justin Connell being given their release. First baseman-outfielder Jay Thomason and infielder Rayne Doncon were activated off the injured list, though Doncon went on the temporarily inactive list a couple of days later.

Pitcher Tanner Hall also went on the IL, joining fellow starter Cole Peschl, who went to the injured list last weekend. Other pitchers either activated from the IL or just coming in straight from low-Class A Fort Myers were Xander Hamilton, Matt Gabbert, Ruddy Gomez, Ivran Romero and Brennen Oxford.

Monday saw pitcher Adrian Bohorquez coming in from Fort Myers. Catcher-outfielder Khadim Diaw was activated from the 60-day injured list

“We are just trying to finish games with what we have right now,” Kernels co-pitching coach A.J. Angulo said last week.

What they have right now looks a whole lot different than a week ago. That’d be 11 players on the active roster who weren’t on the active roster a week ago, including eight pitchers.

That’s a lot of change.

Comments: jeff.johnson@thegazette.com