Twins Rotation Appears Set as Mick Abel Beats Out Zebby Matthews

[Parfigliano]

4 hours ago, jmlease1 said:

I'm not expecting a WS title either, but your projections on the rotation make little sense to me. There may be question marks about the rotation because Bradley & Abel are unproven and Ober's velocity is down, but the upside isn't "mediocre".

Ryan, as noted, is an all-star. SWR gets knocked a lot, but is still actually quite young for his experience and has pitched well for the Twins: other teams would have loved to had a guy like him pitching as their 4th starter. Ober isn't a #2 starter any longer if he can't get his velocity back, but as a 4th or 5th starter he can still be additive (with the shortage of competent starting pitching in MLB, the bar for a 4th or 5th starter is lower than most people realize). But Bradley and Abel have very high upside. Both have the talent and the stuff to be playoff caliber starters, and if his control gets to where it was in ST, then Abel has ace written all over him. That puts the ceiling awfully high...not mediocre.

Are they going to get there this season? That's less likely: between injuries, inexperience, and just luck expecting a 90th percentile result from everyone is silly. But even the floor for this team's rotation is pretty solid and the best case scenario has Abel looking like a young ace, paired with an experienced all-star in Ryan, with Bradley chewing up innings and being a playoff caliber starter as your 3rd guy. There's still more upside to be found in SWR as well, and while expecting Ober to rediscover his velo at this point may be pie in the sky, if the expectation is for him to eat innings and hold down the 5th spot....he's probably viable even if he mostly repeats 2025. Add in the depth we have in AAA and they actually have the ability to survive even more injuries than we've already suffered.

I like the rotation. There's volatility in it with younger pitchers that aren't proven yet...but the upside is quite high. They might flunk out (I personally think there's people around here rooting for that, since the top prospects were picked under the Falvey regime) but they are at least worth watching and have real upside.

Very glad Abel is getting his chance: he earned it.

In today's MLB what does it mean to "eat innings"?   

150 IP and under 4.5 ERA?

175 IP and under 4.75ERA?

200 IP and under 5 ERA?

[mikelink45]

I am always pleased when a player forces his way onto the team and Zebby has disappointed me.  MY only other regret is not having Emma on the opening day roster.  

I think the pitching is looking promising and if Ober struggles I hope there is a quick hook and a call up to replace him. 

[ashbury]

4 hours ago, Parfigliano said:

In today's MLB what does it mean to "eat innings"?   

150 IP and under 4.5 ERA?

175 IP and under 4.75ERA?

200 IP and under 5 ERA?

Last season there were exactly 3 pitchers with 200 IP and they all sported ERAs 3.22 or lower, so the last definition would mean essentially no innings eaters at all, just three aces.

Above the 175 IP threshold only Zac Gallen was above 3.81, and his was 4.83, so he just barely missed your criterion for eating innings and all the rest were too good to be called that and were just mid-rotation guys.

Above 150 IP there were 70 pitchers, and including Gallen I see 17 guys with ERAs above 4.20.  (Keeping in mind that league average last year was 4.15.)

I think the mark of an innings eater is that his manager keeps running him out there despite not being hugely successful, so I would suggest changing the point of view to the ERA being a lower threshold and not an upper one for the role.  You can pick a different lower bound than the 4.20 that I used for counting purposes above, but in any case there are only a relative handful of innings eaters if you use that number of innings as the lower bound.

I might suggest looking also at guys between 100 and 150 innings - too low to qualify for the ERA title - and who compiled an ERA above 4.50.  There were 19 guys like that - pitchers who kept getting the ball and who kept scuffling.  They were arguably there to soak up a percentage of the team's innings for the year.

[Mike Sixel]

4 hours ago, Parfigliano said:

In today's MLB what does it mean to "eat innings"?   

150 IP and under 4.5 ERA?

175 IP and under 4.75ERA?

200 IP and under 5 ERA?

Nm

[DocBauer]

Abel was the right choice. I'm disappointed he's the right choice in so much as I really wanted Matthews to take a step forward and CLAIM that job as his. I still believe there is a viable, quality ML arm in Matthews. But SOMETHING is still missing. I think the control is there, but I think he's still missing the COMMAND part of pitching. That is, the ability to "just miss" the zone enough for whiffs and weak contact. If he can get that part figured out, I could see us as a group suddenly saying: "What's gotten in to Matthews all of a sudden?" in a pleasantly surprised and pleased way.

I suppose he's still a viable oen convert where he might just dominate. But I'm still holding out hope for him to be a rotation fixture.

This doesn't mean I'm not excited to see what Abel can do. IIRC he was a top 100 prospect...for what that's worth...for 2 or 3 years, but slipped out of those rankings prior to the Twins acquiring him. The STUFF and potential are real. But I don't expect an All Star caliber performance his 1st year.

Bradley is interesting. Again, great STUFF. But he never put it all together while in Tampa. He's still young and his arm has some real electricity. No insult to the kid, but I'm still blown away that while in Tampa he didn't really do the "bookwork" on opposing hitters and just trusted his catcher. As I understand it, he's started to embrace the pre-game work the Twins are so diligent about. This would seem to indicate a next level of mental "maturity" as a professional pitcher. NOT to say he was immature as a person, simply that he's growing as a professional. Considering his repertoire, his still young age, adopting a new "homework" approach, and the Twins having a good history of tweaking deliveries and grips, he might just be about ready to raise his game another notch. Again, not expecting All Star results immediately, but considering past experience, it might not be out of the realm of possibility. 

I'm a fan of SWR not because he blows people away, but because I'm somewhat amazed at how well he's done considering how poorly he's been handled in his early career. The Mets traded him to the Jays when he was 20yo, I believe. The Jays put him at AA as a 20yo, but he had a badly disjointed season being selected to the Olympic team that he never even pitched for. The Twins were pretty much: "OK, maybe you've been rished and missed a lot of time, but you've already been at AA, so I guess we'll keep you there".

Not going to blame the Twins for "damage done", but maybe they should have sent him down initially for lost development time. But he looked pretty good as a 21yo in AA in 2022, and finished the season at AAA looking pretty solid. 

So he began 2023 at AAA as a 22yo and looked average at best. This where the whole lost velocity and change of arm angle happened to get him ready for 2024. And while he was nursed a bit early on, he really saved the Twins BUTT with solid performances before running out of gas late.

Fast forward to 2025, he really disappointed me with his early season. I really expected another jump in his development. But after a demotion, he came up and pitched as well, or better than, he ever had before. His splitter over the last couple of months was excellent, and he looked as if he had truly raised his game to another level. And he's STILL only 25yo and learning the game. He's absolutely behind Bradley and Abel in pure STUFF, but if he can keep that splitter working, he has the ability to be really solid, if not downright good.

I'm really worried about Ober, as most of us are. I just can't believe a 30yo has suddenly lost 3MPH off his fastball. And yet, he says he feels great, with no physical impairment. So MAYBE it's mechanical and we'll see a ramp up. We can hope for that. Otherwise, he needs to adjust the velocity of his other offerings and take them down a notch to keep a suitable speed variance. In other words, he needs to be more "crafty" as a pitcher. He's got the intelligence to do so. But his days as a really good #3 who often throws like a #2 may be behind him. He might honestly be the Twins #5 starter without an uptick in velocity. And that really stinks!

But while I'm not expecting Bradley and Abel to make All Star kind of jumps in 2026, BOTH have the ability to "take over" the #2 and #3 spots pretty quickly. And that's what we should be hoping for, and why the Twins traded for them.

 

[Hunter4848]

21 hours ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

This is a much worse team on balance than last year’s 73 win team. If I had my druthers they wouldn’t have done the fire sale and instead invested into the contention window.

since they did the fire sale, I would have finished it out and stripped it down to the studs in the last offseason.

since they failed to gain any value for the remaining vets, and also failed to meaningfully supplement to make this a good team, I guess a couple decent pitchers is something, but lemonade out of lemons now, is hoping some of these veteran players go ape and have good trade value at the deadline while the next wave of graduating prospects gets their feet wet.

having Bradley and Abel is awesome, but I’d rather have a good team or a young team, this is neither.

What contention window?!

[jmlease1]

On 3/21/2026 at 9:41 AM, Richie the Rally Goat said:

 

mediocre /mē″dē-ō′kər/

 

adjective

1. Of ordinary or undistinguished quality. synonym: average. 
   Similar: average
2. Of a middle quality; of but a moderate or low degree of excellence; indifferent; ordinary. 
   Similar: indifferentordinary
3. Ordinary: not extraordinary; not special, exceptional, or great; of medium quality;

this rotation

was ranked 16 in xERA

 

no Pablo, no Paddack, Festa is iffy. There’s upside with Abel, but as constructed this rotation is literally mediocre.

its also the strength of the team :(

LOL, you're using "losing" Paddack as support for why the rotation will top out at mediocre? I'd much rather have Abel in the rotation than Paddack!

But again, the issue isn't what the most likely outcome will be for the rotation, it's whether or not the "at best" outcome will be for them. There are real talents in this rotation that have high upsides.