Week in Review: Bullpen Blues

[Nick Nelson]

Image courtesy of Matt Blewett-Imagn Images

The Weekly Nutshell:
For a second consecutive week, the Minnesota Twins opened up with an impressive victory, and then it was pretty much all downhill from there. They dropped four of the next five, sinking further below .500 as their leaky relief corps turned the late innings into a recurring horror show. There have been some small positive developments and positive signs mixed in for this club, but they are being vastly overshadowed by setbacks and failure.

Sunday's series finale against Toronto brought yet another devastating gut-punch; the modest morale boost of a split-clinching victory was derailed by Joe Ryan exiting with right elbow soreness after just two batters faced. Vibes are bad, and the season already feels like it's on life support here in early May. 

Weekly Snapshot: Mon, 4/27 through Sun, 5/3
***
Record Last Week: 3-4 (Overall: 15-20)
Run Differential Last Week: -5 (Overall: +5)
Standing: 5th Place in AL Central (4.0 GB) 

Latest Game Results

Game 29 | MIN 11, SEA 4: Bats Awaken as Twins Snap 5-Game Losing Streak

• Clemens: 2-5, 5 RBI

Game 30 | SEA 7, MIN 1: Bullpen Collapses Behind Ryan, Lineup Gets Shut Down

• Twins offense: 0-10 RISP 

Game 31 | SEA 5, MIN 3: Bullpen Caves in Late Innings Again, Wasting Bradley Rebound

• Orze: 0.1 IP, 2 H, 3 BB, 3 ER

Game 32 | MIN 7, TOR 1: Ober Combines with Relievers to Keep Blue Jays in Check

• Ober: 6 IP, 1 ER, 4 H, 2 BB, 2 K 

Game 33 | TOR 7, MIN 3: SWR Struggles Again, Twins Can't Escape Early Hole

• Woods Richardson: 4.2 IP, 9 H, 6 R (4 ER) 

Game 34 | TOR 11, MIN 4: Bullpen Surrenders Eight in the Eighth to Lose Yet Again

• García, Banda: 1 IP, 8 R (7 ER), 5 H, 2 BB, 0 K

Game 35 | MIN 4, TOR 3: Twins Salvage Split with Win, But Lose Ryan to Elbow Injury

• Morris: 3.2 IP, 0 R, 2 H, 1 BB, 3 K

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NEWS & NOTES

Nine pitches into his eighth start of the season, Ryan motioned to the dugout for trainers and quickly headed for the clubhouse. Soon after, the Twins announced that the right-hander was removed due to soreness in his right elbow, which is obviously quite alarming. 

As we anxiously await details regarding the official prognosis, it's difficult not to despair, given how these things tend to go and how this season has gone. Needless to say, in the event this is a significant arm injury for Ryan, it's going to place a lot of heat on the front office's questionable call to hold both him and Pablo López heading into a doomed campaign.

For at least a while, the rotation is going to have to proceed without its top pitcher, and that's also true of the bullpen, which lost Cole Sands to the injured list with a forearm strain on Saturday. Sands hasn't been very good this year but was undoubtedly the team's most trusted option, and his loss stretches an overmatched relief corps even thinner. Earlier in the week, the bullpen lost fellow right-hander Garrett Acton to a shoulder strain.

Replacing Acton: 39-year-old right-hander Luis García, who'd been signed to a minor-league deal days earlier after being released by the Mets. Replacing Sands: 24-year-old righty John Klein, one of the last remaining healthy depth options on the 40-man. Klein tossed a scoreless inning in his MLB debut on Saturday. 

Zak Kent was designated for assignment to make room on the roster for García. Eric Wagaman, who was DFA'ed the previous week to make room for waiver pickup Christian Roa, was himself claimed off waivers by the Mets.

HIGHLIGHTS

The rotation has been the clear and decisive strength of this team through 35 games. This past week we saw Connor Prielipp build upon his impressive debut, Taj Bradley bounce back admirably from his stumble on the prior road trip, and Bailey Ober continue to defy convention with a sub-90s fastball. Let's take a closer look at each of their performances.

Prielipp recorded his first big-league win on Monday against the Mariners, allowing two runs over five innings, and he posted the same line on Saturday against Toronto. His control wasn't as sharp in these two starts as in his debut, as Prielipp issued five walks across 10 innings, but he continued to look comfortable and confident on the mound, allowing just four hits. His slider has proven to be a dominant pitch thus far, as anticipated, and his changeup shows great promise as well.

 

Bradley's last outing against the Rays, in which he allowed four home runs, raised some concerns of a major regression backslide getting underway. He quelled those fears with an excellent outing on Wednesday, holding the Mariners to two runs over seven innings with seven strikeouts, two walks, and four hits allowed. 

The overall numbers from Taj this year have obviously been impressive, but what has really stood out to me about the right-hander — even when he struggled during his initial stint with the Twins late last year — is his durability and stamina. He's gone on the injured list only once in his major-league career, back in spring of 2024. He's completed five or more innings in 11 of his 13 starts with Minnesota, including six-plus in five of seven turns this year. 

Bradley not only throws the hardest fastball for a starter in Twins history, but he's able to maintain upper-90s velocity very deep into games, even beyond 100 pitches. He has surpassed that threshold four times this year, and his 114 pitches thrown against Seattle on Wednesday were the most by a Twins starter since Kenta Maeda back in 2020. Traditionally-inclined fans are surely loving this shift.

 

Speaking of appeal to old-school fans, Ober is turning back the clock with his stunning level of success despite a lack of velocity. Against the Blue Jays on Thursday, his fastball averaged 88 MPH and never topped 89.1 MPH. His average FB velo is the lowest in the major leagues, but it hasn't mattered lately. On Thursday he worked through six innings of one-run ball, with a solo homer representing the only damage. Ober's ERA is now down to 3.55 on the season, including 1.47 in his last three starts.

We'll see how long he can make it last, but right now Ober is effectively offsetting the death of his fastball by embracing his offspeed arsenal. Opponents are batting .173 against his changeup, and .125 against his sweeper. Nothing short of remarkable. 

Offensively, it was an absolute monster week for Byron Buxton, who was 10-for-30 with five home runs in seven games. For whatever reason he just seems far more locked in when he's hitting leadoff; he shifted there after batting second in his first eight games (with a .415 OPS), and since the switch has batted .288 with a .615 slugging percentage.

 

A few other hitters worth highlighting from the home stand:

• Trevor Larnach is starting to see steadier playing time as the parade of opposing lefty starters dissipates, and he's still not losing steam. He notched eight hits, including a pair of doubles, in 21 at-bats last week and kept on controlling the zone with four strikeouts against three walks. His fielding has also been drastically improved, providing a rare defensive bright spot for the Twins. Sticking it to the skeptics who wanted to see him shipped out during the offseason, Larnach's been one of the team's most valuable players thus far.
• Ryan Jeffers is up there as well, tied with Larnach for second among Twins position players behind Buxton in fWAR (0.9). Jeffers opened the week with three consecutive multi-hit games, finishing 7-for-20 with a homer and five RBIs. 
• Kody Clemens posted a five-RBI night on Monday, and during the home stand he tallied three extra-base hits (two doubles and a home run). His OPS had dropped down to .581 entering the week, but is back up to a more reasonable, albeit unexceptional, .675 following Sunday's game.
• Austin Martin went 6-for-17 (.353) with two walks and two stolen bases. His .484 on-base percentage leads all big-leaguers with 90+ PA, and nobody else is within 40 points.  

LOWLIGHTS

The consistently strong work from Minnesota's rotation and occasional flashes from the offense are too often going to waste thanks to a bullpen that is predictably one of the least dependable in the game, and in recent Twins history. The late innings have been full of misadventures, featuring a rotating cast of culprits.

On Tuesday night Ryan exited in the seventh inning with the score tied 1-1. Kody Funderburk allowed his inherited run to score, and then combined with Sands and García combined to surrender five more, turning a close game into a lopsided loss. The following night saw Bradley in position to pick up the win before Eric Orze melted down in a save opportunity, entering with a one-run lead in the ninth to cough up three earned runs while recording just one out in an eventual 5-3 loss.  

Saturday's game really took the cake though. The Twins were once again on track for a potential victory, leading 4-3 in the eighth before handing the ball over to García up one. The Jays went single-walk-single-single to chase the veteran from the game. In came Anthony Banda, who committed an error on a comebacker before yielding a walk, a double and a home run. By the time the Twins were able to record a single out in the inning, Toronto had scored eight times and taken an 11-4 lead.

 

García had been released by the lowly Mets a couple weeks earlier. Banda had been designated for assignment by the Dodgers in February despite posting a 3.18 ERA last year. Orze was likely at risk for a DFA by the Rays if Minnesota hadn't acquired him in a low-wattage trade in November. These pitchers had been essentially rejected by their previous teams and were not in demand. For the Twins to be turning to them in high-leverage situations this early in the season is simply an embarrassing reflection of how the team was constructed.

And you know, it'd be just as well if it aligned to a coherent larger strategy. When you're not even trying to compete, a capable bullpen isn't going to make much of a difference. The problem is that the Twins openly held onto this notion that they would be competitive despite their lack of investment and effort, and elected not to shop either of their top veteran starters during the offseason as a result. Pending a prognosis on Ryan, this aimless decision-making is at risk of looking like a total disaster, made all the more upsetting by how foreseeable the outcome was.  

The pitching staff has been mediocre overall, mainly thanks to starters pulling weight, but will be hard-pressed to maintain even that level in the absence of Ryan and Sands. In order to make any inroads back toward .500, the offense — rarely able to muster more than four runs —  will need to come alive, and too few hitters appear up to the task. 

Josh Bell has spiraled after a strong start, with a 4-for-25 week dropping his OPS to .640 on the season. Victor Caratini, the other "big ticket" signing from the offseason, is slashing .217/.317/.265. Matt Wallner snapped an 0-for-19 skid with two hits on Sunday but is still treading dangerously close to a demotion. Royce Lewis looks utterly hopeless, and was justifiably batting ninth in three of his five starts. He managed just two singles and a walk in 19 plate appearances. 

It's a bad team with a bunch of players performing dreadfully. Aside from Buxton and a few bright spots in the rotation, there's not much here to stoke interest or create a compelling experience for fans. On top of it all, top prospects Walker Jenkins and Emmanuel Rodriguez were both forced out of games for the Saints due to injuries over the weekend. (Rodriguez jammed his thumb sliding into first base on Saturday, and Jenkins hurt his shoulder colliding with the wall on Sunday.) 

TRENDING STORYLINE

Joe Ryan's health is clearly the biggest topic for the Twins heading into a new week. Presumably we will learn on Monday or Tuesday the severity of what he is dealing with. I'm mindful that we've already had a false-alarm health scare with Ryan this year, when he came out of his first spring start with what turned out to be a minor back issue. 

But of course, elbows are a different animal. And the initial indicators — how quickly he signaled for trainers, how brief the discussion was before he came out of the game, how defeated he looked coming off the mound — all point toward bad news. For now, the Twins and their fans will have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

 

No matter what imaging tells us, it seems all but certain Ryan will at least be landing on the injured list for some period of time. It's a major blow for a rotation that has already seen its admirable preseason depth whittled away by injuries to López, David Festa and Mick Abel. 

We can look to Abel as an optimistic example vis-à-vis Ryan's situation. He was scratched from his scheduled start on the previous road trip after experiencing some elbow soreness in a bullpen but his scans came back clean and he was diagnosed with light inflammation. He's already started playing catch and could advance to a rehab stint soon. 

In the meantime, though, the Twins are probably going to need to find someone else to fill Ryan's rotation spot. They've already called up their top pitching prospect in Prielipp, whose grasp on a rotation spot just got firmer. Andrew Morris, who threw 57 pitches in relief of Ryan on Sunday, could theoretically shift back into a starting role, but that would subtract from a bullpen that is already woefully short on anything resembling power arms. 

As of now, Zebby Matthews is the most likely candidate to get the call. Really the only credible candidate. He has shaken off a rough start at Triple-A with a string of solid outings, including his most recent on Saturday: 5 IP, 1 ER, 3 H, 3 BB, 7 K. His stuff has been ticking up and unlike, say, Kendry Rojas, Matthews is built up to handle the rigors of starting and pitching five-plus innings in the majors, 

LOOKING AHEAD

The Twins are back on the road, heading to Washington after the day off on Monday to face a Nationals team that has gone 4-12 at home so far this year. Next up will be their first showdown of the season with Cleveland. We'll see who gets the nod for Ryan's turn on Saturday, since it feels safe to assume it won't be him.

TUESDAY, MAY 5: TWINS @ NATIONALS — RHP Taj Bradley v. RHP Cade Cavalli
WEDNESDAY, MAY 6: TWINS @ NATIONALS — RHP Bailey Ober v. RHP Miles Mikolas
THURSDAY, MAY 7: TWINS @ NATIONALS — RHP Simeon Woods Richardson v. RHP Jake Irvin
FRIDAY, MAY 8: TWINS @ GUARDIANS  — LHP Connor Prielipp v. LHP Parker Messick
SATURDAY, MAY 9: TWINS @ GUARDIANS  — TBD v. RHP Tanner Bibee
SUNDAY, MAY 10: TWINS @ GUARDIANS  — RHP Taj Bradley v. RHP Gavin Williams

 

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[Mike Sixel]

Not trading Ryan this off season looking dumber and dumber, as many here feared. Let's hope he's ok, mostly because he's a person, but also for the teams sake. 

It's hurts my brain people slide into first. 

Another great write-up, thanks 

[C-Gangster]

8 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

Not trading Ryan this off season looking dumber and dumber, as many here feared. Let's hope he's ok, mostly because he's a person, but also for the teams sake. 

It's hurts my brain people slide into first. 

Another great write-up, thanks 

I mean I agree but am still on the fence about trading him. On one side great person great leader and can be when healthy one of the best pitchers in the leauge. But on the other hand the return could be great get some great MLB ready players and some great prospects to build on a already pretty good farm system. Still on the fence tho. I guess will see at the trade deadline.

[mikelink45]

Wow - where do we go to climb out of our Twins Funk?  Let's hope Mathews has it all together and I am glad he is back, but I thought it would be for SWR.  I have no idea who the next pitchers are in the minors.

Wallner just does not impress and I am glad you called out Lewis - he is my biggest disappointment.

I could be disappointed in the BP, but I did not expect anything from them.  We have a bullpen full of 7th - 8th options.  No one is reliable to close.

I leave for work on Wednesday and will be traveling in Canada for 15 days - refreshing - no trump, no Twins broadcasts.  Please give me better news when I return.  I will be checking it to TD for most of that time. 

 

[tony&rodney]

The crux of the offseason - finish the rebuild with some 4-5 speculative gambling trades of players or believe that Lopez, Ryan, and Ober can lead the team to relevance. The Twins took Option B and it doesn't make much sense to second guess it now. Standing still was the habit and there was a hint that the pitchers could deliver while the bats were counted on to come around.

The unbalanced roster continues to leak due to a poor defense and until the young bucks in AAA prove they have polished their skills this shortcoming is going to be ongoing. The good news of fewer mental mistakes in 2026 took a few days off but we should expect that to improve this week.

Somehow, some bodies need to step forward in the bullpen. I'm holding out hope for Orze, Rogers, and Funderburk while believing guys like Klein, Morris, Matthews, Festa, and Rojas could hold the line. The Twins have been leaning on their starting pitching and while many of the arms are pretty raw, there is talent. 

To some degree the decent work of Bradley, Abel, Prielipp, and Morris are worth retaining hope for the Twins team. Matthews, Festa, and Rojas could also play important roles soon enough. Ober has been pretty good. Woods Richardson has struggled to be sure but the gloves have really hurt him as well. Look for Simeon to turn it around. 

The next week could be interesting.

[Parfigliano]

55 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

Not trading Ryan this off season looking dumber and dumber, as many here feared. Let's hope he's ok, mostly because he's a person, but also for the teams sake. 

It's hurts my brain people slide into first. 

Another great write-up, thanks 

NYM Ronny Mauricio slid into first last night and broke his thumb.  Expected to be out 4-6 weeks.

 

[High heat]

I feel we will look back  in October and say this weekend was the end of the season.  
 

Loss Ryan and Sand.  Bullpen bleeds runs  with no help coming!

 

Anyone else think this is a 100 loss season?

[Glorybound]

If Ryan needs TJ then his Twins career is over. It would be a shame if that is the case.

[Mike Sixel]

13 minutes ago, High heat said:

I feel we will look back  in October and say this weekend was the end of the season.  
 

Loss Ryan and Sand.  Bullpen bleeds runs  with no help coming!

 

Anyone else think this is a 100 loss season?

The season was over when they decided not to fix the bullpen. And cut payroll drastically. 

[Mike Sixel]

Hard to believe Lewis was the number one overall pick at this point. Sure, they bust sometimes, but not as often lately....

[USAFChief]

38 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

The season was over when they decided not to fix the bullpen. And cut payroll drastically. 

This season was over last trade deadline. 

[DocBauer]

I despise seeing guys get hurt. But I'm not going to lie and say watching Bradley, Abel, Prielipp, and Morris...with a small dash of Rojas...hasn't been exciting. 

I understand keeping Morris stretched out as far as possible for a rotation return, but I'd really like to see him go all out for a single inning or two. 

While Klein's ERA looks bad, some of his peripherals are still solid. Maybe I'm wrong, but when I read the MILB reports, it seems Klein is always good for 1-2 IP before a run scores. So I'm looking forward to see him throw those 1-2 IP.

Nice to see Matthews start to get in a groove. Orze has largely been solid. Funderburk has been dependable. In other words, seeing younger and less experienced arms getting their opportunity is not oy fun, but helps build for the future. 

[mark sills]

38 minutes ago, DocBauer said:

I despise seeing guys get hurt. But I'm not going to lie and say watching Bradley, Abel, Prielipp, and Morris...with a small dash of Rojas...hasn't been exciting. 

I understand keeping Morris stretched out as far as possible for a rotation return, but I'd really like to see him go all out for a single inning or two. 

While Klein's ERA looks bad, some of his peripherals are still solid. Maybe I'm wrong, but when I read the MILB reports, it seems Klein is always good for 1-2 IP before a run scores. So I'm looking forward to see him throw those 1-2 IP.

Nice to see Matthews start to get in a groove. Orze has largely been solid. Funderburk has been dependable. In other words, seeing younger and less experienced arms getting their opportunity is not oy fun, but helps build for the future. 

I think when Klein came up that probably changed Morris role wouldn't be surprised if he becomes the closer, and I think he will do great. Still no runs in his first inning in six games.