Grading Every Player Who Appeared for the Twins in 2026: Pitchers

[Nick Nelson]

Image courtesy of Matt Marton-Imagn Images

Thirty-two different pitchers made at least one appearance for the Minnesota Twins in 2026. It's certainly a sign of the times. Twenty years ago, in 2006, the team used barely over half that number (17). 

This Twins staff had plenty of injuries, but the front office also churned-and-burned through arms as they looked to account for innings on a staff depleted by the 2025 deadline firesale. As you get to the bottom of the list below, you might start running into names you barely remember. 

Here are my grades for all 32 hurlers who appeared for the Twins this season, in order of innings pitched.

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Taj Bradley (178.1 IP): A-
Huge breakout and without a doubt that biggest individual bright spot for the Twins this year. He threw the most innings of any Minnesota starter in the last two seasons despite an IL stint, joining 2023 Pablo López and 2018 José Berríos as the only Twins since 2010 to strike out 200 hitters. Posted a career-best 3.73 ERA and 3.82 FIP. Team went 18-13 in his starts.

Joe Ryan (144.2 IP): B-
Seemingly a harsh grade for one of the team's two All-Stars, but Ryan's second half (once again) did so much to undo all of the great work from early on. He missed a month with a glute injury and struggled mightily when on the mound, going 1-5 with a 6.82 ERA and 11 homers allowed in seven post-break starts. His inability to stay effective throughout a full season has become such a bummer.

Bailey Ober (131 IP): C
Against all odds, Ober held his own with the lowest top-end velocity of any pitcher in baseball, posting a slightly below-average 95 ERA+. Missed time and logged fewest innings in four years but the big righty was a stable back-of-rotation arm.

Zebby Matthews (130.1 IP): C-
Maddeningly inconsistent. Matthews showed great flashes at times, and stayed mostly healthy, but his proneness to homers and clunker outings resulted in a sub-par 4.90 ERA. When the Twins added to their rotation at the deadline, he was the one demoted, which seems telling.

Connor Prielipp (125.2 IP): B-
An even more encouraging season than this grade would suggest. His ERA (4.87) was barely lower than Matthews, but Prielipp did it with much better peripherals and mixed in a very strong finish, which was especially reassuring as he ventured deep into unprecedented workload territory.

Andrew Morris (73.2 IP): C+
Much like Ryan, an instance where a very poor finish diminished much of the good work leading up to it. Acclimating to the majors and a full-time relief role simultaneously, Morris was brilliant for much of his rookie campaign, posting a 2.98 ERA through 47 appearances and elevating into the top setup role. But he cratered in the last six weeks with a 8.80 ERA and five losses in his final 16 appearances, leading to merely average numbers overall.

Taylor Rogers (60.1 IP): C+
A valued veteran presence whose performance on the mound was mediocre, with the caveat that most of his worst outings came in garbage time. Stayed healthy, led team in appearances.

Travis Adams (59 IP): C-
Brutal in May and June, but quietly rounded into form during the second half with a 3.31 ERA and 3.66 FIP from July 1st onward. It wasn't enough to salvage a 90 ERA+, but the promising finish should give Adams a leg-up in next year's bullpen competition.

Dean Kremer (54.1 IP): B+
Deadline acquisition pitched very well in 10 starts as a Twin, holding opponents to two or fewer runs in seven of them en route to a 3.48 ERA that greatly outshined his numbers before the trade. He won four of five decisions.

Kody Funderburk (51 IP): B+
Another pitcher who really turned a corner in the second half, shaking off his control struggles to post a 3.03 ERA with 36 strikeouts and only one home run and nine non-intentional walks allowed in 34 post-June appearances. 

Yoendrys Gómez (49.2 IP): B+
The start to his Twins career could have hardly been better: 1.85 ERA with a perfect 20-for-20 save conversion rate through 44 appearances. The final stretch would have hardly been worse: 10.13 ERA with two blown saves in his final 12 games. The sum result, though, was a very solid season as a Twin. He led the bullpen in WPA and filled a crucial need out of nowhere. (We're not factoring his nine ugly outings with the Rays.)

Simeon Woods Richardson (47.2 IP): F
Stunning fall from grace. A multi-year rotation staple, Woods Richardson ended the 2025 season with momentum but fell flat in 2026, posting a 7.74 ERA in 12 appearances (10 starts) before being waived in early June.

Eric Orze (41.1 IP): D-
Pitched his way out of the team's plans with a 5.66 ERA through 36 appearances. For what it's worth, the 3.34 FIP looks a lot better and suggests bad luck was in play, but the Twins never saw fit to recall him from Triple-A after an early-June demotion.

Anthony Banda (34.1 IP): C
Got off to a rough start, was on his way to turning it around before a season-ending lat injury suffered in late June. Ultimately the 4.46 ERA is nothing to write home about. 

Mike Paredes (34.1 IP): C-
For Paredes, a 4.72 ERA actually is something to write home about. He was far down the pitching depth chart entering this season, but stepped up as attrition struck. Made five starts among nine appearances and generally did his job by keeping the Twins in games. The 18-to-13 K/BB ratio doesn't paint him as an arm worth counting on in the future.

Kendry Rojas (29.2 IP): B
Showcased impressive stuff and velocity in limited action, posting a 3.34 ERA with 34 strikeouts and just two home runs allowed across 29 ⅔ innings. The control issues are a problem though, with 22 walks removing some of the luster. Didn't pitch for Twins after August 2nd, which is unfortunate.

Tommy Nance (26.2 IP): C+
Sort of a middling acquisition when Minnesota targeted him in early July, he pitched shockingly well for a stretch: 1.35 ERA through 14 appearances. Nance unsurprisingly regressed from there, allowing runs in seven of his last 10 appearances to finish with a 4.21 ERA as Twin.

A.J. Minter (22.2 IP): A-
Pretty much exactly what you want from a rental reliever. He posted a 2.78 ERA and 22-to-6 K/BB ratio in 25 appearances with the Twins.

Mick Abel (20.1 IP): B+
Since we're only grading here based on time spent on the field, Abel was quite good. He struck out 25% of batters faced, allowed zero home runs, and threw 13 shutout innings in his last two starts. Unfortunately, he went down in April with an elbow injury that ultimately required surgery and ended his season.

Justin Topa (19 IP): F
Gave up 27 hits (including four homers), 11 walks and 17 earned runs in 19 innings before being released in May. 

Jeff Hoffman (18 IP): A-
The front office's marquee deadline addition looked fantastic after being acquired, allowing just nine hits (zero home runs) with 27 strikeouts in 18 innings. A truly dominant arm that could've been a real difference-maker if the Twins were able to stay in the fight. 

Cody Laweryson (16.2 IP): D
Surprisingly made the bullpen out of camp but failed to reward the team's confidence with a 4.86 ERA and 5.08 FIP across 16 ⅔ innings of work. He was released in August to make room on the 40-man roster for Minter.

Cole Sands (12 IP): F
Threw only 12 innings all year with an 8.25 ERA. Completely lost season that puts his career outlook in jeopardy, especially on the heels of an underwhelming 2025. 

Garrett Acton (11 IP): D
There are things to like about his pitch arsenal, but a 5.73 ERA in 11 innings between injuries is what it is.

Luis Garcia (8.2 IP): F
Gets no worse than this. In nine excruciating appearances, the washed-up veteran allowed 10 earned runs while striking out just two of 42 batters faced.

Justin Lawrence (6 IP): F
Another forgettable midseason relief flier. Gave up a whopping 12 earned runs in just six frames, averaging more than three baserunners allowed per inning.

Marco Raya (6 IP): B
Wish we could have seen a little more of the intriguing young righty. He got the job done in his three two-inning appearances, allowing just two runs for a 3.00 ERA, but was far from dominant.

John Klein (4.1 IP): D+
Barely got any chances. Struggled to throw strikes when he did, issuing four walks with just two strikeouts. 

Jack Anderson (4.1 IP): A
I didn't remember him pitching this well, to be honest. Allowed zero runs, two hits and one walk with six strikeouts in his four appearances. That's very fine work. Wasn't enough to earn him any opportunities in the majors after July, but Anderson remains on the 40-man roster for now.

Woo-Suk Go (4 IP): F
Flashed mildly intriguing stuff but allowed eight hits in four innings of work.

Austin Voth (4 IP): F
Made only one appearance and it wasn’t pretty; the Dodgers went 11-for-24 against him and scored five earned runs. 

Zak Kent (3.2 IP): D-
Gave up a hit or walk to nine of the 20 batters he faced in two relief outings.

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The Twins cycled an awful lot of arms to get through 2026, but they came out of the churn with some important answers. Bradley emerged as a legitimate rotation anchor, Prielipp held up through a breakthrough workload, and several younger pitchers showed enough to warrant continued opportunities.

There are still plenty of questions to answer — especially with Ryan and Ober coming off uneven seasons and the bullpen remaining unsettled — but compared to where this pitching staff stood after last year's deadline teardown, there's at least a clearer foundation to build around. And as we just learned, it will be a new pitching group leading the way.

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[SteveLV]

That was a very depressing read.  Total dumpster diving.  Yielded one decent pickup--Gomez, and a plethora of failures.

[stringer bell]

I'd say that Morris was the barometer of the bullpen. He looked overmatched early, had a nice run in the middle and faded at the end. If he could have sustained his nice run, he would have been a revelation. I think a C+ is a bit high for his entire season.

Fundy had an interesting year. He pitched himself back to Triple A by walking a ton of hitters, but came back and pitched well in the second half, as he had done in '25. He did enough to be around next year IMHO, but not enough to be assured high leverage status. I also think it's a stretch to give this Kody a B+.

[Whitey333]

And im sure now that we have fired Pete Maki as Pitching coach over these mostly castoffs and rejects from other clubs we wall make it to World Series in 2027.  How convenient to have a scapegoat to blame it on.

[Althebum82]

Great article!  I found myself agreeing with each grade.  The game has evolved into the search for “value discoveries “ and it’s cool when you find one, but too commonly a futile exercise that looks incredibly stupid.

[stringer bell]

Another pitcher to comment on IMHO is Matthews. More than any starter, he was inconsistent, but he had several starts where he breezed into the late innings and against some good lineups. Those 7 and 8 inning starts provide such a relief for the bullpen that I think the Twins should keep using him as a starter and try to find ways to help him be more consistent. Zebby was very good for the whole month of August, when just about every other pitcher struggled mightily. I think he has multiple plus pitches, but needs to find a way to limit both big innings and home runs.

If the guys rated D or F were removed from the mix, the remainder of the Twins' staff was decent. I would hope that particularly the bullpen is much more set whenever play starts in the coming season.

[arby58]

Hard for me to figure out what Bradley needed to do more of to earn an A. He was durable, a strike out machine, and routinely hit 100 mph as a starter. Led the team in wins, ERA, Ks, games started, innings pitched. It’s an odd grading system that ranks Anderson’s small sample performance as better than Bradley’s.

[mikelink45]

Too generous - drop Ryan, Morris, Adams, Gomez a half a grade.  Second half fades are just when we need them to be good.  Part of the problem for the pen is overuse.  But that is the current Baseball strategy. 

Orze should be an F.

Rojas is a C - he was not good enough to be brought back up and we needed him. 

[MackMan]

9 minutes ago, arby58 said:

Hard for me to figure out what Bradley needed to do more of to earn an A. He was durable, a strike out machine, and routinely hit 100 mph as a starter. Led the team in wins, ERA, Ks, games started, innings pitched. It’s an odd grading system that ranks Anderson’s small sample performance as better than Bradley’s.

Struggled with 1st inning runs was his biggest issue. Too often he let 1-2 across but then would shut them down for the next 5 innings of work. Other than that, I really have no issues with a lot of the grades that the pitchers earned. I thought all of them were very spot on and deserved. 

[tarheeltwinsfan]

Thanks for the good article Nick. I was surprised to see Rogers led the team in appearances. Maybe Rogers and Hawkins should be the pitching coaches next year.

[old nurse]

Inconsistency and fading is probably one of the reasons for the coaching change.  66 games in a season could have been the cause of Morris’ falloff. 

[Twins GFP]

This team has the 25th worst ERA and WHIP in all of MLB.

The top 11 pitchers in IP were given grades of C- or better.

Something does not add up.

[chinmusic]

1 hour ago, SteveLV said:

Yielded one decent pickup--Gomez, and a plethora of failures.

Like who, Kremer?

[DJL44]

6 minutes ago, Twins GFP said:

This team has the 25th worst ERA and WHIP in all of MLB.

The top 11 pitchers in IP were given grades of C- or better.

Something does not add up.

There’s the dozen pitchers with D and F grades that you’re ignoring. They pitched too. Plus, the defense cost them a half a run in ERA this year.

[Twins GFP]

Just now, DJL44 said:

There’s the dozen pitchers with D and F grades that you’re ignoring. They pitched too.

Did you actually read the article?

But if you want to go that route, here are the grades broken down by IP:
A/A-           222
B+/B/B-     478
C+/C/C-     547
D+/D/D-    75
F                100

Nick graded 88% of the IP at a passing grade. Again, the 25th worst ERA in all MLB.  Outside of 5-6 guys, everyone is at least a full letter grade too high.

[killercarewoliva]

2 hours ago, Whitey333 said:

And im sure now that we have fired Pete Maki as Pitching coach over these mostly castoffs and rejects from other clubs we wall make it to World Series in 2027.  How convenient to have a scapegoat to blame it on.

I think he did a great job considering the situations he was put in. I'm sure he learned a lot from Mr. Johnson that he replaced. sometimes people get fired just because team had a bad year. when seeing him on the television at the games he looked calm. confident. I don't think he should have been let go.

[Coach Wheels]

27 minutes ago, Twins GFP said:

This team has the 25th worst ERA and WHIP in all of MLB.

The top 11 pitchers in IP were given grades of C- or better.

Something does not add up.

💯 on this comment.

There was just so much inconsistency all year with everyone except Bradley. The next game where Ryan beats a playoff caliber team might be the 1st time he's done it. I don't see him as an ace but a #2 stsrter and that is not who he needs to be.

The bullpen was a group we held our breath with all year long. The fact that we used so many RP this year tells you what chaos looked like. Lots of room for improvement in 2027

[jmlease1]

I'm still wondering about what happened to SWR. he was a very solid starter in 2024 & 2025 and it's all gone completely to hell for him this season, and he finished the season on Seattle's AAA roster. The peripherals tell the story of how it happened: walked to many guys, couldn't get K's any longer, was incredibly hittable, and the defense did him no favors. It's an utter collapse across the board for him...but why? Toronto couldn't fix him either and they were dying for rotation help, but still ended up trying to get him right in the bullpen...and it didn't work. It's not like his success 2024-2025 was an obvious fluke or anything; the FIP lines up reasonably well to the ERA. Baseball is a funny game, but I'm guessing SWR wasn't laughing much this year.

I really hope the Twins try and bring back Minter, who was quite good and is someone that you'd feel very confident in coming in late & close as your top LHP in the bullpen. I'd be much happier with Funderburk being the second option and the two of them together could be a strength in 2027.

Joe Ryan...I love watching the dude pitch, but the second half swoons are incredibly frustrating. He was a very deserving all-star in the first half...and injured/ineffective for way too much of the second half. Don't know what to think of him right now.

Taj had a great season. He really stepped up and looks like he can be a front line starter. If he can figure out how to get settled before he takes the mound rather than in the second inning he'll be even better. From a pure pitching standpoint, if he can just cut down on the non-competitive pitches a little bit he'll be even more dangerous. If he can make it a little harder on the hitter he can take another step forward, because the stuff is excellent. Real success story for the team.

Super bummed that Abel went down just as it seemed that he was figuring it out. Kind of expecting that he'll start next season in AAA to show he's fully healthy, which gives the team some starting depth especially if Ryan is still on the Twins.

Eliminating the rotten relief innings from the early part of the season would go a long ways to raising the floor on this team. I'm not generally a fan of spending significant money on the bullpen, but making sure they come out the gate with a stable bullpen is worth it at this point and spending a little on Minter plus an arm like Abreu would provide real depth and push guys like Gomez & Morris further down the pecking order until/unless they show they're ready for high leverage situations.

There is a part of me that likes Gomez as the "closer" though; he seems pretty comfortable pitching the 9th and I'm happy to let him be the guy who collects cheap saves while deploying Hoffman & guys like him in key moments late in games rather than holding them back for 9th inning "saves".

[DJL44]

40 minutes ago, Twins GFP said:

Did you actually read the article?

But if you want to go that route, here are the grades broken down by IP:
A/A-           222
B+/B/B-     478
C+/C/C-     547
D+/D/D-    75
F                100

Nick graded 88% of the IP at a passing grade. Again, the 25th worst ERA in all MLB.  Outside of 5-6 guys, everyone is at least a full letter grade too high.

You seem unfamiliar with how a long tail in a distribution can skew the mean.

[SteveLV]

1 hour ago, chinmusic said:

Like who, Kremer?

Kremer was a trade acquisition.  Perhaps I wasn't clear:  the endless wave of waiver wire pickups that failed.

[JBK]

Did he grade on a curve?  I wish he'd been my English literature professor in college.  I'd have gotten an "A" instead of a "B-".

[TheLeviathan]

In a long list of failures, the greatest failure of the Falvey regime was the complete opposite of a pitching pipeline.

We were constantly hunting for other people's pitchers rather than actually developing our own.

[DJL44]

1 hour ago, Twins GFP said:

Did you actually read the article?

But if you want to go that route, here are the grades broken down by IP:
A/A-           222
B+/B/B-     478
C+/C/C-     547
D+/D/D-    75
F                100

Nick graded 88% of the IP at a passing grade. Again, the 25th worst ERA in all MLB.  Outside of 5-6 guys, everyone is at least a full letter grade too high.

Team FIP is 4.23 and league average is 4.18. The pitching staff was a C grade overall. The defense was a solid D-.

[Twins_Fan_in_NJ]

What's the deal with Hoffman - forearm injury? Hopefully it isn't anything that foreshadows TJ surgery. 

[chinmusic]

1 hour ago, SteveLV said:

2 hours ago, chinmusic said:

 

Kremer was a trade acquisition.  Perhaps I wasn't clear:  the endless wave of waiver wire pickups that failed.

Thanks for the clarification.

[stringer bell]

9 minutes ago, Twins_Fan_in_NJ said:

What's the deal with Hoffman - forearm injury? Hopefully it isn't anything that foreshadows TJ surgery. 

While you never know for sure, Hoffman and the tesm both indicated the injury was minor to be addressed by a couple of extra days of rest. 

[Mike Sixel]

48 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

In a long list of failures, the greatest failure of the Falvey regime was the complete opposite of a pitching pipeline.

We were constantly hunting for other people's pitchers rather than actually developing our own.

I'll never understand why trading for Ryan or Abel isn't part of building the pipeline. It's actually a much better way than drafting players. Also, Ober, Matthews, Prielipp were drafted by this team. 

[The Great Hambino]

Jeez, it feels like Zak Kent pitched here three years ago

[TheLeviathan]

22 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

I'll never understand why trading for Ryan or Abel isn't part of building the pipeline. It's actually a much better way than drafting players. Also, Ober, Matthews, Prielipp were drafted by this team. 

In ten years that list at the end isn't much to write home about.  Trading is fine, but then you need other pipelines feeding it...we didn't have that either.

[Mike Sixel]

11 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

In ten years that list at the end isn't much to write home about.  Trading is fine, but then you need other pipelines feeding it...we didn't have that either.

Well, there were zero prospects in the minors when they took over, so the first three years are a wash. SWR was decent for two years, then forgot how to pitch. They traded for Gray and Lopez. If Abel isn't hurt, they have three rookies that look legit. I'm not sure what people expect? They also need to draft and develop hitters. 

The team has been much more successful lately with drafts, which is partly the earlier picks....