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

[TheLeviathan]

4 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

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....

What I expect is what they were hired to bring: Cleveland pitching pipeline.  Which, imo, is the best.  You get an arm's best few years and then spin them off for surplus.  Churn, repeat.

[Mike Sixel]

8 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

What I expect is what they were hired to bring: Cleveland pitching pipeline.  Which, imo, is the best.  You get an arm's best few years and then spin them off for surplus.  Churn, repeat.

I'm guessing that was the plan with Ryan, which is why Falvey is gone......but we'll never know for sure.

[AceBee]

Agree with most of the ratings and what's being said above. Hoping both Abel and Lopez can come back stronger from injury layoffs ! Excited and cautiously optimistic about Prielipp also. I hope we get some solid bullpen arms (either internally or externally) for the next year! Of course, with the Twins, there is then a chance that the starting rotation will completely fall on its face. 

Also, just saw that Mahle is pitching in the second playoff game for ATL, and I am not entirely sure how I should feel about that..lol

[IndianaTwin]

1 hour 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. 

And Bradley, Hoffman, Banda...

[IndianaTwin]

41 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

What I expect is what they were hired to bring: Cleveland pitching pipeline.  Which, imo, is the best.  You get an arm's best few years and then spin them off for surplus.  Churn, repeat.

Two out of their five primary starters this year (admittedly not their best two), plus Foster Griffin, were aquired by trade.  

[Coach JT]

I would trade Ryan while teams are still interested before he is cooked . Unfortunately we cannot bring back Ober , 88 isn’t enough same with Rogers . Plenty of depth and maybe add a big name starter to this group and bring Lopez back and get as many prospects for Ryan . 

[TheLeviathan]

41 minutes ago, IndianaTwin said:

Two out of their five primary starters this year (admittedly not their best two), plus Foster Griffin, were aquired by trade.  

My punctuation sucked and thus communicated something I wasn't intending.  Sorry about that...I didn't mean to say that they were the best (they aren't this year, that title belongs in Milwaukee and Tampa), but that the notion of a pitching pipeline is the best thing you can build.  

Draft position players high and then use the rest of the draft to snipe upside arms that your development system can turn into good players.  That's the ideal.  Those arms can come up and pitch for you long enough to generate value, trade them off (if you aren't a legit contender) and keep taking bites at the apple with your surplus value you mined out of mid round picks.

[TheLeviathan]

1 hour ago, Mike Sixel said:

I'm guessing that was the plan with Ryan, which is why Falvey is gone......but we'll never know for sure.

No, but we do know that was part of the appeal in hiring Falvey.  To bring insights from a successful development system.

He appears to have forgotten to pack those when he moved here.  (There was a point where I really thought it might have happened when Zebby, Festa, Ober, etc were starting to be the norms in the system.  It just didn't work)

[jmlease1]

2 hours 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. 

I think it certainly should be! Being able to acquire pitching from another team's system is almost as valuable as developing them straight from draft picks. There's a higher cost, but also lower chance of bust.

Overall the pitching development has been better, and they've shown an ability to refine pitchers from other teams into valuable assets. The biggest concern right now is whether or not there's enough depth in the high minors that's going to be ready to contribute in 2027 (Quick still needs development, Bohorquez is a ways off, etc) and after the last couple of seasons you have to be concerned about rotation injuries.

Bradley might not quite be as great an acquisition as Ryan was (gave up more), but moves like that are pretty dang impactful, and the sort of thing that teams like Cleveland and TB have excelled at.

If you look at the top 13 pitchers for the Twins this season by IP, 6 were drafted by the Twins as their only club (plus Rogers who was drafted as a Twin and came back as a FA), 5 were acquired by trade (with 2 having never thrown in MLB before being acquired), and 1 waiver claim. Interesting.