Breaking Down Riley Quick’s First Pro Season: What Went Right and What’s Next

[Sam Caulder]

Image courtesy of William Parmeter

Entering the 2026 season, there was some speculation around what we’d see from pitching prospect Riley Quick. Despite some concerns about the Tommy John surgery he underwent in college (which limited his career workload at the University of Alabama), the Twins selected him 36th overall in the 2025 MLB Draft. They clearly believed the talent outweighed the risk, and based on what we saw from Quick this year, it’s hard to blame them.

Quick finished the year with a 4.74 ERA in 81 2/3 innings, split between Low-A, High-A and Double-A. He racked up 110 strikeouts, good for a 30.6% strikeout rate, and the swing-and-miss stuff that made him such a high-upside prospect in the first place was obvious. As a result, he earned Twins Daily’s minor league pitcher of the year honors and ends the season ranked within the top five organizational prospects. What did he do that made him so successful, and what areas does he need to work on this offseason?

A Definite Out Pitch

Let’s start with what made him so successful. As I mentioned, the swing-and-miss was his best friend. Quick finished the year with a very strong 14.6% swinging-strike rate, in large part thanks to his wicked slider. Over the course of the season, 37.3% of the pitches Quick threw outside of the strike zone generated a swing. That’s downright filthy, and opposing hitters only connected on a quarter of their chases. That slider was sliding, and it should continue to be a really strong pitch for him as he progresses through the Twins’ system.

He also did a good job of keeping the ball on the ground. A whopping 52% of batted balls against him were grounders. Quick’s fastball is more of a sinker than a traditional four-seam fastball, and that pitch (along with his changeup) helped him consistently induce pitcher-friendly contact. When you combine that with his ability to miss bats, it gives him a really strong foundation moving forward. However, it obviously wasn’t all good.

The Name of the Game: Throw Strikes

The biggest problem was walks. Quick’s 13.4% walk rate is far too high, and if he’s going to be a front-line starter (or a starter at all) in the majors someday, that number is going to need to come down. It’s easy to just say “throw more strikes,” as if every pitcher who has ever struggled with command hasn’t thought of that already. The more important question is how Quick can achieve that.

The best pitchers in baseball, guys like Tarik Skubal, Jacob Misiorowski and Paul Skenes, are throwing first-pitch strikes to roughly two-thirds of opposing hitters. Quick was just below half, at 49.9%, and the difference those first-pitch strikes make cannot be overstated. Aaron Judge, who’s arguably the best hitter in baseball when healthy, has a career .319 batting average when he gets ahead in the count 1-0. When he falls behind 0-1, that number drops to .239. Getting ahead gives pitchers a massive advantage, and Quick has incredible swing-and-miss stuff to take advantage of those favorable counts. If he can't fill up the zone, though, hitters will stop helping him out by swinging at pitches outside it.

Quick did also struggle with the long ball a bit once he got to Double-A, but I’m not overly concerned about that part of his profile. Just under 30% of the fly balls he allowed with Wichita wound up leaving the yard. That’s an extremely high number, and it’s simply not sustainable over a larger sample. There’s always going to be some fluctuation in home-run rates, particularly when dealing with a relatively small sample size at one level. If Quick can continue doing a good job of keeping the ball on the ground while generating plenty of swings and misses, I’d expect that home-run rate to come down next season.

There was a lot to like from his first year of professional baseball. He worked his way through three levels, struck out more than 30% of the hitters he faced, and showed off a slider that can make opposing hitters look silly. There are certainly things he needs to clean up, particularly when it comes to his command. But that’s also why I think there’s reason to be excited about what Quick could do in 2027. I expect a jump from Quick next season. And depending on just how big that jump is, I think there’s a possibility we see him at Target Field in 2027—maybe even by the All-Star break.

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[Steve Lein]

Command is always the last thing to get back to "normal" after Tommy John surgery, which is why I'm not putting a whole lot of stock into that being a big issue for Quick.

Yet.

Theoretically, if he makes improvements in that regard the further removed he is, all the other numbers improve. Maybe that ERA gets a full run shaven off, that walk rate gets under 10%, and that strikeout rate creeps higher. 

We've already seen this exact same scenario play out with Connor Prielipp. I think we'd all be happy with that from Quick. 

[Permanent Twins Fan]

RIley Quick was also dealing with a recurring blister issue pretty much the entire year. I think that could have something to do with his off-speed. It was preventing him from throwing off-speed pitches fully for a stretch. I think fully healthy he could take a huge step forward next year and maybe make an impact for the major league team in late 2027.

[Coach]

Never refer to a hopeful pitcher with; "Breaking Down" in the same headline. It can Quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy.