Make or Break Players For Twins In 2025: Chris Paddack

Chris Paddack, who is still on the Minnesota Twins — a fact you can check using our handy-dandy Chris Paddack tool — is in the final year of his contract and making $7.5 million this year ($4.175 million for luxury tax purposes). Earlier in the offseason, when it appeared the Twins wanted to do nothing but slash payroll, he was a lock to be traded.

Then, the team (slightly) reversed course, signing Danny Coloumbe, Harrison Bader, and Ty France to (cheap) major league deals for the 2025 season. Even with a prospective sale of the franchise looming over every transaction and player, it’s clear that Minnesota isn’t totally punting on the idea of putting out a competitive team this year.

Which brings us to Paddack. Can he actually contribute to a competitive team? He’s been very effective in the big leagues before, but his performance has leveled off since an impressive rookie season with the San Diego Padres in 2019. Do the Twins actually need Paddack to be his best self in order to have a chance in a loaded AL Central, or can they treat him as nothing more than expensive filler?

What Went Wrong In 2024?
Like most pitchers, the Sheriff’s struggles last season can be traced back to his injury issues. He was returning from his second Tommy John surgery in 2023, only to deal with constant forearm issues throughout the summer.

When healthy, he maintained his usually-excellent level of control, which is promising considering that’s often one of the last things to return for pitchers trying to come back from elbow surgery. However, his fastball velocity (93.3 mph) was more than two ticks below his average speed in 2023 (95.5 mph), though the former number is subject to small-sample size caveats (just 34 fastballs thrown in 2023).

The reason that dip in velocity matters is because it became harder for Paddack to fool hitters with his offspeed offerings without the threat of blowing something hard by them. From 2021 (his last healthy season) to 2024, only his fastball improved in terms of xwOBA allowed to opposing hitters. His changeup was smacked around to the tune of a .385 xwOBA in 2024, and it was downright catastrophic against right-handed hitters (.463 wOBA; for reference, Shohei Ohtani had a .431 wOBA last season).

Neither his slider (.314 xwOBA allowed) nor his curveball (.396 xwOBA) were all that good either, with both getting crushed by left-handed hitters (.434 wOBA on his slider to lefty batters; .356 wOBA on his curveball). His fastball remains one of the better for-strike four-seamers in the league, but if he can’t differentiate between his breaking pitches, he’s not going to make a lot of headway as a starter.

What Can Go Right In 2025?
For starters, as laid out by Cody Pirkl, better health. Paddack has had elbow, oblique, or arm injuries in every single season since 2021. He’s thrown a total of 224.0 innings in the last four seasons combined, and nearly half of that workload came four years ago. Ever since arriving in Minnesota, he simply has not been able to stay on the mound.

Likewise, when Paddack first began working with the Twins’ coaching staff, they implored him to add a slider to his arsenal, reworking a discarded cutter that got bashed around like silly in 2020. He tinkered with a sinker, too, though that doesn’t look likely to return in the wake of his second Tommy John procedure. Instead, all eyes should be on his firm slider, which, despite being crushed by lefties, was actually pretty dominant against right-handed hitters.

Throwing it 177 times to same-side hitters in 2024 (23.6% of all his offerings to righties), Paddack’s slider generated a .208 expected batting average and .258 xwOBA. He induced soft contact with it and got batters to whiff on the pitch 29.3% of the time — not quite the elite figure his changeup used to average during his Padres days, but some of his best stuff with the Twins.

At worst, the upside of this new breaking pitch gives Paddack a credible reliever profile, where his old velocity would also be more likely to show up in shorter bursts out of the bullpen. If he can hone the pitch (and stop throwing it to opposite-handed hitters) while finding a variation of his changeup or curveball that messes with lefty batters’ timing, Paddack could be a back-end rotation surprise for the Twins in 2025.

How Will This Impact The Twins in 2025?
Should the Twins have done more this offseason to add rotation depth and ensure Paddack wasn’t being relied on to throw 120+ innings this season? Probably, but you could say they should have done more at nearly every position on the roster.

With Pablo López, Joe Ryan, and Bailey Ober entrenched as the top three starters, Simeon Woods Richardson looks to have the inside track on the No. 4 job heading into spring training. That leaves Paddack, David Festa, Zebby Matthews, and Louie Varland fighting it out for the final spot in the Opening Day rotation. Top prospect Marco Raya is also on the 40-man roster.

By all accounts, Paddack should be the favorite for the job, at least as long as he’s on the roster. If his body just can’t handle a starters workload anymore, he could theoretically become a valuable long-man/opener in the bullpen, though that group is probably even more crowded than the rotation right now. Either way, with free agency looming for the 6’5” right-hander, Paddack will need to put together his best season in a half-decade in order to remain relevant within the organization.