Twins Daily's Top 20 Minnesota Twins Prospects: #5 Marco Raya

Age: 22 (DOB: 8/7/2002)
2024 Stats (Double-A and Triple-A): 25 GS, 3-4, 4.05 ERA, .243 BAA, 1.36 WHIP, 103 K, 44 BB, 97 2/3 IP
ETA: 2025
2024 Ranking: 4

National Top 100 Rankings
BA: NR | MLB: NR | ATH: NR | BP: NR

What’s To Like?
As a prep starting pitching prospect, the name of the game with Raya has always been potential. While he didn’t come with as much hype as (say) José Berríos, at the time of their drafting, I think there are some similarities to draw from there. Both are undersized, and came with fastball and slider combinations scouts could dream on. They were also plenty athletic, with clean deliveries they were able to repeat better than most high-school hurlers.

A shoulder injury kept Raya out of the 2021 season, but he was quick to make a mark for the Fort Myers Mighty Mussels when 2022 rolled around. The second start of his career saw him post career bests with six innings pitched and 10 strikeouts. It certainly looked a lot like Berríos.

His fastball now sits in the 94 MPH range, and will touch 96. His slider and curveball can both be swing-and-miss pitches and boast well-above-average spin rates. He worked hard on a cutter this past season and it is now his primary weapon against left-handed hitters, giving him another tool to get through full lineups.

His curveball, in particular, made an impression after a bump to triple-A with the St. Paul Saints for his final start of this past season.

That pitch has some serious depth, given how hard he throws it. The combination of mid-80s velocity and true curveball downward action is a highly valuable one. On this chart, you can see some of the names in his neighborhood, including one who makes clear what might be possible if Raya ends up in the bullpen.

What’s Left To Work On?
This might be the easiest question to answer for Raya as a starting pitching prospect and what they may have been lacking coming up through the system:

Volume.

What I mean by that is the amount of pitches and innings he has thrown since being taken by the Twins in the fourth round of the 2020 draft. It will be Year Five in the system for Raya, and although he didn’t really get started until the 2022 season, to say he has been handled with kid gloves since he was signed is an understatement.

Whether this has been because of some new pitching prospect plan that the Twins and Derek Falvey have created with health at the forefront, or if there’s something else afoot with Raya, he simply hasn’t pitched enough to really draw any concrete conclusions on his long-term outlook as a starting pitcher.

In his three years of pitching, he has started 64 games (appeared in 66), which doesn’t sound like a bad number by itself, but it comes with just 225 1/3 total innings. That means he has averaged less than three and a half innings per game for his career. In a starting pitcher's lens, he has pitched five or more innings in a game just 10 times, and six innings just twice (ironically, one of those outings was that tweet from me above). The most pitches he’s ever thrown in a game is 81, and during the 2023 season he never eclipsed 55.

Call me old-fashioned, but these aren’t the types of numbers I like to see out of starting pitching prospects. The baseline goal should be that they are capable of picking up a win on the stat sheet every time out, even if that statistic by itself means very little. We’ve seen time and time again the past few seasons with the Twins how an inability to work more than halfway through a game can tax a bullpen (and pitching staff as a whole) over a full season.

Raya is also still developing his arsenal and learning to control it. His changeup received positive reviews for its improvement last year, but he was throwing it very little or not at all at the tail end of the 2024 season. Instead, he began employing that cutter en masse, to go along with his 4-seam fastball and two breaking balls. His walk rate of 4.1 BB/9IP is also something you want to see come down in 2025.

What’s Next?
If I’m being honest, Raya was further down in my own list submitted for these rankings, in large part because of my concerns about his role. He came in as the fourth-ranked pitcher in the Twins system for me.

You should have the gist by now: That is because I want to see more of what Raya can do next year, but I also do not want you to think that somehow lowers the amount of potential he carries. If he responds well to a ramped-up workload, his ceiling is awfully high.

I have watched him dominate lineups. I have seen those high-spinning breaking balls fool hitters, and 96-MPH fastballs being dotted on the corners. I’m just not certain there isn’t a better reliever here than a starter at this point. You have to start treating him like one, eventually, to find out.

He was added to the Twins' 40-man roster on Tuesday, so it’s quite obvious they believe in that ceiling, too. Depending on what the Twins do with the active roster this offseason, there is a good chance he begins the year in the rotation of the St. Paul Saints. While he will certainly be down in the pecking order with the likes of David Festa, Zebby Matthews, and Andrew Morris around, spot starts could be a possibility as soon as they become necessary, now that he's on that reserve list.

In a perfect world for me, Raya reaches the 100-inning mark for the first time in his career before August. If he is not already making starts for the Twins by then (which could be a good or bad thing) but showing he deserves a chance, they then find a place for him in the bullpen as they make a playoff push. They should push him above 125 total innings in the process. That would put him in line to be a full-time contributor in the majors while he is still just 23 years old the following season, or pretty much what the Twins got out of Simeon Woods Richardson this year.

Do you agree with Raya’s ranking? What do you expect out of him during the 2025 season? Can he reach the majors with the Twins, and will he start for them?

Interested in learning more about the Minnesota Twins' top prospects? Check out our comprehensive top prospects list that includes up-to-date stats, articles and videos about every prospect, scouting reports, and more!