Matthew Trueblood

I think that's definitely been true of *some* version of Ryan's fastball. I'm not sure it's true of it right now. He's more dependent on mixing his pitches than ever—which is fine, of course! Just reflects the fact that he can't dominate with that pitch the way he once could. There are numbers for this kind of stuff, but I don't fully back any of them for an at-a-glance eval. I'm talking about a holistic assessment: how the pitch moves, where he can locate it, whether it misses bats without running into barrels when a batter does make contact, how it fits into his arsenal and sets up various sequences. I like Prielipp's slider better than any one pitch anyone else in the active group throws right now, edging out Ryan's and Bradley's fastballs and Ober's changeup. But I'm being subjective—informed by numbers, but ultimately making judgments. I'll happily hear arguments for Ryan's heater or any other pitch someone feels is better; making that assertion was just my way of emphasizing what I see in that pitch for Prielipp.

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images It's only been two starts, but it's not too early to get deeply intrigued by Connor Prielipp's slider. Hell, it's practically too late. Where have you been? Why hasn't this fascination been gripping you for weeks, months, or years already? For now, though, we'll let you slide on that part. Let's focus on the present, and savor what has been an encouraging pair of starts by the young southpaw since his promotion to the majors earlier this month. Though he's run into a couple of rocky spots and given up four runs in his first nine big-league innings, it's felt more like Prielipp might have held his opponents to less than like they might have produced more. On Monday night in Minneapolis, he gave up just two runs in five frames against the Marinersne of them came home when Tristan Gray, struggling to read a foul fly ball not far behind third base but twisting toward the stands, had to accelerate slightly as he ran into the tarp, leaving him unable to get off a throw quickly and strongly enough to retire J.P. Crawford on what became a very shallow sacrifice fly. As it happens, though, that very pitch is a good place to start our discussion of what has made Prielipp stand out so much in these two outings. It was 3-1 on Mariners second baseman Cole Young, but Prielipp went to his slider—because that's what Prielipp does. Of the 166 pitches he's thrown in his first two appearances in the majors, Prielipp has selected the slider 78 times (47%). He is, above all, a slider monster. In the past, that profile—a slider-first lefty—wouldn't work in the starting rotation. Right now, though, it looks like Prielipp can make it work. For one thing, the pitch is really, really good, in a vacuum. Some context might help us see just how good that is. Here are the pitch movement and velocity profiles of three lefty pitchers. Two of them have made the American League All-Star team and drawn serious Cy Young Award consideration within the last half-decade. Prielipp doesn't have the run on the fastball or the consistent depth on the curve that Cole Ragans can boast. He doesn't have the velocity or carry on the heater that Shane McClanahan had at his best, before going through an elbow surgery wringer similar to the one Prielipp went through during an overlapping span. Of these three lefties with similar size, stuff, command and arm slots, though, Prielipp's is the standout slider. The similarities to the best of Ragans's version of the pitch are almost eerie. Here's Prielipp putting away a batter with his sharp breaker. WU8yQTlfVjBZQUhRPT1fQmxVRUFnVldVUUlBREFCVVhnQUhVMU5RQUZoUkFWTUFWQUZVVWdRQ0J3RmRVUXNG.mp4 Here's Prielipp looking very similar in shape, but throwing the pitch harder, with the same result. TzA0VmxfWGw0TUFRPT1fVndGU1VWQUdYZ3NBQ0ZGVUJBQUhBbFZTQUZnR0JsUUFCVklHQWdjQUFBQUJCVkZX.mp4 Prielipp's slider even has a similar spin profile to those of Ragans and McClanahan, but he can achieve a bit more velocity—or, at other times, more movement, at the expense of velocity. That's where he branches off from these two encouraging comparators, but also (perhaps) how he can eventually meet up with them on the high road among junior-circuit lefties. Notice that the distribution of Prielipp's shapes on the slider was a bit wider—the yellow blob a bit bigger—for Prielipp than for Ragans or McClanahan. Now, consider this, too: The above only shows his first start's slider movements. Here's another look at it, with a line drawn through the slider blob to show the orientation along which he manipulated the shape of the pitch against the Mets. Compare that to this chart, which corresponds to the above but for his start Monday against Seattle. The feel he showed for the slider on Monday has a chance to make him special. On a chilly, rainy night, Prielipp didn't throw quite as hard or get quite as much sheer spin as he did in his amped-up debut in New York. He showed the ability to shift the offering east and west, though, which proved important. In the game in New York, Prielipp got seven whiffs on 24 swings on the slider, but he also allowed eight batted balls in play with the pitch. Five of those were hit at least 95 miles per hour; four of them went for hits. On Monday night, he got six whiffs on 16 slider swings. The Mariners put six balls in play on the pitch, but only one was hit hard, and none went for hits. Prielipp's slider is, in truth, two or three different pitches. Pitchers say there are three ways for a good breaking ball to get outs: Strike-to-ball: the good, old-fashioned chase-inducer, aimed at getting a whiff; Ball-to-strike: the one that should freeze a batter, usually with a noticeable early break and more velocity difference from the fastball, prompting them to give up on a pitch that lands in the zone; and The in-zone: a pitch nasty enough to miss bats or induce weak, useless contact even when it both starts and ends inside the zone, with a blend of power and spin that a hitter can't outmuscle. Prielipp has shown all three of these, though it's not yet clear how consistently he can execute each. One thing is clear, though: there's no count in which he won't go to the slider. We saw him use it for a key out on a 3-1 pitch, above. Here are 10 instances of him starting right-handed batters with a slider on an 0-0 count, just in these two games. It's not as simple as one version of the pitch being confined to a given count or to a given matchup. Prielipp will throw a sharp, biting strike-to-ball slider on the first pitch in one at-bat against a given hitter, then take advantage of the fact that they're looking for that pitch by going ball-to-strike the next time. Indeed, he did just that to Julio Rodríguez Monday night. He's eager to get ahead, but doesn't feel any need to use his fastball to do so. That the in-zone slider—the one that slashes across the whole zone but never really threatens not to be within in—works so well to righties is a testament to its viciousness. Now, here are 10 of the whopping 36 times Prielipp has already thrown a slider with two strikes, trying (in various ways) to put hitters away. It's actually not an exceptional out pitch yet. Prielipp has seven strikeouts with it, but a pitch with this much potential can eventually put batters away at a better rate than 19.4%. Hitters are sitting on that pitch in those two-strike counts, though, which has allowed Prielipp to put them away with other stuff at times. He got two strikeouts with his fledgling curveball Monday night, and another with his changeup. Meanwhile, he's showing the capacity to use that slider in multiple forms even within similar counts and situations. The ball-to-strike slider isn't a great option with two strikes, but Prielipp certainly made some hay with the version that stays in the zone the whole time. Even when he leaves the pitch up, its firmness and sidespin make it deceptive. Neither Prielipp nor the slider are finished products. Hitters will adjust; they'll punish his mistakes more often. He needs to find ways to make them respect his fastball a bit more, but the four-seamer lives in the movement dead zone and his sinker doesn't really play to righties. He hasn't stepped into the majors and overwhelmed the best hitters in the world, the way some slightly higher-caliber pitching prospects have over the last few years. However, Prielipp's slider should have your full attention now. It's the best individual pitch in the Twins rotation, and it could become the engine of the rookie's drive for a long-term home in the starting group. View full article

Image courtesy of © Bruce Kluckhohn-Imagn Images He's not going to make the All-Star team or anything. Victor Caratini has come back to Earth with a much less gentle splash than the Artemis II crew made earlier this spring. He batted a sturdy .271/.373/.354 through his first 14 games and 59 plate appearances of the season, and came up with a couple of big hits along the way. Since then, though, he's been awful: 3-for-24, with six strikeouts and a double-play grounder. Three times in the last seven games he's played, he's reduced the Twins' win probability by over 10% in his turns at bat. His OPS for the season is now .596. Behind the plate, though, he's turned out to be a genius—or, he's playing pretty well and getting a little lucky, to boot. The choice is (partially) yours. Caratini has been the better of the two Twins catchers at pitch framing, worth 1 run already, according to Statcast. He's also been better in the ABS challenge aspect, though—not just better than Ryan Jeffers, or better than average, but better than all but one other catcher in the big leagues. Taken together, those two skills (or is it three? One? Two and a half?) have made up for most of Caratini's shortcomings as a hitter. When the umpire calls a pitch Caratini catches a ball, he's very good at knowing whether or not to challenge. In 13 tries, he's won nine appeals, nudging his team toward the black by ensuring that the zone is the size it ought to be. Just as importantly, though, Caratini is still getting slightly more calls along the edges of the zone than most catchers do, and when opponents challenge those strikes, they lose. Batters are just 4-for-11 when challenging called strikes caught by Caratini this year. Pitch framing, as we've discussed many times, is a many-layered skill. There's some politicking in it. There's a bit of pitch-calling in it—knowing when to test the edges of the zone, and which edges each umpire is most likely to accommodate. Mostly, it's a physical skill, but the mechanics of good framing have evolved over time. When this part of the game was first quantified (around 2010), the best framers were guys with big, strong bodies, who held very quiet positions and caught the ball with minimal movement after setting their targets. Now, in the era of one-knee-down catching, catchers have changed the way they hunt calls. They stick out their mitts to present a target (which might be the real one, or not), then drop it toward the ground and try to catch the ball with the mitt in motion. It's not about being quiet. It's about making it look like the ball was right in the fat of the zone, whether that's remotely true or not. It makes fans howl a bit more about calls than they should, at times, but when you're on the field, it makes sense. This is how catchers have come to avail themselves of the rising baseline of athleticism throughout the league, which reaches down even into their squats. If you're Caratini, then, the goal is to catch the ball with a movement that anticipates the movement and location of the pitch and smoothly steer it toward the center of the zone, all in one movement. Umpires don't always fall for this, anymore. They've gotten steadily more accurate over the last two decades; the implementation of the ABS system is more about the technology finally being ready to boost the accuracy of the zone than about some pressing need to amend umpires failing at their jobs. They do fall for it sometimes, though, and they rarely punish catchers for being noisy when the pitch really is in the zone. After all, every catcher does this, now. Caratini has succeeded at that very often this year. To get a good look at how, let's focus on one corner of the zone: his glove-hand side, down. These are pitches low and in to righties, low and away from lefties. They look like this. cU93MFFfWGw0TUFRPT1fQndSU1ZsSURWZ2NBWFZWV0J3QUhCQWRSQUZsUVZnTUFBVndIQmxFR1UxRlhDVlFG.mp4 That's a good, solid catch on a pitch from Taylor Rogers that nailed its spot. It was a strike, and it was probably going to be called one, anyway. Caratini was actually a hair late, here, jerking the ball upward—ah, but maybe that was a good thing, rather than a bad one. As you can see at the tail end of the clip, Reds hitter Dane Myers challenged this call. He wrong to do so, and the choice to challenge was a dubious one, given the count and the location of the pitch, but Caratini's slightly late move might have fooled him (even if Caratini didn't really mean to do so) into costing his team a challenge for later in the game. Here's another instance of the same thing, only different. TzA0VmxfWGw0TUFRPT1fVTFOU0FRRlhWZ2NBRGdaVVZ3QUhDQTVTQUFBRVYxTUFVQVpSQXdGUVZWSmNBZ05m.mp4 This is a picture-perfect modern frame job by Caratini. The orientation of his body gives the umpire a good look at the pitch as it slants across the zone. His catch anticipates the ball trying to work its way off the corner, and he brings it up and holds it on the edge of the zone nicely. However, because the matchup here was left-on-left and the pitch was a slider, Juan Soto was fooled. Lefty batters make very bad decisions about challenging against lefty pitchers and on pitches along the outer edge; they do especially badly when both things are true. Soto's head turned slightly to follow the ball to the mitt, and maybe he saw the move from Caratini out of the corner of his eye. Maybe he just thought that pitch had to be a ball, given the angle of its movement away from him. Either way, he challenged this call, too, and was wrong again. Caratini isn't always as clean when catching the ball in that spot, but unlike Soto and Myers, he sees the ball exceptionally well when it's thrown there. He knows, for instance, when he's let a Taj Bradley fastball beat him to its spot and lost a call on a pitch that really nipped the zone. In the past, there would have been nothing to do but rue that loss, but now, he has a recourse—and he takes it. ckR3NW9fWGw0TUFRPT1fQVFaWkJnRlJCUUFBWEFRREFBQUhCUUpVQUZrQ1dsSUFWMUJRQWxZRVZBTUhCUVlE.mp4 In fact, this exact thing has happened with Bradley's heater three times this year: the pitch zips in on the high side of 97 MPH; Caratini can't quite catch it with a good enough frame to earn the call; but he challenges the call and earns the strike, anyway. Something slightly different happened here, with Mick Abel throwing a changeup. ZU53T0FfWGw0TUFRPT1fVUFBQVhRRUFVQVFBQUZCWEJ3QUhVbFZUQUFNQ1ZRUUFCUUFEVlZVSEFRdFZCd29B.mp4 This pitch tailed a bit more than Caratini thought it would, and he stabbed out toward the edge of the plate more than he'd expected to need to. However, even as he did that (and then brought the ball back to the zone), he knew it had been a strike, so when the call didn't come, he had the confidence to challenge it—even though it was the first inning. All told, relative to the expected challenges for and against him and the success rates of each, Caratini has earned the Twins 11.6 extra calls via the ABS system this year, according to Statcast. Only Cal Raleigh has earned more, mostly by fooling batters with his own noisy catching style: hitters are 2-for-18 when challenging Raleigh's calls. Put together framing and ABS-related value (which are distinct; Statcast's model grades framers based on the initial call to keep the two separate), and Caratini is one of the most valuable catchers in baseball. He often gets the calls on the edges, and when he doesn't, he's good at knowing whether he should have. In that low, mitt-hand corner of the zone, alone, he's earning a called strike rate of 38.3%, relative to the league's average of 30%—and he's added four more calls to that by challenging, while hurting the other team by prompting misbegotten challenges three times. That's a lot of value in a small amount of real estate. Statcast estimates that Caratini has been worth 3.1 runs relative to an average catcher, combining these two skills. He's on pace to be worth over 15 runs in that department, despite playing less than half the time behind the dish. That pace probably won't hold, but Caratini is a genius of the modern art of catching—of both crafting the zone and enforcing it, and tricking some opponents into self-defeating behavior. To whatever extent this skill proves real, it's enormously useful, especially for a Twins pitching staff that won't miss many bats and needs to steal strikes to survive their poor defense. View full article

Image courtesy of © Nick Wosika-Imagn Images Since 1986, 19 different players have started an MLB season with an OBP of at least .515 in their first 23 games, with at least 60 plate appearances in those contests. As you'd guess, it's mostly superstars. Barry Bonds did that three times. Jason Giambi, John Olerud and Mike Trout did it twice each. The worst player to do so in the last 40 years is either Von Hayes or Wally Joyner, and even they were awfully good at their peak and never better than in the year they started that hot. That's the company Austin Martin is keeping now, after reaching base four times in Thursday night's game in New York. Martin is, of course, being shielded from some right-handed pitchers, and the Twins have faced an extraordinary number of lefty starters early on. Still, the numbers Martin is now putting up—.347/.515/.469, in 68 plate appearances—are remarkable, and the team is starting to take notice. Martin's start Thursday night came against a right-handed starter, at the expense of slugging teammate Matt Wallner. What's working so well? As you would guess, Martin is getting on base so much more by walking often, and he's walking often because he's swinging less than in the past. He's down from swinging just over 40% of the time to being under 32% this year—but when we break things down even further, the truth of the situation comes even more clearly into focus. Late last season, I talked to Martin about how he handled the high pitch, as a hitter with a steep bat path but not much bat speed. His answer was simple: try not to swing at it. Force pitchers down into the middle of the zone, if at all possible. He was decent at that, too. Naturally, this season, his swing rate in the top third of the zone has... risen, while his swing rate along the bottom third has dropped considerably. Wait, what? Martin is being much more patient, but not in the segment of the zone you'd expect to see him take that tack in. Instead, he's reaching down to the bottom of the zone much less often, despite a swing seemingly geared to get on plane with those offerings. What gives? Well, firstly, you need to know that the strike zone isn't where it was last year. That's the biggest driver of Martin's change in approach, and well it should be. This season, with the ABS challenge system in place, the top and bottom of the zone are no longer set by the umpire's best estimate of the height of the hollow of Martin's knee or the halfway point between his belt and his shoulders. Martin was measured before the season, and a strike on him should now be between 27% of his height (around 19 inches) and 53.5% of his height (around 37.5 inches) above the ground. That's a short zone. The 5-foot-10 Martin ends up with almost a perfectly square zone, whereas in the past, we've always thought of most players' zones as being noticeably taller than they are wide. Umpires don't enforce these top and bottom lines perfectly, of course, but the league changed the tolerances of umpire grading last season to force them to be more accurate, in anticipation of exactly this dynamic. They've been very observant of each player's new rulebook zone, as best they can be, and Martin has the challenges themselves to help ensure that. He's 3-for-4 on ABS appeals this year, always using them to question the top and bottom of the zone. Opponents, meanwhile, have tried to find the top rail by challenging called balls up there twice, with no luck. So, when we see Martin's swing rate in the top third of the zone rising, that's not really what's happening. Instead, the vertical thirds of the zone are getting smaller, and any increase in swing rate is happening in what used to be the middle of his strike zone. He's also dedicated himself to not chasing low pitches, because even though his swing tilt gets him in position to touch those balls easily, he can't drive them. He doesn't have the bat speed for that. He's chosen, instead, to lock in on things the opponents leave up a bit, where the lift is done for him and he can just hit the center of the ball. An altered zone means Martin can safely ignore what used to be the top third of his zone. Here's a side-by-side look at the results of pitches at which he didn't swing that came in at least 2.9 feet off the ground, for both 2025 and 2026. The raw height of the pitch when it got to home plate cuts off at the same point (34.8 inches) for both seasons, but look how many of those balls were in Martin's old zone and called strikes last year. This year, almost none are. It's hard to convey just how valuable being able to cut off that extra five inches or so at the top of the zone is, except by restating Martin's numbers. He's getting on base more than half the time, and hitting a ton of line drives in the process, because he has pressed a newfound advantage. He's not chasing down and out of the zone, and the top of the zone now seems to be much lower than it was in the past. That leaves a nice, squat square for him to defend, and his excellent hand-eye coordination is more than up to the challenge. That doesn't mean, of course, that his new true talent level is to hit .350. The matchups will even out; Martin will get less lucky; and the league will figure out how to pitch to the newly shrunken zone. For now, though, Martin's approach change—probably informed, via his coaches, by the installation of the ABS-influenced zone—suits his swing brilliantly, which has produced brilliant results. For a player who already had plenty of baserunning and defensive value, this could be the key to becoming a regular in the majors—or even a star. View full article

No player chooses to be platooned, is the thing. Everyone wants to play every day. Platoons aren't tools to optimize the performance of individuals. They optimize team production at the *expense* of individuals.

Image courtesy of © Matt Blewett-Imagn Images After 22 games, the Minnesota Twins have six batters with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title. Catcher Ryan Jeffers and fourth outfielder Austin Martin are just off that pace, with 65 and 62 plate appearances, respectively. Just below those eight players, there's a tier of three guys who have been part-timers this season, with between 40 and 50 plate appearances despite being active all year. For Kody Clemens and Tristan Gray, that's to be expected; these are the roles they're meant to play. For Trevor Larnach, though, 47 trips to the plate in 22 healthy games reflects the strangeness of the team's early schedule. Through a series of matchup coincidences, the Twins have faced left-handed starting pitchers 13 times in their 22 games. Larnach, a lefty batter who's had little luck against southpaws during his career, has therefore started only half of the 22. He's been in there all nine times against righties, but only twice in the 13 games against lefties—and then, partially because of injuries to other players. Normally, players hate having the routine of playing every day disrupted. Only good players get the privilege of assuming they'll be in the lineup for each game, and those clinging to the fringes of the majors are happy to fill in wherever and whenever they're needed, but Larnach has long been able to plan on playing at least five times a week, at least when he's been healthy enough to do so. This pattern of (dis)use is extremely unfamiliar to him, and it's begotten a very weird version of Larnach so far in 2026—but weird in a good way. Larnach is batting .265/.468/.412. In his 47 trips to the plate, he's drawn an eye-popping 13 walks, to go with three extra-base hits and just seven strikeouts. He's still whiffing at a catastrophic rate against everything but fastballs, and by now, fans know better than to expect anything else. Against fastballs, though, he's only whiffed once, and more importantly, he's been extremely patient. His swing rate was around 41% in both 2022 and 2023. It rose to 44% or so in 2024 and 2025. So far this season, he's swung at 33.8% of the pitches he's seen. Thence come all those walks—though also lots of questions. Generally, that low a swing rate isn't viable in the big leagues. That goes double for someone who swings and misses as much as Larnach does against anything offspeed or breaking. It's a recipe for too many strikeouts, even if it does come with a fair number of walks. It's also, certainly, not what Larnach is trying to do. The Twins are a slightly more patient team than they were last year. New hitting coach Keith Beauregard has them trying to wait for the right pitch a bit more. The difference isn't huge, though, and no one is telling Larnach to swing barely a third of the time. He's just not in enough of a rhythm to swing any more often. He can't get off his 'A' swing consistently enough to justify swinging at all, given not only the plan he's taking to the plate but the years of practice and programming that have gotten him this far. It doesn't help that, after being strictly a platoon guy in 2023 and 2024 and getting only partial exposure to lefties last year, he's seen them in 11 of his 47 trips so far this season. In this small sample, though, Larnach has benefited from being forced to behave bizarrely at the plate. Swinging much, much less is working for him, not only because he's not getting himself out, but because the strike zone is smaller this year and pitchers aren't throwing as many strikes. A more patient approach might suit him, after all. This level of selectivity will probably never profit such a whiff-prone slugger, but unless and until Larnach can get his swing ranged and start producing the power he only intermittently accessed last year, waiting hurlers out is a good plan. He might have tried a bit more of this, no matter what. Because he's not playing especially regularly and is seeing some tough matchups, though, he's had to lean into it—and the results are as peculiar as this stretch of lefties on the schedule was. View full article

Image courtesy of © Bruce Kluckhohn-Imagn Images The Twins suffered a major loss on an off day Monday, as they're set to place right-handed starter Mick Abel on the 15-day injured list. Dan Hayes of The Athletic broke the news on Twitter. The initial diagnosis—inflammation in his throwing elbow—isn't the worst news you could hear about a player hitting the injured list between starts, but it's awfully close. The extent of Abel's injury won't be clear until the team provides further updates about any imaging taken on the arm, but right away, one must worry about a long-term absence. Inflammation isn't an injury in itself; it's a symptom of fatigue and/or damage, which has some cause. Finding out the cause of the inflammation will tell us whether Abel will be out a few weeks, the rest of the season, or somewhere in between. No matter what, though, it hurts the team badly to lose him now. Abel, 24, has a 3.98 ERA and a 24.7% strikeout rate through his first four appearances of the season, but that undersells what has been a thrilling upward trend over his last two outings. His dominance of the Red Sox last week at Target Field (7 innings, 4 hits, 10 strikeouts, no walks) felt like a step toward legitimate mid-rotation status, and Abel came out of that outing feeling great. Abel was scheduled to start Tuesday night in Queens. The team could turn, instead, to left-handed pitching prospect Connor Prielipp, who was on the taxi squad for the trip, anyway. Barring that, it's likely to be a bullpen day, but the team's roster isn't built for that right now. Short-term and long-term, this is a daunting disruption of the team's plans. They can only cross their fingers while they (and we) await more news on Abel's prognosis. UPDATE: Simeon Woods Richardson will start in Abel's stead Tuesday night, Hayes reports. Woods Richardson moves up a day to fill the gap for now, taking advantage of the off day for the team, but that doesn't answer the question for the longer term. To give a sense of how long an absence we're likely to be looking at, though, Baseball Prospectus's Return to Play tool shows that pitchers sidelined with elbow inflammation (that specific diagnosis, not surgery or a documented strain or tear, even if that later turned out to be the cause of the inflammation) in the months of March, April, May or June over the last three seasons missed an average of 72 days, with a median a bit lower. Abel is as likely as not to miss at least two months; the Twins need to find a long-term replacement. If Abel avoids elbow surgery and comes back at full strength, that's a win, from here. Doing it quickly would be a minor miracle. It's time for the young arms (be it Prielipp, Zebby Matthews, Andrew Morris or someone else) to step into the breach. View full article

I.... think you're massively overreacting to what is basically a short-term logistical maneuver that just happens to involve two high-upside arms.

Image courtesy of © Jim Rassol-Imagn Images Top left-handed pitching prospects Kendry Rojas and Connor Prielipp will travel with the Twins to New York this week, as the team takes on the New York Mets in Queens. Rojas, 23, will officially be added to the team's roster to replace fellow southpaw Kody Funderburk, according to Dan Hayes of The Athletic. Funderburk will go on the paternity list, and could meet the team in St. Petersburg for their weekend series against the Rays. Prielipp, 25, is on the taxi squad, a COVID-era invention still utilized by teams to keep fresh players ready during road trips when there's some belief that they might need them. For Twins fans who mentally entered rebuilding mode as soon as the team undertook a selloff at the 2025 MLB trade deadline, Rojas and Prielipp have taken on outsized significance as symbols of the team's future. Rojas, at least, now looks to be part of their present, though his stay on the roster could be brief. The Twins have a travel day Monday before taking on the reeling Mets beginning on Tuesday. Some chance exists, of course, that the addition of Rojas (or even that of Prielipp, which isn't yet a true call-up but puts him at the ready for one) will prove permanent. A few weeks in, it's become suddenly clear how much the Twins need to upgrade their bullpen if they hope to remain competitive. After climbing to 11-7, they've lost four straight, and on Saturday and Sunday, they lsot consecutive games which they led by multiple runs after six innings. Justin Topa, Funderburk, Eric Orze and Cole Sands—the closest thing the team currently has to an 'A' bullpen—blew their lead one run at a time over the final three frames on Saturday. In Sunday's series finale, manager Derek Shelton tried to get a two-inning save from rookie Andrew Morris, who went to pieces in the second of those frames, giving up three runs to flip the score in the top of the ninth. Shelton hadn't trusted Garrett Acton enough to turn to him until the horses left the barn in the ninth, but he then stuck with Acton (amid a defensive meltdown) rather than turn to Anthony Banda against a left-handed batter in the Reds' three-run 10th. The Twins face a major deficit of trustworthy, bat-missing relievers. At their best, Rojas and Prielipp are eminently capable of ameliorating that. Rojas sits on the high side of 97 miles per hour with his fastball. If he makes his debut amid an electric New York atmosphere, he could touch 100 MPH. He also has a changeup and a slider that could be plus, if he can locate them well enough. So far, consistency—in location, for sure, but even in shape and broader execution—has proved too much to hope for with Rojas, but his arm is one of the system's most electric. He was the co-headliner of the Louis Varland trade with the Blue Jays last summer, and is certainly the higher-upside of the two prospects the team acquired in that deal. Prielipp is homegrown, and though he's older and doesn't throw quite as hard, he might have an even higher ceiling. Even on the other side of multiple surgeries, he flashes a top-of-the-scale slider. The two-plane curveball he's added to the mix this spring shows tremendous promise. In the long run, the Twins would like both Rojas and Prielipp to stick in the starting rotation. However, their track records with regard to both health and performance suggest that their best roles could be in the pen. For now, Rojas will be asked to reinforce a bullpen that hasn't garnered much confidence from Shelton. How long that remains his job might depend not only on when Funderburk returns, but on how Rojas and several of the incumbent arms in the pen perform in the days ahead. View full article

Image courtesy of © Bruce Kluckhohn-Imagn Images It looks pretty innocuous. Garrett Acton isn't notably big or small. He doesn't have a funky arm angle or a complicated delivery. He just kicks and delivers, and it's not like his fastball hums in at 100 miles per hour. On the contrary, in his two appearances with the Twins so far this season, he's averaging just 94 MPH with the fastball. He's only thrown fastballs and sliders, so far. It's not an elaborate or an overwhelming operation. That's probably why Acton has always been below the prospect radar. He was a 35th-round pick by the White Sox in 2016, coming out of a high school in Chicago's southwest suburbs. Instead of signing, though, he went to junior college at Parkland College in Champaign, Ill. From there, he moved on to Saint Louis University and the University of Illinois-Champaign, but he went undrafted in 2019, and again in the COVID-shortened 2020 event. He signed as an amateur free agent, with the Athletics. He stuck with the Oakland organization for almost three years, even making a brief debut in 2023, but he then became a 40-man roster casualty. He wasn't claimed on waivers at the time, and didn't find a new home until signing with the Rays that December. He underwent Tommy John surgery and missed all of 2024. Last year, he pitched just well enough at Triple-A Durham to earn one appearance with a forgettable Rays team. He didn't morph into a relief ace, or anything. Somewhere in there, though, he became an in-demand asset. The Rockies claimed him on waivers in November, and the Marlins plucked him from Colorado the same way in early February. If you're hearing the words 'Rockies', 'Marlins' and 'waivers' and thinking this guy doesn't sound all that in-demand, you're not entirely wrong, but remember: waiver priority is determined by team quality. He did end up on the waiver wire repeatedly, even though he was passing through the hands of some bad teams, but then again, he got claimed by bad teams who had good spots in the line for such players. The Twins became the third team to scoop him up, this time via a trade, at the beginning of this month. It was a minor move, for a minor arm, but it could end up making a more significant impact than you'd guess. There's a reason why Acton has become a buzzier name lately: his stuff is sneakily good. In the image above, the distributions on the left show that all four pitches Acton throws (though he hasn't yet shown his splitter or curveball in the bigs) are above-average. His fastball-slider combination, in particular, rates well on Baseball Prospectus's StuffPro model. Why? Look at how high that heater rides, on the right. It sets up the tight slider gorgeously, and vice-versa. Again, Acton's delivery is unremarkable—but that's to his advantage. The way the ball spins and carries out of his hand is unexpected, to the batter. Taj Bradley (to choose a familiar name, especially at the moment) gets lots of carry on his heater, but he does it with a very high arm slot, so hitters expect a bit more of that movement. When a pitcher's vertical movement doesn't quite match their slot, though, it creates more deception. ZFh2d2pfWGw0TUFRPT1fQVFSVVVWd0dYZ0VBWEZvTFVBQUhBMVVEQUZoVVVsa0FCbElFQXdvQkJsWUFBZ05V.mp4 Stereotypically, fastballs with that extra vertical hop achieve swings and misses at the top of the zone, as in the pitch above. It's less obvious, but this extra carry also helps at the bottom of the zone, when a pitcher locates and sequences well. It can earn you called strikes, because a hitter expects the pitch to dip low, only to see it hold on for a strike on what should have been a hittable pitch. ZFh2d2pfWGw0TUFRPT1fQkFFQ1YxeFJWbFFBRGdGVFZRQUhDUWRWQUFNQld3VUFCd1FNQUFBRVZBWlVBRkJm.mp4 For those reasons, this is a trait the Twins hunt. Bradley's rising heater appealed to them, but so do pitches with much less raw movement, like the heaters of Mick Abel, Bailey Ober and Eric Orze. Plot pitchers by arm angle and vertical movement, and you can see how unusual the movement some of those hurlers achieve really is, based on how they throw. Unlike Ober, Orze or Abel, though, Acton's fastball does something else: cut more than expected based on the arm angle, too. That cut-ride action is a shape the Twins like, and a very rare one. Most pitchers whose arm slots are low enough to allow for unexpected vertical ride have a hard time achieving that while still getting around or behind the ball enough to give it relative cut. Not Acton. In this chart, the lower a pitcher's point appears, the less arm-side movement their heater has. That characteristic is especially valuable for setting up the slider. Because the batter will struggle to distinguish the two pitches from one another out of the hand, he can miss bats with the slider even when he misses his spot with it—but it's especially devastating when well-located, moving out of the same tunnel as the fastball. ZU53T0FfWGw0TUFRPT1fQUFnRVhWZFJYMVFBWFZSV1ZnQUhWQTVYQUFNRFZBY0FCRklGQmxGVEFBSlJCQWNB.mp4 This is plus stuff. Acton didn't suddenly show up with it this spring, either. In his longish career in Triple-A, he struck out over 28% of opposing batters. The reason it's taken him until age 27 to find any lasting foothold in the big leagues is exactly the one you'd guess, given everything we've discussed so far: he struggles to throw strikes. Acton has walked roughly 10% of the batters he's seen in Triple-A. That humming fastball often rises above the zone, and his command of the slider isn't great. To be a useful big-league reliever, he has to find the zone more consistently. He might be en route to making that crucial adjustment, though. Last year, he had a bit more of a high front side, slightly increasing deception but taking some stability out of his delivery. eUxNeHdfVjBZQUhRPT1fQUFCVVZ3SUVVZ3NBRFZjRVZnQUhCVmRYQUZoVVVWQUFVMVlIVWdVR0JWY0VDQU1D.mp4 This season, he's quieted that down. A simpler delivery might beget just enough more control to allow Acton to turn the corner and establish himself as a good reliever—and if he does, for this Twins team, he'll simultaneously establish himself as a solid setup man, or more. He's one of the highest-upside arms in a bullpen with a lot of journeymen but few who still have his ability to generate whiffs. Acton has minor-league options remaining, so he doesn't have to depart the organization if the team needs his roster spot. He might have to ride the Green Line a time or two this year, but he's showing enough to make it relatively likely that he sticks with the Twins organization for a while. He might even emerge as an important cog in a pen the team will count on to keep them from collapsing into non-competitiveness as the season wears on. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images In a boxing match, you don't spend your time waiting and hoping for the chance to land one haymaker. If the other person in the ring were ready to go down and never get back up on the strength of one solid blow, they wouldn't be in the ring with you. Pugilism feels outdated in the 21st century, but there's a reason it was once called the "sweet science": the challenge within it is intricate. You do want to wait and build toward something, but it's the opening to deliver six or seven telling blows, not one. That's how the Twins are turning in a devastating offensive effort so far this year, and especially during the sizzling nine-game heater on which they enter the final game of their series against the Boston Red Sox. They're patient, but they're also opportunistic—and that doesn't just mean hitting mistake pitches out of the park. "Well, I don't know if I expected, you know, multiple seven-run innings or whatever they've been," said manager Derek Shelton on Tuesday. "I think the thing that has been the most impressive is how we've done it. It hasn't been just a homer, a hit, a hit, a hit. There's walks mixed in, I mean, hit by pitches, you cannot control, but the cadence to how we're doing it and to be able to sustain innings, I think has been what's the most impressive thing." Shelton is right. When the Twins scored three runs against former Twin Sonny Gray Tuesday night in the fourth inning, the tallies came on four straight hits to start the frame. One of those was a homer, but it was just the opening volley. They hammered away at Gray while he was reeling, with three more hits. In the first inning Monday night, they scored four times on Garrett Crochet without a home run, and they already had three runs on the board against him in the second before crushing two long homers to put the game away. This is not to decry home runs, which remain a focal point of every modern offense, including the Twins'. As Shelton noted, though, it will have to be more than that, if the team wants to sustain the success they've enjoyed over the last fortnight. "We have to manufacture runs," Shelton said. "Home runs are sexy, but they don’t sustain." He went on to say that his focus within each inning is to get a runner to third base with less than two outs, however that has to be done. He believes the team can apply much more pressure to the pitcher and open holes in the defense by consistently creating those situations within innings. Vital to that endeavor is a shared focus, and lots of communication—both in the dugout, and around the batting cage. Shelton believes new lead hitting coach Keith Beauregard has prepared his charges brilliantly, and that they're able to feed off one another because they've learned to speak the same hitting language and pass information quickly. "The greatest indication is, watch our dugout for two innings [Monday]," Shelton said. "Just the enthusiasm, the excitement, the conversation. I think the thing that is imparted is, you see young players now, Keaschall, Lee, coming back, having conversations with guys on deck, guys in the hole. This is what the pitch does. That comes when you have veteran hitters and they have the ability to communicate. And we were fortunate that we were able to add some guys to our group that really have a good way about them." He's talking—everyone around the Twins is talking—about Josh Bell and Victor Caratini. Luke Keaschall and Brooks Lee are polished, smart, self-possessed hitters, and Byron Buxton and Ryan Jeffers have been leading by example for years, but Bell and Caratini have been welcome additions to a mix of hitters who had underachieved over the past two seasons. When information flows freely through the lineup, so does confidence; so does conviction; and so does production. Some of this is technical, rather than merely a vibe. The Twins have five of the biggest bat speed decliners in the sport so far this season, according to Statcast: Caratini, Bell, Buxton, Trevor Larnach and Matt Wallner. In reality, though, those guys are capable of swinging as hard as ever. As Jeffers began doing more frequently last year, they're merely modulating their swings more—not cutting them down, but changing how they start them and how they visualize finishing them. Under Beauregard's tutelage, these guys are anticipating and preparing with a greater sense of surety, which has them starting earlier and knowing what they're looking for in the box. If they get it, they're already on their way to it, and they don't have to rush their barrel, thus losing accuracy with it. If the pitch isn't what they expected, they have the faith in their preparation and in one another to either take it or whiff on it, rather than making an emergency adjustment that leads to weak contact. Bell was a perfect addition, because he was already doing that before he arrived. "They really haven't asked me to do anything different," Bell said of his approach and his mechanics. "We just talk about what we're looking for and being ready when we get it, and I have no problems with that because the results have been great." For other Twins, the adjustment has been bigger, but the rewards they're now starting to reap make it all feel worthwhile. Kody Clemens gave back the swing speed gains he made in 2025, which allowed him to hit 19 home runs in his first extended playing time in the majors. Unlike Bell, he has ugly numbers so far this year, but he's reached base five times (including hitting a home run) in his last 13 trips to the plate, as he's gotten more used to the marriage between preparation and execution under Beauregard and company. "it’s hard. It’s hard for hitting coaches," Shelton said of his staff's fight to stay on message and keep the hitters onside when the season began with more frustrating days. "And that’s the frustration of hitting coaches. Because players want immediate results. They want immediate success. So the commitment, the conversations, the communication when you’re in the cage is vital. And that’s where that trust is built. And that trust is not built easy." Clemens, at least, had the spring to implement the alterations Beauregard, Rayden Sierra and Trevor Amicone prescribed for his timing. Buxton had no such luck. "For the most part, my swing feels good [now," Buxton said, after breaking out in a massive way Tuesday night after slowly warming for the previous week. "Still a few things to figure out here and there—three weeks, eight at-bats will set you back a little bit." He's referring to his time with Team USA in the World Baseball Classic, where he only played sparingly. That also denied him time with Beauregard, Sierra and Amicone, and he admitted to trying to "rush my swing back" in the first days of the season. Now, Buxton is very much in the middle of the Twins' offensive outburst. He not only hit two long homers Tuesday night, but scored the team's first run in the style Shelton seems to prefer. He was on second when Keaschall hit a flared liner to center in the first inning. He initially froze, but saw that Red Sox center fielder Jarren Duran got a late break on the ball and turned on the jets. He scored, albeit on a close play after a highly aggressive send. Shelton called the decision to try it "elite," and both the manager and his star chuckled after the game about a shared moment in the dugout later. Buxton asked Shelton whether he thought he should have stayed at third on the play. Shelton said he trusted Buxton, and that he was the one on the field, reading it in the moment. That's the level of trust between the skipper and his offensive leaders, and the level of ownership and energy the lineup is taking, in turn. It won't always be this rosy, but for now, the Twins are rolling, thanks to a corps of hitters playing to their potential under a shaken-up coaching staff and a nice balance of new and old veteran leadership. They have patience, but once the opening comes, they want to land five knockout punches, not just one. View full article

I never knew they existed, either, and honestly, sports fashion and collectibles are both far from my radar most of the time. Video games, equally so. And I STILL think these are cool as hell. Appreciated Cody educating me about them. Haha.

Image courtesy of © Jordan Johnson-Imagn Images No one can accuse Ryan Jeffers of being selfish. Though he'll sometimes hide himself away to undergo treatment during open clubhouse times, when he's near his locker, he's as generous with the media as any member of the team. He's conscientious about meetings and collaboration with his pitchers and coaches. He gives everything he can to the team, in the pursuit of wins. That said, he's always been refreshingly frank about the realities of the game and its economics. Jeffers was an underslot signing as a second-round pick in 2018. He didn't make more than $1 million in a season until 2023. He understands that he's very lucky to have earned nearly $20 million playing baseball, but he's also aware that he becomes a free agent this winter—and that that's his chance to secure generational wealth for his family. The way arbitration works and the opportunity to hit paydirt in free agency motivated his push to play more over the last two years. The same factors have influenced the way he's remade his game over the same span, and especially since the end of the 2024 season. For instance, in concert with the Twins, Jeffers made a change last summer that he believes turned him into one of the game's best receivers. It's a fairly simple one: he went exclusively to a right-knee-down catching stance. "Since July 1 of last year, when I went to right-knee-only, I've been third in baseball [in overall catcher defense]," Jeffers said Wednesday, citing the Twins' internal metrics. He's not just saying he's been better; he's positioning himself in the broader context of the league. And the data bears him out. Jeffers said he and the team agreed on the change because his framing numbers weren't where either party felt they should be, going back to the beginning of 2024. In particular, he was losing too many strikes just inside the zone, partially because he was uncomfortable with the variety of setups he was trying to use behind the plate. The league has trended toward putting the left knee down more often, and Jeffers was doing the same, but his body works a bit differently than do other catchers'. He's akways been acutely aware of his size—not just his sheer dimensions, but the proportions of his body. "I think most guys are more comfortable left-knee-down, but for me, right-knee-down is way better," he said. "I just feel like I can move better, present the ball better." It helps, Jeffers noted, that right-knee-down is the preferred stance any time a runner is on base, because it's easier to throw from that stance than when starting with the left kinee down. Still, most catchers find that the left knee being down leaves their glove arm freer to move and receive the ball smoothly. Jeffers prefers the stability he feels with the right knee down. Of the 60 catchers who have caught at least 2,500 tracked pitches since the start of last July, only four have used the left-knee-down stance less often than Jeffers—and he's been better since making the change. Here are two curves and tables, comparing Jeffers's strike rate on called pitches near the edges of the strike zone to that of Alejandro Kirk and to the league average. The top graphic is from the start of 2024 through the end of June 2025. The bottom is since July 1 of last year. There's been an across-the-board improvement. Jeffers was, previously, about average at keeping strikes that were clearly inside the zone but near the edge strikes, but below-average on and just off the edges. Now, he's average on those pitches comfortably inside the zone, and above-average on the coin-flip calls and those just off the fringes. The Statcast framing data doesn't quite line up with what Jeffers and the Twins are looking at, but he went from 54th of 55 qualifying catchers in the year and a half before going exclusively right-knee-down to being 6th of 57 qualifiers since. Even more importantly—or at least more visibly, and firing up everyone involved, including Jeffers—he's turning out to be the master of the challenge system. That's no surprise. "I think our catchers have done a really good job," manager Derek Shelton said of the early returns on the ABS system at the start of this homestand. "I think we went into spring training, knowing—because the one thing I will note, not talking about last year, but I give the Twins a lot of credit with last year in spring training—is they paid attention to it, knowing that it was probably coming in. and we knew coming in that Jeffers had done a good job during spring training [of 2025]." Though it couldn't be implemented right away in games that counted, Jeffers did dedicate himself to learning the system and anticipating the best ways to use it last spring. He talked about its eventual installation throughout last season. One reason why being so much more comfortable physically in the right-knee-down setup mattered was because it allowed Jeffers to hone his eye for the edges of the zone, an advantage he's now able to press by challenging when the umpire doesn't bite on a pitch he knows caught a corner. He's been gearing up for this for a long time, and he's been an eager and excellent user of the system since Opening Day. Jeffers ended four Tigers at-bats by appealing called balls with two strikes late in the games on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, getting overturns each time. He's flipped eight calls for third strikes this season, which not only paces the league, but leads the next-best catchers by five. Flipping pitches to finish off strikeouts and even end innings is a very obvious way for that skill to shine through, but it's not just about the outs themselves. "But what that also does is, it saves pitches, and then it could possibly save who you’re using in the bullpen, or what the actual strategy of the game [looks like]," Shelton said Wednesday. "So when you're managing the game, you think, ‘I like these matchups,’ and then all of a sudden, that pitch flips one way or another—we don't have ABS and it ends up becoming a ball, then maybe that guy doesn't go through that stretch." Jeffers believes his acuity and restraint—for instance, the Twins lost their first challenge in the first inning Wednesday night when Austin Martin wasted one at the plate, so Jeffers waited until the eighth inning to mount challenges that got Cody Laweryson two outs in that frame—will be viewed as a high-value, marketable skill this offseason. You can bet that his agent, Scott Boras, will include it in his binder of information about his client, even if that binder is now digitally delivered, rather than a physical tome. His usage of the system only boosts Jeffers's popularity with his pitchers, of course, but the affinity there runs deeper than the challenge system, or than framing in general. Taj Bradley credits Jeffers with helping him go into starts with a clearer, more detailed plan of attack against opposing batters. "I think he calls a good game," Bradley said after his 10-strikeout performance against the Tigers Tuesday night. "He does his research and his reports and stuff like that, and we sat down before the game and we talked through it, so it's not a surprise what he's calling, why he's calling it, and it's just confidence in everything he puts on the [PitchCom] buttons." It's not hard, when considering the mechanical changes he's made in setting up to receive the ball and the deftness he's shown with the system already, to see why Jeffers believes he can hit the market as an in-demand, high-end defensive backstop. Nor, based on his track record, is he a glove-only catcher. Still, to get paid the way he envisions, he'll need to show the league that he's a true two-way threat. In terms of results, he's off to a slow start, batting .226/.351/.290. The process numbers paint a finer portrait, though—and his solid games Tuesday and Wednesday night started to reward the good work. Most notably, he cracked an opposite-field two-run double against Tarik Skubal Tuesday night, the game-breaking strike. eHl3T0RfWGw0TUFRPT1fVUFsV1hGWUVWQWNBV3dSWFVnQUhDQUZRQUZrTVUxWUFWd1pRQVZWUlVGVUFCQVFI.mp4 "The Jeffers at-bat was an unbelievable at-bat," Shelton said after that game. "I mean, to foul balls off—I thought he'd taken some really good swings earlier on the fastball and got underneath it a little bit—but to go two strikes and just flatten himself out and hit that double down the line, that was a really, really good at-bat." That's a good summation of what happened, and describes something that Jeffers has changed this year that could help him do it more consistently. The slider from Skubal was actually down and out of the zone, on the outer part of the plate. Since the start of 2025, Jeffers only has four hits on pitches in that area, and this one is the only extra-base hit. Even last year, he couldn't have gotten to this ball the way he did Tuesday night. To understand why, take a look at how he was oriented when he made contact with the pitch. The flattening out Shelton is talking about is, in part, his bat path. Jeffers's swing tilt on this pitch was 29°, which is unusually flat for a pitch down around or below the knees. To hit the ball low and away, though, you have to be able to stay somewhat flat, so the barrel of the bat can reach far enough to hit the ball solidly. That's a long way of saying what every baseball fan already knows: it's hard to hit the ball down and away. At the very least, doing so usually requires anticipation and commitment. For Jeffers, though, there's been another element, too. He changed his stance this year, getting more upright in the box to start and striding longer. In this table, the distance between his feet is official, as reported by Statcast; his stride length is an estimate based on Statcast's visualization of his stance and swing. Season Dist. Between Feet (in.) Stride Length (in.) (est.) 2023 35.3 12.1 2024 37.9 11.1 2025 36.2 14.8 2026 32.0 19.4 A longer stride means Jeffers is getting into his legs more flexibly within his swing. It costs him a bit of power, based on the approach he's used the last year-plus (more on that momentarily), but it allows him to hit the ball sharply to the opposite field in a way he couldn't do as well in 2025. He's more adaptable. He can adjust and, yes, flatten himself out, because by sinking deeper into his legs, he gains the option of swinging flatter on low pitches and still reaching them with the barrel. Most of the time, of course, his plan is not to be in a 1-2 count, and thus, to let that pitch go and wait on a better one to hit. He came up with a huge hit against the two-time defending Cy Young Award winner, but the hope is that he won't always be in such a defensive position in the box. That starts with being patient. Jeffers swung at the first pitch in the at-bat roughly 30% of the time over his first five big-league seasons, but last year, that number fell to 19.1%. It's just 21.1% so far this year. Overall, Jeffers is swinging less, accepting walks, and trying to stay in counts where he can hunt for meatballs. So far, he's not generating the power that could turn him into an especially high-end free-agent prize. He only hit nine home runs last year, as he changed his approach a bit and gave up some pull power to get on base more. Unlike some players, he doesn't swing noticeably harder or catch the ball farther out in front of himself when he's ahead in the count. To get back to slugging the way he did two years ago, that might need to change. For now, though, Jeffers is happy with the swing decisions and the contact he's finding with the swing he's engineered. The results, he believes, will come. The Twins don't need Jeffers to hit 30 home runs. What he did at the plate last season was plenty, especially given how good a defender he's become at the most defense-forward position on the diamond. A catcher who adds value via run prevention and gets on base at a .350 clip, as Jeffers has done since the start of last year, can be extremely valuable even with below-average power. Though he has plenty of his own reasons to do it all, the team can be pleased with each of the adjustments he's made. They'll make Jeffers rich, but first, they'll also help the Twins win some extra games in 2026. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jordan Johnson-Imagn Images It's not that the Twins don't throw hard. That's not the remarkable thing about their collection of fringy relief arms. What's remarkable—what might end up being quasi-historic, though it will probably change later this year—is how far they are from throwing hard. In Taj Bradley, they have one of the hardest-throwing starters in baseball, and Mick Abel can work in the mid-90s, too. On days when Bailey Ober or Simeon Woods Richardson starts, though—and even with Joe Ryan, who stands out for his movement, rather than his velocity—the team can go a full nine innings without touching 95 miles per hour. Two decades ago, that wouldn't be noteworthy at all. Even one decade ago, you'd have noticed it, but it wouldn't have shocked you. Now, however, it's startling. The brightline at which a relief pitcher can be said to be a hard thrower isn't 94 or 95 MPH, anymore. It's more like 97. In fact, since 2021, the median team's frequency of exceeding 95 MPH on four-seam fastballs and sinkers is 43.8%. Nearly half of all fastballs thrown by relievers are 95 or faster. Just a year ago, the Twins boasted Jhoan Duran and Louis Varland, who could each get to 100 MPH. When Griffin Jax and Brock Stewart were going well, they could sit on the high side of 95 and push toward triple digits, too. "Only" throwing 95 doesn't even register as interesting, anymore. Over the last five full seasons, the lowest percentage of reliever fastballs to eclipse 95 MPH belonged to the 2021 Diamondbacks, at 17.1%. Only they and that year's Angels were under 20%. This season, the Mets have thrown the second-fewest heaters at 95 or faster, at 56. They have several guys who can top that number—Luke Weaver, Devin Williams, Huascar Brazobán, Luis García, and Tobias Myers—but they rarely actually do so. In fact, if their current rate of 14.6% of fastballs getting to the midpoint of the 90s holds, it would be the lowest since the pandemic—except, of course, for the Twins'. Minnesota has only seen 38 fastballs reach 95 after departing the fingers of a pitcher working in relief this year. That's in over 400 heaters, pushing them down into a range not seen since the 2019 Cleveland club. Before that, only the 2015 Athletics were similarly starved for heat, in the Statcast Era. This team is an outlier, throwing slower than any pen has in a decade or more—because the truth is, even the raw numbers presented above oversell them. Of the 38 fastballs at 95+ this year from a Twins reliever, 35 were thrown by Mick Abel—who's not really a reliever. Working in tandem with Bailey Ober in the season-opening series in Baltimore, Abel furnished almost all of the honest-to-God heat the Twins pen has mustered all season. Only Justin Topa (once) and Cole Sands (twice) have even scraped 95 MPH, among real members of this bullpen. This will change, of course. With any luck, as the weather warms, Sands (and perhaps one or two others) will at least flirt more often with the upper half of the 90s. More importantly, the team is likely to call up some guys who throw harder, as the season wears on. If Zebby Matthews can't quickly find a way into the rotation in Minneapolis, maybe it's time to try him in the bullpen. Something like that will give them an infusion of velocity. Heck, even most waiver claims will have a chance to bring more juice to the relief unit. For now, though, this is borderline hilarious. The Twins are to fastballs with anything on them (by modern standards) what Charlie Bucket was to Wonka Bars. Everyone around them is counting their accumulations by dozens or hundreds. The Twins have, through 13 games, three 95+ fastballs from their relievers. Just three. I would analyze this further, but like Charlie's teacher in the movie, I don't know how to do just three. This team is blazing a new trail, when it comes to not really blazing anything in the pen. View full article

Image courtesy of © Daniel Kucin Jr.-Imagn Images You never see a pitcher for whom things are going well practicing their stance on the rubber or the way they break their hands in front of their locker in the clubhouse. There's plenty of space in the Twins' home clubhouse at Target Field, but not so much that anyone would be tempted to move meaningful practice off the field and into that space. Big-league ballplayers love to take up space, but in front of their lockers, they instinctively make themselves small. They don't move in big, unpredictable ways. They stay out of the walkway that runs right past each row of lockers. On Tuesday afternoon, Bailey Ober had his glove on his hand and stood in front of his locker, thwacking a ball into the glove and practicing some of the key timing moments in his delivery. He was waiting for locker neighbor Mick Abel to be ready to head out to the field, but while he waited, he didn't chat breezily with the younger pitcher. They had an easy conversation going, but as Abel turned his attention to lacing up his spikes, Ober turned and became slightly absorbed by the back of his locker. It was the reverie of a man who's not happy with how his body is responding to his mind's commands, for whom that's a particularly big problem—because his body makes his living. "It's just the way the body's working," Ober said of his slight reduction in arm angle this year. "There's some things I'm trying to balance, and I'm a little late [timing-wise], which leads to that." His voice carried a peculiar mixture of optimism and frustration. Ober is a thoughtful and energetic player, though that energy manifests itself in a very quiet way. He's dedicated to his craft, and early in the season, he's excited by what's working—but it's also clear that he resents his own inability to iron out the mechanical issues he's been sifting through for the last year-plus. Some pitchers struggle, even with the guidance of pitching coaches, to identify and target flaws in their delivery. Ober, who has always been keenly aware of the challenges posed by his towering height, isn't one of those guys. He knows what he needs to do. He's doing it. Maddeningly, his body just won't hit the targets he commands it to hit, despite the best training he's been able to give it. Thence comes the deficiency of velocity that jumps out most readily to fans, but that's not the only issue created by not being on time within his delivery—or even the most important one. Ober admitted that there are pitches (not just pitch types, but combinations of pitch type and location) he can't throw with much confidence right now, which limits his options. Most of his arsenal is going through a long period of having good days and bad days; he needs to reclaim the consistency that made his deep mix great a couple years ago. For now, Ober is largely eschewing his slider to right-handed batters, because he feels he can better execute his sweeper. 'Execute,' in this case, means not only to throw the pitch where he wants to and with the shape he wants, but to tunnel its release and initial trajectory with another pitch the batter might be anticipating. The slider can't check all of those boxes right now, except in its more cutterish form, to lefty batters. Instead, Ober is going to the sweeper—but also to his changeup, even against righties. "I'm not consciously leaning on it," he said Tuesday, "but I can really trust that pitch right now. And it doesn't really matter for me, lefty or righty, because I try to throw that pitch a lot like a splitter—focused on getting that [downward movement] on it. And I know that even if it runs in on a righty, I can sometimes jam them." That's why, so far this season, Ober has thrown his changeup 48% of the time against left-handed batters and 29% of the time to righties. Last year, those numbers were 34% and 23%, respectively, and they were similar in 2024. The changeup is working. That's always been Ober's best pitch. The only problem, right now, is that it's the only one he fully trusts. Good news can still be found in the mix. Ober's sweeper and curveball have bigger break this year. If he's stuck with the lower arm slot because of the way his body is unfolding and timing up its many movements, he might find some solace in more movement on his sinker, helping him attack righties despite the lost velocity. He expressed hope that, as the sinker comes along, he can use that pitch to keep righties looking inside, making the sweeper and even the four-seamer on the outer half more effective. Ober takes the mound again Wednesday night against the Tigers, with the Twins looking to secure their first series win of the year. His stuff isn't ready to take the big step forward both Ober and fans crave. However, he's feeling out his own pitch mix with each outing, and he's coming to a better understanding of how he can win with what he has. As long as the changeup keeps obeying him, he can keep relying on it, and that itself might make his fastballs look a bit faster. View full article