The Twins will select the contract of right-hander Joe Ryan when rosters expand to 28 players on Wednesday, SKOR North’s Darren Wolfson reports (via Twitter). Minnesota created space on the 40-man roster last night by passing reliever Edgar Garcia through outright waivers.
Ryan and fellow righty pitching prospect Drew Strotman were acquired from the Rays in the Nelson Cruz trade last month. MLB Pipeline ranks Ryan as the sixth-best prospect in Minnesota’s farm system, saying he “has all the makings of a mid-rotation big league starter” if he can develop secondary pitches to properly support his outstanding four-seam fastball.
Ryan has a combined 3.41 ERA, 4.82% walk rate, and 36.9% strikeout rate over 66 Triple-A innings with the Rays’ and Twins’ top affiliates this season, which marks Ryan’s first taste of Triple-A ball. That impressive strikeout total has only increased over his nine innings with Triple-A St. Paul, as Ryan has an absurd 17 strikeouts during his brief time in the Twins organization. Ryan has only thrown nine innings since joining the Twins since he was busy at this summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo — the righty had a 1.74 ERA over 10 1/3 innings to help the American team win a silver medal.
With the Twins fully looking ahead to 2022, pitching is a particular need for a club that dealt Jose Berrios and J.A. Happ at the trade deadline, could lose Michael Pineda to free agency, and could quite possibly be without the injured Maeda for all of next year. This leaves plenty of room for the 25-year-old Ryan to establish his case for a rotation spot over the next month. Ryan’s Major League debut could potentially come as soon as Wednesday, when the Twins host the Cubs.
The Rays gave up absolutely way to much unless they win the world series. Otherwise, this trade joins the Cronenworth, Marquez, Dickerson blunders of the past.
It was a pretty bold move, especially by Rays standards. I felt like they overpaid a bit as well, but I also admired the message that it sent the fan base, in that the Rays are actually trying to win a World Series finally.
Agree. For the long term, this hurts. If Cruz can dial up some clutch hits and help in playoffs…as you note, it’d be worth it.
The rays have about a 99% success rate when trading the last 3-4 years. Dickerson and Marquez were the same trade and cronenworth didn’t have a place on the team and Franco is outplaying cronenworth and he wouldn’t have replaced Lowe or Wendle… so he had to go. They never ever ever make THAT move to go for it and this year they did for an established slugger they were lacking and it hadn’t panned out… nobody would’ve thought that
I have been told (I don’t know the rays minor league system), that they would have likely lost some guys in the Rule 5 draft so they “upped the ante” to entice the trade. If that’s true, from the Rays perspective, it’s lose them in a trade or lose them in Rule 5. Might as well get something for them. Once again, no idea if any of that is true or not, but it does make sense if that IS true.
Ryan was going to be rule 5 eligible so probably true. The other guy the Twins got was already on the Rays 40 man.
Ryan had to be protected this winter anyway, and there’s no option year burnt if Ryan comes up and gets sent back down (during September). Logical move. Might as well see what he’s got, even tho inter-divisional games at this point are meaningless, so everybody’s just playing out the strings.
But as Bucky Showalter once said, at least next year Ryan will know where the bathrooms are in Target.
Looks like a keeper! Hope it works out for the Twins. You need a lot of help with SP.
The Twins have a lot of promising young pitching now. Check out their minor league system. It’ll probably be a year or two before they have a legitimate staff again, but the future is looking brighter again for them at least.
Again? When, exactly, did they last have a competent pitching staff, the Johan/Radke/Liriano days, with Nathan closing?
I miss liriano
Go get ’em, Joe!
I was very impressed with his brief showing in AAA. If he turns out to be a mid-rotation starter, that would be an impressive haul for the Twins for a rental player (even if his name is Nelson Cruz)!
All great points here. I totally understand we can’t stash prospects forever. Strotman is legit also btw. Here’s my comp on Ryan with the notion that he develops a solid secondary. His ceiling is Jake Odorizzi and his floor is Alex Cobb. I think he’s an extremely intelligent kid and will develop and evolve just like these guys have…minus the injuries hopefully.