Twins To Promote Zebby Matthews

The Twins are calling up top pitching prospect Zebby Matthews, reports ESPN’s Jeff Passan. He’ll join an injury-plagued rotation and make his MLB debut the first time he takes the mound. Matthews isn’t yet on the 40-man roster, so Minnesota will need to make a corresponding move to formally select his contract.

Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey acknowledged last week that Matthews was very much in the mix for a call to the big leagues in the wake of Joe Ryan’s Grade 2 teres major strain — an injury that puts the remainder of Ryan’s season in jeopardy. The Twins currently have Tuesday’s starter listed as TBD.

Matthews, the Twins’ eighth-round pick in 2022, posted sub-2.00 ERAs in both High-A and Double-A before his recent promotion to Triple-A. He’s had two solid starts and two rough starts at the top minor league level. Collectively, the 24-year-old has logged a 2.60 ERA with an impressive 30.5% strikeout rate and a staggering 1.8% walk rate across those three minor league levels. He’s fanned a hefty 114 opponents and issued just seven walks in 97 innings this season.

Though he boasts elite command, Matthews is hardly the type of soft-tossing finesse pitcher one would expect for someone with that type of location. His heater sits in the mid-90s and tops out around 97 mph. Matthews is listed at 6’5″ and 225 pounds, though Baseball America’s scouting report notes that the “massive” righty “seems to be larger” than his listed height and weight. Matthews works with a five-pitch arsenal, complementing his four-seamer with a cutter, slider, curveball and changeup. Both BA and The Athletic’s Keith Law write that none of the five pitches are true plus offerings, but they each play up because of his precision.

Matthews has ridden his breakout season all the way to the No. 61 spot on Baseball America’s recent update to their top 100 prospects, where they note that he has perhaps the best command in minor league baseball. Law ranks Matthews 60th in the sport, and MLB.com has him as their No. 100 prospect.

With Ryan shelved perhaps for the duration of the season — manager Rocco Baldelli said his injury would take “weeks or months” to heal — Minnesota will lean on a rookie-heavy starting staff down the stretch. Pablo Lopez and Bailey Ober give Minnesota some healthy veterans atop the staff, but they’ll need righties Simeon Woods Richardson, David Festa and now Matthews to step onto the staff. Right-hander Louie Varland, who opened the season as the No. 5 starter, could also factor in down the stretch, although he’s had a rough showing both in the big leagues and the minors this year.

Woods Richardson has emerged as a solid mid-rotation arm this year, logging 3.78 ERA with a 21.4% strikeout rate and 7.3% walk rate in 102 1/3 innings (20 starts). Festa, a fellow top-100 prospect alongside Matthews, was hit hard in his first two big league starts (12 runs in 10 innings) but has a 2.04 ERA in 17 2/3 innings since. He’s yet to work more than five innings in a big league game, however. Matthews will be the next man up. The Twins remain hopeful that Ryan will return this season, and righty Chris Paddack is also expected to rejoin the rotation at some point, but he’s still on the 15-day IL with a forearm strain.

Matthews won’t be able to pick up enough big league service time to get a full year in 2024, meaning he’ll still be under club control for an additional six seasons — even if he’s never sent back down from this point on. He’d currently be on track to reach arbitration eligibility in the 2027-28 offseason, although future optional assignments to the minors could impact both his arbitration and free-agent timelines. He’ll join a growing pitching pipeline in the Twins organization, where Lopez, Ryan and Ober are signed/controlled through 2027 and each of Woods Richardson, Festa and Varland are (like Matthews) controllable through at least 2030.