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Twins Rumors

Cubs Sign Ryan Jensen To Minor League Deal

By Darragh McDonald | July 4, 2025 at 11:11pm CDT

The Cubs have signed right-hander Ryan Jensen to a minor league deal, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. He had been in the Twins’ system but was released a little over a week ago. The Cubs also released right-hander Phil Bickford, according to his tracker.

Jensen, 27, was a first-round pick of the Cubs back in 2019. On his way up the minor league ladder, significant control problems seemed to get in his way. From 2019 to 2022, he tossed 151 2/3 minor league innings with a 4.04 earned run average. He struck out 26.3% of batters faced and got ground balls on more than half the balls in play he allowed but he also gave out walks at a 13.1% pace.

Despite the control problems, the Cubs gave him a 40-man spot in November of 2022, not wanting him to be plucked in the Rule 5 draft. Less than a year later, he was on the waiver wire, getting claimed by the Mariners. He would subsequently go to the Marlins and Twins, also on waiver claims, until the Twins passed him through waivers in February of last year.

Along the way, the control problems haven’t improved. From the start of 2023 to the present, he has thrown 149 2/3 minor league innings with a 5.35 ERA, 27.8% strikeout rate and plenty of ground balls but an 18.3% walk rate. The Twins have apparently given up but his original organization will take a flier and see what happens.

Bickford, 29, signed a minor league deal with the Cubs in the offseason. He may have triggered an opt-out in that deal because he has been dominant this year. He has thrown 27 2/3 innings for Triple-A Iowa with a 2.60 ERA, 34% strikeout rate and 5.7% walk rate.

He also has some good major league work on his track record. Over the 2021 and 2022 seasons, he tossed 112 1/3 innings in the big leagues with a 3.85 ERA, 27.8% strikeout rate and 7.3% walk rate. In 2023, he was still getting punchouts but his walk rate spiked to 12.8%. Last year, he only got a brief MLB look, which didn’t go well. He tossed 8 1/3 innings for the Yankees with an 8.64 ERA.

Photo courtesy of Chris Tilley, Imagn Images

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Chicago Cubs Minnesota Twins Transactions Phil Bickford Ryan Jensen

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Twins Place Bailey Ober On IL With Hip Impingement

By Steve Adams | July 2, 2025 at 1:58pm CDT

The Twins have placed right-hander Bailey Ober on the 15-day injured list with a left hip impingement. Left-hander Kody Funderburk has been recalled to take his active roster spot for now, though Ober was scheduled to start Friday’s game, so the club will need to figure out their rotation plans in the coming days. The club also announced that infielder Jonah Bride, who was designated for assignment last week, has cleared waivers and been outrighted to Triple-A Saint Paul. Phil Miller of the Star Tribune reported the moves prior to the official announcement.

The towering 6’9″ Ober has been a constant in the Twins’ rotation dating back to 2021. He’s been a steady mid-rotation presence along the way, logging 471 1/3 innings with a 3.76 ERA (3.75 SIERA) from 2021-24. The 2025 season looked like more of the same. Ober was trounced for eight runs in his first start of the season but quickly righted the ship. By the end of May, he was sitting on a tidy 3.48 ERA despite that brutal first outing of the year.

The wheels came off completely last month, however. Ober started five games and yielded between four and seven runs in all of them. Opponents connected on an astonishing 14 home runs last month alone — more than half the amount he yielded all season in 2023 (22 homers) or in 2024 (27 homers). The long ball has always been somewhat of an issue for Ober, which isn’t a shock as a right-hander with sub-par fastball velocity, but last month’s sudden spike was alarming nonetheless.

Ober becomes the Twins’ third starter to hit the injured list in the past five weeks, joining ace Pablo López and top prospect Zebby Matthews. They’d already optioned Simeon Woods Richardson, who struggled after opening the season in the fifth spot, but he’s returned amid the recent injuries.

With Ober sidelined for a yet-to-be-determined period, the Twins will go with Joe Ryan, Chris Paddack, recent top prospect David Festa and Woods Richardson in the rotation. Prospects Travis Adams or Andrew Morris could get a look in the rotation moving forward, and Minnesota also claimed righty Connor Gillispie off waivers from the Marlins last week, providing a bit of additional depth.

It’s also possible the Twins will look outside the organization for more depth, as they already did late last month when signing José Ureña to a minor league deal. President of baseball operations Derek Falvey already acknowledged that he’d had some trade talks about adding more pitching in the wake of the Lopez and Matthews injuries, and further health woes could spur more urgency as the reeling Twins look to stay relevant in the AL playoff picture.

Bride, 29, came to the Twins in exchange for cash earlier this season after the Marlins had designated him for assignment. He posted a strong .276/.357/.461 slash and popped 11 homers in 71 games for Miami as recently as 2024, but he went 4-for-40 with a 33.3% strikeout rate in Miami to begin the season and batted only .208/.275/.236 in 80 plate appearances with Minnesota. Bride is a career .221/.311/.313 hitter in parts of four major league seasons but hasn’t had any success at the plate outside last year’s showing. Because Bride has fewer than three years of MLB service and has never been outrighted in the past, he can’t reject in favor of free agency. He’ll head to St. Paul and stick with the organization as a depth piece.

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Minnesota Twins Transactions Bailey Ober Jonah Bride Kody Funderburk

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Poll: What Will The Twins Do At The Deadline?

By Nick Deeds | July 1, 2025 at 2:33pm CDT

The Twins ended the 2024 season with a bitterly disappointing slump in September that pushed them out of the playoff picture at the very end of the year. Budget constraints forced them to follow that up with a generally very quiet offseason, however, and they entered 2025 with mostly the same team as last year aside from a few small additions like Danny Coulombe and Harrison Bader. Given that lackluster offseason, perhaps it’s not a shock that the Twins are currently 40-44, four games out of the final AL Wild Card spot and 12.5 games back of the Tigers in the AL Central.

Minnesota would have to leapfrog five clubs in the standings just to secure a Wild Card berth. On the other hand, they have a 25.6% chance at making it to the postseason, according to Fangraphs, with a roster that looks quite intimidating on paper. Injuries to Pablo Lopez and Zebby Matthews are certainly frustrating, but even without those pieces, the Twins have a solid-looking roster. The offense is centered around a pair of stars in Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa who are complemented by the likes of Willi Castro, Bader, and Ryan Jeffers. The rotation features a legitimate front-of-the-rotation arm in Joe Ryan, and the bullpen is anchored by an excellent dynamic duo of Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax.

Unfortunately, the cracks in the roster quickly begin to show up when you look at the roster’s performance this year. While Buxton has been as much of a star as advertised, Correa has been a below-average hitter this year with a 93 wRC+ after a brutal start to the season. He’s hit more like himself in recent weeks, but continues to show a concerning lack of power. Matt Wallner was unable to sustain a hot start, Brooks Lee hasn’t been the hitter Minnesota was hoping for, and a handful of expected contributors are languishing in Triple-A due to poor performance. The rotation has nothing concrete behind Ryan, with even Bailey Ober posting an ERA north of 5.00 on the year. And despite possessing the second-best bullpen in baseball by FIP, the unit’s 4.32 ERA is well below average.

That leaves the Twins as one of the many teams stuck between buying and selling as July kicks off. It’s not too difficult to imagine a return to form from Correa and better results from a bullpen with excellent underlying numbers being enough to pull Minnesota back above .500, or at least stop them from falling out of the race completely until Lopez and Matthews eventually return. All of that reason is sound enough, and it’s surely played into comments from president of baseball operations Derek Falvey last week that indicated selling is not something the team is “focusing on” at this point.

For a team that could be just a starting pitcher or two away from a second-half surge, buying and hoping to get into the dance understandably holds some appeal. Correa and Buxton aren’t getting any younger, after all, and key pieces like Lopez, Duran, and Ryan are all slated to reach free agency following the 2027 season. With only three pennant races to go until the Twins will need to make some major changes, a sell-off this summer could leave the team with little reason for optimism headed into the final years of their stars’ prime seasons.

On the other hand, the Twins already suffered one painful collapse last year and have limited resources due to financial constraints placed by ownership. A sale of the team could be in the works, and it could be argued that, between the number of potential contenders jockeying for a seat at the table in the AL and the very limited supply of clear sellers this summer, the Twins would be better off selling some of their pieces and regrouping for the future, when they figure to have more certainty on an ownership level.

Young pieces like Lee, Wallner, Simeon Woods Richardson, David Festa, all have years to go before free agency. The arrivals of players like Emmanuel Rodriguez and Walker Jenkins should help the lineup make up for the eventual declines of Correa and Buxton. It’s certainly possible to make an argument that the Twins are set up relatively well for the future, and a few savvy sell-side moves could keep their theoretical window of contention open for much longer. Adding another top prospect or two to the mix alongside Jenkins and Rodriguez could keep the team relevant for years to come.

Of course, another possibility would be to split the difference and do a bit of both. Perhaps rental players like Castro and Coulombe are dangled and replaced internally, while the team uses some of its controllable depth to acquire a starter or two. That sort of balanced approach could make plenty of sense, as could the approach teams like the Cubs and Pirates took to the deadline last year where they added controllable, longer-term assets like Isaac Paredes and Isiah Kiner-Falefa to simultaneously improve the current club while also building for the future.

How do MLBTR readers think the Twins should approach this deadline? Should they trust the team they’ve constructed to make up for last year’s collapse and add? Should they take advantage of a potential seller’s market and see what they can get for some of their best pieces? Or should they take the middle road and do a bit of both? Have your say in the poll below:

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MLBTR Originals MLBTR Polls Minnesota Twins

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Twins Designate Jonah Bride For Assignment

By Mark Polishuk | June 29, 2025 at 9:03pm CDT

Following the Twins’ 3-0 loss to the Tigers tonight, Minnesota announced that infielder Jonah Bride has been designated for assignment.  No corresponding move has been made yet, but several members of the Twins beat speculated that Royce Lewis will be activated from the 10-day injured list prior to the team’s next game on Tuesday in Miami.

By coincidence, Bride came to the Twins from Miami in a trade back in April.  This is the third time Bride has been designated in his career, and the previous two DFAs resulted in trades — from the A’s to the Marlins in February 2024, and then the swap that brought Bride to the Twin Cities.

Multiple injuries around the Twins’ infield created the need for Bride’s versatility, and he ended up appearing in 33 games with Minnesota mostly at third base, but with a few cameos as a first baseman, second baseman, and even four outings as a mop-up pitcher in blowouts.  While Bride hit better with Minnesota than he did in Miami, he still has only a .170/.248/.188 slash line over 125 total plate appearances with both clubs in 2025.

A veteran of four big league seasons, Bride seemed to have a bit of a breakout with the Marlins in 2024, hitting .276/.357/.461 over 272 PA.  It could be that rebuilding Miami never saw the 29-year-old Bride as more than a stopgap, however, and Bride’s lack of minor league options also reduced his flexibility in terms of roster shuffles.

That out-of-options status is why the Marlins and now the Twins have had to designate Bride and expose him to waivers before attempting to send him to the minors and outright him off their 40-man rosters.  Bride doesn’t have a past outright on his record or the necessary MLB service time to reject an outright assignment, should he clear waivers this time and the Twins move him to Triple-A.

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Minnesota Twins Transactions Jonah Bride

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Falvey: Twins Not Focused On Selling

By Darragh McDonald | June 25, 2025 at 1:15pm CDT

The Twins have hit a rough patch lately but are still hoping to avoid going into the deadline as sellers. President of baseball operations Derek Falvey explained his thinking to members of the press this week, including Bobby Nightengale of The Minnesota Star Tribune and Matthew Leach of MLB.com.

“[Selling is] not my focus right now by any means,” Falvey said. “I think when you think you have the team that you believe you have, and you hope you get healthier and get guys back here soon, that you feel like this group … is capable of putting together good baseball, it’s hard for you to think like that.” Falvey did leave the door open to a later pivot, however. “If we have to cross that bridge, we’ll cross that bridge later, but that is not at all our focus right now. It’s to figure out how to get this team right back to where it needs to be.”

The Twins have proven to be one of the least consistent teams in the majors this year. They were 13-18 at the end of April but bounced back with a 13-game win streak in May, eventually posting an 18-8 record that month. However, they’ve now slid back down with a deadful 6-16 showing in June so far.

They gives them a record of 37-42 overall. They’re not totally buried, currently sitting 4.5 games back of a Wild Card spot. However, they would need to leapfrog six clubs to get into postseason position. FanGraphs gives them a 20.4% of getting into the playoffs with Baseball Prospectus at 26.8%.

That puts them in a notable position with the deadline just over a month away. If their current slump continues, their outlook will obviously worsen. Whereas another 13-game win streak or anything close to that would push them in the opposite direction.

If the Twins are in a position to add, starting pitching would be a natural target as they recently lost both Pablo López and Zebby Matthews to shoulder strains. Rather than wait until the deadline, it seems the Twins were close to adding to their rotation recently, but the commonality of pitching injuries also hurt them indirectly.

“Pitching depth is not a phrase that’s real to me,” Falvey said. “Every time you think you have some, it gets thinned. Even when we had a couple injuries, there was a team that felt like they had some pitching depth and we had a brief trade conversation, ‘Hey, could we pick off some?’ And they were open to it. Within 72 hours, there were two different pitching injuries on that team that ultimately peeled them back from the market.”

This seems highly likely to be a reference to Paul Blackburn of the Mets. Shortly after López and Matthews hit the injured list, it was reported that the Mets were fielding trade interest in Blackburn, on account of their relative rotation surplus. But as that report came out, Kodai Senga got injured and then Tylor Megill followed him to the IL a few days later.

The Twins currently have a rotation mix consisting of Joe Ryan, Bailey Ober, Chris Paddack, Simeon Woods Richardson and David Festa. Ideally, that group would have stepped up when López and Matthews landed on the shelf but that hasn’t been the case. Ober has been effective at times but has an unsightly 8.51 ERA in June. It’s a similar story for Paddack, who had a 6.11 ERA this month. Woods Richardson is at 5.06 for the year and Festa at 6.39.

Over the next month, the club’s record will obviously be an important factor to watch, but so will the starting group. It’s possible that Matthews is back with the club prior to the deadline while López could be making some progress towards a return. The guys currently on the roster could, of course, improve their results over the coming weeks.

If the club struggles in the next few weeks, then pivoting into sell mode will have to be a consideration. Players like Paddack, Willi Castro, Harrison Bader, Danny Coulombe and Ty France are impending free agents and would garner interest. They would also surely get calls on players with a bit more control such as Ryan Jeffers, Jhoan Durán, Trevor Larnach and others.

If the club is able to go into the deadline as buyers, a classic baseball trade is a possibility. “It feels like in light of 12 out of 15 American League teams [being in contention], you sometimes have to evaluate need-for-need stuff at the Major League level,” Falvey said. “They’re harder to pull off, admittedly. No one likes to trade from depth at their big league level. But if we find the right opportunity overlap, we have to be open-minded to that. I don’t think it’s a likely path because you don’t see it that often. But I think we have to at least have those conversations and be open-minded to it.”

The Twins have a number of intriguing players who are currently putting up good numbers in Triple-A, including Edouard Julien, Austin Martin and Emmanuel Rodriguez. It’s also possible that Royce Lewis could be back from the IL before the deadline, with Luke Keaschall potentially making progress as well. Perhaps the Twins could consider trading players like Castro, Bader, France or others even if they are still in the race, if they felt they could add some pitching while still having a good amount of position player talent.

Money is another noteworthy factor for a team without huge spending capacity like the Twins. Falvey addressed that situation but noted that it’s still very much up in the air, like everything else with the club. “If we get close to the deadline and have decisions to make, I’m always bringing those to the Pohlad family, to Joe [Pohlad, primary owner] and saying ’I think this is the right baseball decision for us or not.’ We’ve had plenty of opportunity to have those conversations and had opportunities to add when it’s the right fit. I feel confident I’ll be able to have those conversations again; where they land, and what they are, I can’t predict that yet.”

Photo courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel, Imagn Images

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Minnesota Twins New York Mets Paul Blackburn

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Twins, Jose Urena Agree To Minor League Deal

By Anthony Franco | June 24, 2025 at 7:47pm CDT

The Twins are in agreement with José Ureña on a minor league contract, according to the MLB.com transaction log. The veteran swingman has been assigned to Triple-A St. Paul.

Ureña is now on his fourth team of the season. He logged brief stints with the Mets, Blue Jays and Dodgers but was eventually outrighted off all three rosters. He elected free agency in each case — the most recent of those coming after the Dodgers waived him two weeks ago. He has allowed 11 runs across 18 1/3 combined innings. He recorded 10 strikeouts against five walks.

The 33-year-old Ureña held a spot on the Texas pitching staff throughout the ’24 season. He posted a 3.80 ERA while getting ground-balls at a 50% clip in 109 innings for the Rangers. He has never had a good strikeout and walk profile, but he averages around 96 MPH on his sinker and got grounders on half the batted balls he allowed last year. He’ll presumably work as a starter in St. Paul but could serve as rotation or long relief depth for the MLB club.

Minnesota’s pitching staff has collapsed this month. Their 6.81 team ERA in June is nearly a run and a half higher than the next-worst team. That doesn’t include tonight’s game in which Chris Paddack has given up four earned runs through his first three innings. Minnesota’s entire rotation has struggled since they lost Pablo López and Zebby Matthews to injury. The bullpen hasn’t been any better. Out-of-options long reliever Joey Wentz, a recent waiver claim from Pittsburgh, has given up 10 runs in 5 1/3 frames since landing with Minnesota.

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Minnesota Twins Transactions Jose Urena

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Twins Have Exercised Rocco Baldelli’s 2026 Option

By Anthony Franco | June 23, 2025 at 9:17pm CDT

Rocco Baldelli is in his seventh season as Minnesota’s manager. It was unclear whether his deal ran beyond this season, but the 43-year-old skipper is apparently signed for another year. Dan Hayes of The Athletic reports that the Twins have exercised their 2026 club option on Baldelli, though it’s unclear when they did so.

Minnesota did not make any kind of formal announcement at the time. Many teams do not publicly reveal the length of the contracts for their non-playing personnel, so that’s not a huge surprise. Baldelli being under contract for next season doesn’t mean the Twins couldn’t make a change before then. Still, president of baseball operations Derek Falvey has been steadfast in his support for his longtime manager throughout their tenures in the Twin Cities.

Falvey again expressed confidence in Baldelli’s leadership today, ruling out the possibility of making a change at the moment. “It’s just making sure no one runs away from the work that is right in front of him, and Rocco is not running away from any of the work. … We’re all side by side with him, as is the staff and as our core players,” Falvey told Hayes. “We’re trying to figure it out together.”

The Twins have made the postseason in three of Baldelli’s six full seasons. They won the AL Central in each of 2019, ’20 and ’23 but only won one playoff series in that time. They’re 3-8 in the postseason since Baldelli was hired. They looked on track for another playoff berth late last season, peaking at 17 games above .500 in the middle of August. They collapsed to a 12-27 finish over the final six weeks, ultimately landing at 82-80 and on the outside looking in.

That dreadful run carried into this April, as the Twins won only seven of their first 22 games. They picked things up in the second half of the month and ripped off a 13-game win streak — which remains easily the longest by any team this year — in the middle of May. They climbed as high as seven games over .500 earlier this month, but June has been a disaster.

Injuries to Pablo López and Zebby Matthews have dealt a huge hit to the rotation, and none of their starters have pitched well in recent weeks. The bullpen has been even worse, allowing more than seven earned runs per nine innings this month. They entered play tonight with an MLB-worst 6.59 ERA overall in June. That’ll climb even more after Bailey Ober and Joey Wentz were torched for 11 runs by the Mariners tonight. They just wrapped up a defeat that drops them to 37-41 on the season. They have lost 14 of their last 18 games.

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Minnesota Twins Rocco Baldelli

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Twins Claim Connor Gillispie

By Steve Adams | June 23, 2025 at 1:34pm CDT

The Twins have claimed right-hander Connor Gillispie off waivers from the Marlins, reports Bobby Nightengale of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He’s been optioned to Triple-A St. Paul. Miami had designated Gillispie for assignment last week.

Gillispie, 27, was an offseason waiver claim by the Marlins (from the Braves, who’d signed him to a big league deal) back in January. He parlayed a strong spring showing into a spot in Miami’s rotation to open the season. He made six starts, the first three of which went fairly well (3.86 ERA in 14 innings), before being pummeled for 19 runs over his next dozen innings. The Marlins optioned him to Triple-A Jacksonville at that point, and he hasn’t pitched in the majors since, leaving Gillispie with a bleak 8.65 ERA in 26 MLB frames this season.

Things have gone better in the minors. Gillispie has pitched 33 2/3 innings with a 4.28 ERA. His 15.7% strikeout rate is a well shy of league average average, however, and his 11.4% walk rate is quite high. The right-hander’s average 90.9 mph average fastball this year is down from the 91.5 mph he posted last year with the Guardians’ Triple-A affiliate.

That 2024 season in Cleveland’s system was solid. Gillispie pitched 113 1/3 innings with a 4.05 ERA, a 25% strikeout rate and a 10.1% walk rate. That led to a brief big league debut with the Guardians, wherein Gillispie tossed eight innings of relief and held opponents to two runs with an 8-to-5 K/BB ratio.

Gillispie is in the second of three minor league option years. He’ll give the Twins some depth either at the back end of the rotation or as a long reliever for a reeling pitching staff. The Twins were among the league leaders in most pitching categories for the better part of six weeks before injuries to Pablo Lopez and Zebby Matthews thinned their rotation.

The Twins have since endured a series of short starts, even from some of their more established arms, that has led to a heavily worked bullpen and prompted them to lean heavily on waiver claim Joey Wentz and utilityman Jonah Bride for mop-up work in several blowout games. Minnesota has dropped nine of its past ten games, falling below .500 and sliding considerably down the playoff standings in the American League.

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Miami Marlins Minnesota Twins Transactions Connor Gillispie

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Richard Lovelady Opts Out Of Twins Deal

By Darragh McDonald | June 18, 2025 at 3:21pm CDT

Left-hander Richard Lovelady has opted out of his minor league deal with the Twins, reports Robert Murray of FanSided. The southpaw is now a free agent and available to sign with any club in the league.

Lovelady, 29, started the season with the Blue Jays but was designated for assignment after just two appearances. He cleared waivers, elected free agency and signed a minor league deal with the Twins. Since then, he has been putting up good numbers for Triple-A Saint Paul. He has thrown 20 2/3 innings for the Saints with a 1.31 earned run average. His 8.4% walk rate is right around average while his 26.5% strikeout rate and 60.4% ground ball rate are both strong numbers.

Despite that performance, the Twins have decided not to call him up. They have Danny Coulombe and Joey Wentz as their lefty relievers at the moment. Neither of those two can be optioned to the minors and Lovelady himself is out of options, so perhaps they didn’t want to have three lefties with no roster flexibility.

Unsurprisingly, Lovelady has decided to canvass the league for other opportunities. With several clubs around baseball battling numerous injuries and the trade deadline still over a month away, he should find some interest.

In addition to that strong Triple-A work of late, he has some major league success on his track record. He missed 2022 while recovering from Tommy John surgery but posted solid numbers around that. He logged a combined 44 innings in the 2021 and 2023 seasons with a 4.09 ERA, 26.1% strikeout rate, 8.9% walk rate and 51.8% ground ball rate.

His 2024 was mixed. He had a 7.94 ERA through 5 2/3 innings with the Cubs when he was traded to the Rays. With Tampa, he had a 3.77 ERA in 28 2/3 innings but with a diminished 16.8% strikeout rate. The Rays non-tendered him at the end of the year. He landed a minor league deal with the Jays coming into this year and made the Opening Day roster but held onto that spot for just a few days.

Photo courtesy of Dan Hamilton, Imagn Images

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Minnesota Twins Transactions Richard Lovelady

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Twins Place Royce Lewis On 10-Day Injured List

By Mark Polishuk | June 15, 2025 at 8:40am CDT

TODAY: The Twins have officially announced Lewis’ IL placement, with a retroactive June 14 date.  Outfielder DaShawn Keirsey Jr. was called up from Triple-A in the corresponding move.

JUNE 14, 5:14pm: The Twins are planning to place Lewis on the IL, as relayed by Miller. He goes on to note that the Twins are labeling Lewis’s strain as “mild.” That’s an encouraging framing for the injury, although it must be emphasized that due to Lewis’s long history of lower half issues even a mild strain could leave him out of commission for some time.

2:52pm: Twins third baseman Royce Lewis suffered a left hamstring strain in Friday’s 10-3 loss to the Astros that forced Lewis out of the game.  The injury occurred in the ninth inning, as Lewis hit a line drive into the left field corner that resulted in only a single, as Lewis came up limping heading into first base.  According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Phil Miller and other beat writers, Lewis will undergo an MRI today to determine the extent of the damage.

An earlier strain to that same left hamstring sidelined Lewis during Spring Training and delayed his season debut until May 5.  The missed time clearly seemed to be having an impact on Lewis’ bat, as he has hit only .202/.282/.303 over 110 plate appearances.  With a 1.056 OPS over his last 33 PA, however, Lewis seemed like he was getting into form just before his balky hamstring may again force him to the injured list.

Injuries have hampered Lewis’ entire pro career, limiting the former first overall pick to 546 games (182 in the majors, 364 in the minors) since he was selected in the 2017 draft.  Two right ACL tears were the most devastating of Lewis’ multiple health issues, and he has also missed time on the Twins’ injured list due to a quad strain, an adductor strain, and a less-serious left hamstring strain late in the 2023 season that Lewis was able to overcome in time to return for a dominant playoff performance.

If the MRI doesn’t reveal anything too serious, Minnesota could opt to give Lewis a few days of rest in lieu of an IL stint, since the Twins don’t play on Monday anyway.  A backdated IL placement would still “begin” today anyway if the Twins ended up sending Lewis to the 10-day injured list on Tuesday, though such a decision may also hinge if the club is willing to play a man short over a big weekend series against the Astros.

Brooks Lee is the likeliest candidate to get the bulk of third base time if Lewis does wind up on the IL, with such versatile options as Willi Castro, Kody Clemens, or Jonah Bride also available to rotate into the hot corner.  Several other infielders are on the 40-man roster and could be summoned from Triple-A, yet naturally there’s not much substitute for the upside that a healthy and productive Lewis can bring to the Twins’ lineup.

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Minnesota Twins Transactions DaShawn Keirsey Jr. Royce Lewis

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