Twins Place Cole Sands On 15-Day IL, Promote John Klein
1:54PM: Sands’ strain doesn’t appear to be too serious, as the MRI results indicated “probably some of the better news you could have gotten out of the whole thing,” as the reliever told the Minnesota Star Tribune’s Bobby Nightengale and other reporters.
9:18AM: The Twins announced that right-hander Cole Sands has been placed on the 15-day injured list due to a right forearm strain. The placement is retroactive to April 29. Right-hander John Klein was called up from Triple-A in the corresponding move, and Klein was already added to Minnesota’s 40-man roster last November in advance of the Rule 5 draft.
More information on the severity of Sands’ injury should be known later today when Twins manager Derek Shelton speaks to the media. Some forearm strains are very minor, but naturally teams tend to proceed with caution when a pitcher has any sort of forearm or elbow-related issue.
Sands has a 4.63 ERA, 22% strikeout rate, and eight percent walk rate over 11 2/3 bullpen innings for Minnesota this season, and batters have a hefty 51.4% hard-hit ball rate against his offerings. Sands’ fastball is averaging 93.1mph, down from the 95mph velocity he posted in 2025. His 3.65 SIERA is almost a full run better than his real-world ERA, however, and the fact that Sands allowed two runs in his most recent appearance (two-thirds of an inning against the Mariners on April 28) could imply that his forearm issue had something to do with that tough outing.
While Sands hasn’t been as sharp this year, he has been a workhorse reliever for the Twins since the start of the 2024 season. His absence is another hit to a Minnesota bullpen that has been pretty ineffective, and the Twins now have another hole to fill in covering Sands’ high-leverage innings.
Klein may be able to at least help in the depth department, as the 24-year-old has been a starter for most of his five minor league seasons. Klein has had a rough go of things in 2026, posting a 7.48 ERA and allowing 10 homers over only 21 2/3 innings (starting six of seven games) for Triple-A St. Paul. This extreme difficulty at keeping the ball in the park is a new issue and maybe even just a fluke for Klein, who has posted solid homer rates over the rest of his career.
Klein will be making his MLB debut whenever he appears in his first game, and pitching for the Twins carries some extra hometown weight for the native of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. An undrafted free agent who signed with the Twins in 2022, Klein has been hit hard at the Triple-A level in both 2025 and 2026, but he has a respectable 24.17% strikeout rate and 8.32% walk rate over the entirety of his 288 2/3 career innings in the minors.
MLB Pipeline ranks Klein 20th on their list of Twins prospects, and Baseball America has the right-hander 24th on their list. Both outlets project Klein more as a swingman or long reliever than as a starter at the big league level, as Klein lacks any plus secondary pitches. Klein’s top pitch is a mid-90s fastball that has topped out at 97mph, but there could be a higher ceiling given how Klein has added a couple of miles of velocity within the last two seasons.
Twins Add Six Players To 40-Man Roster
The Twins have selected the contracts of left-handers Kendry Rojas and Connor Prielipp, righties Andrew Morris and John Klein, and outfielders Gabriel Gonzalez and Hendry Mendez, the team announced. They’re all protected from next month’s Rule 5 Draft.
Rojas, who came to the Twins alongside outfielder Alan Roden in the trade sending reliever Louis Varland to Toronto, is a 22-year-old southpaw (23 next week) who climbed three minor league levels in 2025, topping out with his first taste of Triple-A work. The Cuban-born lefty breezed through High-A and Double-A before running into some trouble in his first 32 1/3 innings at the top minor league level. He yielded 26 runs in that time (7.34 ERA) and walked 14.7% of his opponents.
Those struggles came in a small sample of nine Triple-A appearances at a time when most of the opponents he was facing were much older and further along in their development. Walks haven’t been a major issue for Rojas to this point in his pro career, however, and most scouting reports project that he’ll eventually have average command with the potential for three average or better pitches. Rojas could be in line to make his MLB debut next summer, so there was no chance the Twins were going to leave him unprotected.
Prielipp, 24, was a second-round pick in 2022 and might’ve been a first-rounder had he not been coming off Tommy John surgery at the time of the draft. Elbow troubles have further plagued the Alabama product since being drafted. He underwent an internal brace procedure in 2023 and, entering the 2025 season, had all of 30 professional innings under his belt.
Prielipp looked plenty healthy this past season, however, appearing in 24 games (23 of them starts) and missing plenty of bats with an above-average ground-ball rate. He posted a 3.65 ERA, 27% strikeout rate and 7% walk rate in 61 2/3 Double-A frames before showing some fatigue late in the season with a 5.14 ERA in five Triple-A games (four starts). He’s already drawn top-100 fanfare at FanGraphs and ESPN, and he’ll likely draw further consideration for such lists in the offseason. As with Rojas, there was never a doubt he’d be added to the 40-man today.
Morris, 24, doesn’t have the same ceiling as Rojas and Prielipp but is arguably the most MLB-ready of the bunch. He started 19 games (plus two long relief outings) in Triple-A this season and worked to a 4.09 ERA with a 22.4% strikeout rate and 7% walk rate. The 2022 fourth-rounder averaged 95.5 mph on his four-seamer in Triple-A this past season — up 1.6 mph from the prior year — and draws praise for plus command and a five-pitch arsenal that includes at least average grades on his heater, slider and cutter.
A Twin Cities native, Klein was an undrafted free agent who signed with his hometown club in 2022. He pitched 106 1/3 innings between Double-A and Triple-A, logging a combined 3.98 ERA. Klein, who’ll turn 24 in April, fanned 27.6% of his opponents against an 8% walk rate. He sits 94-96 mph with his sinker and four-seamer, complementing those fastballs with a cutter, curveball and changeup.
Gonzalez came to the Twins from the Mariners as part of the 2023 Jorge Polanco trade. He was a top-100 prospect at the time who struggled in his first season with the organization but bounced back to the tune of a .329/.395/.513 batting line as a 21-year-old between Double-A and Triple-A this season. He could get an MLB look in 2026.
Mendez was one of the team’s many deadline pickups, coming over in the trade that sent Harrison Bader to Philadelphia. He hit a combined .299/.399/.439 with more walks than strikeouts (13.6% to 13.2%) in 491 turns at the plate between High-A and Double-A. He’s a bat-first, hit-over-power outfield prospect who is generally considered to rank within the top 20 of a deep Minnesota farm system.
Francys Romero of BeisbolFR.com first reported that Rojas had been selected.