The Twins’ Saturday started with Joe Ryan lined up to pitch and ended with Kendry Rojas getting thrown into the fire with almost no notice.
Ryan’s outing was pushed back because of arm fatigue, which moved rookie Mike Paredes into the start against the Athletics. Then Paredes strained his left oblique in warmups, and manager Derek Shelton had to turn to Rojas in the dugout and send him scrambling to the mound.
Rojas handled the emergency assignment just fine. The 23-year-old lefty gave Minnesota four scoreless innings in a 2-0 win, allowing one hit and one walk while striking out five on 56 pitches. He had originally been slated to follow Paredes in relief, but instead wound up making his fourth Major League start with barely any warning.
“I was just sitting, chilling, talking, and then they told me to get the start,” Rojas said to MLB.com. through teammate Pablo López. “So I sprinted my way back there.”
That one outing was impressive on its own, but it also fit the larger picture around Rojas: the stuff is real.
Toronto signed him out of Cuba for $215,000 in 2020, when his fastball was sitting around 90 mph. Since then, the pitch has kept climbing. By 2025, it was averaging 94-95 mph and touching 97, and he piled up 90 strikeouts in 69 minor league innings before Minnesota acquired him and Alan Roden from the Toronto Blue Jays for Louis Varland and Ty France.
Against the Athletics, the heater looked even better. Rojas averaged 96.4 mph and reached 98, while his slider accounted for four of his eight swings and misses. Through 10 Major League appearances, hitters are batting .154 with a .269 slugging percentage against his four-seamer, according to Statcast.
That’s not a huge sample, but it’s enough to show why the Twins are intrigued. National League Cy Young favorite Jacob Misiorowski has held hitters to a .179 average and .253 slugging percentage with his four-seamer across 1,084 pitches this season. Rojas has thrown his four-seamer only 166 times, so the comparison isn’t direct, but the early results point in the same direction.
He’s got more than one pitch to work with, too. His changeup and sinker give him a four-pitch mix, which matters for a young starter trying to get beyond the “throw hard and hope” stage.
The challenge is command. Rojas has walked 19 batters in 25.2 Major League innings, and that’s part of why his WHIP sits at 1.40 even though he’s allowed only 17 hits. His 42.4% zone rate is below the 48.7% MLB average, and the path from electric arm to reliable starter runs straight through better strike throwing.
Even so, the overall line is encouraging: a 2.81 ERA with 29 strikeouts across four starts and six relief appearances. Durability remains another question. He has never topped 84 innings in a season, and injuries have already interrupted his year.
He began the season on the injured list with a right hamstring strain, then missed 24 games after posterior soreness in his pitching elbow was diagnosed as inflammation in his left triceps.
One surprise start won’t answer every question. But it did give Minnesota another look at why Rojas matters.
The Twins brought him in during a deadline teardown that was all about turning established pieces into younger talent, and less than a year later he was the guy asked to rescue a game after two pitching plans fell apart before first pitch. He didn’t just get through it.
He showed why the Twins can keep believing he might end up in their rotation for good.
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