Garrett Acton spent much of 2026 trying to get back on the mound, and the time away from it also became the time he finally rediscovered a pitch he’d been chasing for years.
A right shoulder strain sidelined him from April 28 to July 11, wiping out a big chunk of his season. But before the injury, Acton and the Twins had already started tinkering with his changeup, trying to give him something that would move away from left-handed hitters instead of everything running in on them.
“We thought we needed something to be able to go out and compete against lefties, get something going away from them instead of having everything running inside,” Acton said.
“So Pete, Hawk, Luis, and I kind of talked about, ‘Hey, let’s see if we could get a changeup again. How did you throw it in the past?’ Basically, we ended up with the same grip I had thrown pre-TJ, and it just worked out that I was starting to have success in bullpens.”
Acton had been searching for the right grip for a few years. He had a changeup before his 2024 Tommy John surgery, but he barely used it with the Tampa Bay Rays in 2025. The same pattern showed up in his seven games with the Twins this year, where he leaned mostly on a slider and a split-finger while the changeup work continued behind the scenes.
The injury paused that progress, but it didn’t erase it. Once Acton returned to the Saints on August 1, the pitch work picked up again, and he started seeing the payoff.
“It’s been really positive that my stuff has been trending upwards since I got off the IL,” Acton said. “Throwing harder, breaking ball’s been sharper.
Obviously, it was really frustrating to be down as long as I was. It’s frustrating to be watching the guys out there go and compete when I was just kind of sitting on the sidelines.
So mostly just glad to be back playing and largely really happy with how I’ve thrown the baseball.”
In St. Paul, the changeup became a real part of the mix.
Acton said he was using it at about a 20-25% clip to lefties, and he believes it can become a real weapon for him. Over 17 outings with the Saints, he posted a 2.91 ERA, 31.5% strikeout rate, 10.1% walk rate, 0.92 WHIP, .145 opponents’ average, and 3.90 FIP in 21 ⅔ innings.
His brief run back with the Twins had some encouraging moments too. In his first six of seven appearances, he worked 10 ⅔ innings with a 2.53 ERA, 2.07 FIP, 28.9% strikeout rate, and 6.7% walk rate.
That last outing was a rough one, though. In a 10-1 loss to the White Sox, Minnesota left him in long enough for him to allow four runs on three walks, two hits, and a home run.
Even with that blemish, the overall body of work gave the Twins something to think about. They’re expected to focus on bullpen upgrades this offseason, and Acton’s injury-shortened year was good enough to keep him in the conversation as 40-man depth in Triple-A next season.
For Acton, the bigger issue has been finding some peace amid all the movement. He has bounced through four organizations in the past year, and Minnesota has given him something he can actually settle into.
“It’s very nice to have some stability,” he said. “Obviously, we know a lot of things are out of our control, but being in a stable situation where it’s like, ‘Okay, I know I can go into work tomorrow.’
It’s just really reassuring. While it sounds so simple, it’s very nice to have that assurance with that here.”
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