The Twins spent 2026 leaning on almost everybody they could find on the mound, and the season ended up saying as much about survival as it did about upside. Minnesota used 32 different pitchers, plus position players Alex Jackson and Orlando Arcia (!), and the injuries were severe enough that only one pitcher topped 145 innings.
Still, amid the churn, a few arms moved forward in real ways. That’s where the story of the year lives.
One of the more encouraging developments came from Yoendrys Gómez, who arrived from Tampa Bay on May 6 for cash considerations and quickly became a central figure in the bullpen. Minnesota didn’t have a steady answer at the back end early on, and Gómez stepped into that void as something of an accidental closer.
He opened his Twins run by converting his first 21 save chances before a late-season slump nudged the final line to 21-for-23. Even with the rough patch, he gave the club the kind of ninth-inning stability it had been missing.
The stuff backed up the results. Gómez’s sweeper was a true weapon, producing a 40% whiff rate while limiting hard contact.
His four-seam fastball, which sits around 96 miles per hour, gives him a strong pitch mix to work with. The main issue is command: a 13.5% walk rate leaves obvious room for improvement.
But the framework is there for Derek Shelton to keep using him in high-leverage spots.
Joe Ryan, meanwhile, looked every bit like Minnesota’s ace for long stretches before injuries interrupted his year. He posted a 3.79 ERA with 144 2/3 innings, a 25.9% strikeout rate and a superb 5.0% walk rate, and he was good enough in the first half to land on the American League All-Star roster. Before the break, he was clearly the club’s best starter, pounding the strike zone and missing bats the way he has throughout his rise.
The second half told a different story. Ryan hit the injured list in early August with a glute strain and missed about a month.
He did return, but the lost time left him at 144 2/3 innings, just shy of the workload that separated him from the top spot here. Even so, the underlying numbers suggest he may have underdelivered a bit relative to his performance, which gives Minnesota a reason to think even better days are possible.
Barring an offseason trade, he should still anchor the rotation in 2027.
The top honor goes to Taj Bradley, and this one feels earned by both performance and volume. After a rough first impression with the Twins in 2025, Bradley entered 2026 with plenty to prove.
He answered with 178 1/3 innings, 31 starts and a spot among the 13 pitchers in baseball to reach 200 strikeouts. For a team that needed a starter to step up, Bradley did exactly that.
He also showed real swing-and-miss stuff. His 27.4% strikeout rate ranked in the 83rd percentile among major league pitchers, and five of his starts featured double-digit strikeout totals.
That kind of bat-missing ability gives him a foundation as a potential frontline starter, and at just 25 years old, he’s still early in the climb. In a span of roughly eight months, he went from a pitcher who had to prove himself to one of the leaders of Minnesota’s staff.
That doesn’t mean the rough edges are gone. Bradley’s 10.2% walk rate points to command issues, and he still had trouble getting hitters to chase pitches out of the zone.
If he can tighten those areas this offseason, there’s room for another leap in 2027. Even with the flaws, though, he gave the Twins exactly the kind of young starter they needed in a season full of uncertainty.
There were other names worth noting, too. Connor Prielipp turned in a 4.87 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, 23.9% K, 8.2% BB, 3.73 FIP over 125 2/3 innings in 24 games, 22 starts.
Dean Kremer posted a 3.48 ERA, 0.99 WHIP, 22.7% K, 8.5% BB, 3.82 FIP in 54 1/3 innings over 10 games, all starts. But the bigger takeaway is clear: Minnesota got important innings from a few different places, and Bradley’s emergence stood above the rest.
For a pitching staff battered by injuries and forced to cycle through arms all year, the best outcome was finding signs of future stability. Bradley, Ryan and Gómez gave the Twins that. Now the challenge is turning those bright spots into something more durable in 2027.
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