{"id":503047,"date":"2026-02-25T11:46:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T11:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/503047\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T11:46:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T11:46:16","slug":"twins-notes-ryan-raya-merryweather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/503047\/","title":{"rendered":"Twins Notes: Ryan, Raya, Merryweather"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days after being scratched from his start on Saturday, Joe Ryan<\/a> is already throwing. Twins manager Derek Shelton told reporters that the pitcher played catch from 90 feet this morning (link via Matthew Leach of MLB.com<\/a>). Ryan was sent for imaging over the weekend after experiencing lower back discomfort, but he\u2019s dealing only with inflammation.<\/p>\n

There should still be ample time for Ryan to be ready for the start of the season. If healthy, he\u2019d be a lock to take the ball on Opening Day after Minnesota lost\u00a0Pablo L\u00f3pez<\/a> to Tommy John surgery. That\u2019s already a massive hit to the Twins\u2019 uphill path to competing for a playoff spot, making it all the more imperative that Ryan stay healthy. It\u2019s a bigger question whether the All-Star righty will be back in time to represent the U.S. in the World Baseball Classic in a couple weeks.<\/p>\n

Assuming Ryan is ready for the start of the season, he\u2019ll be followed in the rotation by\u00a0Bailey Ober<\/a> and\u00a0Simeon Woods Richardson<\/a>. There should be a camp battle for the final two spots among\u00a0Zebby Matthews<\/a>,\u00a0Taj Bradley<\/a>,\u00a0Mick Abel<\/a>\u00a0and potentially\u00a0David Festa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One pitcher no longer in the rotation conversation:\u00a0Marco Raya<\/a>. The 23-year-old prospect moved to the bullpen while pitching at Triple-A St. Paul in the middle of August. That\u2019s a permanent move, as Bobby Nightengale of The Minnesota Star-Tribune<\/a> writes that the Twins informed Raya he\u2019ll be a full-time reliever this year. The righty pitched a perfect inning with a strikeout against a handful of Tigers minor leaguers in his spring debut on Monday.<\/p>\n

Raya\u2019s move to the bullpen doesn\u2019t come as a huge surprise. The former fourth-round pick has good stuff but hasn\u2019t thrown enough strikes in his minor league career. He walked almost 13% of opponents over 98 2\/3 Triple-A frames a year ago, turning in a 6.02 earned run average in the process. Raya used six pitches in the minors but could pare down the repertoire now that he\u2019s working in short relief. The bigger hope is that Raya\u2019s below-average control won\u2019t be as big an issue in brief stints.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s ample opportunity in the Minnesota bullpen.\u00a0Taylor Rogers<\/a>,\u00a0Anthony Banda<\/a>,\u00a0Justin Topa<\/a>, Kody Funderburk<\/a>\u00a0and Cole Sands<\/a> are probably penciled into the Opening Day relief corps. That still leaves three jobs up for grabs. Most of Minnesota\u2019s depth arms on the 40-man roster have little to no MLB experience. They compensated by bringing in a number of veteran arms on minor league contracts with Spring Training invites.<\/p>\n

Julian Merryweather<\/a> is among the non-roster invitees trying to pitch his way onto the roster. Merryweather\u2019s team debut got out to a less than ideal start. The right-hander departed his first Grapefruit League appearance after suffering a left hamstring strain, Nightengale relays. Merryweather walked\u00a0Justyn-Henry Malloy<\/a>\u00a0and struck out\u00a0Ben Williamson<\/a> before departing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A few days after being scratched from his start on Saturday, Joe Ryan is already throwing. Twins manager…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,12742,241869,220949,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-503047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-joe-ryan","11":"tag-julian-merryweather","12":"tag-marco-raya","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}