{"id":904184,"date":"2026-09-21T14:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T14:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/904184\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T14:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T14:30:09","slug":"twins-to-select-aaron-sabato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/904184\/","title":{"rendered":"Twins To Select Aaron Sabato"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Twins will select the contract of first baseman Aaron Sabato<\/a> for the final week of the season, as first reported by Bobby Nightengale of the Minnesota Star Tribune<\/a>. They\u2019ll need to open a 40-man roster spot, but that can be accomplished by moving Byron Buxton<\/a> to the 60-day IL. His season is over after last Friday\u2019s surgery to address a hip injury that\u2019s hobbled him on and off for a few years.<\/p>\n

Sabato\u2019s promotion will mark his major league debut. The former University of North Carolina standout was Minnesota\u2019s first-round pick in 2020 but hasn\u2019t yet received a call to the majors and hasn\u2019t been selected by another club in the Rule 5 Draft. The righty-swinging slugger cruised through Class-A and High-A in the years after his draft selection but has seen his offensive output wane since. Sabato struggled at Double-A in 2023 and again in 2024 when he repeated the level. He finally posted some good numbers against Double-A opposition in 2025 but then struggled upon being bumped to Triple-A.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been another story this year. Sabato has spent the entire season with the Twins\u2019 Triple-A affiliate across the Mississippi River in St. Paul. He\u2019s tallied 470 plate appearances and turned in a stout .273\/.349\/.528 batting line with 25 home runs, 29 doubles, a triple, five steals (in five attempts), an 8.7% walk rate and a 25.3% strikeout rate. He\u2019s averaged just shy of 90 mph off the bat since reaching Triple-A in 2025 and has an overall 43.3% hard-hit rate at the top minor league level.<\/p>\n

Former top pick Royce Lewis<\/a> held down first base in Minnesota for much of the summer. He\u2019d been optioned early in the year after an awful start to the season, and the Twins shifted Brooks Lee<\/a> to third base \u2014 Lewis\u2019 typical position \u2014 on a permanent basis at that time. Lewis decimated Triple-A pitching and returned in short order, and his Triple-A hot streak carried over to the majors for much of the summer. He hit .268\/.322\/.458 in just over 300 plate appearances from early June through early September, but Lewis has been playing through a shoulder issue for a few weeks now and has mustered only a .151\/.179\/.189 slash through his past 56 trips to the plate.<\/p>\n

The Twins have other options at first base \u2014 Kody Clemens<\/a>, Victor Caratini<\/a>, Josh Bell<\/a>, namely \u2014 but will take the final few games of the season to reward Sabato for a strong performance in Triple-A and take a quick look at how he fares versus big league pitching. Whether he actually sticks on the 40-man roster throughout the winter is another question, but the Twins will have a full slate of three minor league option years over Sabato now and have plenty of other candidates to remove from the 40-man roster (plus some veterans who\u2019ll naturally be subtracted by reaching free agency) if they want to keep Sabato in their plans for the 2027 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Twins will select the contract of first baseman Aaron Sabato for the final week of the season,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":904185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[246365,49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-904184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-aaron-sabato","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}