Minnesota Twins 2025 MLB Season Preview

Rotation

Perhaps the strongest unit on a fairly balanced roster, the Twins’ rotation features imported ace Pablo López, who can chew up innings and rack up strikeouts when his changeup and sweeper are both hitting their spots. He did run into a bit of a first-inning problem in 2024, giving up too many runs before settling in, but he’s a true frontline starter. Slightly less proven are aces-in-waiting Joe Ryan (injuries) and Bailey Ober (consistency and homer vulnerability), each of whom nonetheless makes plenty of teams jealous as a mid-rotation option. This whole group is young, but it’s youngest at the back end, where Simeon Woods Richardson enjoyed a modest breakout rookie campaign in 2024, and tall, hard-throwing David Festa threatens a breakout as well. Zebby Matthews completes a six-man rotation.

Bullpen

The team is leaving open the possibility of converting one star reliever — late-blooming four-pitch monster Griffin Jax — back to the rotation, but on balance, the need is likely greater in relief. Jax emerged as one of the best relievers in baseball in 2024, with a bullying fastball and a deluxe bat-missing sweeper. That made up for slight regression from fellow flamethrower Jhoan Durán, whose fastball sat 99 and touched 102 instead of sitting 101 and touching 105. Durán remains the most likely closer, despite a minor misstep on the road to true stardom in that role. Beyond that duo lies a large number of exciting but not truly reliable options, like Alcala, the oft-injured Brock Stewart and the always-improving Cole Sands, who took a big step forward in 2024.

Middle infield

In a season meant to redeem him after a 2023 campaign in which he was marginalized by plantar fasciitis, Carlos Correa had one of the best half-seasons of a borderline Cooperstown-caliber career. Then, he landed on the injured list at the All-Star break and didn’t make it back until late September. The former No. 1 overall pick is still the unquestioned starting shortstop and a dynamic presence on the field, but only when he can manage to be there. Meanwhile, on the other side of the keystone, chaos reigns. The most likely and best option is Brooks Lee, one of the top prospects in the game before his promotion in July, but he has to show doubters that his false start of a rookie season was just a blip.

Corners

After getting unexpectedly excellent returns on a one-year investment in superannuated Carlos Santana, the Twins watched him sign a much more lucrative version of the same deal with their archrivals, the Cleveland Guardians. Their plans to replace him at first base could be as simple as a straight platoon, with the remarkably patient Edouard Julien facing righties and the streaky but intriguing Jose Miranda facing lefties. On the other side of the diamond, the answer (unless and until he makes a permanent move elsewhere, as the team has tried him at second base and in the outfield) is Royce Lewis. When in the lineup, Lewis is one of the game’s most ferocious power hitters, but that qualifying clause has carried an unhappily heavy weight throughout his young big-league career.

Outfield

After a few hiccups and a reset in the minors or two, Trevor Larnach and Matt Wallner appear to have locked down the corner outfield spots. Though he played through an injury down the stretch, Larnach was perhaps the Twin least susceptible to the collective six-week slide that ended Minnesota’s season; he slashed .303/.389/.465 during those final 39 games. Wallner, meanwhile, has blossomed into a fearsome slugger. He had six of the Twins’ seven hardest-hit balls in 2024 in only 261 plate appearances. He could hit 40 home runs in a full season. Byron Buxton will set up camp between Larnach and Wallner in 2025 after making minor but significant progress in his never-ending battle to stay healthy. His legs have slowed just enough to make him merely solid in center field instead of spectacular, but he remains a two-way asset.

Catching

With a timeshare approach, Minnesota has kept both Ryan Jeffers and Christian Vázquez healthy and fresh for the last two seasons. It hasn’t paid off in stellar production, but the stability and defensive value of the pair have made them a worthwhile tandem. With tight payroll constraints in place and big contracts locked up elsewhere on the roster, though, it seems unlikely that the front office will want to allocate roughly $15 million to a position short on upside. A shakeup is coming to what had been the least changeable spot in the lineup.

DH/bench

Switch-hitting utility man Willi Castro is the linchpin of much of the team’s attack. He rotates through most of the positions on the diamond, providing a slashing style of offense and playable defense everywhere, including patching holes created by injuries. Since trading Nelson Cruz at the July deadline in 2021, the Twins have steered clear of using a full-time DH. Instead, they like to rotate players through that role. Julien and Miranda figure to get chunks of time there, but so do veterans the team wants to shield from injury, like Buxton and Correa, and strong hitters with dubious but important defensive skills, like Lewis and Wallner.

Management

The Pohlad family resisted the temptation to clean house after a deeply frustrating final quarter of the season. Instead, Derek Falvey will return as the chief baseball decision-maker for a ninth season, but some changes did reshape the front office. Ditto for the dugout, where Falvey retained Rocco Baldelli for his sixth season but sent a quartet of coaches packing. Falvey and Baldelli have built the Twins into a team with a strong farm system and perennial expectations of contention, but they face the challenge of becoming more athletic and less one-dimensional — a task made tougher by a lack of spending power.

Final analysis

When the Twins won the AL Central in 2023 and snapped a playoff losing streak of nearly two decades, they seemed to have found a lane through which to pursue a miniature dynasty in the league’s least imposing division. Just one season later, the Guardians have reclaimed primacy in the division, and the Tigers and Royals have emerged as medium-term threats. The Twins can claim the league’s fastest throwers and some of the hardest hitters but also the slowest runners and some of the worst defenders. Their viability in 2025 depends on changing some of that for the better without giving away the strengths they’ve systematically implemented over the last almost-decade.

Scouting report

OPPOSING SCOUTS SIZE UP THE TWINS:

“They’re kind of like Seattle Lite for me — they have plenty of pitching, and they throw a lot of strikes, so they’ll stay in every game. But it’s really the same story here because their best hitters just never stay healthy. Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton and Royce Lewis could be the nucleus of a runaway division winner, but something always goes wrong physically. Willi Castro should get more credit; he’s a very important guy for them, and Trevor Larnach and Matt Wallner are solid. They have a lot of guys with good-but-not-great power, so they’re dangerous, but they don’t really scare you. Pablo López has stretches where he’s dominant at the top of that rotation, and Bailey Ober came into his own last year. But they need Chris Paddack to be the guy he was five years ago, and that’s asking a lot. The bullpen doesn’t really light you up, either. But they all fill up the zone, so you know you’re gonna make your dinner reservation after the game.”

Beyond the box score

TROUBLE IN PARADISE? At the end of the season, amid the team’s unraveling and the sense of wasted opportunity, some tensions surfaced between veterans (notably, Carlos Correa) and younger players (notably, Royce Lewis). Though no loud arguments were heard or harsh words hurled in public, Correa and other veterans spoke of a need for some teammates to put in more thoughtful prep work. Lewis appeared to take that somewhat personally, in remarks to the press.

A NEW DIRECTION: Not long after the end of the season, the Pohlads announced their intention to sell the Twins, after 40 years of family ownership. For many Minnesota fans, it was welcome news, as the family’s spending on the team has been uneven and unpredictable over the years. In December, megarich brothers Mat and Justin Ishbia emerged as possible buyers. Their combination of wealth and eagerness to please fans of the other sports teams they own (Mat is the owner of the Phoenix Suns) suggest that they would represent a sea change for the franchise.

BREAKING FREE OF BLACKOUTS: For the last handful of seasons, hundreds of thousands of Twins fans faced a choice between paying for a premium package with a specific cable provider and being frozen out of watching their favorite team’s games altogether. Now, however, the Twins will be available to any fan willing to pay the monthly or annual subscription fee to stream their games via MLB.tv. It’s a big step forward for accessibility — though it won’t allow the team to pull down as much money as their previous rights deal did.

DOING SOMETHING RIGHT: Though neither their depth of talent nor their existing processes allowed the team to avoid that late-season tumble, the Twins are one of the sport’s leaders in player development and analytically-informed coaching. That was underscored (albeit in a very bittersweet way) by a fistful of instances of other teams swooping in to hire away key coaches, instructors, and coordinators throughout their farm system just after the campaign.

THE RIPPLE EFFECT: In June, the Twins rolled out their Nike City Connect uniforms, which take as their inspiration the collision of sunlight and blue waters for which the state of Minnesota is famous. The threads do an admirable job of weaving together the team and its community, and on the night of their debut, the Twins won in walkoff fashion.

GEM OF THE NORTH: Though mentioned less frequently than Oracle Park in San Francisco, Pittsburgh’s PNC Park, or Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Target Field is arguably MLB’s most picturesque and enmeshed facility. Set below street level and on the smallest footprint of any big-league stadium, it allows fans near-instant access to public transportation, extraordinary views of the Minneapolis skyline, and clever touches that evoke the history of baseball in Minnesota. It should still be the team’s home in 70 years.

Top 10 prospects

1. Walker Jenkins, OF (20): A fast riser with an advanced feel for hitting.

2. Emmanuel Rodriguez, OF (22): Draws walks as often as some players collect hits.

3. Luke Keaschall, UTIL (22): Has the athleticism to play all over the diamond defensively.

4. Andrew Morris, RHP (23): Morris’ ceiling is in the middle of the rotation, but he’s nearly ready.

5. Marco Raya, RHP (22): Looks like either a five-inning starter or a backend reliever with mouthwatering stuff.

6. Kaelen Culpepper, IF (22): Even fairly advanced pro pitching is manageable for him.

7. Kyle DeBarge, IF (21): The 33rd overall pick in July, thanks to his solid collegiate production.

8. Cory Lewis, RHP (24): Incorporates the knuckleball into a solid, deep arsenal.

9. C.J. Culpepper, RHP (23): Shows signs of being capable of a mid-rotation workload.

10. Charlee Soto, RHP (19): A big, hard-throwing starter with unusual polish for his age.