Twins To Place Bailey Ober On IL With Hip Impingement

The Twins are going to place right-hander Bailey Ober on the 15-day injured list with a left hip impingement, reports Phil Miller of the Star Tribune. Left-hander Kody Funderburk will be recalled to take his active roster spot for now, though Ober was scheduled to start Friday’s game, so the club will need to figure out their rotation plans in the coming days. Miller also relays that infielder Jonah Bride, designated for assignment earlier this week, has cleared waivers and been outrighted to Triple-A Saint Paul.

The towering 6’9″ Ober has been a constant in the Twins’ rotation dating back to 2021. He’s been a steady mid-rotation presence along the way, logging 471 1/3 innings with a 3.76 ERA (3.75 SIERA) from 2021-24. The 2025 season looked like more of the same. Ober was trounced for eight runs in his first start of the season but quickly righted the ship. By the end of May, he was sitting on a tidy 3.48 ERA despite that brutal first outing of the year.

The wheels came off completely last month, however. Ober started five games and yielded between four and seven runs in all of them. Opponents connected on an astonishing 14 home runs last month alone — more than half the amount he yielded all season in 2023 (22 homers) or in 2024 (27 homers). The long ball has always been somewhat of an issue for Ober, which isn’t a shock as a right-hander with sub-par fastball velocity, but last month’s sudden spike was alarming nonetheless.

Ober becomes the Twins’ third starter to hit the injured list in the past five weeks, joining ace Pablo López and top prospect Zebby Matthews. They’d already optioned Simeon Woods Richardson, who struggled after opening the season in the fifth spot, but he’s returned amid the recent injuries.

With Ober sidelined for a yet-to-be-determined period, the Twins will go with Joe Ryan, Chris Paddack, recent top prospect David Festa and Woods Richardson in the rotation. Prospects Travis Adams or Andrew Morris could get a look in the rotation moving forward, and Minnesota also claimed righty Connor Gillaspie off waivers from the Marlins last week, providing a bit of additional depth.

It’s also possible the Twins will look outside the organization for more depth, as they already did late last month when signing José Ureña to a minor league deal. President of baseball operations Derek Falvey already acknowledged that he’d had some trade talks about adding more pitching in the wake of the Lopez and Matthews injuries, and further health woes could spur more urgency as the reeling Twins look to stay relevant in the AL playoff picture.

Bride, 29, came to the Twins in exchange for cash earlier this season after the Marlins had designated him for assignment. He posted a strong 276/.357/.461 slash and popped 11 homers in 71 games for Miami as recently as 2024, but he went 4-for-40 with a 33.3% strikeout rate in Miami to begin the season and batted only .208/.275/.236 in 80 plate appearances with Minnesota. Bride is a career .221/.311/.313 hitter in parts of four major league seasons but hasn’t had any success at the plate outside last year’s showing. Because Bride has fewer than three years of MLB service and has never been outrighted in the past, he can’t reject in favor of free agency. He’ll head to St. Paul and stick with the organization as a depth piece.