FORT MYERS, Fla. — If the teardown continued this offseason and he wasn’t included, Joe Ryan might not feel as good about returning to the Minnesota Twins.
But once it became clear the Twins intended to retain the key players who remained after last year’s trade deadline roster culling, namely Pablo López and Byron Buxton, the All-Star pitcher got on board with returning.
Ryan — who went 13-10 with a 3.42 ERA and 194 strikeouts in 171 innings last season — said at the team’s spring training complex on Wednesday that he mostly remained occupied this offseason with the birth of his first child in November and his preparation to pitch for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic. On the eve of the team’s first workout of the new season, Ryan brushed off concerns about nearly going to arbitration, noted he enjoyed his recent meeting with new executive chair Tom Pohlad, and said there’s a lot of potential in the Twins’ starting rotation.
Ryan is set to earn $6.2 million this season after he and the Twins agreed to terms on Jan. 26 on a one-year deal that includes a $13 million mutual option for next season.
“I’m really happy to be here,” Ryan said. “If they started shipping off more guys, it would have been a little bit harder. But we’ve got Buck and Pablo here, (Bailey Ober is) here and (Ryan) Jeffers is here — the guys that have been here since I got here. There’s a few of us left. I think the young guys are great and (we’ve got) a lot of guys to build around. We’ll be in a good spot.”
Ryan can envision success for the Twins based on the team’s starting rotation, a group teeming with young talent in Taj Bradley, Mick Abel, Zebby Matthews, David Fest and Simeon Woods Richardson.
“They all look really good and have a ton of potential,” Ryan said. “That’s super exciting. I think we’re really lucky to have them. I think they’re going to make some really good strides this year and perform well for the team.”
Ryan didn’t spend much time this winter reflecting on a trying final two months of the 2025 season, a span that occasionally left him struggling to find motivation after seeing 10 teammates traded. The stretch may have also cost him votes for the American League Cy Young Award, which he seemed on track to garner before the second half.
Following a poor outing in Toronto on Aug. 25, Ryan acknowledged there were times in the weeks immediately after the Aug. 1 trade deadline where his energy flagged because the Twins weren’t playing for a postseason spot. Over his final 10 starts, Ryan posted a 4.89 ERA and yielded 2.17 home runs per nine innings in 49 2/3 innings, an increase from the 14 round-trippers he’d served up in his first 121 1/3 innings when he featured a 2.82 ERA.
After the season and following the firing of manager Rocco Baldelli, Ryan wondered if the Twins might continue to tear down their roster, but not for too long.
“I didn’t really sit on (the season) too much because it’s in the past,” said Ryan, who at one point thought he was being shipped out of Minnesota on the day of the deadline, too. “It’s done. I have no control over anything in those areas, whether I was going to stay with the team or not. I don’t know, I thought about that a little bit at the end of the year when I was leaving Minnesota. I was like, ‘Am I going to get traded now?’ and the implications of that. But nothing crazy.”
Ryan didn’t harp on the end of the season because life stepped in. On Nov. 11, his partner, Clare, gave birth to a boy, Rowan. With a new family member to focus on, followed by an invitation to join Team USA’s impressive roster of pitchers, Ryan managed to keep his mind off the business of baseball.
Even though he was surprised when Baldelli was dismissed in October, Ryan described new manager Derek Shelton as friendly after multiple phone calls and believes the club is in a “good spot.” He also appreciated the efforts of Pohlad to fly to Los Angeles and have lunch with him ahead of TwinsFest, an event the player declined to attend because of family obligations and ongoing WBC prep.
“It was good to talk with (Pohlad) and start that relationship,” Ryan said. “He seems really motivated and has a good vision for the way the organization is going to go. You can tell he really wants to win. There’s certain things we talked about and we’ll see how those come through. I think he has a good vision.”
Ryan, who recently switched his representation to VC Sports Group, also downplayed the notion that he was rankled by the arbitration process.
“It is what it is — it’s done,” he said.
Earlier in January, the Twins and the pitcher’s previous agency weren’t able to agree to terms before the Jan. 8 deadline, the sides ultimately filing numbers that were $500,000 apart. Eventually, the parties compromised and avoided arbitration hours before Ryan and Twins officials boarded planes headed for Phoenix, where the case was to be heard. Though he’s not a fan of the process, Ryan was not concerned about hearing the team state its case against him.
“They’re trying to win, and that’s kind of their show,” Ryan said. “That’s their baseball game. … I think at the end of the day that process is pretty antiquated and kind of stupid. No one in the league likes it. No team likes it. No one that works for a team likes it. No players like it. It doesn’t benefit anyone. It’s just a dumb system.”