The 2025 St. Paul Saints have already been projected to be one of the more talented teams in Minor League Baseball. Still, a big part of what has them expected to perform so well is the plethora of top pitching prospects the Twins have in the upper levels of the Minor Leagues.
Zebby Matthews‘s dominating command, Andrew Morris’s whiff percentages with his pitches, Cory Lewis’s lighting-fast knuckleball, and Marco Raya’s curveball are just a few attributes that make these prospects promising.
Matthews, Morris, Lewis, and Raya are on multiple top 10 Twins prospect lists. Joining them in St. Paul are Travis Adams, another prospect who was added to the Twins 40-man to be protected from the Rule 5 Draft this winter, and veterans Randy Dobnak, Huascar Ynoa, and Erasmo Ramírez.
It’s the deepest rotation the Saints have had to start a season in their five years as a Twins minor-league affiliate, and it could be even deeper. The Twins have had the luxury of good health early in spring training, which they hope will remain intact. Aside from right-handed reliever Daniel Duarte, who is still recovering from Tommy John surgery and won’t return until August, every other pitcher is healthy.
Historically, it’s a matter of when, not if, another pitcher or multiple pitchers will be injured before spring training concludes. However, suppose Minnesota’s rotation of Pablo López, Joe Ryan, Bailey Ober, Chris Paddack, and Simeon Woods Richardson remain healthy between now and Opening Day. In that case, David Festa should bolster St. Paul’s rotation.
If everyone stays healthy, St. Paul’s five-man rotation will have current or graduated top 10 prospects in their system with Festa, Matthews, Morris, Raya, and Lewis. Only the Texas Rangers will have even four current or former top 10 prospects in their farm system who will also start their 2025 seasons in Triple-A.
One of Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter are still highly likely to make the Rangers Opening Day rotation because someone else gets hurt or they pitch so well they force themselves into a spot. However, in the scenario where they don’t, the two of them, along with MLB Pipleline’s No. 6 Rangers prospect Emiliano Teodo and No. 8 prospect Winston Santos, will fill out the Round Rock Express’s starting rotation.
Starting the season in Triple-A will still require a laundry list of items to work on for these stars of Minnesota’s pitching pipeline. For instance, Festa added a sinker into his arsenal and threw it twice in his first spring training start on Sunday. Given such a small sample size, Festa will likely take more chances to tinker with the pitch if he starts his season in St. Paul rather than the majors.
Matthews’s top priority is lowering his elevated home run-to-flyball percentage, which jumped from 9.1% in the minors to 20.8% over his nine major league starts. One of the more hitter-friendly ballparks in the International League, CHS Field will be a good place for Matthews to face that challenge head-on.
Morris is more of an outlier because he doesn’t need to improve upon one or two specific parts of his game. Instead, he needs to continue to pitch to his strengths, which is allowing few hits and walks (1.08 WHIP in 133 innings between Single-A, Double-A, and Triple-A) and raising the strikeout numbers (24.5 K%) and his ground ball rate (45.1%).
Lewis started 2024 injured with a shoulder injury that kept him on the shelf until June. He had a slow build-up in the summer but pitched to a 2.51 ERA and 3.83 FIP in 79 innings. A healthier shoulder for Lewis means more build-up on velocity for his insanely fast knuckleball, which has touched 88 MPH.
Finally, Raya will have to focus on the same goal everyone will have to do at the start of the 2025 minor league season: build up their pitch count to go five, six, or even seven innings come summertime. Raya has had a hard innings and pitch count limit for most of his minor league career. However, from July 26 to the end of the year, Raya made it into the fifth inning of all but one start before being removed from the game.
But Raya’s goal to build up workload is something every pitcher is working on, including Adams, Dobnak, Ramirez, and Ynoa. Adams will also likely be a part of the Saints rotation to start the season, giving St. Paul a projected six-man rotation to get through the first month.
A six-man rotation will give each starter a start a week with Dobnak, Ramirez, Ynoa, and Aaron Rozek in the bullpen to piggyback off the younger guys and eat the middle innings.
Reuniting with Jonas Lovin, their pitching coach at High-A Cedar Rapids for the last two seasons, will be another big help for St. Paul’s young pitchers. Only Festa and Adams have yet to work with Lovin. Still, his track record with Matthews, Morris, Lewis, and Raya developing their off-speed pitches into competent strikeout pitches will only benefit them more as they work their way to the majors.
The Saints will have an exciting team in 2025, but their starting rotation may be the most dominant in Triple-A if Minnesota’s starters stay healthy all year. Paddack is the most injury-prone of the arms locked in the starting rotation now. Joe Ryan has fully healed from his shoulder strain that ended his 2024 season but has suffered multiple injuries throughout his MLB career.
Almost all starters must wait for the right opportunity to get their call to the big leagues. Still, with how injuries are treated in Major League Baseball today compared to 10 years ago, it’s almost certain that all of these young men will either return or make their major league debuts in 2025.
