Minneapolis – Anthony Banda wasn’t quite feeling himself on the mound to start his Minnesota Twins tenure. While he had three scoreless outings to start the season in Baltimore and Kansas City, Banda wasn’t staying around the strike zone as he usually does, and often allowed the leadoff man to reach in each outing.
Then from April 3 to April 23, Anthony Banda had one of the worst stretches of his career, allowing 11 runs on 12 hits, two walks, and three hit batters, along with three wild pitches and seven strikeouts against 40 batters in eight outings. Banda attributed the wildness to a lack of velocity on his fastball and feeling his delivery toward the plate wasn’t in the direction he wanted.
“Typically it’s usually there at the start of the season,” said Banda, “but you know, sometimes you get punched in the face, and you’ve got to keep growing with it,”
The one ‘punch in the face’ outing of Banda’s that has stuck in a lot of Twins fans’ heads was on April 23, when the Twins and New York Mets were tied 7-7 in the bottom of the eighth.
Derek Shelton brought Banda in to face the left-handed hitting rookie Carson Benge. However, the Mets put veteran righty Tommy Pham in to pinch hit for Benge with runners on first and third with one out. Banda walked Pham on six pitches, and All-Star shortstop Bo Bichette came up with the bases loaded. Two pitches later, Bichette drilled a slider up and out of the zone for a bases-clearing double that gave the Mets a 10-7 lead that went on to win them the game.
Since that outing in New York, Banda has been turning in the right direction. He’s made 12 appearances over the past month, and owns a 3.48 ERA, 4.86 FIP, and .172 opponents’ batting average. Shrink that down to his seven outings, and he has a 1.42 ERA, 3.90 FIP, and .136 opponents’ average for Banda.
It has taken a bit more time for Banda to get back into place. Still, the work he’s put in each day before the game alongside pitching coaches Pete Maki, Luis Ramirez, and bullpen coach LaTroy Hawkins has started to produce results on the mound.
“It’s like hitting a golf ball pure,” said Banda. “You don’t really feel it. … It just jumps off the club face. Same thing with pitching. It’s very relaxed, and very loose, and moving fast, getting good positions until the last second when you want to deliver the pitch. That’s typically what I feel.”
“I think it’s a combination of the velocity, No. 1, and then he looks cleaner in his delivery,” Twins manager Derek Shelton said on Banda. “Early, it looked like he was flying open a little bit and causing him to miss to his arm side. We’re not seeing that as much anymore.”
Anthony Banda has been throwing with more velocity recently. However, it’s still down 2.2 MPH from 95.9 MPH in 2025 to 93.7 MPH this season.
In his latest outing against the Houston Astros on Tuesday night, Banda topped out at 95.3 on his sinker and retired the minimum on just 16 pitches. With the velocity getting back to normal standards, so too are his outings. Three out of his last four have been clean, allowing no runners to reach.
“[It’s] kind of getting back to who I am, what I identify myself as, a hard-throwing lefty with some swing and miss, and just trusting that,” he said. “And really get in a groove of that confidence back as far as like the execution of the pitch, a little bit more aggressiveness in the zone, trusting the stuff that is in the zone, swing and miss in the zone. Not trying to overcomplicate things, not trying to overshape things.”
Take his one bad outing against the Toronto Blue Jays on May 2, where he allowed four runs, three earned in an inning of work, and Banda has a 0.96 ERA over his last 9 ⅓ innings in 11 appearances. While fans may fixate on the numbers when at Target Field, especially when they see an ERA of 6.64 on the season for Banda, he’s less fixated on the numbers.
“I primarily try to focus on the process, not so much the results,” he said. “But the process has gotten really good as far as I’ve felt internally with mechanics, bouncing back and feeling healthy, and it’s good to look up and see velocities that I’ve seen before, where it’s like earlier in the season I was like, ‘Where is it? Where is it?’ I knew it was a mechanical thing. I knew it was something going on, and we found it, and it was more of a directional thing.”
As Minnesota’s bullpen continues to see turnover after the Twins designated veteran righty Justin Topa for assignment on Tuesday, Banda is becoming a stable, veteran arm right when the Twins need it. He’s tied with Topa for the most appearances of the season with 23, and Shelton will likely continue to lean on his hard-throwing lefty as more younger arms try to carve out their own roles in the Twins bullpen.
Anthony Banda has been grateful for the support staff Minnesota’s pitchers have had available in the clubhouse each day to get back to feeling himself. He hopes to continue to be the stabilizing lefty who can get three outs or be an old-school specialist whenever his manager calls him into the game.
“It was a collective group effort, and I loved it,” he said. “It was great, and they’re still doing it. Work doesn’t stop just for a few outings, got to continue going.”
