The Minnesota Twins have answered one of the questions that has long hovered over them this offseason. We know who will be in the Opening Day bullpen, but it’s not the players everyone expected.
Cole Sands, Justin Topa, and Kody Funderburk return from the end of last season. They also brought back Taylor Rogers via free agency. They also picked up Anthony Bonda and Eric Orze from waiver wire trades.
Still, the last two names were anyone’s guess. It could have been Liam Hendriks and Andrew Chafin, the veteran relievers on Minor League deals. However, the Twins released them. They also optioned promising prospects Connor Prielipp and John Klein to Triple-A, where they will remain as starters.
Then there were the fringe candidates who entered camp as long shots. The Twins claimed Cody Laweryson from the Los Angeles Angels off waivers, but released him a week before pitchers and catchers had to report to camp in Arizona. The Twins re-signed him on a Minor League deal as their camp opened.
Zak Kent started his spring training with the St. Louis Cardinals organization. However, the Twins claimed him off waivers after officially placing Pablo López on the 60-day IL following his Tommy John surgery.
“It’s just approach it as an opportunity, opportunities for a few guys to take that next step in their careers and solidify themselves in the bullpen,” Twins bullpen coach LaTroy Hawkins said last month regarding how the team evaluated the open bullpen roles in camp.
“Obviously, what happened last trade deadline, we traded a bunch of our high-leverage guys. And our thought process, we created those guys, we built those guys, and we can do it again.”
Laweryson and Kent don’t have the same overpowering stuff as Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax, or even Brock Stewart had when in Minnesota’s bullpen last season. But the two impressed Hawkins, Shelton, and the Twins front office well enough that they rounded out the last two spots in camp and left with the team for Baltimore on Tuesday.
With all eight spots penciled in for Opening Day, the projection systems are still projected as the 20th-best bullpen by fWAR (2.4) going into the season. FanGraphs also has them projected for the 23rd-ranked ERA by relievers in baseball at 4.20.
It’s a complete turnaround after the Twins traded away their five best relievers at last year’s trade deadline. For the returning relievers like Sands and Topa, it’s all about the opportunity to show they can handle the high-leverage roles and prove this year’s bullpen can get crucial outs.
“I think last year at the end of the year, it was a younger bullpen and we kind of had to almost feel like I kind of had to help lead by example and set a good precedent with the younger guys,” said Sands.
“But you look around, and we have some guys that have done it for a really long time, much longer than I have. I’m looking forward to whatever that roster looks like on Opening Day, months moving forward, it will be a fun time with whoever is out there, and hopefully we can all build a good relationship.”
Justin Topa echoed the same sentiment.
“I think Cole and I have an opportunity to do great things this year, and as a group, it’s going to see that blend of veteran guys and guys we have camp here that have pitched big innings in Major League Baseball for a long time,” Topa said. “So having those guys mixed with the young guys is a good opportunity for the young guys to learn as well as us to learn every day.”
On paper, Rogers looks like the de facto leader entering the 2026 season with 9.145 years of service. However, the Twins have a new group of relievers, who will all be pitching together for the first time under Hawkins’s first year as a big league coach. Therefore, it’ll take time for a leader to emerge as they continue to build relationships with one another.
“I don’t think a leader necessarily walks in Day 1 and says, ‘I’m going to lead you,’” Rogers said. “I think that forms over time. So if that happens to me over time, great; if not, somebody else does, that’s cool, too. But I think that’s how those are formed, are over time, and let them happen organically.”
Even if the Twins don’t have established leaders in the bullpen, Funderburk is ecstatic to have veteran lefties such as Rogers and Banda added into the mix to help balance out the workload and see what each can do in lefty specialist roles and match up against righties a bit more often.
“I’ve been so lucky with the lefties I’ve been around in my career with [Caleb] Thielbar, [Steven] Okert, and Danny Coulombe last year,” said Funderburk.
“They have been so, so good to me, and taking me under their wing, and Rog has done just that. Super nice guy, great teammate, always asking how I’m doing, and we’re very similar pitch arsenal-wise, so I’m super excited to watch him do his thing and pick his brain a little bit pitch-wise against certain hitters, certain counts, and certain situations.”
The Twins have a unique bullpen group. They have returning veterans looking to take the next step, longtime veterans looking for a bounce back, and young arms looking to make their first big impressions. Fortunately, there’s no better bullpen coach for them to have than Hawkins, who spent the better part of 16 of his 21 MLB seasons as a full-time reliever.
“It’s a good chance to get back in the game and just give these guys something they’re not used to getting,” said Hawkins.
“They’re getting so much other information, numbers, and exFIP, everything with these stats. I think I bring a little bit of touch of, as I always said, from the done did it school. I can really relate to what they’re going through because there’s probably not too many things on the mound that I haven’t been through.”
The expectations may be low for Minnesota’s bullpen all season, and this collection of relievers will have a lot to prove for themselves early in the season. There will still be many other names moving up and down from the minors throughout the season. The Twins used 37 different pitchers, including four position players pitching in blowouts, to get through the 2025 season.
No matter what, this group wants to change the narrative around them and step up in big opportunities so the 2026 Twins can achieve better all-around results than this year and last season.
