St. Paul – May 2, 2026, will be a day John Klein and his family will forever remember. Even three weeks after making his MLB debut, he continues to get butterflies in his stomach whenever he thinks back to it.
The Brooklyn Park native could have found out about the news a few minutes earlier on Friday, May 1, had it not been for his leaving CHS Field to get out ahead of the postgame fireworks crowd.
“He had already left the park that night, so I called him,” said Saints manager Brian Dinkelman. “I actually called him twice; he didn’t answer. So Matt Tramp, our clubhouse guy, called him a few seconds after, he answered the phone, so I gave him a hard time about that, not answering my call, but answering his.”
“I saw Tramp was calling me,” Klein recalled. “So I picked it up, then it was like, ‘Sup, John? I know you got off the mound today and threw a little bit. You’re supposed to go on Sunday. Can you pitch tomorrow?’ I was like, ‘Sure, whatever you need.’ And then he was like, ‘Well, it’ll probably be at Target Field instead of here.’”
It was all a quick turnaround for John Klein. The Saints game that Friday night had ended just after 10:00 p.m., and he’d have to report to Target Field just 12 hours later. Despite the quick turnaround, news of his call-up spread fast enough among family and friends that more showed up than he had tickets for.
“It was a pretty surreal moment, and instantly called my wife, my mom, my best friend, let them know the news, and they spread it like wildfire. So I instantly got a whole bunch of texts and calls and the full shebang of it,” He said.
Klein got a little lost getting into the player’s lot at Target Field that first day. Fortunately for him, one of his favorite players as a kid and the Twins bullpen coach, LaTroy Hawkins, was pulling up right behind him, so there wasn’t much confusion from there on where to go.
Everything from there on was go, go, go for Klein for most of the day. That was until Derek Shelton put him in the game at the top of the ninth, when the Twins were already trailing 11-4. He’d heard plenty of friends and family shouting his name out while he was warming up pre-game and in the pen. Once Klein entered the game, all the extra noise had ceased, and he could just do his job and pitch the Twins out of the 9th.
Klein pitched a scoreless inning on 12 pitches for his MLB debut. When he made his big league debut, he became the third Minnesota-born player in the past five seasons to be drafted, developed, and debut with the team, along with Louis Varland and Matt Wallner in 2022.
Varland and Wallner didn’t get to make their MLB debuts at home. However, Klein did, which was an extra-special moment for a kid who spent most of his childhood going to Twins games at the Metrodome and Target Field.
“It was my, everyone here’s lifelong goal is to make it to the big leagues,” said Klein. “So not only can I say I did that, but I did it for my hometown team in my hometown stadium. So, still thinking about it just gives me butterflies, and it’s surreal.”
“Being from this area, being a Twins fan growing up, to let him know he was going to go join the big league team and pitch in that was pretty awesome,” Dinkelman said.
Klein would only make one more appearance before the Twins sent him back to Triple-A. His outing against the Washington Nationals in D.C. wasn’t spectacular. He allowed two runs on two hits, including a home run, and a walk in 1 ⅓ innings.
However, in his three outings since the Twins optioned him to Triple-A St. Paul, John Klein has begun to turn a corner on the season. He’s posted a 2.89 ERA, 33.3% strikeout rate, 6.1% walk rate, 3.21 FIP, and 0.64 WHIP over 9 ⅓ innings.
Before his call-up to the majors, Klein’s 2026 season hadn’t been going well. He had a 7.48 ERA, 8.42 FIP, and a .259 opponents’ average. Getting a taste of the big leagues has been a contributing factor to Klein’s turnaround. Still, he’s also been putting in plenty of unseen work behind the scenes that makes him a candidate to return to an ever-shuffling Twins bullpen this year.
“I feel like my breaking stuff is getting a little better,” he said. “Sweeper, slider. Been working on a slider. I was getting it over the plate, but now it’s kind of executing it down rather than leaving it belt high.”
