St. Paul – It’s not often that a Triple-A team experiences a coaching change in the middle of a season. However, that’s what happened with the St. Paul Saints last month when pitching coach Ryan Ricci left the team for a coaching job with Grand Canyon University.
The Minnesota Twins didn’t have to look too far to find a new man for the job. They promoted the Florida Complex Twins pitching coach, Ryan Meisinger, to join Brian Dinkelman’s staff in St. Paul.
“Drew MacPhail, the farm director, called me and offered it to me and just told me to talk to my family if I was comfortable leaving Florida and all that,” said Meisinger. “I was comfortable enough here. I played a lot of years at Triple-A, so it’s kind of been — after the first week, it’s been awesome.”
“Anytime you get a new coach in here, especially coming from complex where it’s just different baseball from Triple-A baseball with older guys and guys who have been up in the big leagues,” said Dinkelman. “But he’s done a nice job so far.”
Meisinger, 32, had always known he wanted to be a coach before the Baltimore Orioles drafted him in 2015 out of Radford University in Virginia. He spent a decade in pro ball, made his MLB debut as an 11th-round pick on June 29, 2018, with the Orioles. He also spent a couple more seasons in the majors with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2020 and the Chicago Cubs in 2021.
He continued to bounce around the Indy Ball and Mexican League circuits the past few seasons. However, when Meisinger and his wife had their first daughter in early 2025, he knew that season would be his last year pitching.
“That made it easier to hang it up, and then I’ve always been interested in coaching, ever since I was in college,” Meisinger said. “And I got some phone calls this off-season, and I decided that was the next step for my career.”
Among those calls were the Twins, who brought Meisinger on as a pitching coach with their Florida Complex team. They brought him in during spring training to meet the coaches throughout the other affiliates and roaming minor league instructors.
Meisinger established a relationship with Saints manager Brian Dinkelman and fellow pitching coach Carlos Hernandez there. That has made the transition into the Saints role much easier for him over the last month.
“It’s been an easy transition,” said Hernandez on Meisinger joining the staff. “When I first met him in spring training, I thought he was an awesome guy. Like, first year coaching, and I think he’s come a long way. He’s doing wonderful things, like he’s connecting with players, not just the pitchers but everyone in the clubhouse, which is awesome.”
Only four weeks into the job, Meisinger has felt like he’s fit right into the role. It’s not often that a player retires and immediately goes into coaching. Most prefer to take a ‘gap year’ before getting back into the game full-time.
But with Meisinger’s passion to become a coach having been there since college, there was no time for him to waste getting into it. Having a longtime veteran like Hernandez to help him adjust to coaching in Triple-A has gone a long way toward helping him adjust.
“Carlos is such a great guy to work with. He’s been helping me a lot along the way. He’s awesome,” Meisinger said. “He’s very prepared; he works really hard. We’ve had really good dialogue back and forth. If he sees something, he’ll say something to me and vice versa. We’ve had a really, really good relationship.”
Having spent parts of six seasons in Triple-A, Meisinger had an easy time adjusting to the routine. At first, figuring out how to break down the analytics for multiple players was a bit of a challenge, especially compared to just digesting the information available to him. Now that he’s adjusted to his new role, he’s found a way to approach each player with the information they need.
“I mean, as a player I really dove into it,” he said, “but it was just for me and based off my arsenal, and now I have to base it off everyone’s arsenal and build out plans that fit player by player, not just myself.”
“He has a good understanding for pitching and kind of the new age of pitching, analytics, stuff like that,” Dinkelman said. “But he also has a good feel for the guys. I feel like they respect him because he’s played the game and has done it recently, so it’s been good for him so far.”
While it’s an adjustment for the coaching staff to experience a coaching promotion in the middle of the season, it’s also an adjustment for the players. However, the adjustment is not only for the Saints pitchers, but also for their entire clubhouse.
Fortunately, as Hernandez has noted, Meisinger has fit right into his role. He’s helped the pitching staff with their day-to-day work as well as the catchers. In doing so, he’s accomplishing what drove him to become a coach.
“Honestly, that’s the whole reason I got into coaching is to help guys get to the big leagues and stay there,” Meisinger said.
“The guys have been great to him so far,” said Dinkelman. “Anytime you lose one of your coaches in the middle of the season, you kind of build a relationship with them, and get somebody new, and you never know how it’s going to go. But the guys have been good to him so far and seems like it’s been good back and forth.”
