St. Paul – There’s never a good time for any injury in sports. However, the latest one for Walker Jenkins, the Minnesota Twins’ top prospect, comes at an especially bad time.
On Sunday, Walker Jenkins exited the game after he made a game-saving catch that caused him to crash his left shoulder into the right-center field wall. Jenkins went down immediately with pain and took some time to get up.
Fortunately, he was able to get off the field on his own power and was removed from the game. The next day, the Twins announced that Jenkins had an MRI, which revealed a Grade 2 AC joint sprain.
The Twins plan to shut down Jenkins for 10 days and then reevaluate its status. But the typical recovery time for a Grade 2 AC joint sprain can range from 3 to 6 weeks. According to John Hopkins Medicine, a Grade 2 sprain ‘consists of damage to the ligaments,’ meaning they are more stretched than torn, unlike a Grade 3 or higher.
That’s encouraging early news on Jenkins’ left shoulder joint sprain. However, again, the Twins will not know the next steps until they reevaluate his status during the next homestand.
There was some additional bad timing with Jenkins’ injury, because it marked the third straight day one of Minnesota’s top prospects at Triple-A St. Paul left the game with an injury. The first came on Friday, when Emmanuel Rodriguez slid headfirst into first base and sprained his left thumb. Then on Saturday, Kaelen Culpepper was hit by a pitch below his right shoulder and left the game.
Fortunately, Culpepper and Rodriguez have only been considered day-to-day. The Saints had Culpepper perform a full workout Tuesday afternoon before the start of their six-game series in Las Vegas. The workout went well enough that Saints manager Brian Dinkelman added him as a late addition to the lineup, leading off as their designated hitter in their 15-7 win over the Aviators.
Rodriguez has been taking batting practice the past few days and could be ready to return to the Saints lineup as early as Wednesday night.
For Jenkins, though, the timing of his injury couldn’t be any worse. He was just beginning to heat up at the plate. He had a .333/.455/.639 slash line with two home runs, five RBI, two stolen bases, seven strikeouts, and eight walks in his last 10 games. That was a vast improvement from his .204/.358/.222 slash line from his first 15 games of the year.
Some of Jenkins’ struggles could be attributed to the cold, while others stem from beginning the season at a level where the average pitcher age is 27.4, a full six years his senior.
The one bright side of his early-season struggles is that Jenkins now has something to reference for how he performs immediately out of spring training into the regular season.
Before this year, Walker Jenkins had played only three career games in April. He suffered a hamstring injury to open 2024 with Low-A Fort Myers and tried to battle through an ankle injury with Double-A Wichita, which had been with him since spring training in 2025.
Even with a baseline to reference for performance going forward, the setback with his Grade 2 AC joint sprain in his left shoulder could still have him sidelined with the St. Paul Saints until mid to late June.
But no one will know his recovery timetable for certain until the Twins reevaluate within the 10-day timeframe they have given. So for now, Twins fans will have to be patient and hope they’ll get good news on their top prospect recovering from his left shoulder joint sprain on a quick timeline rather than the longer one.
