It’s January, and the Minnesota Twins are still itching to add some oomph to their bullpen picture. Could some of their old friends provide the right scratch?

The club has largely remained on the sidelines while premier and even second-tier options have come off the board this offseason. However, with spring training fast approaching in a matter of weeks, they should be feeling more urgency. Even if they were never planning to spend considerable resources on proven relief aces like Edwin Diaz and Kenley Jansen on the free agent market, they surely had to envision more additions than just Eric Orze, who’s a nice pick up, but probably better suited for a lower-leverage role.

Internal options and trade possibilities certainly remain on the table. Still, if the Twins want to add arms externally and do so for relatively minimal resources, there are a few tiers of players the club is at least somewhat familiar with.

Reliable Southpaws

Kody Funderburk is back in the picture after a strong two-month finish to the 2025 campaign. Right now, he looks like the team’s top option from the left side. He’s a reasonable lock to crack the opening day roster, but he should probably be the second-best lefty option on a competitive team. If the Twins want to add someone ahead of him on the depth chart, and someone with legitimate closing experience, Taylor Rogers is probably the best bet remaining on the free agent market.

Now 35 years old, he is coming off a solid year with the Cincinnati Reds and Chicago Cubs, where he had a combined 3.38 ERA across 50 ⅔ innings pitched. Rogers still provided plenty of strikeouts (24% in 2025, 27.1% across his career), but his walk rate crept up to 10.2% this year, which was the second-highest clip of his career.

Some of the numbers under the hood were also worrisome, including batted-ball stats such as average exit velocity (29th percentile) and hard-hit percentage (19th percentile). However, both of those figures were in elite territory for Rogers as recently as 2024. Maybe last season was an outlier, or perhaps it was the veteran’s age finally catching up to him. Either way, he could probably be had on a one-year deal in the $5 to $7 million range.

Another southpaw that has a stint with the Twins already under his belt (well, two actually) comes in the form of Danny Coulombe, who the club signed almost exactly a year ago to a reasonable $3 million pact. They then traded him at the deadline in the infamous 2025 bullpen exodus™.

But really, the club and the pitcher couldn’t have asked for more from their partnership. The Twins got strong results from a solid lefty setup man for four months, who posted a sterling 1.16 ERA, and then netted them a mid-level starting pitcher prospect (Garrett Horn). Coulombe was able to prove he still has the stuff to be a reliable pitcher for at least another go-around despite diminished velocity. Maybe another reunion could be in the cards for a similar value to last year’s signing.

Forgotten Twins

Tyler Kinley was one of the Derek Falvey-led front office’s only selections in the Rule 5 draft in 2018. The righty appeared in just four games, but he floundered to the tune of a 24.30 ERA, and the Twins returned him to the Miami Marlins, because Rule 5 picks are not allowed to be optioned to the minor leagues.

Kinley would then spend one more year on South Beach, and then five-plus seasons in Denver as a bullpen stalwart on some truly terrible teams. The Colorado Rockies sent him to the Atlanta Braves at the trade deadline, where he pitched well, with a 0.72 ERA and a 96.4% strand rate. He got a ton of misses last year, and his slider was an absolute hammer that held opponents to a .194 batting average and just 10 extra base hits across the entire season. He would be an intriguing pickup for the Twins as long as he isn’t their only addition from here on out.

Last, and probably least, is there anything left in the arm of old friend Liam Hendriks? He’s only made 19 appearances over the last three seasons, mostly to rough results, but he has a long track record of success before injuries and illnesses ravaged the Aussie.

From 2019 to 2022, he was one of the best relievers in the game, with a 2.26 ERA while accumulating 114 saves for the Oakland A’s and White Sox. Of course, that was a lifetime and multiple surgeries ago at this point. But if he can prove that he’s in a healthier spot, maybe Hendriks could be a buy-low lottery ticket experiment that could at least provide some veteran leadership for a young and inexperienced relief corps.