Fort Myers – For the first time in his baseball career, the Minnesota Twins’ top pitching prospect, Connor Prielipp, was able to enjoy a healthy off-season. He could schedule his off-season training without any rehab plans.

“It was my longest season, and it was a good off-season to be healthy and build up like normal,” Prielipp said. “Usually in the off-season, I’m rehabbing some type of surgery. So this off-season was nice to just be chill and a normal baseball player off-season.”

Now that Prielipp has a clean bill of health to work off of, the Twins want him to add some new pitches to his arsenal. Towards the end of 2025, Prielipp added a sinker into his mix and threw it 16.4% of the time over his five outings with the St. Paul Saints.

With some successful results with his sinker against righties, the Twins saw fit for him to add a fifth pitch to his arsenal, as many starters would have. Prielipp started tinkering with a curveball in January and has begun throwing it against hitters in live batting practice.

“We just want to give him another weapon in his belt,” said Twins pitching development coach Jonas Lovin. “Another solution to solve problems that hitters present and the curveball was a no-brainer.

“When I got here for camp, I’ve been developing a curveball, so we’ll see how that goes. Working on both those two. Oh yeah, I’ve thrown two lives, I’ve thrown it the last two lives, and it’s been okay.”

Like his sinker, it’s a pitch the Twins are hoping he can use outside the zone and get hitters to chase, which is something Prielipp struggled with throughout all of 2025. He owned a .288 opponents’ average on the year, which went down from .301 in Double-A to .250 in Triple-A.

Fortunately, his lack of command in the strike zone was not an issue. He owned an 8.5% walk rate through his 82 ⅔ innings on the year. But Connor Prielipp has yet to become comfortable with pitches that can get hitters to chase outside the strike zone, which is where the sinker and curveball have come in as weapons to use against righties and lefties.

Prielipp’s 27% strikeout rate in 2025 is already proof enough of what he can do against hitters with his fastball, changeup, and slider. By adding two more pitches that can move effectively both inside and outside the zone, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see his strikeout rate in 2026 go above 30%.

As for Prielipp’s role coming into 2026, the Twins are fully committed to keeping him as a starter. Even with Pablo López’s season-ending injury opening up a rotation spot for the Twins, Prielipp will be a part of the Saints Opening Day rotation, slowly building up his workload from three innings a start to five or six on average by June.

While the injury history has provided some sense as to why he’d move to the bullpen sooner versus later, the stuff Connor Prielipp has in his arsenal can still be very effective as a starter. By keeping him in that role, the Twins are giving him all the confidence that 2026 will be his best season yet, while allowing him to potentially reach the majors this year.

“I’ve been a starter my whole life,” he said, “and I’d love to start as long as I can.”