Taylor Rogers Can Follow Caleb Thielbar’s Blueprint

The mission to rebuild the Minnesota Twins’ bullpen hasn’t taken shape as fast as the fanbase anticipated. With less than a month to go until pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training, the Twins hadn’t even signed a reliever to a major league contract. Fans have been waiting for them to replace the production lost from trading away Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax, Brock Stewart, Louis Varland, and Danny Coulombe at last summer’s trade deadline.

That was until the team reunited with 2021 All-Star left-handed pitcher Taylor Rogers, who had a 3.15 ERA over six seasons with the Twins. Minnesota traded Rogers and Brent Rooker to the San Diego Padres a day before 2022 Opening Day for a trade that included Chris Paddack, Emilio Pagán, and minor-leaguer Brayan Medina. It was an unpopular trade in Twins Territory to lose Rogers, and now the fanbase can feel good about a familiar face rejoining a Twins bullpen that is unrecognizable from the one he left in 2022.

Still, the Rogers who hasn’t returned isn’t the same pitcher from his first stint at Target Field. Despite his 3.38 ERA over 50 innings last season between the Cincinnati Reds and Chicago Cubs, he had a 4.38 FIP.

Taylor Rogers probably shouldn’t be Minnesota’s closer again. The good news is that the Twins staff has worked with a similar archetype to Rogers before and squeezed extra value out of a reliever who had to reinvent himself. Sergio Romo and Tyler Clippard are among the success stories that come to mind, but the best example is one of Rogers’ teammates when he left the Twins.

Lefty reliever Caleb Thielbar sets a great precedent for Rogers to follow if his second stint in Minnesota can be a success. Thielbar came back to the Twins in 2020 after being with the team from 2013 to 2015. He had a 2.74 ERA, a 19.9 percent strikeout rate, and a 0.26 clutch rating in his second stint. Under Derek Falvey, Thielbar ditched his sinker and added a sweeper to his arsenal. A sweeper and curveball breaking ball mix showcased his offspeed stuff.

But the biggest improvement for Thielbar came in reinventing his fastball. Thielbar went from an 89.6 MPH average fastball velocity in his first Twins run to a 92.2 MPH average velocity from 2020-24. It became his best pitch with a +17 rating, according to Baseball Savant. It led to a 28.8 percent strikeout rate in his second run with the Twins.

Even though his 3.66 ERA was higher the second time, it came in much more important situations, which his 1.29 clutch rating highlights. The Twins didn’t use Thielbar in every big situation. Still, they found value in him as their No. 1 lefty option out of the bullpen, even if he lacked overpowering characteristics.

Twins fans remember Rogers as the All-Star closer before Duran. Even with Minnesota’s lack of veterans in the bullpen, it would be unwise to thrust the everyday high-leverage role right back to a reliever in Rogers who hasn’t recorded a save since 2023. Especially considering Rogers put up a 0.68 leverage index and a -0.85 win probability added in 2025.

New Twins manager Derek Shelton will have to be a bit more strategic in Rogers’ usage to keep him productive in Minnesota. That’s what happened in Thielbar’s first season back in Minnesota in 2020. He had a 0.96 leverage index that season, and he continued to build confidence from there.

Taylor Rogers has lost some of the pure stuff that made him successful early in his career. For example, his average fastball velocity, which was 95.7 MPH in 2021, has dipped to 92.7 MPH in 2025.

That decline began as early as 2022, when his average velocity that season dropped to 93.6 MPH. Minnesota’s first step to get Rogers going again is to find a solution to reinvent the four-seamer. It doesn’t need to be at the 2021 level. But finding a way to regain any extra speed can help re-establish a pitch he only threw one time in 2025.

If Rogers wants to continue his bounce-back efforts, there will be two key statistics that he will need to keep at a reasonable number in 2026. His 90.1 MPH average exit velocity was a career-worst a season ago. The same goes for his 9.9 percent barrel rate. Both stats were worse than their respective league average, leading to an increase in home runs allowed. The 1.24 HR/9 Rogers surrendered in 2025 was another career low.

Finding a way to continue swings and misses will be crucial for Rogers in 2025. Even without his fastball, Rogers still found a way last season to miss enough bats to be effective in that department. A 24 percent strikeout clip in 2025 was far from his 27.7 percent career average, but it was still better than the 22.2 percent league average.

Taylor Rogers still has an advantage in his arsenal throughout his life, especially with his breaking pitches. A 76th percentile breaking run value shows that his sweeper and sinker have enough movement for the Twins to refine. They could add another breaking pitch to Rogers’ repertoire. If the pitch lineup stays the same, the Twins could lean into Rogers’ sweeper, just like they did with Thielbar, to generate swings and misses.

Thielbar used the sweeper, which led to a 33.6 percent whiff rate last season and a 33.95 percent whiff rate on sweepers since 2022. There’s a risk that opposing players will hit the sweepers hard when they make contact, and Rogers has given up 17 home runs off sweepers since 2022. The Twins were able to find success keeping that pitch in the park with Thielbar, who only allowed 4 home runs off of sweepers in his second Twins stint.

It’s no guarantee that Rogers generates the same production Thielbar did with the Twins. It’s partly why the Chicago Cubs paid Thielbar $4.5 million to return for the 2026 season, while the Twins signed Rogers to a $2 million contract. But Minnesota can get some good production out of the veteran arm to aid a bullpen that’s in desperate need of big league stability.

Efforts to reload Minnesota’s bullpen for the 2026 season. Hopefully, we’re just getting started with the report date for Fort Myers fast approaching. More work on the high-leverage arms is needed if the team hopes to contend this season.

But the bullpen needed more veteran arms to better establish its floor. Taylor Rogers isn’t going to be the same hurler he was in his first stint in Minnesota. However, the Twins in recent years have established that they can squeeze the most out of an aging arm with successful stints like Caleb Thielbar.