{"id":552657,"date":"2026-02-03T18:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T18:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/552657\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T18:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T18:10:13","slug":"twins-eduardo-salazar-agree-to-minor-league-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/552657\/","title":{"rendered":"Twins, Eduardo Salazar Agree To Minor League Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Twins and right-handed reliever Eduardo Salazar<\/a> are in agreement on a minor league contract, per Jon Heyman of the New York Post<\/a>. He\u2019ll presumably be in camp as a non-roster invitee later this month.<\/p>\n

Salazar has pitched in each of the past three major league seasons, spending time with the Reds, Dodgers and Nationals, in that order. The 27-year-old righty has pitched 70 2\/3 big league innings but been tagged for a grisly 5.99 ERA in that time. Salazar sat 95.1 mph with his four-seamer and 94.4 mph with his sinker in 2025, complementing that pair of heaters with a slider that averaged 87.5 mph. He\u2019s fanned only 16% of his opponents in the majors against a 10.2% walk rate, but the right-hander does sport an encouraging 52.8% ground-ball rate.<\/p>\n

Salazar\u2019s production in the upper minors hasn\u2019t been demonstrably better. He has a 5.71 ERA in 117 Triple-A frames with comparable strikeout, walk and ground-ball rates. That said, he did post quality swinging-strike and strikeout rates during his Triple-A time with the Nationals in 2024-25, which is notable given that Washington altered his pitch selection. He\u2019d previously been almost exclusively a sinker\/slider reliever with very occasional four-seamers and changeups. The Nats significantly upped his four-seam usage, so perhaps Minnesota is intrigued by what he\u2019d look like with further tweaks to his pitch usage and\/or pitch shapes.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s plenty of room in the Twins\u2019 bullpen, should Salazar enjoy a nice performance in spring training or early in the season with the Twins\u2019 Triple-A club in St. Paul. Minnesota had one of baseball\u2019s best bullpens heading into the 2025 trade deadline and gutted it by trading Jhoan Duran<\/a>, Griffin Jax<\/a>, Louis Varland<\/a>, Danny Coulombe<\/a> and Brock Stewart<\/a> as part of an 11-player fire sale. They\u2019ve done virtually nothing to revamp the relief corps this offseason. Taylor Rogers<\/a> returned on a $2MM deal for what will be his age-35 season, and the Twins picked up righty Eric Orze<\/a> in a small trade with the Rays.<\/p>\n

That pair will join holdovers Justin Topa<\/a>, Cole Sands<\/a> and Kody Funderburk<\/a> in what looks like one of the weakest bullpens in the sport. The Twins have more young starting pitchers in the upper minors than they have rotation spots available, so perhaps some of David Festa<\/a>, Zebby Matthews<\/a>, Taj Bradley<\/a>, Connor Prielipp<\/a> and Marco Raya<\/a> will end up in the bullpen rather than on the starting staff.<\/p>\n

Regardless, the Twins represent a good opportunity for someone like Salazar as he tries to find his footing in the majors. Salazar is out of minor league options. If he\u2019s added to the 40-man at any point, he\u2019ll need to stick or else be exposed to waivers. If things click, he can be controlled for five seasons, but there\u2019s a lot that needs to go right before that\u2019s a real consideration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Twins and right-handed reliever Eduardo Salazar are in agreement on a minor league contract, per Jon Heyman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[5,5856,822,60,3190,4,148],"class_list":{"0":"post-552657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-twins","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-eduardo-salazar","10":"tag-minnesota","11":"tag-minnesota-twins","12":"tag-minnesotatwins","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-twins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116008047513755421","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}