{"id":587102,"date":"2026-02-22T19:58:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T19:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/587102\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T19:58:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T19:58:19","slug":"twins-receive-encouraging-news-from-joe-ryans-mri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/587102\/","title":{"rendered":"Twins Receive Encouraging News From Joe Ryan&#8217;s MRI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"inline-text-0\" class=\"mt-[18px] md:mt-0 mb-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6a\">Star Twins pitcher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/mlb\/twins\/onsi\/minnesota-twins-news\/joe-ryan-scratched-from-first-spring-start-reason-to-worry\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Joe Ryan<\/a> was scratched from his first start of spring training on Saturday with lower back tightness. His MRI on Sunday showed that it was just inflammation.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Good news for <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/MNTwins?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">#MNTwins<\/a>: Joe Ryan\u2019s MRI showed only inflammation. Best case scenario.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 DanHayesMLB (@DanHayesMLB) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DanHayesMLB\/status\/2025564592538112343?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">February 22, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-2\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6g\">After No. 1 pitcher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/mlb\/twins\/onsi\/minnesota-twins-news\/twins-pablo-lopez-out-for-season-and-may-have-to-wait-till-2028-to-pitch-again\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pablo Lopez<\/a> underwent season-ending elbow surgery earlier this month, Twins fans expected the worst with Ryan&#8217;s exit. They received best-case scenario news on Sunday, and Ryan is expected to miss only a limited amount of time.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-3\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6j\">Ryan&#8217;s availablity for next month&#8217;s World Baseball Classic for Team USA is still in question, but he expected to be ready for the start of the regular season on March 26. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-4\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6m\">&#8220;He\u2019ll be down for a few days here just to let things calm down,\u201d Twins general manager Jeremy Zoll told The Athletic&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7063675\/2026\/02\/22\/joe-ryan-twins-pitcher-mri-mlb\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dan Hayes<\/a>. &#8220;We\u2019ll progress him as tolerated and don\u2019t envision this impacting his readiness for Opening Day&#8230; As of now, we\u2019re just going to take (WBC readiness) day by day here before we have anything definitive on that front. We\u2019ll see how things go. But overall, this is about as good of news as you could have.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-5\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6p\">Ryan is coming off his fist All-Star game appearence, and his best MLB season. He finished last year with a career-best 3.42 ERA and 194 strikeouts in just 30 starts. At 29 years old he looks like an elite option on any pitching staff in baseball.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-6\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6s\">He was one of just a few players on Minnesota&#8217;s roster to survive last year&#8217;s trade deadline firesale. After some contract questions, Minnesota avoided arbitration and settled on a $6.1 million contract in 2026 for its star pitcher in the offseason. Ryan continues to be in the middle of trade rumors, but the entire Twins franchise can now take a deep breathe.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Star Twins pitcher Joe Ryan was scratched from his first start of spring training on Saturday with lower&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[5,822,60,3190,4,148],"class_list":{"0":"post-587102","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-twins","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-minnesota","10":"tag-minnesota-twins","11":"tag-minnesotatwins","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-twins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116116056014935284","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587102","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=587102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}