{"id":596496,"date":"2026-02-27T17:51:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T17:51:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/596496\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T17:51:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T17:51:25","slug":"twins-claim-zak-kent-off-waivers-from-cardinals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/596496\/","title":{"rendered":"Twins Claim Zak Kent Off Waivers From Cardinals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Twins announced Thursday that they\u2019ve claimed righty <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/search\/search.fcgi?pid=kentza01,kent--001zak&amp;search=Zak+Kent&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-02-26_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Zak Kent<\/a> off waivers from the Cardinals, who\u2019d designated him for assignment a few days ago. Righty <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/l\/lopezpa01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-02-26_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Pablo L\u00f3pez<\/a>, who <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mlbtraderumors.com\/2026\/02\/pablo-lopez-to-undergo-tommy-john-surgery.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">underwent an internal brace procedure<\/a> yesterday and will miss the entire 2026 season, was transferred to the 60-day injured list to open a spot on the 40-man roster.<\/p>\n<p>Kent joins his third team since spring training opened and his fourth of the offseason. The 28-year-old (as of Tuesday) finished the 2025 campaign on the Guardians\u2019 roster but has since bounced to the Cardinals, Rangers, back to the Cardinals, and now to the Twins following a series of DFAs. There\u2019s fortunately no cross-country journey for him this time around, as the Twins and Cardinals both play their spring games in Florida\u2019s Grapefruit League.<\/p>\n<p>The 2025 season saw Kent make his big league debut with Cleveland, tossing 17 2\/3 innings with a 4.58 ERA, 21.1% strikeout rate and 10.5% walk rate. Most of his season was spent with the Guardians\u2019 top affiliate in Columbus, where Kent notched a 2.84 ERA and set down a gaudy 31.4% of his opponents on strikes \u2014 albeit against an ugly 13.2% walk rate. Kent isn\u2019t an especially hard thrower, sitting 93.1 mph with his four-seamer in 2025, but he missed plenty of bats in the upper minors thanks to the quality of his mid-80s slider and low-80s curveball.<\/p>\n<p>Kent is entering his final minor league option year. He\u2019s actually already exhausted the standard three option years allotted to players, but teams can be granted fourth option years based on a player\u2019s minor league injury history and\/or the speed with which they burn through those original option years. He\u2019ll give the Twins another option to consider in a wide-open bullpen mix that has only <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/sandsco01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-02-26_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Cole Sands<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/bandaan01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-02-26_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Anthony Banda<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/r\/rogerta01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-02-26_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Taylor Rogers<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/t\/topaju01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-02-26_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Justin Topa<\/a> locked into spots. In parts of four Triple-A seasons, Kent carries a 3.74 ERA, a 26% strikeout rate and a 12% walk rate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Twins announced Thursday that they\u2019ve claimed righty Zak Kent off waivers from the Cardinals, who\u2019d designated him&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,1997,464],"class_list":["post-596496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-pablo-lopez","tag-zak-kent"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116143868486255516","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596496","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=596496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}