Spring training is coming up on every baseball fan’s docket. Teams travel to warmer weather to begin their work and preparation for the coming season, and players on the bubble hope to earn their spot on the Major League roster.
To that end, the Twins on Monday announced 22 players who have received an invite to major league camp:
Some notes from this group:
The non-roster invitees include three recent Twins first-round picks: Aaron Sabato, Walker Jenkins, and Kaelen Culpepper. Sabato made his AAA-St. Paul debut last season, hitting 14 home runs with a .741 OPS after putting up a .973 OPS (with nine homers) in AA-Wichita. Jenkins also reached St. Paul last season after spending most of the season in Wichita (.912 OPS), playing in 23 games as a Saint (.719 OPS) in his age-20 season. Culpepper, like Jenkins, has been accelerating through the minors, reaching Wichita in his second minor league season and putting up an .824 OPS over 59 games.
The group also includes several older veterans, none more familiar to Twins fans than Gio Urshela. Urshela was the Twins’ primary third baseman in 2022, playing in 144 games and putting up a 2.9-WAR season before joining the Angels the following year. Across the last three seasons, though, Urshela has been a subpar player, with a .654 OPS and 0.4 total WAR in just 249 games played.
Twins fans may also recognize veteran middle infielder Orlando Arcia via familiarity with his brother Oswaldo, who spent the first three-plus seasons of his career as a Twin, bounced around the league in 2016 (playing for four teams), and was out of the majors following that year. And there is one more player here who has previously appeared in a game for the Twins: reliever Matt Bowman, who made five appearances out of the Minnesota bullpen in 2024.
The last player I want to draw attention to here is Matt Canterino, whose pitching track has been repeatedly derailed by injuries. Canterino last threw a pitch in a non-spring training game in 2022 and will reportedly be unable to pitch yet again this spring, but he remains with the organization.
Of course, I haven’t talked about everyone here, which means it’s going to be one of the players I haven’t mentioned who comes out of nowhere to earn a roster spot. And that’s the best part of spring training.
We’re this close to baseball.
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