As his team crumbles, Ryan is having a season worthy of a Cy Young Award

Minnesota Twins ace Joe Ryan is 11-4 with a 2.48 ERA in his past 20 outings, including a 2.34 ERA in his past 10. (Instagram via @thejoeryanexperience)

By Aaron Gleeman

Joe Ryan had his shortest start of the season last Tuesday in Minneapolis against the Athletics, failing to complete five innings for the first time. He gave up two earned runs in four innings, and the Minnesota Twins’ shaky defense led to another three unearned runs scoring in the eventual 6-3 loss.

The night was a rare blemish on a season full of consistent excellence. Despite the rest of the Twins’ starting rotation, overall roster and season as a whole crumbling around Ryan, a first-time All-Star, he has performed like a legitimate Cy Young Award contender. Six weeks still remain for him to bolster his credentials.

Ryan is 12-6 with a 2.77 ERA and 159 strikeouts versus just 28 walks in 143 innings, holding opponents to a .205 batting average and a .611 on-base plus slugging percentage. When he is on the mound, the Twins have played like an 85-win team, compared to a 72-win pace when he is not pitching.

Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal is heavily favored to capture a second consecutive American League Cy Young Award, but Ryan has placed himself firmly in the down-ballot mix. And he continues to climb the rankings of the Twins’ best seasons by starting pitchers since 2000.

Ryan is one win off the AL lead and trails only Skubal in strikeout-to-walk ratio. He also ranks among the AL’s top five in ERA, opponents’ batting average, walks and hits per inning pitched, strikeout rate, walk rate, wins above replacement and win probability added. He is in the top 10 for just about every other category.

Ryan was a Triple-A prospect with a low-90s fastball and no other reliable pitch when the Twins got him from the Tampa Bay Rays for Nelson Cruz at the 2021 trade deadline. Four years later, his fastball averages 94 mph and he throws four other pitches, each with a sub-.250 batting average allowed.

“I think Joe is enjoying being really good at what he does,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “He takes a lot of pride in being the type of pitcher that we’re seeing right now. I think this is what it looks like for Joe Ryan as he pours more and more into this and wants to reach new heights in his career.”

Ryan is the first Twins pitcher with an ERA below 2.80 in at least 140 innings through the first 127 games of a season since Frank Viola in his Cy Young-winning 1988 campaign.

Focusing on the past 25 seasons, nearly every Twins pitching leaderboard is dominated by Johan Santana’s amazing run from 2004 to 2006, in which he won two Cy Youngs and merited three. Ryan is building a compelling case for the Twins’ best season by a pitcher other than Santana since 2000.

Ryan has averaged about 1.1 wins above replacement per six outings, as calculated by Baseball Reference, which puts him on a pace for 5.7 WAR. That would be the Twins’ best figure since Santana’s 7.6 in 2006, just ahead of Sonny Gray’s 5.6 for his Cy Young runner-up season in 2023.

Ryan fares even better in win probability added, which measures performance based on the context in which it occurred to analyze the actual effect on wins and losses. He ranks No. 7 in WPA among Twins starters since 2000. At his current pace, Ryan would finish with 3.5 WPA, again narrowly ahead of Gray’s standout 2023 for the Twins’ best mark since Santana in 2006.

Ryan is 29, and under team control for two seasons after this one, which is part of why he was highly sought at the trade deadline. At one point, Ryan thought he had been traded when an erroneous report made the social media rounds.

“I obviously thought I got traded for several minutes,” Ryan said. “Then I was like: ‘Is this going to happen? What’s the deal?’ That was a weird mix of emotions.”

At the time, Ryan was with pitcher Griffin Jax, who is now with the Rays. “It was just weird,” Ryan said. “Then he didn’t think he was going to get traded. And he got traded, and I didn’t.”

Despite last-minute pushes from several teams, including the Boston Red Sox, the Twins opted to keep Ryan. For now, at least. Trade speculation will undoubtedly start to swirl around Ryan again this winter, particularly after the Pohlad family pulled the Twins off the market amid more payroll cuts.

After a deadline-day experience he called sobering because of the uncertainty, Ryan has been able to put the emotions and speculation aside to continue pitching at a high level for an otherwise makeshift Twins rotation that desperately needs any sort of consistent quality innings.

Ryan admitted to being “frustrated at times and a little confused” about the Twins’ defensive issues, but he has kept pitching well in increasingly difficult circumstances and has shown little sign of slowing. He is 11-4 with a 2.48 ERA in his past 20 outings, including a 2.34 ERA in his past 10.