Joe Ryan is about as solid a player as you will find in the big leagues. Since his first full season in the majors, 2022, Ryan has never made fewer than 23 starts. He never threw fewer than 135 innings or more than 171, and his season-to-season WAR hovered between 2.2 and 3.1. He didn’t start in the lead, but he only made $6.2 million, which is a huge profit. He was a hot commodity who somehow remained during the Twins’ fire sale last summer; if Minnesota is out of contention again, you’ll likely hear his name come up this upcoming deadline, too.
It also helps that Ryan is having a career year at the right time. He’s already at 2.1 WAR on the season, and we’re only about a third of the way through the calendar. That ranks him fifth in the league. He is also sixth in FIP, 12th in strikeouts, and 10th among qualified starters in K-BB%.
And it goes hot. Ryan hit the Mets on April 23, allowing seven runs in five innings. In six starts since then, he has thrown 32 innings with 37 strikeouts, just six walks, and one home run allowed. His ERA over the past month is 1.97 and his FIP is 2.01. That’s not just ace stuff, that’s Cy Young stuff.
What has always been good about Ryan is still good now. He’s never had great velocity, but his four-seamer has always been at or near the top, thanks to excellent command and lateral arm movement. In every full season of his career, Ryan has ranked in the 93rd percentile or higher in fastball rate, and this despite begging for all kinds of other arm-side contributions.
Every year there is something new. First, he went from a changeup to a splitter, then he added a sinker, and he started throwing the sinker as part of his regular arsenal — especially against righties — instead of treating it as a show-me pitch.
Last year, Ryan’s heater was third in Stuff+ and seventh in Position+ among qualified starters. Or, if you think pitch modeling is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, consider that opponents hit just .208 with a .195 xBA off four-seamers last season. That’s good on any pitch and impressive for a starting four-seamer with below-average speed.
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In baseball, as in life, I’m a big believer in not making things harder than they need to be. Life throws you enough challenges on its own. Another way to make your life easier, as a pitcher, is to cut back on travel. This may be the best way to make your life easier. And Ryan does this, too. He has the 10th best walk rate among active pitchers with at least 500 innings, and hasn’t walked more than 6% of batters since his first full season in the big leagues.
Ryan also has a career 27.6% strikeout rate – like everything else, this is consistent throughout his career – which ranks him 17th among professional hitters in the 2020s. That’s one spot below Zack Wheeler and one spot above Shane Bieber.
So Ryan has a good FIP career, too, right?
It’s wrong!
Ryan’s biggest weakness has always been the home run. To some extent, that’s the cost of setting it up the way it does. He throws a low three-quarter arm angle, and five of his six pitches — his gyro slider is the only exception — have above-average horizontal movement. He’s an aloof guy, and avoids a lot of contact, even hard contact, in the air.
Last year, Ryan had the eighth highest batting average among 127 pitchers who threw at least 100 innings. This year, as he is ruining everyone, he is 11th out of 76 qualified. Most guys pitch successfully without getting many ground balls, and it helps that Ryan sits in the top quartile of strikeouts.
This year, he has cut his home run rate by more than half.
That is probably not sustainable. Which is not to say that Ryan stopped a million planes off the track as a warning; he has allowed four home runs this year, and Statcast has 1 in 3.9 expected home runs. Instead, Ryan’s HR/FB ratio dropped to 5.3%. He hasn’t posted a single-digit HR/FB since 2022. In 2023, when his other numbers were among the best of his career, he allowed home runs on 14.9% of his fly balls. He still allows a lot of balls in the air, and on the pull side; I expect this rate to drop significantly by the end of the season.
But he does a few things differently.
The first is a new pitch, or new pitch: the curveball, which Ryan debuted in the middle of last year. It is only slightly slower than his channeler, and as a channeler he has more than average glove movement. But with the same speed and glove side movement, it drops about an extra foot compared to his sweeper.
No one can beat him. Ryan has a .079 batting average and a .105 slugging percentage when throwing his curveball. And he’s already thrown it 31 more times this year than in 2025; his second most used voice. Last year, Ryan’s fastballs were good, but his breaking balls were average. This year, he’s in the 91st percentile for scoring touchdowns.
But there is a big change there Ryan throws his six pitches. This is the in-zone rate for every pitch in his arsenal throughout his career.
It’s a little hard to understand the difference in Zone% with a chart as limited as this, so I’ll risk being a little vague. Last year, Ryan threw both of his fastballs in the zone at least 60% of the time, while none of his relievers hit the zone more than 45% of the time. His divider spent less time in the area, he even penetrated 30%. And it didn’t work as a chase; opponents chased only 23% of Ryan’s breakaways out of the zone.
This year, Ryan is throwing all six of his pitches somewhere between 40% and 60% of the time. He throws a slider and a pitcher for strikes half the time, and his Zone% in the splitter is up by half. Despite throwing more splitters in the zone, his offspeed pitch rate actually increased slightly.
Ryan’s biggest chase pitch is now his curveball, and guess what: His opponents’ chase rate on that pitch increased from 32.9% to 44.6%. And while he’s throwing sweepers into the zone more, he’s scored about 17 percent of the rush points there, too.
Ryan also throws four of his seamers in the most profitable areas. Last year, it looked like he just walked right up the middle of the strike zone and let it fly.
In 2026, he pitches accurately to the top edge of the strike zone, which is where you want to be if you have a fastball with a ride, two slow breakers, and a splitter you can throw for strikes.
Combining all of Ryan’s pitches, his rushing rate increased from 25.3% last year to 31.7% this year, while his swing rate dropped 2.4 percent. He throws as many meatballs, according to Baseball Savant, as he has his entire career, but opponents are throwing at 73.3% of those pitches this year, down from 83.1% in 2025.
The ability to throw fastballs for strikes is low-hanging fruit. The willingness to throw five or six pitches for strikes, obviously, opened up a new level of performance for Ryan. Don’t make things more difficult than they have to be.
