The Twins pitching pipeline has succeeded, to the point of having two and a half legitimate high-upside options waiting in the wings in Saint Paul.

Making this more impressive is the fact that they aren’t waiting to replace a crusty veteran scrap heap signing who has struggled, but rather, a struggling pitcher who is actually still young and projectable. This isn’t news to anyone, but it’s still worth celebrating for a moment.

The true choice for this callup was Mattews or David Festa. Andrew Morris doesn’t have quite the shine or the upside of either Festa or Matthews, but he is a legitimate prospect who has moved quickly through the farm system.

He profiles more as a mid-to-back of the rotation starter.

But, he realistically wasn’t an option for a call up, based on his 2025 performance to date. He hasn’t been missing many bats, and has gotten middling results. But why Zebby, when Festa has generally been the better pitcher, especially with the Twins?

The David Festa situation

Fans have seen plenty of Festa over the past couple seasons. The Slim Reaper has acquitted himself well, showing tantalizing flashes of a potential future as a frontline starter.

In three starts with the Twins, replacing Pablo López while he was dealing with a minor hamstring injury, Festa threw to a 1.38 ERA and 2.41 FIP.

However, he averaged just 4 ⅓ innings per start, and walked 8.9% of the batters he faced. To avoid bullpen burnout, the Twins would prefer a starter who can be counted on to average at least five innings per turn.

Festa also hasn’t pitched since May 5th, skipping a start due to arm fatigue.

Hopefully this is just a proactive measure to get him rest, but it certainly raises potential questions around his health. He is expected to start this weekend, so fingers crossed. There’s also one more factor at play, aside from health.

Service time implications

Matthews being called up over Festa is probably at least partially a business decision.

A player accumulating 172 days of service time uses their first year of team control, and begins the countdown to free agency.

Those first 172 days can come across multiple seasons. Basically, teams have an incentive to keep good prospects in the minors until they are needed to maximize team control. Applying this to the Festa and Matthews situation, a couple things stand out

There are 134 days in potential service time remaining, beginning on Sunday. By my math, Festa was in the majors for 80 days in 2024, and added another 14 covering for Lopez. This means that for the Twins to gain an additional year of team control for Festa, he will need to spend at least 57 days in the minors this season.

Matthews got called up on August 13th last season when Joe Ryan went down. He accrued 47 days through the end of the season.

This gives him a bit more wiggle room compared to Festa: he needs to spend just 10 days in the minors to prevent accruing a full season.

Because of this, it’s likely that there’s some shuffling that happens at some point in 2025, and Matthews probably won’t be up for the entirety of the remaining season. Festa will still be needed, due to injury, ineffectiveness, or to give a fresh look to the rotation.

What to expect from Zebby

What do spring training and his 2025 start with the Saints tell us? Let’s start with a look back. Matthews got his first call-up last season after starting the season at High-A Cedar Rapids.

He wasn’t impressive in his first taste of the majors, pitching to a 6.69 ERA and a 5.72 FIP. Struggling a bit is to be expected from a guy lacking seasoning and pushed into duty a full season earlier than expected.

Through his nine starts, Matthews gave up too much hard contact, and allowed home runs at an unworkable rate — 2.63 bombs allowed per nine innings pitched.

Despite having an arsenal of pitches, he allowed hard contact on all them but his slider. On his four-seam, his expected slugging was .595.

The cutter was somehow worse, at .660. His curve got shelled too, with a .563 expected slugging rate. It was clear that he had some things to work through. Lauded for his control, Zebby posted video game walk rates all through the minors.

His command, however? A real work in progress. With good-but-not-elite velocity and average-ish movement, he left too many pitches where hitters could do damage. In some ways, he resembled a Terry Ryan-style pitch to contact machine, albeit with better stuff.

Fast forward to 2025.

During Spring Training, Matthews showed the unexpected — elite velocity for a starting pitcher. In his early starts in Saint Paul, he was touching 99 on his heater. He has scaled back a bit since then, but is still up a full tick compared to 2024.

And, he kept his signature control despite the added velocity. Through seven Triple-A starts, he has held opposing hitters to a .611 OPS. He’s striking out more than 10 guys per nine innings.

Now, Triple-A is a different level of competition, to be sure. But, Matthews has limited his damage to a single homer across 32 innings pitched. He has pitched to a sparkling 1.93 ERA, with a 2.38 FIP that suggests his results haven’t been a mirage.

How did he get here? As The Athletic’s Aaron Gleeman identified in his top-40 prospect analysis headed into this season:

Good news. By Stuff+, all five of his pitches are now plus offerings, and his slider and cutter have become his best pitches.

By making an adjustment in his pitch mix, he’s lowered his hard-hit rate by 10% year over year, driven by significantly better results on his changeup. This is also great news, as he told Fangraphs that he was working on building confidence in his off speed weapon heading into the season.

Looking at Thomas Nestico’s profile of Zebby’s 2025 season, we see a few additional things.

He’s giving up less contact in the zone with a 5.1% reduction compared to last year, suggesting that he’s gotten better at hitting his spots.

He’s coaxing a few more ground balls as well, with a 1% increase year over year. His weighted on-base average is down a remarkable .99 points since 2024.

That’s the difference between a fifth starter and someone who could start playoff games.

So. Better secondary stuff. More velocity. Less hard contact. Better results in the zone.