Kremer gives unfriendly welcome to former team with 7-inning gem 

MINNEAPOLIS -- When the Twins acquired Dean Kremer from the Orioles prior to last week’s Trade Deadline, it did not grab headlines, thanks largely to his inflated ERA following a couple of rough starts in an injury-interrupted season.

If the Kremer who has made two starts for Minnesota so far is what they’re going to have going forward, however, then the Twins' front office made one of the moves of the year in acquiring him.

Kremer was absolutely brilliant in his first home start with the Twins, shutting down his former mates over seven superb innings as Minnesota shook off a frustrating road trip with a 9-5 win in the opener of a three-game series. Once again he leaned into his four-seam fastball, throwing six different pitches to keep a team of very familiar opponents off balance all night.

He induced 14 swinging strikes, his most since April, and was simply unthreatened for just about the entire game. Kremer was one of baseball's most reliable starters from 2022-25, and early returns suggest he could quickly regain that status.

“I would like to be like this every time,” Kremer said. “That would be the goal. But I’m just going out there and competing.”

It was the second straight start that Kremer threw his four-seam fastball more than he had on average earlier this year. Between that and what he said were the beginning of some other tweaks given to him by the Twins’ pitching development department, Kremer looked like much more than a depth piece, and rather like a potentially significant addition to the Twins’ rotation as they pursue a playoff spot.

“Dean’s been a really good pitcher,” said catcher Ryan Jeffers. “He’s had really good moments. It hasn’t gone his way this year. And you look at what he did today, I think that’s what we believed that he was and he can keep being that person.”

Pitching aggressively and efficiently, Kremer held the visitors to one run on one hit with one walk, striking out seven. And both the run and the hit were scarcely his fault. Jackson Holliday beat out a grounder with one out in the fourth, and Gunnar Henderson scored on the back end of a first-and-third delayed double-steal attempt (though he was not credited with a steal).

Other than that? Nothing. Kremer did not allow a baserunner in any of his other six innings. He needed only 89 pitches, throwing more than two-thirds of them for strikes, and likely would’ve pitched longer if the Twins’ offense hadn’t broken the game open in the bottom of the seventh. He was the first Twins pitcher since Bailey Ober in September 2024 to pitch at least seven innings with no more than one run or one hit.

“I think we were looking at the overall back of the baseball card,” said manager Derek Shelton. “He had some tough starts earlier this year. He was injured. But I think we were looking at what he’s done over the last three or four years in Baltimore. And what he’d done there was be a really effective starter in the American League East, which is not an easy place to do it.”

The performance was extremely welcome for a team that took a series of late losses on a 3-6 road trip over the previous 10 days. It’s also a very good sign for a team currently without ace Joe Ryan, who is on the injured list due to a left glute strain.

“I think it’s really important,” Shelton said. “We talked about the fact that we wanted to add a starter at the Deadline. We added it after a really good start by Zebby [Matthews], not knowing that Joe was going to go on the IL. But I think the fact that we continued to add depth there and get quality appearances is really important.”