Orioles Trade Dean Kremer To Twins

It’s Minnesota’s second straight day adding to the pitching staff after they brought in A.J. Minter from the Mets on Thursday. Kremer provides some stability at the back of an inexperienced rotation after the Minter pickup added a much needed veteran in the late innings.

The Twins are reasonably well positioned at the top of the rotation with Joe Ryan and Taj Bradley. They can expect roughly league average production from Bailey Ober. The final two spots are more questionable after season-ending injuries to Pablo López, Mick Abel, David Festa and potentially Paredes.

Zebby Matthews has battled home run issues throughout his career. He has a 5.29 ERA on the season and entered tonight’s start with a 5.64 mark across 38 big league appearances. Rookie lefty Connor Prielipp has a 4.73 ERA over his first 14 career starts. Prielipp was a talented prospect and has a strong strikeout and walk profile, so the Twins probably feel he’s better than the ERA would indicate, but he also has a notable injury history.

Prielipp just returned from a blister issue. That sidelined him for a couple weeks but provided a few weeks rest as he reaches uncharted territory from a workload perspective. Prielipp had never thrown more than 82 2/3 innings in a college or minor league season before this year. He’s at 91 frames between Triple-A and the big leagues already.

Kremer has been a durable league average starter for the majority of his career. Acquired as a prospect in the 2018 Manny Machado trade with the Dodgers, Kremer has logged parts of seven seasons in Baltimore. He was in the rotation between 2023-25, posting an ERA just above 4.00 with average strikeout and walk marks in each season.

This year hasn’t gone according to plan. Kremer was squeezed out of the rotation at the end of Spring Training and opened the season in Triple-A. The O’s brought him up in mid-April upon quickly losing Zach Eflin to UCL surgery. Kremer got injured himself shortly after, suffering a right quad strain that cost him the next two months. He has been back in the rotation throughout July but hasn’t performed well. Kremer has only managed one quality start in his last five outings and was rocked for 14 runs over his final two starts in a Baltimore uniform.

There haven’t been any dramatic changes to Kremer’s stuff, though he has had a slight velocity dip this month. The 30-year-old righty is averaging 92.9 mph on his fastball after sitting closer to 94 in April. He mixes five pitches with regularity, relying most frequently on a splitter that he’ll throw to hitters of either handedness.

Kremer is playing on a $5.75MM arbitration salary. Minnesota assumes roughly $1.75MM for the remainder of the season. As shown on MLBTR’s Payroll Tracker, the Twins had a player payroll around $102MM prior to the Minter and Kremer trades. They assumed approximately $3.4MM on Minter’s salary and have pushed their spending close to $107MM within the last two days. That’s still well shy of last year’s $130MM season-ending mark. They’re not going to approach that level but could have another mid-level bullpen or position player pickup in store.

They can retain him for another season after this one, though he’d be a non-tender candidate if his July struggles continue for the stretch run. Kremer crossed the five-year service threshold while he was on the injured list and can no longer be assigned to the minor leagues without his consent. He’ll need to stick on the MLB roster and should bump one of Matthews or Prielipp out of the rotation.

Baltimore won their series opener over the Phillies tonight to improve to 54-56. They’re only 1.5 games back in the Wild Card race but trailing each of Texas, Minnesota and Cleveland. General manager Mike Elias said this afternoon that the O’s aren’t firmly committed to either side of the buy/sell line. They’re not waving the white flag on 2026 but are open-minded to trading from the MLB roster for prospects if the right return presents itself.

Kremer wasn’t a core piece with how he’d been pitching lately. They should get Chris Bassitt back from injury within the next couple weeks, which likely would’ve pushed Kremer to the bullpen if no one else is traded. They could look for a back-end starter on the trade front or tab Trey Gibson or Cade Povich as a stopgap until Bassitt returns. They did move Kremer to a direct Wild Card competitor but picked up an intriguing low minors outfielder for doing so.

Reyes ranked 12th among Minnesota prospects at Baseball America and 10th in the system according to Eric Longenhagen and James Fegan of FanGraphs. MLB Pipeline has slotted him 20th among O’s farmhands after the trade. He’s a left-handed hitting outfielder with a 6’3″ frame that leads to significant raw power projection. Reyes signed out of the Dominican Republic during the 2025 international signing period and has spent most of his time in the Florida Complex League, where he was hitting .275 with seven home runs.

The Twins just promoted the 18-year-old outfielder to Low-A last week. He’s years away from the majors but has a chance to develop into a power-hitting right fielder. There’s a fair amount of risk with this profile given the likelihood he ends up in a corner and concern about how often he swings and misses. There’s substantial upside as well, though, with FanGraphs scouting report noting that Reyes has the kind of profile that would likely have seen him taken towards the back of the first round if he were a domestic high school draftee. That’s a strong get for a fifth starter.

Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic first reported the Twins were acquiring Kremer. The Athletic’s Dan Hayes reported the O’s were receiving Reyes in return. Image courtesy of David Reginek, Imagn Images.