Twins’ Joe Ryan felt fine moments before getting pulled from game due to injury

Five minutes before Joe Ryan’s season likely ended, he had no inkling that he was hurt.

As he warmed up for the third inning at Chicago’s Wrigley Field on Wednesday, he noticed a tightness near his pitching shoulder, “but it wasn’t, like, alarming. It wasn’t a sharp pain,” Ryan said Saturday. Then he threw a couple of pitches to Cubs outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong and they didn’t feel quite right.

He threw a third pitch, “and I was like, ‘Is this something that I should be concerned about?’ "

Turns out, yes. Ryan called for the trainer, came out of the game, and a day later, underwent an examination that revealed the problem: a Grade 2 strain of the teres major muscle. He will need several weeks to heal, almost certainly ending his 2024 season.

“I’m still kind of in shock by the news,” Ryan said. “It doesn’t hurt that bad. Day-to-day, I don’t even notice it. … The only peace of mind I guess I can have is that I don’t think it’s going to affect me going forward.”

It’s the first relatively serious arm injury he has suffered, but Ryan said he knows not to take any chances with it, even though tests have shown that the injury is limited to that one muscle, what he called “the best-case scenario.”

Still, the late-season timing, especially as the Twins chase a playoff berth, is particularly disappointing.

“It’s definitely hard to digest right now,” Ryan said. “The biggest frustration has to be feeling as good as I do right now, in relation to past seasons. I feel the freshest I’ve been mentally, physically, everything feels good. That’s the hardest problem to deal with. I want to go.”

It was striking how similar Brooks Lee’s shock and disappointment over his injury echoed Ryan’s.

“It just happened out of nowhere,” the 23-year-old rookie said of the shoulder pain that struck him while the Twins were in New York in the final days of July. “It started to pinch, feel painful. Never had pain in my shoulder before. It got worse and worse.”

Last week in Chicago, “I couldn’t throw above 25 percent. I didn’t even want to take ground balls between innings [because] it just hurt,” Lee said. “I don’t want to make it worse. If there’s a possibility of that, there’s no point in throwing, especially at my age.”

A magnetic resonance imaging exam found no structural damage and he had a cortisone shot, so now the prescription is mostly rest. “Hopefully, it’s not long,” he said.

One Twin received positive injury news this past week.

Chris Paddack spent a few days in Dallas, where his Tommy John surgeon, Dr. Keith Meister, examined his pitching arm.

“He’s seen me at my best and at my worst. So him saying everything looks great, looks healthy, those are really valuable words of encouragement,” Paddack said. His 88 innings pitched, he said, one season after throwing only 8⅔ as he recovered from elbow surgery, is probably a success, though it’s about half as many as Paddack had hoped for.

Now the righthander, on the injured list because of a forearm strain, is working with the Twins to put together a plan that he hopes allows him to return — albeit probably to the bullpen, not the rotation — sometime in September. He hopes to begin a throwing program within two weeks or so, he said.

“My goal is to be back this year. I’m just taking it a day at a time and make sure we’re doing everything we can from this point on,” said Paddack, who posted a 4.99 ERA and struck out 79 in 17 starts. “As we close out the next 50 or 60 days, I’ll be doing everything I can to contribute to this team.”

Terry Ryan, who served two stints as Twins general manager, and Rick Stelmaszek, whose 32-season run as a Twins coach is the longest such tenure in team history, were inducted into the Twins Hall of Fame on Saturday, the 39th and 40th members.

Tom Kelly and Ron Gardenhire, two of the five managers Stelmaszek coached under, spoke about the legendary story-teller who served mostly as bullpen coach. Stelmaszek died in 2017 at age 69.

And Ryan, GM from 1994 to 2007 and 2011 to ‘16, was introduced by his predecessor, Andy MacPhail, after a video of other teams’ executive managers congratulating Ryan played on the scoreboard. Ryan thanked the many administrators he worked with, and the players who played for his teams. He also thanked his family, especially his wife of 39 years, Karilyn, “an unbelievable wife … and now you’re a fun grandma.”

• Estevan Florial hit three homers — including two two-run shots off Caleb Boushley — and had seven RBI as Columbus beat the host Saints 11-8.

• The Twins held a moment of silence for Mike Cubbage, an infielder for the Twins from 1976 to ’80 who died Saturday at age 74.

• Ric Oliva, son of Hall of Fame outfielder Tony Oliva, performed the national anthem on guitar.