Twins part ways with pitching coaches Maki, Ramirez and trainer Kirkman

What happened

The Minnesota Twins have parted ways with pitching coaches Maki and Ramirez, as well as trainer Kirkman, MLB.com's Matthew Leach reported. The departures arrive as the organization turns the page on a 77-85 campaign and begins the work of deciding what the 2026 coaching staff will look like.

The timing is not unusual — the weeks after a season's final out are traditionally when clubs audit their staffs, and the Twins are doing exactly that. What makes this particular round of changes worth watching is the context surrounding it: the pitching staff that Maki and Ramirez oversaw finished a season in which, among other things, Jeff Hoffman was placed on the injured list with a forearm injury with two games remaining, per earlier Posterior Wire reporting.

Why it matters

Pitching staff continuity — or the deliberate disruption of it — is one of the quieter levers a front office pulls when it decides a rebuild of culture or approach is necessary. The Twins are not simply swapping out a name on a depth chart here; they are removing the two coaches most directly responsible for developing and deploying their pitchers, along with the trainer who worked alongside them.

For a franchise that finished 8 games back in the AL Central and was eliminated from both the division race and the Wild Card race, the message embedded in these moves is fairly legible: the current approach to pitching was not producing the results the organization needed, and new voices will be brought in to try a different path.

That said, Matthew Leach's report does not detail the reasons behind the departures, and the Twins have not publicly characterized them as anything beyond a parting of ways. Attribution matters here — this is what the reporting establishes, and the desk will not dress it up further than that.

Where the club stands

Minnesota finished 77-85 (.475), third in the AL Central, and ranked seventh in the Wild Card standings at 7.0 games relative to the cut line. The season ended on a one-game winning streak, which is the kind of detail that feels both technically accurate and cosmically beside the point when the broader record reads the way it does.

The coaching staff changes land inside a broader offseason picture that has been taking shape over the past several days. Twins owner Tom Pohlad pledged a meaningful payroll increase targeting a playoff-caliber roster for 2027, per Posterior Wire reporting from Tuesday. Separately, ownership confirmed the team expects to raise payroll for the 2027 season. The framing from the top of the organization is explicitly forward-looking — 2027 is the stated target, which means the 2026 season is, at minimum, a transitional one, and the staff being assembled now will be asked to lay groundwork rather than immediately deliver a pennant.

Byron Buxton, meanwhile, is rehabbing a right hip injury and targeting a healthy return in 2027, per Posterior Wire reporting earlier this week. Catcher Ryan Jeffers plans to test free agency this offseason but has indicated he is open to re-signing with the Twins, per a Posterior Wire item from Tuesday. The roster itself is in motion, and the coaching staff is now, too.

What we don't know yet

The Twins have not announced replacements for Maki, Ramirez, or Kirkman. Matthew Leach's report establishes the departures; it does not name candidates, offer a timeline for the search, or characterize what the club is looking for in the next pitching staff leadership group.

It is also not yet clear whether these moves are connected to any broader philosophical shift in how the organization wants its pitchers developed and deployed — whether that means a different approach to workload management, pitch mix development, or bullpen construction. Those are the kinds of questions that tend to get answered slowly, through hiring decisions and spring training, rather than in the immediate aftermath of a staff change.

What to watch

The obvious next question is who fills these roles. Pitching coordinator hires and coaching staff announcements tend to trickle out across October and November, and the Twins' search will be worth tracking given the organizational emphasis on 2027 as the target year for contention. The coaches brought in now will be the ones working with whatever pitching staff the front office assembles — and given the payroll increase ownership has pledged, that staff could look meaningfully different by the time spring training opens.

Jeff Hoffman's forearm injury, which landed him on the injured list with two games left in the season per earlier Posterior Wire reporting, is another thread to follow. His status heading into the offseason is unresolved in the reporting, and the new pitching staff leadership will inherit whatever the medical picture looks like when they arrive.

The Kirkman departure is also worth noting separately. Trainers and pitching coaches often work in close coordination, and the simultaneous exit of all three suggests this was a unified decision about the group rather than individual performance reviews arriving at the same conclusion independently — though Matthew Leach's report does not characterize it either way, and the desk will not speculate beyond what it establishes.

What is clear is that the Twins are not standing pat. A 77-85 finish, a payroll pledge aimed at 2027, and now a pitching staff overhaul: the organization is in active reconstruction mode, and the coaching search that follows these departures will be one of the more telling early signals of what direction that reconstruction is actually heading.