FORT MYERS, Florida — In his very first taste of professional ball in 2019, right after he was drafted out of Rice University, Matt Canterino was turning heads with his tantalizing talent. It’s been more or less a string of bad luck for the now 27-year-old right-hander since then.

He felt great in 2020, but the minor league season was wiped out because of the pandemic. It’s been injury after injury since then. In 2021, it was his forearm. The next year, he had a recurring forearm injury that required Tommy John surgery. The 2023 season was spent rehabbing from the elbow procedure. Then, last year, a shoulder strain during spring training, which he aggravated again in June wiped out the whole season.

“I love baseball,” he said. “I don’t love rehabbing.”

Now, healthy once again, Canterino and the Twins are hoping his days and months of rehab are behind him. In an effort to keep him healthy, the Twins have told Canterino that they are building him up as a reliever to reduce his workload.

“I’m very much a realist,” Canterino said. “I know I haven’t recorded a regular season statistic in two and a half years, so I would say writing was kind of on the wall with that one. … I’m hopeful to see if I can stay healthy in this new role.”

Canterino hasn’t pitched in a minor league game since Aug. 30, 2022. That was more than 900 days ago. But in between his injuries, the results have always been head-turning.

He has a 1.48 career ERA across three minor league seasons (85 innings), striking out 130 batters, walking 35 and posting a 0.859 WHIP (Walks and Hits Per Inning Pitched). The highest level he has pitched at is Double-A Wichita in 2022.

“Whenever I’ve come back from an injury, it’s like I’m able to kind of pick up where I’ve left off,” Canterino said. “It’s tough to say, ‘Oh, I’ve gotten so much better over the time,’ because four years missed due to injury, it’s tough to get better on the field without those actual reps but I feel like I’ve shown myself the glimpses of the pitcher that I was, the pitcher that I can still become if I can stay healthy.”

After spending last year rehabbing, first in Fort Myers and then at Texas Metroplex Institute for Sports Medicine & Orthopedic Surgery, where Dr. Keith Meister, who performed his Tommy John surgery, works, Canterino was finally healthy and facing hitters again in Fort Myers by last October. He started seeing batters, got some swing and misses and “remembered why I was doing it.”

The goal, of course, is to reach the majors. And if he can stay healthy — a big if, considering his history — he certainly has the talent to force his way into the Twins’ bullpen picture some point in the near future.

“You get a guy like that healthy and on a little bit of a roll (and) you do not have to squint too hard to see him getting a ton of swing and miss at the big-league level,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “He just has to get back out there, regain the feel for who he is and what he’s doing. Put a little bit of a workload on himself and we’ll see where he’s at.”

Live batting practice begins

Live batting practice began on Sunday at Hammond Stadium with Pablo López,  Joe Ryan, Jhoan Duran, Justin Topa and Louie Varland toeing the rubber against a group of their teammates. As part of it, López, who has already been announced as the Twins’ Opening Day starter, touched 95-96 miles per hour on the radar gun, throwing somewhere in the range of 35-40 pitches.

“We all enjoy watching all the players show up, reminding ourselves of all the stuff that they do,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Whether they hit it or not, that’s not the point. Everyone’s getting something out of this exercise.”

Briefly

Monday marks the Twins’ first full-squad workout. Ahead of that, Baldelli will deliver his annual speech to the group, which he said he mostly wrote upon arriving in Florida. “Most of it had to stay upstairs for a little while because Enzo and Nino and Louisaia Baldelli, they like to be on me so it’s hard to do any actual writing,” the manager said of his young children.

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