FORT MYERS, Fla. — In the wake of devastating news for starter Pablo López, who has an elbow injury that seems likely to require season-ending Tommy John surgery, the phrase “next man up,” has been continuously thrown around in the Twins’ clubhouse.

The Twins believed that their rotation depth was a strength this seaosn, and now they’ll have to tap into it earlier than expected. As it sits now, with López out of the picture, the Twins have seven starting pitchers in the mix for five rotation spots, with some spots solidified and some up for grabs.

With Joe Ryan and Taj Bradley headed off to compete in the World Baseball Classic next month, the Twins should get an extended look at some of their rotation options. Here’s a look at that group.

Joe Ryan

Ryan established himself as an all-star starter last season, and with López out, he is at the top of the Twins’ rotation. The 29-year-old made 30 starts last year for the first time in his career, threw a career-high 171 innings and finished with a 3.42 earned-run average.

“If I can provide some guidance and some help for guys that need it, absolutely, I’m always going to be there,” Ryan said.

Bailey Ober

Ober is looking forward to this season after a difficult 2025 campaign marred by a hip issue that eventually forced a monthlong stint on the injured list.

He finished the season with a 5.10 ERA. He allowed 30 home runs, 14 in June alone. It was a far cry from the results the Twins have come to expect out of the right-hander, who has been among their most consistent in previous years.

Taj Bradley

The Twins acquired Bradley from the Rays in the trade deadline deal that sent Griffin Jax to Tampa Bay, and they let him briefly acclimate to the organization at Triple-A before calling him up.

Aside from Ryan and Ober, Bradley has the most big league experience of the younger group, spending much of the past three seasons pitching at the major league level. He made six starts with the Twins in August and September to mixed results, but the early returns in camp have been promising.

“(There) were so many things Taj did well (Monday),” manager Derek Shelton said earlier this week. “His stuff looked really good, first and foremost. Hitters did not get great swings on him.”

Simeon Woods Richardson

Woods Richardson made one major league appearance in 2022 and in 2023 before staking out a claim to a rotation spot in 2024. The starter made 28 starts for the Twins that year and 22 (23 games) last year.

Many of his starts were limited to five innings or fewer last year, but he had a particularly strong finish, posting a 2.33 ERA across 27 innings  while turning in a couple of his longest outings. The 25-year-old enters this year out of minor league options.

Zebby Matthews

Matthews, who is slated to start the Twins’ spring training opener on Friday against the Gophers, made 16 starts last season for the Twins, missing time with a shoulder strain. Though he started the season in Triple-A, Matthews spent much of the summer pitching for the Twins.

David Festa

Festa was hampered by shoulder issues throughout 2025, eventually receiving Botox injections late last season to treat a case of thoracic outlet syndrome. He has been throwing bullpen sessions, but his health is still a question mark. Between injuries and stints at Triple-A, Festa last year made 11 appearances in the majors, 10 starts, and posted a 5.40 ERA.

Mick Abel

Abel, 24, was acquired From Philadelphia as part of the return for Jhoan Duran at the last trade deadline. He made 10 major league appearances last year, eight starts, and could be the most likely candidate to begin the season back in Triple-A.

Shelton was raving about what he saw from Abel on Tuesday, citing his “electric stuff,” and the fact that the first pitch out of his hand was a 98 mph sinker to Byron Buxton.

“I’m coming in here and competing for a spot,” Abel said. “Whether I make it or not, I’m just here every day to get better and compete.”

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Gov. Hochul has proposed expanding an initiative that freezes rent for senior and disabled tenants in exchange for property tax relief. But the program has a low uptake rate, and stagnant enrollment. Can the state get tenants to use it?

Apartment buildings in Manhattan. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

Rarely are tenants, landlords, legislators, and executives all in agreement. But in New York State, they appear to be on the same page when it comes to freezing the rent for low income seniors and people with disabilities.

In her State of the State address last month, Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed expanding a lesser-known program that freezes the rent for seniors or people with disabilities who have low incomes. The lost rent increases are offset by a property tax credit for landlords. 

Not to be confused with Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s promised rent freeze for all rent stabilized tenants, the Senior and Disability Rent Increase Exemptions (known as SCRIE and DRIE, respectively) are targeted to eligible households with incomes below $50,000.

Now the governor wants to raise eligibility to $75,000. But supporters of the program say that won’t be enough: the city needs more to get people to actually use the exemptions. “Many, many people who are eligible are not aware of them… and don’t apply,” said New York State Senate Housing Chair Brian Kavanagh.

A 2025 report from the city’s Department of Finance estimated that just 42 percent of households eligible for the program were using it in 2023, down from 56 percent in 2019.

Total enrollment fell from 75,000 recipients in 2019 to 68,000 in 2024, despite DOF’s estimates that there were more eligible households. Participants have to be living in rent-regulated apartments and pay more than 30 percent of their income in rent to be eligible for the freeze.  The report notes that utilization rates have gone down in part because buildings owners reported more rent stabilized units to the state.

Kavanagh helped put together a package of bills in the New York State Senate that would tie SCRIE and DRIE eligibility to inflation, ensure no tenant in the program pays more than 30 percent of their income in rent, and require notice be sent to all eligible tenants.

While Hochul backs raising the eligibility cap to $75,000, she would not say if she supports the suite of bills that supporters say are critical to getting the program to work.

“Governor Hochul will review any legislation that passes both houses of the legislature,”  a spokesperson said in a statement to City Limits.

Barbara Collins, a senior who lives in a Mitchell-Lama apartment, said that she was pushed just out of eligibility range because the city’s formula counts her Medicaid premiums as income. In addition to raising the income threshold and tying it to inflation, Collins called for excluding those premiums in income calculations.

“This is crazy. It’s so hard for seniors in New York City,” said Collins, who has also been pushing lawmakers to help seniors better understand the program’s complicated application.

Even if officials vote to raise the income threshold, advocates worry that having a hard cap on eligibility might kick tenants off the program later on as they get cost of living adjustments.

“Without tying the income threshold to cost of living adjustments for seniors and folks with disabilities, this will be a temporary fix,” said Genesis Aquino, executive director at Tenants & Neighbors. “Tenants will continue to lose eligibility every year as rents and basic expenses rise, and the state will be back here again while more low-income people are pushed toward displacement.”

Landlord groups like the New York Apartment Association also support expanding eligibility. CEO Kenny Burgos said that his group tries to educate landlords about the program but thinks the city can do more to reach tenants who may be eligible.

His group opposes the broader rent-stabilized rent freeze that Mamdani championed as part of his affordability-focused election campaign. But it supports the SCRIE and DRIE programs in large part because they offset the costs of rent freezes with property tax credits.

“We’re supportive of it because this is a policy that actually tackles affordability and doesn’t defund buildings,” said Burgos.

Burgos said that rent freezes without accounting for increased costs to landlords lead to distress in rent stabilized properties. Tenant advocates, on the other hand, have argued that a 12 percent rent increase under former Mayor Eric Adams pushed vulnerable households out of the city. 

Mamdani presenting his preliminary city budget on Tuesday, where he floated the possibility of a property tax hike. (Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

Since SCRIE and DRIE actually take property tax revenues off the city’s roll, it won’t help with what Mamdani is calling a “fiscal crisis” in New York City. The mayor is trying to plug a $5.5 billion hole in the city’s budget and threatening to increase property taxes by 9.5 percent if he can’t convince Albany to raise taxes on the rich.

The larger rent freeze for tenants in stabilized units looks likelier this week after an Adams administration holdover rent guidelines board member resigned. Mamdani on Wednesday appointed six new members to the nine-person board, which is expected to vote on the next round of rent adjustments later this spring. 

But a rent freeze, and the existing SCRIE or DRIE benefit, only does so much to help elderly or disabled renters on fixed incomes who are already rent-burdened.

“I want to make sure that I am not forced to go into my savings. Because right now, I’m paying 78 percent of my income in rent,” said Fitzroy Christian, a tenant in his 80s living in the Bronx. “I have not much left for [electricity] and my groceries.”

Even freezing his rent at that price, he added, “is not a true benefit.”

One of the bills on the table in Albany this session would not just prevent rent increases for SCRIE and DRIE recipients, but lower their rent to 30 percent of their income (while still offsetting the cost through property tax credits).

Such a policy would lower the rent burden for elderly and disabled tenants even under a promised citywide rent stabilized rent freeze. “We have many tenants in rent stabilized housing taking 40 or 50 percent of their income in rent,” said Kavanagh.

Supporters think that the common sense changes will help enrollment. But they’re also calling for better outreach efforts so tenants can learn about the program. Elderly and disabled folks, who may be more likely to be at home, might be harder to reach. One bill would send a mailer to every eligible tenant.

“Tenants don’t know when and how they can help themselves, and there’s no way for them unless they can afford to hire a very astute tenant landlord lawyer to work for them,” said Collins.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Patrick@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

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The post Hochul Wants to Expand Rent Freezes for Senior & Disabled New Yorkers. Can the State Get Them to Sign Up? appeared first on City Limits.

A fleeting wonder, indeed.

After opening to the public for the first time in more than a decade on Monday, it looks like the ice caves of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Wisconsin will be closed for the season after a winter storm blew through.

“The ice shelf near Meyers Beach at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore was broken up during a winter storm that began on 2/17,” the National Park Service reported. “The stretch of sub-zero temperatures and calm winds that formed stable ice is unlikely to return before spring.”

Webcam images from wavesatseacaves.cee.wisc.edu show the change between 4 p.m. on Tuesday and 8 a.m. on Wednesday.

Before Monday, the last time the caves were open to the public was 2015.

Watch for more updates at nps.gov/apis/mainland-caves-winter.htm.

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By JOSH FUNK, Associated Press

More than 550 commercial driving schools in the U.S. that train truckers and bus drivers must close after investigators found they employed unqualified instructors, failed to adequately test students and had other safety issues, the federal Transportation Department planned to announce Wednesday.

The move marks the Transportation Department’s latest effort to improve safety in the trucking industry. And unlike its previous actions last fall to decertify up to 7,500 schools that included many defunct operations, this latest step is focused on what it deemed were active schools with significant shortcomings that inspectors identified in 1,426 site visits.

The department has been aggressively going after states that handed out commercial driver’s licenses to immigrants who shouldn’t have qualified for them ever since a fatal crash in August. A truck driver that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says was not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people. Other fatal crashes since then, including one in Indiana earlier this month that killed four, have only added to the concerns.

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Duffy said 448 schools failed to meet basic safety standards. Inspectors found shortcomings such as employing unqualified instructors, failing to test students’ skills or teach them how to handle hazardous materials and using the wrong equipment to teach drivers. Another 109 schools removed themselves from the registry of schools when they learned that inspectors were planning to visit.

“American families should have confidence that our school bus and truck drivers are following every letter of the law and that starts with receiving proper training before getting behind the wheel,” Duffy said.

The list of schools that officials want to decertify now are generally smaller ones, including a number of programs run by school districts. The bigger, more reputable schools were generally not included in this action. Another 97 schools are currently under investigation for compliance issues.

Part of the problem in the trucking industry is that schools and trucking companies can essentially self certify themselves when they apply to begin operating, observers note, and questionable operations might not be caught until much later when the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration gets a chance to audit them.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many students were enrolled at these schools that are being decertified. But there is some cushion in the industry right now because there are currently more drivers than needed in the midst of a 10% drop in shipments since 2022 because of the economic uncertainty. Although many trucking companies still struggle to find enough well-qualified drivers with clean records.

In addition to threatening to withhold federal funding from states that don’t clean up their commercial driver’s license programs, the Trump Administration has been focused on making sure truck drivers meet English proficiency standards. California is the only state to lose funding so far with the federal government planning to withhold $160 million.