FORT MYERS, Fla. — There was a little moment of awe for Zebby Matthews last August, when, after a meteoric rise through the Twins’ farm system, he saw Royals star Salvador Perez’s name in the opposing lineup before his major league debut.

“I’m like, ‘I’ve watched this guy play for 15 years,’” Matthews said. “It’s nuts.”

Matthews began last season at Single-A Cedar Rapids. A trip to Double-A Wichita preceded a quick stint in Triple-A before he debuted for Minnesota in August. The whole year was a whirlwind for Matthews, 24. But after sprinting through the minors, there’s plenty left for him to prove.

“It was definitely surreal to go from where I was to debut last year,” Matthews, who threw two scoreless innings and touched 97 mph on Saturday in the Twins’ 3-1 win over the Atlanta Braves in the spring opener at Hammond Stadium, said. “It was awesome, but it’s just the beginning. The job doesn’t stop.”

In his first taste of the majors, Matthews posted a 6.69 ERA. The starter’s command wasn’t quite as sharp in the majors after walking just seven batters in 97 minor league innings, and he was capped at five innings, not working past that point in any of his nine starts.

“I just want to show them that I can pitch at this level,” Matthews said. “Last year in the big leagues, I had a lot of up-and-down starts, some good, some really bad. Just to show them that I belong, I can do this. I can make a career out of it.”

Matthews spent the offseason working on his changeup, which he is trying to establish as another option to throw to lefties. Throughout last year, he said he was trying to get comfortable throwing the pitch in the zone or in games but he could never get it just right. Now, he thinks he’s trending in the right direction with the pitch.

“I feel bad for my catch play partner I had this offseason,” Matthews said. “I was tearing him up with some changeups.”

It was an offseason of trial and error but finally, about two weeks before heading down to Fort Myers, he settled on a grip and started getting more comfortable. Early word from Trackman data, and teammates and coaches that have seen it, he said, have been positive as he works towards getting it where he needs it to be.

While Matthews seems likely to begin the year at Triple-A — where he made just four starts last year — he’ll serve as an important depth option for the Twins while he continues to develop.

“Zebby is a good-looking, young, horse of a man,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “He put himself in a nice spot. He has a lot of the makings of a good major league starting pitcher.”

ABS challenge system in use

The Twins’ first challenge of the spring was a successful one.

Catcher Christian Vázquez initiated a challenge during the first inning of the game, believing a two-strike pitch from Matthews on the corner was a strike, despite the call from home plate umpire Marvin Hudson. After a quick review shown on the Hammond Stadium scoreboard, the call was overturned and Matthews was out of the inning, stranding a runner on second base.

“He hesitated for a little bit and then he hit it,” Matthews said of the catcher. “I thought it might be a little bit away. No, we clipped the zone. That was cool to see.”

MLB is testing out the automated ball-strike challenge system — which has been used in the minor leagues in previous years — this spring for potential implementation in future years. It will not be used at the major league level this year.

Briefly

David Festa, another young starter who debuted last season, is expected to start the Twins’ second contest of the spring when they head north to Bradenton on Sunday to face the Pittsburgh Pirates. … Luke Keaschall, the Twins’ Minor League Player of the Year, drove in two runs with a single in his first at-bat in the Twins’ win over the Braves.

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FORT MYERS, Fla. — Justin Ishbia may buy a major league baseball team after all. It just won’t be the one that he’s been linked to for months.

After a winter of speculation over whether Ishbia would buy the Minnesota Twins, the billionaire businessman has instead decided to increase his stake in the rival Chicago White Sox and end his pursuit of the Twins, The Athletic reported late Friday night.

Ishbia already is a minority owner of the White Sox and the move could lead to full ownership of the team in the future should longtime majority owner Jerry Reinsdorf decide to sell, The Athletic suggested. Ishbia is a founding partner of a Chicago-based private equity firm and has been building a house along the lakeshore in Chicago’s north suburbs.

But despite his Chicago ties, his name first emerged as a prospective buyer of the Twins in December, a couple months after the Pohlad family announced its intention to explore a sale of the Twins, which it has owned since 1984. To date, Ishbia’s name was the only one that has leaked into the public as a potential buyer of the Twins.

Though he is reportedly no longer involved, a source with knowledge of the situation said there are “more than a handful,” of prospective buyers, noting that a “new party” entered the mix just last week. The process, the source said, is “certainly closer to the end than the beginning.”

“The process goes on,” the source said. “It was never dependent on any one party and it’s going to continue irrespective of any other news.”

The prospect of Ishbia buying the team had been an exciting one to many Twins fans, who pointed to his brother Mat’s aggressive style of ownership of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns as an example of what Justin could do for the Twins. Justin is a part owner of the Suns, as Mat likely would’ve been with the Twins had the brothers taken that route.

Now, it’s possible that they’ll bring that style of ownership to the South Side of Chicago down the line rather than the Twin Cities.

Meanwhile, details about any potential Twins sale have been scarce as the process has unfolded behind the scenes. The Pohlad family announced its intention to explore a sale on Oct. 10, stating in a release that the decision had been made after “months of thoughtful consideration,” and hired New York-based investment bank Allen & Company to facilitate the sale.

“The process is underway and, as expected, there’s significant interest,” outgoing team president and CEO Dave St. Peter said last month. “This is a gem of a franchise, in a great market, in a wonderful ballpark, so it doesn’t really surprise me at all. But there’s also no definitive timetable on the process.”

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After upsetting Southern Cal and UCLA on the road, the Gophers returned with a chance to essentially seal a Big Ten tournament bid against Penn State, another team fighting to extend its season into the conference tournament.

The Gophers won the previous meeting in University Park, 69-61, but the Nittany Lions were missing a big piece in that game, 7-foot center Yanic Konan Niederhauser. And, boy, did it make a difference.

Konan Niederhauser just about had his way in the paint and scored a game-high 24 points, to go with seven rebounds, as Penn State Penn State (15-13, 5-12) won the rematch, 69-60, on Saturday at Williams Arena.

Minnesota (14-13, 6-10) didn’t have the size to contend with the center, who missed the last game because of a sprained ankle, and got little scoring from their bigs — even Big Ten co-scoring leader Dawson Garcia (19.7 ppg.), who finished with a game-high 10 rebounds by was 3 for 16 from the field and finished with 11 points, an assist and three turnovers.

Femi Odukale, who picked up two quick fouls and played only 21 minutes, scored a game-high 15 points for Minnesota, keying a late rally that fell short despite the encouragement of a lively, and fairly robust, crowd.

Minnesota had leads of as many as nine points through the game’s first 11 minutes. Then it all kinda came apart for the Gophers, who went without a field goal for the final 9:01 of the first half.

On the other end, the Nittany Lions started playing better offensively, not just making their shot attempts, but passing better, driving effectively and getting the ball to big man Yanic Konan Niederhauser. The Lions outscored the Gophers, 13-2, over the final xx minutes to take their first lead, 28-26, into intermission

The momentum stayed Penn State’s way until the Gophers began chipping away at their deficit with a little more than 5 minutes left. A dunk and free throw by Odukale cut the deficit to nine points and started a 14-5 run that saw Minnesota pull within 60-57 with 1:31 left in regulation.

But Penn State answered by making 6 of 6 free throws, and the game ended when Konan Niederhauser dunked for a three-point play and blocked a shot as time was about to expire.

The Gophers got as close as three points, 60-57

Konan Niederhauser, who missed the Gophers’ 69-61 victory at Penn State because of a sprained ankle, was tough to guard for Minnesota on Saturday. The lanky 7-footer weaved his way through post traffic — and undersized defenders — to score a game-high 24 points. He was 9 for 14 from the floor and made 6 of 7 free throw attempts.

And it wasn’t just Konan Niederhauser. Penn State was strong at the rim in general, while the Gophers often settled for outside shots, sometimes putting up desperation shots as the shot clock was about to expire.

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DETROIT — While many of his players jetted off to Mexico, Florida or the Caribbean over the 4 Nations Face-Off, Minnesota Wild coach John Hynes was hard at work in Montreal and Boston, serving as a Team USA assistant coach, and therefore didn’t get any time off.

But on Saturday before the Wild’s road game versus the Red Wings, he joked that not having to meet with the media for nearly two weeks was a nice break in itself.

Following Team USA’s overtime loss to Canada in Thursday night’s 4 Nations title game in Boston, Hynes — along with Wild defenseman Brock Faber and forward Matt Boldy — made the flight from the East Coast to Detroit on Friday. All were ready to go by puck drop for the afternoon game at Little Caesars Arena.

After the pace of games in the tournament, with four rosters featuring the best players in the world, Hynes admitted there might be kind of a come-down to coach regular-season NHL hockey again.

“It’s like you’re on a treadmill going 10 miles an hour at 10 incline, and all of a sudden it just stops,” Hynes said. “But yesterday was good, and it’s good to come back and play right away and get around the guys and get right back into it.”

The Wild won two in a row, and five of seven going into the break, and certainly look to continue that momentum with 25 regular-season games remaining after Saturday’s Motor City matinee. But assistant coach Jack Capuano, who ran last week’s practices while Hynes was gone, said they almost treated this week like a mini training camp and restart to the season.

“The practices leading into this are really important because guys have been off, so we hit some foundational things to get back,” Hynes said. “Now, it’s the final stretch run of the season, so we wanna make sure we get off to a good start and get to the game that gives us a chance to win.”

Coaches notoriously borrow ideas from one another for practice and in-game strategy. Just having spent nearly two weeks in the trenches of international hockey working with NHL colleagues like Mike Sullivan, John Tortorella and David Quinn, Hynes admitted there were some ideas he picked up from others, and likely some ideas that others picked up from him.

“It’s all about trying to find a way to win, so no one holds back,” Hynes said. “You get different ways to practice. There’s some different things to present, some system tweaks that either reinforce what you’re doing or some things where you like, ‘I like that maybe a little bit better.’

“So, I always find in those events, it’s great. You come back with not only things from the coaches, but with the level of player in dealing with those guys. Just things that they see, or things that they say on the bench at key critical times.”

The Wild’s three players from Team Sweden — goalie Filip Gustavsson, defenseman Jonas Brodin and forward Joel Eriksson Ek — returned to Minnesota and practiced with the Wild on Friday, making the trip to Detroit on the team plane Friday afternoon.

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