This story was excerpted from Do-Hyoung Park’s Twins Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Earlier this month, Brock Stewart leaned over to his wife, Christina, and asked if she remembered that time when he asked her if he should bother to keep going in baseball.

That was back before the 2022 season, after he’d recovered from Tommy John surgery, when he thought his elbow should have been fixed, but he was still having pain trying to throw at full strength. It turned out he’d need arthroscopic surgery for a bone spur in March, but he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d be better off following his dad into scouting or maybe even going into lawn care (he loves his grass at home).

It’s a good thing he didn’t. Fast-forward one year and it’s fair to wonder where the 2023 Twins’ relief corps would be without him. At first, Stewart had to overcome some walk issues to escape jams. Now, after that transition period, he has flipped a switch to simply eliminate the walks altogether, turning him into one of Minnesota’s highest-leverage relievers.

“There were definitely times when I didn't know, and we didn't know what was best for the family -- if I should try to get another job -- so I mean, I've always had a great amount of support from my family and friends, and thankfully, I kept going,” Stewart said.

After the Twins first brought Stewart up from Triple-A St. Paul on April 25, manager Rocco Baldelli said they wouldn’t shy away from any situations with the right-hander who hadn’t pitched in the Majors since 2019 due to a combination of ineffectiveness and injury issues. 

He immediately turned heads when he went 14 appearances into the season without allowing a run. But walks remained a glaring issue. He had 15 strikeouts in 14 innings -- but 11 walks made many of those appearances unnecessarily fraught.

Since then, Stewart has thrown 11 2/3 innings without a walk -- striking out 20 batters along the way. Talk about a turnaround.

“I was probably trying to be a little too fine, make perfect pitches, rather than just letting it rip in the zone,” Stewart said. “So I think I've just been doing a better job of that. Doesn't really matter who's in the batter's box. Obviously, you have the scouting reports and areas you want to try to focus, but I just want to attack the zone and come right at them and put the pressure on the hitters.”

That’s really the key that both pitching coach Pete Maki and bullpen coach Colby Suggs have emphasized to Stewart, he says: Just let the four-seam fastball and sinker rip down the middle, attack hitters and trust that the quality of his stuff will do the work.

When he had health issues in 2018 and ‘19, Stewart’s four-seamer flattened a bit and averaged 91.7 mph. That’s now up, incredibly, to a 97.3 mph average, and hitters are swinging and missing at it 56.8% of the time, by far the highest whiff rate in baseball among pitchers with at least 70 swings against the fastball.

Hitters are slugging .100 against the one-seam sinker, which he picked up from one-time teammate Clay Buchholz in 2019, that he says gets 10-15 inches of separation from his four-seamer, and opponents are slugging .071 against his cutter. According to Stuff+, the metric that attempts to quantify the quality of individual pitches, Stewart has four solidly above-average pitches -- the fastball, cutter, sinker and slider -- and a slightly below-average changeup.

“This could not have played out any better for us, having Brock Stewart and having him in this role that he’s in now,” Baldelli said. “You can bring him in almost any time, and you have confidence that he’s going to go out there and just get outs. It’s not smoke and mirrors. He’s coming at you with some real-deal, big league-caliber relief pitcher type stuff.”

It’s no wonder that Stewart’s 0.70 ERA is tracking to be the lowest ever among Twins pitchers to make at least 24 appearances in a season. And for the first time in several years, Stewart is able to find the comfort in a big league clubhouse again that he long sought, especially in those years building back to this version of himself.

“I just feel comfortable,” Stewart said, "mainly because of the good group of guys we have in the clubhouse. I can be myself. There's good leadership. Yeah, I've been pitching well, so that helps my comfort levels. But I know from experience that baseball is not forever. Every time I come to the field, I still am comfortable each day, for sure.”