Toeing the Jaime García Line: How Will Twins Front Office Decide Whether to Buy or Sell?

[Hans Birkeland]

Image courtesy of © Neville E. Guard-Imagn Images

The Twins are in a predicament to end all predicaments. The trade deadline looms just 13 days away, and the team is under .500, but just barely. To add more fuel to the gas fire of uncertainty regarding the team’s direction, they appear to be getting closer to a sale to a new ownership group. They have also been playing better lately, taking series from the Rays, Cubs and Pirates in succession heading into the break.

They are also getting healthier, though that is always a jinx-ridden statement. Pablo López, Bailey Ober, Luke Keaschall and Zebby Matthews being available could certainly change how the front office views the team’s chances. Matthews looks likely to re-join the club this weekend, with Keaschall and Ober beginning rehab assignments simultaneously in St. Paul.

However, the trade value of Joe Ryan has never been higher, and he could fetch a 2020 Mike Clevinger-type haul (more on that later). The team faced a similar dilemma in 2017, the first year of the Derek Falvey-Thad Levine regime. The core of Miguel Sanó, Byron Buxton, Jorge Polanco, Eddie Rosario, Max Kepler and José Berríos were together and keeping their collective heads above water. On July 19, their playoff odds had “surged” to 23.4% (per Baseball Prospectus) after winning a home series against the Yankees. The upside was palpable, and with veterans Brian Dozier, Joe Mauer, Ervin Santana and Robbie Grossman all performing well, the front office felt the need to acquire a starter. Maybe someone who could give quality innings in a playoff series, and who perhaps would come cheaply, given injury concerns. Enter Jaime García.

García was a few years removed from his peak, when he posted a 161 ERA+ for the Cardinals in 2015 across 20 starts. That came with the lowest strikeout rate of his career, so the sustainability of that performance was questionable. Pitching for the Braves in 2017, his ERA+ was a much more middling 101, but that was enough for the Twins to take a swing on the lefty.

Famously, Garcia made one start for the Twins, and the team won! But that came amidst a 2-6 stretch heading into the trade deadline, and García was flipped—as well as the team’s de facto closer, Brandon Kintzler. The team’s playoff odds had decreased to 7%.

From there, the team’s offense surged and the pitching bent but didn’t break. That is, until the Wild Card game at Yankee Stadium.

Coming out of the All-Star break this year, the Twins have an 8.8% chance to make the playoffs according to Baseball-Reference. However, FanGraphs puts their odds at 23.1%, suspiciously close to the 23.4% Baseball Prospectus figure from 2017, while BP now gives them a 28.3% chance.

The latter two odds give deference to the talent present on the roster, rather than the team’s actual performance (over the past 100 games is BR’s formula), which speaks to the main issue here: the team still feels like it has the pieces to be pretty good. The team’s results (for nearly a year now) say otherwise.

Does the front office look at the 8.8% chance and sell, similar to how they acted following the 2-6 stretch post-García acquisition in 2017? Or do they view that juicy 28.3% chance from BP as legitimate, and add to their roster? The 2023 Angels went for it and paid a huge price, losing Shohei Ohtani for a draft pick and depleting an already bad farm system, while the 2015 Mets added Yoenis Céspedes and made the World Series. Their odds at the All-Star break? 26.7%.

The real question might not be at what specific point the team no longer believes their playoff odds justify investment in the team, but rather, what they think their odds really are. After all, the Twins have their own internal evaluations of themselves and the rest of the league. Whether their self-perceptions match the pseudo-objective estimates of outside entities is unclear.

The default answer is that Falvey and company will stand pat, unless the team really tanks over the next 10 days. Last year, their odds at this time were 82% per FanGraphs and all we got was a lightly charred Trevor Richards, so winning every game from now until July 31 won’t necessarily change the calculus. Like 2024, there may just not be enough money in the budget to take on even a middling salary.

What we haven’t seen from this front office is a retooling trade, whereby the team sold high on a valuable asset (such as Ryan or Jhoan Duran) that infused enough talent to set the team up better for the future while not necessarily punting on the current year. Think about that Clevinger trade, which brought the Guardians Josh Naylor, Gabriel Arias, Cal Quantrill, Joey Cantillo and Owen Miller. Naylor was then flipped this past offseason for Slade Cecconi, who has made 10 good starts for the Guardians. Other examples include the Brewers trading Josh Hader in 2023 or the Guardians (again) unloading Trevor Bauer in 2019. Truly, only the Rays, Guardians and Brewers make these types of trades, as they are all cash-strapped, on the cutting edge of analytics and have little concern for what their fans think. Do the Twins view themselves in such a mold?

---

What do you think? Should the Twins add, stand pat, retool, or sell?

View full article

[tarheeltwinsfan]

The Guardian trades of Bauer and Clevenger are not good comps to the Twins trading Ryan. Both Bauer and Clevenger appeared to be weird people, who probably needed to be traded for the good of the team. Joe Ryan, while unique, is a great teammate, and is team orientated. He is a talented, cerebral pitcher, not just a thrower. I am opposed to trading a player just because he is at his "peak". Keep him at his peak and win today. The future is now. Tomorrow is always a day away. 

[dxpavelka]

But that one win by Jaime Garcia is one more than he got in 8 starts for the Yankees after the trade.  For all the good the Clevinger trade did for Cleveland they still sit behind the Twins in the standings.  I have enjoyed their World Series parades since the trade though.

 

[dxpavelka]

9 minutes ago, tarheeltwinsfan said:

The Guardian trades of Bauer and Clevenger are not good comps to the Twins trading Ryan. Both Bauer and Clevenger appeared to be weird people, who probably needed to be traded for the good of the team. Joe Ryan, while unique, is a great teammate, and is team orientated. He is a talented, cerebral pitcher, not just a thrower. I am opposed to trading a player just because he is at his "peak". Keep him at his peak and win today. The future is now. Tomorrow is always a day away. 

Totally agree.  The object should be to have guys have their peak IN a Twins uniform.  You don't get better when your best players play for other teams.  The one exception to that might be Bauer.  But he doesn't have too much good in him.

[Jack207]

Twins should look to try to win this year. Isn't that what sports is all about, giving your best to the team to try to win games?

 

[DJL44]

Quote

Coming out of the All-Star break this year, the Twins have an 8.8% chance to make the playoffs according to Baseball-Reference. However, FanGraphs puts their odds at 23.1%, suspiciously close to the 23.4% Baseball Prospectus figure from 2017, while BP now gives them a 28.3% chance.

The latter two odds give deference to the talent present on the roster, rather than the team’s actual performance (over the past 100 games is BR’s formula), which speaks to the main issue here: the team still feels like it has the pieces to be pretty good. The team’s results (for nearly a year now) say otherwise.

Usually, when the team is underperforming their talent for the past 100 games, the manager gets fired.

[Doctor Wu]

Very difficult to say what the Twins will do at this point. Obviously, having healthy and productive players like Lopez and Ober, or even Luke and Zebby back in the lineup will be a big help. But so would ten straight wins out of the break. Good things could happen, or the team could look lackluster and weary. I'm not entirely giving up hope, but my optimism is flagging. 

[mickster]

1 hour ago, tarheeltwinsfan said:

The Guardian trades of Bauer and Clevenger are not good comps to the Twins trading Ryan. Both Bauer and Clevenger appeared to be weird people, who probably needed to be traded for the good of the team. Joe Ryan, while unique, is a great teammate, and is team orientated. He is a talented, cerebral pitcher, not just a thrower. I am opposed to trading a player just because he is at his "peak". Keep him at his peak and win today. The future is now. Tomorrow is always a day away. 

AGREED!!  Ryan is someone you build around, this team still has a 2 year window.  However, they must deal prospects and not hold them so long if they are not coming to Target

 

[Fire Dan Gladden]

The ownership situation looms large over every discussion like this. Any decisions of magnitude need to be viewed through lens of good for sale/bad for sale vs win/lose.

Outside of that, IMO if the Twins trade Ryan, arguably a top 3 SP in the AL right now with multiple years of relatively cheap control, they really need to look at the nuclear option and trade every veteran of value. The following waves from this move, both internal and external, would be massive. The message to the clubhouse is winning is not a priority. The message to the fans is get ready for a rebuild (not retool). Attendance and viewership will plummet.

The team is walking an extremely fine line right now. The longer the sale drags out, the longer this team will tread water on salary and moves. It is a horrible position to be in.

[In My La Z boy]

30 minutes ago, Fire Dan Gladden said:

The ownership situation looms large over every discussion like this. Any decisions of magnitude need to be viewed through lens of good for sale/bad for sale vs win/lose.

Outside of that, IMO if the Twins trade Ryan, arguably a top 3 SP in the AL right now with multiple years of relatively cheap control, they really need to look at the nuclear option and trade every veteran of value. The following waves from this move, both internal and external, would be massive. The message to the clubhouse is winning is not a priority. The message to the fans is get ready for a rebuild (not retool). Attendance and viewership will plummet.

The team is walking an extremely fine line right now. The longer the sale drags out, the longer this team will tread water on salary and moves. It is a horrible position to be in.

This ☝️
Minor salary dump should be expected. Both Castro & Bader make enough to provide some meaningful salary relief. Pohlad seems stuck with this team for the duration of 2025, and we are stuck w/him it seems. France is cheap, and could bring back a prospect. Maybe a big market contender loses a shortstop and we move Correa? Nothing would surprise me "except" bolstering this squad. No bolstering this year in my opinion. 

[JD-TWINS]

1 hour ago, DJL44 said:

Usually, when the team is underperforming their talent for the past 100 games, the manager gets fired.

OR the players get healthy……..&/or play to their capabilities going forward 

Wallner - Lewis - Lopez, etc,

[DJL44]

4 minutes ago, JD-TWINS said:

OR the players get healthy……..&/or play to their capabilities going forward 

Wallner - Lewis - Lopez, etc,

Usually, when the players are consistently underperforming their capabilities, the manager gets fired.

[JD-TWINS]

3 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

Usually, when the players are consistently underperforming their capabilities, the manager gets fired.

These 3 are hurt too much & you think Baldelli should be fired based on Wallner & Lewis’ performance????

[DJL44]

14 minutes ago, JD-TWINS said:

These 3 are hurt too much & you think Baldelli should be fired based on Wallner & Lewis’ performance????

You can't blame just Wallner and Lewis for the underperformance of this team. It's a lot deeper than that.

[Blyleven2011]

Who knows what the FO will do  ...

They've stood pat for way to long and all that has gotten us is inconsistency from the lineup  ...

Yes they should trade some expiring contracts And maybe have some money to add back , tweaking could help , it can't hurt ...

Lineup has been inconsistent since late last July  , don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining ...

[TheLeviathan]

3 hours ago, tarheeltwinsfan said:

The Guardian trades of Bauer and Clevenger are not good comps to the Twins trading Ryan. Both Bauer and Clevenger appeared to be weird people, who probably needed to be traded for the good of the team. Joe Ryan, while unique, is a great teammate, and is team orientated. He is a talented, cerebral pitcher, not just a thrower. I am opposed to trading a player just because he is at his "peak". Keep him at his peak and win today. The future is now. Tomorrow is always a day away. 

I would like to keep Ryan.  If they can give him a 5 year extension...count me in.

But if he's going to hit free agency in two years?  Then we have to have the conversation on moving him.  

[Mike Sixel]

They'll do almost nothing and once again get nothing for expiring deals. 

[Doctor Gast]

 I've always said, we have a very good core. Big market teams have always salivated over our roster & think they have the right to take them off our hands (preferably for their rejects). They've wanted Buxton for years & create hype to persuade us that it's a good idea to trade him. There have been many redundant players in our system that we could have traded at their peak value, but we didn't & now they are tanking. IMO, if we correctly find areas that are fragile in the offseason & shore them up, plus give our promising young players a chance to prove themselves, the deadline wouldn't be an issue. I pointed out that our INF, catching & rotation were very good, but fragile & needed to be shored up. IMO, we have suffered because of this, & we should be leading the wild card race. When Lopez went down, we needed to react to fill that void pre-deadline but nothing until now has been done.  

As I've said we have a very good core so we don't have to go big time at the deadline. We can shore up our INF internally, w/o resorting to Julien at 2B, we can shore up our rotation cheaply with an inning-eating veteran until Lopez comes back. We can shore our catching with one of a couple of young 3rd string catchers from solid catching corps (C Salazar or H Feduccia) cheaply.

Can we sell off all of our expiring contracts? IMO, not if we want to make & compete in the postseason. We probably need all of them to make it to the postseason. Once Lewis & Correa start heating up, hopefully Wallner find himself to join Buxton & supporting crew; SWR, Festa, Paddack, Matthew & Ober stabilize to join Ryan & Lopez return in time for the postseason. Play the defense that we are capable of, stay the course on fundamentals & clutch hitting. IMO, the chemistry will return & we can be a force in the postseason.

Should we sell off the core? No, our problem isn't the core. If we do everything right next year, our core can make a good run next year. Hopefully with a different Twins organization.

[Parfigliano]

2 hours ago, JD-TWINS said:

These 3 are hurt too much & you think Baldelli should be fired based on Wallner & Lewis’ performance????

I think Baldelli should have been fired based on the last couple years.  He definitely should not have been  extended.

[Parfigliano]

2 hours ago, DJL44 said:

You can't blame just Wallner and Lewis for the underperformance of this team. It's a lot deeper than that.

Mariana Trench deep.

[Parfigliano]

1 hour ago, Mike Sixel said:

They'll do almost nothing and once again get nothing for expiring deals. 

Bingo.

[Hawkeye Bean Counter]

We seem to be in purgatory for any big moves due to the sale.  I don't anticipate any big trades or unless the new owners have already approved, and/or the haul outweighs the player.  The only 3 that that could apply to is Ryan, Duran and Jax.  So slim to none.  Bader and Coloumbe could be flipped for something useful.  We could really use an upgrade at 1st base.  I would love to see a minor trade to upgrade 1st honestly.   Then hope Lewis, Wallner and Correa pick it up in the second half.  If so we could have a legit team for the playoffs.  Solid starting pitching,  a deep bullpen and a pretty decent lineup.  We have the pieces to make a run.  

[Danchat]

2 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

They'll do almost nothing and once again get nothing for expiring deals. 

I betcha they'll make one tiny move right before the deadline hits, like how they did with Dylan Floro and Trevor Richards.

[TwinsDr2021]

3 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

I would like to keep Ryan.  If they can give him a 5 year extension...count me in.

But if he's going to hit free agency in two years?  Then we have to have the conversation on moving him.  

5 years buy out two arb years and 3 more or 7 years or buy out two and 5 more years? 

I would be fine with 5 total years, but my guess it is going to be real expensive, It starts some place well above Pablo's right? I am not for the extending him any further than that.

[TwinsDr2021]

3 hours ago, Doctor Gast said:

As I've said we have a very good core

IMO the Twins core is CC, Buxton, Jeffers, Lopez, Ryan, Jax and Duran (I would say Castro but he is a FA at the end of the year) and that is it I would have said Ober before the year and maybe in the second half he can add his name to the list. The hope is and has been that Wallner, Lewis, Lee, Larnach, Festa, SWR and a cast of others would join that group before heading into their arb year, but not yet. IMO I am not sure that is a good enough core of players and thus why I think the manager and FO should go. 

The sad part for me is I like most of the players individually and think most are decent major league players, my problem is a whole group together it is severely lacking. 

[TheLeviathan]

16 minutes ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

5 years buy out two arb years and 3 more or 7 years or buy out two and 5 more years? 

I would be fine with 5 total years, but my guess it is going to be real expensive, It starts some place well above Pablo's right? I am not for the extending him any further than that.

I was thinking to buy out 2 arb years with 3 more after it.  

Crochet had (I think) 1 year of arb. bought out by the Red Sox with a 6 year, 170M contract.

So, spitballing.....5 years $130 million?

[Doctor Gast]

1 hour ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

IMO the Twins core is CC, Buxton, Jeffers, Lopez, Ryan, Jax and Duran (I would say Castro but he is a FA at the end of the year) and that is it I would have said Ober before the year and maybe in the second half he can add his name to the list. The hope is and has been that Wallner, Lewis, Lee, Larnach, Festa, SWR and a cast of others would join that group before heading into their arb year, but not yet. IMO I am not sure that is a good enough core of players and thus why I think the manager and FO should go. 

The sad part for me is I like most of the players individually and think most are decent major league players, my problem is a whole group together it is severely lacking. 

This basically is the same core that adanced in '23,  Lost some key pieces but others have stepped up. So the chemistry should still be there. I like the players too but something is missing. It's like an untuned engine. Sometimes it runs OK, other times it's lousy.  Sometimes there's chemistry most often not. Twins are missing Lopez, they are trying to perform w/o him. I have a feeling everybody will get hot when Lopez returns in Sept. if some of the players don't run out of gas towards the end, & that's a big IF. 

[tarheeltwinsfan]

9 hours ago, Fire Dan Gladden said:

The ownership situation looms large over every discussion like this. Any decisions of magnitude need to be viewed through lens of good for sale/bad for sale vs win/lose.

Outside of that, IMO if the Twins trade Ryan, arguably a top 3 SP in the AL right now with multiple years of relatively cheap control, they really need to look at the nuclear option and trade every veteran of value. The following waves from this move, both internal and external, would be massive. The message to the clubhouse is winning is not a priority. The message to the fans is get ready for a rebuild (not retool). Attendance and viewership will plummet.

The team is walking an extremely fine line right now. The longer the sale drags out, the longer this team will tread water on salary and moves. It is a horrible position to be in.

Very interesting post. Thanks for reminding us to look at the big picture here. 

[NotAboutWinning]

They will do nothing. That's what they did in 2023 & 2024 when they had play-off caliber teams. They did nothing. Falvey got promoted, Baldelli got extended and Levine is gone ( listen to his interview on Gleeman and the Geek to hear his opinion of doing nothing at the deadline).

[twinfan]

Everything is wishful thinking. If the Twins pitchers get healthy, do they need to trade any of them? and to whom? And for what? If we could make the playoffs with a healthy pitching staff, we could make some noise but that's a big if. Is our offense good enough to get there? We couldn't beat a 1-8 pitcher yesterday and that doesn't bode well. I think if we don't win 5 of the next 7 games, we'll sell off for next year. If we do win, we might make 1 major (maybe Jax and/or Castro) and 1 minor deal. I think our best possible deal could come with the Cubs who have lots of prospects nearly ready.