Question of the week: Should the Twins buy or sell?

[Brock Beauchamp]

Assume you have both a valid offer for a player to help your team and an offer to trade a key piece like Jeffers. Which direction do you move right this moment?

[amjgt]

This feels like the equivalent of Twitter engagement bait. 
We’ve been talking about this in the forums all week. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

Just now, amjgt said:

This feels like the equivalent of Twitter engagement bait. 
We’ve been talking about this in the forums all week. 

This poll will be viewed by thousands of users outside the forums. Just because it's here doesn't mean it's *only* here.

[MMBoys93]

Obviously super dependent on what happens the next 6 games, BUT

Pretending they'll be in the same spot-

I think sell with a tiny bit of buy involved 

Jeffers and Larnach have to be traded. It’s too late to extend Jeffers. They should have attempted that years ago.

Listen on Bell and Clemens and move if it makes sense.

Listen on Joe Ryan and only if it’s a big return. 
 

Prioritize guys who are close to ready to promotion.

If Joe sticks then bring in another reliever. They’re not gonna be a top tier guy but they can add a 3rd or 4th guy and still come out with a much improved farm system.

St Paul is jam packed with guys who can replace the hitters they trade away without skipping much of a beat and they can still push for a wild card spot, even if it looks unlikely at the moment.

 

[The Great Hambino]

Why Not Both Dot Gif

If forced to choose, I choose sell as I think they're more in the pretender category than an actual contender.  And even though it would go against the FO's stated intentions, I don't buy the idea that selling would have any sort of real effect on fan morale.  First of all, it's already in the toilet - it's not gonna get much worse.  Second of all, league-wide fan morale is probably going to crater next season if there's a prolonged work stoppage regardless of what they do at this deadline.  Third of all, no one single move - or even one single trade deadline or offseason - is going to meaningfully improve fan morale long-term.  They have dug themselves such a hole in this department that nothing short of consistent investment AND consistent winning - as in, over a multiple year stretch - will get them out of it.  So for the purposes of this deadline, I hope their decisions are based on long-term roster value and not short-term fan morale

But if I had my way, they'd be doing some of both.  Sell Ryan at the peak of his value, sell Jeffers if they can get better value than a comp pick, listen on Larnach/Bell/other expring/arb-eligible players, but use your prospect pool to target controllable pitchers.  I keep seeing comments like "I'm only trading Player X if I can get back someone that can help now."  Well, no one looking to rent a (relatively, in terms of prospect cost) high-priced catcher is going to be giving up anything that helps win now.  It defeats the purpose.  It's the net return from all your trades in aggregate that matters at the end of the day

Of course, given all the uncertainty surrounding the contender status of most of the league as well as the upcoming CBA, I can see the trade market becoming a league-wide dud, so "none of the above" could end up being a possible answer as well