A dearth of viable pitching depth did in the Twins down the stretch in 2024. After Joe Ryan went down with injury, the team's overreliance on young hurlers became glaringly apparent. David Festa, Simeon Woods RIchardson, and Zebby Matthews were all asked to do just a bit too much, and when they couldn't meet that challenge, important innings had to be shifted onto middle relievers, who also cracked under the burden of those demands.
Bringing in multiple high-level arms with strong track records would be the most natural response to that structural failure, but because the Pohlad family has left in place its artificially low ceiling on payroll while they shop the team this winter, the front office will need to get creative in pursuit of any improvement in pitching depth. That might mean trades, either to directly acquire good pitchers who are still far from free agency and cost relatively little or to create financial flexibility that can then be reallocated toward pitching. It can also mean doing some more bargain-hunting. Over 500 players became minor-league free agents earlier this month, because they've played at least six full professional seasons or have previously been outrighted off the 40-man roster and were not on it five days after the World Series.
In the description of how these players achieved their free agency, you can hear the reality that they're not likely to be great, surefire options. If they were, though, they wouldn't be available as free agents—or, if they were, their price tags would be out of the Twins' range.
Combing through the list of those free agents to find all those who might have value is enough work to be assigned to a full-time employee of some big-league front office. For our Caretakers, though, I did sift through a large number of pitchers who hit the market, in search of some who could help the Twins. Here are the six who stood out as fits for the team's needs and their predilections, ranked from most to least desirable.
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