4 Early Trade Targets that Can Upgrade the Twins' Offense

Agree with Karbo.  1st base and DH are not positions of need.......

I think the hitters are/will be fine; what it appears we need (especially after Alcala got whacked in AAA) are some more quality arms for the pen; what was thought to be a strength is looking sketchy right now. Larnach is hitting well enough that swapping Buxton and him as OF/DH will help the defense (OF-elite!), and Kirilloff will help (wish he was right-handed, though).  A trade of a LH hitter Kirilloff, Gallo (!?), Larnach, Gordon, Wallner, Joulien, etc for a guy who crushes LH would be nice, but I wouldn't reach for a guy to do it.  OR you wait for Royce Lewis (who you put in the Buxton-DH role) or call up Brooks Lee, and let him and Miranda fight it out.  Castro, Gordon, Solano (who I really like) appear to be the guys who would be in trouble when Kirilloff is ready to go...

As a team as of Sunday morning the Twins have the sixth best WRC at 1b.  Polonco’s health, Miranda and Correa having cold springs contributes more to the problems on offense. Solan o hasn’t seemed to add much, either

Another bench bat would be nice.  But, if Kepler continues to hit a little bit, and Miranda and Correa get going as the weather warms, we’re going to score plenty of runs.  We’ll get Kirilloff back shortly.  We should get Royce back at some point to be, hopefully, a much better version of Nick Gordon and get 4 starts a week in LF/CF/SS.  We have Garlick as an emergency lefty masher if needed.  I think we’re fine offensively.  I can’t see them giving up anything for a bat.

As mentioned above, some bullpen help is probably the biggest need.  We can’t throw Thielbar, Jax, Duran, and Lopez every night.  We can’t afford to keep throwing away games with these other guys.  Unfortunately, they could’ve addressed that with a few million dollars instead of prospect capital, but that ship has long sailed.

Twins hitting has picked up.  I can understand an upgrade at First Base ONLY if AK can't perform as the Twins hope.  Otherwise, it remains to be seen if the team needs to make any moves.  None are obvious at this point with excellent depth throughout the roster.  I don't like any of the suggested pick-ups.

We could use replacements/upgrades for Pagan and Moran right away. Otherwise, I'd hold off until we have more data on Kiriloff and the rest of the team before pulling the trigger on anything else.

Cody: Have you been watching games? Pen has been anything BUT solid!! Almost time to panic. It is much like last year. When the Pen comes in you can only cross your fingers. Nobody seems to want to take control and be the consistent shut-em down guy! Way too many walks and then a bloop and game is tied. Then more walks and a single - lead gone. Maybe St Paul can help?

It is always good to see posts on what people see as possible additions to the Twins team. This is an interesting collection of good baseball players. The problem is that none of these guys would be rostered on our current team even if the they were DFA'ed. The Twins would not release Gallo for Cron or Walker, Torres would not displace Polanco, and the Twins already have a pile of left handed hitting corner outfielders which means no role for Pederson. No room at the inn for these four.

The biggest black hole in the line-up is the $200 MM shortstop. Maybe dropping him from the two-spot for a couple games will wake his bat up.

The biggest weakness on this team is defense(who as a Twins fan thought that would the case). There seems to be at least one bad play a game, and that seems to open the floodgates to a bad inning. Here's to hoping that warmer weather (eventually) will cure that.

We have a roster crunch right now. I like our chances with the incoming  support better than those you recommended, there's no guarantee on them either. The main cold hitters are Correa, Miranda & Kepler. Kepler has been turning it on, Miranda is heating up a little, Correa is the only one that's really lagging behind & I don't recommend switching him out but drop him down the order might wake him up as MNfireman stated.

I see Correa has been dropped in line-up today....from 2nd to 3rd!!

Look for help in the pen. Pagon isn't being used at all even in a mop up role. Why is still here, do Rocco and the FO have a difference of opinion here?

Another hitter?  Arraez.  
 

The biggest problem is Correa is just not hitting, but our trainee manager keeps hitting him at the top of the lineup. It just seems Correa cannot hit under pressure.  He is barely hitting .200, but if you look at his batting average with runners on base it would even be lower. I do not know if he is trying too hard to get a hit when under pressure, but so far the $200 million man has been a complete failure. I really hope he can start getting big hits or the Twins will have a hard time winning.

The offense is light in pure hitters or high-leverage bats. Think about the last time someone went off and had a stat line like this: 4-5 with 2 doubles, a 3-run homer, and 6 RBI's. Not one instance last year or 2023. Only Arraez and Cruz were good enough to post a 5 hit or 6 RBI game a few times per season. I think Buxton's 2-5, 2HR, 5RBI, BB, 2R was the most productive game anyone could produce in 2022. Yikes. Gallo has a similar game this year and that's it. We'd need two Arraez's with decent power to be a legit playoff team...or the leagues best hitting coach to mentally and mechanically transform every player on the roster.

It's still April for god sake.  Let's talk in a couple months.  Many / MANY questions to answer before we have a clue of how to set-up for the 2nd half.

Rooker anyone?!

ÏThe way Baldelli mis-manages hid pitching staff, they would need at least 18 pitchers on the roster to be competitive in the play-offs……ain’t gonna happen😳

Hard pass on all of these options.

Correa will make people forget their complaints once the weather warms. We have short memories.

We're flush with starters? We just lost two of them and Lopez has looked shaky in consecutive starts.

16 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

It's still April for god sake.  Let's talk in a couple months.  Many / MANY questions to answer before we have a clue of how to set-up for the 2nd half.

While I agree with this, it is setting up that the only central division team going to the playoffs is the champion, and the Twins do have 3.5 game lead, so there is some room to let things play out, but a couple of months in a long time and if Cleveland passes them in the division and starts pulling away the second half might be a little late to be figuring things out.

49 minutes ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

While I agree with this, it is setting up that the only central division team going to the playoffs is the champion, and the Twins do have 3.5 game lead, so there is some room to let things play out, but a couple of months in a long time and if Cleveland passes them in the division and starts pulling away the second half might be a little late to be figuring things out.

We already are trying to figure out how to get promising young players onto the active roster.   At some point you have to work Varland / Kirilloff / Lewis / Julien / Winder and others into the active roster.  We can continue to be just good enough to get into the playoffs but the only way this team becomes a serious contender is to develop the good young talent we already have.  The Phillies did not get better last year because of trades.  Fans like to think the answer is another teams players but improvement more often comes from within.  

I highly doubt the Yankees or D-Backs will be sellers. 

Pederson is redundant.

Cron is a hard pass.

A right-handed hitting corner outfielder is about the only position of interest (as of now) in the trade market for the non-pitching side.

Pitching, pitching, pitching.

On 4/30/2023 at 8:07 AM, miracleb said:

Agree with Karbo.  1st base and DH are not positions of need.......

Well, I respectfully disagree.  We could use an upgrade at almost every position, but obviously that isn't feasible.  Every line up in the majors has weak spots.  However we have about 6-7 weak spots one through nine on almost every night.  We need to upgrade in at least half of them.  3B, LF, RF, 1B, C to start.  We might see alot more 1-0, 2-0, 3-1 losses until that happens.