A Radically Different Deadline Approach Has Led to the Same August Results for the Minnesota Twins

Last year, the Twins stumbled into the month of August, dropping four of their last five in July to fall six games below .500 and spur an unprecedented deadline sell-off. In what would prove to be Derek Falvey's final big swing at the helm, Minnesota's front office traded away 10 major-league players. The outgoing wave included their three best relievers in Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax and Louis Varland, and one of their top-three position players in Carlos Correa. What remained was an ill-suited starting shortstop in Brooks Lee and a bullpen full of marginal (at best) MLB talent.

The ensuing result was predictably very bad. Through August 27th, they were 9-16, a .360 winning percentage. Their decimated bullpen ranked 19th among MLB teams in fWAR, while their rotation ranked 18th and their offense ranked 21st. 

This year, August started on a very different note for the Twins. They won seven of their last nine games in July, bouncing back from a post-break slump, and by the time the trade deadline arrived, they had emphatically emerged as buyers. They traded one of their top pitching prospects for Jeff Hoffman, after also shipping out noteworthy prospects for reliever A.J. Minter and starter Dean Kremer.

Following Tom Pohlad's edict, first-year baseball ops leader Jeremy Zoll invested in his roster, in an effort to bolster the club's chances in August and September as they competed for a playoff spot. And in response to that investment, through August 27th, this year's Twins have gone ... 8-15, good for a .348 winning percentage that is slightly worse than 2025 through this date. The revamped bullpen has been modestly better (15th), albeit with a far worse Win Probability Added, while the rotation and offense have both been middle-of-the-pack.

Just as expectations played to Shelton's favor in the first half of the season, they now work against him relative to where Rocco Baldelli stood one year ago. Last August, people were commending the Twins for playing free and easy, absent the weight of contention status and urgency. Now the current team is collapsing under pressure, struggling across all phases, with poor play accompanied by questionable decision-making from both Shelton and Zoll's front office.

The difference is that the ending of this year's story remains unwritten. We know where it went from here last season: from August 28th onward the Twins went 10-19 to end up in fourth place with 92 losses. There's still time for the Twins to turn the ship around and at least make things interesting. Their remaining schedule is favorable. Walker Jenkins is on his way and Joe Ryan is hopefully not far behind.

But in order to avoid irrelevance by mid-September, an outcome that would cast huge scrutiny on their decision to parse out future assets for short-term help three weeks ago, these beefed-up Twins need to show they are better than the dismantled, resigned team that marched to the finish line a year ago. So far, they haven't proven it in the least.