Twins Trade Candidate Breakdown: Griffin Jax

Griffin Jax is coming off a career year that saw him throw 71 innings with a 2.03 ERA, a 1.94 FIP and a K-BB rate of 29%. In his third season as a full-time reliever, Jax established himself not only as the best arm in the Twins bullpen but also one of the best bullpen arms in all of baseball. He’s entering his first season as an arbitration-eligible player, and he is projected to make $2.25 million, per Cot’s Baseball Contracts. He'll have two more years of team control following the 2025 season.

The Case for Trading Griffin Jax
There is almost always a case to trade away a reliever coming off a strong season, simply because of the volatility of the position. It’s fairly uncommon for a reliever to maintain near-elite production for more than a few years, which Jax already has done, and knowing when their time is up can be next-to-impossible to predict. While relievers of Jax’s caliber don’t grow on trees, they can generally be plucked from other organizations fairly cheaply. Look at the two World Series teams as evidence that good scouting can help teams find productive relievers on the scrap heap. Combining both bullpens, only one reliever was truly homegrown; 11 of them were acquired via free agency, trade, or waivers within the last two years. What’s more, Jax would arguably be the best arm on either team, suggesting that a more balanced bullpen of solid arms may be better than a bullpen with a few top-end arms and sub-optimal ones bridging the gap.

Jax is entering his age-30 season and coming off three seasons in a row of more than 65 innings and appearances. From 2021 to 2024, there were 10 pitchers who threw more than 260 innings of relief, and only Emmanuel Clase, who is four years younger than Jax, averaged 1.6 or more fWAR per season. By nearly every metric you can reference, Griffin Jax is coming off of the best season of his career, and his FIP suggests that he could be even more productive with a better defense supporting him. While that may sound like a reason to keep the righty, you can easily flip that as a reason to sell him: his value may never be higher.

Examining a Potential Trade Market
Another reason to take advantage of Jax’s career year is that, if he were a free agent, he would be the most sought-after right-handed relief arm on the market. Of the high-leverage relief arms available, he’s both coming off the most productive season of the group and the youngest reliever of the group by more than a year. This elevates his value even more, especially considering the three years of cheap team control tied to him. So who needs a relatively young, cheap, near-elite, and controllable reliever? Well, anyone who plans on contending in the 2025 season.

Quite literally, if the Twins made him available, I would expect everyone except the Blue Jays, White Sox, Athletics, Angels, Marlins, and Rockies to pick up the phone. And given his team control, I might not even totally eliminate all of those teams. If we focus on what a return might look like in a Jax deal, I want to compare it to recent deals from both the trade deadline and the previous offseason, with the latter probably being a more realistic comparison. I think the reliever market, especially, varies in the offseason as compared to at the trade deadline, and it was very challenging to find even a somewhat similar trade that moved a reliever of Jax’s caliber in the 2023-2024 offseason.

Last offseason, Aaron Bummer was coming off an unspectacular season with the Chicago White Sox and was dealt to the Atlanta Braves for a bevy of assets. The Braves sent three former first-round picks in Mike Soroka, Jared Shuster, and Braden Shewmake, all of whom had some prospect pedigree but also had question marks at or close to the major-league level. They also added utility infielder Nicky Lopez and pitching prospect Riley Gowens. Essentially, the White Sox got three kind-of intriguing fliers for their middle reliever. Not long afterward, the White Sox dealt a slightly better reliever, Gregory Santos, to the Seattle Mariners for two top-20 organizational prospects in Prelander Berroa and Zach DeLoach, plus a second-round comp pick (#69 overall). The Dodgers’ Caleb Ferguson was coming off back-to-back solid seasons and getting ready for his age-27 season. In February, he was dealt to the New York Yankees for a lesser bullpen piece in Matt Gage and a 19-year-old pitcher who had performed well in the Complex League. 

Turning our sights to the trade deadline, where he had more comparable deals to look at, Lucas Erceg of the Oakland Athletics was dealt to the Kansas City Royals. In return, the Athletics received a top-10 organizational pitching prospect with iffy surface stats but strong peripherals; another struggling top-20 prospect; and their most recent 11th-round pick, who was performing well at High A. The San Diego Padres acquired Jason Adam from the Rays for a top-100 pitching prospect and two top-12 organizational prospects.

Conclusions
I think it’s pretty clear that if the Twins are going to shop Griffin Jax, they would be remiss to do it this offseason. Because of reasons outlined earlier (volatility, dime a dozen, etc.), there just isn’t a strong enough market for a near-elite reliever from November through (say) June. Teams have their sights focused on free agents and acquiring relievers off the scrap heap via waivers, believing in their pitching development system to turn them into productive members of their respective bullpens. The shelves are more bare come mid-to-late July, and that naturally inflates the value of top-end relievers. It’s at that point, if circumstances warrant it, that the Twins should start answering calls on Jax.