kmeyer14

Forgive me if I'm wrong on this.... but I believe there might be one or two more things that impact it. Specifically where some of the young guys place in awards racing. I don't remember if Julien was in the top 100 in multiple places (he was close if he wasn't) but him placing or winning ROY gets the Twins a pick - same could be for Royce, though that's obviously less likely now. However, from my understanding, because Joe Ryan is still pre-arb, him placing high in the Cy young award race could net the Twins a pick. I don't remember how high he has to place, but I believe it's a thing that could happen this year.

If Flexen is the reason we give up Kepler, I'll hate the deal. I'm all for moving Kepler, but Flexen does nothing for us. I'd rather trade him for whatever type of prospect we could get. Yes Flexen had a 3.73 era last year, but the 4.62 xERA and 4.49 FIP paint a much different picture. I want nothing do with a guy that struck out 6.21 per 9 last year. Feels like a really low ceiling, back-end starter. If this was last year, I might be more for it but we've got plenty of mid-to-back end of the rotation arms that I don't really see the need to actively acquire more. Not to mention he's making $8 million this year so it's not even a salary dump (which would be my goal with moving Kepler, salary dump him and chase a Correa/Bassitt package or something like that).