Matthew Trueblood

Certainly not. Although we should decouple the two. Kremer (or Ober) would be a perfectly fine price to pay for Campusano or Fermin, because both of those guys come with multiple years of team control, and neither would be a true backup for the Twins. At the very least, each would become a 50/50 tandem guy with Caratini. The bigger problem, imo, is that I don't know that Kremer or Ober gets you either of them, without you also throwing in a prospect. Preller doesn't like to trade for rentals, ever.

It'd cost significantly more than that, too, FWIW. Think Marek Houston instead of Tait, and you're getting warmer. The pitching prospect would have to be stronger than I think you're thinking. (This is why I agree it's unlikely.)

You have the conversation before you make the decision, but my guess is that Ober would be displeased with that plan, and you'd probably sooner non-tender him than move him to relief in his walk year unless he really bought in hard on the transition.

Unsure if they did publicly or not. I can tell you for sure that it was under serious consideration within the front office, as of a year (or nine months) ago.

The Twins remain engaged with free-agent catcher Ryan Jeffers and have discussed other terms under which he might return, even as he ponders the qualifying offer the team extended to him earlier this month, general manager Jeremy Zoll told reporters Monday afternoon in Las Vegas. Teams have congregated at the Aria Resort this week for the annual GM Meetings, which has traditionally been a staging area for the offseason's bigger moves. "Ryan earned the right to become a free agent, explore the market, and I want to give him that respect," Zoll said. "[He's trying] to understand what is out there, but also, we're in touch there. We have made clear that we'd love to have him back, not just in a QO scenario, but in other scenarios, too." Zoll said the team doesn't feel the need to wait until Nov. 17 (when Jeffers must decide whether or not to accept the qualifying offer) to have those conversations with Jeffers. In theory, they could draw a hard line during that period, forcing Jeffers to either accept or decline the one-year offer on the table before talking about multi-year options. Instead, they've left the door wide-open for the backstop to return, should he choose to do so. At the same time, Zoll has to turn his attention to the wider world of the hot stove, which is just beginning to catch a light and isn't yet crackling the way most executives believe it will by the end of this month. "Not yet," Zoll said, when asked whether the early days of the offseason have felt tangibly different from past Novembers. "I don’t know. Maybe I’ll have a better answer for you by the end of the week, but right now, I’d say it feels closer to normal than not from a general operations perspective." That means that the Twins are laying groundwork through conversations with both representatives for free agents and other clubs, and that there are no clear roadblocks in the team's vision to making a particular move. So far, the urgency required to prompt those deals to happen just hasn't been there. The league is expected to lock out the players at the beginning of December, and Zoll acknowledged that "deadlines spur action," so a flurry of activity is still likely at the end of this month, but teams' conversations haven't yet been tinged heavily by the specter of that work stoppage. Jonas Lovin Joins Big-League Coaching Staff, Amid Other Promotions Zoll also announced Monday that Jonas Lovin would be promoted to serve as the major-league assistant pitching coach, after the team interviewed several candidates and ultimately decided to elevate the long-time organization functionary. Lovin most recently served as the assistant minor-league pitching coordinator. In his new gig, he'll work with new head pitching coach Brian Reith and incumbent bullpen coach LaTroy Hawkins. "Our hitting group this year did a really good job working as a team, and it felt like they could all kind of fill in for—you know, one person might float over here, the other person could fill in," Zoll said, when asked whether the goal of shaking up the pitching coaching group was an attempt to mirror their success on the hitting side. "Some players worked with just [Keith Beauregard] or just Trevor [Amicone], or Rayden [Sierra], and then some worked with all of them, and there wasn't as clear of a delineation on, ‘This person is only doing this set of responsibilities, and this person's only doing that set of responsibilities.’" While the team didn't elevate Reith to a director of pitching or similar higher role, the hope is that the communication between the former big-league righthanders Reith and Hawkins will be a bit more comprehensive than between Hawkins and the ousted Pete Maki. "You still need to create some level of roles there, but I think with the group we have for this year, we're hopeful that it creates a little bit of a more well-rounded nature and a little bit less redundancy in skill set and expertise," Zoll said. The team is also promoting Ross Seaton, who was already a member of their advance scouting group, to be the head of that department; he'll also have a role in working with the pitching coaches and pitchers in game preparation. Hailey Leviton, who had been an assistant director of baseball operations, also got a promotion. Leviton will now serve as the director of major-league operations, which Zoll characterized as an effort to have her "take on a more clear lead function." Leviton has had a wide remit within the team's front-office structure, but gained greater control of specific functions via this promotion. Image courtesy of Matt Marton-Imagn Images View full article

I don't lean on *any* of those numbers in evaluating a pitcher, in fact. I look at each, but a good evaluation runs deeper than a couple of numbers, anyway, and I keep some homespun stats that suit my predilections better than any of them. I went with FIP for this article because that's what Zoll mentioned specifically at the press conference. The Twins are thinking about their FIP—not in simple terms, of course, but it's part of their approach to the question of what went wrong this year. That stat, specifically.

I agree that that was the premise of FIP when it was introduced, 20 years ago. We now know much better, and our usage of the figure as both a stat and a shorthand needs to be updated accordingly. No team believes, any longer, that there's a negligible difference between pitchers when it comes to outcomes on balls in play. The differences between them are complicated, though, and there's a tradeoff between value generated in plate appearances that end with something other than a BIP and value created by improving expected outcomes on BIP. That's, now, where FIP fits: It's a starting point for a conversation about whether pitchers are making the right tradeoffs or not.

Eleven pitchers threw at least 50 innings for the 2026 Minnesota Twins. Six of them—Taj Bradley, Joe Ryan, Bailey Ober, Zebby Matthews, Taylor Rogers and Kody Funderburk—finished with ERAs that were essentially reflective of their fielder-independent skills, as measured by FIP (Fielder Independent Pitching). All six of those guys had FIPs within 0.20 of their ERAs. Of the other five hurlers, though, four had markedly worse ERAs than their FIPs would have predicted. Connor Prielipp's ERA was 1.14 worse than his FIP. Yoendrys Gómez's was 0.22 worse. Andrew Morris was 1.11 worse, and Travis Adams was 0.55 worse. Only Dean Kremer prevented runs better than his strikeout, walk and home-run rates would have predicted. He had a 3.48 ERA in his stint with Minnesota, against a 3.82 FIP. As a team, the Twins had a 4.23 FIP but a 4.56 ERA. The former ranked 20th in the majors; the latter ranked 25th. The failure to prevent runs as well as their pitchers' baseline skills suggested they should cost the Twins about six games in the standings; they missed the playoffs by seven games. One major reason why results fail to live up to pitchers' skills (at an individual or team level) is defensive support, and the Twins know they didn't offer their pitchers good defensive help in 2026. Brooks Lee was a great third baseman, but only moved there after six dreadful weeks at shortstop. The team didn't find an adequate defensive regular at short until mid-August, when they called up Kaelen Culpepper. Luke Keaschall began the season at second base, where he's a butcher. He's not good in the outfield, either, but moving him there mitigated the damage—too late for many Twins hurlers. Royce Lewis was a fine first baseman, but only landed there after a failure in his final trial at third base. Trevor Larnach is a bad defensive outfielder. Kody Clemens is a fine defender, but has limited range and arm strength and was often asked to do more than he's capable of—like playing center field, in one stretch. With Lee, Culpepper and Keaschall at the spots that suit them best and young legs (Walker Jenkins and Emmanuel Rodriguez) taking over in the outfield, the team is optimistic about their 2027 defense. That might improve the results their pitchers enjoy, on its own. However, pitching coach Pete Maki was still fired at the end of the season, and the team hired long-time Rays minor-league pitching coach Brian Reith to take his place. Why? Some of the answer might lie in those FIP gaps. At the end-of-year press conference, managers and executives always try to avoid saying anything about anything without being directly asked about it. It's just part of the modern team's information hygiene routine. They stay mum unless directly asked to comment on a topic, and when that happens, they try not to give away anything valuable. Jeremy Zoll made it most of the way through the press availability the team held just after the end of the regular season without breaking that rule. Here was his one wobble. "We spent a lot of time in spring talking about [how] we thought starting pitching was going to be our heartbeat," Zoll said, in response to a question about the depth of his rotation. "[We] fell short of that being true, and we need to go under the hood on these gaps between our FIP and our ERA over the last number of years, and the impact that defense is having on that, and some of the position changes we're having, but also to know that when you dream on what the rotation could look like for 2027, it's hard not to be extremely excited, knowing how strong of a foundation that would give us for the rest of the roster." No one had asked Zoll about the interaction between skills and results. That wasn't the thread of the conversation in which he was then engaged. He introduced that thought, which is telling. The Twins are concerned about the fact that their results on the mound don't match the talent they believe they've assembled. That's a big part of why Maki lost his job, and why Reith is here now. It's true that the Twins need to play better defense. Getting to more balls and converting the ones fielders reach into outs more reliably is a goal for every team, but it's especially important for teams who haven't done it well recently; that's the state of the Twins here in the fall of 2026. However, there are also ways for pitchers to affect the quality of contact they surrender and the likelihood of hits on balls in play against them, and if the team concluded that they haven't been doing enough to make their defense's job easier via savvy pitching, they reached the right conclusion—albeit a bit later than they should have. Pitchers' top objective is to miss bats. It's vital that hurlers have ways to induce weak contact (or at least to minimize hard contact) when batters do touch the ball, though, for two reasons: It's not always possible to strike people out; some contact is inevitable. The harder one has to try for a strikeout to get an out, the more susceptible one is to high pitch counts and walks, which are trouble of a different kind. We now have granular data on what happens when bat meets ball: where along the bat did the contact occur? Was it up the handle, or out on the end of the lumber? Did the hitter have the pitch timed up, and therefore have a good chance to hit the ball forward? Did they hit the top or the bottom of the ball? These are all valuable data, but one element controls exit velocity and the overall quality of contact most. It's the horizontal location of contact along the barrel. Getting a hitter to hit it off the end of the bat or up the handle a bit weakens contact and makes a hit much less likely. Last season, the Twins allowed the most centered contact on fastballs of any team in the majors. They were, simply, too much in the middle of hitters' sweet spots. That's because they've been one of the most four-seam-heavy teams in baseball over the last several seasons. They prefer a four-seamer to either of the other major fastball shapes—especially the sinker. Twins hurlers threw four-seamers on 33.5% of all their pitches in 2026. That's actually part of a downward trend, for them. As they lean ever more into breaking and offspeed stuff, the share of their pitches that were four-seamers has fallen steadily, from 41.8% in 2022 all the way to last year's number. However, the Rays are way ahead of them, on this front. They only threw four-seamers 27.2% of the time last season, and have been under 30% more often than over it in the seasons since the pandemic. Therefore, they were average in getting off the center of hitters' bats in 2026. Their team ERA (3.70) beat their FIP (4.04) by almost exactly the same margin by which the Twins' FIP beat their ERA. Reith won't be able to wave a magic wand over Twins hurlers and produce the same results. The Rays have better defenders than do the Twins, and they're the state of the art in defensive positioning—something the Twins did very poorly in 2026. The Twins also have a collection of pitchers who have developed and been taught to work with the four-seamer at the heart of their arsenal. Sinkers and cutters move off the center of hitters' bats better, though they also produce fewer whiffs than four-seamers do. Reith might be part of a change in pitching philosophy, but it won't be an overnight overhaul. Minnesota has to prevent runs better in 2027, and they need better results on contact to do it. That should and will start with better defense, but their pitchers can also induce contact that's more conducive to outs. Expect Reith to get them throwing more sinkers and/or cutters, whether that's by tinkering with a pitcher's mix or bringing in new arms with different arsenals. It's not time to abandon what the Twins have done well over the last few years, but they need to update their pitching paradigm. In Reith, they chose someone already familiar with the how and why of switching lanes (literally and figuratively) in the pursuit of better pitching outcomes. Image courtesy of Jay Biggerstaff-Imagn Images View full article

I don't think Larnach has much trade value. But it's more than zero. If you limit yourself to hoping for a decent reliever who has minor-league options left—rather than, say, one with late-innings, high-leverage stuff—I think you'll be happier.

No, trading Ryan for six years' worth of Ramírez is about converting short-term value into long-term value. And while pinning too much hope on López would be folly, nor has it proved profitable to count on Ryan delivering a full season of above-average work.

Twins general manager Jeremy Zoll faces a tall order this winter. Owner Tom Pohlad has loudly proclaimed that expectations around the team are rising, and while Pohlad has also pledged to boost the payroll in support of grander goals, not all problems can be solved with money. If the Twins want to make the playoffs in 2027, they need to make some significant changes this winter. I believe they will, but they might well stop a step or two short of where they really need to go—or simply be outbid for a player who's key to their plans. Using our Offseason Blueprint tool, I've sketched out what I think would be the ideal Twins offseason. It's no small set of changes; this would mark the end of one Twins era and the dawn of a new one. Not Counting on Victor Caratini, and Not Waiting on Vahn Lackey Ryan Jeffers will depart via free agency. That's not for certain, but it's a prediction I offer confidently. I wrote late last week about why the Twins might not even extend the qualifying offer to Jeffers, and even why that might be the right choice. One way or another, I expect Jeffers to leave, but that doesn't mean the team should or will leave the position in the hands of veteran Victor Caratini. I have the team signing erstwhile Reds backstop Tyler Stephenson, whom the Blueprint tool assigns a salary of $8 million for 2027. I think that's about right; he would get that amount each year on a two-year pact. The idea is to bridge the gap from Jeffers to top prospect Vahn Lackey, whom the Twins selected with the third overall pick in July's MLB Draft. Caratini is miscast as anything above a complementary option. Stephenson, a solid righty bat with a shaky defensive profile, is similarly limited, but the two players fit nicely into the team's longstanding preference for balanced playing time between two catchers. Caratini will slough off the roster after 2027, but in this scenario, Stephenson would still be in position to support Lackey and keep him fresh in 2028. Jettisoning Royce Lewis, and Aiming a Whole Lot Higher at First Base I don't think the Twins face an interesting dilemma or a crossroads with Royce Lewis this fall. I think Lewis is just a bad player whom the team needs to get rid of, whether that's via trade or non-tender. The raw talent remains somewhat in evidence, but Lewis is too flawed a hitter for so limited a defender, and injuries have dimmed his former athletic brilliance. The team shouldn't put itself in any position to pay him significant money in 2027. Nor should they let him stand in the way of needed improvements, including at the positions where he's been such an underwhelming presence over the last three seasons. My plan includes getting rid of Lewis and signing top free-agent first baseman Jake Bauers, whom the Blueprint values at $18 million. I think it's possible Bauers makes even more than that, but let's imagine a four-year, $72-million deal and call it good. For a player with elite bat speed, excellent plate discipline and a positive clubhouse presence, that's still a great deal. The Twins need more reliable thump in the middle of their lineup; Bauers is capable of providing it. He might also cost the team a draft pick—the Brewers should extend Bauers a qualifying offer late Monday afternoon—but Bauers can be an anchor of the batting order for multiple seasons to come. There's another noteworthy change to the 2027 infield picture on my Blueprint: current Cubs infielder Pedro Ramírez. We'll talk more about how he could become the 2027 Twins' second baseman later. Not much later, though! A Starting Rotation Reset Although the bullpen came in for criticism all season, quietly, the Twins' starting rotation wasn't good enough, either. That's been true in each of the last three years, as the names in the team's starting mix outdid the production each year. This winter, rather than hold onto the group that has ill-served them of late, I propose resetting the starting unit and reallocating some resources. In this scenario, the Twins would deal Joe Ryan to the Cubs, in exchange for Ramírez and outfielder Kevin Alcántara. Ramírez, 22, batted .261/.321/.402 as a rookie in 2026, and is under team control through 2032. He has a bit of speed and power, but no place in the Cubs' long-term plans, after they locked themselves into several years of Nico Hoerner and Alex Bregman at second and third base, respectively. Alcántara is toolsy but strikeout-prone, and he's out of options next spring. The Twins would have to keep him on the big-league roster in order to retain him, but he's a right-handed batter who mashes lefty pitching, so there's at least a chance he's a solid fit. I also have the team trading or non-tendering starter Bailey Ober, though not for a substantial return. With the money they save on Ryan and Ober, the club then signs (in my vision) Michael Soroka, who turned down his side of a mutual option with the Diamondbacks to become a free agent over the weekend. Soroka, 29, had a 3.41 ERA in 116 innings for Arizona in 2026. He profiles as a solid back-end starter and a possible mid-rotation guy, with an arsenal (and, in particular, a capacity for missing bats) that should appeal to the Twins. Pablo López anchors the rotation as I envision it, with Taj Bradley, Dean Kremer, Connor Prielipp and Soroka backing him up. Two Major Bullpen Upgrades Finally, I foresee two more forays into free agency for the team, to shore up that aforementioned relief corps. Jeff Hoffman should be ready to deliver a full season at the back end of the pen, but the Twins need more upside than they'll get from the likes of Andrew Morris and Tommy Nance in the middle innings. I'm predicting that they sign Jonathan Loáisiga, another free agent wrapping up a successful stint with Arizona, and lefty JoJo Romero, a teammate of Bauers's at the end of the season with the World Series-winning Brewers. Loáisiga underwent an impressive transformation this year with the Snakes, with a well-conceived move to the first-base side of the rubber and a few corresponding tweaks to his pitch mix. He doesn't miss bats the way one might expect a hard-throwing righty reliever to do, but he induces weak contact well and still has the stuff to see the strikeout rate tick back up. Meanwhile, Romero showed late in the season that he has more sheer power than he might have initially let on. He frequently touched 96 miles per hour with his heavy sinker during Milwaukee's title run, and might be a sneaky high-leverage option at a middle-reliever price this offseason. The Big Picture I'm advocating for an offseason in which the Twins pivot hard toward a future centered on their top young players. Kaelen Culpepper, Brooks Lee, Emmanuel Rodríguez, Walker Jenkins, Luke Keaschall and the newcomer Ramírez each play as close to every day as their health permits, in this scenario. Prielipp is guaranteed a rotation spot when he's able to fill it, and space is left for Kendry Rojas, Mick Abel and David Festa, given the inevitable attrition that will affect the rest of the projected group. At the same time, Stephenson, Bauers, Soroka, Loáisiga and Romero constitute a significant investment in the team's short-term future. The 2026 Twins were only slightly better than the 2025 version. The organization hasn't fielded a legitimate winner since 2023. They have a young core in place, and they ought to seize their opportunity to win with it. With these five players replacing (on the whole) less expensive ones like Lewis, Ryan, Ober and Trevor Larnach, I have the Twins committing $150 million to their 2027 payroll, including the money they'll send to Houston as part of last summer's Carlos Correa trade. That's relatively ambitious, but if the Twins can't summon at least that much gumption, they're in for another disappointing year. Image courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images View full article

Boy, that Bowden estimate is extra-strength crazy. That dude has no IDEA what's going on anymore. Incredible. But broadly, this is so helpful; thank you. I think the outside view is important here. Jeffers really isn't a premium commodity, league-wide. That makes giving him the QO more of a risk than people on here tend to think, IMO.