Matthew Trueblood

If the Jaime García trade still keeps you up nights... why? I mean I was gonna say, you can finally rest, but no, skip bed, go straight to therapy. It was seven years ago! Let it go! Image courtesy of © Mike Watters-Imagn Images In the Dallas Hilton Anatole's answer to the midnight tumbleweed across a ghost town's main street, MLB reporter Stephanie Apstein clued us all in early Tuesday morning to a minor-league signing that will satisfy one very niche type of Twins prospect nerd. This would not be newsworthy, really, except that Huascar Ynoa was the teenage hurler whom the Twins sent to Atlanta in the ill-fated Jaime García trade in 2017. Four years later, for the merest blink of an eye, it looked like he would make the team look foolish, as he pitched 91 strong innings across 18 appearances for Atlanta and won a World Series ring (though he was the furthest thing from an instrumental part of their title run), fanning 100 and walking just 25. A year later, Ynoa crashed back out of the majors, possibly for good. He underwent Tommy John surgery at the end of 2022, missed all of 2023, and struggled for much of 2024. He didn't pitch for Atlanta at all this year and became a minor-league free agent after the season. However, there's a glimmer of hope for some kind of recovery. Late in the season, Ynoa's fastball seemed to regain the zip that had been missing since his return. He averaged almost 95 miles per hour with the heater in September, without an attendant rise in velocity on his breaking ball. At this juncture, Ynoa is unlikely to make a major impact, but his future is most likely in relief. In light of that, even an extra tick—the ability to sit 95 and touch 97, with the good slider—goes a long way. The Twins can bring him to big-league camp without worrying about a roster spot for him right away, and evaluate whatever continued improvement he shows as his fully healed arm continues to progress. He's still only 26 years old, so it's worth at least giving him that extra look. By way of a refresher, the Twins traded Ynoa for Jaime García and catcher Anthony Recker on Jul. 24, 2017, when they were on the fringes of contention. After just one start, though (and amid a stretch of seven losses in eight games to sag below .500), the team flipped García to the Yankees, picking up Zack Littell in the process. The transaction string worked out fine, really, since Littell would go on to deliver some value for the team in his own run of bullpen success, and the 2017 Twins managed to bravely power through to the playoffs despite the loss of their beloved leader, García. It was so weird, though, that many fans still remember it less than fondly—and for a moment, when Ynoa looked like a potential medium-term contributor for Atlanta, the move was infamous. Deals like this are functionally free. They cost mostly whatever it took to convince the player in question they have a shot at a real role with the team in question for the coming season. Ynoa will have to show a lot to make the Twins roster before an opt-out date in the contract arrives, but if nothing else, this small move brings an old trade full-circle. It also adds one more intriguing arm to a deep collection of them, come February. View full article

I was worried he was going to sign with the White Sox, weren't you? Phew. Bullet dodged. Image courtesy of © Brad Penner-Imagn Images Ok, plainly, that's not the nature of the ripples Twins Territory will feel after Juan Soto and the Mets agreed on a gargantuan contract Sunday night. The Royals reportedly expressed interest, but one can only guess that when they and Soto's camp took the measure of each other, they all shared a hearty chuckle and agreed to part friends. There was no chance Soto would land in the AL Central, so his choice of a new team feels like only a small bit of influence. We might as well start there, though, and then go on to break down two other ways in which this deal figures to affect the Twins' matrix of options and their prospects for 2025. 1. He's out of the American League. Although three AL Central clubs snuck into the postseason in 2024, by and large, it's going to be hard for anyone in the division to claim Wild Card berths. The Red Sox vied for Soto's services, and while they fell short, they sound especially aggressive as they pivot toward other ways to upgrade their roster for next season. They, the Yankees, and the Orioles remain formidable, and the Guardians and Royals have already acted decisively to hold onto key contributors this winter—Kansas City by extending Michael Wacha, and Cleveland by re-signing Shane Bieber. Still, with Soto going to the Mets, Willy Adames signing with the Giants, and Blake Snell heading to the Dodgers, the biggest deals of the winter to date have all sequestered top talent in the National League. If it seems imposing to try to consistently attain October for the Twins, consider this: they're much better off than most of their division rivals and (arguably) all of their NL Central counterparts. So far, this winter has not seen a major step forward by any AL contender, unless you count the overexcited Angels as contenders. In an interview Monday morning on MLB Network, Derek Falvey reiterated that the Twins' focus is to win again in 2025, fueled by the roster they've already built over the last few years. As frustrating as the end of their season was, the flow of talent (not just Snell, Soto, and Adames, but Clay Holmes and Matthew Boyd, among early movers) leaves open some lanes through next year's schedule and onward into October—if the Twins act decisively. 2. There will be Carlos Correa rumors. It still feels like little more than big-market arrogance, but Yankees media continues to sling around Correa as a name to which the Yankees could turn after having been spurned by Soto. It makes sense from their perspectives, but much less so from the Twins'. On the other hand, the Soto deal can only have acted to raise the going rate for star-caliber players, which also augments Correa's trade value. He'd be a steal at roughly $33 million per year over his four remaining guaranteed seasons, and he comes with a series of team-friendly options, to boot. If that salary was daunting even a few days ago, it's much less so now, after Soto got more than $50 million per year and the right to opt out of his deal—in effect, and in stark contrast with Correa's deal structure, a monstrous player option. That doesn't mean the Twins should or will want to trade Correa, or that Correa (whose big consolation prize in this team-friendly deal is a full no-trade clause) would be open to being dealt. It merely proves that the surplus value on Correa's deal is considerable, even in the wake of a second straight season marred by plantar fasciitis. Unless and until the Yankees make a couple of huge free-agent outlays instead, Correa's name will keep coming up. Joel Sherman mentioned him as a target for New York on MLB Network Monday, although again, that felt more like an East Coast columnist feeling entitled to all the league's good players than like a sourced report. 3. New ownership is not going to solve the problems posed by the Mets' financial edge over the Twins. While Soto never had a connection to the Twins at all, it's a little bit poignant to see him land with the same ham-fisted mega-market behemoth to whom the Twins had to trade Johan Santana nearly two decades ago. The staggering terms of this deal, which amounts to a five-year, $255-million deal with a 10-year player option worth $510 million (which the team can convert, if they choose, to a $550-million commitment to cancel the opt-out), make clear how wide the chasm has become between the league's haves and have-nots. It's a good reminder that the league needs a dramatically expanded, comprehensive revenue-sharing system, and that the ugly collective bargaining agreement negotiations a year or two from now will really have three important parties: the players union, small-market owners, and large-market ones, all at crossed purposes. The Twins could be sold to as rich and competitive a magnate as is practically possible, and they would still be wildly unlikely to seriously battle with the Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Phillies, or Red Sox for top free agents, given the scale to which those teams are now showing themselves able to spend. The league's wealth needs to be radically redistributed, and big-market owners will only be pulled into such an arrangement kicking and screaming. It's a big change, and much-needed, but the upheaval will not be fun. A work stoppage might be in the offing. View full article

One of the Twins' division rivals catalyzed their playoff run this summer with a trade far beyond the ordinary deadline swaps of rentals, acquiring an elite player under long-term team control. Can Minnesota mimic that this winter? Image courtesy of © Bob Kupbens-Imagn Images Ever since the 2024 Twins finished the season with a faceplant that cost them a chance to reach the postseason in consecutive seasons for the first time since 2009-10 (no, 2020 doesn't count), there have been at least whispers that the team is considering a meaningful shakeup of their roster, including players heretofore considered indispensable parts of the core. While there is ample and apparent talent on this roster, it proved dysfunctional for long stretches of this season, and the front office is open to resolving that by changing the personnel in place. "Dysfunctional" might be too strong a word for the 2024 Kansas City Royals, who not only made the postseason at the Twins' expense but won their first series therein. They were far from a juggernaut, though, and even further from being one before July. That's when they went out and, unsatisfied with merely complementary or short-term additions, transformed their bullpen by acquiring Lucas Erceg from the then-Oakland Athletics. Erceg, a late-blooming converted infielder, emerged as a relief ace for the team down the stretch, striking out 32% of opposing batters and walking just 3% of them after the trade. He's under team control for five more years, too, so if he continues to dominate, he'll be a key cog for Kansas City for years to come. That move involved some speculation, which is why the Royals were able to land Erceg at a lower price tag than his skill set might suggest in hindsight. Still, it was a huge deal. It not only vaulted them toward the playoffs for 2024, but will be a gift that keeps giving as the team tries to establish a pattern of consistently competing in the AL Central. You don't see moves this impactful every day, either at the trade deadline or during hot stove season. Could the Twins find a similar move somewhere this winter? To do so would be a huge win for the franchise, at a crucial time. They have a lot of talented young players, but what they need isn't necessarily another passel of veteran role players. To reestablish the window they hoped was opening wide as recently as 2023, they could try to land a player with lots of remaining team control and star-caliber upside. Doing so would be hugely expensive, of course, but they'd pay for them in young talent, rather than money. At the moment, it's young talent they have, and money they lack, so perhaps the time is right for such a move. The trick, really, is finding players good enough and with enough team control to be obvious targets, who nonetheless are available. If a given guy is so good, why does his team want to get rid of him? Here are a few studs for whom there's a plausible answer to that barb. Lawrence Butler, OF, West Sacramento Athletics You know what the Twins need more of? Left-handed power hitters in the outfield! Ok, not really. But Butler might be too good an opportunity to pass up, if the A's make him available. He's a 24-year-old with recent experience in center field who hit .262/.317/.490 with 22 home runs in 451 plate appearances last year, and that undersells him. He had better numbers against lefties than against righties. He slugged .553 after the All-Star break. He's toolsy, skilled, and eminently watchable, and he's under team control through 2029. Why, then, would the A's trade him? Look, undeniably, they would have to hear a very attractive offer. But here's the thing: they're about to spend three years playing in a dressed-up Triple A facility, with no guarantees about the ability to move to Las Vegas even then—and the move to Vegas is a bad idea even if they successfully build and open a ballpark there. It's going to be miserable to play for the Athletics for the next few years: scorching in the summers, eerily quiet in the stands, and thoroughly uncompetitive. As reductive as it sounds, everyone on that team is going to want out, and Butler will draw lots of calls. The Twins could very well conclude that he's the younger, more athletic element they need in the outfield, and send to Sacramento some players who wouldn't actually have to play there right away, since they'd be in Double or Triple A in 2025. It sounds cynical and sad, because it is. The A's should be doing this with all their good players. Which brings us to... Mason Miller, RHP, West Sacramento Butler's teammate and (briefly) Erceg's, Miller is another in the group of players too good to still be in Triple A, which is what the Athletics will be for the next few years. Getting him out of there is especially urgent, because his rocket launcher of an arm could yet give way in the next few years. For that very reason, one of the nastiest pitchers alive might actually be available this winter, as he theoretically was this summer. Again, the A's front office will need to get a haul in order to move him, but can you imagine the formidability of a bullpen headlined by Miller, Jhoan Durán, and Griffin Jax? Heck, at that point, the team could even move Jax back to the starting rotation, strengthening both elements of their pitching staff. Miller's 103-MPH fastball and devastating slider make him, arguably, a step up even from peak Jax or Durán in short bursts. Curtis Mead, 3B, Tampa Bay Rays You might be sensing a theme. As the Rays grapple with the existential threat they face from climate change and pass the 2025 season outdoors in front of minor-league crowds at a ballpark named after their archrival's longtime owner, they, too, have every reason to do some offloading. They're much better than West Sacramento, and will be better positioned to contend, but that's the great news about Mead: He really might be available, because the team doesn't necessarily need him. The position at which he provides the most obvious value is third base, but the Rays figure to insert Junior Caminero there full-time in 2025. Mead is big-league-ready, but needs to clean up his approach slightly. The Twins could seek to do so as a part of moving on from Royce Lewis, or to let Mead and Lewis—two hitters with similarly obvious offensive tools but some limitations rooted in plate discipline, pitch recognition, and fielding—challenge and complement each other. A down 2024 slightly lowered Mead's stock price. Obviously, though, the Twins would still have to give up some solid youngsters to get him. Shane Baz, RHP, Tampa Bay Injuries have marred the development of every major Rays hurler lately, it seems, and Baz is no exception. Nonetheless, he's an exciting arm, with four solid pitches and four years of team control remaining. His fastball sits 96 and roughly suits the Twins' style. He could be a great addition to the team's starting rotation, and they'd be able to retain him one year longer than they currently have Joe Ryan or Bailey Ober for. Jordan Walker, RF, St. Louis Cardinals Just for fun, let's tackle one of these that doesn't involve a team playing next year in a thoroughly toxic baseball environment. Walker is a right-handed slugging outfielder, which makes him an incrementally but importantly better fit for the Twins than, say, Butler. He's even younger than Butler, and his game is really only missing one important ingredient: pulled fly balls. The Twins, as we well know, can help a hitter fix that problem. Any of these players would come at a high trade cost, and the Twins might ultimately retreat from whatever urge they're feeling to alter the basic makeup of their roster. If they want to make the leap to the next level for the next several years, this is the kind of longshot they might elect to try. If nothing else, more than fanciful ideas of landing expensive stars whom the team can't afford now or control later, these are the fun trades to kick around as we gather around the hot stove. View full article

A little bit... but that's not the primary answer. Sign up! I think you'd find the Caretakers-exclusive section interesting analysis.

The slump thing he did, specifically, was get eaten alive by his own signature move in the batter's box. Image courtesy of © Brian Bradshaw Sevald-Imagn Images Royce Lewis is a freak. He put up historic numbers during the first year and change of his big-league career, and the raw production came with huge hits in key moments; playoff heroism; and no small dose of swagger. Lewis oozed confidence up there. He owned the box, and even the opposing pitcher seemed to know it. Certainly, Lewis himself did. You'd feel that way, too, if you were capable of maintaining a sequence of movements that unlocks devastating power without sacrificing feel for contact—one most of your cohort finds impossible to emulate, because it's complex and difficult. Lewis attacks the baseball in a two-phase move, with a step forward before the pitcher goes into his delivery, then a traditional leg lift and stride. The Lew Step.mp4 This move is a cousin to one Nolan Arenado cultivated early in his career, with the Rockies. Arenado would stomp his back foot as the first move in his load, to ensure that his weight didn't get stuck on his back foot. The back-foot stomp forces you to get both halves of the body moving, and unleashes a torrent of energy into the ball. Lewis's almost tentative-looking pre-stride step does the same thing, by drawing him forward, forcing him to lean back into his back leg and hip, and then letting the rest of his power flow as he picks up the front foot again for the real leg kick. He can generate as much force on a line to the ball, with as much upward plane through the hitting zone, as hitters like Justin Turner do with much larger leg kicks. There's a rhythm to Lewis's moves that creates bat speed without undue loading of the hands or tipping of the barrel. It's all that that permitted him to bat .304/.367/.588 in 338 plate appearances from the start of 2023 through the 2024 All-Star break, despite multiple injuries. So, what went horribly wrong? View full article

Inside the ardent campaign to rid the Twins of the pox that is, apparently, a dirt-cheap, rubber-armed reliever who's a perfect fit for their roster. Image courtesy of © Matt Blewett-Imagn Images What did Michael Tonkin ever do to you? What did he do wrong, except bounce around the league for the last decade without evincing the ability to be a relief ace? What is he really asking of you? Just, maybe, $1.5 million, on a one-year deal, and a roster spot the team has spent on guys like Jay Jackson and Josh Staumont lately. Is that so much to ask? Must you detest him so, for his failure to be elite? As offseason blueprints roll in and fans speculate about non-tender candidates on the Twins roster, I find myself agog (agog!) at the number of people eager—desperate, almost—to be shot of Tonkin, soon to turn 36 years old. The message from Twins Territory is clear: This is not Tonkin Territory. Here's my question: Why? Since the start of the 2023 season, only the following players have more innings pitched in relief than Tonkin: Tyler Holton [end list] Hang on, sorry, this thing must not be working. I said, here are all the relievers who have been more available and more used than Michael Tonkin over the last two years: Tyler Holton [end list] Ok, well, I guess it's true then. Holton has pitched more than Tonkin, but no other reliever in baseball has. Could the mileage catch up to the aging righty? Of course. That's a risk with any pitcher who has pitched a lot recently. By and large, though, it's not a good idea—it is, in fact, a colossally stupid idea—to mentally punish pitchers for being durable, especially if they're established veterans, rather than guys in their early 20s. Tonkin is the proverbial rubber arm, the guy you don't mind not being able to option to the minors because you know you can go to him for multiple innings, or on back-to-back days. That's argument number one for everyone to stop being so mean to him. Here's argument number two: It's not like he's been bad, at all, over these two years. He doesn't have a true out pitch, and (by modern high-leverage standards) he doesn't throw very hard, but Tonkin has allowed an OPS of just .662 since the start of last season. He's struck out 24.1% of opposing batters and walked 8% of them. He's not wildly homer-prone. Tonkin is, simply, an above-average pitcher who will give you 80 innings of work if he's healthy, and we know that for sure because he just got done doing so two years in a row. I think fans, and even many would-be experts, are mostly (perhaps subconsciously) holding it against Tonkin that he was out of the big leagues from 2017 until 2023. He's had a peripatetic, fairly anonymous career, but Twins fans remember him from over a decade ago. They know that he's not famous or rich. They naturally fill in the rest, and assume he's as forgettable and fringy as ever. He's not, though! He's not dominant, and he comes with some age-related risk, but he's just good now! The kicker is, Tonkin is also a truly terrific fit for this Twins pitching staff. They desperately need exactly what he does, because they're a team with a lot of guys who use high arm slots, and Tonkin offers the contrast every team wants to have. If you plan out a game well, using Tonkin against a right-leaning pocket of an opposing lineup who last saw the likes of David Festa or Pablo López can be devastating. He gives hitters an especially tough look if they've been accustomed to seeing guys with high release points and vertically-oriented arsenals, because he works almost purely east and west. If Tonkin didn't exist on this roster, a master builder would need to create him. He's the yin to a whole lot of yang, and he and the rest of his likely 2025 teammates can make each other better by presenting opponents with contrasting styles and changes of pace. There are arguments for cutting Tonkin later this week. I just don't think any of them are good. Please, be nicer to Michael Tonkin. View full article

We know the Twins need to add pitching depth this winter. We also know their financial constraints will make that difficult. Let's head down to the river and pan for gold in the silt. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images A dearth of viable pitching depth did in the Twins down the stretch in 2024. After Joe Ryan went down with injury, the team's overreliance on young hurlers became glaringly apparent. David Festa, Simeon Woods RIchardson, and Zebby Matthews were all asked to do just a bit too much, and when they couldn't meet that challenge, important innings had to be shifted onto middle relievers, who also cracked under the burden of those demands. Bringing in multiple high-level arms with strong track records would be the most natural response to that structural failure, but because the Pohlad family has left in place its artificially low ceiling on payroll while they shop the team this winter, the front office will need to get creative in pursuit of any improvement in pitching depth. That might mean trades, either to directly acquire good pitchers who are still far from free agency and cost relatively little or to create financial flexibility that can then be reallocated toward pitching. It can also mean doing some more bargain-hunting. Over 500 players became minor-league free agents earlier this month, because they've played at least six full professional seasons or have previously been outrighted off the 40-man roster and were not on it five days after the World Series. In the description of how these players achieved their free agency, you can hear the reality that they're not likely to be great, surefire options. If they were, though, they wouldn't be available as free agents—or, if they were, their price tags would be out of the Twins' range. Combing through the list of those free agents to find all those who might have value is enough work to be assigned to a full-time employee of some big-league front office. For our Caretakers, though, I did sift through a large number of pitchers who hit the market, in search of some who could help the Twins. Here are the six who stood out as fits for the team's needs and their predilections, ranked from most to least desirable. View full article

Next season, the Minnesota Twins need a better alternative to Byron Buxton than they had in their outfield in 2024. Could the answer to those problems lie right down I-94? Image courtesy of © Lon Horwedel-Imagn Images When the Fielding Bible Awards were announced earlier this month, the center field honoree was Rockies outfielder Brenton Doyle. Toronto Blue Jays center fielder Daulton Varsho also claimed a prise, as the Multi-Position Fielding Bible Award winner. That made sense; Doyle and Varsho are marvelous, multi-talented players who stood out from the field both statistically and in a scouting sense. However, if you watched the Milwaukee Brewers in one of the roughly half of their games in which Blake Perkins patrolled center field, you might have balked a bit. The switch-hitting Perkins, 28, has played parts of the last two seasons for the Brewers, after signing with them as a minor-league free agent after the 2022 season. He's only batted .234/.318/.337 across 602 plate appearances, which would make him underqualified for everyday inclusion in the lineup. However, he's cobbled together that significant a share of playing time because almost no one in baseball can match his combination of athleticism, efficiency, and IQ in center field, inning for inning. He was worth 9 Defensive Runs Saved in fewer than 1,000 innings in center field, including some clutch plays that were worth more than that style of valuation can capture. Firstly, unlike Byron Buxton, Perkins has exquisite feel for the wall. When he goes back on the ball, he does it with a mixture of confidence and control, gliding toward the wall, jumping off one foot, and changing the angle of his body to minimize the risks both of having the ball jarred out of his glove and getting injured in a collision. Blake Glide.mp4 It's relatively easy to make such plays at one's home park, where the dimensions and the flight of fly balls are familiar. Perkins, however, often took his homer-robbing show on the road in 2024. Even when a ball was hit to a particularly idiosyncratic place, he seemed to have charted his course and to make small adjustments with ease and grace. Blake Robbery.mp4 Perkins also charges balls in front of him (even surefire hits) exceptionally aggressively, though. He racked up seven outfield assists in relatively modest playing time in 2024, but the biggest of them by far was this kill of a runner trying to score the tying run in the ninth inning of a game in the first half. Blake Throw.mp4 These are just a few examples, but they capture what Perkins can do—including things even Buxton can't, at this stage, and which all the team's secondary options and alternatives to Buxton failed to do in 2024. He covers ground effortlessly, has a strong arm, and makes plays even when they require last-second changes of direction or orientation of the body. He's situationally aware and has a nose for the out an opponent isn't anticipating. Perkins's offensive game is also slightly more dynamic than his overall numbers suggest. He's a good bunter and a great baserunner, and although he doesn't lift the ball consistently enough to generate big power numbers, he has the ability to cut it loose and hit the ball a long way. All of this makes him an invaluable role player, but the Brewers have a crowded outfield picture, with Jackson Chourio, Christian Yelich, Sal Frelick, and Garrett Mitchell also on board, and a couple of top prospects knocking on the door. Milwaukee needs help in the starting rotation, and the Twins need to shed some salary to give themselves more financial flexibility in building a 2025 winner. Could the two Upper Midwest neighbors find a fit on a trade? Perkins is still not yet eligible for arbitration, so he'd be cheaper and more controllable than previous acquisitions in the same vein, Michael A. Taylor and Manuel Margot. That would make him more expensive to acquire, in terms of talent, but again, the Twins need to offload some money, anyway. They could spin either Joe Ryan or Bailey Ober to Milwaukee for Perkins and a prospect, in a move somewhat reminiscent of the Jorge Polanco trade last winter—though grander in scale and better calibrated to their needs. It would have to be Perkins and a somewhat valuable secondary piece, for a player like Ryan or Ober, but keeping in mind that Perkins would fill a crucial immediate need and be controllable for up to five years, as well as costing less than Ryan or Ober, it wouldn't need to be such a good prospect as to cause the Brewers to walk away. Though he did stay on the field much better in 2024 than in previous years, Buxton only proved that he is no longer the defensive ace he once was. It's too soon to ask him to permanently move to a corner, but he could do so in a part-time capacity this year, in addition to spending time as the designated hitter. That would best serve the team in terms of winning the games he plays, as well as keeping him healthy enough to play more games—as long as they bring in a player who can adequately sub for him in center on a regular basis. Surveying their options throughout baseball, the best one available might be right next door. View full article

The historic hiccup that is the Twins' singularly even distribution of catcher playing time has to end, now, for the sake of the team. Which guy should they keep? Image courtesy of © John Hefti-Imagn Images Welcome to the 2025 Offseason Handbook! This year, we’re offering the format online only through our Caretakers program. The Offseason Handbook is a comprehensive look at what challenges the Twins face in the coming winter to field a competitive team in 2025. To become a Caretaker, visit this page. On top of receiving exclusive access to the Offseason Handbook, Caretakers also receive in-depth analysis from national writers you cannot find anywhere else. You will also receive exclusive access to events and an ad-free browsing option. In celebration of the Offseason Handbook’s release, we’re offering 20% off all Caretaker programs for the next week. Use the code HANDBOOK at checkout to receive 20% off your purchase! When the Twins signed Christian Vázquez for three years and $30 million prior to 2023, it was a perfectly reasonable move. He's underperformed slightly, relative to expectations, but in much greater part, the fault for how badly his deal suits the team now falls on ownership. You can spend $15 million on the catcher position, as the Twins will have to do if they don't trade either Vázquez or Ryan Jeffers this winter, if your overall payroll is pressing toward $180 million, as the team's behavior right up until their elimination from last year's postseason suggested they would. Once it stalled out south of $160 million, and especially once it plunged back downward from there, the pact became onerous. Imagine how obvious this choice could be, if Ryan Jeffers were just a bit more consistently in contact with his talent. At times, the younger of the Twins' timeshare backstops looks like a good framer and game-caller. At times, he looks like a star-caliber slugger, especially adjusting for his position. At times, he even looks like a situational hitting ace, using the big part of the field expertly when there's a runner on third and less than two outs. Alas, at other times, he looks as bad as any player in baseball—worse, even, than the aged husk of Vázquez, even offensively. Though Jeffers had an above-average OPS this year, whereas Vázquez had one south of .600; though Jeffers will still cost less than half what Vázquez will in 2025, as he begins the arbitration process; and though he's more than half a decade younger, it's not clear that Jeffers is the better player. The Twins need to trade one of these two, to create even a scintilla of flexibility for upgrades elsewhere on the roster. Jeffers, being younger, is probably better suited to take on the resulting increase in workload if he sticks around, and Vázquez has more money attached to him. But could the front office clear his whole salary? And if Jeffers would bring back meaningfully more in a trade, does that make him the better candidate? It really comes down to: What do you want from your catchers? View full article

Join up as a Caretaker, and see the full story! That's addressed, in part, by the exclusive portion of Davy's piece.

I agree wholeheartedly, and you should subscribe in time to read Hans Birkeland's piece for the Handbook tomorrow. It's killer, and precisely on this topic.

Welcome to the 2024-25 Twins Daily Offseason Handbook! We're going to be running a special series of articles tackling big offseason topics in exceptional depth, all week, so keep checking back and sign up to become a TD Caretaker. In this first installment, let's get into the key questions facing any team, in any winter: How much wiggle room is there? Image courtesy of © Matt Blewett-Imagn Images Welcome to the 2025 Offseason Handbook! This year, we’re offering the format online only through our Caretakers program. The Offseason Handbook is a comprehensive look at what challenges the Twins face in the coming winter to field a competitive team in 2025. To become a Caretaker, visit this page. On top of receiving exclusive access to the Offseason Handbook, Caretakers also receive in-depth analysis from national writers you cannot find anywhere else. You will also receive exclusive access to events and an ad-free browsing option. In celebration of the Offseason Handbook’s release, we’re offering 20% off all Caretaker programs for the next week. Use the code HANDBOOK at checkout to receive 20% off your purchase! Wiggle room, of course, comes in many forms. Teams don't relish using it, in any sense, because the modern approach to team-building is to be so ruthlessly efficient as to obviate wiggle room. As the Twins have proved lately, though, sometimes that attempt to control and optimize everything only backfires, begetting fragility and eventual sclerosis. Just as a team has to be willing to be flexible, they have to have the luxury of that flexibility, even once they embrace the concept. A lack of ownership investment reduced the team's flexibility when it comes to building a winner last winter, and unfortunately, it looks very much as though those conditions will persist during hot stove season this time around. Last winter, though, the team's greatest failing might have been the inability or unwillingness to use the levers available to them to create more flexibility even without financial options. They pursued their customary, plodding strategy in an offseason that moved at a pace that should have suited them, but they never found the right opportunity to pounce and rapidly create new value. They didn't leave their comfort zone in order to overcome the new challenges posed by a lack of spending power, and as a result, they brought back a more extreme version of the team they were in 2023: older, more power-reliant, more athleticially limited. Realigning one's principles based purely on a shift of the wind is a lousy way to live, but one could argue that the Twins have cleaved too tightly to their team-building paradigm, even absent a sudden and dramatic change of direction from ownership. They believe so fervently in a pull power-focused offense and a strikeout-mad, four-seam-only, soft-and-spin pitching approach that they might be trapped in that mode, at the expense of both mental dexterity and roster maneuverability—both of which are indispensable if you're already dealing with sparing financial capacity. Maybe the tears that rolled down Derek Falvey's cheeks at his intimate season-end media scrub were the waters of onrushing change, though. Maybe they symbolize that the pain of their late-season collapse broke this front office open and forced them to seriously reconsider some things about their own approach to team building. In that case, maybe flexibility is back, even if the belts are still tight all along the factory line. Let's take a closer look at the numbers, to find out. View full article

For as long as there have been World Series, there have been occasional complaints that they're sloppy. We should expect that. The crispest baseball of the season can't come at the end of a 200-game schedule, in varying climates and amid a media circus. But extraordinarily compelling baseball still can. Image courtesy of © Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images A great World Series has to run six or seven games, and thus, sadly, the much-hyped 2024 Fall Classic fell short. A good one needn't be played at an exceptionally high level of tautness or neatness, though. Chaos is good. Chaos is the element thrown at the last moment into the mixture of great ingredients—talent, stakes, and setting—that make up good baseball in general, elevating it by testing the players contesting a series and forcing them to meet unexpected moments and challenges. Chaos creates vividity, and that's how you should truly judge a World Series: by its vividity, piquancy, and historical redolence. Those are the aspects of great baseball drama, and they were all present in the 2024 postseason, including the Series between the Dodgers and Yankees. There has to be rising action, and good rising action includes foreshadowing. We had that. There have to be visible, understandable protagonists, but there also have to be surprise heroes and goats. We had that. Finally, there have to be twists, but not twists so violent that the final outcome feels unearned. We got that, too. The Dodgers were the better baseball team, and they won this Series without even having to go back to Los Angeles for a second miniature set at home. It didn't have to be that way, though, and the path the team carved to their ultimate victory was as messy, as dramatic, and as fragile as good baseball always ought to be, even as they earned every drop of it. View full article

The Minnesota Twins’ 2016 first-round pick is stepping away from the game a week shy of his 27th birthday, after a pro career frequently disrupted and ultimately derailed by a series of injuries. Image courtesy of © Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports Although his MLB tenure got an auspicious start when he was included as part of the Twins’ playoff roster in 2020 and debuted in postseason play, Alex Kirilloff goes down as one in a string of Twins first-round picks that all went sour, From 2013 to 2016, Minnesota made Kohl Stewart, Nick Gordon, Tyler Jay. and Kirilloff top selections. None of the quartet found their way to big-league success. As a group, they have -0.1 career wins above replacement (WAR), according to Baseball Reference. As has become some mixture of running joke and hard-earned commiseration, Kirilloff joins Gordon, Miguel Sanó, Byron Buxton, Royce Lewis and Trevor Larnach among a seemingly endless list of players who entered the organization as top prospects, only to immediately suffer major, development-damaging injuries that sidelined them for long periods. A few of those players survived and eventually established themselves in the big leagues, but for Kirilloff, the damage never stopped piling up, and his talent couldn’t compensate. During a career in which he lost significant time with injuries to his elbow, wrist, shoulder, and back (among other maladies), Kirilloff did climb to the majors and flash the potential to hit for both average and power there. Slumps and new injuries repeatedly threw him out of rhythm, though, and the team wasn’t able to rely on him enough to commit to him unreservedly at any point. In parts of four regular seasons, he had just 884 career plate appearances, with a career line of .248/.309/.412—far from impressive or sufficient, for a player who was billed first as a fine defender in the outfield corners, then as a potential whiz at first base, but who was never able to demonstrate above-average defense or baserunning anywhere. In 15 postseason plate appearances, he went 1-for-13, leaving no mark other than by failing to come up with a key ground ball in the 2023 ALDS against the Astros. We’ll never know how good Kirilloff could have been, but he did hit the ball hard when he was right physically. A product of his father’s passion as a coach, Kirilloff took great pride in his swing, but struggled to adjust and create the consistent lift to tap into his natural power. He played well for a long stretch in 2023 and started scorching-hot in 2024, only to collapse brilliantly and unmistakably. He went so cold from mid-April through mid-June that the Twins tried to option him to Triple-A St. Paul, whereupon Kirilloff informed them about a nagging back discomfort that contributed to that catastrophic stretch. Fairly or not, the perception thereafter was that the team and the player were at odds, and because Kirilloff never got back to full health or showed any sign of being able to help the big-league team thereafter, he fell off the radar in the second half. The baseball gods can be cruel, and they were unremitting with Kirilloff. He might have been able to do more to make the most of his brief career, but he had impressive talent and worked hard to translate it to production. His body defied and betrayed him so many times that he’s now decided to let his dream go. The Twins, who seemed certain to move on anyway, are left to wish things had panned out better, and to plan a permanent replacement for Kirilloff’s left-handed upside at first base and/or DH. View full article