The Twins at the Winter Meetings

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The Winter Meetings have been slow in getting started this year. In the last stanza of the meetings, things have started really moving, and with Juan Soto likely off the board, one has to speculate on whether the trade market is about to open up soon. Free agency, however, has one, big Shohei Ohtani shaped block before the market opens up.

As Dan Hayes from the Athletic noted earlier, and I anticipated, the Twins never really expected to be active during the meetings, because it suits their methodology. They prefer to wait out the market and then pounce. It seems like the current regime hasn't made a move before mid-January in any of their previous iterations. 

Still, the silence was stark. Nearly every team started making minor league deals for roster depth, or finding some bullpen options, even if those players weren't going to be primary options for the opening day roster. But the Twins didn't even do that, which is, as I said, stark. They even passed on the Rule 5 draft.

There is some relief in knowing that this was part of the plan all along, though. Before the winter meetings, Derek Falvey told us to expect quiet, but this was even quieter than I could have anticipated. This seems to suggest that they are going to hope to buy low through all phases of their roster, right down to those non roster invites.

Like I said, in the past, the Twins have been slow to get started in the offseason, but there is the added element of financial constraint. They may be waiting to know exactly how much money they have to spend until a TV contract is solidified. I think it's probably more of the former than the latter, since there was no activity, even with minor league contracts. 

Regardless of the reason,  the Twins will await a point in the offseason where they won't have to get into a bidding war with other organizations, and can try to get real major league talent to bolster their system depth, after that major league talent fails to get a contract earlier in the offseason.

Trades are inevitable, and the Twins are good at staying out of the rumor mill, so we probably won't see it coming. With the absolute silence at the Winter Meetings, we will have even less of an idea what a trade might look like, because we have even less insight into the plan than usual. I guess we can look forward to an even more wild January than we've even seen in the past.