Cash for your consideration

 As seems to always be the case, the Twins are in a complicated and uncomfortable situation. Again, as always seems to be the case with the Twins, there are ownership complications that affect any realistic strategy that the front office can employ. Instead of simply reducing the payroll allowances, the issues are magnified both by the high pressure of the deadline and the potential sale of the team. 

The front office right now is not building for a future that the Pohlads are in charge of. In fact, they may not be building for a future that Derek Falvey or Jeremy Zoll are a part of. How forward thinking should the Twins be? When looking at the future, do they plan for a Pohlad level payroll, or towards a payroll that will likely go up with less frugal owners? Do you know? I don't. 

If this was only strategic on a baseball development side, I would note the clear strength of the team - the bullpen - is a volatile component and may not offer the same benefits next year. A good bullpen is also fully unnecessary on a team that is no longer in contention. With that in mind, I would trade the rental players best as I could, as well as a couple of relievers with team control. Brock Stewart is 33 and has an injury history. Griffin Jax and Jhoan Duran are nearly the same in terms of mound talent, if not results. Duran is more popular locally. I would move Jax, leaving Duran and Louis Varland to backstop the pen next year.

The offense has been problematic all season. The seeming bumper crop of young offensive talent has not come through in a meaningful way. The top offensive player drafted and developed by the current regime is, I don't know, Ryan Jeffers? So the team could stand to add some forward looking offensive depth at the deadline, and moving a player like Jax in particular could bring a usable player to Minnesota immediately. 

There is a lot of talk about the availability of Joe Ryan, but that doesn't really offer a fair assessment of where the Twins are as a franchise. Their two biggest contracts right now are in the middle of those players' peaks. From a baseball perspective, it makes a lot more sense to keep him than trade him, because next year, Ryan would need to be immediately replaced. From the sale of the team's perspective, Ryan is a great selling point, and likely something prospective buyers don't want to see gone.

But the Pohlad's are in charge and still in debt. That might be the most important factor in the deadline. If the Twins aren't actually on the cusp of a sale, continued paring of the payroll is important, and any arbitration eligible Twins could be on the block. If a new owner with a willingness to spend is coming and the front office knows it, none of the arb eligible players are going to go.

It seems that the best way to assess the deadline is this. The Twins FO has potentially little stake in the future, but there are players already to be free agents. It would be malpractice not to see them shipped out for something. But then, there is the debt. The Pohlads have always been cost conscious, and this has to be grating. I assume this is why the team is even on the market. 

The deadline is going to be active for the Twins, and given all the factors illustrated above, I am inclined to believe that a lot of those deals are going to involve cash coming back to Minnesota. Appreciate the prospects the team does get back.

Mid-season break, and I'm not ready to give up yet.

 

The buzzards are circling the Minnesota Twins*. I've had wildly changing opinions about the team, from delight to grief, but the fact of the matter is that the team isn't in as bad a position as you perhaps feel. It's too bad they dropped their final game against the Pirates to send the team into the break off of a sweep, relishing Byron Buxton's cycle from Saturday, and being a .500 team, just 3 games out of the Wild Card hunt. 

The Twins are going to come out of the break and bring back Zebby Matthews and secret wild card Luke Keaschall. Many are awaiting Matthews return, but the pitching of late has stabilized. As demonstrated by their rough offensive outing on Sunday, the spark Keaschall may bring is really needed. Of course, the biggest kick in the pants will be playing the Rockies right out of the gate. A sweep there, if it were to happen, brings the Twins to maybe 2 games out of the Wild Card.

Certainly not a team looking to tear things down. 

Everything with the Twins needs to be looked at through the lens of a potential team sale, which to me blunts any forward thinking maneuvers at the deadline. Derek Falvey might not be building towards anything, and the Twins may not want to be left holding the bag with any big swings on controllable contracts. With that said, there are certainly baseball reasons not to expect a big July with the transactions.

First, more optimistically, the Twins aren't that far out of it. Fangraphs has them as somewhere between 1/4 and 1/5 chance of making the playoffs. A good series in Colorado (followed by taking at least one in LA against the Dodgers) should see that number rise. That's not a team that typically subtracts pieces, nor would one recommend they make big acquisitions. But this team would be adding near the deadline, as Pablo Lopez is on track to return in early August.

Even if the team takes a turn for the worse, which obviously this is Minnesota, it doesn't make sense to destroy the core right now. Buxton and Carlos Correa are in the middle of contracts, team friendly in Buxton's case. A powerful 1-2 at the top of the rotation remains in place, and Matthews, David Festa and Simeon Woods-Richardson are coming along nicely (to say nothing of Bailey Ober, if he shakes whatever is bothering him.) 

There may be some calculated moves regardless of the situation. The Twins obviously need offensive help, and Keaschall isn't going to bring all of it. Bullpen arms are always in demand at the deadline, and the Twins are well positioned there, and always willing to transition strong arms to later innings, if it fits. The Twins want to surely keep every member of their bullpen, but if a major league player with more team control goes, I wouldn't be surprised if they were part of that unit, regardless of where the Twins stand on July 31st. 

The first half is done, and this was supposed to be forward thinking. It doesn't help that the trade deadline is only a couple of weeks after the All Star Break. The point is, it isn't all doom and gloom, even if Jim Bowden thinks the Twins would be smart to trade all of their best players. They wouldn't be, and they won't. In a season of rises and falls, the Twins are amidst a good stretch that will continue next weekend. They will be in contention longer than current headlines would lead you to believe. 

*I didn't realize until well after I wrote this that Dan Hayes used this exact turn of phrase last week. Derek Falvey showed up in an image search for buzzards because of this.

Joe Ryan is going to the All Star Game, not anywhere else.

 

Joe Ryan is a good pitcher. I think at this point, we all agree on that, right? Even the national pundits were perplexed as to how Ryan was left off the initial All Star roster, though he was added as a replacement when Hunter Brown's turn in the rotation ended up putting him too close to the Game. This is another in a consistent run from Ryan, who will ultimately emerge from the Derek Falvey reign as his best pick up.

Truly, Ryan is exactly what Twins fans have been asking for since Johan Santana was dealt to the Mets. He is a high strikeout pitcher that stabilizes the rotation, and is doing so at the beginning of his career, rather than as a high priced free agent. Heck, he even came to Minnesota as a flyer from a Florida based team. Th wit correlation between Santana and Pablo Lopez exists because of a mutual admiration and shared heritage, but Ryan and Santana have similar meaning to the Twins organization.

Santana got going at a younger age than Ryan did. In fact, Ryan's current age profile puts him at about the same age as Santana was during his first couple of seasons with the Mets. Because he started in the majors at an older age, years 1-3 for Ryan don't align really at all with Santana's, but his current numbers, the strikeouts, the rate statistics, align nicely with Johan at the same age.

Johan, obviously, is a lefty and had a longer track record than Ryan did to this age, but after age 29, the outlook for Ryan look much better than it did for Santana. Not only did he get started sooner, but he worked a ton of innings, well over 200 in his last 4 seasons with the Twins, followed by two heavy inning workloads with the Mets essentially spelled the end of his career.

Barring something unforeseen, Joe Ryan has many more years ahead of him to really leave a mark as a Twins legend. By the time he reaches the open market, he will be 33 when he is a free agent. They will have him through what should be his peak years at a manageable salary. He has runway to start accumulating stats to go with the rate stats while in a Twins uniform.

There is a remarkable amount of talk about the Twins and their potential trade assets. The first targets should be the players on expiring deals, of course, particularly Willi Castro and Chris Paddack, who may even attract a usable return. Talk of Byron Buxton being moved are ludicrous because of his no trade clause and good contract. If any controllable players are traded, I could see a reliever change team for a hefty premium. To make that point hit home, former Twins Emilio Pagan and Ronny Henriquez are closing for their teams now, and Trevor Megill is an all star, closing for the Brewers. You can never really tell with relievers, so get comfortable with trading and replacing them.

But Joe Ryan shouldn't be a realistic part of the discussions. His time under contract aligns with the window provided by Buxton and Carlos Correa, as well as Pablo Lopez at the top of the rotation. The window is now, and rebuilding through trading important cogs isn't a currently feasible strategy. Joe Ryan is too important, and will remain so for a few more seasons.