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.
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