There is something of a furor in the Twins blogging community lately, reflecting on last year's trade deadline sell off. Alex Speier of the Boston Globe reported that the Red Sox offered Payton Tolle and Franklin Arias, two prospects that are very highly regarded, for Joe Ryan, and the deal didn't come through. In a stunning turn of events, this means that some Twins fans and writers are upset that the burning down of the team last year didn't go far enough.
They are saying this with a straight face as the Twins are currently contemplating adding to the roster that the Twins would be better off without their #1 starter. This is clearly a lack of faith in the current squad, and an inability to believe that, for once, the Twins catch fire in the playoffs. I know Minnesota is suffering from a very real curse, but on the other hand, every single other team in the AL Central has reached a World Series since 2005, which is to say all you need is a ticket to the playoffs, and weird things can happen. Even if that is a great trade for the Twins on paper, I'm not mad it wasn't executed.
I have a couple of thoughts on the whole situation, as it happened then, and why it isn't happening now. First, and I don't want to call into question Alex Speier, because that's not the impression I am trying to give, but it is possible that the report is not true. Teams and agents put rumors into the press all the time to get a narrative going. The Red Sox lackluster deadline last year earned some negative reactions from fans. Feeding information through the press as if to say "look how unreasonable the Twins were, we couldn't have done anything else!" It's possible, but I don't want to speculate further down this path, because some may misinterpret it as dishonest or underhanded, when I think it's just gamesmanship.
Thoughts two and three are closely related. The Twins were surprised themselves by the extent of the sell off. They were going to trade their rentals, like Harrison Bader, but they had set a high price for Jhoan Duran, and then the Phillies met it. As the sell off of rental pieces continued, Griffin Jax asked for a trade, then the Astros and Carlos Correa pushed for a trade, and finally, the only trade that truly came out of nowhere, Louis Varland was traded to Toronto.
Importantly, Carlos Correa was the only salary dump, and just as importantly, the future rotation and position players were left intact, while the bullpen was a shambles. Initially, this wasn't meant to be as broad a fire sale as it was until Jax and Correa indicated their desires. The Twins had no intention of trading Ryan. Because of that, this leads me to my second point: The Twins hadn't internally priced Joe Ryan yet. Perhaps the Red Sox made just the offer that was proposed, and the Twins hadn't figured out what the appropriate sell point was, like they had for members of their bullpen.
:Let's also circle back to the Jhoan Duran trade for a second. This is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, because of their roles, but Duran netted two top prospects in Mick Abel and Eduardo Tait. Abel is currently on the IL, and has missed most of the season, while Tait has fallen in the Twins prospect rankings after a slow start in the organization. This is to say, there is no guarantee that prospects will hit. Relievers are wild cards, so trading them for prospects is always going to be more palatable than starters, who tend to be more of a commodity.
If you thought my last comparison was apples to oranges, hold on. Last fall, the Colts traded several draft picks and a receiver for Sauce Gardner, one of the best cornerbacks in football. After the trade, a former assistant with the Eagles was on a podcast, talking about how clear a win it was for the Colts despite the draft capital. He noted that trading picks for players was how the Eagles have received so much sustained success. Draft picks are lottery tickets, but getting a player that you already know about is a guarantee, and usually ends up being the "winning" side of a trade. In this analogy, the draft picks are minor league players.
We can second guess and eventually look back on a Joe Ryan non-trade as a missed opportunity, but that depends on Tolle and Arias' career, not their current stature. A real missed opportunity is failing to embrace a playoff chance. The Twins have been competitive all year in an admittedly bad league, which means they don't need to make big swings to get there, and the team is reliant enough on young talent that they should be even better next year.
And they'll do it this year because they have Joe Ryan.
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