Twins Trade Rumors: Byron Buxton, Joe Ryan, Pablo López

Twins Trade Rumors: Byron Buxton, Joe Ryan, Pablo López

What’s up, baseball friends? It’s Tom. Thanks for clicking on this video. Uh, let’s It’s gonna be difficult. It’s gonna be a difficult conversation, but I promise we’re gonna kind of uh swing this into some interesting uh talk. And I’m I’m curious, you know, if the Twins were to make some trades, who you would target, what type of players or even specific players you’d target. Uh, we’ll get to that in a sec. But first off, let’s talk about this. We’ve got Byron Buckton, trade, numerous rumors, Joe Ryan, Pablo Lopez coming from ESPN, Kylie McDaniel, and Jeff Passen. Uh, they released a list of the ranking of the players who could be traded. So, uh, and they just wanted to freak out Twins fans, I think, by putting Byron Buckton as the cover boy of this article. Uh, you know, that certainly freaked me out this morning. So, um, but I don’t want to give away that whole article. It is for free on ESPN. You should go check it out. I’ll put a link down in the description. Um, but three twins were ranked in the top eight. I’m not going to say where. You’ll have to check that out. But Buckston, Ryan, and Lopez all ranked within the top eight. And then it was a top 25 list. And Ryan Jeffers was among the names in the uh the additional 15 beyond that. So, lots of twins popping up in this ranking. But important to to kind of step back from that panic of of thinking about a potential Byron Buxton trade and understanding this was a ranking of perceived trade value and not a likelihood of being traded. So they put a 35% on Byron Buckson and then a 50% on Joe Ryan and Pablo Lopez. You know, that still doesn’t feel great, but uh keep that in mind. It’s not like those guys were in the top eight players believed to be traded as their trade value. um based on those percentages. I ran this through like a a calculator of of three events and then the to run probabilities based on those percentages. An 83.75% chance at least one of those guys is traded. That does mean a 16.25% chance that none of them is traded. Uh and then an 8.75% chance of all three being traded. Now, to be fair, this is maybe a weird approach to this. It was just something I was thinking about. uh you know if you ran those questions by McDaniel and passing maybe you’d get totally different figures and maybe that’s not how the math works but you know some something to think about and then you know this is not surprising to me and I I I could see all three guys being traded beyond those probabilities because I said this in mid August months ago they’re going to trade Joe they’re going to trade Pablo and at that point Byron will wave his no trade clause because everyone has a limit. Um, now that was, you know, in the depths of, you know, recovering from a couple weeks after the trade deadline fire sale. If you want my Nostra Thomas prediction of the off season, there it was right there. Um, and again, maybe maybe I’m a little doom and gloomy. So, let’s pivot that to maybe a more interesting, a more positive way to talk about these conversations, and that’s well, who’s going to come back in one of those trades? Because as I put here, you know, yes, the motivation is to reduce payroll, and that sucks. Yes, we love these guys and I I I think I put in that post, these are three of the most enjoyable twins players to follow of the last 20 years. Um, but on a plus side, these guys would bring back a ton. They would bring back a ton. Each of them has excess value to what their contracts look like. And, you know, especially if teams are comparing what a free agent is going to look like compared to potentially trading for one of these guys. And the free agents are also typically on the older side. Uh, so the Twins could get a ton if they deal, you know, one or, you know, potentially all of these guys. Um, but what would they even want? That’s what help me help me kind of figure that part out. That’s what I’m curious on your end. Um, if the Twins are trading those guys, what are you targeting? Are you targeting MLB help? Are you that’s cheaper and more has more years of team control or are you going prospects? If you’re going prospects, are you targeting guys in like double A or is more like a Eduardo Tait uh target who’s, you know, in low low A but is like a top 100 prospect very well regarded. Who would you target? I put there that, you know, the minor league system could always benefit from a boost. The Twins are a team that basically has to develop from within, especially with the way they’re being run right now. Um, but the system is already really well regarded and you’ve had some guys debut like a Luke Kishell who came up and looked good. Um, so it’s like, well, it’s not like that’s a weakness that you would really need to address. It could, you know, there’s not going to be a a problem to make that even better, but would they target young affordable MLB players with multiple years of team control? And I have a name that I want to throw out there that I’ve been thinking about a lot, and that’s Mason Win, shortstop of the St. Cardinals, a 2025 gold glove shortstop. One of the best defensive players in all of baseball. The Twins have been talking a big game about wanting to get better on defense. If you ask me how I think that might look, I think that might look like going after someone like Mason Win. He’s got he’s entering his age 24 season. I would say keep that in mind. If you look at Win’s hitting stats, they don’t really jump off the page at all to be honest. But he is still so young entering his age 24 season. I think his bat has more to show. And if you think about the truly truly elite defensive players, a lot of them don’t hit a ton. So it would be really hard to find anyone who can bring you as much value defensively at shortstop as Mason Win and provide, you know, above average offense. I think it’s possible he gets there in the next couple seasons, but he’s not there yet to be completely honest. He does have four more years of team control as well. So, this is a guy who’s going to be around for quite a bit longer if you were to add him. This would allow the Twins to move Brooksley to second base and Luke Keshel potentially either to the outfield or first base. I think you can get away with Brooksley at shortstop and I think you can get away with Luke Keshaw at second base, but you cannot get away with putting them both in your middle infield. That’s just not going to be a good defensive middle infield. You would need if if those guys stay at those positions, you would need to surround them with a very good rest of your infield. And right now having both of those guys locked into those spots, I think there’s very little hope in my opinion for the Twins to have a good defensive infield. Uh so I would I don’t know if the Twins are anywhere near on this track, but I would definitely look for a good defensive shortstop uh to open up some different possibilities and dramatically improve your defense, which is going to help your run prevention and your pitching staff. Uh now, if I like this guy so much, you always have to think, well, if this guy’s exciting, well, why would his team get rid of him? That’s a that’s a very reasonable question. Uh and my reasoning is that St. Louis has the number four overall prospect in all of baseball. JJ Weatherh hold expected to debut this upcoming season. He has primarily played shortstop, but he is nowhere the defender that Mason Win is, but he also has way more offensive upside. Maybe the best pure hitter in the minor leagues right now, JJ Weatherhold. So maybe that’s a reason that they would move on from Mason Win to try and see if Weatherhold can stick at shortstop. I don’t know. Uh they did just trade away Sunny Gray. So it’s kind of like well if if they got rid of his salary would they really be looking to add veterans and salary. Uh you know the only you know thing I would say to that is Sunny Gray was on his last year of team control and he was getting paid a ton for this upcoming season. So maybe their justification is a little bit different. Maybe it’s not that they can’t spend any money but just that situation didn’t make sense for them. Um so that’s just a name I’ve been considering. Let me know what you think about that. Let me know again what would you target. There is a big part of this fan base that has been vocal about for years about wanting the Twins to do a full rebuild and I don’t think they necessarily are excited about the idea of potentially Buckston, Ryan, and Pablo being traded, but it’s always there that wants to just do full rebuild mode, tank for a couple years, and really get a bunch of talent to potentially not just build a contending team, but maybe a World Series type team. Um, I’m not really on that boat, but I can see some validity in feeling that way and I understand why people might feel that way. And just trying to throw out that, you know, this it’s this news sucks. Seeing some of our favorite guys in the trade rumors is a gut punch. I don’t like it. But there are some it’s not like it’s it there’s nothing to be uh intrigued by. It’s it’s conversations I don’t want to be having, but it is kind of interesting and exciting to think about the type of players those guys could bring back. So, thanks for checking this one out. Uh me and my buddy Jamie Cameron launched a Patreon focused all about twins prospects called Limestone Pipeline. Go check that out. It’s four bucks a month. Really appreciate you watching this video and supporting this channel, my projects, anything really. and we’ll talk again

ESPN published a ranking of players who could be traded this offseason, and Minnesota Twins Byron Buxton, Joe Ryan and Pablo López were all toward the top of the list. In this video, I provide my reaction to this article, try to figure out what the Twins would target in return and offer up a player I’d love to see them acquire. Here’s a link to that article: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/47166190/mlb-offseason-2025-2026-trade-candidate-player-rankings-skubal-marte-buxton-peralta

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