Major League Baseball placed Emmanuel Clase on administrative leave until at least the end of August Monday, as they investigate Clase’s connections to the same suspicious betting activity that previously led to the same steps being taken with fellow Cleveland Guardians pitcher Luis L. Ortiz. It’s impossible to know how this will end, but a world in which Clase is permanently banned from the sport for involvement in betting on baseball certainly exists. In a moment, rumors of trade interest in Clase fell shockingly silent. He’s not gping anywhere.
With Clase unavailable, the Twins now hold two of the most coveted late-inning arms potentially in play. Both Jhoan Duran (the established closer, with an elite ground-ball rate and overpowering raw stuff) and Griffin Jax (two of the game’s nastiest individual pitches and an extraordinary differential between his strikeout and walk rates) could attract premium offers from contenders desperate to stabilize their bullpens. If the front office is open to a mini-retool or reallocation of resources, they could capitalize on this scarcity.
It’s rare that any reliever with control beyond the season in question hits the trade market at the level of performance Duran and Jax have established. Clase was a rare exception. Now, the Twins are the only team shopping a reliever of this caliber—and they have two of them available. That increases the chances not only of an offer coming in that the team likes enough to make a move, but of their being able to play suitors off one another—or even to force them to decide between two different asking prices for the two relief aces. The Twins could ask for top prospects or young MLB-ready talent, especially from teams who envision making multiple runs into October, of which Duran or Jax could be vital parts.
The last time a seller had this kind of leverage in the reliever market was in 2016, when the Yankees had both Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller. They ultimately traded Chapman for Gleyber Torres, Adam Warren, Billy McKinney and Rashad Crawford, and Miller for J.P. Feyereisen, Clint Frazier, Ben Heller and Justus Sheffield. Of that group, only Torres went on to become an impact player, but those returns infused the Yankees system with so much depth that it benefited them for years—especially once Torres emerged as an All-Star-caliber infielder.
That’s what’s possible for the Twins in the next two days. They might still believe in themselves enough to want to retain one or both of these pitchers to maintain their bullpen dominance for the next two-plus years. If they’re listening on them, though—and we know they are, based on reports throughout the league—they’re in a great negotiating position.