Byron Buxton has loudly and repeatedly proclaimed himself a Twin for life. Derek Falvey has a long history of giving non-answers when asked straightforward questions. What do these two things have in common, you might be asking? One thing, and maybe a big one: both have, over the past couple of weeks, been conspicuously different than the status quo. Is it possible that both are (consciously or otherwise) sending a message to ownership? Are they making it clear who’s to blame if the whole thing is torn down? There’s reason to think so. Let’s look at both cases independently.
Byron Buxton
As the 2025 trade deadline was approaching, Buxton told the media not to bother stirring trade rumors about him.
“I can’t be traded. I’ve got a no-trade clause,” he said. “I’m a Minnesota Twin for the rest of my life. So that’s the best feeling in the world.”
After the fire sale, when 40% of the roster was traded away, Buxton was asked if anything had changed for him. His answer?
“Nothing’s changed, it’s just part of baseball. It’s the business side of it. Just ’cause we go through these tough roads or whatever, it is what it is. We’ll be better once we get on the other end of it and figure things out a little bit more. Like I said, the end of the season, we’ll talk a little bit more. But I ain’t going nowhere.”
When the Pohlads announced they were no longer selling the team, Buxton said it was “good to know the people who signed me are still in charge.”
And yet.
Last week, The Athletic’s Dan Hayes reported: “a major-league source indicated Tuesday that Buxton, who turns 32 next month, wants to play for a winner and may reconsider his stance for certain clubs if the Twins continue breaking up their roster, potentially by trading starting pitchers Joe Ryan or Pablo López.”
If true, that’s quite the about-face. What if it’s not an about-face, though? What if it’s Buxton giving a bit of an ultimatum? Sort of a “don’t make me want to leave,” dropped in the right ears? This is speculation, but it’s worth considering. Also worth noting is that Falvey reiterated in the GM meetings that Buxton continues to want to be a Twin for life. Still, Hayes’s reporting is out there, and that’s meaningful.
Derek Falvey
In several interviews so far this offseason, Falvey has refused to answer straightforward questions about the 2026 payroll; whether the team will be rebuilding; or whether Ryan or López will be traded, except with evasion.
“It’s not even yet October,” he said at his end-of-season press conference. “So there’s an offseason to play out in terms of what this roster actually looks like. You never end a season and know that that’s your roster going next year.”
“The trade deadline was a moment in time where we had to evaluate those decisions at that time, in concert with ownership around what we wanted, what we felt was best, based on some parameters at the time,” he said in the same presser, when asked about the motivation for the fire sale. “And, you know, we weren’t in a position at the time to add. Right?”
Falvey’s only leaving bread crumbs, but follow them, and it’s clear: he’s covering for his bosses. The use of “we” signifies something different than owning a comment. This stands out a bit further when looking at some comments from last week’s GM meetings in Las Vegas.
“I remain personally committed to figuring out what are the ways we can add to this group to make it better. That is my goal,” he told reporters there. “It was my stated goal before and remains my stated goal until I’m told otherwise. That will be my focus for now, is figuring out ways we can add to the group.”
That’s much more upfront than is typical for Falvey. He chooses his words carefully, and doesn’t say anything he doesn’t mean to. When asked directly about trading away their frontline starters, he doubled down.
“My goal is to try and add around the group we already have. We think our starting pitching is the strength of this team. We know Pablo and Joe have been real anchors for us over the last couple of years when healthy,” Falvey said. “Ultimately, to have Bailey Ober coming back in a healthy spot and all of the young pitching we’ve acquired to join guys like Zebby and Simeon and David Festa, we like that group. We think that’s a group, hopefully, we can build around. That would be my focus here in the early going.”
He acknowledged that it’s difficult to find good starters, and that depth is important.
“I’ve said this: I hope we can add around the group that we have,” he went on to say. “I think at this point, you’re focused on the forward, as to how you grow a young team, how you add around it, and hopefully, over time, we’re in a position to really invest more in the future.”
That’s three different times he clearly spoke about adding, rather than subtracting. He is staking out his desires in clear terms. Then, he says that he hopes “we” get to do this. Could it be that Falvey, like Buxton, is dropping hints that he will be clear about where to place the blame if the team is taken down to the studs? I believe so.
I’ll leave you with a few more points in this case:
Falvey cares. After the epic collapse down the 2024 stretch, he was in tears when discussing the season. If he didn’t care, didn’t want to win, he wouldn’t have done that.
While the Carlos Correa re-signing didn’t work out the way anyone would have liked, there is zero chance Falvey would have signed him if he had known that payroll would be slashed to the point of being unable to build a competitive roster around him.
He would be right to feel frustrated with the constraints placed on him by ownership, since his primary responsibility is to build and run a competitive team.
If the Twins fail to live up to whatever expectations ownership has for the 2026 season, Falvey may be out the door. It would behoove him to stop protecting his bosses, if they aren’t setting him up for success.
Am I reading too much into comments, or is there something here? This could be wholly unknowable at this point. But, it is possible that people like Falvey and Buxton are starting to use their voices to steer ownership in the right and necessary direction. One can hope so, because it seems like they need all the pressure possible to do the right thing for the team—and for fans.