In this season of giving, Kiley McDaniel and Jeff Passan have given baseball fans a ranked list of trade candidates, in turn relaying that Krampus Pohlad has taken Twins fans’ morale and given them absolutely nothing in return.
Their ranking, ordered by “value for their new team if being traded,” lists Byron Buxton (#5), Joe Ryan (#6), and Pablo López (#8) in the top 10. While Ryan and López share a projected 50 percent chance of being traded, it’s the opening of the buzz on Buxton (35 percent) that tears at the heart the most:
Buxton is willing to waive his no-trade clause — and not just for Atlanta (he’s a Georgia native)
Is this really a surprise? No. After Buxton continuously expressed loyalty to Minnesota and his desire to remain with the Twins, ownership rewarded him by trading away 10 players from the major league roster, torpedoing any chance of a playoff push and dropping to fourth in the AL Central. They clearly have no interest in sustained victories, so one can’t fault Buxton for wanting to play where he has a chance to win.
And if Buxton is traded, or Ryan, or López, or article honorable mention Ryan Jeffers, how many people are going to want to watch this team? We’d be lucky to get a couple dozen comments on game threads here, and attendance is surely going to plummet in 2026.
For now, this is still a hypothetical projection. But if beloved Twins players are shipped off during the Winter Meetings next week, we in the fanbase are depressingly prepared for it.