I find it a bit odd—not only online, but when I talk to people in real life—how much hedging is still happening with regard to the Minnesota Twins and their posture at this year’s MLB trade deadline. A lot of people seemed to spend the All-Star break plotting out the final fortnight before the deadline and working out matrices of possibility, both wondering and opining about what the Twins will or should do based on various possible records over their first 10 games out of said break.
While I admire the impulse to seize upon any opportunity to reach the postseason, I think any optimism about the 2025 Twins doing so (or even the desire to wait and see if such optimism becomes more viable, this late in the decision-making window) is unfounded. For one thing, not all playoff berths are created equal, and if the Twins do win enough down the stretch to sneak into October, it will be as a second or third Wild Card entrant. That means a series played entirely on the road against a superior team. It’s not at all the same thing to chase that as it is to chase a division title, or even to fight for positioning when you have a chance of winning the division, and might fall back into a Wild Card slot as something less than the best-case scenario.
In this case, there are a few problems with the idea of buying, and one huge one with the notion of standing pat. Firstly, the Tigers are way, way ahead in the division. They’re playing poorly lately, and they still have an 11-game cushion. Nor are the Twins even the team pursuing them most closely. The division is gone, and has been for two months, ever since Minnesota ended its 13-game winning streak and resumed playing sluggish, sub-.500 baseball.
That leads to the second problem—and this is actually the first problem, in my opinion, but I’m making allowances for those who prefer to go after the playoffs whenever possible, all other considerations be damned. Here’s the thing: This Twins team just is not good. Fundamentally, in the ways that matter and about which we should really care most, they’re not good. I don’t mean that they play sloppily or uninspired baseball (though, of course, they sometimes do). I don’t mean to impugn the work ethic or baseball nous of anyone in the clubhouse or front office. I simply mean that the team isn’t good enough that we should even care if they can eke into October. The playoffs should be a reward for a season-long proof of the wisdom and good work of the organization over that year and the ones before it, to acquire and develop good players and for those players to come through in big situations. This team hasn’t earned that.
Over the last calendar year, the Twins are 85-88. Since the start of 2024, they’re 127-131. Hell, since the start of 2021, they’re 12 games under .500. Because that 2023 team gave the fans such a cathartic series of moments in the postseason, it’s easy to forget that they were only 87-75 even that year. President of business and baseball operations Derek Falvey has stayed extremely committed to the core of this team, but it hasn’t rewarded that faith. It’s just not a good enough team to be accorded the degree of stability Falvey has chosen. He sees this as a winning operation that just needs more time. He’s wrong.
I’m not advocating firing Falvey, who does many things well as an executive and in whom many people within baseball believe fervently—including those with whom he works in the Twins front office. He needs to change tack, though, and the hard part is trying to tell whether he realizes that. There have been times in the past when standing pat did make sense, on a hard, rational level. Fans have hated the stagnant trade deadlines and quiet offseasons of the last few years, but of course, one major reason for those was the financial constraints Falvey has faced due to the Pohlads yanking the purse strings shut just after opening them wide enough for him to splurge on four players (Byron Buxton, Pablo López, Christian Vázquez and Carlos Correa) whose salaries suddenly make up about 57% of his budget. Falvey is a smart and deeply respected baseball man.
However, other teams find the Twins frustratingly hard to deal with in trade negotiations, because Falvey is so value-focused and reluctant to make any trade that doesn’t match his group’s player evaluations—which, as we’ve seen, are not only out of step with the rest of the league, but just plain wrong. That’s how you spend half a decade trying to win every year and still run a sub-.500 aggregate record. With Thad Levine (whose influence tended toward more aggressive moves, especially within seasons, and nimbler changes of direction) gone, the Falvey approach is also missing a key counterbalance. The chief executive needs to change his mode of operation, and quickly.
To their credit, the front office has let it be known that they’re listening more openly than they might have in the past as this deadline approaches. That’s why so many scouts have swooped down on their games lately, and (partially) why there will be a significant contingent of them at Joe Ryan‘s start Sunday in Colorado. There’s a very real chance of one of Ryan, Jhoan Duran or Griffin Jax being dealt, and even some chance (although a remote one) that the positional core will finally get its overdue shakeup, according to sources with teams who have talked to the Twins this month. Royce Lewis, Trevor Larnach and (especially) Ryan Jeffers have drawn interest, and while Jeffers would only be traded if the team got an unexpectedly excellent offer, the other two are more available.
All of the team’s impending free agents (Vázquez, Willi Castro, Danny Coulombe, Harrison Bader and Chris Paddack) are available, sources said, and one or two could be dealt even if the team otherwise stands pat or tries to supplement the roster for the stretch run. The source of consternation, for potential trade partners, is that extracting one of those players from Falvey (especially a Falvey torn on the question of buying or selling at all) might be more trouble than it’s worth.
That’s why it’s important that the team break with the idea of a playoff pursuit this summer and get serious about positioning themselves for one next year, or in 2027. Buxton, Correa and López aren’t going anywhere. They’re the core to build around. Since the sale of the team has gone excruciatingly slowly and a more robust budget this winter isn’t guaranteed, though, they need to build frugally around that trio. They also have to be brutally honest with themselves. That means admitting that the complementary pieces aren’t currently good enough. It means trading Ryan (because he’ll be very expensive over his final two years of arbitration eligibility and because they can get so much for him) or trading Duran (because he’ll be very expensive over his final two years of arbitration eligibility, because they can get so much for him, and because he’s a reliever). It means maximizing the infusion of young talent into the organization, so that the remaining prime years of Buxton, Correa and López aren’t wasted. It doesn’t have to mean acquiring teenagers who might be four years away, but it has to mean giving up on a roster that has proved itself insufficient and making space for real change going into next year.
The prize for which the team is in serious competition just isn’t worth winning, and that’s a result of the way ownership’s betrayal and the front office’s lack of agility have left them playing the same losing hand two years in a row. That cycle needs to be broken.
This is not the official editorial position of Twins Daily, or anything. It’s just my own. This week, we had a great piece from Hans Birkeland on how the team might be more likely to approach the deadline, based on their most interesting past example. Later today and on Monday, we’ll run a two-part series from Eric Blonigen on how the team could approach the deadline as buyers. For my money, though, the team shouldn’t be studying playoff odds too closely or trying to make moves to get themselves into the playoffs with this basic core. They should be taking decisive action, by admitting that they need real change and then making it. They had a chance to do all of this last fall, but doubled down on the group they had. I think it was clear then (and is certainly clear now) that that was the wrong call. The question is whether the team has arrived at the same conclusion.