Teams have until 7 PM Central on Friday to decide whether to tender contracts to their arbitration-eligible players for 2026. The Twins will be one of the busiest teams in the league at this annual miniature deadline, as they have seven eligible players on their 40-man roster right now—even after cutting three such players earlier this month. 

The headliner, of course, is Trevor Larnach. Though Ryan Jeffers, Joe Ryan, Bailey Ober and Royce Lewis are all on the list with him, their places on the roster are relatively safe. The Twins might well trade any of the four within the next nine months, but they’re not going to jettison any of them and lose them for nothing, just to save a few million dollars. Larnach is in a different situation. He batted .250/.323/.404 in 2025, but is now set to make nearly $5 million in his second season of arbitration and his penultimate year of team control. Those aren’t atrocious offensive numbers, but for a guy with virtually no defensive value and little projection for growth left, they’re underwhelming. 

Just as importantly, the Twins have a surfeit of young players with profiles sufficiently similar to Larnach’s that they won’t miss him if they lose him this winter. Cutting bait on him should free up a little bit of money to be spent elsewhere on the roster, but it will also ease the logistical crunch the team has been facing for some time. They’re one of 18 teams who enter Friday with a full 40-man list, and while it’s nice to know they aren’t alone, they need more flexibility than that. Friday is their last chance to create an opening on the roster so that they can make a pick in next month’s Rule 5 Draft, should they wish to do so. 

Moving Larnach aside would also make it easier to find playing time for Alan Roden, James Outman, Austin Martin, Matt Wallner, and outfield prospects Emmanuel Rodriguez and Gabriel Gonzalez. It would give the team a chance to slide Luke Keaschall to the outfield at times, and to play both Kody Clemens and Edouard Julien against right-handed pitchers at times. Larnach is a better hitter than Julien, but at this point, he’s also a more expensive one, and Julien has the greater upside. 

Whether Larnach is simply released or traded will be interesting, but it’s hard to imagine him coming back. Cole Sands will join Jeffers, Ober, Ryan and Lewis in being tendered deals, while Justin Topa is a borderline guy. To create more roster flexibility, the team could dump Topa as well as Larnach. It could come down to whether Topa is willing to agree to terms the Twins find team-friendly. If so, he’ll stick around. If not, rather than take him through the full arbitration process and deal with the lingering uncertainty about his 2026 salary for another six weeks or so, the team is likely to non-tender him.

Topa is the only obvious candidate for a pre-deadline agreement Friday, but similar ones for Ober, Lewis or Sands are also possible. Since they’re likely to be subjects of trade discussions in the weeks ahead, Jeffers and Ryan could sign deals Friday, locking in their salaries and making negotiations a bit easier afterward. There will be news in Twins Territory Friday evening. It might be small, but the roster will further take shape, even if that comes only in the form of one or two existing possibilities being foreclosed upon.