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player ready...The Minnesota Twins made their intention to sell this week clear when they traded starting pitcher Chris Paddack to the Detroit Tigers on Monday. During a tense week for all involved, players within the clubhouse wondered how much more was left to come and who would be remaining on the roster after the trade deadline had passed.
Nobody could predict the stunning sell-off the Twins would undertake in the days to follow, one that culminated with a frenetic deadline day Thursday in which the front office executed seven trades.
All told, the Twins made nine deals this week, sending out 10 major-league players, which represented nearly 40% of their roster. Among them, star shortstop Carlos Correa waived his no-trade clause to return to the Houston Astros in the team’s most shocking move at the deadline.
“At the core of it, it’s a transformative day for our group with some pretty significant change across our roster,” president of baseball and business operations Derek Falvey said. “We feel over the course of the last couple days, while painful and difficult at times to trade away players that have been with us for a while, we felt we added a lot of talent to our group and our organization that will continue to build out the next great core of players coming up and contributing at the major-league level.”
Along with Correa, the Twins sent out three other position players and six pitchers, mostly from the bullpen, which was completely torn apart by trades.
Star closer Jhoan Duran and outfielder Harrison Bader were sent to the Philadelphia Phillies. Homegrown reliever Louie Varland, a former North St. Paul and Concordia University star, and first baseman Ty France went to the Toronto Blue Jays.
Shutdown reliever Griffin Jax ended up with the Tampa Bay Rays. Willi Castro, last year’s team MVP, is now a Chicago Cub, and southpaw Danny Coulombe landed with the Texas Rangers. Reliever Brock Stewart was sent to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
In return, the Twins got a whole lot of salary relief, particularly from the Correa deal, a host of prospects, young major-league players and an upset fanbase.
“It’s not lost on me that it’s hard when players go away,” Falvey said. “There are trades that happen — that happen across baseball, I’m not saying it’s unique to Minnesota — and it’s hard. But it’s about making sure that you’re constantly trying to find a way to not just sit on your heels, hope that it all goes better and keep your fingers crossed. It’s a way to actually go invest in the future of the team.”
While the expectation was that the 51-57 Twins would trade from the group of players becoming free agents after the 2025 season — they traded five out of six of them, keeping only catcher Christian Vázquez — they did much more than that, parting with five players with team control beyond this season (Correa, Duran, Varland, Jax and Stewart).
The trade of Correa, the team leader who unexpectedly signed not one but two contracts with the Twins just years earlier, was purely a salary dump. The Twins are sending money to the Astros and in return received Matt Mikulski, a 26-year-old left-hander who was once a second-round pick but has yet to pitch above Class-A Advanced, and newfound payroll flexibility. The Twins reportedly will pay about a third of the money remaining to Correa over the life of his six-year, $200 million contract.
Duran potentially netted the greatest return, with the Twins landing 18-year-old catching prospect Eduardo Tait and right-handed pitcher Mick Abel, both of whom are included in MLB Pipeline’s top 100 prospects. Abel, who made his major-league debut this year for the Phillies, has been assigned to Triple A.
Left-handed starting pitcher Kendry Rojas, whom the Twins acquired from Toronto as part of the deal for Varland and France, has a 3.46 ERA this season across four levels, most recently pitching at Triple A.
For Jax, the Twins received starting pitcher Taj Bradley, who has a 4.61 ERA in 21 games for the Tampa Bay Rays this season. Bradley is a former top prospect, though he has yet to put it all together as a major-leaguer. Falvey said the Twins “truly believe he is one of the best young starters in the game.”
Other players the Twins received at the deadline in return include outfielder James Outman (for Stewart), outfield prospect Hendry Mendez and right-hander Geremy Villoria (for Bader), outfielder Alan Roden (with Rojas, for France and Varland), left-hander Garrett Horn (for Coulombe), pitchers Ryan Gallagher and Sam Armstrong (for Castro) and catcher Enrique Jimenez (for Paddack and minor-league pitcher Randy Dobnak).
“The decision over the course of the last few days, or the decisions that we got to over the last few days, were to try to continually explore ways that we could evolve this roster, to pump some health into it in different ways, not just for the short term but for the long term,” Falvey said. “And we feel like we were able to do that.”