ORLANDO — The Twins are planning on hanging onto their stars at this time. Now, the question for the remainder of the offseason is how they can best build around them and bring the team back to a competitive level.
This, Twins president of baseball and business operations Derek Falvey had maintained all along, was his hope, though he admitted he didn’t always know if it was path the team would take.
Given the team’s financial situation and on the heels of last July’s sell off, rumors had swirled about starting pitchers Joe Ryan and Pablo López. Even Byron Buxton, who holds a no-trade clause, had been the subject of speculation, with a report suggesting he might waive it if the team was headed into a rebuild. López and Buxton are the team’s highest-paid players and if rebuilding was the path the Twins opted for, they would be logical trade candidates.
Ultimately, they chose otherwise.
“I was hopeful … that we’d get to this place, but I always knew there could be different paths that we could choose,” Falvey said Monday at MLB’s Winter Meetings. “I think, at this stage, figuring a way to add to this group was clearly the best fit for all what we aligned around.”
New Twins manager Derek Shelton said his assumption when he took the job in late October was that the trio would be part of the team. But still, he thought it was important that they heard it from him and wanted to reinforce that in his conversations with them this offseason.
With that settled, the question turns to how the Twins are going to improve the team around them and what areas they need to upgrade after stripping down the roster at the trade deadline and shipping away 10 major leaguers.
Five of the traded players were relievers, and adding to the bullpen is the team’s most obvious need at this point. The rebuilt bullpen will likely be a mix of players already on the roster, starters converted to relievers and external additions. On the position player side, general manager Jeremy Zoll referenced their desire to add “another bat or two with some thump, with some impact.” First base seems like a natural place to add.
Their ability to add to the roster, of course, comes back to payroll and the Twins have made no indication publicly about the payroll flexibility they might have, though they’re certainly not expected to be big spenders. The addition of two limited partners joining the Pohlad family in ownership was announced in August, and there’s still a question of how those two groups might affect the team’s payroll.
Falvey did indicate that there should be news on the limited partners in “the near term.” He also mentioned presenting options for the direction of the team to a larger ownership group with a “few more people that we get to talk to about it.”
“Jeremy and I had a number of conversations internally with our group and then ultimately with ownership to discuss what that could look like going forward and we’ll continue to work closely with them through the offseason in terms of navigating what comes next,” Falvey said. “But my job, our collective job, is to figure out ways that we can add some pieces to the group that we have now.”
The Twins finished last season in fourth place, leading to the firing of Rocco Baldelli and the dismissal of some of his coaching staff. But some of the players they got in return — like Taj Bradley and Mick Abel and Alan Roden — are major-league ready and Falvey said it was always on his mind that the Twins would “find a way to retool,” the group on the fly and add to a group that they thought could compete.
“It’s going to take some creative work in trying to figure out how to plug some holes,” Falvey said. “Ultimately we’re going to need some guys to step up, but that’s probably always going to be our situation to some degree.”
Related Articles
First order of business for new Twins manager Derek Shelton: Meet the team
Three things Twins fans can watch for during MLB’s Winter Meetings
Twins trade for catcher Alex Jackson, tender contracts to seven
Twins, Saints set for ‘Field of Dreams’ games
Twins trade for pitcher, add six to 40-man roster
Leave a Reply