LOS ANGELES — Willi Castro and Danny Coulombe, two veterans on expiring contracts who could be trade targets for other teams, both say they’re doing the best to try to avoid trade deadline chatter.
But as July 31 draws nearer, it’s getting harder and harder to avoid — for now, Coulombe said, he’s trying to stay off of social media — and increasingly harder to not think about, especially when both could be on the move next week.
“More than anything, it’s the stress it puts on families, the logistical part of it. It’s definitely on your mind,” said Coulombe, who has two young sons with his wife. “But you know, you can’t do anything about it. If you think about it, you can’t really control any of it. Control what you control and keep going.”
That last phrase has been thrown around the Twins clubhouse a lot lately with so much uncertainty around the trade deadline. In the clubhouse, the focus within those walls is on winning each night’s game rather than what the front office might be thinking. But the Twins entered Tuesday with eight games remaining before the deadline and were, before a late game against the Dodgers,. four games under .500 and five games back of a Wild Card berth with six teams to pass.
“I don’t tend to spend a lot of my energy on worrying about the trade deadline,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “If we play really good baseball from here until the trade deadline, we’re going to keep playing and probably not going to be trading anyone; we’ll probably be looking to acquire players. We’ll be playing that sort of way for the rest of the season with that sort of mindset. That’s what I want and that’s my goal. That’s all I’m worried about right now.”
The Twins lost three of the first four games on this road trip — two to the major league-worst Colorado Rockies — and look increasingly likely to be sellers, at least to some extent.
“You can say that maybe the next couple weeks of baseball might change the course of the season in one direction or another,” Baldelli said. “That’s the reality of it. That’s what we have to own. We have to do our part to keep our group playing well and together and not worry about it in a negative sense — think about it in a positive light and try to go in the direction that we want to go.”
But the Twins are running out of time to make a case to the front office to not trade pieces at the deadline.
The Twins have not sold at the deadline since 2021, when they traded Nelson Cruz, Jose Berrios, Hansel Robles and J.A. Happ. Among the returns for those trades, they received Joe Ryan and Simeon Woods Richardson, two members of the current rotation.
“We all see what the date is, the time that is coming,” center fielder Byron Buxton said. “We know the situation. So, yeah, it’s definitely thought about, for sure.”
Former Twin Rich Hill still at it
It wouldn’t have seemed particularly likely back in 2020 when Rich Hill pitched for the Twins that five years later, he’d still be making major league starts. Then again, not much about Hill’s career has been conventional.
At age 45, Hill, started for the Kansas City Royals on Tuesday against the Chicago Cubs. With it, Hill has now pitched in parts of 21 major league seasons and has appeared in games for 14 different franchises, tying Edwin Jackson for the most in MLB history.
Hill was drafted by the Cubs in 2002 and his journey has taken him around the majors and to independent ball over the past two decades. It also took him to Minnesota for one season — he pitched to a 3.08 earned-run average in eight starts during the pandemic-shortened season — among his many stops.
“Never bet against Rich Hill, ever,” Baldelli, one of his many former managers, said. “It’s absolutely amazing what he’s done with his career. … He turned himself into what he is and then persevered and continued to this day. He loves the game. He loves pitching. He doesn’t mind being different and doing things his own way.”
Briefly
Bailey Ober (hip) will make a second rehab start on Friday for the Triple-A Saints. In his first, he threw scoreless innings, though his velocity was still down. … The Twins claimed catcher Jhonny Pereda off waivers from the Oakland Athletics and optioned him to Triple-A. To make room on the 40-man roster, fellow catcher Jair Camargo was designated for assignment.
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