KANSAS CITY, Mo. — All-Star slugger Byron Buxton sounded like someone who wouldn’t happily accept another lengthy roster rebuild — if that’s the direction and pace the Minnesota Twins take.
All-star right-hander Joe Ryan criticized Twins leadership for positioning the team to fail the past two seasons by not re-signing free-agent right-hander Sonny Gray.
Minnesota Twins starting pitcher Joe Ryan wipes his face after issuing a second walk during the first inning of a baseball game against the Kansas City Royals in Kansas City, Mo., Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Reed Hoffmann)
Two of the Twins biggest stars, both of whom are having their best individual seasons amid a 63-80 start, expressed displeasure about the team’s recent direction, along with a lack of certainty about what comes next.
As Buxton nears age 32 with three years to go on his $100 million contract, the idea of another deep rebuild is unappealing, especially if it takes more than, say, one offseason. Questions about ownership’s long- and short-term plans, and how they relate to improving the active roster, make Buxton wonder.
If the Pohlad family directs team president Derek Falvey and general manager Jeremy Zoll to make moves that aren’t aimed at immediately improving the club’s won-loss record next season, Buxton likely won’t be happy about it.
“I ain’t treading water,” Buxton told the Pioneer Press. “I won’t do that. It’s all about winning for me. I ain’t a person who’s going to be walking on my toes or anything like that to satisfy anybody. I want to win.”
Ryan pointedly said the quiet part out loud, criticizing the team’s financially motivated decision in late 2023 to not re-sign Gray, a failure he believes reverberates to the present. After the Twins showed no obvious intention to pursue him, Gray instead signed for three years and $75 million with the St. Louis Cardinals.
“Obviously, they didn’t offer him a contract, but having [Gray] on the team would have given us another postseason back-to-back, which would have been pretty special for the city,” Ryan said.
“I think everyone knows it’s not crazy to say that,” he added.
The Twins fell out of contention a year ago after Ryan sustained a season-ending shoulder-muscle injury in August. They started floundering this season around the time right-hander Pablo López missed three months beginning in June because of a similar injury. It stands to reason that having Gray still in the rotation would have softened those blows. He remains an above-average pitcher, making 56 starts the past two seasons combined and ranking 12th in WAR at Fangraphs.
With the Twins in ’23, Gray made the American League All-Star team and finished second in AL Cy Young voting, leading a rotation that included Ryan and López. The trio helped the Twins take the AL Central, break an 18-game postseason losing streak and win a playoff series for the first time since 2002.
As much as he liked having Gray around, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli dismissed the kind of hypothetical assertion entertained by Ryan.
“I don’t think (that’s) productive,” Baldelli said. “And that’s kind of pessimistic, after-the-fact thinking. Talking about all of the transactional what-ifs that we could have done is not for me and will never be for me.”
There was nothing special about the timing of Ryan’s complaint, Ryan said, when he told the Minnesota Star Tribune in a report published Saturday that the Gray decision was “the biggest mistake we have made since I’ve been here.”
Ryan lodged his grievance coincidentally before tying the shortest outing of his career in a lopsided loss to the Royals on Saturday night. Ryan, who has been taking antibiotics to fight an unspecified infection, allowed five runs in the first inning and made it through just two innings.
Ryan didn’t waver about his feelings in a follow-up after his sickly outing.
“Hindsight is always 20/20,” Ryan said. “Everyone in the clubhouse loved (Gray). I don’t think it was like we were going into spring training and everyone was upset about it, but if you look at what happened last year and what could have happened with having him there, yeah, I do stand by that.”
Buxton didn’t come out and agree with Ryan about Gray but conceded, “We’ll never know because we didn’t make the move.”
“I don’t know if it’s the biggest mistake, but I do know that I’ve been here for long enough, so I’ve seen a lot of things,” Buxton added. “If this is what you call a rebuild, this will be my third one since I’ve been here. So, if you want to talk about mistakes, I saw a lot of mistakes leading up to now.”
Buxton didn’t shy away from assigning responsibility for the team’s collective failures the past two years to the players the Twins already had. The club had a 13-game winning streak in May but has gotten abysmal results otherwise. Hence, the big, 11-player dump at the deadline.
“We didn’t win very many games last month,” Buxton said. “How many was it? Six, seven? Eleven? It’s not enough. We had a chance to control our destiny last year, and as a team, we just didn’t play well enough.”
In most ways, the end of the 2025 season cannot come fast enough for the Twins, who started September poorly after enduring a lousy August, plus the stunning trade deadline. Ryan might have been traded along with the rest if the market for top starting pitchers had developed. Maybe it will in November.
Buxton, though, pointed to the past two offseasons for the front office — quiet in the additions column.
“That’s what it’s going to take,” Buxton said, meaning trades and free-agent additions. “Not many teams in baseball don’t do something in the offseason anymore. Every team does something.”
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