The 51-57 Minnesota Twins had a fire sale this past week, trading away ten of the team’s 26 rostered players ahead of the 2025 MLB Trade Deadline scheduled for July 31st at 6:00 p.m. EDT.
Yesterday, Minnesota parted ways with three-time All-Star Carlos Correa, outfielder Harrison Bader, infielder Willi Castro, first baseman Ty France, and four relief pitchers. Prior to that, they traded pitchers Jhoan Duran to the Philadelphia Phillies and Chris Paddack to the Detroit Tigers.
“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,” team president Derek Falvey told the Associated Press. “It’s a way to actually go invest in the future of the team, hopefully the short-term and the long-term.”
The organizational reshaping began on Monday, when starting pitcher Chris Paddack and AAA pitcher Randy Dobnak were sent to the Tigers in exchange for minor league catcher Enrique Jimenez. Two days later, closer Jhoan Duran was acquired by the Phillies for High-A catcher Eduardo Tait and AAA starting pitcher Mick Abel.
“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,” Falvey told MLB.com. “In doing so, I think we felt like we added players that not only are great prospects, and guys that are maybe part of a longer-term future, but we were able to actually access a lot of players who are going to find their ways up to help this team really soon.”
The action picked up yesterday ahead of the MLB Trade Deadline. Minnesota started out by sending Harrison Bader to Philly for two prospects: pitcher Geremy Villoria and outfielder Hendry Mendez. After that, the Twins shipped reliever Brock Stewart to the Los Angeles Dodgers for outfielder James Outman followed by reliever Danny Coulombe going to the Texas Rangers for Low-A pitcher Garrett Horn. First baseman Ty France and reliever Louis Varland were traded to the Toronto Blue Jays for AAA pitcher Kendry Rojas and AAA outfielder Alan Roden. Next, the Cubs acquired Willi Castro for AA starting pitchers Ryan Gallagher and Sam Armstrong. The Twins then acquired starting pitcher Taj Bradley from the Tampa Bay Rays for reliever Griffin Jax. The biggest move of the day came when Minnesota traded Carlos Correa to the Houston Astros for High-A starting pitcher Matt Mikulski.
“There’s opportunity for us this Deadline with other teams that were in a better position competitively, just for this season, to make some changes,” said Falvey. “But we did keep an eye on what this means for ‘26 and ’27. There were plenty of other players asked about on our club who are part of next year and the following year that we chose not to engage in.”
The Correa deal came as a shocker to most around Major League Baseball since he signed a six-year, $200 million contract with the Twins in 2023. On top of that, he isn’t scheduled to be an unrestricted free agent until 2033.
“Over the course of the last couple days, certainly when the Houston rumors came out, he wanted to have a brief conversation about it, and I said my door is always open,” Falvey said. “We had that discussion. Not to get into too many specifics about the private nature of that discussion, but Carlos was never sitting there demanding a trade or wanting to do something else. If it was right for the Twins and it was right for him, he was open to the conversation.”
Though rumors swirled that pitcher Joe Ryan was going to be sent to the Boston Red Sox, a deal never came to fruition. As a result, the Twins were able to keep both of their All-Stars.
“It’s pretty well-established historically in baseball that the deadline premium, so to speak, that you get by trading when there’s a known playoff cycle for teams, compared to the offseason, is different,” Falvey said. “In many cases I didn’t think that we were going to be able to access the same level of talent that we did this cycle for those guys.”
“We just got deals we felt we had to say yes to,” Falvey continued, “for part of the future.”
The twins are in Cleveland today to take on the Guardians as they look to snap a two-game losing streak. The first pitch in that one is scheduled for 7:10 p.m. EDT.
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2025-08-01 19:34:21
