A great offseason gave off the perception the 2018 Minnesota Twins had the depth to propel them to bigger and better things but it quickly turned into a disappointment.
The Minnesota Twins struggled in 2018 for various reasons. They had injuries, a suspension, offseason acquisitions didn’t pan out and some prospects took steps backward instead of forwards. Not many players could be counted on this season. Injuries happen to every team in every season but this team wasn’t prepared to deal with all of that in one season. Could any team have to handle that much adversity, even the World Series Champion Boston Red Sox?
Offseason Success
The Twins went for it in the offseason. They signed pitchers Fernando Rodney, Zach Duke & Addison Reed to help out the bullpen and then acquired right-handed starting pitcher Jake Odorizzi through a trade with the Tampa Bay Rays. They also signed RHP Anibal Sanchez when they found out RHP Ervin Santana was going to need surgery on the ring finger of his right hand (throwing hand.) Then, late in free agency, they signed 1B/DH Logan Morrison and RHP Lance Lynn and once they had agreed to sign Lynn, they released Sanchez, who went on to have a great season with the Atlanta Braves, something none of the Twins other offseason acquisitions failed to do.
Except for Jake Odorizzi, all of those moves were for 1 or 2-year deals with the 2nd year being optional. Addison Reed’s deal is the only one for 2-years and he & Odorizzi are the only 2 players remaining from that great offseason, which now, of course, doesn’t look great at all. The rest of them were sent to other teams at the trade deadlines.
Depth Of Field
Making the playoffs in 2017 made it look like the Minnesota Twins weren’t that far away from becoming a perennial playoff contender and a championship-caliber team. That was the perception, anyway. The reality is they made the playoffs last season by the slimmest of odds and it may have accelerated everyone’s view of where the evolution of this team currently resides. If they didn’t make the playoffs in 2017, odds are Paul Molitor would’ve been fired instead of being awarded for American League Manager of the Year and who knows what they would’ve done in the offseason.
They did play their butts off to win a Wild Card spot and a spot in a game in New York. They proved it to themselves that they were a good enough team to be in the postseason. That team was hard to find in 2018.
They lost 7 major players of their team for all or part of the season due to injury (Ervin Santana, Brian Dozier, Jason Castro, Logan Morrison, Miguel Sano & Byron Buxton) or suspension (Jorge Polanco.) That’s arguably your team’s #1 starting pitcher and your catcher, shortstop, third baseman, second baseman, center fielder and primary designated hitter. Some players tried to play through their injuries which led to them playing worse and hurting the team’s chances of success even more.
Every season, we hear about players being injured but not telling the trainers about their pain because they want to stay in the lineup and feel they can still help the team. This is a problem when they’re performing like a replacement player. Unfortunately, there’s no way to foresee that happening and, most of the time, those players are going to be given the benefit of the doubt to get themselves out of a slump and are often going to perform better than the alternative option of a bench player, anyways.
Paul Molitor did what he could with what he had to work with and it probably was obviously not enough but he still was trying to get them to compete and win games. He didn’t have a lot to go on with some of the players at his disposal so he went with players he thought he could trust in tough spots. That meant overusing some pitchers in the bullpen like RHP Ryan Pressly, Addison Reed and Trevor Hildenberger while not getting consistent innings to Matt Magill and almost all of the young, or not so young, prospects in AAA. That likely wore down the bullpen but the Twins offense wasn’t good enough to win them games anyways.
The Twins never really looked like a very competitive team in 2018.
In hindsight, it makes you wonder if Molitor was worried about his job, knowing that if he didn’t win, he might be out. Then the front office made the decision to sell at the deadline and improve the farm system. That’s the right decision so the sale started in July:
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- May 27th
- Traded RHP Phil Hughes to SDP for C Janigson Villalobos
- They found out if Phil Hughes could help them and finding their answer to be no, they traded Phil to the Padres along with cash and the 74th pick in the 2018 Draft.
- Traded RHP Phil Hughes to SDP for C Janigson Villalobos
- July 27th
- Traded INF Eduardo Escobar to ARI for RF Ernie De La Trinidad, RF Gabriel Maciel (Twins #17 Prospect) & RHP Jhoan Duran (Twins #23 Prospect)
- Traded RHP Ryan Pressley to HOU for CF Gilberto Celestino (Twins #14 Prospect) & RHP Jorge Alcala (Twins #11 Prospect)
- July 30th
- Traded LHP Zach Duke to SEA for RHP Chase De Jong (Made 4 starts for the Twins in September) & 1B Ryan Costello
- Traded RHP Lance Lynn to NYY for 1B Tyler Austin (Twins DH/1B of the future?) & RHP Luis Rijo
- July 31st
- Traded 2B Brian Dozier to LAD for 2B Logan Forsythe, OF Luke Raley (Twins #19 Prospect) & LHP Devin Smeltzer (2018 AFL Fall-Star)
- Aug. 3rd
- Claimed RHP Oliver Drake off waivers from TBJ
- Claimed OF Johnny Field off waivers from CLE
- Aug. 9th
- Traded RHP Fernando Rodney to OAK for RHP Dakota Chalmers
- Aug. 30th
- Traded C Bobby Wilson to CHC for C Chris Gimenez & a PTBNL or Cash
- May 27th
They strengthened their farm system by adding 4 players to their top 30 prospects (according to MLB.com), 1B/DH Tyler Austin and some depth to their rotation in RHP Chase De Jong who was called up and made 4 starts in September for the big club. Is he part of the future rotation? Maybe not the immediate future but he’s 24-years-old (turns 25 in late December) so he’s still young for a major league pitcher.
What’s the Perception Now?
From an Off Season to an Offseason!
Well, the perception of this team now is they have a ways to go because of a bad season but, that can change really quickly if Byron Buxton & Miguel Sano come back quickly and the Twins spend wisely in an offseason where they have the most money coming off the books than any other team.
The big question is if Derek Falvey and Thad Levine can recruit a bigger free agent or two or three to come here. They did it last season but they were coming off a season where they made the postseason. The conversation with free agents is probably a lot easier when you’re coming off a winning season.
The bottom line is they know they have some work to do to fill spots at middle infield, first base and/or designated hitter and to upgrade the starting rotation (with maybe one pitcher) and the bullpen (with maybe 2 pitchers.)
Can they fill those spots through their own roster and/or their system? They could try. OF/DH/1B Robbie Grossman could get more time at 1st base with Tyler Austin. UTIL Ehire Adrianza could slot into the middle infield and they have some pitchers who have either shown enough in the minors to get an extended look (Alan Busenitz, Gabriel Moya, John Curtiss, etc…) or who may have to move to the bullpen to see if they’d provide more value there (Aaron Slegers, Adalberto Mejia, Fernando Romero, etc…) They could also use their prospects to go get a player/pitcher in a trade.
The problem with filling within is you won’t get another shot at the 2018 free agents and there are obviously some very good players and pitchers available so do you strengthen your team through free agency, your system or through trading from your system?
We did a Trust the Process Series of posts about trusting the process of developing your players and your team. In the Team Development article, we broke down each how players were acquired from each team in the 2017 postseason to show how many players were acquired in each category. The results were:
Homegrown-88, Trades-96, Free Agency-57, Waivers-8;
Core Players/Starters–Homegrown-53, Trades-53, FA-30, Waivers-2.
For the core pieces, we just went through each team’s list and picked who we believed were the core pieces or the starters for each team.
*If you’d like to check that out, just click here for the spreadsheet of the results.
A belief across a majority of baseball is that building through the draft (Homegrown talent) is the best way to build a team. The results did show that for the most part but we were a little surprised how many players were acquired from trades at 96 with 53 of those players being starters/core players. In a lot of ways, though, some of those players could end up being homegrown since they were acquired as prospects and grew up on their current team’s farm…uhh …system.
Does that mean trading is a better way to acquire talent than free agency?
This will be a very important offseason for the Twins. The front office has hired “their guy” to manage the team. They have set most of their coaching staff so they can now get down to finding out who & how they want to add to their roster. Those conversations would also determine who they might no longer feel is a part of this team’s future.
We will definitely keep you posted as to the happenings at Target Field with the Twins. They have to make their 40-Man Roster Decisions by tomorrow so stay tuned for those choices! We’ll post our choices by tomorrow, too.
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That is why it’s….
