The Minnesota Twins planned on competing for another American League Central division title and getting back to the playoffs for a 3rd straight season in 2021. That all went sideways pretty quickly. After beginning the season 5-2, they went 4-13 the rest of April, were double-digit games under .500 by the middle of May and never could get back on track.
So trades were made that questioned whether they’d be able to turn it around to get back to being the perennial championship contenders they’ve said they want to be in 2022, including trading their best pitcher at the time, RHP José Berríos, for a couple of high-end prospects. Rumors were also flying that there was a very real possibility they were going to have to trade CF Byron Buxton as well. They weren’t going to give away their injury-ridden, should-be All-Star player for nothing and no team could match what the Twins wanted in return in a trade but things looked grim. We heard Byron Buxton say he wanted to stay in Minnesota and continue being a Minnesota Twin.
Then, on November 28th, just 3 days before MLB locked out their players, the Minnesota Twins & Byron Buxton agreed to a 7-year/$100M contract extension that included a lot of performance bonuses and a full no-trade clause and…
That definitely made it look like getting back to winning was the direction the Twins wanted to go because why would you sign a player for 7 years & $100M if you didn’t want to win, right?
On to a crazy, hurried offseason after 99 days of a lockout that meant a shortened spring training that began March 10th when Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association agreed to a 5-year deal on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Let’s Make Some Deals
The starting rotation was the largest hole to fill and the only pitcher the Minnesota Twins signed before the lockout was RHP Dylan Bundy and that was just hours before the teams were locked out. It was also seen as more of a signing for the back of the rotation rather than an ace-type, frontline starter they’ve lacked for the majority of their time here.* At that time, the majority of those types of pitchers had already signed with other teams so it was another failed offseason from that standpoint. This is part of why it’s difficult to get better pitching through free agency. The trade market was the only way for the Twins to get a veteran pitcher to help them in 2022.
*Kenta Maeda definitely looked like one of those types of pitchers in 2020 when he finished 2nd in American League Cy Young voting but he struggled in 2021 then went down with an elbow injury which turned into Tommy John surgery and he’ll miss the majority, if not all, of the 2022 season.
2 days later this insane offseason started for the Twins as they made 3 trades in the span of 2 days. They traded C Mitch Garver to the Texas Rangers for SS Isiah Kiner-Falefa and pitching prospect RHP Ronny Henriquez and it looked like the Twins got their starting shortstop for the near future and a player with some versatility that could move to 3rd base if/when prospect Royce Lewis (or someone else) was ready.
A day later, the Twins addressed the starting rotation by acquiring RHPs Sonny Gray & Francis Peguero from the Cincinnati Reds for RHP Chase Petty, their 1st-round pick in the 2021 MLB Draft.
Then not too long after that, on the same day, they confused the entire Twins Territory by trading just-acquired SS Isiah Kiner-Falefa, 3B Josh Donaldson & backup C Ben Rortvedt to the New York Yankees for C Gary Sánchez & 3B Gio Urshela but the Yankees were paying all $50M of the final 2 years of Josh Donaldson’s contract and that cost the Twins Kiner-Falefa so it was back to the drawing board for a shortstop.
The Twins now had some moolah to spend for maybe a bigger free-agent shortstop like Trevor Story while having maybe upgraded at the catcher position (from previously having just C Ryan Jeffers and C Ben Rortvedt) with more of a veteran in Gary Sánchez and getting a decent 3rd basemen in Gio Urshela who both might benefit from a change of scenery.
About 6 days went by which seemed like forever in such a shortened time to prepare for the 2022 season. Twins fans started to get the feeling they weren’t going to get SS Trevor Story but some fans thought it meant the Twins had something else up their sleeves…
And…oh, boy, they were soooo right…
Sometime around 3am on March 19th, I decided to take a look at The Athletic app and this is what I saw:
Hey, an article about Royce Lewis. Nice! Oh, what’s this…up in the right corner in small type…
Twins, Carlos Correa agree to 3-year, $105.3M deal
What? This has to be a joke. It was late. I was tired. I rubbed my eyes and looked again and it was still there. Holy Crap! No Way! How? Nobody thought the Twins were a possibility to sign arguably the top free agent available.
“When we talked on the Zoom call, we only talked about winning.”
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Carlos Correa
It still doesn’t feel real, does it?
It’s like watching a movie and thinking, “Who comes up with this stuff?”, right?
But, it is real, and, yes, it might only last one season but it shows that one of the best players in baseball was willing to come to the Minnesota Twins and that’s a pretty big deal and a pretty huge step.
This article from The Athletic goes a lot further into how it all went down and is a big reason why we believe it’s well worth your money to sign up for it.
There are usually deals around for $1/month like this one right now for 6 months from Twins writer Aaron Gleeman.
Is this the turning point for a New Era of Minnesota Twins baseball?
Carlos Correa is a player that can change the whole landscape of what the Twins are trying to do and accelerate it tenfold. He’s that good. He just won his first gold glove and added the platinum glove for the American League as the best defensive player in the American League regardless of position, an award Byron Buxton won in 2017. He’s a tremendous hitter who is just getting better and is just 26 years old and he understands everything about the game and knows exactly what he wants to do and can do in all aspects of the game.
One of the biggest parts to get excited about with this signing is Carlos Correa showing the rest of the Twins what he already knows with his leadership. Think of what that can do for a guy like Royce Lewis, who’s now at AAA with the St. Paul Saints who are just right down the road so maybe he hangs out at Target Field a little more often to learn from one of the best.
The Twins were still trying to add another pitcher via trade, maybe LHP Sean Manaea or RHP Frankie Montas from the Oakland Athletics, who are trading everyone because…Moneyball?* Manaea was traded to the San Diego Padres. The Twins may have just not wanted to give up what Oakland wanted for Montas. We’ll see if anything happens in the future.
*Can Oakland just not survive in their current state, ballpark? This is sad.
But…the Twins then added RHP Chris Archer on a 1-year/$3.5M deal with a mutual $10M option (w/a $750K buyout) for the 2023 season. Archer didn’t pitch in the 2020 season and only pitched 19.1 innings last season but he’s a former great pitcher who, maybe with better health, can get back to the pitcher he used to be. He’ll get that chance in the 5th spot in the rotation.
That is arguably the best offseason ever and for sure the best offseason of the current regime of Chief Baseball Officer Derek Falvey & General Manager Thad Levine, who took over in October of 2016.
They addressed every need and made the most surprising free agent signing in the history of the franchise that could end up being the turning point to & for a new era of Minnesota Twins baseball. They addressed every need. That’s not the same thing as filling every need or solving every problem for their team. They could still use more pitching but you always need more pitching or there’d be no reason for a trade deadline. They also have more pitching coming from the farm than they maybe they’ve ever had in their history.
Healthy Soil
The key to a great farm is healthy soil and we are going to see very soon how healthy the soil the Twins have had for the last 5 & a half seasons is because they have prospects coming and most of them are pitching prospects. 16 of their Top 30 Prospects are pitchers and 13 of those pitchers are at the AA-level or higher.
Chief Baseball Officer Derek Falvey has said they want to have “waves of prospects” on a yearly basis so they will always have prospects coming. We have yet to reach that stage but an almost 2-year hiatus for prospect development had something to do with that.
RHPs Bailey Ober (20 starts) and Joe Ryan (5 starts) are just the beginning. The Twins have named Joe Ryan the Opening Day starter showing how much they believe in him. He’s a bulldog pitcher. He has complete belief in his stuff, especially his fastball, and he will challenge hitters with it then get ‘em with his slider while mixing in his changeup & curveball.
Derek Falvey & Thad Levine were hired for their pitching knowledge with Falvey coming from Cleveland where pitchers seem to grow very well. Will the Twins be able to develop that kind of pitching for the Twins?
RHP Bailey Ober, a 12th-round pick from the Twins 2017 Draft, reached the majors last season. He started 20 games for the big club and went 3-3 with a 4.19 ERA*, a 1.202 WHIP** and 96 strikeouts with 19 walks in 92.1 innings. His minor league stats show an elite pitcher:
*Earned Run Average
**Walks + Hits per Inning Pitched
In 34 appearances (31 starts): 17-3, 2.38 ERA, .941 WHIP, 223 strikeouts & 21 walks in 181.2 innings over 3 seasons(2017-2019). There wasn’t a Minor League Baseball season in 2020 so it looks like the Twins limited him to mostly a pitch count in the low 80s as they tried to build him back up during the 2021 season. He had 7 starts over 80 pitches with just one over 82, a start on July 5th that he threw 93 pitches when he allowed just 2 hits & struck out 7 through 5 innings for his 1st Major League Win.
Another pitching prospect made the Opening Day roster. RHP Jhoan Duran, who has been a starter for his whole career will start his MLB career in the bullpen. In 5 games this spring, he allowed 1 hit and 1 walk while striking out 10 in 7 innings. He has the ability to hit triple digits with his fastball. He also has this “splinker” pitch which is a combination of a splitter and a sinker that is:
“It’s not really a one-pitch-wonder kind of deal, but it’s like, there are pitches that only one person has in the game. I think this pitch is a pretty unique pitch. I don’t know how you prepare or game-plan or think about a pitch like that as a hitter. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. I can honestly say that.”
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Twins manager Rocco Baldelli
This is the season we finally get to see what Derek Falvey & Thad Levine have been growing in the minors and it’s going to be oh, so much fun!
The Final Out
We believe the Twins will be competitive from day one and they’ll get better as the season goes along.
They’ll get into the October dance and see what they can do.
It should be a fun season. We hope you’ll tag along with us here at TwinsTakes.
⚾⚾⚾ ––TT–– ⚾⚾⚾
The Twins postponed Opening Day and moved it to Friday at the same time, 3pm (1st pitch scheduled for 3:10pm) due to bad weather.
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