2017 Twins Trade Deadline Review: Buyers and Sellers?

It's the 2019 trade deadline that hurt for me anyway.  Really thought we had a chance.  I believe the FO has learned.  I know many on here clutch to the prospects..as I follow them as well.  But. No need to wait for next year...you can never know who gets injured or whatever.  Hoping for an active trade deadline and ok with losing prospects..ie non major league players.

Falvey needs to complete a significant trade this July.

It;s difficult for this FO to commit to be big buyer at the deadline in 2017 and they should have shown some guts. They have yet to show they have courage to be a big buyer at the deadline. Hope they can change this year.

I really thought Littel was going to be good. He had a good year last year with the Giants but this year is not going well. 

I have never thought, even at the time, that most of those trades really meant anything other than moving money and/or positions on the 40 man around.  The Kintzler trade, though, was embarrassing.  Your closer, and not a bad one at that, for a kid in low A ball?  In a year you have a chance for the playoffs?  Even if you don't necessarily buy at the deadline, you hang on to the pitching you have.  I have always wondered if that trade and all the ones that followed in '18 were designed to undermine Molitor so they could justify letting him go and get their guy in there.  

This FO has shown a penchant for building from the ground up, not playing for today.   I know there have been exceptions here and there, but overall they have been stubbornly unwilling to part with their precious prospects to get talent today, saying their goal is to be competitive year in and year out.  If anything, they go the opposite direction, trading talent today for more prospects to build on.   Competitive is nice, but once in a while it would be nice to go all in and be competitive in October.  This deadline will be interesting.  I don't see us as sellers by any means, but how much we will be willing to spend in buying mode is the question because there will be a lot of competition for what is for sale.   

10 hours ago, Mark G said:

I have never thought, even at the time, that most of those trades really meant anything other than moving money and/or positions on the 40 man around.  The Kintzler trade, though, was embarrassing.  Your closer, and not a bad one at that, for a kid in low A ball?  In a year you have a chance for the playoffs?  Even if you don't necessarily buy at the deadline, you hang on to the pitching you have.  I have always wondered if that trade and all the ones that followed in '18 were designed to undermine Molitor so they could justify letting him go and get their guy in there.  

This FO has shown a penchant for building from the ground up, not playing for today.   I know there have been exceptions here and there, but overall they have been stubbornly unwilling to part with their precious prospects to get talent today, saying their goal is to be competitive year in and year out.  If anything, they go the opposite direction, trading talent today for more prospects to build on.   Competitive is nice, but once in a while it would be nice to go all in and be competitive in October.  This deadline will be interesting.  I don't see us as sellers by any means, but how much we will be willing to spend in buying mode is the question because there will be a lot of competition for what is for sale.   

Up to this point this team has been nowhere near a real contender.  They are 6th or 7th best team in the AL.  If they become a true contender it will be because Miranda / Kirilloff / Larnach / Celestino / Ryan / Duran / Jax have been a huge part of proving the team.  Some of these guys were acquired by trading away established players at the deadline and the others are all guys they hung on to when people were calling for trades.  3 weeks ago there were plenty of people advocating we trade Miranda and Kirilloff.  The net result of which would be to improve our odds in the playoffs from very slim to slim.  I am really glad our FO is not short-sighted.

Lots of people are again going to be disappointed because they are not trading for starting pitching.  They are going to upgrade the BP and that's it.

39 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

Up to this point this team has been nowhere near a real contender.  They are 6th or 7th best team in the AL.  If they become a true contender it will be because Miranda / Kirilloff / Larnach / Celestino / Ryan / Duran / Jax have been a huge part of proving the team.  Some of these guys were acquired by trading away established players at the deadline and the others are all guys they hung on to when people were calling for trades.  3 weeks ago there very plenty of people advocating we trade Miranda and Kirilloff.  The net result of which would be to improve our odds in the playoffs from very slim to slim.  I am really glad our FO is not short-sighted.

Lots of people are again going to be disappointed because they are not trading for starting pitching.  They are going to upgrade the BP and that's it.

The one thing that I, personally, have never accused the FO of being is short sighted; if anything they are continuously looking 5 years down the road so that the 4th and 5th year never comes.  That's why some folks wish they would put a few chips on the table when we are as close as this.  Not the guys who are coming up to the club last year and this, but the prospects still a couple of years (or more) away.  Again, it is nice to consider yourself competitive year after year, but competitive compared to whom?  The Central Division, or the teams who wipe the floor with us come October?  With some of the players we have today and probably won't have much longer (I'm thinking the left side of our infield), a couple of pitchers might be that ability to compete better come October.  That will cost prospects, not free agent money.  We have enough to go for it.  Be aggressive.  Or not, and keep competing with the Central.  

The argument that the Twins are not serious contenders requires the recognition that other teams such as the Yankees and Houston, for two examples, are superior and have better odds of winning in the postseason. I think that is true. The 1987 and 1991 Twins? Atlanta last year? Any team begins their run by getting into the postseason. Even the Dodgers and Yankees have to win some regular season games before they are eligible to be the favorites to win a World Series.

The Twins have a decent team, they have a host of prospects that can potentially fetch a favorable return, and Falvey will not sell the farm. Understanding this, it is the job of every front office to complete transactions to improve their team and right now the Twins need two relief pitchers. 

1 hour ago, Major League Ready said:

Lots of people are again going to be disappointed because they are not trading for starting pitching.  They are going to upgrade the BP and that's it.

Yeah I agree I don't see a meaningful starter in the cards at the deadline for the Twins.  The cost will be too high and they are more about value long term and short term than overpaying with elite prospects.  They will Roll with Ryan and Gray and whoever else proves to be the best third starter.  They have Maeda and Paddack coming back next year as well so a pretty full rotation right there with Winder, Ober and Smeltzer still in the mix.  There are going to be a lot of teams battling for the best starters at the deadline I see the Twins likely getting squeezed out in the end.

That being said I think they have the capital to get relievers and they generally are the best value at the deadline.  I wouldn't be surprised if they added someone with extra years of control either if there is value there.  The pen is the teams biggest weakness and they will address it at the deadline as they have done in past years.

5 hours ago, Mark G said:

I don't see us as sellers by any means, but how much we will be willing to spend in buying mode is the question because there will be a lot of competition for what is for sale.   

They need to buy buy buy!  Figure out who is not going to make it and let them go.  Sick of waiting for prospects to be MLB ready or even worse letting our MLB players go for more prospects!  

The FO essentially traded Aaron Hicks for Gabriel Moya. This misadventure would certainly would make the Twins worst-trade HOF. I needn't go into Hicks' bona fides. The fact that he earned those with the Yankees is, of course, the cherry on top. 

The by-product of this trade was the brief company of John Ryan Murphy. Murphy is the answer to the question of "how did Drew Butera stay in the bigs so long?"

Say what you want about Murphy but he has the perfect name for a country singer; like some algorithm in Nashville created it. Perfect for knocking back some bourbon and branch or a few longnecks, weeping a little and lamenting the one that got away.  

8 hours ago, Mark G said:

 deadline will be interesting.  I don't see us as sellers by any means, but how much we will be willing to spend in buying mode is the question because there will be a lot of competition for what is for sale.   

Has the FO ever led us astray  in there comments  .... YES .....

quality pitching signings at the deadline have been really sparse  for a team that is a contender  ....

Yes it will take prospects to acquire  quality pitching  ,,, get the 40 man roster trimmed so we don't lose the prospects  in the rule 5 draft  like  we have seen the front office do multiple times  , they either release some at the end of the season or expose them to the rule 5 draft for nothing ... 

The FO got us into this mess with a terrible bullpen , NOW GET US OUT OF IT ... 

WITH QUALITY  PLEASE...

7 hours ago, tony&rodney said:

The argument that the Twins are not serious contenders requires the recognition that other teams such as the Yankees and Houston, for two examples, are superior and have better odds of winning in the postseason. I think that is true. The 1987 and 1991 Twins? Atlanta last year? Any team begins their run by getting into the postseason. Even the Dodgers and Yankees have to win some regular season games before they are eligible to be the favorites to win a World Series.

The Twins have a decent team, they have a host of prospects that can potentially fetch a favorable return, and Falvey will not sell the farm. Understanding this, it is the job of every front office to complete transactions to improve their team and right now the Twins need two relief pitchers. 

I agree completely that they need 2 or 3 RPs.  However, I am thinking the front office has a little different view of where they may come from.  We don't know how well it's going with Maeda / Alcala and perhaps moving Archer / Bundy or Winder to the Pen.  They still have a couple weeks and at this point they might believe those two will help or they might be completely writing them off.   They might put some faith in Duffey if he is great for the next two weeks.  The same is true of Thiebar.  He has been pretty decent for a long-time so they probably have not written him off the way he has been written off here.  Megill flashes good potential at times as well.  They are not signing 3 guys but I believe them signing one or two will depend on how some internal guys look in 2 1/2 weeks.  

I also agree the WS can and has been won by teams that were not the best but teams just don't come out of nowhere.  Let's keep in mind that Atlanta spent virtually no prospect capital.  They replace some injured guys with guys who were performing really poorly, and they performed in a manner that was crazy.  The fact is that only two teams can get to the WS and all of the prospect capital spent at the deadline is spent by teams that fail.  Of those who do make it, it's quite likely the players they acquired were not the difference in getting there.  In other words, it's a very high price with a low probability of paying off.  For me, that makes very little sense unless the probability is already high.  I just refuse to put so much focus on something that is going to happen once every 30 years if our team wins the world series in line with the probability of doing so.  I want to see a quality product on the field as often as possible.  Sure, KC won a WS but they have had a miserable product for the bulk of the past 30 years.  Any team could push their chips in and be good for a year or a year and a half.    I like watching good baseball as often as possible and that requires managing assets accordingly.  If others put far more weight on the immediate, that's their prerogative.  I have studies how competitive teams are built in small/medium markets quite extensively and trading for prospects is waaaay more important than trading them away.  

When writing these articles you should calculate how much payroll was reduced.

also this trade deadline did nothing for the future other than the Zack Littell spurt.

3 hours ago, ashbury said:

That's a remarkably balanced outlook.   Prepare for dissent from all sides.

The Twins are decent - they have as good of a shot as St. Louis, Right now the New York teams, the Dodgers, and the Astros are the best teams in baseball. I'm open to getting some help from a pitcher already in the system, like Canterino, but will leave that to the team's evaluators. The Twins are not going to trade from their MLB roster and they can absolutely afford the loss of a couple of prospects. We all know that Falvey will not "gut the farm." Right? So, let's do something. Robertson, as an example would be something. He may not be the answer and I would not give up a major piece for him but I also doubt the Cubs will ask for the moon either. The Twins could have gambled on either Graveman or Kniebel but took a lotto on Pagan and Paddack. No problem but now Falvey can make a move or two and attempt to make the team stronger again, hopefully with better results. 

11 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

I agree completely that they need 2 or 3 RPs.  However, I am thinking the front office has a little different view of where they may come from.  We don't know how well it's going with Maeda / Alcala and perhaps moving Archer / Bundy or Winder to the Pen.  They still have a couple weeks and at this point they might believe those two will help or they might be completely writing them off.   They might put some faith in Duffey if he is great for the next two weeks.  The same is true of Thiebar.  He has been pretty decent for a long-time so they probably have not written him off the way he has been written off here.  Megill flashes good potential at times as well.  They are not signing 3 guys but I believe them signing one or two will depend on how some internal guys look in 2 1/2 weeks.  

I also agree the WS can and has been won by teams that were not the best but teams just don't come out of nowhere.  Let's keep in mind that Atlanta spent virtually no prospect capital.  They replace some injured guys with guys who were performing really poorly, and they performed in a manner that was crazy.  The fact is that only two teams can get to the WS and all of the prospect capital spent at the deadline is spent by teams that fail.  Of those who do make it, it's quite likely the players they acquired were not the difference in getting there.  In other words, it's a very high price with a low probability of paying off.  For me, that makes very little sense unless the probability is already high.  I just refuse to put so much focus on something that is going to happen once every 30 years if our team wins the world series in line with the probability of doing so.  I want to see a quality product on the field as often as possible.  Sure, KC won a WS but they have had a miserable product for the bulk of the past 30 years.  Any team could push their chips in and be good for a year or a year and a half.    I like watching good baseball as often as possible and that requires managing assets accordingly.  If others put far more weight on the immediate, that's their prerogative.  I have studies how competitive teams are built in small/medium markets quite extensively and trading for prospects is waaaay more important than trading them away.  

I would respectfully submit that there are multiple reasons for trading at the deadline, especially in situations like the Twins find themselves now.  Back on May 24th the team peaked at 11 games over .500.  In the 48 games since then they have gone 22-26 and, if this site is any indication, the fan base is getting more than a little restless.  Winning this division just isn't exciting a whole lot of people based on the level of competition within.  The fans are looking to see where we stack up in October - again.  Trading a couple of prospects the average fan has never followed for something they can see today re-energizes the fan base and lets them know the FO is behind the team.  It gives them something to hope for in October as well as it keeps them watching in between now and then.  Standing pat tells the team and the fans that we are perfectly satisfied with competing within the division and not so much in October.   Now, truth be told, that is how they DO feel, as evidenced by past trade deadlines, so those of us who pay closer attention are not holding our collective breath waiting on them.  But a couple of nice additions would go a long way to rewarding the team and the fans who have stuck with them through the last 2 or 3 years.  They can go back to their never ending 5 year plan soon enough.  

It would seem prudent to trade Sano, especially since word has it, because of his girth and growth, he will now require 2 roster spots instead of the usual one.