Derek Falvey and Thad Levine went into Friday with a full 40-man roster. Eight of those players needed to be tendered a contract for the 2023 season or be sent to waivers prior to being determined free agents. Among them was Gio Urshela, who was acquired along with Gary Sanchez last offseason from the New York Yankees for Josh Donaldson and Isiah Kiner-Falefa. Sanchez is now a free agent, while Urshela had one more season of team control.
His fate was in question because it would be false to suggest that Urshela wasn’t valuable for the Twins. In his first season with Minnesota, Urshela posted a 2.4 fWAR, which ranked fourth among Minnesota hitters. It was also only slightly behind his 2.8 fWAR from the 2019 season in which he broke out for New York. Offensively, Urshela’s 121 OPS+ was well above the mediocre 96 OPS+ he posted a season ago. Although there were low points, his 13 homer runs and gap power came in handy.
Defensively, Urshela was somewhat of a mixed bag. Twins fans saw plenty of highlight reel plays from the hot corner, but it was some of the more straightforward plays that weren’t made which dragged him down. Fangraphs own Defensive Runs Saved metric viewed Urshela favorably at +4, while MLB’s Statcast had him at -5 per their Outs Above Average metric.
For Minnesota, the determination largely came down to how they wanted to spend their capital, while also figuring out what Urshela’s role would be. In talking to a few sources, they seem content with internal options at third base. Jose Miranda, Luis Arraez, and eventually Royce Lewis can all play the position. It remains to be seen which of them are adequate defensively, but none of them carry the $9.2 million price tag MLB Trade Rumors projected Urshela to receive in arbitration.
In knowing they would ultimately decide to move on from Urshela, it became important to find any sort of return for him. Just hours before Friday night's 7pm deadline, the team came to an agreement with the Los Angeles Angels. ESPN Insider Jeff Passan reported that Minnesota sent their starting third basemen to Los Angeles for Single-A pitcher Alejandro Hidalgo .
Hidalgo is a Venezuelan native that spent 2022 at Single-A Inland Empire for just his second season of professional baseball. He posted a 4.62 ERA across 39 innings, all of them coming as a starter. He tallied an impressive 58/19 K/BB and is the exact kind of lottery ticket you'd hope to get as opposed to non-tendering a player for nothing.
Recently Twins Daily’s Nick Nelson called Urshela the Twins toughest arbitration decision and considering all of the factors, it’s hard to dispute that. As things stand presently, and with Carlos Correa unsigned, Minnesota’s entire left side of the infield remains up in the air. It will be on the front office to sort that out over the coming months before Spring Training.
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