OK, having slept on this, I feel like there has to be some kind of gameplan here. Falvey has made some decisions that didn't go well, but he's not the Joker. He's not a gibbering madman who wants to lose his job.
It's so weird, the moves made here seem to point at completely different strategies. The Garver/Kiner-Falefa trade was the sort of tepid, underwhelming move that we expect from the front office, which seemed to indicate that the Twins were content to tread water for the season. The Gray trade was a bold statement of contention (but also a killer bargain). This seems like a move to dump salary and rebuild.
Possibility 1: The Twins are clearing payroll to make a big signing, which is going to HAVE to be Story, since the FA pitching market has dried up. Unless... they're going to try to trade for a pitcher who's already on a fat contract??? What's going on with all the Garver and Kiner-Falefa stuff though? Did the Yankees refuse to take Donaldson's contract without an OK shortstop thrown in? Did the Twins make a "safe" move to cover shortstop, and then swerve to drop Kiner-Falefa with Donaldson when talks with Story started to look promising? If indeed this is the case, then WOW, it had better work out! Falvey hasn't struck me as a big risk-taker, so I've got to believe he wouldn't take this route unless it was almost a sure thing.
Possibility 2: The Twins are just trying to dump salary. They signed Sonny Gray because the deal was too good to pass up, and they don't want to LOOK like they're tanking. This STILL makes the Garver trade look utterly deranged. I really don't think this is the case? And if you're dumping salary for a rebuild, WHY WOULD YOU LET GO OF RORTVEDT AND CREATE A NEW HOLE AT CATCHER????
Possibility 3: The Twins were trying to contend up through the Gray trade but SOMETHING they had in the plans went catastrophically wrong and they decided immediately in the course of 24 hours to pivot to dumping salary and making room for a rebuild. Perhaps negotiations broke down on another SP trade? This still doesn't account for dropping Rortvedt.
Yesterday, a friend was talking about a particular chess-playing computer, and said that great chess players find it hard to play against because it makes shocking moves a flesh-and-blood player would be too timid to make -- for example, sacrificing a queen and a bishop for nothing but a positional advantage. I really hope that's what we're seeing here,