Minnesota Twins likely to flip Jaime Garcia to New York Yankees

The Minnesota Twins may have made a deal to trade recently-acquired pitcher Jaime Garcia

After a rough night for the Minnesota Twins against the Oakland Athletics, news broke that the Minnesota Twins and New York Yankees were in the final stages of making a deal involving Twins starter Jaime Garcia.

Zack Littell

Littell is rated the #22 prospect by MLB Pipeline in their midseason team list update. He was originally drafted by the Seattle Mariners in the 11th round in 2013 out of high school. The Mariners traded him for James Pazos in November, and he’s been dominant for the Yankees this season.

Littell is probably not going to be a guy who blows anyone away, but he works with three above-average pitches and controls them all well. His curve has really stepped forward this season to the point where it could be considered a plus pitch, and the way he is able to sequence to hitters from both sides of the plate is a huge asset.

This season, Littell opened with high-A Tampa in the Florida State League, but he quickly earned a promotion to AA Trenton in the Eastern League. On the year, he’s 14-1 over 20 games, throwing 115 1/3 innings with a 1.87 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, and a 23/109 BB/K ratio.

In all seriousness, while Littell doesn’t have the upside of Huascar Ynoa, he has a lot higher floor and has already reached (and succeeded at) AA. The Twins very likely flipped Garcia for more than they gave up to acquire him.

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Next Move

The Minnesota Twins’ recent losing streak certainly positioned them more as sellers, and this is definitely the first move. What will be next is what many will question. The Twins do have some desirable assets, like Brandon Kintzler in the bullpen. The team could also see what the market was on Kyle Gibson and Hector Santiago is before they have to pass them through waivers in order to trade them.

The Twins could also re-open discussions around second baseman Brian Dozier. While the market would be quite limited as many teams don’t have a need at second base, a couple of contenders do have a need at the position and could make a move for Dozier.

Next: Jaylin Davis Scouting Report

Of course, these moves don’t completely cut the Twins out of acquiring players as well. If a player like has been profiled here previously (A.J. Ramos, Brad Brach, Hector Neris, Keone Kela) were to slip through the trade cracks (though Ramos has already been dealt, so not specifically him) and the team could grab a reliever like that to add to the back of the bullpen for 2018 (and possibly beyond) without hurting the farm system depth terribly, it’s something that should be strongly considered.