The Minnesota Twins look to be headed right towards seller status at the trade deadline, but will they have anything contending teams want to trade for?
The Minnesota Twins are staring a potentially strange trade deadline right in the face. At 7.5 games back of Cleveland and 7 games below .500 they look like clear sellers. Even though a lot points to the Twins selling, there are at least two reasons why they will not be clear-cut sellers quite yet.
Reason number one is the Twins still look like a team that has the ability to get healthy and go on a good stretch of winning. A stretch against several under .500 teams in the coming weeks will certainly help that possibility. At the same time with Eddie Rosario and Eduardo Escobar already hitting well in this lineup, and Jorge Polanco likely to return soon, if others start performing like we expected them this could still be a really good baseball team.
The problem is that this hasn’t been a really good baseball team consistently to this point in 2018. Derek Falvey and Thad Levine did a good job of positioning the Twins for the potential of this situation by inking a lot of short-term contracts this offseason. Contracts that are much easier to move come the trade deadline. The problem is most of those guys on short or one-year deals are not performing well enough for teams to want to add them to their rosters.
That leaves the Twins with very little to sell at the trade deadline. Joe Mauer is on the final year of his deal and honestly he probably isn’t going anywhere regardless of his value to a contending team. Brian Dozier looked like one of the best trade assets coming into the season but hasn’t performed to that standard. He will need to start hitting well soon for him to have any value with his current overall line of .221/.302/.390 and 10 home runs.
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Logan Morrison was a late addition in free agency and his skill set would normally attract some bidders. To this point Morrison has shown glimmers of hope with his good exit velocity but still holds onto a disappointing .191/.293/.347 slash line. For a time Lance Lynn looked like he may be building back his value after a rough start to the season. Last night against the Chicago White Sox we saw that process take a step backward.
Jake Odorizzi‘s name has been floated in plenty of places as a trade candidate. Not sure that many teams would want his 4.97 ERA at this point or if they would be willing to give up much for him. There is likely more value in hanging on to Odorizzi to see if he can help the Twins in 2019 than dealing him in the next month.
Fernando Rodney is likely the one player with any value on this team right now to a contending team that the Twins would be willing to trade. His rebound has been very good and that has allowed his ERA to settle in at 2.73 and he has also recorded 17 saves. Not to mention his entrance is a great marketing and hype tool for any team.
Next: The impact of Jorge Polanco's return
With a lack of assets to trade, that is why we likely won’t be seeing the Twins make any early trades. Even though the record does not look good, the Twins are still barely hanging on to life in the postseason race. If some of these players put together a good month of play they could become valuable assets for the Twins to trade to another team. At the same time, if that happens, the Twins may also have shrunk that games back number changing their buy/sell status yet again.