Minnesota Twins: Selecting the best fits for 5 Twins trade candidates
By Nate Palmer
The Minnesota Twins now find themselves on the wrong side of the buy and sell equation. Here are some of the best potential trade matches for Twins players.
The Minnesota Twins are approaching this trade deadline in a much different place that they expected to be. The hope all offseason was that the Twins would reach this point in the season and be poised at the top of the American League Central and looking to bolster their roster for a playoff run.
Specifically, based on how they approached the offseason, they would be poised to potentially splash for a front-end starting rotation arm. At that time we had all hoped for the likes of Chris Archer. My how both sides are in very different places now than we expected.
In this post, we will try to find some teams that the Twins should be calling to work out trades with for five of their potential trade chips. This is really nothing more than at best some educated guesses, but these five teams and five players could help each other out.
SP Lance Lynn
There haven’t been any rumors or any steam about Lance Lynn gaining interest from anyone on the trade market to this point. It would seem that Lynn’s track record would carry some weight and with his outings improving over the last month he has begun to regain some of his value which was absolutely destroyed after his dreadful start to 2018.
One positive about trading for Lynn for most teams is they will only be on the hook for paying him through the end of this season. He then becomes a free agent again and will see what sort of deal he can sign this time around. Finding time with a contending team may be interesting to Lynn as it may help him build back up his free agent resume.
Currently, Lynn has an ugly 5.21 ERA over 86.1 innings and 17 starts for the Twins. He also owns an 8.9 K/9 rate but what has killed Lynn’s starts has been an awful 5.4 BB/9. Until his lone bad start in the month of July, Lynn had been performing much better than the beginning of the season. The month of June was pretty good for Lynn as he went 2-2 with a 2.83 ERA, a 9.7 K/9 over five starts. His 14 walks over that stretch are still higher than Lynn or the Twins would like.
That said, there are several contending teams that would love to have starting pitching help. The Milwaukee Brewers are one and would put Lynn back in the familiar National League Central. According to Jon Heyman, the Brewers aren’t interested in a rental player so if they made a trade with the Twins for a starter it would have to be the likes of Jake Odorizzi or Kyle Gibson. The Washington Nationals are even rumored to be interested in adding another arm.
Right now the New York Yankees look like a place for Lynn to land. The Yankees have continually been linked with J.A. Happ who right now is much better than Lynn. Looking at the Yankees rotation they have the room to add two starters. Making the addition of Happ as a much bigger splash and Lynn a possible back end of the roation/innings eater type. With still that certain upside to jump up and be much more than that if things go right for the right-hander.
Trade Partner: New York Yankees