The Minnesota Twins will head into the Winter Meetings this week with bullpen help topping the wish list, but splashy signings might not be in the cards.
The Minnesota Twins and all of baseball are descending onto Las Vegas for the annual Winter Meetings. The Winter Meetings always represent a time and space where a lot of baseball conversations are had and a lot of trades and free agent deals struck. While our own Ian Stoever wrote about some conversations the Twins should be having, Lavelle E Neal III gave us a much different picture of the meetings for the Twins.
In his primer to prepare us for this week of meetings, Neal lets us know that the Twins have landing bullpen help at the top of their list of things to accomplish. He also lets us know that the front office believes they have 4 out of the 5 rotation spots taken care of and at the right price could look to add some offensive help as well this week.
With the middle infield needs taken care of after the signing of Jonathan Schoop and Ronald Torreyes, relief help is the next logical position for the Twins to address. As they head to the winter meeting there are plenty of free agent pitchers and their agents to have conversations with that could be lured to Minnesota.
The comment about the Twins rotation, while maybe still true, starts to send continued signals about the approach the front office is taking this offseason. While so many of us thought this would be the offseason for the Twins to go make some impact signings with Joe Mauer‘s and Ervin Santana‘s money come off the books. The team is looking more and more content with sort of sticking with what that have and hoping for bounce back performances to fuel a return to competitive baseball.
Jose Berrios, Kyle Gibson, and Jake Odorizzi are known commodities at this point. The fourth spot the front office feels good about would likely be Michael Pineda or maybe even Adalberto Mejia, who each have their own questions and concerns to consider. That leaves then the group of Stephen Gonsalves, Fernando Romero, Zack Littell, Aaron Slegers, and Kohl Stewart to figure out the rest of the rotation at this point in the offseason.
If you were still dreaming of a big impact signing coming this offseason, it seems that dream just may be dead. Our hope as Twins fans for any sort of a splashy move resides in trade possibilities that could materialize over this week. So stay tuned to Puckett’s Pond as we will try to keep you informed and react as rumors and news surface this week.