3 Sonny Gray replacements Twins should trade for this offseason
Now that Sonny Gray is gone, who can the Twins replace him with?
Something we all expected to happen this offseason finally transpired earlier this week. Cy Young runner-up Sonny Gray exited stage left and signed with the St. Louis Cardinals on Monday morning.
Gray leaving wasn't a shock, but it did confirm that the Minnesota Twins have some work to do in finding ways to replace his prodcution in the starting rotation. Pablo Lopez figures to be the ace of the staff for the next handful of years, but Gray was the No. 1 guy which means something at the top of the rotation needs to be changed.
Lopez is moving into Gray's spot, which means technically the Twins are trying to add a guy who can be his sidekick. Trying to replicate the success of last year on a budget means Minnesota isn't going big game hunting, but it shouldn't narrow their search so much that they miss out on some potentially key replacements on the trade market.
3 pitchers Twins could trade for to replace Sonny Gray
Paul Blackburn
- 1.3 WAR
- 103.2 IP
- 4.43 ERA
- 3.96 FIP
- 1.543 WHIP
He's getting less attention than some of the other more notable names on the trade market, but Paul Blackburn is a lot better than folks think. He didn't light up the league last year the way Gray did, but he was a powerfully efficient pitcher on an absolutely brutal team that was so bad it blocked out a lot of the good that he did.
At a glance his 103.2 innings of work last year is a concern, as it's way under what the Twins got out of Gray. How much of that was the Oakland A's being terrible and how much is Blackburn being incapable of getting deep into starts? It sounds like the perfect question the Twins would want to answer, especially given Rocco Baldelli's history with early hooks for his starters.
His breaking ball and offspeed stuff all grade out well and doesn't give up hard contact, and leans on his other pitches way more than he does his fastball. Blackburn doesn't need to come in and be a 1-for-1 replacement for Gray, rather he feels like an excellent piece of a Lopez-Ryan-Blackburn trio of pitchers at the top of the rotation.
Tyler Glasnow
- 2.0 WAR
- 120.0 IP
- 3.53 ERA
- 2.91 FIP
- 1.083 WHIP
If the Twins want to go big to replace Gray, then trading for Tyler Glasnow is the way to do it. He's by far the best pitcher on the trade market and short of going for a guy like Yoshinobu Yamamoto or Shōta Imanaga -- which won't happen -- Glasnow is the hottest pitcher available.
There are two caveats to that which could take the Twins out of the running. He's in demand, which means there's already a line of teams trying to pry him away from Tampa Bay. Glasnow is also the option to go with if money isn't an object, which we know it very much is with Minnesota.
Should the Twins take a chance, though, Glasnow could be a replacement for Gray and thensome. He'd legitimately challenge Pablo Lopez as the team's No. 1 pitcher and could give the team two ace starters at the top of the rotation. He pitched a career-high in innings last season, but it was about 60 innings fewer than what the Twins got out of Gray.
That shouldn't hold the team back from getting him, though. Everything else he did within those 120 innings was absolutely phenomenal and Glasnow could be one of the only pitchers who arrives in Minnesota with the chance to replace Gray's Cy Young potential in the first year.
Logan Gilbert
- 3.0 WAR
- 190.0 IP
- 3.73 ERA
- 3.85 FIP
- 1.075 WHIP
If the Twins can't land Glasnow -- or don't want to pay a steep price to get him -- a close second could be Seattle's Logan Gilbert.
Gilbert is an excellent young pitcher who might be in an odd-man-out situation with the Mariners. It's sort of like Max Kepler and Jorge Polanco with the Twins, where Seattle could keep him and feel great about having him or trade him and cash in on his trade value to improve the roster.
That's where a deal for Gilbert starts to make the most sense because it feels like what the Twins did last year with Luis Arraez and Pablo Lopez. Seattle has a need for a starting corner outfielder, which makes it a destination for Kepler in a potential deal. A Gilbert trade package centered around Kepler is a good place to start but it won't be enough to get the deal done, and the Twins might have to part with either another good player (like Polanco) or take a risk by trading a top prospect (Brooks Lee has been kicked around Twins Twitter but that feels super steep).
If the Twins find a way to get Gilbert they're landing a guy who might not be just a Robin to Pablo's Batman but perhaps a Superman in the rotation. He has a slightly better WHIP than Glasnow and a better meaner breaking ball than Blackburn. Despite the controversy he got into about how deep into starts he'll go, he pitched almost ten more innings than Sonny Gray did last year, finishing the year with 190 innings. That checks a huge box for the Twins and is the type of workhorse production that could make for a monster front-end rotation in Minnesota.
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