It’s been a year to forget for the Minnesota Twins. While they’ve had to deal with more injuries than the average MLB team, even when at almost full strength, it hasn’t been pretty for the back-to-back AL Central champions.
Now, with a roster littered with both young talent and solid veterans, Minnesota needs to take a reality check and look around.
The Twins are in dead last in the AL Central, sitting at 34-48 overall. Minnesota is just 3-7 in their last 10 games and it’s become very apparent that it just isn’t going to turn around this season. It’s time for the Twins to bite the bullet and accept their fate while selling at the MLB Trade Deadline.
There’s a legitimate case to be made that the Minnesota Twins could be the first domino to fall to get the MLB Trade Deadline going. It could also be true that the deadline could be deemed as very active or relatively quiet based on the moves the Twins do or don’t make. That’s how much of a variety of talent is on this roster.
Let’s start with Nelson Cruz. At the age of 40, Cruz is still mashing the long ball and made the American League All-Star team this year. He was the lone Twins representative. But, Cruz is just on a one-year deal with Minnesota and is set to hit free agency at the end of the season. As great as Cruz has been for the Twins and the young guys on the team, it would be fairly foolish to keep him around past the MLB Trade Deadline.
Cruz will be highly thought of by many teams at the deadline to come in as a designated hitter. While he won’t draw a huge haul for the Twins in return, he’s a piece that will hit free agency and likely be elsewhere next year if the Twins don’t deal him now.
Josh Donaldson is a peculiar case for Minnesota. He has at least two years left on his deal after this season with the potential for a third. The Twins could still view him as part of the plan moving forward as the Twins aren’t expecting to go into a full on rebuild. It’s just been one down year where they need to sell and the plan should still be to have a competing squad again next year.
If that is the plan, Minnesota could opt to keep Donaldson. His trade value isn’t all too high right now as he’s been injured on and off throughout the season.
If they believe it could take awhile to bounce back from this fiasco of a year, they could opt to trade Donaldson elsewhere and get back what they can.
Jose Berrios is the big chip for the Twins and will go quite a ways in painting a better picture of what this front office views the situation as.
Berrios is due an extension and it should be a hefty one considering how much better he has gotten year-by-year in Minnesota. If the Twins don’t want to fork over the money, they should trade their ace now. Berrios is still very young (27) and would bring back a lot of prospects for Minnesota. What the Twins front office needs to decide is if they want to open the checkbook and pay Berrios a large contract to have him be at the top of the staff for the long run or not. He has the stuff there’s no doubting that, Minnesota just needs to decide if they can find the right price.
Finally, Miguel Sano has been an utter disaster this year. He has fallen out of the everyday lineup and the numbers are dreadful. Sano is tied for 15th in strikeouts in MLB (89) and even more alarming, he’s done so playing the least amount of games (62) of anyone in that top 15 and he’s had the least amount of at bats amongst the group (211).
The problem for the Twins is that the trade value for Sano has never been lower. While they would be best of trading him at this point it might not even be worth it given what the return package would look like.
Others Twins that would make sense to move as rentals include Andrelton Simmons and Michael Pineda. Longer term options include Taylor Rogers, Tyler Duffey and Max Kepler.
It’s yet to be seen how much the Twins will move and who specifically will be on the way out. One thing that is very apparent, the time has come to face the music for Minnesota’s front office and for them to realize this year just isn’t going to be it. The wise move at minimum is to sell the pieces that will hit free agency so Minnesota can at least get something back. Bigger moves should be considered if the return is right for the Twins.
"accept" - Google News
July 05, 2021 at 10:54PM
https://ift.tt/3AxhzOk
It's time for the Twins to bite the bullet and accept their fate - ClutchPoints
"accept" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2YsXkRf
https://ift.tt/3d2Wjnc
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "It's time for the Twins to bite the bullet and accept their fate - ClutchPoints"
Post a Comment