My favorite baseball team, which has a long and storied history of finding ways to break my heart, found a new way to hurt me yesterday. No, it wasn’t a 19-game playoff losing streak. No, it wasn’t the threat of contraction. No, it wasn’t a career-derailing injury to an MVP-caliber player. No, it wasn’t trading a two-time (shoulda been three…) Cy Young winner for pennies on the dollar. No, it wasn’t a Hall of Famer retiring early because of glaucoma. No, it wasn’t a bad contract for a bridge player past his prime. No, it wasn’t a monumental collapse down the stretch in what should have been a playoff season. No, it wasn’t their usual trade deadline paralysis.
Actually, it was the exact opposite of the last one there.
In one of the most dramatic—and devastating—trade deadlines in franchise history, the Minnesota Twins unloaded 10 players from their 26-man roster Thursday, sending a clear message to the fanbase: this season is over. And maybe next season too. And the season after that. And maybe even the season after that.
How could a team so bad have eleven players that contending franchises want so badly?
Headlining the flurry of moves was the blockbuster trade that sent shortstop Carlos Correa back to the Houston Astros. The Twins will reportedly eat $33 million of his contract. In return? A single pitching prospect. Meanwhile, All-Star-caliber relievers Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax, fan-favorites Willi Castro and Harrison Bader, hometown kid Louie Varland…plus Chris Paddock, Randy Dobnak, Brock Stewert, Danny Coulombe and his 1.16 ERA, and Ty France. All traded to contenders.
Only 12 guys from the Opening Day 26-man roster were still with the Big club once the dust settled: Byron Buxton (on the IL), Pablo Lopez (on the IL), Bailey Ober (on the IL), Joe Ryan (who was almost traded to Boston), Ryan Jeffers, Christian Vazquez, Matt Wallner, Trevor Larnach, DaShawn Kiersey Jr, Mickey Gasper, SWR, and Cole Sands.
The moves came fast. The explanation was slow.
Eventually, President of Baseball Operations Derek Falvey talked to the media and said the team “chose a lane.” But for many, it feels more like they chose a cliff. There was no attempt to retool for 2026, no effort to trade veterans for major-league-ready talent, and no public indication of what the future might look like.
It was a lane that needed to be chosen, but now was not the right time to do it.
This team won its first playoff series in more than two decades only two seasons ago…the best moment in the baseball lives of thousands of fans who weren’t alive when this team last won a championship 34 years ago. Last year, leading the AL Wild Card race at the All-Star Break, the Twins fell off the face of the planet and missed the playoffs completely. They were 17 games above .500 on August 17th and finished 82-80. Since August 1, 2024, the Twins are 74-89.
And it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.
Carlos Correa was traded for Class A Ball pitcher Matt Mikulski, who will undoubtedly be remembered at a bar trivia contest in 20 years. Mikulski is a 26 year old A ball pitcher with an ERA around 7.00. And he was traded STRAIGHT UP for All Star Carlos Correa. Wait…wrong. The Twins also gave Houston $30 million dollars so we can pay C4 to win games for the Astros.
Correa, by the way, will be playing third base in Houston…something he allegedly wanted to do with the Twins for some time but couldn’t because there wasn’t anybody ready to take short from him.
The Stewart trade got the Twins World Series champion outfielder James Outman from the LA Dodgers. Outman finished third in the NL ROY voting two seasons ago and is batting a sultry .137 this season.
Bader was traded to Philadelphia for a package that included pitcher Geremy Villoria…a 16-year-old kid that just got his driver’s license.
There are so many new faces here that the Twins will have to revive the “Get To Know ‘Em” campaign from 2001.
The front office prioritized shedding salaries and stockpiling unproven minor leaguers, clearing the books in the anticipation of the sale of the franchise in the coming weeks. Even with the team hovering near .500 in a wide-open division, management pulled the plug on contention (The Twins still have a 1.9% chance to make the playoffs and a <0.1% chance to win the World Series according to Baseball Reference, but I don’t know if those odds have been updated after the deadline). Fans were left to watch the team’s core disassembled, piece by piece, in real time via heartbreaking update after hearbreaking update.
In 2023, the Marlins set the Trade Deadline record by trading eight players at the deadline. Yesterday, the Twins traded 11 dudes.
Clubhouse sources reportedly described the mood as “devastated,” with one anonymous player telling a national outlet: “Nobody wants to be here now.”
In a sport built on trust, the Minnesota Twins just broke theirs.
The promises of needing a new ballpark to compete has resulted in three playoff wins since 2010 (a 3-12 record, by the way).
Falvey did have a sit down with Byron Buxton who, at the All Star Game, declared that he “is a Minnesota Twins for life” due to his no-trade clause. But does he want to be now? Will Buxton, at age 31, want to spend the rest of his career in a rebuild? Will Joe Ryan still be on the team after the winter meetings?
This wasn’t a rebuild. This wasn’t a teardown. It was a retreat. A cowardly retreat hastened by the sale of a franchise in which all the good-will the Pohlad name had left with this franchise dissolved.
There hasn’t been a Twins parade in Minneapolis since October 1991. But there will undoubtedly be one once the sale of this franchise is announced. Bidding adieu to the Pohlads may be sweeter than a championship, at this point.
This isn’t just another season that slipped away from the Twins. It’ll be remembered as the one that chased a generation of fans away.