Twins Fire Sale

The 2018 trade deadline has come and gone.

For my money, Falvine did the right thing. They unloaded a bunch of pending free agents, as well as Ryan Pressly, and got a boatload of prospects back.

The Twins fanbase though have lost their fucking minds over the last week. Raging at the Twins front office for giving up on the season, for daring to trade a couple of popular players.

These fans do not live in reality. This Twins club has spent most of the spring, and all of the summer, proving beyond any doubt that they are not a playoff contender. They just aren't. The standings may have said this morning that the Twins were 8 games back of Cleveland, but that might as well be 80. They've seemingly been at least 5 games back for about 2 months. They never gain ground, cause they never win consistently. These fans will point to that pre-ASG homestand where they went 9-2. But sandwiched around that was the recent 4-6 road trip, and that utter fiasco of a trip to Chicago and Milwaukee. They have not even been at .500 since late April. It. Was. Not. Going. To. Happen. This. Yeat.

Far too many players the Twins based their hopes on this season either flopped or got hurt, or both. Of the opening day 25, you can feel good about mayyybe 8 or 9 of their performances this year. Rosario, Escobar, Berrios, Hildenberger, Gibson, and possibly Mauer, Duke and Rodney. But beyond that it's been a disaster. Buxton and Sano have cratered. Kepler regressed. Castro got hurt. Dozier had a hot 1st week but then had the worst 3 months of his career as a regular player. Odorizzi flopped. Reed fell apart. Lance Lynn became one of the most disliked players in 30 years of Twins fandom. Logan Morrison enters August still hitting under .200. Taylor Rogers regressed. Minor league reinforcements offered at best fleeting hope. And then of course we lost Polanco and Santana before the season even began.

The 2018 blueprint for the Twins made sense. The free agent signings made sense. Believing in the young core made sense after what we saw at the end of last season. But it all failed. And it wasn't going to all magically do a 180 just because it did last year. Turnarounds like that are the exception. And this year 85 wins wasn't going to get it done.

So the fire sale was the only option. Obviously we won't know for years if any of these trades netted us key pieces of a future winner, but you had to pull the trigger. Terry Ryan and Bill Smith spent the early part of the decade refusing to deal guys like Joe Nathan, Michael Cuddyer and Jason Kubel when they were free agents to be. You can't hold on to all these guys just so you can finish 7 games back of Cleveland instead of 15.

Sure it's sad to see some of these guys go. Well, okay, it's sad to see Escobar go. Lynn was a waste of time, Duke was a rental, Pressly was just never going to be the lights out guy the analytics Nazis insist he is, and frankly I'm glad to see Dozier leave after his season of moping and whining. But Escobar might be back next year anyway. Even if only a couple of these prospects pan out it was the right call.

It also doesn't signal that the franchise is giving up on 2019 either. They'll have a LOT of money freed up, and yes I know the Pohlads history of not spending money, but the money will be there. They still have about 30-40% of a contender here. You just have to hope that next time the blueprint works.