A month and a half this season, the hottest team of Major League Baseball played Minnesota.
When the classification closed on May 17, the Twins won 13 consecutive games to be second in their division. It was the longest sequence of victories in the franchise in 34 years, and the longest in the MLB since 2022. The Minnesota had one of the best employees of succession of baseball and a voltiseur of the stars in Byron Buxton. Suddenly, a declaration of training in the spring of the best baseball frame of the team, Derek Falvey, that the achievement of the World Series “must be the mission of the first day”, looked more like a possibility.
At the commercial deadline for this week, this mission had radically changed.
No longer going up in the ranking, the twins had left a buyer trying to strengthen his range before a race in playoffs in a seller trying to extract a few Value of a lost season – the kind of change of thought that arrives at many teams in all professional sports.
However, the scope of Twins sold Thursday, in the last hours before the deadline, was anything but typical. Many teams are in the running of the playoffs sell key parts; The twins, however, brought him to the extreme. More than nine trades, they have treated 11 players from a list of 26 men.
When Falvey sent a message signed to fans on Thursday evening, he wrote that “it was not a question of patchwork or small adjustments”.
It was an understatement.
“We had flew or less.
Falvey supervised the reset of the alignment as a baseball decision for the future of a team that had gone from six games above 0.500 to the 17 to six games. But in addition to bringing a collection of prospects, the trade has also made its pay and making it cheaper to work. The highest paid twin trade, Carlos Correa’s shortcoming stop, was indeed to guarantee that another team, Houston, would no longer charge $ 70 million in its remaining salary.
The twins have still never been among the most spending teams, and their decline since May has only dissuade the costs of a team whose property has been publicly looking to leave the baseball industry since the end of last year, when the Pohlad family – which has owned the franchise since 1984 – announced that it was looking for the sale of the sale.
“The sales process continues to be a continuous reality for our organization and something we are going to work at the right time,” said Falvey.
The intention to sell was announced at a time when the peace of work between the players and the league, and the attractiveness of the possession of a franchise on a smaller market are in question. Six teams last season had a payroll of $ 102 million or less, according to Spotrac, less than the amount that the Los Angeles Dodgers have paid solely in taxes.
The average evaluation of the MLB team at the start of the season was $ 2.62 billion, by CNBC. The $ 1.6 billion assessment in Minnesota ranked 22nd out of 30 teams.
The remaining few remaining included the launcher Joe Ryan and Buxton, who only two weeks earlier had noted the security provided by his non-exchange clause.
“I am a minnesota twin for the rest of my life,” said Buxton in the star match. “So it’s the best feeling in the world.”
The twins woke up to a different feeling on Friday. To fill their list for their first match after the deadline, the twins were forced to call eight players from the minor leagues. Finished five lifts from an enclosure of the lifts who had shone during the team’s victories sequence, including the best Jhoan Duran. Players on longer contracts, such as Correa, and others expiring at the end of the season were treated on a par.
On Reddit, a user noted that the upheaval of the list had transformed the official Instagram account of the Twins into a series of graphics announcing either a “commercial alert” or a “thank you” to a deceased player.
Extreme disassembly took place less than two years after Minnesota won its division and made the playoffs for the first time in three years.
“I had some conversations with the front office in Minnesota and we do not bout in the direction that I thought we were looking for [making] The playoffs [in 2023]And they agreed with me that it was time to move me, ”Correa told MLB.com.
And 10 others too.
