What might Twins do at Deadline? Next few weeks will tell

PHILADELPHIA -- Know this: the Twins want to buy at the Trade Deadline. The front office wants to buy. Ownership wants to buy. And of course, the players in the clubhouse want them to buy.

The desire is to add players, not shed them, as Minnesota looks to return to the postseason for the first time since 2023. The team on the field has done enough to make that realistic, and now it’s a matter of making it happen.

The sting and shock of last year’s Deadline sell-off is not forgotten, either in the clubhouse or in club offices. There’s even some thought that the 2024 Deadline might should have been handled different as well, when a lack of additions served as one factor in a late-season fade. The decision-makers would like for this year to be different.

That still doesn’t mean they are guaranteed to add. And it certainly doesn’t mean they’ll do anything drastic. It’s still three weeks until Aug. 3, and a lot can happen.

Record at the break: 48-49 (Third in AL Central, 3 games back; tied with Seattle for third AL Wild Card)
Record at the break last year: 47-49 (Second in AL Central, 11.5 games back, 4 games out in AL Wild Card)
Playoff odds: 34.6%, per FanGraphs
Remaining Strength of Schedule: .491 (23rd)

For one thing, the team could still slump between now and the Deadline, as it did a year ago, stumbling out of the break with a terrible road trip to Denver and Los Angeles that completely changed the tone of the season. It starts there. Even if the desire is to add, if the team falls out of contention, the situation changes.

"There's still a lot of games left to unfold and teams aren't really making those declarations until the last possible minute," said general manager Jeremy Zoll. "And in turn, you need the full market to develop to be able to have things happen. So we're continuing to evaluate things. The team is on a nice run here. … So we're really excited about that to continue to progress and hopefully have a good showing here, and the break and go from there."

And then there’s the simple fact of the standings. With so many teams at least on the fringes of contention, there are very few obvious sellers. So it’s going to be difficult to make matches. That brings into the picture a third path, something in between buying and selling: trading Major League players in order to bolster the Major League roster.

Minnesota has a slew of talent waiting in the wings at Triple-A St. Paul. So one path could be to trade a big leaguer to make room for someone like Walker Jenkins or Kaelen Culpepper, in order to add desperately needed relief pitching help or potentially even starting pitching depth.

But the wish? The goal? It’s to bolster a roster that has overachieved in the season’s first 3 1/2 months.

Biggest need
Bullpen. It’s the bullpen. Even after adding Tommy Nance, even as Andrew Morris and Yoendrys Gómez have emerged as a reliable combination at the end of games, the Twins are still too shallow in the bullpen. They should get Cole Sands back soon, but they need at least another legitimate relief arm or two. Could they use another starter? Probably. Shore up the defense? Sure. But relief help is priorities 1, 2 and 3.

Biggest chip
It depends whether they buy or sell. The Twins have four Top 100 prospects: Jenkins (No. 14), Emmanuel Rodriguez (No. 55, currently injured), Culpepper (No. 32) and Eduardo Tait (No. 38). They’re highly unlikely to move Jenkins or Culpepper. If they sell, they’ll get tons of calls on Ryan Jeffers and Joe Ryan. It wouldn’t be shocking if they moved someone like Trevor Larnach to bolster their pitching in a Major League for Major League deal, clearing space for someone like Jenkins.

Key player for second half
So much revolves around Jeffers, who is confident he’ll be himself once he gets going again after spending more than a month and a half on the injured list. But you just never know when a hitter is coming back from a wrist injury. If he can regain the All-Star-type form he showed before he got hurt, it will take an already potent offense to new heights.

Determining factor
We’re going to know a lot, soon. The front office and ownership want to buy, but the roster needs to hold up its end. Last year, in a similar position, the Twins stumbled out of the gate with a 2-4 road trip. They start the second half on the road again, at the contending Cubs and Guardians. They don’t need to have a great trip; they just need to avoid disaster and stay in the picture.