The MLB trade deadline came and went at 3pm CT today, and the Twins are a different team than they went into it. I’ll have a more thorough breakdown of the deadline later this week, but let’s first run through the nuts and bolts of what actually happened.
The first trade of the day was the biggest. Jose Berrios was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays for two highly regarded prospects, pitcher Simeon Woods-Richardson and shortstop Austin Martin. They slot in as the Twins second and 3rd best prospects in the system.
The other two deals of the day for Minnesota were less noteworthy. The biggest surprise was that J.A. Happ was shipped off to St. Louis, where the Twins are playing tonight. The Twins received John Gant and minor league pitcher Evan Sisk.
Just before the deadline, the Twins also sent reliever Hansel Robles to the Red Sox for minor league pitcher Alex Scherff.
Taken in their entirety, the Twins added 6 pitchers between today and the Nelson Cruz move earlier this week. There wasn’t much damage done to the team’s offense, and they have three pitchers that are now among the team’s top 10 prospects.
Surprisingly, though, that was it. The Twins held onto some popular players on the market, like Max Kepler, Kenta Maeda and Josh Donaldson, but also players that will be free agents at the end of the season, like Michael Pineda and Andrelton Simmons. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that those two, in particular, are still members of the Twins.
Still, the Twins were active, and bolstered their farm system. They really didn’t gut too much of the team to do it, but you have to wonder if their approach was really well executed. We’ll talk about that later.
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