The Twins were sellers at the trade deadline. They acquired Jaime Garcia, sure, but then they turned around and dealt him to the Yankees for prospects and also shipped out reliever Brandon Kintzler to the Nats before the buzzer. And why shouldn’t they have? The Twins were 50-53 on the morning of July 31, 4 1/2 games back of the second wild card spot and trailing four other teams for it.
The Twins sold at the deadline and now have a wild card spot
Tuesday’s Say Hey, Baseball looks at the Twins’ surprising resurgence, Yasiel Puig’s violent catch, and the anniversary of a historic Orioles beatdown.
Photo by David Banks/Getty Images
Fast-forward to Aug. 21, a little less than a month later, and the Twins are now in possession of that second wild card after splitting a doubleheader on the same night the Angels lost. They don’t have Garcia to shore up their rotation, and the bullpen is a little worse without Kintzler there, but the AL wild card is chaos and the Twins, for now, have risen above it.
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Does that make their selling before the deadline wrong?
Not even a little bit. The Twins had been outscored by 72 runs and had an expected record of 45-58 on the morning of July 31. They might have the second wild card spot now, but not much has changed in this regard. They’ve managed to close the gap a bit — now they’ve been outscored by only 43 runs and their expected record has them six games under .500 instead of 13 — but that gap and the larger picture of who this team is still exists.
Maybe Minnesota will hold on to this wild card spot, keeping the Angels, Mariners, Royals, Rangers, and Orioles at bay for the next six weeks. It would be unfortunate only in the sense that having Garcia and Kintzler probably would have been helpful in October. But they weren’t exactly in a position of strength when they made those decisions.
If the Twins do get to the postseason despite their issues from April through July, and they do it because the team is suddenly clicking, it’ll still be good news for 2018 considering how young this club is. Plus, they also would have made the postseason a year after leading the league in losses. That’s a victory right there even if they go nowhere else.
And hey, they still have 10 more days to buy in August before the deadline for postseason eligibility hits. If they win a couple of more games, they might want to think about perusing the list of players who have cleared waivers. Just in case.
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