Orioles sell off another arm as rebuild marches on

The trade broke late Friday night and moved fast, with the whole industry basically confirming it within minutes of each other. Ken Rosenthal had it first, and Jon Heyman and Mark Feinsand chimed in right behind him, which is usually a sign a deal is fully done rather than speculative.

Ken Rosenthal

@Ken_Rosenthal

Twins acquiring RHP Dean Kremer from the Orioles, source tells The Athletic.

Kremer's been with the Orioles for his entire big-league career, all 133 games of it, and he's been a steady mid-rotation piece for years. This season hasn't been his best — he's 1-4 with a 6.50 ERA in seven starts — but he's only 30 and still under club control, which made him a sensible sell-high-ish trade chip for a Baltimore team that's clearly not chasing anything in 2026. Rosenthal's follow-up nailed down the money side of it.

Ken Rosenthal

@Ken_Rosenthal

Kremer is owed ~$1.7M the rest of this season. Twins took on balance of Minter’s salary as well - ~$3.37M. New control person Tom Pohlad providing payroll flexibility.

That detail matters more than it looks. New Twins control person Tom Pohlad taking on Kremer's remaining roughly $1.7 million — plus absorbing the rest of reliever Minter's salary at around $3.37 million — tells you Minnesota's ownership is suddenly willing to spend a little to patch holes. The Twins went full sell mode at last year's deadline, but they're currently 3.5 games back of the surging White Sox in the AL Central and clearly decided a fifth starter was worth the outlay to stay in the race.

Baltimore's return is where this gets interesting for anyone tracking the farm system. Feinsand reported the Orioles are getting outfielder Jhomnardo Reyes, Minnesota's No. 24 prospect per MLB Pipeline, back in the deal.

Mark Feinsand

@Feinsand

The Orioles get OF Jhomnardo Reyes from the Twins for Kremer, per source. Reyes is the Twins’ No. 24 prospect according to @MLBPipeline.

Reyes is only 18 and was mashing at the complex level before Minnesota bumped him up to Single-A Fort Myers in late July — he'd hit.296 with a.541 slugging mark and seven homers in 47 games before the promotion. That's the profile the Orioles have built their whole rebuild around: buy low on teenage bats with power projection and let their player-dev machine figure out the rest. It's the same blueprint that turned this farm system into one of baseball's best over the last few years, and it's why even a modest return like this gets circled by prospect watchers.

None of this screams blockbuster on its own, but it's a data point in a bigger story: Baltimore keeps quietly moving big-league pieces for lower-level upside as the deadline approaches, while Minnesota keeps making just enough moves to avoid falling out of a winnable division. Worth watching whether Kremer steadies things in the Twins' rotation and whether Reyes keeps hitting his way up the O's system — because this is exactly the kind of under-the-radar deal that looks a lot different in three years.