For weeks, the Twins have been the team every contender was circling like sharks. Joe Ryan and Ryan Jeffers sat atop nearly every trade candidate list in baseball, with the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays reportedly scouting Jeffers for weeks and speculation swirling that Ryan could net a monster return given he's under club control through 2027. Then Minnesota went and won a game in walkoff fashion, and suddenly the tone out of the front office flipped completely.
Mark Feinsand relayed Twins president of baseball ops Jeremy Zoll saying he's clear the team will buy, not sell, at the deadline.
'I feel clear on the direction': Zoll says Twins will be buyers at Deadline https://t.co/ANw3zKUUgO
That walkoff pulled Minnesota to.500 and within a half-game of an AL Wild Card spot, and per Jon Heyman, that was enough for the front office to publicly declare itself a buyer. This is Zoll's first deadline running the show without Derek Falvey looming over every call, and it's a genuine test of how he views a roster with real, if shaky, postseason legs.
Jon Heyman laid out what the buyer declaration actually means for the Twins' two biggest trade chips.
Twins say they are looking to improve the team after walkoff win gets them to .500, 1/2 game back in the AL wild card race. So they’re buyers. Which means Joe Ryan and Ryan Jeffers aren’t going anywhere.
The stakes here are real money and real years. Ryan, who could slot into basically any team's playoff rotation, was the single most valuable chip Minnesota could've dangled — teams have reportedly been "speed dialing" about him. Jeffers is a pending free agent, and the Twins were reportedly weighing whether they'd even want to stick him with a $23 million qualifying offer if he walked. Trading him now for a package of controllable pieces would've been the sensible sell-side move. Instead, both stay put, at least for now.
Whether this holds until the Aug. 3, 6 p.m. ET deadline is the real question. A half-game gap in a Wild Card race is basically nothing — one bad week and this whole "buyers" framing evaporates. But for a fanbase that's watched this front office get cautious in past summers, hearing "we're clear on the direction" instead of "everything's available" is a genuine shift in posture, even if it's built on the shakiest of foundations: one walkoff.