Twins Daily: Revisiting trades made by Derek Falvey, Thad Levine
In Part 3 of the look at Falvey and Levine Era trades we take a look at some emotionally charged trades from the summer of 2018. Looking back now, those trades may be exactly what the Twins needed to set themselves up to make a World Series-sized trade sometime soon.
As we continue on with our series looking at the Derek Falvey- and- Thad Levine-led front office and the trades they have made we will look not at a single one, but at a flurry of trades. That flurry came in the middle of the 2018 season when the Twins had a fire sale of veterans who were on expiring deals and stocked their farm system with prospects.
As a fan, it was a tough series of trades as we saw several fan-favorite players leave Minnesota. At the time it seemed like a pair of infielders, Brian Dozier and Eduardo Escobar, were the ones most deeply missed. Let’s recap quickly those trades that happened mid-2018.
- Eduardo Escobar to Dbacks for Ernie De La Trinidad, Jhoan Duran, and Gabriel Maciel
- Ryan Pressly to Astros for Gilberto Celestino and Jorge Alcala
- Zack Duke to Mariners for Ryan Costello and Chase De Jong
- Lance Lynn to Yankees for Luis Rijo and Tyler Austin
- Brian Dozier to Dodgers for Luke Raley, Logan Forsythe, Devin Smeltzer
- Fernando Rodney to A’s for Dakota Chalmers
- Bobby Wilson to Cubs for Chris Giminez and PTBNL or cash
The majority of these trades are “wins” simply because these guys were free agents to be and there weren’t plans on the Twins part to re-sign them. One we could say the Twins should have kept around may have been Escobar. My hunch is that Escobar was ready to be a starter. With Miguel Sano here that probably wasn’t happening that offseason.
The Pressly trade is certainly up for debate. He certainly would have been nice to have around this past season. At the same time, as much of the conversation was centered on last week, it is hard to truly evaluate trades until these prospects get their chance to develop. That doesn’t erase the fact that before the Twins bullpen really took shape during the second half, Pressly was someone many of us were wishing was still around.
Some of the players acquired have already exited the Twins organization for one reason or another. Some as veterans that were simply not needed any longer, and others as prospects that were allowed to go elsewhere. Below is a graph with those remaining sorted by FanGraphs' recent ranking of the Twins organization.
There was a whole lot of talent that was brought in in a short amount of time during that 2018 season. Some of these players the Twins are hoping to develop into the waves of players that sustain winning in the Twins Cities. I also fully believe these trades were made to set the front office up to make more trades.
That becomes especially important now as the Twins have yet to fulfill their promise of impact pitching coming to help the 2020 Twins. These prospects make up one of the deepest group of prospects in MLB baseball and it is time to see which players can be used to acquire an arm to help next season's rotation.
So while as a fan it was hard to say goodbye to so many of our favorite players in 2018 it was the right baseball move. Now if the Twins want to get to a World Series it is time to move some of those prospects to get players who are ready to take them there now.
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This story first appeared at Twins Daily and was re-shared through a collaboration with Bring Me The News.
