The Twins Blow It All The Way Up

For Twins fans, the Louis Varland deal was something like the final straw. Parting with Willi Castro could be forgiven — his contract was up at the end of this season. Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax — okay, they were under team control through 2027, but you could convince yourself that the deadline is the best time to part with a premium reliever, and look at the return. Dumping Carlos Correa and the majority of his contract on the Astros was definitely a feel-bad move, but it was also one that was requested by Correa himself after the Twins made clear that they were headed into a rebuilding phase, and the back half of that deal might look pretty bad from a production standpoint.

But giving up on Varland defied any reasonable explanation. He grew up in Minnesota, played his college ball there, and was brought into the Twins organization as a 15th rounder in the 2019 draft. From these humble hometown beginnings, he developed into a fire-breathing bullpen monster. Varland sits 98 mph on his four-seam fastball; he’s under team control until 2030, and wouldn’t even hit arbitration until 2027. If there was ever a perfect closer to bridge from one competitive Twins era to the next, it would’ve been Varland.

Instead, the front office sent him (along with Ty France) off to Toronto in exchange for outfielder Alan Roden and left-handed pitcher Kendry Rojas. On the merits, it’s a reasonable return; Roden can really rake, and Garcia is a legitimate pitching prospect close to the big leagues.

But Varland’s affordability, years of team control, and homegrown pedigree made it all seem so personal, as if ownership could care less about stripping the team down to the studs. As I write this, the top post on the Twins subreddit is a photo of Varland with the caption “​​This one straight up feels like a middle finger to the fanbase.” There are hundreds of comments commiserating.

It wasn’t so long ago that the Twins were the class of the AL Central. In fact, it was as recently as the beginning of this season. Even after a disappointing 2024, where ownership cut payroll by 20% and the Twins won just 82 games, they were still projected as the favorites in the division on Opening Day 2025. Between Correa, Byron Buxton, and Royce Lewis, the offensive core appeared to be in place, locked up on deals through the majority of the 2020s. The bullpen was projected to be the best in the league. Joe Ryan, Pablo López, and Bailey Ober looked to be about as solid of a playoff rotation as any team could ask for.

A bunch of stuff went sideways, of course. Ober got shelled. López got hurt. Correa and Lewis stopped hitting. But below-average performances from a few key performers doesn’t necessitate trading away 10 players from a 26-man roster, including multiple players under team control well beyond this doomed season. All of this happened for other reasons. It’s hard not to look at the Pohlad family’s efforts to sell the team, or the $425 million in debt accrued while the team was under their stewardship.

Whatever the specifics, there is no good baseball reason to dispatch Duran, or Jax, and especially not Varland, who was in the midst of a breakout season. Over 49 innings, the 27-year-old posted a 2.02 ERA and a 2.89 FIP, with verifiably nasty stuff. As mentioned earlier, he sits 98 on his heater, but it’s relatively dead-zone, so it doesn’t get a ton of swing-and-miss. His best pitch is his curveball, key to his breakout this season.

Last year, Varland’s breaking balls were a mess, ranking in the first percentile in breaking ball run value. His primary was a hard slider/cutter variant, similar to the shape of Jacob Misiorowski’s “slider” but at 90 mph. Underneath that pitch, he threw an 85 mph curveball with seven inches of drop.

This year, he’s largely moved away from the slider/cutter (I’m really trying hard not to write slutter), opting for the curve as his primary breaking ball. And while it’s dropping an inch less than in 2024, it’s gained a full three and a half (!) ticks of velo and is now sitting at 88 mph. He’s transferred some of the slider intent into the curveball, and it’s benefitted the pitch enormously. Varland throws it with roughly equal frequency to both righties and lefties, and the results have been sparkling: a 39.7% whiff rate and a .225 wOBA on contact.

Right now, RosterResource sees Varland as the fourth guy in the Jays bullpen, behind Jeff Hoffman, Yariel Rodríguez, and the recently acquired Seranthony Domínguez. I would not be surprised at all if Varland grabs hold of the primary setup role in Toronto by year’s end, at least until Yimi García works his way back from injury.

(I’m not exactly sure how France fits on the roster, but I have great affection for him, and I wish him the best in his endeavor to remain in the big leagues.)

The players coming back ease the blow to some degree. Roden, who graduated from rookie eligibility not long ago, received a 50 FV grade from Eric Longenhagen at the start of the 2025 season. He’s since split time between Triple-A and the big league roster, racking up 113 plate appearances for the Jays with just a single home run. Roden’s plate discipline remains excellent, but the lack of power production has led Eric to downgrade his expectations slightly.

“I hemmed and hawed over whether he was a 45 (the version where he doesn’t get to much power) or a 50 (the version where he does), and it’s looking like the 45 version,” he told me.

Eric also has Rojas as a 45 FV prospect. He shared some updated thoughts on the lefty with me:

Rojas is sitting 93-96 and touching 97, and is generating plus miss and chase with his heater, a true plus starter’s fastball and foundational pitch. His secondary stuff is below average, with his slider sitting 85-87 with inconsistent finish and depth; his changeup also sits 88. He doesn’t have especially great tactile feel for creating movement on his secondaries. Rojas has a prototypical starter’s build, and I think he fits in a big league rotation, but more as a no. 4/5 type because of the generic offspeed stuff.

Roden and Rojas were perhaps front of mind when Twins POBOBO Derek Falvey attempted to explain the moves in a letter to season ticket holders on Friday morning.

“We didn’t make surface moves,” Falvey wrote. “We acted with purpose. That meant adding players who can help now, deepening our talent pipeline for 2026 and beyond, and reinforcing the foundation for long-term success.”

There’s a way to squint and see how this could be the case. Buxton, López, and Ryan remain on the roster (for now.) The Twins received a haul of controllable talent. If the Pohlad family gave the front office a mandate to clear as much payroll as possible at the deadline, they did as well as anyone could reasonably hope under challenging circumstances. But Twins fans and the rest of the baseball world aren’t reacting to this sequence of moves from some place of unsophisticated emotion. Right now, this all sucks a lot, and even the finest prospects won’t change that reality.