Tag: Christian Vazquez

Minnesota Twins 2025 Offseason Moves: Eric Orze Trade, Alex Jackson Addition, and Ownership Uncertainty

Eric Orze
Jacob Kisting

The Twins first move early this off-season was on November 18th when they traded with Tampa Bay to acquire 6’4″ right-handed reliever Eric Orze and sent minor league pitcher Jacob Kisting a 6’5″ right-hander to Tampa in return. Kisting was drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 14th round of the 2024 MLB June Amateur Draft from Bradley University (Peoria, IL). Trading Jacob Kisting shows the Twins are willing to move younger assets for immediate bullpen help. Tampa Bay acquired Orze from the Mets last winter in the trade that sent center fielder Jose Siri to New York. Tampa used Orze as an up-and-down middle innings arm. The former fifth-round pick tossed 41 2/3 innings of 3.02 ERA ball across 33 appearances. His 22.5% strikeout percentage and 10.7% walk rate weren’t as impressive, but he missed bats on a strong 13.2% of his offerings overall. Orze’s profile—solid ERA, decent bat-missing ability, but middling strikeout/walk rates—suggests he’s more of a depth stabilizer than a high-leverage arm. This is probably just the first of many moves the Twins will make to try to rebuild a bullpen they decimated when they traded off Griffin Jax, Louis Varland, and Jhoan Duran at the trade deadline this past season.

Payton Eeles

Additionally, the Twins acquired veteran catcher Alex Jackson from the Baltimore Orioles in exchange for minor league infielder Payton Eeles. Jackson presumably becomes part of the mix for the club’s backup catcher role, an opening that results from Christian Vazquez‘s free agency.

The Twins have cut payroll so there is no reason to think they will spend money now, but, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the payroll between $120 million-$130 million going into the 2026 season. The two early moves might be a sign the Twins are diving in the pool earlier this season to try to acquire players. Relievers without big league deals and something to prove should be standing in line to sign with Minnesota. If the Twins hit on some relievers and the team struggles they can flip these guys and get something in return.

Lewin Diaz

The Twins still have a hole to fill at first and I would like to see them go after Lewin Diaz (who just turned 29) who was in the Twins minor league system before being traded Miami in 2019 at the trade deadline for Sergio Romo, Chris Vallimont and a PTBNL. Since then he was picked up by the Pirates, Orioles, Braves and Nationals but he has not played in he big leagues since he left Miami. After being cut lose by the Orioles he has played in Mexico and Korea. This past season in Korea in 629 PA’s he hit .314 with 50 home runs and 158 RBI while walking 60 times while striking out 100 times. He committed just 4 errors.

I am disappointed that the Twins have not yet named who their two new investor groups are. It will be interesting to learn who they are and what they have to say about the state of the Twins. It might be some time before we learn what impact these two new ownership groups have on how the Twins are run and if they are in this for the long haul or just in it to get a quick return on their investment when the Twins do get sold. Their intentions—long-term stewardship vs. short-term profit—could shape the franchise’s trajectory more than any single roster move.

The 2025 Minnesota Twins: A Team Caught in Limbo, and a Fan Base Losing Patience

A loyal fan’s lonely vigil at Target Field—watching a team still searching for its soul.

The title and the image here are AI generated. I wrote a piece about my thoughts on the Twins and then I gave an out line to AI to write a similar article and I am publishing both of them here and I am very curious what your thoughts are on the two articles, which would you prefer to read and why. So if you have a few minutes to spare please leave me a comment or two. The first article is the one I wrote, the second is the AI version.

Article 1

After 83 games the Minnesota Twins find themselves with a 40-43 record and in third place in the American League Central division trailing the league leading Detroit Tigers by 11.5 games and the second place Cleveland Guardians by one game and just one game ahead of the fourth place Kansas City Royals. There are four teams in the AL East and four teams in the AL West that have more wins than Minnesota does. Yet, the Twins and all the local Twins scribes seem to think the Twins are still in the running for a play-off spot.

Let’s get real folks, the 2025 Twins team has about as much of a chance of playing in post season as the Chicago White Sox and the Colorado Rockies do. The trade deadline is coming up and it will be interesting to see if Twins President Derek Falvey makes any moves. When he first started working for the Twins he stated that regardless of a teams standing at the deadline, moves should be made to improve the team and you do this by either being a buyer or a seller but you have nothing to gain by standing pat.

The 2025 Twins team does find itself in a unique situation in the fact that the Pohlad family that owns the team announced in October 2024 that the team is for sale putting the team between a rock and hard spot. Ownership doesn’t want to spend money on a team they want to sell not do they want to burden future buyers with long term deals.

Twins attendance this season is down almost 6% from last season and 2024 attendance was a low-water mark for the Twins at Target Field with the exception of 2020 when COVID kept fans from attending MLB games and 2021 when attendance was limited by MLB and ratcheted up slowly as the year progressed. July is almost here and that means the NFL teams including the Minnesota Vikings are getting ready to report to camps and start getting ready for their 2025 season. Once the Vikings start, interest in the Twins wanes, particularly when the team is playing poorly.

The 2025 Twins are a strange bunch. They started the season with four straight losses and it took them 26 games before they notched their tenth win of the season. Then in early May they go on a 13 game winning streak and go 18-8 in the month of May. June rolls around and with 2 games left in the month to play, they are 9-17.

As I said earlier, it is a strange team and you don’t know from day-to-day what you will see when you watch them play. So far in 2025 they have been out-scored 367 to 356. They had top notch pitching in May and just the opposite in June. The team has found itself seven games over .500 and eight games under .500. It has 21 come from behind wins and 18 blown leads. They have allowed 10 or more runs on seven occasions and scored 10 or more runs the same number of times.

The 2025 Twins payroll is about $149 million which put them about the middle of the MLB pack according to Spotrac. That said, only two teams with higher payroll, the Atlanta Braves with a payroll of just under $220 million and the Baltimore Orioles at $185.5 million have fewer wins than Minnesota.

The team has only four players making $10 million or more, Carlos Correa at $36 million, Pablo Lopez at $21.5 million, Byron Buxton at $15 million and Christian Vazquez at $10 million. These four players make over 55% of the Twins 26 man payroll (plus the five players on the IL). With the top four players $82.5 million, that leaves the remaining 27 players to share about $67,578,459. Spotrac shows 13 players making under $1million. With Correa and Vazquez playing sub par baseball, Lopez on the IL for most of the rest of the year things do not look like this team is playoff bound.

Manager Rocco Baldelli‘s current contract with the Minnesota Twins is a 3-year, $30 million deal signed in December 2022, according to Baseball Prospectus. The contract covers the 2023-2025 seasons. Some time this season, the Twins brain trust picked up their 2026 club option for Baldelli, according to Yahoo Sports. 

There is something seriously wrong with this team and I certainly don’t know what that is, but, I feel confident in saying that Rocco Baldelli is not the right manager for this team at the present time. It makes no difference if it is Rocco’s fault or not, the bottom line is this team is not winning and history has shown us that when this happens you need to get a new spoon to stir the pot. Every team gets injuries and they fight on but how can you explain an entire team short of Byron Buxton and Joe Ryan playing so poorly? I have followed the Twins through thick or thin since 1961 and I will probably continue being a Twins fan until I pass on, but it sure would be more fun watching a team and an organization that wants to win versus just fielding a team that is plays .500 or less baseball. Believe me when I tell you that the 2025 Twins are not a fun baseball team to watch. I will continue to watch the Twins but whenever they play bad baseball (all too often these days) I am glad that the TV remote is close at hand.

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2023 Twins Turkey of Year

November is flying by. The World Series is over, the GM meetings are behind us, the Hot Stove league is starting to heat up, the newly hired managers are all excited about how good their new teams are, the 2023 MLB award season is in full swing, free agents players and their agents are starting to count their money, the weather is cooling off and Thanksgiving is upon us one more time. The NFBC site is already accepting players for the 2024 Fantasy season and drafts for the 2024 season are already underway (If you think you know baseball and have some extra money then this is the place for you). Black Friday sales have been on-going for some time and yes, the entire baseball world will once again be getting together for the Baseball Winter Meetings (Dec 3-6, 2023) and this year they are back in Nashville.

The Minnesota Twins broke their long losing streak in post-season play and even won a post-season series in 2023 but unfortunately the Houston Astros were waiting for them once again and sent the Twins home early to heal what ails them and to sharpen their golf skills. Hey, they were 3-3 in the post-season but they still have a ways to go and they obviously had some Turkey’s on their roster this season that we can roast. A team that has seven batters that struck out 100 or more times and another that fell just one KO short of 100 along with a $33 million dollar player that hits into a team record 30 double-plays must have some fowl players for us to chose from.

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Twins fun facts from Twins 3/4 ST notes

Louie Varland

THIS LAND IS VARLAND: Louie Varland is in his first career spring training, making his second start…tossed 2.0 scoreless inning with one hit allowed and one strikeout February 25 at Baltimore…went 8-5, 3.06 ERA (126.1 IP, 43 ER), 42 walks, 146 strikeouts, a 1.26 WHIP and a .242 (117-for-484) opponent batting average in 24 minor league games (23 starts)…named Jim Rantz Award winner as Twins Minor League Pitcher of the Year for the second consecutive season, joining José Berríos (2014-15) as the only pitcher to win the award in back-to-back seasons…led all Twins minor leaguers in strikeouts (146) and innings pitched (126.1), was tied for first in games started (23) and was second in ERA (3.06), second in winning percentage (.615), fourth in opponent batting average (.242) and WHIP (1.26), and tied for fifth in wins (8)…made major league debut on September 7 at New York-AL, striking out seven in 5.2 innings pitched, fanning Aaron Judge in the first inning for his first career strikeout…went 1-2, 3.81 ERA (26.0 IP, 11 ER) in 5 starts with the Twins.

I was at CoolToday Park as the Atlanta Braves beat the Minnesota Twins today by a score of 7-5 and it was not as close as the score indicates. The Braves took Varland behind the woodshed and put a serious beating on him right from the get-go. The Twins trailed 7-0 before they scored all five of their runs in the top of the eighth inning with little to no help from the big leaguers (Christian Vazquez & Ryan Jeffers) that were in attendance. The game lasted 2 hour and 33 minutes but it seemed like it went on for four hours. We were supposed to check out CoolToday Park last Spring but the game we were going to attend was called off due to the lockout. It is a beautiful ballpark with lots of parking available. It is about 75 miles north of Fort Myers in North Port. The only complaint I would have is that it kind of a pain getting from one level to another primarily because the signage is non-existent telling you where the stairs are.

What’s up at the ballpark you say?

Taking down Luis Arraez

I made my first trip out to the Lee County Sports Complex Tuesday morning to see what is going on out there before Spring Training starts. I had hoped to get out there back in early January to take in some of the Twins Fantasy Camp games and chat with some former Twins players that serve as team managers and coaches but I had a nasty cold for about two weeks that just didn’t want to go away so I thought it best to stay away.

When I got out to the complex today it was a beehive of activity from trucks delivering office equipment, landscaping activities going on around the complex (which actually withstood Hurricane Ian back in late September fairly well), a cherry picker taking a huge Luis Arraez images down from above the ticket office, to major and minor league players working out on numerous fields.

Louie Varland

On my walk to the back fields I noticed a player heading towards me and he looked familiar but I just couldn’t place him, it turned out to be Louie Varland and I got his picture, wished him good luck and embarrassingly I forget to introduce myself. How dumb is that? I didn’t make that mistake on all the other players I met today. This time of the year no one is wearing uniforms with numbers so it is often very hard to know who is who. What surprised me I guess is how many players are already here with pitchers throwing on at least three fields. Catchers all over the place and one of those catchers was Christian Vazquez. Looks to me like Vazquez is going to be an easy player to like as today he signed autographs for a group of people and posed for a picture for me, even went to the trouble of taking off his catching gear first. He reminded us “that I am number 8 and not number 7” and everyone got a good laugh including Christian in an obvious reference to Joe Mauer.

I met a gentleman on the back fields from Indiana by the name of Robert McCammon who is a retired school teacher and now spends winters in Florida and works part-time at Hammond Stadium during Spring Training. He grew up a Washington Senators fan and is now a Twins fan and last year he published a book called Walter Johnson Had No Idea. Twins President Dave St. Peter wrote the Forward for the book. I have a copy of the book and am anxious to read it since I just wrapped up my latest Baldacci novel yesterday.

It was so nice to be at the complex on a nice sunny day with temperatures in the low 70’s and watching people catching and throwing a baseball around again. It is a fun time of the year, no one has lost a game, no one is injured yet, no pressure on anyone to make the team, no trade rumors flying around and everyone is happy and in a good mood. How can you not love baseball at this time of the year. I took a number of other pictures that I will share with you in the next few days.

Update on 2/8 – You can see the rest of the 2023 Spring Training pictures here.

Twins get their catcher in Christian Vazquez

Christian Vazquez with mandatory credit: Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports

With the catching market hot of late the Minnesota Twins jumped in and filled one of their holes by signing 31-year-old free agent Christian Vazquez. Vazquez was drafted by the Boston Red Sox in round nine of the 2008 MLB June Amateur Draft from Puerto Rico Baseball Academy. Vazquez worked his way up through the Red Sox system and debuted in the big leagues on July 9, 2014 going 0 for 3 against the Chicago White Sox. The deal, which is pending a physical, will guarantee him $30MM.

Continue reading Twins get their catcher in Christian Vazquez