MILWAUKEE — When they approached teams to express interest in acquiring their players last week, the Minnesota Twins could provide a mix of prospects and the ability to take on payroll to enhance their offers.
While the Twins were always authorized in years past to make trade-deadline deals using prospects, a significant amount of cash has rarely been available to the front office.
But in an attempt to improve the roster and hopefully win back disinterested fans through aggressive moves, Twins chairman Tom Pohlad wanted to provide general manager Jeremy Zoll with sufficient resources to make meaningful additions.
Twins chairman Tom Pohlad discusses the team’s trade deadline strategy
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Zoll quickly recognized the benefits of entering discussions with a wallet flush full of cash.
In making three deals between July 30 and Aug. 3, the Twins absorbed more than $8 million in 2026 payroll from the Toronto Blue Jays, Baltimore Orioles and New York Mets. Being able to add payroll this season limited how much the Twins needed to surrender in prospect capital to acquire high-leverage relievers Jeff Hoffman and A.J. Minter and starting pitcher Dean Kremer.
“The ability to add payroll was huge,” Zoll said. “It was really helpful to be able to work through a wide variety of conversations. I’m really grateful for Tom Pohlad’s partnership and support along the way. We had really productive conversations leading into this deadline process about how we wanted to attack that and do everything that we could to improve the club. I felt like I was in lock step with him along the way.”
With Minter, the Mets were motivated to trim payroll rather than maximize the return on their rental reliever. Though Minter was one of the top left-handed relievers available, the Twins acquired him for what MLB graded as the team’s No. 21 prospect (Billy Amick) and 29th-best prospect (Bruin Agbayani) because they took on the rest of Minter’s $3.5 million salary.
Had they not absorbed salary, one team source who spoke on condition of anonymity to allow for candor suggested the Twins would have needed to surrender a prospect in the 10-15 range, perhaps as high as No. 8.
Knowing his team would be a buyer, Pohlad made sure to be clear with Zoll that he would have ample resources at his disposal. By the time they acquired Dean Kremer on July 31, the Twins had added $5 million in payroll. Another team source, granted anonymity to provide insight into the team’s strategy, said Pohlad offered access to more cash than the team had ever had before: “Tom’s not f—ing around.”
Pohlad said he simply wanted to make a difficult endeavor easier for Zoll.
“We were committed to giving (Zoll) the financial flexibility to make this team better,” Pohlad said. “I think the results of what happened at the trade deadline were in no small part a function of having that financial flexibility and that clarity at the outset. Now somebody has to go out and execute that, and that is a very hard thing to do, and he did that masterfully.”
Here’s what else we learned about the Twins at the trade deadline.
• Yes, the Twins expressed interest in Los Angeles Angels shortstop Zach Neto, a player they’ve been intrigued by for multiple seasons. Yet the timing of a national report Monday noting the Twins were all over Neto arrived a few days late.
The Twins reached out to Los Angeles before the weekend began to see if that team’s front office would be open to dealing Neto only to discover it would cost more than they were comfortable paying. Neto wasn’t moved at the deadline.
As evidenced by the team’s decision to promote No. 2 prospect Kaelen Culpepper on Friday, four days after the deadline, the club hoped to bolster its shortstop play.
The Twins also were in discussions for Reid Detmers and Jose Soriano, who was traded to Toronto.
• Indicating they were buying didn’t prevent teams from inquiring about catcher Ryan Jeffers, who is a free agent at the end of the season. With multiple teams pursuing catching help, Jeffers drew plenty of interest, but the Twins decided to keep their roster intact.
“He’s a big part of what we’re doing right now,” Zoll said. “We wanted to make sure we were not taking any steps backwards this year just to acquire future value to say we did. Had a clear goal of making the team better and wanted to deliver on that.”
Whether the Twins make Jeffers a qualifying offer or not depends on how he plays the rest of the season. But if the club thinks Jeffers would receive a long-term contract in free agency, the Twins seem unconcerned with making him a qualifying offer, which would net them a compensatory draft pick. While it could be perceived as a gamble to offer him a one-year deal expected to be worth at least $23 million, a source close to Jeffers said the catcher would reject the offer and be a free agent. Even if he accepted, the Twins would secure Jeffers, who’s in the middle of a career year, on a one-year deal, which would help bridge the gap to prospect Vahn Lackey’s eventual promotion to the majors.
• One person familiar with the team’s thinking who was granted anonymity to speak candidly said the Twins’ aggressive spending plan is repurposing what the organization originally intended to do beginning in 2023. When they re-signed Carlos Correa to a six-year, $200-million deal that January, the Twins were operating on a five-year plan under Derek Falvey in which payroll would increase every year to support the roster.
Only one year later, ownership pulled the plug on the plan and asked Falvey to reduce payroll by $30 million, a move Pohlad has since identified as a misstep. Team officials believe the move saved the money up front but cost the franchise far more money over the long run.
Pohlad has repeatedly said the Twins’ future payrolls would increase and that the team needs to spend more than $100 million on payroll to compete. Though it’s almost a certainty the Twins would never approach their $248 million payroll from 2023, Pohlad views the small-market San Diego Padres’ model as a positive.
“To build the business, we’ve got to win,” Pohlad said in July. “And to win, we’ve got to put a better product on the field. There does need to be an upfront investment made. But when we make an investment, we have to be successful. We have to f—ing win. If we do that, then people will come and it will all work.”
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• Curious to see how the Twins front office works at the deadline, Pohlad spent time with Zoll and others in the front office and had an opportunity to see how many hypothetical possibilities arise during the process. But as the deadline neared and the work started to speed up, Pohlad left the Twins front office alone to conduct business.
Pohlad kept in contact with members of the front office via text and email over the past few days in case he was needed to sign off on a deal. One point made by Falvey last December when Pohlad took over was that the team’s new chairman would need to learn about most aspects of the business on the fly.
“It was a great learning experience,” Pohlad said. “It was a great team-building experience, particularly between (Zoll) and myself, and to some degree (Twins manager Derek Shelton). I felt like we had a very clear plan going in. I had a lot of confidence in (Zoll), and things turned out the way we hoped.”
