On July 7, the day that the Minnesota Twins acquired Bartolo Colon, the team’s chief baseball officer was asked if the team would be buyers before the July 31 trade deadline. “We are buyers of Bartolo Colon,” Derek Falvey said in jest. So yeah, buyers of a 44 year old pitcher who throws sub-90 mile per hour fastballs who reportedly considered retirement after his first start against the New York Yankees.
“To think about retirement when you’re 44 in major league baseball is a pretty normal thing,” Paul Molitor said after Colon’s first outing, in which he gave up four runs in a 6-3 loss to the New York Yankees.
He might have retired already this season, given that he owned a 8.14 ERA with the Atlanta Braves before signing with Minnesota. But a promise to his mother has kept a one-time fireballer from walking away from the game. He will reportedly make at least one more start despite a similar performance against the Los Angeles Dodgers Monday night.
Colon’s ERA increased 0.05 points after his first start with Minnesota. He struck out Aaron Judge looking in the first inning and seemed fine his first time through the New York Yankees order, but faltered his second time around and exited the game to a round of applause in the fourth inning. He lasted one more inning against the Dodgers, but gave up three runs and was chased after Yasmani Grandal and Joc Pederson hit back-to-back homers off of him and Yasiel Puig followed with a triple.
While Colon was making his Twins debut, the Yankees were loading up for a playoff run
Particularly vexing for local fans is that while Colon was making his Twins debut, the Yankees were loading up for a playoff run. In a deal with the Chicago White Sox they acquired reliever David Robertson, New Jersey native Todd Frazier and one-time farmhand (and LaTroy Hawkins’ “worst teammate”) Tommy Kahnle for reliever Tyler Clippard and three prospects: left-handed pitcher Ian Clarkin and outfielders Blake Rutherford and Tito Polo.
The Yankees received nearly universal praise for solidifying their roster and making a push to unseat the Boston Red Sox in their division. “The Yankees are going all in,” wrote Sports Illustrated’s Jon Taylor. “On Tuesday night, New York made a big move to try to bolster its hopes for an AL East title and World Series berth.”
Not only did the hated Yankees put themselves in contention with the trade, but Rutherford was a universal top-50 prospect entering the season, and between the Chris Sale and Jose Quintana trades, the White Sox now have eight of Baseball America’s midseason top-100 prospects, seven of whom were acquired in trades in the last nine months.
The Yankees’ trade reflected a Twins ethos — they brought in a player who grew up in the area and two players with ties to the organization — only it was with the aggressiveness and foresight that fans in Minnesota would like to see. While it was the failure to develop pitchers that ultimately cost longtime GM Terry Ryan his job last season, his lack of blockbuster moves at the trade deadline or marquee free agent signings drew the ire of a fanbase impatient with the team’s growing ineptitude.
With a brand-new stadium which was supposed to bring increased revenue, fans became sick of watching a once efficient and overachieving franchise bottom out when they should be increasing payroll in order to sustain a winning team.
There is some belief in the Twins organization that if Colon can replicate his performance from last year, when he made his fourth All-Star appearance as a New York Met, it could energize the clubhouse — galvanizing them in an otherwise slog of a season.
The Jaime Garcia trade indicates that the team knows that they know that Colon’s acquisition alone, even if he pans out in any capacity, isn’t enough to keep the Twins afloat in the playoff race. It indicates that they are, at the very least, taking advantage of an opportunity afforded to them by Cleveland’s failure to replicate their success from last year and the wild card being in reach.
They add Garcia to a set of two reliable pitchers, two other starters who are question marks and gaping holes in the lineup. Ervin Santana (34) and Jose Berrios (23) have secured spots in the rotation for the time being. Kyle Gibson, 29, is a first-rounder who has graduated from a prospect to a puzzling starter with stuff but a devastating lack of execution. He could be on another roster next season, but will hold down a spot due to lack of pitching depth this year and the sporadic encouraging starts that remind everyone of his potential. Adalberto Mejia, 24, could be a part of the Twins future, but labors arduously and has pitched into the sixth inning or longer only four times in 15 starts this season.
Garcia, 31, will be expected to hold down the fifth spot in the rotation in case the Colon experiment does not work out. Garcia made one start with the St. Louis Cardinals as a 21 year old in 2008, finished third behind Buster Posey and Jason Heyward in the Rookie of the Year voting in 2010 and was instrumental in the Cardinals’ World Series run in 2011.
He has struggled with injuries throughout his career, however, reaching 100 innings pitched in just three of five seasons since 2010. He is also a free agent next season, meaning that the Twins do not benefit from player control if he succeeds this year — a rental in a year when they remain in the mix with a .500 record, but have to pass last year’s AL Champion Indians in the standings or sneak into the Wild Card game, which is essentially a coin flip (the result of any given baseball game is random, hence the 162-game schedule) and should be considered a play-in game rather than a “playoff appearance” for the team that loses the contest.
For better or for worse the Twins are buyers right now
For better or for worse the Twins are buyers right now. They are hardly all-in like the Yankees, and they are no longer in a full-scale rebuild mode like the White Sox. They are in baseball purgatory — one of many .500 teams in a division that is tantalizingly within reach, although that could all change if the Indians suddenly start to reach their potential.
It’s fair to allow the Falvey and Thad Levine regime to audit the team this year. MLB organizations are behemoth operations that take years to turn around, continuity is vital to player development and this team is too flawed to fix in one blockbuster trade. They need to find at least two or three more reliable starters, a younger, revamped bullpen behind Brandon Kintzler and Taylor Rogers and protection in the lineup for Miguel Sano. They need to know what they have in players like Mejia, Zack Granite and Alan Busenitz, as well as prospects like Stephen Gonsalves, Nick Gordon and Nick Burdi.
In short, it’s not the year to go all in. But after five losing seasons in six years, and coming off last year’s 103-loss disaster, the Twins need to give their fans a reason to believe — and patience is running thin. The moves they have made so far are salves for immediate wounds; how they finish the year will determine if this team needs a full-scale operation in order to be a playoff team once again.
