Minnesota Twins Comprehensive Sell-off Stuns MLB teams With Shocking Trade Deadline Moves

The 2025 Major League Baseball trade deadline has come and gone, and several teams were active on the buying and selling side. 

The San Diego Padres proved once again that they don't care much for prospects, with top shortstop Leo De Vries sent to the Athletics for Mason Miller, and 10 other young players were traded away to improve in 2024. The New York Mets and Yankees went for bullpen help, bringing in Ryan Helsley, Tyler Rogers, Gregory Soto, Jake Bird, David Bednar, and Camillo Doval. Though early returns for both teams have been disappointing, to say the least. 

No team, though, was more active than the Minnesota Twins. 

The Twins, up for sale as an organization, trimmed salary and players in a wild, shocking period leading up to the deadline. And a new report has confirmed that even other teams were stunned to see how comprehensive the Twins sell-off was. As well as what it says about how front offices approach the modern game.

READ: Minnesota Twins Basically Empty Their Roster; Who Were The Deadline Winners And Losers?

Aug 4, 2025; Miami, Florida, USA; Houston Astros third baseman Carlos Correa (1) looks on against the Miami Marlins during the eighth inning at loanDepot Park. Mandatory Credit: Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

Minnesota Twins Shock Baseball World With Trades

Bob Nightengale from USA Today spoke to several front office executives around baseball, who were stunned at the scope and scale of the Twins decision to sell. 

"The deadline was going to be a complete dud," said one general manager to Nightengale, "but what changed the entire deadline were the Twins selling. They said they were going to just trade players on expiring contracts. They were going to re-visit the other stuff in the winter. Then, they started selling off everyone.

"I mean, no one expected them to do this. They had everyone going everywhere. The trade deadline wouldn’t have been nearly this active without the Twins doing what they did."

Why did they do it? Because they could save money and make the team more attractive to sell. Per Nightengale, Houston Astros owner Jim Crane spoke to the current owners, the Pohlad family, emphasizing the fact that prospective buyers would be significantly more interested if the current roster had less in the way of expensive contracts and future commitments. 

Sure enough, after initially downplaying the possibility of a Carlos Correa trade back to his original organization, Twins ownership told the front office to re-engage with Houston. A few hours later, Correa was on his way to the Astros, with tens of millions of dollars in savings returning to Minnesota.

They even traded inexpensive players, like reliever Louis Varland. Varland, making basically the league minimum and under cheap team control for the foreseeable future, was born and raised in the Minneapolis area, was flipped for first baseman Ty France. Per the report, rival front offices were "dumbfounded."

The team's general manager, Derek Falvey, told reporters that these were "baseball trades," based around the "real talent" they received, not based on "the financial flexibility component to it."

Why did the Twins do this? Because front offices and ownership have entirely removed emotion and the value of wins over losses from the game. For better or for worse, teams have realized that finishing 82-80 simply isn't meaningful relative to finishing 74-88. There's no point in being in the middle, the thinking goes. And it has merit; saving money and improving future production is important. But it also tells your fans that there's no point in showing up. That money comes first, not the marginal value in winning. That the business side of the organization comes before the competitive side. Homegrown talent isn't meaningful compared to contract status.

It's a disheartening view of baseball, though it's rapidly become the most prevalent one. The 2025 trade deadline proved that, once and for all.