Twins stand pat at trade deadline as other teams' deals 'shrunk the market'

ST. LOUIS – As Tuesday's 5 p.m. trade deadline came and went, the Twins opted to stick with their current roster.

The Twins exited the trade deadline with no deals over the last three days, their lone trade amounting to a swap of middle relievers with the Marlins when they acquired Dylan Floro for Jorge López. They sought a reliever and a righthanded hitter, but nothing came to fruition.

Derek Falvey, the Twins president of baseball operations, attributed the lack of deals to the number of teams that shifted from the position of sellers over the past week.

"We had some clear buy-side conversations with teams that said, 'We might be interested in doing a deal like that, but we just need to see what happens over the next four to five days,'" Falvey said. "What ultimately happened over those four or five days is things changed. … It shrunk the market a bit."

The Twins, swept by the Royals last weekend, entered the deadline one game above .500 with a one-game lead over Cleveland in the American League Central Division. One year after the Twins were big buyers at the deadline, acquiring pitchers López, Tyler Mahle and Michael Fulmer, they stayed pat.

Falvey isn't worried, he said, that the lack of a trade will send any type of negative message to the team's players.

"My hope," Falvey said, "is that the room there looks at it and goes, 'We didn't want anyone kicked out of this room. We need to figure out how we do this because we have the talent in this room to go compete.' "

Even with some worrisome injury news, the Twins didn't alter their stance in trade talks. They will likely be without injured reliever Brock Stewart for longer than expected. Stewart threw a bullpen session Saturday, reaching 94 mph with his fastball, but he felt soreness in his forearm afterward. Stewart underwent a medical resonance imaging exam Tuesday to determine the severity.

Alex Kirilloff, who hit in the middle of the lineup throughout July before landing on the 10-day injured list, underwent an MRI on his right shoulder Monday.

"We believe this roster is capable of continuing to compete for this AL Central championship and ultimately beyond," Falvey said. "We've seen stretches of our performance as a team that we think can go do that."

There were rumors about the Twins listening to trade offers for Sonny Gray and Kenta Maeda, two starting pitchers who will be free agents at the end of the season because it was a seller's market. The Twins can extend Gray a one-year qualifying offer at the end of the season, worth around $20 million, and they will receive a draft pick if he rejects it and signs elsewhere.

"Just because there's a rumor out there, doesn't mean we're quote-unquote, 'shopping them,' " Falvey said. "It means that teams are calling, and they have interest. Our jobs are to listen and try to figure out how it best fits the team. There was interest, certainly. But interest at the level of trading them for lower-level prospects, for us, that was not part of the equation. We ultimately wanted to find ways to make this major league team better and continue to compete. We never found any crossover there."

As inconsistently as the Twins have played this season, they viewed themselves as buyers at the deadline. In fact, they were the only team in the AL Central that didn't turn into sellers. The Guardians traded starter Aaron Civale (5-2, 2.34 ERA) and first baseman Josh Bell.

"We didn't find something in this market that we felt was enough to push somebody off the team that would align with what we were looking to do," Falvey said. "And that's honestly just where we were with it."

Dallas Keuchel, who was in the St. Paul Saints rotation, reportedly exercised the opt-out clause in his minor league contract Tuesday. Falvey didn't rule out the former AL Cy Young winner returning to the organization.

"We've had really healthy, open dialogue with Dallas and with his agent and representation about what the opportunities could look like for him here," Falvey said. "Not ruling anything out there. We've had some different conversations with him about different roles and what that could look like."

The Saints scored the first two runs at Columbus on Tuesday night, then gave up 15 unanswered runs, including eight in the fifth inning, and lost 15-7.