CHICAGO — The reality of what is likely to come over the next couple of weeks has sunk in across the Twins clubhouse. And even on a team more than a dozen games below .500, it's a bittersweet topic.

"I don't want to lose Nelson Cruz. I don't want to lose any of these guys in this clubhouse," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said Monday, 11 days before the MLB trade deadline. "I want to start building in the direction we need to go in, and start building toward winning a championship. … And those guys, they're important. They can be important pieces toward doing that, whenever that's going to be."

Yet Cruz is a logical candidate to wind up elsewhere next week, given his All-Star season and his expiring contract. So are Andrelton Simmons and Hansel Robles, with Josh Donaldson, Byron Buxton, Taylor Rogers and Jose Berrios surely attracting various levels of interest.

"Many guys think they're going to get traded, or they might be traded, when in actuality, very few people normally do get traded," Baldelli pointed out. "Every year, there might be 100 guys on a team, because they saw some article or heard their name somewhere, they show up to the field thinking there's a chance. And rarely does it occur."

Still, the last time the Twins were so far out of the playoff race, in 2018, they moved a significant portion of their roster in July: Brian Dozier, Eduardo Escobar, Fernando Rodney, Ryan Pressly and Lance Lynn were all dealt. It was an emotional month for those Twins, but made sense for a sub-.500 team.

"That was really hard, but it had to happen," said catcher Mitch Garver, who was a rookie on that team. "And look what we did in '19."

Back-to-back division championships weren't necessarily a direct result of the remake of the roster, but it cleared spots and returned value in the form of prospects.

"We don't know what the team is going to look like in two weeks. There could be some changes. But we put ourselves in this position" with such a disappointing season, Garver said. "You could almost read it going. You could almost see it on the wall. When we got off to a slow start, the first month we were like, 'Well, listen, we've got to get this thing going.' You can't win the division in the first month, but you can probably lose it."

Baldelli said he is consulted about each potential move by team President Derek Falvey and General Manager Thad Levine, but knows they make the final decisions.

"I end up talking with them a lot about what we may or may not do, and what things could look like," Baldelli said. "How to build the team out the way we think it works best."

Garver was activated after Monday's first game, nearly seven weeks after being hit by a foul ball in Baltimore that required groin surgery.

"Worst injury I've had, for sure," the 30-year-old said. "But I'm confident my body is healed. And I have a new [protective] cup. So I'm confident in that, too."

Garver went 4-for-16 with a couple of walks in four rehab games in Class AAA St. Paul, and said he's as ready as he can be to play again. He then went out and showed it by homering in his first two at-bats Monday.

"You can catch off a machine all you want, but you just need to see a live arm. Both [for] catching and hitting," Garver said. "It's just completely different. The arms are different. The jump from Triple-A to the big leagues is so big. It's so big. And the lights are obviously not good. I'm excited to see what it's like under the lights I'm used to."

Ben Rortvedt was returned to St. Paul between games Monday to make room for Garver.

Outfielder Jake Cave's rehab will take longer, Baldelli said, because the disc issue that has sidelined him since May is more serious. "Everything has gone smoothly so far, but he is going to continue to build up and keep playing," the manager said.