Twins expected to be active on the trade market during offseason

SAN ANTONIO – Speaking to reporters for more than an hour at the general managers meetings Tuesday, Derek Falvey received a question about whether the Twins could be a surprise team in the bidding for Juan Soto, a free agent who is expected to receive more than a half-billion dollars.

“I would say our payroll is going to land in a very similar place to where we have been historically,” said Falvey, the Twins president of baseball operations.

Cross the top free agent off the list.

With little payroll flexibility entering the offseason, the Twins front office will spend the winter determining how much it wants to shake up the roster through trades.

The Twins have no plans to phase into a rebuild. They can opt to keep almost all their roster together, minus the six players who departed through free agency, but it would amount to essentially running it back with a group that collapsed in the final six weeks of the season and fell out of a playoff spot.

Instead, the Twins are expected to look for ways to reallocate money to different parts of the roster through trades while maintaining a payroll around $130 million. It makes pitcher Chris Paddack, catcher Christian Vázquez and utilityman Willi Castro their top trade candidates. Paddack is owed $7.5 million in the last year of his contract and Vázquez will receive $10 million next year. Castro is projected to command more than $6 million through salary arbitration in his last year before he is eligible to reach free agency.

“We’re going to have to be creative if we want to make a lot of tweaks to the group,” Falvey said. “In some ways, I do believe that the group we have, as constituted, is a really good team, a really competitive team. I know we need some guys to come back. We need some guys to be healthy.

“We feel like it’s a good group to build off, but we’re going to just have to see where the rest of the offseason shakes out from a trade standpoint.”

The Twins don’t have a glaring positional roster hole besides first base. Jose Miranda and Edouard Julien are the leading internal candidates at first, but it’s not the primary defensive position for either player.

Falvey didn’t rule out a free agent signing for a first baseman, including a reunion with Gold Glove winner Carlos Santana, but that would likely require a trade to create additional room in the Twins payroll.

“Jose Miranda is a guy that we’ve already talked to about making sure he gets some of that exposure there,” Falvey said. “We’re going to have to lean on some of the internal guys to take on some of those at-bats, for sure, at least in terms of a backup consideration. Then we’ll just have to see how the offseason plays out.”

The rest of the position player group, barring a trade, is more straightforward. Matt Wallner will likely absorb some of the at-bats from departing free agent Max Kepler. Byron Buxton will start in center field with Trevor Larnach, Austin Martin and Castro, if he returns, filling the rest of the outfield.

Royce Lewis might see more time at second base. It’s a conversation that already started at the end of the season — Lewis started one game at second — but it could allow Miranda to spend more time at third if the Twins add a regular first baseman.

“Some of that will depend on the personnel we acquire, don’t acquire and how that all shakes out,” Falvey said of Lewis at second base. “We want him to stay open-minded to that and we’ll have that conversation.”

Medical reports have all been positive on Joe Ryan, who should be one of the frontline starters in a rotation that includes Pablo López and Bailey Ober. All teams want more pitching depth, but the Twins are in an enviable spot with at least four guys — Paddack, Simeon Woods Richardson, David Festa and Zebby Matthews — in line to compete for two spots in the rotation.

“You never feel like you have enough pitching; you always want more — but looking at five, six, seven, eight starters who you think could toe the rubber in a major league game right out the chute is a really good place to start,” Falvey said. “Then you layer on guys like [Jhoan] Duran and [Griffin] Jax, Cole Sands really stepped up in a good way this year. You have some core in different places that are really positive for us.”