Twins face 5 offseason questions before '25 season

This story was excerpted from Do-Hyoung Park's Twins Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

There will be much soul-searching, from top to bottom, within the Twins’ organization this offseason, and a lot of that has already started with the departures of four members of the coaching staff and a re-examination of many of the club’s core approaches.

How much is there to think about? Here are five questions facing the Twins this offseason:

1. What will be the focus of the new hitting hires?
Cleaning house at the organization’s highest level of hitting instruction comes with challenges. The front-office leadership has paid close attention to rebuilding a cohesive player development apparatus from top to bottom, and to a certain extent, the Major League group could ultimately have been viewed as simply the highest level of that interconnected machine.

So, the question here is: Will the Twins look to slightly shift their overall organizational hitting philosophy -- the strategies they look to teach from draftees all the way up -- or bring in new coaches who largely adhere to the existing approach they believed in, with perhaps different points of emphasis or ways to adapt those philosophies?

2. Will they need to subtract before they can add?
The Twins have indicated that they don’t anticipate cutting their payroll further from their 2024 levels, but even simply maintaining the status quo leaves them in a thorny spot.

Minnesota will get some relief with the likes of Max Kepler, Manuel Margot and Kyle Farmer hitting free agency, but this is also the first year that Pablo López's massive raise kicks in, along with a raise due to Chris Paddack and several key players entering or continuing along the arbitration path.

That leaves open a scenario where, if the Twins were to have some wiggle room for moves, players like Christian Vázquez ($10 million salary) or Paddack ($7.5 million) might have to become potential candidates to be moved off the books via trade.

3. Can they count on this core?
The challenge with how the 2024 season ended was that key members of what the Twins expected would be their core --Edouard Julien, Brooks Lee, Jose Miranda and Royce Lewis -- struggled deeply at the plate late in the season, and that’s not to mention Alex Kirilloff essentially becoming a non-factor.

An organization like the Twins will necessarily need to lean on its young players. On the pitching side, Bailey Ober and Joe Ryan have certainly become that type of reliable player, along with Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax as the anchors of the bullpen. But the manner in which the offense struggled late -- especially those key young guys, including Lewis -- has raised questions.

4. How can they avoid a repeat of the bullpen disaster of 2024?
However the Twins evaluated their bullpen additions for the 2024 season, it didn’t work.

It’s tough to blame them for Justin Topa’s lingering injuries, but they whiffed on the signings of Josh Staumont and Jay Jackson, and the trades for Trevor Richards and Steven Okert very much did not work out.

The Twins were understandably in a tough spot with those decisions, needing to find upside picks on the margins, but they’ll be in a similar situation this offseason. Louie Varland’s seemingly inevitable full-time transition to the relief group should help, but they’ll be asking a lot of Brock Stewart’s uncertain health and Kody Funderburk’s shaky track record.

5. What will happen at first base?
It would have been very tough to imagine that the Carlos Santana signing would be as impactful as it was, but will the Twins have the desire to try it again with the soon-to-be 39-year-old?

Their other options here are Julien and Kirilloff, both of whom deeply struggled in 2024, or Miranda, who all but disappeared down the stretch. At such a premium offensive position, are the Twins willing to make do with their in-house options?