Twins banking on talent within after quiet Trade Deadline

ST. LOUIS -- The Twins did maintain all along that most of their improvement following the Trade Deadline would have to come from within -- but that didn’t seem to mean that all of their improvement would have to come from within.

Well, it’s time to really put that to the test.

As Tuesday’s 5 p.m. CT Trade Deadline passed, the Twins didn’t make any moves, choosing to stand pat following their bullpen swap of Dylan Floro for Jorge López with the Marlins last Wednesday.

The existing group has no choice but to step up and control its playoff destiny in a two-month stretch run that began with a 3-2 victory over the Cardinals on Tuesday night at Busch Stadium.

“I think what I would say to fans and what I feel in this group is that we believe this roster is capable of continuing to compete for this [American League] Central championship and ultimately beyond,” president of baseball operations Derek Falvey said.

“We’ve seen stretches of our performance as a team that we think can go do that. I don’t think that there were clear opportunities here that we felt were going to be achievable based on the conversations that we were having that would change that significantly.”

It seemed evident in the weeks leading into the Deadline that the Twins could use a right-handed bat and another solid-to-good reliever, as evidenced by their MLB-worst .657 OPS against left-handed pitching this season and their season-high five-game losing streak, including a sweep to the last-place Royals, entering the series opener against the Cardinals.

But Minnesota will, instead, have to rely on the eventual returns of Royce Lewis and Brock Stewart from an oblique strain and right elbow soreness, respectively. On paper, those will address those needs, but they aren’t sure things, especially as the club announced a setback in Stewart’s recovery with additional forearm soreness that required an additional MRI exam.

The first-place Twins were focused on improving their roster with a strong start to their second half in a tight AL Central race.

But Falvey said that as the market began to settle in the days leading into the Deadline, many teams with the Twins’ target players -- whether hitters or relievers -- that might have been sellers instead drifted into either holding on to their players or being light buyers.

“We weren’t rejecting something that was put to us on a premium guy in any way that would have helped us,” Falvey said. “We were exploring a lot of those fits. Ultimately some teams held really high bars and weren’t necessarily even ready to press go on that.”

So, instead, the message to the players remained that the front office has faith in the existing group to play up to their perceived potential, which they have not for most of the season on the offensive side of the ball.

There was a brief stretch in which the Twins were strong offensively coming out of the All-Star break, when they opened the second half going 9-2 with more balanced offense before their five-game skid entering the Trade Deadline.

It’s fair to wonder if this team can, in fact, consistently access that level, given they had been unable to do so for the first three and a half months of the season.

But Falvey said the Twins didn’t end up with much of a choice but to trust in that stretch. Jorge Polanco and Caleb Thielbar have already arrived as reinforcements from the IL, marking a first step.

“I still feel like that stretch that we saw is more emblematic of what I hope we’ll see over the course of the next couple of months,” Falvey said. “But ultimately, we didn’t see the impact [of a trade] match up with what we could access this go-around.”

Ultimately, even with an underperforming offense, the Twins had still mustered first place in the AL Central -- and the second-place Guardians spent their Deadline trading away their most consistent starting pitcher and dumping Josh Bell’s salary.

Could the Twins have done more? Certainly. But that time is past, and now, Minnesota’s only path forward is to have faith in the group it had already hoped could win this division.

“I expect nothing, and then I let [a trade] surprise me, and I get really excited,” Carlos Correa said. “If nothing happens, I was expecting nothing. If you start asking questions and listening to names and nothing happens, there's kind of a disappointed feeling.

“That's not what I want going into a game today.”