Twins have received trade calls about Royce Lewis, Eddy Julien
Trade calls are increasing as spring training inches closer in what has so far been a silent offseason for the Minnesota Twins, and the team's chief baseball officer Derek Falvey had some interesting things to say during a live show on Wednesday.
"The reality of free agency and the trade markets and the offseasons over the last, really handful of years in baseball, probably over the last decade, is it keeps getting later and later. We end up getting a little closer to mid-January before some of the things come together in terms of deals," Falvey told Kris Attebury on Inside Twins. "For us at the Twins, we've have less in the early going and hopefully a little bit more action in the weeks to come."
Falvey said trade conversations have been "picking up" and that he's heard from other teams about veterans Max Kepler and Jorge Polanco, along with rising stars like Royce Lewis and Eddy Julien.
"We hold high bars on those guys. They're great players. They were critically important to our success at different junctures or the last handfuls of seasons that they've been here," Favley said of Kepler and Polanco.
"The other players on our team, you won't be surprised to hear that teams want to know a little bit about Royce Lewis, and want to know a little bit about the availability of Eddy Julien and Matt Wallner," Falvey continued. "Our young pitching. A lot teams look at our pitching staff and what they accomplished last year and have thought about ways they can access that and potentially bring in one of those guys. Again, we hold really high bars on those types of players. We have to take the calls, we have to think about how we're going to rework our roster to make it the best we can be, but ultimately we feel the core of this team right now going into the season is a really good core that we want to build off of that showed an ability to do some special things last fall."
There have been zero reports to indicate the Twins would even consider trading Lewis or Julien, but to have the baseball boss say it publicly is certainly worth noting.
Falvey says Buxton is on track to play in center field
"For every week that passes, for every month that goes by, we get further and further away from his procedure ... and get a chance to see him really progressing well. He's done [batting practice] work," Falvey said, noting that Buxton has progressed into baseball activities.
"He's done that without any issues, so that's huge for us. If he continues to progress in this direction, our expectation — and we've said this all along, we have made no secret of this — our plan is to have him in center field and to focus on that. How many games? What does that look like? That's doing to be determined somewhat on how it goes through the course of the spring and into the season, but we're very optimistic about where he stands today."
Jan. 13 will mark three months since Buxton underwent a procedure on his right knee to alleviate patellar tendinitis. Ailments limited Buxton to 85 games last season, and he didn't play at all in the outfield.
"Byron is critical to the center field picture," Falvey said. "We need Byron to be Byron. We know that. That's going to be critical to our success."