Twins have ‘no interest’ in selling .948 OPS catcher at trade deadline

Twins have ‘no interest’ in selling .948 OPS catcher at trade deadline originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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The Minnesota Twins are not having the season many might’ve expected coming into the year. Instead of sitting at the bottom of the AL Central and looking like one of the worst teams in the league, the Twins are in the thick of the postseason hunt.

Sitting at 47-49, the Twins are right in lock-step with the Seattle Mariners for the third and final AL Wild Card spot, and they’re only 3.0 games back in the AL Central. This team might not sell; they could be deadline buyers.

Amid such a potential plan for the Twins, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale is reporting that the Twins have “no interest” in trading away a key trade chip in Ryan Jeffers this summer, despite plenty of interest from around the league.

Twins have ‘no interest’ in trading Ryan Jeffers

“… and the Twins have no interest in trading Jeffers unless they fall out of the mediocre AL Central race, hanging just 2 games back,” Nightengale writes.

Jeffers, the veteran catcher who is a free agent after the 2026 season, is not looking likely to be traded barring the Twins falling out of a postseason spot.

This season, he has 1.8 bWAR across 126 at-bats with seven homers, a .294 batting average, and a .948 OPS. Making $6.7 million this year, Jeffers is a cheap and elite-hitting catcher.

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Combined with Jeffers hitting free agency after this season, he’d make for the perfect trade deadline target for a contending team like the New York Yankees or the Tampa Bay Rays.

However, unless the Twins struggle coming out of the All-Star break, there seems to be little chance that Jeffers will be on the move this summer.

It’s still possible that Jeffers is traded, but as things currently stand, that doesn’t look very likely with the Twins’ plan to keep him through the deadline unless they fall out of the playoff hunt by the August 3 trade deadline date.

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