The Twins’ decision to keep Walker Jenkins in Triple-A is starting to look a lot bigger now that their season has slipped into danger.
Minnesota entered Thursday at 64-70, four games behind the Cleveland Guardians for the American League’s final Wild Card spot, with its playoff odds down to roughly 10 percent. That slide came after a sweep by San Diego and two losses in three games against the Athletics. Plenty has gone wrong to put the Twins here, but the choice to leave Jenkins in the minors deserves a second glance.
Nobody can say for sure that Jenkins would have fixed anything. He might have arrived at Target Field and needed time to adjust.
He might have looked overmatched at first. He might have helped right away.
That uncertainty is exactly why this has become such an uncomfortable question for Minnesota.
Earlier this month, Jeremy Zoll’s explanation for keeping Jenkins down made sense. The Twins wanted a real path to everyday playing time, and they did not want to promote a top prospect only to park him on the bench. Zoll also pointed to Kaelen Culpepper’s promotion as proof that opportunity matters when deciding when to bring a player up.
That logic held up well enough at the time. But the roster didn’t stay the same. By the middle of August, Byron Buxton was dealing with another hip issue, the outfield picture had become shakier, and the Twins suddenly had the kind of need that makes a promotion feel obvious in hindsight.
Jenkins was doing his part to force the issue. In the first 16 games of August, he hit .415/.493/.800 with a 1.293 OPS, seven home runs and six stolen bases. He kept producing into the final week of the month and added another home run on Thursday.
At some point, that stops looking like a prospect still trying to prove himself and starts looking like a player who has already done enough.
The Twins can still point to the caution they showed after Jenkins missed a significant chunk of the season because of a shoulder injury. That kind of absence matters, and there’s nothing wrong with being careful. Development should not be rushed just because people outside the organization want a splash.
But there’s a difference between being careful and ignoring when a player is clearly ready for the next step. Jenkins was not just getting by in Triple-A; he was stacking together months of production and then turning up the heat in August with power, discipline, speed and all-around impact.
Minnesota also wasn’t acting like a club that had thrown in the towel. The Twins bought at the trade deadline.
They added Jeff Hoffman, Dean Kremer and A.J. Minter because they believed they could still play meaningful baseball in September.
They also promoted Culpepper because they believed he could help them win now.
That’s what makes the Jenkins decision hard to square. A team can’t spend much of late July and early August acting like a contender, then suddenly hide behind development concerns when a premium bat is tearing up Triple-A and the big-league lineup needs help.
It’s fair to be careful with the wording here. There’s no way to prove Jenkins cost Minnesota a playoff spot.
The Twins have lost for too many reasons to pin this on one player. Pitching has been uneven.
Injuries have hit key pieces. The team has also played poorly at times.
Still, the better question is not whether Jenkins would have carried them to October by himself. It’s whether he might have supplied enough over the last several weeks to matter. When a team’s postseason odds drop from nearly 40 percent to about 10 percent in a little more than a week, even one or two games can change everything.
Maybe Jenkins gets one more hit. Maybe he makes one more catch.
Maybe he takes away one extra-base hit. Maybe he doesn’t change anything at all.
But Minnesota had an elite prospect producing at a ridiculous level in Triple-A while its major-league outfield was dealing with injuries and inconsistency. Eventually, the cost of waiting starts to outweigh the risk of calling him up.
The Twins don’t need to regret protecting Jenkins. They do need to wonder whether they missed the moment when the situation changed.
Protecting a prospect is one thing. Protecting yourself from a hard decision is another.
Jenkins’ future is still the real story here, and it matters far more than the final stretch of this season. But the Twins spent much of the summer signaling that they thought this team could contend, and that meant using every useful piece available. Jenkins was becoming harder and harder to leave out of that equation.
Maybe Minnesota brings him up and he struggles. Maybe the call comes too late to help. That’s baseball.
But as the Twins stumble through August and watch Jenkins keep crushing Triple-A pitching, the what-if is getting louder. They may not have needed him to become a star this summer.
They just needed to find out whether he could help them win. And they may have waited too long to answer that question.
In Other News...
Walker Jenkins May Have Just Solved A Twins Outfield Problem
Walker Jenkins arrival gives the Twins a cleaner look in the outfield at a time when they could use one. Minnesota has promoted its top prospect, and the move immediately shifts Luke Keaschall out of center field, where the defensive growing pains have been obvious, and toward right field, where he has looked more comfortable. With Byron Buxton still day-to-day because of a hip issue, Jenkins has even stepped into center while the veteran gets a breather, giving the Twins a chance to reshuffle without forcing Keaschall into a job that has not fit well.
For Minnesota, the appeal goes beyond one temporary lineup card. Keaschalls bat remains part of the equation, but the Twins have been searching for a way to maximize him without exposing him in center, and Jenkins presence suddenly makes that easier to manage. Whether this is a short-term fix while Buxton heals or the beginning of a longer-term alignment, it is the kind of roster answer that can matter quickly for a team trying to keep its season moving in the right direction. [Read more 🡒]
Twins Suddenly Have A Late-Game Problem They Can't Afford
The Twins have spent much of this stretch playing from behind, and the late innings have started to feel like the part of the game where their offense simply stops carrying over. Minnesota has lost four straight and slipped to a season-low eight games below .500, a slide that has left the club staring at postseason odds of just 5.0 percent. It is one thing to have a bad week in the standings, but it is another when the teams most troubling trend is becoming easier to spot by the inning.
Since the fifth, the Twins have not done enough damage against bullpens, with their late-game production lagging well behind league norms in slugging and home runs. That is a rough place to be for a lineup already operating without Byron Buxton, whose hip injury has taken an obvious bite out of the offense and whose return remains up in the air. For a team trying to stay in the race, the problem is not just scoring less, but running out of answers exactly when games tend to turn. [Read more 🡒]
Former Twins Playoff Starter Is Suddenly Becoming A Royals Problem For Minnesota
Randy Dobnak has quietly worked his way back into the majors with Kansas City, and the former Twins pitcher is giving Minnesota a familiar kind of headache. Since being recalled on July 1, he has logged a 1.92 ERA over 51 2/3 innings, a sharp reminder of the ground-ball work that once made him a useful piece for the Twins in October and a tough at-bat for opponents when he was right.
Dobnaks path back has been a winding one, with stops in Detroit, Seattle and now Kansas City after leaving Minnesota in 2025. The Royals have played better since his return, but they still sit behind in the playoff race, which only adds to the sense that Dobnaks presence is making a difference in ways the Twins would rather not notice. [Read more 🡒]