The Twins are headed toward a fifth playoff miss in six seasons, and the late-season product has once again been rough enough to push roster changes to the front of the conversation. After overhauling the front office and the manager’s chair before the year, Minnesota still carried much of the same core onto the field. With another disappointing finish taking shape, the next step may be a tougher one: moving on from familiar names.
Trevor Larnach looks like one of those names. He has one more trip through arbitration coming, and the cost of keeping him around no longer makes much sense for the Twins.
He did answer the club’s decision to tender him a contract last offseason with a .768 OPS, but the second half has been a different story. His .594 in August dragged down the offense and reopened the same concerns he seemed to quiet a couple months earlier.
The bigger issue is opportunity. Emmanuel Rodriguez, Walker Jenkins, and even Alan Roden are the kind of younger players who deserve a chance in 2027 and beyond.
Larnach brings no defensive value and has to be managed in a platoon. After letting the Twins down again down the stretch in 2026, the argument for keeping him gets harder to make.
It may be time for Minnesota to see what’s behind Door No. 2.
Bailey Ober is in a different stage of the conversation, but the conclusion points the same direction. He’s still a smart pitcher who knows how to get outs, yet his stuff has slipped to a point where it’s becoming difficult to trust at the big-league level. His fastball has averaged just over 88 MPH this season, and when his command isn’t razor sharp, the whole outing can get uncomfortable fast.
Ober is also due for his last arbitration trip this offseason, and if the Twins tender him a contract, he’ll likely make at least $7-8 million in 2027. That’s not an outrageous price for what he’s given over the years, but his ceiling is gone, and there’s real risk the Twins could regret bringing him back before the 2027 season gets very far. In this case, cutting bait early may be smarter than waiting for the bottom to fall out later.
Royce Lewis has had a more complicated path, but he belongs in this same offseason discussion. He was in a shaky spot earlier this season after a demotion to Triple-A, then reignited his year with a blistering return to the lineup in June.
Since then, though, things have gone quiet again. On the season, he’s a below-league-average hitter, and since the start of 2024 he’s slashing just .235/.293/.410, which comes out to 5% below the league-average hitter in that span.
The problem is that Lewis no longer has much margin for error. He’s mostly a first baseman now, which pushes the offensive bar much higher.
He doesn’t hit left-handed pitching at an exceptional rate, he doesn’t reach base especially well, and the speed and athleticism that once helped define his game seem to be gone. His free-swinging approach still produces the occasional hot streak, but the Twins may be better off finding him a new home this winter.
Minnesota already changed leadership in the front office and in the dugout. The next round of changes may need to come on the roster itself. After another disappointing finish, the Twins may have reached the point where turning the page on a few long-time pieces is the only real way forward.
In Other News...
Matt Wallners Surge Has Put His Twins Future In Doubt
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Wallner and his coaches have been candid enough to know the situation is bigger than a temporary assignment. His future in the organization is unsettled, and he is already preparing for the possibility that next season could come with a different major league team, a sign of how quickly a promising surge can turn into a crossroads. [Read more 🡒]
Twins Face A Tough Infield Decision With Two Future Building Blocks
The Twins keep finding themselves in a familiar sort of development puzzle, only this one could shape the middle of the diamond for years. Kaelen Culpepper has started his pro career with promising offensive and defensive traits, while Marek Houston arrives with a reputation built on elite glove work and athleticism, giving Minnesota two middle infield prospects who both have the tools to handle shortstop at the major league level.
How the club sorts that out will matter just as much as the talent itself. One possible path would let Culpepper stay at shortstop and move Houston to second base, a setup that could maximize what each player does best while the organization keeps both on a track toward becoming part of the next core in Minnesota. [Read more 🡒]
Twins Found A New Way To Make The Same Collapse Hurt More
The Twins have spent the last three seasons finding different ways to arrive at a familiar place, and each version of the decline has carried its own kind of sting. One year it was a second-half fade after a promising start, another it was the frustration of standing pat at the trade deadline, and in 2025 the bottom fell out after a major fire sale that made the endgame feel inevitable.
What makes the 2026 version linger is that Minnesota tried to steer around the same fate and still wound up back in it. There was at least an effort to improve the club and keep the slide from repeating, which only sharpened the disappointment when the results failed to match the intention. In that sense, this collapse has been the hardest one to sit with, because the Twins did not merely stumble into it - they worked to avoid it and came up short anyway. [Read more 🡒]