The Minnesota Twins’ season is winding down with nine games left, and the roster churn keeps coming. At 71-82, Derek Shelton’s club has already had to deal with rookie shortstop Kaelen Culpepper going down with a hamstring injury, and now Trevor Larnach is out as well.
Larnach’s year is over after the Twins placed him on the injured list with a wrist issue and recalled Alan Roden from Triple-A St. Paul. Roden is back in the majors three weeks after being sent down.
Larnach was one of the more interesting cases on the roster this offseason, a surprise tender candidate who seemed to be putting things together in the first half. He hit .289 with an .830 OPS before the bottom dropped out later in the season. After missing the past few games, Minnesota decided there was no point in keeping him active any longer.
He’ll finish the season batting .269 with a .788 OPS. That’s a step back from the strong first-half stretch, but his 121 OPS+ still stands as a career best.
The Twins had actually lined up a deal to move Larnach despite being buyers at the trade deadline, which says plenty about where things stood behind the scenes. The rise of Walker Jenkins and Emmanuel Rodriguez helps explain that, too. Both have now reached the majors and will still count as rookies next season.
If this is the end of Larnach’s run in Minnesota, it would close the book on six seasons with the organization that drafted him in the first round. Across 564 games, he hit .247 with a .739 OPS, and his 65 home runs never quite matched the power expectations that followed him.
Roden gets another chance to make his case with the big-league club. Acquired as a throw-in piece in the Louie Varland trade, he has hit just .212 with a .586 OPS in 83 major league games. He did post an .853 OPS in 48 Triple-A games this season, but he still has work to do at the highest level.
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Walker Jenkins Just Showed Why Twins Fans Should Still Believe
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The Twins still came up short in a 5-4 extra-inning loss, but Jenkins response mattered more than the final score in the long view. After a difficult start to his Major League career, he showed the kind of calm and competitiveness that teams want to see from a young hitter under pressure, and the performance only added to the sense that Minnesota may already have a cornerstone in the making. [Read more 🡒]
Twins Turn Wild Comeback Night Into Another Brutal Late Collapse
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Minnesota still walked away with the wrong kind of familiar ending, though, as the Angels finished it with a walk-off single in the bottom of the tenth. For a Twins club trying to turn a difficult night into something salvageable, the frustration is in how close it came to being a statement comeback, only to become another late collapse with another game still to come in the same series the next day. [Read more 🡒]
Rod Carew Just Gave These Twins Players Something Few Ever Get
Rod Carew made a familiar sight feel special again before the Twins opened their series against the Angels, showing up in uniform and spending time around batting practice and pregame meetings. For a clubhouse that has leaned on veteran voices all season, having a Hall of Famer like Carew in the room carried a different kind of weight, one rooted in the standards and history that still hang around the franchise.
Manager Derek Shelton and players such as Taylor Rogers and Ryan Jeffers welcomed the chance to be around him and pick up whatever they could from his experience. Carew means something on both sides of this matchup, with his number retired by the Twins and the Angels, and his presence offered a reminder that some baseball lessons go beyond the box score, even if the full impact of the visit is still more felt than measured. [Read more 🡒]