Falvey, Levine and the Minnesota Twins front office: An interim grade
By Bill Felber
Acquired or traded
This was not an especially active offseason at the trade mart for Minnesota. Falvey and Levine made only one big personnel exchange with another team, and they’d sure like a do-over on it.
In January, the Twins sent AL batting champion Luis Arraez to Miami in a deal that brought them a front-line starting pitcher, Pablo Lopez.
Over the season’s first half, Lopez has made 16 starts, and he’s been a passable No. 3 on a rotation led by Sonny Gray and Joe Ryan. Lopez is 3-5 in 16 starts with a 4.41 ERA over 96 innings, all of that adding up to a 0.0 WAA.
As for Arraez, you know without me telling you. Let’s just boil it down to one number, a 2.6 WAA. So far, that deal isn’t working out according to plan.
Minnesota’s other three acquisitions — Kyle Farmer, Michael Taylor and Oliver Ortega — have been neutral factors, so calculating Minnesota’s success at the trade window comes down to putting a value on what they gave up.
Beyond Arraez, they gave up Gio Urshela to the Angels in exchange for a minor leaguer. Urshela’s been a -0.1 WAA player to date. They sold Danny Coulombe to the Orioles, and he’s been a +0.5 player in Baltimore.
In all the Twins traded away, waived or sold a half-dozen players to other MLB rosters since the end of the 2022 season, and four of those six have generated positive WAA totals for their new teams.
But the Arraez deal all by itself makes this a big black mark for Falvey and Levine.