‘Biggest mistake’ for Twins: Joe Ryan laments decision to let Sonny Gray walk away after 2023 season

KANSAS CITY, MO. – They might be gone, but Joe Ryan is making sure his former teammates aren’t forgotten. In the past week, the Twins righthander said, he talked to Harrison Bader and Max Kepler, friends who now play for the Phillies. “I’m excited for them,” Ryan said Friday. “Hoping they have a great postseason run.”

There’s another former Twins player the All-Star righthander keeps in touch with from afar — but wishes that wasn’t necessary. And not just because they remain friends.

“I wish Sonny [Gray] was still here,” Ryan said of the veteran righthander, who spent two impressive seasons with the Twins. “I feel like things would be different if he was.”

In fact, amid a frenzy of late-season analysis among Twins fans — and the team’s front office, of course — to figure out why the team has flopped so dismally over the past 12 months, Ryan believes the problems are rooted in a money-saving decision two winters ago.

Gray entered free agency off a 2023 season in which he made the All-Star team and finished as runner-up for the American League Cy Young Award, having posted a 5.6 WAR, according to Baseball Reference, that was the highest mark by a Twins player since Johan Santana’s prime. Ryan, it should be noted, has a chance to exceed Gray’s mark, with a 5.0 WAR and three weeks still to play — although he got roughed up Saturday night against the Royals, giving up five first-inning runs, including four before retiring a batter. He was pulled after two innings in an 11-2 loss.

The Cardinals eventually signed Gray to a three-year contract that guarantees him $75 million, with a team option worth $30 million for 2027. The Twins were not serious bidders.

“In my opinion, that goes down as the biggest mistake we have made since I’ve been here,” Ryan said. “He wanted to come back. He loved it here.”

But Ryan is convinced the Twins’ six-week collapse at the end of the 2024 season would not have happened with Gray on the staff.

“There were a lot of avenues we could have gone down, but if we had re-signed Sonny, I can guarantee we would have been in the playoffs last year, and we’d probably be in a better spot this year,” Ryan said. “He was a top-notch guy, a great pitcher, incredible competitor, great guy in the clubhouse. I learned so much from him. We missed him last year.”

That move would have had ripple effects, too, Ryan believes, from improving fan morale to persuading the front office not to trade off so many assets at July’s deadline to perhaps even raising the value of the franchise. And given the coin-flip nature of baseball’s postseason, he can dream of might-have-beens.

“Who knows how far we’d have gone?” Ryan said of the Twins’ failure to reach the 2024 playoffs. “But now we’d have two straight years in the playoffs, we’d be riding that a little bit, maybe it makes it a little easier [for the Pohlad family] to sell the team. Maybe we make other moves if they think we’re really close to a championship.”

Ryan said he realizes the reason for letting Gray walk away was financial, that the Pohlads, facing a debt that reportedly reached $400 million or more, were intent upon cutting the team’s payroll.

There’s no doubt that Ryan has been well worth the $3 million he is earning this season, his first since becoming eligible for arbitration. He figures to receive a big raise this winter, but likely won’t reach a Gray-level payday, or more, until he reaches free agency after the 2027 season, when he will be 31.

He knows there has been speculation among fans that the Twins will trade him this winter, a possibility that would probably ignite a bidding war among teams at the top of the standings. In fact, “I already thought I had been traded,” he said, after seeing an incorrect social media post during the Twins’ frantic four-trade final hour before the July 31 trade deadline.

“That’s not under my control,” said Ryan, who joined the Twins when they traded Nelson Cruz to Tampa Bay to get him in July 2021. “I got traded once, it was an adjustment, and if I got traded again, that would be another adjustment. But it doesn’t change my goals.”