Christian Vázquez will be a free agent; are the Twins interested in re-signing him?

Christian Vázquez was the only impending free agent the Twins didn’t deal away at the trade deadline.

That decision surprised him.

There were, of course, some additional considerations. He wasn’t hitting well at all. He was still owed $3.33 million over the final two months, a hefty salary for a team to pick up on a backup catcher. Contending teams rarely trade for catchers anyway, because of the difficulty learning a new pitching staff during a playoff race.

It still, surely, led to some awkwardness. The Twins traded 11 players at the trade deadline, including six who will be free agents after the World Series concludes.

“It was tough seeing everybody leave from here,” Vázquez said. “A lot of good friends left. I thought we had a great team to win the World Series here. It was a disaster on that day. But that’s part of the game. That’s part of the business. Nothing we can control, but it was hard to swallow.”

Vázquez, 35, says he is looking forward to free agency. He won’t command the same type of contract he did beforehand — the Twins signed him to a three-year, $30 million deal in 2022 — because of his poor offensive production over the past three seasons (.215 batting average, .577 OPS), but he maintains a good defensive reputation.

The Guardians re-signed Austin Hedges, an elite defender and one of the league’s worst statistical hitters, to a $4 million contract last week.

“I don’t think so, because they have two [challenges] only,” Vázquez said. “So, they need to be 100 percent [confident] it’s a ball. If not, they’re going to miss 0-1 and it’s going to be tough late in the game when you need that challenge and it’s not there. I think the challenge is going to be more late in the games when we need it to challenge.

“At the end of the day, you need to help your pitcher in any way, so I’m not worried about that.”

Vázquez didn’t rule out re-signing with the Twins, who don’t have any obvious replacements for him, by saying he is open to playing anywhere. But he noted the team is in a rebuilding stage, which should pave opportunities for younger players. He was a part of a last-place, 91-loss Boston Red Sox roster during his rookie year in 2014, and that helped him grow as a catcher.

“A lot of guys don’t have experience, and you need that for the playoffs,” he said. “This is a big opportunity for those guys to open the front office’s eyes and they can establish themselves in the big leagues and stay forever.”

The Twins hoped for more production when they signed Vázquez as a free agent, and he didn’t enter any games during their 2023 postseason run, but there was still a lot of respect for how he handled himself.

“That’s very important to stay together in the good times and the bad times,” he said. “The clubhouse is like a family. I feel like everybody here needs to be together and fighting for each other.”

Less than a week after the trade deadline, a shoulder infection nearly ended Vázquez’s season. He was hospitalized for five days. He still pushed to return to the team after his infection required a peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC line) in his right arm for a month because he needed antibiotics every eight hours.

He made it back for the final week of the regular season, and he produced five hits in 12 at-bats (.417 batting average) with a homer, two walks and two strikeouts. It probably wasn’t a coincidence that the Twins rotation had one of its best weeks of the season once he returned at the same time as Ryan Jeffers, who was previously out because of a concussion.