What we learned about the Twins roster during the Major League Baseball winter meetings

ORLANDO – After spending four days at the Major League Baseball winter meetings, Twins front-office staffers returned home with one Rule 5 draft-related trade to show for it.

The bigger question for the Twins is: What comes next?

They broadcasted their intentions to keep their All-Star players. With starting pitching as the strength of the team, they believe it’s feasible to compete in a weak American League Central. But it’s still unclear how much money they have to spend on a team that had the second-most losses in the AL last season.

Here are things we learned about the Twins roster at the winter meetings:

The Twins want to give Luke Keaschall some experience in the outfield. He played some outfield during his 2024 minor league season, but he stayed at second base this year after recovering from elbow surgery.

A forearm fracture cost Keaschall three months last season and scuttled plans to experiment with Keaschall in the outfield.

“It could be really valuable if he could run out to left field or center field along the way,” Twins General Manager Jeremy Zoll said. “We’re going to have some more formal conversations on what all that is going to look like pretty soon.”

Building a bullpen on a tight budget will be the challenge of the Twins offseason. Call it the consequences of trading four relievers with multiple years of team control.

It will be a mix of external additions, which includes non-roster invitees to spring training, and counting on young relievers to mature quickly.

“There are so many games won or lost in a bullpen, especially during the regular season,” manager Derek Shelton said. “We’ve talked about this: There are teams that go out and spend a ton of money on their bullpen and use their starters as bullpen.”

A young bullpen, Shelton said, is a reason why LaTroy Hawkins was the first hire to his staff. He can relate to players well and he pitched in every role during his 21-year major league career.

“We may get in a situation, depending on how it shakes out, that we have six young guys down there,“ Shelton said. “I want someone sitting down there that has the ability to have those conversations.”

“I don’t think it’s singularly focused on guys that have a lot of closing experience or have a lot of setup experience,” Twins President Derek Falvey said. “If there are guys that fit out there, we’ll have conversations with those guys.”

The Twins haven’t committed to which starters will convert to relievers. Marco Raya, who spent the entire year in Class AAA, seems likely to end up in the bullpen.

Members of the front office are split on Connor Prielipp’s role. The lefty has the potential to be a frontline starter, which would take a little longer to unlock, or an impact reliever.

Prielipp started throwing a sinker at the end of last season. Twins player development staff want to “get one more crack trying to finish developing his [pitch] mix,” Zoll said.

If Pablo López, Joe Ryan and Bailey Ober return next season, which is now the expectation, then Simeon Woods Richardson, Taj Bradley, Zebby Matthews, David Festa, Mick Abel and Andrew Morris are competing for two spots in the big-league rotation.

Kody Clemens and Edouard Julien are the leading candidates to start there. Zoll said Matt Wallner and Trevor Larnach are not candidates to move there despite the team’s depth in the outfield.

Alan Roden played the position one year in college, but upgrading through free agency or a trade seems like the most logical option.

The No. 3 pick in the draft felt like a win. Falvey knew the Twins didn’t net the No. 1 pick in the MLB draft lottery Tuesday when he didn’t receive a call 30 minutes beforehand to report to the TV stage where the winning head of baseball operations is interviewed.

It was possible for the Twins, who had the second-best odds of earning the top pick, to plummet all the way to eighth. Falvey and Zoll started discussing what pick they would consider to be an acceptable outcome if they weren’t No. 1.

“I was going to live with No. 4,” Falvey said. “I was going to be OK. [Zoll] was going to slam something at four and be OK with three and above, so I was like, ‘All right, we’re on the same page.’”