Perhaps no team in the MLB had a busier trade deadline than the Minnesota Twins, who got rid of several key players in what was essentially a fire sale amid their disastrous 2025 season. All told, Minnesota traded ten active players from its MLB roster, including Carlos Correa, among many others.

However, one move in particular regarding a lesser known player of the Twins' rotation was the trade that really had others around the league puzzled: Minnesota's trade of Louie Varland, the 27 year-old reliever who grew up in the St. Paul area and “absolutely loved being a Twin,” per Bob Nightengale of USA Today.

Nightengale noted that “Varland was devastated, leaving Twins players seething and rivals GMs dumfounded as to why the Twins would actually trade a valuable reliever,” and that “his wife and a family (would come) to virtually every home game. This is the way you treat him?”

“By and large across the board, [these] were baseball trades, trades we felt we got real talent back and were not geared toward the financial flexibility component to it,” said Derek Falvey, the Twins' President of Baseball Operations, per Nightengale.

Varland recorded a 2.02 ERA with 47 strikeouts in 49 innings this season with Minnesota and is now a member of the Toronto Blue Jays after the trade.

A rough Twins stretch

Why ex-player is a fan of Carlos Correa-Astros reunion
Credit: Troy Taormina

Last season, the Twins appeared poised for the MLB postseason for most of the year before a late season collapse ended their chances of competing on the game's heighest stage.

This season, Minnesota did its fans the courtesy of not giving them any false hope and instead stumbled out of the gates, sitting below the .500 mark for the majority of the year. The Twins are currently at 51-59 with any potential playoff hopes on life support, especially now in the wake of their gigantic roster reshaping at the trade deadline.

Overall, it's been a major disappointment for a team that a couple of years ago looked like it could be a contender in the MLB for years to come.

In any case, the Twins will wrap up their series against the Cleveland Guardians on Sunday afternoon.

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