By Jim Souhan

Most Twins fans seemed to hate the Twins’ 2025 sumer selloff, and appreciate the Twins’ 2026 summer shopping spree.

I think that’s backwards.

The Twins added a massive amount of young talent by making all of those trades in 2025. Taj Bradley paid off immediately. Mick Abel and Kendry Rojas could pay off next season. Eduardo Tait is a top-10 prospect in the organization. And by admitting they weren’t good enough to contend – and they weren’t – they wound up with the third pick in the draft and selected catcher Vahn Lackey, now the second-best prospect in the organization behind Walker Jenkins.

I believe that Jenkins and Lackey will be franchise-altering stars.

That summer selloff gave the Twins a wealth of young prospects and arms, which is what a team like the Twins needs, because not all prospects are going to succeed, and they can’t outbid richer teams for free agent pitchers.

This summer, the Twins traded a number of prospects away for relief help that didn’t help much – a reminder that most trade-deadline deals fail to pan out, either because the incoming players don’t perform well enough, or the team isn’t good enough to take advantage of the infusion.

The 2026 Twins weren’t good enough. They were entertaining, and the woeful state of the American League allowed them to hang around the wild card race, but this was never an imposing team.

Here’s what to track in terms of this summer’s trades: Did the Twins give up any players of value?

One of the best ways to evaluable front offices is how well they know their own prospects. Terry Ryan was a master at trading prospects who weren’t going to pan out.

If this Twins’ front office traded players they didn’t value for a midseason upgrade, then they did well. If they traded a future star in what was essentially a marketing strategy to please fans and players, then they made a terrible mistake.

-The hot listen: Alec Lewis joined Jon Krawczynski and myself on The Vikings Update Show this week. We talked special teams, the KO hire, Flores’ future and the defensive line. Check it out at TalkNorth.com

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