Twins star Byron Buxton did his best to shut down trade chatter last week, reiterating his longstanding stance that he’s not interested in waiving his no-trade clause. Minnesota’s front office is evidently on the same page.
“We have no plans to trade Byron” general manager Jeremy Zoll tells reporters (via Dan Hayes of The Athletic and Betsy Helfand of The St. Paul Pioneer-Press). “It’s not something we’re exploring. It’s not something we plan to explore. … He wants to be here. We want him to be here. I think to just get that out there makes a lot of sense, especially given a lot of speculation being thrown out there that’s not actually rooted in fact.”
Minnesota finds themselves among a muddled playoff picture in the American League. They’re four games below .500 but only two out of a Wild Card spot and within 3.5 of the White Sox and Guardians in the AL Central. Buxton has carried the lineup, hitting an AL-best 25 home runs with a .275/.333/.596 slash line through 306 plate appearances. Durability is the ever present question, but Buxton has a shot at a top three MVP finish if he gets through the season healthy.
Front office personnel rarely speak in absolutes about taking players off the trade market. In those rare instances, they almost never reverse course. The big exception is when the Nationals traded Juan Soto less than two months after then-GM Mike Rizzo said they wouldn’t do so, but Soto declined a reported $440MM extension proposal in the interim.
Zoll’s comments are notably a change from last summer. While there’s no indication the Twins actually considered moving Buxton, they didn’t make a public statement to that effect. That seemed to irk the two-time All-Star, who expressed some frustration about it when he reported to camp in February.
“All it takes is for somebody at the top to go to the media, ‘We’re not trading you,’” Buxton said at the time (link via Bobby Nightengale of The Minnesota Star-Tribune). “Trade rumors stop and now we don’t have those conversations. That’s how simple this could get.” It obviously didn’t sour the long-term relationship between player and team, but it’s probably not a coincidence that Zoll is going on record to undercut any speculation this time around.
Buxton is signed through the 2028 season. He’s making a $15MM base salary but can earn up to $2.5MM annually in plate appearance incentives and has a significant MVP bonus. He’d earn $8MM if he wins MVP, $7MM for a runner-up finish, $6MM for third, $5MM for fourth, $4MM for fifth, or $3MM for landing in the back half of the top 10. Buxton narrowly missed the cutoff last year, landing in 11th place for the highest finish of his career — though he did collect a $1MM bonus for reaching 542 plate appearances. This offseason would be a speculative time for extension talks if they want to keep Buxton in Minneapolis for his whole career.
There’s been some thought that Buxton could reconsider his no-trade stance if the Twins go on a scorched earth rebuild. He’ll be 33 in December and has only appeared in four career postseason games between injuries and the team’s inconsistency. The Twins seemed to be trending toward a rebuild last summer but pulled back on that over the winter, holding Joe Ryan, Pablo López and Ryan Jeffers.
Tom Pohlad replaced his brother Joe as control person. The Pohlad family evidently didn’t want to abandon all hope of competing in 2026 at the same time they brought in minority investors to help cover a significant amount of debt the franchise had accrued. They also made a rare late-offseason front office change, as longtime baseball operations president Derek Falvey stepped down and turned the reins to Zoll.
Minnesota could have a more difficult call on what to with Jeffers and Ryan if they’re still a fringe contender at the August 3 deadline. The former is an impending free agent who’d be a long shot candidate for a qualifying offer. They control Ryan for another season via arbitration but would net a bigger haul if they traded him this summer rather than holding him until the offseason or into next year.
