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Twins To Interview Nick Punto About Managerial Vacancy

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The Twins’ search for a new manager has taken them to a familiar name, as The Athletic’s Dan Hayes and Dennis Lin report that the club will be speaking with former utilityman Nick Punto.  The Padres currently employ Punto as a coach on their big league staff, and granted the Twins permission for an interview with the 14-year MLB veteran.

Seven of Punto’s seasons (2004-10) were spent in a Twins uniform, and his nickname of “the Shredder” sums up Punto’s style of play.  Despite below-average hitting numbers for his entire career, Punto enjoyed a long career based on defensive versatility, speed, and a focus on solid fundamentals.  As Hayes/Lin note, Minnesota team president Derek Falvey stressed that the next version of the Twins is “going to be a really good base running team, we’re going to be on the details, we’re going to be leaning into the fundamentals.”

On paper, this would seemingly make Punto an ideal match, plus his past ties to the Twins organization certainly help.  What Punto (who turns 48 next month) lacks in comparison to other candidates is a lot of coaching or managerial experience, certainly at the big league level.  Punto was a manager in MLB’s Prospect Development Pipeline League in 2021 and he coached at the high school level in 2023-24 before taking the job on San Diego’s staff.  Punto didn’t have a defined role with the Padres, but Hayes and Lin wrote that his duties included “working with the team’s infielders.”

Punto is the fourth candidate publicly linked to the Twins’ search for Rocco Baldelli’s successor.  Former Pirates skipper Derek Shelton is the only known candidate with MLB managerial experience, as Punto, Yankees hitting coach James Rowson, and Red Sox bench coach Ramon Vazquez would all be first-time managers (apart from Vazquez’s single game as a fill-in for Alex Cora when Cora was attending his daughter’s graduation this past May).

“Another hot name internally” for the Twins is Cubs bench coach Ryan Flaherty, according to Hayes and Lin, but it isn’t known if the Twins have yet been given permission to speak with Flaherty.  Already a popular name amidst the many managerial vacancies around baseball this fall, Flaherty has been cited as a likely candidate for the Padres and Orioles jobs.  Flaherty has bench coaching experience with the Cubs and Padres but would be another first-time skipper at the MLB level.

Twins To Interview James Rowson, Derek Shelton In Managerial Search

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8:40pm: Rowson, Shelton and Vázquez will all indeed get interviews, according to a Minnesota Star-Tribune report.

3:37pm: The Twins are looking for a new manager and are considering a current Yankee coach. According to reporting from Greg Joyce, Jon Heyman and Joel Sherman of The New York Post, the Twins are interested in Yankees hitting coach James Rowson. Clubs generally don’t stand in the way of their staff members seeking promotions with other clubs and the report notes that the Yanks have already given the Twins permission to speak with Rowson about the gig. The report also mentions Derek Shelton and Ramon Vazquez as potential candidates. MLBTR covered Vazquez earlier today.

Rowson, 49, has no managerial experience but has a long track record as a hitting coach. The Twins are surely familiar with his coaching abilities, as he was their hitting coach from 2017 to 2019. Minnesota’s bats fared well during that time, putting up a collective .260/.330/.445 line over those three campaigns. That translates to a 105 wRC+, which trailed only four clubs for that span. The 2019 club was particularly successful, hitting 307 home runs. That was the juiced-ball season but the Twins still led the league in putting that ball over the fence.

Going into 2020, he jumped to the Marlins with the titles of bench coach and offensive coordinator. Miami didn’t have especially strong offense during his time there but the club wasn’t trying especially hard to win, playoff appearance in the shortened 2020 season notwithstanding. Rowson then spent 2023 with the Tigers as assistant hitting coach before getting his current gig as the Yankees hitting coach.

Separating the contributions of the players versus a coach is always difficult but the Yanks have performed well under Rowson. The Yanks had a .248/.333/.429 line last year, translating to a league-leading 118 wRC+. This year, it was a .251/.332/.455 slash, again topping the league with a 119 wRC+.

Obviously, having a slugger like Aaron Judge on the roster helps but Rowson appears to be respected around the game, based on his continued employment. Whether his experience with hitters can translate to the larger role of manager is something the Twins will have to debate as they pursue various candidates to replace Rocco Baldelli, who was fired last month. For the Yankees, they will have to find a new hitting coach if Rowson ends up getting the gig in Minnesota.

Shelton brings more managerial experience, though without much success in the role. He managed the Pirates from 2020 to 2025, getting fired in May of this year. He produced a 306-440 record while at the helm of the Pirates. That’s obviously a poor mark but Pittsburgh has been rebuilding for that stretch, so it’s debatable how much of that record should be attributed to Shelton’s managerial abilities.

Photo courtesy of John Meore, Imagn Images

Twins Ask Permission To Interview Red Sox’s Bench Coach Ramon Vazquez

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The Twins have sought permission from the Red Sox to interview bench coach Ramón Vázquez in their managerial search, reports Jon Heyman of The New York Post. It’s standard practice for clubs to allow coaches or front office personnel to interview for potential promotions, so it’d be a shock if the Red Sox didn’t grant that request.

Vázquez, 49, would become the first known candidate to interview for the Minnesota position. A native of Puerto Rico, he played parts of nine MLB seasons across six clubs as a utility infielder during the 2000s. He has spent over a decade in the coaching ranks since ending his playing career. Vázquez worked as a minor league coach in the Houston system and spent a season on the Padres’ MLB staff before joining Alex Cora in Boston for the 2018 season. The Sox promoted him to bench coach three years ago.

Aside from one game filling in while Cora was attending his daughter’s graduation, Vázquez has no MLB managerial experience. He has managed in the Puerto Rican winter league and managed one season in A-ball while coming up through the Houston system. This would be his first publicly reported interview for an MLB managerial job.

The Twins are one of eight teams with a vacancy after firing Rocco Baldelli at season’s end. The team never really recovered from their late-season collapse in 2024, when they squandered a playoff berth despite peaking at 17 games above .500 in the middle of August. They had a 13-game winning streak early this past season but were otherwise a well below-average team.

After injuries decimated the starting rotation in June, they embarked on a massive deadline sell-off that sent Carlos Correa back to Houston for salary relief. The deadline also left Baldelli and his staff with a bullpen consisting mostly of waiver pickups and journeymen. The Twins went 19-35 in the final two months and finished with a 70-92 record that had them as the second-worst team in the American League. Only the White Sox, who lost over 100 games for a third straight year, kept Minnesota from the bottom of the AL.

An incoming manager seems likely to step into a rebuild. The Pohlad family had considered selling the franchise but reversed course in August, instead bringing on minority investors to pay down significant debt which the team had reportedly accrued. Their season-ending payroll has dropped in consecutive seasons (per Cot’s Baseball Contracts) following the collapse of their local broadcast contract. They have a handful of question marks at the bottom of the lineup and arguably MLB’s worst bullpen.

That won’t all be fixed in one offseason, meaning they should be active sellers this winter and at next summer’s deadline. Ryan Jeffers is headed into his final season of arbitration control. Joe Ryan is down to two arbitration years, while Pablo López is signed for two more seasons at $21.75MM annually. They could listen on role players like Trevor Larnach and Matt Wallner as well. Minnesota added upper level starting pitchers (e.g. Mick Abel, Taj Bradley) in a couple of their trades last summer, so perhaps there’s a path back to contention in 2027, but they’re facing an uphill battle to compete next year.

Seven Players Elect Free Agency

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Now that the season is over, we’ll start seeing several players choose to become minor league free agents. Major League free agents (i.e. players with six-plus years of big league service time) will hit the open market five days after the end of the World Series, but eligible minor leaguers can already start electing free agency.

To qualify, these players must have been all outrighted off their team’s 40-man rosters during the 2025 season without being added back. These players also must have multiple career outrights on their resume, and/or at least three years of Major League service time.

We’ll offer periodic updates over the coming weeks about many other players hitting the market in this fashion. These free agent decisions are all listed on the official MLB.com or MILB.com transactions pages, for further reference.

Infielders

Outfielders

Pitchers

Poll: Should The Twins Trade Pablo Lopez This Offseason?

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The Twins conducted a complete fire sale at the trade deadline this year as they shipped 11 players off their big league roster, but one significant player who stayed in place was ace right-hander Pablo Lopez. The talented righty was limited to just 14 starts this season by a hamstring strain and a shoulder strain before his season came to an end in September due to a forearm strain.

The fact of Lopez’s injury-marred season left the Twins unable to move him at the deadline this year when they purged the majority of their veteran players, but that doesn’t mean a deal can’t be made this offseason. After all, the aforementioned forearm strain that ended his season came with “no concern” regarding Lopez’s UCL or elbow, and all indications point to him being expected to have a normal offseason and be ready for the 2026 campaign. What’s more, Lopez was nothing short of excellent when healthy this year as he pitched to a 2.79 ERA with a 3.19 FIP in 75 2/3 innings of work.

That’s the sort of top-of-the-rotation potential that contending teams will want to bring in desperately this winter, and the Twins could stand to benefit from trading Lopez during an offseason where there are few free agents who offer much certainty. Dylan Cease, Zac Gallen, and Framber Valdez all had tough years that didn’t quite reach their typical standards, while Brandon Woodruff and Shane Bieber face health-related questions after seasons coming off major surgery. Lopez has his own flaws, of course, including his array of recent injuries and a pedestrian 4.08 ERA as recently as last year. Even so, the uncertainty surrounding this crop of free agent starters can only serve to make Lopez more attractive by comparison.

It’s unclear what the Twins’ payroll capacity or competitive expectations for 2025 are, but if the team embarks on a lengthy rebuild it would make little sense to hold onto the final two years and $43.5MM left on the Lopez’s contract. Young arms like Mick Abel, Simeon Woods Richardson, Taj Bradley, Zebby Matthews, and David Festa are all likely to compete for a spot in the rotation. Holdovers Joe Ryan and Bailey Ober will surely be in the rotation (unless they’re traded themselves), and Kendry Rojas could be ready for the majors at some point next year as well. That deep group of young rotation pieces makes Lopez a bit more expendable to the Twins than he would be for most teams, at least if they aren’t expecting to compete next year.

Given the fact that Lopez would surely bring back a hefty return on the trade market and the depth the Twins currently enjoy in their rotation, using the right-hander to infuse more offensive talent into the club’s roster would make a lot of sense. With that being said, it’s worth noting that the Twins actually still have some notable talent on paper. Lopez, Ryan, and Ober could form a front three in the rotation that many contenders in the league would be jealous of. Star outfielder Byron Buxton has been healthier of late and has the offensive ability to be an anchor for a playoff lineup. Players like Royce Lewis and Matt Wallner have shown impressive ceilings despite their inconsistency, while young bats like Brooks Lee and Luke Keaschall could take a big step forward. It’s not impossible to imagine a viable offensive core coming together as soon as next year, especially if top prospects like Emmanuel Rodriguez and Walker Jenkins can contribute at some point.

Of course, even with those positives the Twins would need to significantly invest in the team in order to build a real contender for 2026. RosterResource estimates the club’s current payroll for 2026 to fall into the range of $95MM, and while that leaves around $40MM in budget space relative to the 2025 club’s payroll it’s an open question how much of that (if any) will actually be reinvested into the major league club given the clear financial motivations behind this summer’s Correa trade.

The Twins would need serious help in the bullpen in order to compete after losing Griffin Jax, Louis Varland, and Jhoan Duran at the deadline, and players like Kody Clemens and Austin Martin starting regularly at first base and in left field wouldn’t exactly inspire confidence either. If the front office is facing substantial financial constraints that weren’t in place this time last year, there may be an argument for moving Lopez even if they do want to compete next year. After all, his $21.75MM salary could then be reinvested into the offense or bullpen, both of which have much less depth than the rotation does at present.

How do MLBTR readers view the situation? Should the Twins trade Lopez this offseason, either in hopes of reallocating his salary to other parts of the roster or as part of a full-scale rebuild? Or should they keep their ace in the fold to give themselves the best shot of winning next year? Have your say in the poll below:

22 Players Elect Free Agency

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Now that the season is over, we’ll start seeing several players choose to become minor league free agents.  Major League free agents (i.e. players with six-plus years of big league service time) will hit the open market five days after the end of the World Series, but eligible minor leaguers can already start electing free agency.

To qualify, these players must have been all outrighted off their team’s 40-man rosters during the 2025 season without being added back.  These players also must have multiple career outrights on their resume, and/or at least three years of Major League service time.

We’ll offer periodic updates over the coming weeks about many other players hitting the market in this fashion.  These free agent decisions are all listed on the official MLB.com or MILB.com transactions pages, for further reference.

Catchers

Infielders

Outfielders

Utility Players

Pitchers

Luke Keaschall To Undergo Thumb Surgery

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Sept. 30: Keaschall will indeed undergo thumb surgery tomorrow, per Dan Hayes of the Athletic. He is expected to be ready for spring training.

Sept. 24: Twins rookie infielder Luke Keaschall is weighing surgery to address a left thumb injury, manager Rocco Baldelli told reporters (including Dan Hayes of The Athletic and Matthew Leach of MLB.com). That decision will be made after Keaschall visits a specialist next week.

Keaschall jammed his thumb diving into second base on a steal during last night’s win in Texas. He exited the game and went for imaging this morning. The Twins haven’t officially placed him on the injured list, but there’s no reason to have him playing through pain for their final few games against the Rangers and Phillies. Ryan Fitzgerald drew into the lineup at second base tonight.

The 23-year-old Keaschall is one of Minnesota’s most promising players. A second-round pick in 2023, Keaschall hit at every minor league stop. The Twins called him up in the middle of April. He got out to a strong start to his MLB career when a Kyle Hendricks pitch broke his right arm in his seventh game. Keaschall was out of action until early August, at which point the team had fallen out of contention and sold off much of the roster.

Keaschall picked up where he left off once he returned from the forearm injury. He slashed .294/.359/.436 with four homers and 11 doubles over his final 181 plate appearances. The righty hitter struck out in fewer than 15% of his trips, continuing the plus contact ability he’d shown against minor league pitching. Keaschall didn’t post huge exit velocities, but he has shown an impressive understanding of the strike zone for any hitter, especially a rookie.

That should be enough to have a hold on the Opening Day second base job. The Twins will presumably provide more specifics on his recovery timeline and offseason plan once he makes the official decision on whether to undergo surgery. Keaschall’s promotion came a little too late in the season for him to get a full service year. Minnesota controls him for six seasons after this one.

Twins Fire Rocco Baldelli

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The Twins announced that they have fired manager Rocco Baldelli. “This game is ultimately measured by results, and over the past two seasons we did not reach the goals we set,” said president of baseball operations Derek Falvey, per Aaron Gleeman of The Athletic. “I take personal responsibility for that. After discussions with ownership, we determined this is the right moment for a change in voice and direction.”

Baldelli, now 44, was hired by the Twins seven years ago. Minnesota had a disappointing season in 2018, finishing 78-84, and bumped Paul Molitor from the skipper position. Baldelli’s first few seasons went quite well. The club went 101-61 in 2019 and followed that up with a 36-24 showing in the shortened 2020 season. They won the American League Central in both of those years, though were quickly dispatched in the playoffs on both occasions.

The club fell below .500 in the next two seasons but bounced back to win the Central again in 2023. They actually managed to win a playoff series this time as well, defeating the Blue Jays in the Wild Card round, though they were then felled by the Astros in the ALDS.

More recently, things in Minnesota have gotten quite wobbly. Despite that strong 2023 season, the club went into 2024 determined to cut payroll. Their offseason spending consisting of one-year deals for Carlos Santana, Jay Jackson and Josh Staumont worth a total of $7.7MM. They seemed to be cruising to another postseason berth for most of the year but then went 9-18 in September and missed with an 82-80 record.

Going into 2025, their regional sports network deal was not renewed. That left the club little choice but to have Major League Baseball handle their broadcasts, an arrangement that is generally believed to bring in less revenue than the previous setup. The Pohlad family began exploring a sale of the franchise about this time a year ago.

Going into 2025, the club again made almost no investments in upgrading the roster. Late in the winter, they gave one-year deals to Harrison Bader, Danny Coulombe and Ty France, spending a combined $10.25MM in the process.

This year, they hovered around contention for a while but fell behind the rest of the American League pack. Their trade deadline selloff ended up being more extensive than anticipated. They flipped controllable relievers Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax and Louis Varland. They also sent Carlos Correa back to Houston in a salary dump deal. Minnesota limped to the end of the season with a 70-92 record.

Since that selloff, the Pohlads have decided not to sell the franchise after all. Instead, they have lined up minority investors who are reportedly going to help the franchise pay down its $500MM debt load.

Taking all that into consideration, it’s hard to know how much blame to assign to Baldelli. Evaluating managers from afar is always a tough business, but that’s especially true when the club is actively trying to cut payroll, which naturally gives the manager less talent to manage.

Regardless, the Twins have decided to shake things up with a change in the dugout. Baldelli’s original deal ran from 2019 through 2022, with multiple club options. He was still around in 2023 with some uncertainty around his contract status, but it was reported in May of that year that he had been extended through at least 2025. In June of this year, it was reported that the club had exercised Baldelli’s 2026 option at some point. It’s unclear when that option was triggered but the club has decided to make a change since then.

Time will tell what the Twins have in mind for their next manager, as their general approach for 2026 remains unconfirmed. If they still need to pinch more pennies, then perhaps they will trade Pablo López this winter and go into a rebuilding phase. On the other hand, they have already moved out a lot of payroll and targeted a lot of MLB-ready players in this year’s deadline deals. Perhaps their direction will impact what sort of skipper they look for.

In the coming weeks and months, more information about the club’s general plans and their managerial search should come to light. For now, this opens another managerial vacancy. The Giants also fired Bob Melvin today. There were also some midseason managerial firings in Pittsburgh, Colorado, Baltimore and Washington. The Pirates have decided to keep Don Kelly for next year but those other situations are less clear. It’s also not certain if Ron Washington will be managing the Angels again next year, after a quadruple bypass forced him to depart the team in 2025.

 Photo courtesy of Brett Davis, Nathan Ray Seebeck, Imagn Images

Pohlads Discuss Previous Sale Exploration, Club Finances

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The Pohlad family decided to maintain its controlling stake in the Minnesota Twins when new investors emerged and gave the club a chance to pay down a significant amount of the team’s $500MM debt. That’s according to two members of the Pohlad family, executive chair Joe Pohlad and his brother Tom, who spoke to Bill Lukitsch of the Minnesota Star Tribune.

“That was really the driver,” Joe said, then revealing the $500MM number. Previous reporting had mentioned a debt of around $400MM or $425MM but it seems it was actually notable higher than those numbers.

The exact identities of the minority investors are currently unknown, as the Pohlads have not disclosed details, pending approval of the partnership by the league. The piece does mention that the investors are from Minnesota and the East Coast, though little is known beyond that. Once approved, Lukitsch notes that the deal will clear some of the debt and give the Pohlads more room to invest in payroll and stadium upgrades.

The family had been exploring a sale of the franchise since late last year, reportedly seeking $1.7 billion from investors. As mentioned, Joe said the debt was the main driver behind the intended sale. Tom also noted: “We never wanted to sell. But we also had to think about what’s in the best interest of the Twins, what’s in the best interest of the community.” With these minority investors, the Pohlads are going to hold majority ownership and hopefully pay down some or all of the debt.

Tom argued that the team’s middle market revenues “don’t necessarily support” a top-class stadium or a consistently high-performing team. Twins fans may not be satisfied with that explanation, although it is true that attendance at Target Field declined to roughly 1.8 million in 2025, compared to nearly 2 million in 2024. That figure was at 2.3 million in 2019 and has not fully recovered in the years following the pandemic.

Beyond ticket sales, the club’s regional sports network deal with Diamond Sports Group (now Main Street Sports) was not renewed after the 2024 season. This led Major League Baseball to manage the team’s broadcasts in 2025, a situation generally understood give clubs less revenue than a traditional RSN deal. Revenue pitfalls aside, Tom acknowledges that fans are right to be dissatisfied with the team’s performance. “It’s been 34 years since the World Series, and, up until 2023, 21 years since we had a playoff win,” he notes, “and that’s unacceptable.”

The Pohlad family has controlled the Twins since purchasing the team for around $40 million in 1984. Carl Pohlad, the family patriarch, was the original control person until his passing in 2009. He was succeeded by his sons and eventually his grandsons, the aforementioned Joe and Tom. Since the start of 1985, the team has a record of 2976-3295 (.475). The team won the World Series in 1991 but hasn’t had a ton of postseason success since then. Fans have generally criticized the Pohlads in recent years for a lack of spending in payroll as well as the lack of playoff success.

Heading into the final day of the season, the Twins have posted a record of 70-91 (.435), ranking fourth in the AL Central. The team fared better early in the season but fell out of contention by the trade deadline, leading many to expect a sell-off. However, the sell-off ended up being much more vast than anticipated. In addition to trading pending free agents like Chris Paddack, Harrison Bader, and Willi Castro, they also traded star closer Jhoan Duran to the Phillies and controllable reliever Griffin Jax to the Rays. They also shed significant payroll by sending Carlos Correa to Houston, with Minnesota responsible for $33MM of the $103.4MM remaining on his contract at the time of the swap. All told, the Twins traded away 10 big-league players and signaled the start of a rebuild for the franchise.

The decrease in spending has even extended beyond payroll cuts. Earlier this month, the club announced that they will not renew the contracts of four people on their pro scouting staff, leaving just one major league scout heading into the offseason. On the one hand, the cuts follow the trend of teams relying less on traditional scouting in favor of analytics. However, as reported by Dan Hayes of the Athletic, the team’s decision to pare back its scouting department was about cutting costs rather than analytics.

It’s currently not confirmed if the Twins plan on making further payroll cuts or if they now feel better about the financial picture. Pitching-wise, the team has Pablo Lopez and Joe Ryan under control through 2027, while Byron Buxton continues to lead the offense. The club also has four Top 100 prospects according to MLB.com, with outfielders Walker Jenkins (No. 14) and Emmanuel Rodriguez (No. 67) finishing this year at AAA. The Twins could try to put another competitive team together or they could target further spending cuts by making players like Lopez or Ryan available in trades this winter.

Michael A. Taylor Announces Retirement

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White Sox outfielder Michael A. Taylor announced his retirement to members of the media today, ahead of the Sox facing the Nationals in Washington, a place he played for many years. “To be able to play my last games of my career here in this ballpark in front of these fans, it’s just the icing on the cake,” Taylor said, per Andrew Golden of The Washington Post. He is in the lineup for the Sox today, playing center field and batting ninth, in what will be his final game.

Michael A. Taylor | Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY SportsTaylor, now 34, was a sixth-round pick of the Nationals back in 2009. He was a shortstop at that time, considered to be raw, but in possession of some elite tools. He was moved to the outfield and quickly showed the potential to be a strong defender. He also showed more pop with the bat as he climbed the ladder, hitting 23 homers in the minors in 2014.

Going into 2015, he was considered to be one of the top 100 prospects in the game. Baseball America gave him the #32 spot, MLB Pipeline had him at #42, Baseball Prospectus at #57 and ESPN at #71. FanGraphs was a bit more bearish, putting him at #133 on their top 200 list.

Taylor had already made a brief major league debut in 2014 but got more properly established in 2015. He got into 138 games for the Nats, popping 14 homers and stealing 16 bags, but his overall value was held back by subpar walk and strikeout rates of 6.8% and 30.9%. Over his career, he would have his ups and downs, but his contributions mostly took that shape. He could put the ball over the fence, track it down with his glove and swipe some bags, but the plate discipline was never good.

Despite his flaws, he was a useful player for the Nats during their best stretch in Washington. The club finished above .500 in each season from 2012 to 2019, making the playoffs in five of those eight seasons. Those clubs featured stars like Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg, Trea Turner, Juan Soto, Max Scherzer, Anthony Rendon and others, but Taylor often played a solid supporting role.

In 2019, Taylor spent a decent chunk of the year in the minors, only getting into 53 big league games with one home run. But he took on a more prominent role at just the right time. As the Nats made a miracle charge through the postseason, Taylor got into eight of the club’s playoff contests. He clinched the NLDS over the Dodgers with a diving catch, as seen in this video from MLB.com. He also slashed .333/.391/.619 in his 23 plate appearances as the Nats eventually went on to win the World Series.

In the shortened 2020 season, Taylor had a rough showing, slashing .196/.253/.424. At the end of that campaign, the Nats put him on waivers and he elected free agency after clearing. That led to a one-year, $1.75MM deal with the Royals for 2021. He bounced back somewhat that year with a .244/.297/.356 line and 14 stolen bases. As the season was winding down, the Royals didn’t want him to get away, so they gave him a two-year, $9MM extension for the 2022 and 2023 seasons.

He had a somewhat similar campaign in the first year of that extension but the Royals flipped him to the Twins for 2023. He hit a career-high 21 home runs for Minnesota that year but also struck out at a 33.5% rate, leading to a .220/.278/.442 batting line.

That was a relatively strong campaign for him but he remained unsigned into mid-March of 2024, when he settled for a one-year, $4MM deal with the Pirates. His year in Pittsburgh turned out to be fairly forgettable, as he hit just five home runs and put up a .193/.253/.290 line. He then secured a one-year, $1.95MM deal to join the rebuilding White Sox this year. With one game remaining, he is currently sporting a .199/.256/.366 line.

Taylor currently has 1,215 games played with 3,797 plate appearances, with one more contest to go. He has 806 hits, including 109 home runs. He has drawn walks at a 6.9% clip and struck out 30.7% of the time, producing a .232/.287/.379 batting line. He stole 128 bases. He was credited with 90 Defensive Runs Saved and 61 Outs Above Average in his career as an outfielder. For the 2014-2025 period, that DRS total was sixth among outfielders and his OAA tally was eighth. FanGraphs credited him with 10.2 wins above replacement. Baseball Reference gave him 12.6 WAR and pegs his career earnings above $27MM.

We at MLB Trade Rumors congratulate Taylor on a solid career and wish him the best in whatever comes next. He tells Golden that he plans to spend more time with his kids but would consider a coaching role in the future.

Photos courtesy of Geoff Burke, Steve Mitchell, Imagn Images

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