New York — The men who mattered most at Wrigley Field last weekend were not in either dugout. They were sitting behind home plate with notebooks, and at least one of them worked for the New York Yankees.
Brian Cashman has three weeks to fix a roster that is chasing the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League East. The trade deadline arrives Monday, Aug. 3, at 6 p.m. Eastern, and the Yankees have holes they cannot paper over.
Catcher has been a problem. Austin Wells has not given the lineup what it needs. The outfield thinned out when Aaron Judge went down. Carlos Rodon is hurt, which has pushed Ryan Weathers and Will Warren deeper into the rotation than the club planned.
So the Yankees did what contenders do in the third week of July. They bought plane tickets.
What happened next was not what they wanted.
Three names on the Yankees’ list
USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported Sunday that the Yankees had personnel at the Twins-Cubs series specifically to evaluate three Minnesota players.
“Scouts from the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays were at Wrigley Field over the weekend to closely watch Minnesota Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers, starter Joe Ryan, and outfielder Trevor Larnach,” Nightengale wrote.
The Cubs are not selling anything this summer. That makes the purpose of the trip obvious. The Yankees were there for the visitors.
The detail that should concern Yankees fans is who else was in the building. The Rays, the team sitting ahead of them in the division, were scouting the exact same three players.
The catcher who fits best and costs most
Ryan Jeffers is the cleanest fit of the three, and he is playing the best baseball of his career.
The 29-year-old is slashing .292 with a .402 on-base percentage and a .547 slugging mark across 41 games. He has eight home runs, nine doubles, a triple, and 31 RBIs. His OPS sits at .952. He missed nearly two months with a fractured left hamate bone and has picked up exactly where he stopped.
Twins manager Derek Shelton was asked about the catcher’s return and did not hedge about where the season was headed before the injury.
“Overall, he was on pace to be an All-Star this year,” Shelton said. “With everything he’s done and for him to just pick back up where he left off, it’s been really encouraging to see.”
Jeffers is earning $6.7 million and becomes a free agent this winter. That expiring status is the argument for moving him. It is also the argument for the Twins keeping him and attaching a qualifying offer.
Jeffers has heard every version of the question. He laughed before answering one of them at Wrigley.
“There’s nothing you can do about it,” Jeffers said. “You just go out there and continue to play baseball.”
The audition that raised the price
Then he went out and made the scouting trip considerably more expensive.
With Yankees and Rays evaluators watching Friday night, Jeffers launched a three-run homer over the left field ivy, his eighth of the season, to put Minnesota ahead 4-1. Larnach had tied the game an inning earlier with an opposite-field RBI single that scored Luke Keaschall. Bailey Ober, back from the injured list, gave up two runs on five hits in 5 1/3 innings with seven strikeouts.
The Twins won 5-2. Every player the Yankees came to see helped beat the Cubs in front of them.
Larnach has been quietly excellent all year. He is hitting .289 with a .379 on-base percentage, an .830 OPS, seven home runs, and 32 RBIs over 80 games. He is under team control through 2027, which makes him the most affordable of the trio and a logical insurance policy while Judge is out.
Joe Ryan is the prize and the problem. The right-hander is 6-5 with a 2.85 ERA, a 1.05 WHIP, and 128 strikeouts in 110 1/3 innings. He just earned his second consecutive All-Star selection. He is controlled through 2027, which means Minnesota has no obligation to move him and every reason to demand a haul if it does.
The Twins may not be selling at all
The larger complication has nothing to do with any individual player. It is the standings.
Minnesota has won 33 of its last 60 games. Entering Sunday, the Twins sat one game behind Boston for the third American League wild card and three games behind Chicago and Cleveland in the AL Central. A team in that position does not tear down its roster.
The front office has already signaled its direction. Minnesota acquired right-hander Tommy Nance from Toronto earlier this month. That is a buyer’s move, not a seller’s.
For Cashman, that turns a shopping trip into a waiting game. The Yankees can identify the players they want. They cannot force the Twins to make them available, and they cannot stop the Rays from bidding on the same three names.
Two weeks of Minnesota baseball will settle it. If the Twins fade, the Yankees have their list ready. If they keep winning, the scouts who filled those notebooks at Wrigley will have watched three players the Yankees are never going to get.
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