{"id":794820,"date":"2026-07-31T05:45:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T05:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/794820\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T05:45:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T05:45:10","slug":"mets-trade-a-j-minter-to-twins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/794820\/","title":{"rendered":"Mets Trade A.J. Minter To Twins"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mets and Twins are reportedly in agreement on a trade that\u2019ll send veteran reliever A.J. Minter<\/a> to Minnesota for minor league infielders Bruin Agbayani<\/a> and\u00a0Billy Amick<\/a>. The Twins will need to open a 40-man roster spot once the deal is official. They can do that by transferring Cole Sands<\/a> (who is slated for season-ending arthroscopic elbow surgery<\/a>) to the 60-day injured list.<\/p>\n

Twins general manager Jeremy Zoll said on Tuesday the front office was preparing to buy. The Twins have been surprisingly competitive and aren\u2019t far off the pace in the AL Central or the Wild Card picture. Minnesota pulled off a dramatic comeback with two outs in the ninth, capped off by a\u00a0Kody Clemens<\/a> walk-off grand slam, to move back to .500 this afternoon. Their 55-55 record has them in third place in the division, three games back of the White Sox. They\u2019re only a game behind the Guardians, who currently hold the last Wild Card spot.<\/p>\n

The bullpen is the obvious priority. Minnesota relievers have an earned run average close to 5.00, the fifth-worst mark in the league. They\u2019re sixth from the bottom in strikeout rate and have the sport\u2019s second-highest walk percentage (better only than Cincinnati). They\u2019ve improved from a run prevention perspective in July but are still issuing too many free passes without a ton of strikeouts.<\/p>\n

Minnesota can at least feel confident that Minter will attack the strike zone. He has only walked two batters and hit one across 23 innings on the season. Minter isn\u2019t going to maintain a walk rate quite that low (2.2%) but has had above-average control for the last few seasons. He used to have big swing-and-miss stuff, but that hasn\u2019t returned since he underwent season-ending lat surgery in May 2025.<\/p>\n

Minter needed a full calendar year to recover from that operation. That kept him from making his 2026 debut until late May. He has career-low strikeout (21.7%) and swinging strike (10.9%) rates, each of which are a hair below league average. His four-seam fastball velocity has dipped to 93 mph, down a tick from last year and quite a bit from the 96-97 mph heat he had early in his career.<\/p>\n

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Opposing hitters have pummeled that diminished fastball. Minter has responded by leaning more heavily on an upper-80s cutter that remains an effective pitch. He carries a 2.35 earned run average, though he has been scored upon in three of his past six outings. Minter was in middle relief for New York and has only recorded one hold this year.<\/p>\n

The 32-year-old should get more late-inning opportunities in the Twin Cities.\u00a0Kody Funderburk<\/a> and Taylor Rogers<\/a> have been Minnesota\u2019s top lefty relievers this season. Funderburk has a 3.52 ERA but an equal number of walks and strikeouts across 30 2\/3 innings. Rogers has an ERA a little above 5.00 with a personal-low 19% strikeout rate.<\/p>\n

Minter, Rogers, and mid-July trade acquisition Tommy Nance<\/a> are the only veteran relievers in Derek Shelton\u2019s bullpen. They\u2019re relying heavily on rookie Andrew Morris<\/a> and journeyman\u00a0Yoendrys G\u00f3mez<\/a>, who has pitched well since being acquired in early May. This should be the first of multiple bullpen adds, as they could also use a reliable right-hander to mix into the late innings.<\/p>\n

An impending free agent, Minter is making an $11MM salary in the second season of his two-year free agent deal. If there\u2019s no cash involved, the Twins would take on just under $3.5MM for the stretch run. As shown on MLBTR\u2019s new Payroll Tracker<\/a>, Minnesota had an approximate $101.4MM payroll before the trade. That\u2019ll climb to roughly $105MM, which is still nowhere close to last year\u2019s end-of-season payroll in the $130MM range. They\u2019re not going to spend that much in 2026 but clearly have flexibility from ownership to make some mid-tier pickups.<\/p>\n

The Mets will save 110% on any salary they shed over the next few days. Offloading Minter without any cash considerations would save them just over $8MM. It\u2019s their first small bit of business with trades of Freddy Peralta<\/a>,\u00a0Clay Holmes<\/a>,\u00a0Brooks Raley<\/a> and Luis Robert Jr.<\/a> surely forthcoming. New York could also move\u00a0Luke Weaver<\/a> and\u00a0Huascar Brazob\u00e1n<\/a>, each of whom would command a superior return to what they\u2019re receiving for Minter.<\/p>\n

Neither prospect ranked among Minnesota\u2019s top 30 on the most recent update from Baseball America. Eric Longenhagen and James Fegan<\/a> ranked Agbayani 48th in the organization and Amick outside the top 50 when they wrote up the Twins\u2019 system in mid-June. MLB Pipeline<\/a> is a little more bullish on both players, slotting them each among the back third of Minnesota\u2019s top 30 prospects.<\/p>\n

Agbayani, as a lot of Mets\u2019 fans have surely surmised, is the son of former New York outfielder\u00a0Benny Agbayani<\/a>. Bruin was a sixth-round pick out of a Hawaii high school last summer. A lefty-hitting infielder, he\u2019s a pure projection bet with essentially no minor league track record. Agbayani has been out since the middle of May with a shoulder injury. He has played 15 professional games, all in Low-A. The Mets are surely going mostly on their reports from when he was a draft prospect. He\u2019s 6\u20192\u2033 and viewed as an advanced pure hitter for a teenager but faces questions about his long-term positional home.<\/p>\n

Amick, 23, is a right-handed hitting corner infielder at the Double-A level. He had a strong college career between Clemson and Tennessee and was a second-round pick in 2024. Amick has plus raw power but a three true outcomes approach that comes with a lot of whiffs. He\u2019s hitting .217\/.338\/.482 with 23 homers, a 13% walk rate, and an alarming 29% strikeout percentage. Scouting reports peg him as a below-average defender at the hot corner who probably fits better as a first baseman.<\/p>\n

Jeff Passan of ESPN<\/a> first reported the Twins were acquiring Minter. Will Sammon of The Athletic<\/a> reported New York\u2019s end of the deal. Image courtesy of Vincent Carchietta, Imagn Images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mets and Twins are reportedly in agreement on a trade that\u2019ll send veteran reliever A.J. Minter to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[145050,99],"class_list":["post-794820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-a-j-minter","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}