Red Sox Trade Rumors: Twins’ Joe Ryan Update Not Promising

You can’t always get what you want. No one knows that better than Boston Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow, who continues to be linked to Minnesota Twins ace Joe Ryan ahead of the July 31 MLB trade deadline.

“I don’t know that the Twins are going to want to trade Joe Ryan. And that’s the key thing here,” The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported Thursday.

“So if the Twins don’t want to trade Joe Ryan and all these other teams that have theoretical No. 2s, and there may be a couple of them that even would factor into such a conversation, it’s going to be difficult to do. So you may have to look at other alternatives,” Rosenthal added.

Ryan would be atop anyone’s trade deadline shopping list, if he is actually on the market. The 29-year-old is 9-4 this season in 19 games (18 starts). Ryan is eighth in the American League with a 2.72 ERA and he’s seventh with 121 strikeouts.

The right-hander earned a spot on the AL All-Star roster this year. He pitched one scoreless inning in the Midsummer Classic on Tuesday, striking out a pair of batters.

Perhaps most compelling is the fact Ryan is making just $3 million this year and has two more seasons of arbitration eligibility remaining. He’s not scheduled to reach free agency until 2028.

So as you can imagine, the Twins are reluctant to part with a cost-controlled ace entering the prime of his career.

It’s also possible Minnesota becomes a trade deadline buyer rather than seller. The Twins (47-49) are in second place in the AL Central, 11 1/2 games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers. But they are just four games back in the AL Wild Card standings.

As for the Red Sox, they could use reinforcements for the starting rotation after losing Hunter Dobbins to a season-ending torn ACL.