Twins drama teases an Angels dream starter that still feels unreachable

The Los Angeles Angels' rotation is a work in progress. The unit already looks better than last year, with the addition of Grayson Rodriguez, doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

Yusei Kikuchi and Jose Soriano are both stalwarts, even if they aren't aces. The Halos are also hopeful that Reid Detmers translates his bullpen success back to the rotation, as opposed to reverting to his past struggles. All of that makes for a potentially solid No. 2 through No. 5, but what's still missing is an ace at the top.

The Angels don't have the money to land an arm like Framber Valdez in free agency. Even a bounce-back candidate with high-end potential in Zac Gallen could be out of reach, given the FanDuel Network drama and Arte Moreno's aversion to putting profits at risk for the sake of on-field performance.

That means a trade might be Los Angeles' best route to find their elusive ace, and the recent drama surrounding Joe Ryan and the Minnesota Twins would be the perfect solution. Too bad it will never happen.

The Angels would love to take advantage of the Twins-Joe Ryan drama, but an insurmountable hurdle exists

The Twins proclaimed earlier in the offseason that they were looking to build around their core rather than continue the fire sale they started at last year's trade deadline. The club had been in rough financial shape, and the Pohlad family had to sell some minority stakes in the franchise in order to raise cash and pay down debt.

However, despite their front office's protests, Minnesota has done next to nothing to strengthen its roster this winter. That might have signaled that the earlier claims of contention were simply posturing to improve their negotiating position in eventual trades for their stars, but then their actions during the arbitration deadline confirmed it.

The Twins could not come to terms with Ryan and will head to a hearing. They offered the ace $5.85 million and refused to acquiesce to his demand of $6.35 million. Shortly thereafter, Ryan was removed from the Twins Fanfest lineup.

Burning a bridge with one of your stars over $500K is certainly a choice, and it may speak to just how bad the financial situation is up in Minnesota. Ryan has two years of team control remaining, so they don't have to move him now, but it seems that the stars are aligning for such a trade to come to fruition.

The 29-year old posted a 3.42 ERA while putting up a stellar 10.21 K/9 against an equally impressive 2.05 BB/9 over a career-best 171 innings pitched in 2025. He's an emerging ace and would look perfect as the cherry on top of the Angels' rotation.

However, in order to get him, Los Angeles would need to pay up in prospects. The going rate for starting pitchers with more than a year of team control remaining is astronomical. The Tampa Bay Rays extracted a treasure trove of assets in the Shane Baz trade, and that was with the right-hander coming off a 4.87 ERA performance.

Mike Burrows cost the Houston Astros two of their top-five prospects and has just 99.1 career major league innings under his belt. Edward Cabrera cost the Chicago Cubs their presumptive Kyle Tucker replacement and No. 1 prospect, Owen Caissie, plus more, and he's never thrown more than 137.2 innings in a single season and had a 4.95 ERA in 2024. Ryan Weathers cost the New York Yankees four prospects, three of which were in their top-30. and he owns a career 4.93 ERA with 281 innings logged over five big league seasons.

Point being, Ryan is significantly better than all of those hurlers, and the precedent that he set means he'll cost an arm and a leg (and a torso and a head) in prospect capital. That's something the Angels simply don't have, given their status as one of the worst farm systems in the sport. Even if they could scrounge together enough prospects to entice Minnesota, the result would be a farm system so barren that it makes Joshua Tree look like a lush rain forest.

Ryan would fit the bill in terms of talent and financial cost, but he will unfortunately be out of reach for the Angels.