Report: Twins’ big trade acquisition likely to miss entire 2024 season

A look at a Twins logo at Target Field. Photo taken
8/24/16 by Terry Foote/Wikimedia via CC BY-SA 4.0

The Minnesota Twins may have to wait until 2025 to see their new trade acquisition throw his first official pitch for them.

Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey told reporters Monday that right-hander Anthony DeSclafani has been shut down with a right elbow flexor strain. DeSclafani, who missed the last two months of 2023 with the same injury, will visit Dr. Keith Meister to evaluate his options, which may include elbow surgery. It is now seen as likely that DeSclafani will miss the entire 2024 season, per Bobby Nightengale of the Star Tribune.

The 33-year-old DeSclafani was the headliner of the Twins’ return in trading former All-Star Jorge Polanco to the Seattle Mariners this offseason (though Minnesota also received reliever Justin Topa as well as multiple prospects). DeSclafani had spent the last three seasons with the San Francisco Giants, including a career-best 2021 where he went 13-7 with a 3.17 ERA and 152 strikeouts. But the injuries have caught up to him lately with a shoulder issue also plaguing DeSclafani last year in addition to the elbow injury.

DeSclafani was traded by the Giants to the Mariners in January as part of another blockbuster deal before being traded by the Mariners to the Twins just weeks later. Nightengale adds that the Twins are only on the hook for $4 million of the $12 million that DeSclafani is owed in 2024. But that will not come as much solace for a Minnesota rotation that already lost Sonny Gray, Kenta Maeda, and Tyler Mahle as free agents this winter.