It's our 2026 Minnesota Twins preview up next on Fantasy Baseball today.

Welcome to On the Beat, a mini team preview series we're doing here at Fantasy Baseball today.

I am Frank Sample joined by Bobby Nightingale, who covers the twins for the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Make sure to give him a follow on X at Nightingale Jr.

And let's get into the Twins offseason. We'll just start there. Hasn't been too much going on. They brought in Derek Shelton as their manager. That was the first move. They signed Josh Bell to a one-year deal. We know that there's been a lot of talks. Trade rumors involving their pitchers. Obviously, lots of talent there, Joe Ryan, Pablo Lopez.

Nothing has happened to this point. Those names have stayed put. What's your current feel for this

2026 Twins team? Yeah, I think they're just going to kind of stand pat for the most part. I mean,

they cut a lot of payroll at last year's trade deadline. Obviously they traded 11 players at the deadline, so

it felt like, okay, they're going to go into a full-blown rebuild. But kind of the state of the

American League Central, I feel like they feel like, hey, if a lot of things turn right, I mean,

if some young hitters bounce back and some young pitchers take a step forward, you know,

you could mess around and find your way to like

500 and maybe that's good enough to fight for a division title. I mean, Cleveland wasn't very good

for half the year last year and ended up winning the division with the hot second half. So I think

they feel like, you know, there's a chance there if Detroit stumbles, if they end up trading

Tarek Scouble, you know, the division's wide open. So, you know, Pablo Lopez, Joe Ryan, and they were kind of the obvious trade candidates, but it does feel like they're pretty settled in terms of, okay, we're going to keep those guys, we're going to keep Byron Bucks, and then, you know, if they struggle out of the gate, you know, those guys would probably be traded at the trade deadline this upcoming July. But until then, I think they just view it as, uh, let's run it back and see what happens. The twins very much so feel like a variance team, right? Where like if their guys can stay healthy, they have a lot of really talented players. If Buxon can stay on the field, Royce Lewis, Pablo Lopez, all these guys. We know that they're talented, right?

So they do have variance in that way where, you know, if they stay healthy, we can perhaps see a big upside outcome from this Minnesota Twins team. But, of course, we haven't seen that often enough from the Minnesota Twins. We have some big fantasy questions here in Minnesota. Luke Keishel came up last season and he impressed in the 49 games that he played, hit 302, 382 on base percentage. 14 steals and that last part, the speed is very intriguing for us in fantasy. So how many steals could you see from Luke Keishel if he stays healthy for a full season? Is this a guy where you could just see them letting him run wild in 2026? Yeah, I think that's probably the plan. I mean, the guy's a gamer. He played in like, I think, 49 games last year and got on base in like 41 or 42 of them. So he's just one of those guys. I mean, he's a ball player. They want to let him run loose.

I think he has more power than he showed last year. I know kind of like his exit velocity numbers aren't great. But I do think, you know, he's had some arm injuries in the past two years. I do think he's going to hit for a little bit more power than he's shown. And I also think he's going to run a lot. He's the guy that he is pretty quick

I mean he's not he's not a guy that like sprint speed

He's going to be 90 lot. He's the guy that is pretty quick. I mean, he's not,

he's not a guy that like sprint speed. He's going to be 90th percentile or anything like that, but he uses it well on the bases. He's aggressive. He likes to run. And he's young. So I do think they're going to give him the green light as much as possible. If you look at like the second half, I mean, the twins at the trade that like around August 1st were like the worst base running team

in baseball, barely tried to steal, barely

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