Most trade deadline deals are on the “safer” side of the spectrum—rentals for players on expiring contracts or flyers for struggling veterans who have performed in the past. Every so often though, a top-flight player becomes available midseason. Twins All-Star pitcher Joe Ryan reportedly may be one of those players.

Per Jon Heyman of the New York Post and MLB Network:

As the latter half of that Tweet—er, post?—implies, it would take a massive trade package to get the Twins to part with Ryan. That makes sense, as the 29-year old righty is having the best season of his MLB career. But if the Yankees want to make a big splash that will bolster their rotation for today and tomorrow, they should be interested.

Ryan, who appeared in his first All-Star Game last week, sports a 2.63 ERA and 3.13 FIP though 20 appearances. His strikeout and walk rates are sitting pretty at 29.2 percent and 5.1 percent respectively; both around 90th-percentile figures overall. After allowing 32 home runs (and an almost-15 percent HR/FB rate) in 2023, Ryan has taken great strides to chip away at that weakness. That HR/FB rate, for instance, is down to 9.2 percent this year. While he’s by no means a soft-contact maven now, he isn’t clenching his teeth every time an opposing hitter gets a ball in the air anymore.

The key to Ryan’s success is his four-seam fastball, which is the most valuable pitch in baseball by Statcast Run Value. This is partially attributable to just how much he throws it: about 53 percent of the time. RV is a cumulative stat, so if we look at RV per 100 pitches, it checks in at 2.2, still a top-five figure among four-seamers. So yeah, it’s an elite heater.

What makes it elite? Nothing about it jumps off the page at you. Ryan averages 93.5 mph on the pitch—so it’s not velocity. It also doesn’t have particularly elite movement, though it moves a little more to the arm side than the average heater. The answer is essentially a combination of a low arm angle, deception, long extension, and exquisite command, though even Ryan himself didn’t always know what made it so good. Whatever the case, it plays up.

Ryan doesn’t throw any secondary pitch more than 13 percent of the time. You’ll see his splitter more often against lefties and his sweeper—probably his best pitch outside of the fastball—more often against righties. Ryan has generally been platoon neutral throughout his career and has actually handled lefties better overall. But this year, he’s been an absolute menace to same-sided hitters: they’ve sputtered out a .545 OPS against him this year with a 34.5 percent strikeout rate.

Ryan’s best attribute is his command, and with it has come a great deal of start-to-start consistency. He has completed at least five innings in each of his appearances this season, including a “relief” appearance in a game which had been suspended from the prior night. He does his best work in the strike zone, so he doesn’t have to rely on making hitters chase. Hitters swing at his pitches in the zone more than the average pitcher while making contact far less often than the average pitcher. It’s an appealing recipe. When Joe Ryan throws strikes, and he usually does, good things tend to happen.

As Heyman helpfully notes up top, the Twins would have to be “blown away” to trade Ryan. This season was his first year of arbitration, so the Twins have two more years of team control after this one. Trading for three playoff runs worth of an All-Star starter in his prime means virtually no prospect would be off the table.

This seems like a spot where dangling Spencer Jones would make sense. Jones is tearing up Triple-A right now and seems just about ready for the majors. However, the Yankees have four good outfielders right now and can’t really justify calling him up to sit behind all of them. Jones’ prospect stock has been volatile in recent years and the Twins have a superior left-handed power-hitting prospect in Walker Jenkins, but his trade value likely won’t get much higher than it is right now.

More relevant for our spitballing purposes, I doubt the Yankees would be able to trade for Ryan without parting with one or more of their top pitching prospects. The Twins will want to get a few quality arms who would be able to make up for Ryan’s absence in the rotation, after all. The Yankees would be dealing from a position of strength with how pitcher-heavy the top of their farm system is, which could make parting with a top arm like Carlos Lagrange or Ben Hess go down a bit easier. Cam Schlittler also comes to mind thanks to his recent MLB debut and eye-popping velocity numbers, but if he were the headliner in an offer, I doubt the Twins would budge.

Joe Ryan is a shoot-for-the-moon deadline target, and in the end he may never be truly attainable. But he profiles as a good-to-great pitcher for the foreseeable future, and if the Twins are serious about dealing him. the Yankees should do their best to bring this All-Star into the fold.