Twins wave white flag on Blue Jays trade deadline acquisition with a DFA

The Toronto Blue Jays cleaned house at this year's trade deadline, sending every single player on an expiring contract packing. This included Trevor Richards, who had at one point been an integral part of the club's bullpen.

Richards, a seven-year veteran, logged 195 appearances across four years in Toronto before he was dealt to the Minnesota Twins in exchange for lottery-ticket infield prospect Jay Harry at the deadline. Before the deal went through, he had 45 outings for the Jays this year, posting a 4.64 ERA with a strikeout rate that significantly dipped compared to where it had been in years past.

The Twins were hoping to land a durable reliever who's available to fill any role he needs to and can go multiple innings at a time. Instead, they got the worst version of Richards, even though his 4.15 ERA in 10 post-trade outings may not tell the whole story. On Tuesday, the Twins elected to designated Richards for assignment, ending his tenure in the Twin Cities oh, so shortly after it began. To the surprise of many, the Richards trade was the only one the Twins made at this year's deadline, so to have this be the outcome is simply an admittance of utter failure by the club's front office.

Twins DFA ex-Blue Jays reliever Trevor Richards

The problem with Richards' performance on the Twins was that in 33 percent of his appearances, he completely melted down. Sure, there were some scoreless outings sprinkled in there, but rarely did he go walk-less or escape without a wild pitch or two. On Aug. 7, he recorded just two outs but walked five and surrendered three earned runs on one hit. Then on Aug. 23 and 26, he pitched a combined four innings but walked four and allowed three runs on five hits.

The wild pitches are particularly interesting, as Richards now leads the major leagues with 13 of them this year. His previous single-season high was eight (2018, 2021) and a whopping seven of them this year occurred after the trade to the Twins.

Point blank, this type of shaky production is the last thing the Twins need as they look to make the playoffs. They're currently 72-60, which is 2.5 games back for the lead in the AL Central and good enough to be in possession of the third Wild Card spot in the AL.