Twins may flip Garcia to Yanks

The Twins have played more as anticipated recently, sliding slowly out of contention with 10 losses in 14 games — while the Indians and Royals have surged in the AL Central.

That has moved the Twins to flip from buyers to possibly sellers, potentially including Jaime Garcia, whom they recently obtained from the Braves to try to go for it.

What makes that interesting is the Yankees were among the teams that were talking to the Braves about Garcia — as were the Mariners. The Yankees’ top-end target for now is the Athletics’ Sonny Gray, not only because he can help in this pennant race, but is under control through 2019 and the Yankees face the possible free-agent defection of CC Sabathia and Masahiro Tanaka this offseason.

But the Yankees, as of midweek, were not ready to meet Oakland’s price for Gray, and Garcia could be a pivot just to try to win this year, because the lefty is a free agent after the season. The Yankees were not offering the Braves top prospects for Garcia and almost certainly would offer Minnesota something similar if this came to pass.

Garcia is not the kind of big strikeout guy the Yankees like (just 6.8 per nine innings), and part of his success has been holding opposing pitchers to three hits in 29 at-bats with 14 strikeouts and no walks. But the Yankees like groundball pitchers and Garcia’s groundball percentage (55.4) is sixth among qualified starters, just ahead of Luis Severino (51.8). Garcia is scheduled to make his Twins debut Friday night.

Minnesota did make a trade Thursday, dealing minor league catcher John Ryan Murphy to the Diamondbacks for lefty pitching prospect Gabriel Moya.