#mitch garver

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Ok, this is legit one of my favorite baseball sicko topics. The Twins are not a high-personnel-drama team so it's kinda fun to have this one thing. We as a fanbase do probably exaggerate it but it's very much real.

The short version is when they played together in 2021, they both wanted to be the starting catcher and saw each other's ambition as a personal slight. The 2021 team had a lot of bad vibes, and Garver got traded that offseason as part of a larger vibes clean-up, and for at least a couple years after that he remained salty that the Twins picked Jeffers over him.

The full timeline long version is this:

Garver was drafted in 2013 by the previous front office, which was notoriously shit at prospect development. As a big, power hitting catcher with questionable defense, analysts weren't optimistic he would stick at catcher. He didn't debut until mid-2017 (at an old-for-a-prospect 26), but an early season injury to primary catcher Jason Castro in 2018 suddenly made him the main guy. He was as advertised, great hitting and meh defense. He had a breakout 2019, hitting 31 home runs in only 93 games as a major contributor to the record-breaking Bomba Squad team. In 2020 he struggled and got injured, which opened the door for Jeffers.

Jeffers was drafted by the current front office (who took over in 2017) in 2018, in the second round, which was universally regarded as a massive long shot by the Twins. So much so that it's a story he's asked about and tells frequently to this day. Like Garver, he was a big, power hitting catcher with questionable defense who wasn't favored to stick at catcher, but under the Twins' new minor league catching coach (who was later poached by the Yankees and has turned Wells and Escarra into defensive standouts) he quickly became a well-regarded defender. This was where the catcher one-knee-down trend started; it was taught to all Twins catchers, and Garver said on record he wished he had coaching like that as a prospect.

Between this and his well-lauded baseball IQ and drive to improve as a player, Jeffers was an extremely highly regarded prospect in the Twins system. While we don't have much of Garver's thoughts on the matter from this time, I can't imagine he took well to his team drafting and developing their catcher of the future while Garver was still in arbitration. Jeffers shot through the minors, skipping triple-A (in part due to the 2020 minor league cancellation), and looked great in his small 2020 major-league sample, starting both playoff games over multiple more experienced options.

The plan in 2021 was a 50/50 split between Garver and Jeffers, given Garver's injury history and Jeffers' inexperience. Jeffers struggled to start the season and was sent down, but in early June Garver got hit with a foul ball and ruptured a testicle (truly he was destined to become a Mariner), making Jeffers the primary catcher. This general trend continued the entire season, with Garver outperforming Jeffers significantly on offense, but given his repeated injuries and Jeffers' better defense, the 50/50 split remained. They were both unhappy with this, with Jeffers openly attributing his hitting struggles to a lack of consistent playing time.

There were multiple reported conflicts between teammates in a largely miserable 2021 season rife with illness, injury, and awful pitching blowups. Josh Donaldson got the headlines, but last year senior Twins reporter Dan Hayes confirmed, though talking carefully around exact names, that Garver is "not positive" toward Jeffers and only Jeffers and "both of them decided to not play nice toward each other". He declined to get into specifics, saying, "There's nothing really to know other than they didn't like each other," but confirmed the reason was they both "wanted to be the lead guy". This backs up statements both players made in 2023, which I'll get into later.

Despite being among the more productive members of that 2021 team, both Garver and Donaldson were traded after the lockout ended in 2022, as part of the domino chain of events that ended with the Twins signing Carlos Correa. Rookie catcher Ben Rortvedt was traded alongside Donaldson for notoriously bat-first catcher Gary Sánchez, cementing Jeffers as the Twins' choice at catcher. Early in the 2022 season, the team's positive vibes and great clubhouse chemistry were frequently discussed, inviting the inference of what personnel changed between seasons. Despite continuing to run 60/40 or 50/50 splits with his co-catchers, Sánchez and later Christian Vázquez, Jeffers never complained again about playing time and has been very complimentary of them both.

For Garver's part, he suffered an arm injury in 2022 that limited him to DH, and he intentionally delayed season-ending surgery until after the Twins played the Rangers in July. In 2023, with Jonah Heim's breakout season, Garver was pushed even further to DH, where he was an excellent hitter for the World Series-winning Rangers. Jeffers, meanwhile, finally had his own offensive breakout in 2023, though his characteristic framing-centric defense declined significantly as he reworked his mechanics with coaches.

The Twins and Rangers met in late August, with the Rangers on a losing streak, and in the first game Jeffers hit a pinch-hit go-ahead home run to seal a big Twins comeback, complete with massive bat flip. The next game, the Rangers hit Jeffers. Unintentional or not, who knows: the pitcher had been wild and there was a runner on, but first pitch of the at-bat and he hadn't been missing in that direction. Either way, the next half inning Sonny Gray hit Garver (who had homered earlier in the game) in clear retaliation and the benches cleared. In his postgame interview, Garver blamed Jeffers for the benches clearing, referring to him as "their guy" and essentially calling him stupid for thinking the hit-by-pitch was intentional.

No further drama ensued that series. After the Rangers won the World Series, Jeffers was asked in a private Q&A if he'd contacted Garver to congratulate him on the win; Jeffers gave a firm but awkward no and said something like, "We're not really... friends" in a forced polite way before directly referencing the August incident and Garver calling him "their guy".

Ultimately the Twins wanted stability at catcher and they made the right decision. Garver's offensive highs have been much higher, but Jeffers has played 85% of his games at catcher, is highly respected by the pitching staff, and has developed into a team leader, if not quite the catcher of the future they were hoping for. I think the Twins' choice of who to keep reflected mainly Jeffers' skillset and potential, but also who they thought was a better clubhouse fit. I don't know who started the beef, but I would say the blame for not being the bigger person lies more on the 6-years-older veteran.

Since Garver joined the Mariners things seem to have simmered down, but there's not nothing if you're looking for it. Garver's other former Twins teammates all seem to regard him pretty well, which makes the dynamic with Jeffers stand out even more. The Mariners did also hit Jeffers with a pitch at the end of a lopsided series last May in which Jeffers performed very well, on the first pitch of his final at-bat for their only HBP of the series. Garver's also been a bit cursed, as yesterday makes twice now he's come out of the game due to injury against the Twins on his rare catching days.