Sources: Nelson Cruz signs one-year, $14M deal with Twins

Nelson Cruz, the 38-year-old slugger who averaged more than 40 home runs over the past five seasons, on Thursday agreed to join the Minnesota Twins. It’s a one-year deal worth $14 million with a team option for 2020, sources told Yahoo Sports.

Cruz, who spent the past four seasons in Seattle’s pitcher-friendly Safeco Field and remained one of the game’s consistent long-ball threats, joins a Twins team looking to find its footing in the AL Central. They’ve bounced between contenders and disappointments the past few years, as Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano tried to live up to the hype. Minnesota is hoping adding a veteran bat like Cruz could help add stability and challenge Cleveland for the division title.

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Cruz’s deal with the Twins is pending a physical and hasn’t been announced by the team. But sources tell Yahoo Sports it comes with a $12 million option for 2020 with a $300,000 buy out.

While 2018 brought declines in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage, Cruz hit 37 home runs, eighth in the American League and the first time in five years he finished out of the top four.

It was, in all, his least productive season since his eighth, and last, in Texas, when his season was compromised by a 50-game suspension for his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal. (Cruz accepted the suspension and explained he’d “made an error in judgment” while combatting an illness.) His free-agent market thinned as a result, prompting Cruz to take a one-year deal in Baltimore. He hit a league-leading 40 home runs in 2014 for the Orioles, signed a four-year, $57-million deal with the Mariners, and entered this winter with what appeared to be one more contract waiting, even as one of the older players in the league.

While the Mariners were unable to capitalize on it, Cruz, in 41 postseason games, batted .292 with 16 home runs and 34 RBI. Six of those homers came in a single series, the 2011 ALCS – Rangers vs. Detroit Tigers — for which he was named Most Valuable Player.

Never regarded as an adept defensive outfielder, Cruz is a full-time designated hitter, having played only nine games in the outfield over the past two seasons.

Signed out of the Dominican Republic by the New York Mets, Cruz was traded to the Oakland A’s, then to the Milwaukee Brewers, then to the Rangers. He arrived in Arlington, then, at 26, with only five big-league at-bats to his career. He was not a regular for another two years when, in 2009, he hit 33 home runs and was an All-Star for the first of six times. He was a critical, middle-of-the-lineup player in the best years in the history of the Rangers, 2010 and 2011, when the Rangers twice won AL pennants. They lost in the World Series both years.

Earlier this winter, Cruz became a U.S. citizen.

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