Twins agree to deal with free agent Ty France, bringing in 2022 All-Star as another option at 1B
The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the contract had not been finalized. France has spent the majority of his career with the Seattle Mariners, who traded him last summer to the Cincinnati Reds after he'd been placed on waivers. France, who was drafted by the San Diego Padres and made his major league debut with them in 2019, was dealt to the Mariners in 2020.
France had three full seasons as the regular first baseman for the Mariners, batting .272 with a .415 slugging percentage and a .763 OPS from 2021-23. He led the majors in hit by pitches in both 2021 (27) and 2023 (34). In 2022, he hit 20 homers with 83 RBIs in 140 games.
The 30-year-old France became a free agent in November when he refused an outright assignment by the Reds to Triple-A. He'll give the Twins an experienced hitter to consider starting on Monday with their first full-squad workout in Fort Myers, Florida. The departure of Carlos Santana in free agency for the Cleveland Guardians left a void at first base, where Jose Miranda and Edouard Julien are also viable options with significant upside on offense. The challenge will be replacing the defense provided by Santana, who won the AL Gold Glove award in 2024.
Minnesota also will take a look at first baseman Mike Ford, among 16 players invited to spring training on minor league contracts. Ford appeared in 17 games with the Reds last season, his sixth major league team in six years. He hit a career-high 16 home runs in 83 games for the Mariners with a .798 OPS in 2023.
The Twins have had another quiet offseason, with their payroll in a holding pattern. They signed left-handed reliever Danny Coulombe and backup outfielder Harrison Bader last week, the only other additions of significance before France.
The Twins had two relief pitchers claimed off waivers on Tuesday, right-hander Ronny Henriquez to the Miami Marlins and left-hander Brent Headrick to the New York Yankees. Headrick's departure created space for France on the 40-man roster. Henriquez was designated for assignment on Friday to make room for Coulombe, who was signed to a $3 million, one-year deal.
The Twins also traded outfielder Michael Helman to the St. Louis Cardinals last week for cash, clearing a space for outfielder Harrison Bader, who signed for a guaranteed $6.25 million on a contract that includes a mutual 2026 option and bonuses that would pay him up to $7.75 million in 2025 alone if he plays regularly.
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Nobody tells Steve (Parish) what to do, he's as stubborn as anybody.' Palace, no doubt, will say the only player to be transferred between them and Lyon was centre-back Jake O'Brien in 2023: beyond some young players going on loan to Molenbeek (including O'Brien, earlier in his career), they had no other transactions with an Eagle Football Group club, despite Textor's frequent suggestions. Advertisement But Dr Gregory Ioannidis, an experienced campaigner at CAS and an associate professor at Sheffield Hallam University, is not sure this will be enough to sway the panel. He believes Palace will try to argue that a 'more flexible and purposeful interpretation of the regulations' should be applied, with the club's lawyers asking the panel to think about what UEFA is trying to achieve with its MCO rules, fair competition, and whether the English side pose any threat to that legitimate aim. 'But if the panel decides the rules are clear, and therefore a strict and literal approach needs to be applied, the chances for a successful appeal will be minimised,' explains Ioannidis. While each case is considered on its own merits, precedents can be helpful, and two CAS panels have recently made very quick decisions on MCO cases involving Slovakian team FC DAC 1904 and Drogheda United from the Republic of Ireland. Both were blocked from playing in the Conference League by the CFCB and then lost their appeals, DAC unanimously and Drogheda on a majority verdict. The two cases were different but both argued they simply did not have enough time to create the separation UEFA requires between them and their MCO sister clubs. As MCO groups have proliferated across Europe, UEFA has given owners two options: reduce your stake in one of the clubs that want to compete in the same competition to less than 30 per cent, step down as a director and halt whatever player-trading strategy you are pursuing with the two teams, or put one of into a blind trust, so you have no influence over day-to-day operations. Crucially, UEFA moved the deadline for doing one or the other of these workarounds from early June to March 1. DAC, Drogheda and Palace all missed this memo. However, in both the DAC and Drogheda cases, the CAS panels backed UEFA. Advertisement 'What is of immense importance here is the panels' findings that the current regulations do not require evidence of actual influence, but rather only the possibility of such influence,' says Ioannidis. 'This, in conjunction with the finding on the procedural aspect of submitting the changes in the club's ownership structure on time (or not), may cause serious difficulties for those arguing Palace's case.' Parish has explained in recent interviews that Palace were too busy playing Championship neighbours Millwall in the last 16 of the FA Cup on March 1 to be thinking about what might happen if they were to win the whole thing and play in Europe for the first time in their history, but Duval says the deadline argument is doomed. 'It seems to me that a possible argument about the new deadline has already been rejected, thus the main focus will probably be on whether Textor had decisive influence,' he says. And while Palace will come armed with evidence that shows Textor was routinely ignored, UEFA's lawyers will no doubt point to the letter CFCB chair Sunil Gulati sent to the club licensing managers at UEFA's 55 member associations last May which spells out what 'decisive influence' means. A literal reading of that document — the 30 per cent shareholding threshold, significant financial support, being a director, the ability to influence recruitment decisions and so on — would suggest Palace's legal team are going to have their work cut out. Given all that, it might make sense for Palace to make a more general argument that a strict application of the rules in this case simply make no sense, as there is obviously no threat to the integrity of the competition, which is the entire point of article 5.01 in UEFA's rulebook, the regulation that deals with MCO clubs. And there is some encouragement here, in that the concepts of fairness, integrity and sporting justice are all enshrined in Swiss law. But there are risks attached to this approach, too. 'Swiss law does protect such principles and both CAS and the Swiss Federal Tribunal (where any appeals over a CAS verdict are heard but rarely upheld) have ruled accordingly,' says Ioannidis. 'However, I wouldn't run this argument, because the panel may take the view that it is precisely for these principles that UEFA's decision may be upheld, as the other clubs in the competition acted promptly and ensured they followed the rules and deadlines.' Advertisement That said, the Drogheda case shows that one of the panel disagreed with his colleagues. The written judgment has not been published, so we do not know why they disagreed but it is possible the Irish club's plea for a more common-sense-based assessment of the rules was persuasive. Palace may think that if they can do the same, they are halfway there. 'Not everything is negative for Palace,' says Ioannidis. 'I would argue that the intention of the regulator is to ensure fair competition. As such, the fact that Palace may have realised their mistake and acted in compliance with the rules, albeit late, shows a genuine and honest approach to the legitimate aim pursued by UEFA. 'In this instance, it would be fair, just and reasonable for UEFA to allow Palace to be admitted to the Europa League.' Another possible line of attack for Palace is the apparent inconsistencies in the application of UEFA's rules — and this is where the decision to make Forest a party in this appeal is intriguing. The argument, presumably, would be that Evangelos Marinakis, owner of both Forest and Greece's Olympiacos, did not place the former in a blind trust until the end of April, a move he reversed when they eventually failed to join their cousins from Athens in next season's Champions League. It is a moot point now but Marinakis seemed to miss the UEFA deadline, too, and, if literal readings are important, you either meet it or you don't. If Palace wanted to be really mischievous, they could ask what Marinakis was doing on the pitch at the end of Forest's home draw against Leicester City on May 11. While he may well have been checking on the health of an injured Forest player, the episode suggested the Greek billionaire still exerted some influence at the City Ground despite that blind-trust move. And, just to add some further spice to the pot, Parish has suggested that Forest played a part in Palace's demotion to the Conference League. But an argument that effectively depends on the panel accepting that it is OK for a club to be confused about the regulations is unlikely to pan out. 'The rules and deadlines have always been there, and Palace had to act promptly, irrespective of what other clubs did,' says Ioannidis. 'The panel might say that a professional club, with an army of expert lawyers, ought to be more diligent and proactive. If confused, they could have asked UEFA for clarification.' And with that sensible advice, we should probably wrap this up and wait for CAS to make sense of it all. Hopefully.
