The Minnesota Twins and Los Angeles Dodgers have reportedly reached an "impasse" in trade talks involving Brian Dozier, but that doesn't mean the infielder will stay put.

"I think that's the obligation we have to ownership here, to our fans, to our players," Thad Levine said, "which is we're never going to narrow the field over our ability to help the franchise in the short and long term. So any sort of deadline or saying we can't work with specific teams because of how they've worked with us in the past, (chief baseball officer Derek Falvey) and I will never do that. We'll never curtail our ability to improve the club."

Levine went on to say any reported deadlines regarding Dozier are artificial at best.

"In this case in particular it was reported there was a hard-and-fast deadline," Levine said. "I can assure you that is not the way we're going to operate. First of all we would never use that as a ploy just to leverage a negotiation. I think that's pretty flimsy and transparent on its own merits.

"The reality is there's going to be a point in time in this offseason where we may stop initiating calls but we're always going to pick up the phone and hear teams out. We would be imprudent not to do that, and I assure you Derek and I will never let one of our individual principles get in the way of helping this franchise. So we'll never put ourselves in intractable positions that will cost this franchise in the near or long term."