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An annual ritual for many baseball fans is the release of the Baseball Prospectus Handbook. It has in-depth coverage for every MLB franchise and commentary on almost 2,000 players. For some fans, this is the "Baseball Bible" for the coming season as they try to gain an advantage in the fantasy baseball realm or just want to know more about the sport they love.

I was a first time buyer this season and was surprised to see how big the almost 600-page book was when it arrived at my home. After marveling at it's size, I quickly paged open to the Minnesota Twins section of the book. Twins Territory is flying high after last season so I was ready to read great reviews about the little team that could in 2015.

I was wrong. In fact as I flipped through the pages, a thought started to creep into my head. What if the Twins system is broken?

Twins pitchers and catchers reported to Hammond Stadium in Ft. Myers on Sunday. On Monday, those pitchers and catchers participated in their first practice of the year. Pitchers fielding practice (PFP) is already in full effect.

Also on Monday, Nick began our Twins Daily Top 20 Prospect Rankings by providing us with more information on our choices for Prospects 16-20. Today, we continue that list by reviewing our Prospects 11-15. This group contains a couple of pitchers with upside coming back from Tommy John surgery. There are a couple of very young middle infielders who have strong offensive potential. We also have a hitter who is just plain strong.

I want to talk about the Twins and payroll, and how we talk about the Twins’ payroll.

It’s been about a month since Jack Moore wrote the excellent and scathing The Minnesota Small-Market Con over at Baseball Prospectus Milwaukee. The points it makes are numerous and wide-ranging -- the most important, I think, is “if the billionaire Pohlads had been willing to take a short-term loss, they could have made their way out of the Metrodome years earlier without taking the public for such a ride" -- but being published as it was in the latter part of an offseason in which fans have watched the team take very few substantial visible steps toward getting better, most seemed to take it as a chance to complain about the team's unwillingness in recent years to spend on free agents.

Aaron and John talk about Kurt Suzuki vs. John Ryan Murphy, Ricky Nolasco being the fly in the rotation's ointment, how you can win Twins season tickets thanks to the Minnesota Corn Growers, Miguel Sano's non-weight loss, Aaron's cat obsession with our friends at Iron Door Pub, Baseball Prospectus projections, Brian Duensing going to Kansas City, and tons of mailbag questions from listeners. You can listen by downloading us from iTunes, Stitcher or find it at GleemanAndTheGeek.com. Or just click the Play button below.

It's that time of year. Pitchers and catchers officially reported to spring training on Sunday, and now things will begin ramping up toward the start of exhibition action in 10 days.

As usual, Twins Daily will be on-site in Ft. Myers with in-depth coverage of camp throughout the month of March. Over the next couple of weeks, we'll lead up to that coverage by listing and profiling our choices for the Top 20 prospects in the organization.

The signing of Brian Duensing with the Kansas City Royals closes the book on a story that was started in 1989. In the first round of that year's draft, the Twins selected Texas A&M shortstop Chuck Knoblauch who would go on to spawn the trade that would put Twins GM Terry Ryan on the map and the fruits of that trade would be felt until 2015.

After seven seasons of what looked to be the beginning of a HOF career, Chuck Knoblauch and his 37.9 WAR wanted out of Minnesota and to a contender. Well that's how the fans knew it anyway, back before internet media was a thing. While largely unpopular at the time, the Twins received Brian Buchanan (0.3 WAR), Christian Guzman (7.5), Eric Milton (14.7) and Danny Mota (-0.1) in what would be the branches of our Knoblauch trade tree.

With the shift from power hitting toward power pitching that baseball has seen over the past couple decades, it has become quite a bit more rare to see offenses pile up 200 home runs. It was a feat accomplished by 11 teams in 2000 and by only five in 2015.

To find the last Twins squad that went deep 200 times, you have to go all the way back to 1964, when Harmon Killebrew, Bob Allison and Tony Oliva were leading the way.

For this year's club it is an unlikely yet not unfeasible possibility.

As I wrote last week, there are national Top 100 lists out, and there are national and local Top 10, 15, 20, 30 and 40 prospect lists out there. Each September, following the Minor League season, I run a preliminary Top 50 Twins Prospect ranking. Then we spend three months researching and writing the Minnesota Twins Prospect Handbook, and in there, I submit my “official” top 30 list.

Since that book has now been out for six or seven weeks, I’ll post my Top 30 Twins prospect rankings publically. (for those who didn’t get a paperbackor electronic copyhere yet)

Next week, we’ll start the Twins Daily Top 20 Prospect list which will be based on the thoughts of Twins Daily writers and contributors. As I wrote about in the What To Make Of All These Prospect Rankings article last week, we all have our own personal thoughts and rankings, but the Twins Daily list will bring them all together.

If you’re a pessimist like me, you look at the PECOTA projections released by Baseball Prospectus yesterdayand you see a confirmation of everything you’ve suspected this offseason. You see a team who has done nothing to build on its surprising run in 2015 and, in turn, has slipped to the bottom of a competitive AL Central division.

You think about a thoroughly mediocre starting rotation led by Ervin Santana, Phil Hughes, and Kyle Gibson and you resign yourself to falling behind early. You think about the bullpen, populated with retreads and low upside plays like Casey Fien and Fernando Abad and you shudder about holding onto leads. You see an offense with potential, but one that will struggle to reach base.

For the past five years, this team has been there, lurking. The Indians have won 80 or more games in four of those seasons, almost constantly remaining within reach of first place, but all that this stretch has yielded is one single postseason game – a loss to Tampa Bay in the 2013 wild card.

Last year, the White Sox went 76-86, finishing fourth in the AL Central with the league's lowest-scoring offense. Their offseason was pretty quiet, featuring the addition of third baseman Todd Frazier but little else of note.

With Jeff Samardzija departing as a free agent, it appeared that the Sox were poised for a rebuilding year of sorts, but this week USA Today picked them to come out on top of a tough division with 90 wins.

About a month ago, I posted an article asking Where Are We Now in which I tried to project the Twins Opening Day roster. Not a lot has happened since then, but being at Twins Fest, trying to read between the lines of notes and quotes from players and front office personnel, I thought it would be good to try one more pre-spring training Roster Projection. We'll update this periodically throughout spring training.