Thread: Article: How full is your Minnesota Twins glass?

If I was a Pohlad or concerned about the Twins bottom line, I chose the win now path versus rebuild mode to win 2 years from now. I think you trade Morneau to dump his salary and go with Parmalee at first. Keep Span and Revere, and bring in two starting pitchers.

Originally Posted by Brock Beauchamp

Originally Posted by LastOnePicked

Originally Posted by Seth Stohs

If I've learned anything from the last two years, I'll take a competitive in the division team anytime over a team that may win a World Series once every 8 years and be poor 6 of the other 7 years.

Seth, I admire your writing and I appreciate everything you contribute to Twins baseball talk, but I totally don't get this perspective. We've had enough of this route to failure over the last decade, and a pathetic three-and-out against the Yankees puts a far worse taste in my mouth than a stinky season with the promise of a stronger draft. It bothers me that people say "anything can happen in the playoffs" --which is proveably false. Carl Pavano cannot magically become Curt Schilling in the postseason. Danny Valencia cannot become Miguel Cabrera. Ron Gardenhire cannot become Tony LaRussa. You get out of the playoffs what you bring into it. The Twins brought nothing into the postseason over the last decade, and got exactly that out of it. The trophy is never a guarantee, but, c'mon, there's a reason why the Yankees considered drawing the Twins a first-round bye. And they were right.

It's a sound philosophy because baseball, more than any other sport, has the "best team on paper" losing to an "inferior team". The 2006 Cards were not the best team in baseball on paper, yet they won the World Series.

You can't get to the World Series without making the playoffs. After that, anything can happen. I'm all for the Twins pushing harder to make trades to push them over the top in years they are competitive but the idea of "building a World Series team in March" is a ridiculously impossible challenge. You do your best to field a competitive team, then you supplement that team mid-season in years where you think you have a real shot to win it all (2006 and 2010 come to mind).

The Twins have been very good at building a competitor. They have not been good at pushing hard to build a WS team mid-season.

But before you build that "WS team", you need to be competitive. Walk before you run. The Twins are awful right now. Their first step should be a return to legitimacy, not burning it all down and hoping that 500 things come together perfectly in 2016 and they become a world-beater because chances are that most of those 500 things required to build a world-beater just won't happen on the timeline you hoped to see. All you have to do is look through the recent histories of really bad MLB franchises to see how "building to win it all" often leads to "more losing seasons as prospects sputter and fail".

You're failing to acknowledge an entire decade of Twins baseball history, other than the meaningless references to 2006 and 2010. "Just make the playoffs" resulted in the one of the most embarrassing postseason losing streaks in the history of sports.

The glass is pretty full. They need two players to make an enormous difference, but they would be two BIG players.

They need a guy to hit behind Morneau who has the ability to hit like Shane Mack did. Doumit is an okay player, but this guy needs to hit further down in the order.

They need an Ace/Stopper/Staff Horse. That guy will make everyone better and give them confidence, take pressure off them, and allow them to relax and not try to do too much.

That is two guys who will cost the Twins a lot of money. But it would be better than 5 guys who would cost the same amount or less that weren't capable of the same kind of impact.

It didn't even take 90 wins to grab the division this year. You can expect the same next year.

Originally Posted by kab21

Let's ignore that just about everything (aside from MI) went perfectly for the Twins on offense. And they still had an average offense. Or that there's only one starter on the team that anyone has any confidence in.

And until May most people thought he was AAA filler. And people keep saying nothing went well.....

Originally Posted by TheLeviathan

Originally Posted by kab21

Let's ignore that just about everything (aside from MI) went perfectly for the Twins on offense. And they still had an average offense. Or that there's only one starter on the team that anyone has any confidence in.

And until May most people thought he was AAA filler. And people keep saying nothing went well.....

Don't forget the bullpen, which outperformed expectations, and whose coach was fired today...