Article: Building for the Future

I agree on the middle ground, which I suspect is Ryan's position. We need to acquire several SP, but only ones who have the potential to be around in 2015. My hope is they sign Sanchez (only 28 years old) and trade for two young pitchers (Minor, Delgado, Hellickson, Paxton...). Those guys would make us better next year and get some experience for a run by 2015, maybe even 2014. The Twins should avoid any SP past his early thirties. I was pushing for Shields, but now I only think it makes sense if he will sign an extension. I don't want to see Willingham, Span or Morneau leave, but at least we have potential replacements for them. Without pitching we are just spinning our wheels towards another 60-70 win season.

I really don't understand this insistence that Shields needs to be signed to an extension if he's traded for. He's signed until he's 33. Players don't sign 1 yr extensions. He'll be looking for 3 more years particularly since he signed such a cheap deal the first time and this will be his only chance at a multi-year FA contract.

I think most likely the Twins try to get 1-2 of the prospects that the Reds/Braves/M's have to offer.

I agree with the dissent on the either/or position...meaning we either push all our chips to the middle of the table and try to compete next year or resign ourselves to 2015 or beyond. Clearly, the Tigers are better. SP 1-5 they are light years ahead of us. With V-Mart coming back, their lineup will probably be better. At the end of last year, I was not in favor of trading Willingham. Good grief, we needed power and he was it! That said, his value will never be higher and teams like the Braves and Rays have young pitching they would part with. Span's value also won't get much higher. With a surplus of young outfield talent in the minors the Twins can make moves that will improve the team for next year and also build for the future. What would our outlook on the Twins be had THEY made the deal with Miami and not Toronto? We'd have a star shortstop who would fill our leadoff spot, two solid starting pitchers to go with Diamond and an outfielder in Bonifacio that would have stepped in to LF paving the way for a Willingham trade. We have some tradeable assets, the question is how do we use them and how aggressive will be be? Will the best options be gone before we pull the trigger or will waiting improve our leverage. (This is by far the best site to keep up on the Twins with the best bunch of guys sharing their opinion).

Here's the problem. The team's needs now (starting pitching and MI help) will still likely exist in 2015. There's some potential for some help up the middle in the farm system for 2015, but not nearly enough pitching. Essentially that means that they are going to have to make some smart free agent pitching signs over the next two years regardless. I don't know which pitchers are FAs for 2014 and for 2015, but the bottom line is that if they want to be competitive in 2015, that problem is still going to have to be addressed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by diehardtwinsfan

Here's the problem. The team's needs now (starting pitching and MI help) will still likely exist in 2015. There's some potential for some help up the middle in the farm system for 2015, but not nearly enough pitching. Essentially that means that they are going to have to make some smart free agent pitching signs over the next two years regardless. I don't know which pitchers are FAs for 2014 and for 2015, but the bottom line is that if they want to be competitive in 2015, that problem is still going to have to be addressed.

---

Bingo.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by diehardtwinsfan

Here's the problem. The team's needs now (starting pitching and MI help) will still likely exist in 2015. There's some potential for some help up the middle in the farm system for 2015, but not nearly enough pitching. Essentially that means that they are going to have to make some smart free agent pitching signs over the next two years regardless. I don't know which pitchers are FAs for 2014 and for 2015, but the bottom line is that if they want to be competitive in 2015, that problem is still going to have to be addressed.

---

I think this is obviously correct, but leaves unstated there are multiple routes to go regarding free agency. We can aim for FA talent who will still be prime contributors to a pennant-winning 2015 squad. Or, we can obtain younger talent by some other route (trades, mainly, if prime talent is the aim) who won't be ready until 2015, and use FA to supplement the 2013-4 squads so that further loss in the fan base can be avoided and let those contracts run out when the young'uns are scheduled to arrive. (A combination of these two approaches is quite viable, of course.) Also, as you allude, it's not necessary to completely stock up for 2015 this winter, so it can be phased over the coming three offseasons - there is not much value in paying prime talent for 2013, in and of itself. I trust that Terry Ryan has the long term plan in place (longer than 2015, naturally), and it will be interesting to watch the deals as they unfold. Stopgap moves by themselves are not a cause for despair - that is basically what Ryan accomplished last winter and they were necessary. What would be deadly is if the only moves going forward look like stopgaps to get us to 2015, without the moves that actually pertain to success in 2015 and beyond.

It's going to take Terry Ryan and company time to clean up the mess that he inherited from Bill Smith's regime. It was a different philosophy with Smith in charge, and it didn't work, and now they're going back to building the farm system, focusing on instruction and fundamentals. Sadly, the big-league club needs as much work on fundamentals as the Rookie-leaguers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by diehardtwinsfan

Here's the problem. The team's needs now (starting pitching and MI help) will still likely exist in 2015. There's some potential for some help up the middle in the farm system for 2015, but not nearly enough pitching. Essentially that means that they are going to have to make some smart free agent pitching signs over the next two years regardless. I don't know which pitchers are FAs for 2014 and for 2015, but the bottom line is that if they want to be competitive in 2015, that problem is still going to have to be addressed.

---

I don't know... Depending on how this past draft pans out, the team could look pretty good in pitching prospects (or at least adequate).

But... you can never have too much pitching.

Good article by Dave Cameron on fangraphs today. "Why I'm not a fan of losing on purpose."

Quote:

---

I see this argument a lot as it pertains to teams like the Mets, with valuable walk-year veterans in R.A. Dickey and David Wright. We saw it last year when the A’s signed Coco Crisp to play center field. The perceived value of putting a respectable team on the field is quite low, but as the A’s showed last year, the actual value of doing just that can be extremely high. We simply don’t know enough about the future to say that Dickey and Wright aren’t going to be part of the next competitive Mets team. We do not have the forecasting capabilities to look at a 75 win team and tell them that they can’t be a 90 win team in the following year.

There’s too much variation in baseball for teams to simply accept their most recent record as evidence of their short term future.

---