Article: Back of the Napkin: How Far Are The 2013 Twins From Contention?

[The Greatest Poster Alive]

A lot of this relies on how Gibson responds. He's gonna be able to get a lot of good rehab between the end of the AAA season and the AFL.

 

If he can get himself healthy he could really solidify the back end of this rotation, and potentially become the #2 or #3 pitcher this team really needs.

 

If Gibson isn't rotation ready... the Twins have a low-end #2 and a bunch of #5 options in house right now. Next to impossible to fill 3/5ths of a rotation in one offseason.

[Jack Torse]

When was the last time the Twins signed ANY incoming free agent pitcher to a multi year contract? Maybe they have once but I cant think of a single pitcher since the 80's. They won't this year either as it's just not anywhere in their DNA to spend. It's been said by those in baseball, Kenny Williams among them, that if the Twins would have spent any money at all during the last decade they would have won multiple world series. When they had great teams the Pholads and their Billions woundn't budge an inch. Now, with their baseball model in its depression era, folly is anybody to think they are going to spend any of their capital gains on back to back terrible teams.

[glunn]

As I have said on other threads, the chances of the Twins signing Greinke seem very remote. Why would Greinke want to move from a contender to a cellar dweller? And I can think of many teams who would bid high to get Greinke.

[The Greatest Poster Alive]

As I have said on other threads, the chances of the Twins signing Greinke seem very remote. Why would Greinke want to move from a contender to a cellar dweller? And I can think of many teams who would bid high to get Greinke.

 

Really why would we want Grienke if he would come here?

 

It would show he has no competitive spirit, and can't handle pressure if he chose to go to a team in our situation.

[ashbury]

AND a career year from Willingham

 

Don't look now but JWillie is drifting back down to his career norms, and is on a pace to reach there by season's end. Which still is a good acquisition, don't get me wrong.

[TheLeviathan]

Otherwise....yuck. When you consider that we had a healthy Mauer AND Morneau this year, AND a career year from Willingham, do you really expect all three of those things to happen again? Moreover, aside from Plouffe hopefully staying healthy and having a breakout year, there isn't any other IMMEDIATE help on the way. In 2-3 years, yes, things may start to look up, but not next year.

 

Well said. You forgot about the insane month that Plouffe had that completely defied his past career, Doumit's unusually healthy season, Diamond going from AAA filler to a part of this team going forward, Fien and Burton, and Revere becoming a force. Not all of these things will fail, but people are acting like everything has gone wrong this year.

 

Everything went wrong LAST year. This year, one could argue they've been relatively lucky. Certainly not unlucky. When you're the worst team in the AL and you weren't unlucky, talking "contention" the next year with no immediate AAA help seems pretty silly.

[CDog]

Otherwise....yuck. When you consider that we had a healthy Mauer AND Morneau this year, AND a career year from Willingham, do you really expect all three of those things to happen again? Moreover, aside from Plouffe hopefully staying healthy and having a breakout year, there isn't any other IMMEDIATE help on the way. In 2-3 years, yes, things may start to look up, but not next year.

 

Well said. You forgot about the insane month that Plouffe had that completely defied his past career, Doumit's unusually healthy season, Diamond going from AAA filler to a part of this team going forward, Fien and Burton, and Revere becoming a force. Not all of these things will fail, but people are acting like everything has gone wrong this year.

 

Everything went wrong LAST year. This year, one could argue they've been relatively lucky. Certainly not unlucky. When you're the worst team in the AL and you weren't unlucky, talking "contention" the next year with no immediate AAA help seems pretty silly.

 

I will continue to put the list of Valencia, Capps, Pavano, Baker, Blackburn, Marquis and the rest of the hurt or performing below expectations against the list of "unexpected" successes any day.

[mlhouse]

The Twins are far, far, far away from contention, and the truth of the matter is that the only way to get into contention is to become worse. In 2013 the Twins need to do what they should have done THIS year. REBUILD.

 

Our lineup 2013 should be:

 

LF Oswaldo Arcia (Willingham traded)

CF Ben Revere (Span traded)

RF Aaron Hicks

3B Trevor Plouffe

SS Pedro Florimon

2B Eddie Rosario

1B Justin Mourneau (trade possible, but hard to do with his contract)

C Joe Mauer (trade possible, but almost impossible because of PR)

DH Chris Parmalee

 

Utility Brian Dozier Doumit Joe Benson

 

Rotation: Diamond, and combinations of players we have tried this year, Kyle Gibson

 

This team will be terrible, but from this group will rise the players that will form a rebuilt team. Think 1982, and the 102 loss team. But from that team came the core group of players that won both the 1987 and 1991 World Series, including Hrbek, Gaetti, Brunansky, andViola.

 

Other players, like Sano and Buxton, will have to be added over the next couple of years to take the places of players that do not pan out just as the 1987 team added Kirby Puckett and Greg Gagne.

 

But, the issue is you can develop players at the major league level if you have the managers at the top that are willing to work with the young players and take the losses. Right now, the Twins do not have such a group.

[TheLeviathan]

I will continue to put the list of Valencia, Capps, Pavano, Baker, Blackburn, Marquis and the rest of the hurt or performing below expectations against the list of "unexpected" successes any day.

 

Any list that says Nick Blackburn being awful was "unexpected" is trying WAY too hard. And almost all of the others have similar issues.

[twinswon1991]

60 games under 500 over the last 2 years would cause most people to think maybe it's time to make some serious changes. But we get maybe a tweak here or there and we'll be ok. Don't trade anyone they are all great players, it's add one or two pitchers and we'll be a contender (around 500 in the Central) again.

Getting to the end of two years of some very bad baseball and thinking this team is not far away is silly, imo. Our record is worse than the Royals the last two years, does anyone think the Royals are a player or two away from contending?

 

A voice of reason. Diamond is a #5 starter or long man on a contending team and that is their best guy. Without great health from the M & M boys next year this team will challenge the Stros for worst record.

 

The biggest issue is TR is too clueless to realize this team is not close and he failed to cash inall the guys who could've brought back sp prospects that our scouting dept cant seem to find.

[CDog]

I will continue to put the list of Valencia, Capps, Pavano, Baker, Blackburn, Marquis and the rest of the hurt or performing below expectations against the list of "unexpected" successes any day.

 

Any list that says Nick Blackburn being awful was "unexpected" is trying WAY too hard. And almost all of the others have similar issues.

 

Well...there's the fact that he was worse than career averages AND worse than the last few years AND by fairly wide margins. So there's that. (And there's Mauer being on your "unexpected" and "lucky" list when he's pretty much right smack in the middle of what he's done in prior years.) But ignoring that is fine...I guess.

[phalvorson]

How come nobody ever advocates that the Twins re-sign Liriano at the end of the season, assuming that the White Sox don't sign him to an extension? Unless Frankie goes lights out (and he hasn't so far) in the next month, he ought to be available for under $10M/yr and be serviceable rotation filler. If the Twins couldn't get much back in trade for him due to lack of interest at the trade deadline, surely there won't be much of a market for him in free agency either for the Twins to compete against. And you know how they like to re-sign the known quantities (ironically, in Liriano's case, being his inconsistency) over going after another team's unknown (to them) players.

[TheLeviathan]

ell...there's the fact that he was worse than career averages AND worse than the last few years AND by fairly wide margins. So there's that. (And there's Mauer being on your "unexpected" and "lucky" list when he's pretty much right smack in the middle of what he's done in prior years.) But ignoring that is fine...I guess.

 

Mauers health....not production. Do you really want to double down on that dumb notion about Blackburn? Your schtick is snipe and run but I will gladly retort - just want to give you a chance to back pff that plank.

[CDog]

ell...there's the fact that he was worse than career averages AND worse than the last few years AND by fairly wide margins. So there's that. (And there's Mauer being on your "unexpected" and "lucky" list when he's pretty much right smack in the middle of what he's done in prior years.) But ignoring that is fine...I guess.

 

Mauers health....not production. Do you really want to double down on that dumb notion about Blackburn? Your schtick is snipe and run but I will gladly retort - just want to give you a chance to back pff that plank.

 

And your schtick is to tell lies about things I have said or done. But yeah, I'd love to see you show that this wasn't Blackburn's worst year.

[Nick Nelson]

Mauers health....not production. Do you really want to double down on that dumb notion about Blackburn? Your schtick is snipe and run but I will gladly retort - just want to give you a chance to back pff that plank.

Blackburn over the past two years averaged 150 innings with a 4.98 ERA and 1.52 WHIP while being affected by injuries (which were, in both cases, purportedly corrected after the season). Certainly not good numbers, but borderline palatable for a fifth starter and far better than the muck we've seen this year. When you take into account how sharp he looked in spring training, I think it's pretty tough to make the case that anyone truly should have expected him to be anywhere near as bad as he's been.

[TheLeviathan]

Those stats belong to a bad pitcher - Blackburn's negative impact is more related to our insistence on running him out there than on bad luck because he was some degree more awful then what we could have reasonably suspected. T

 

he only truly unlucky breaks have been Span,Plouffe, and Capps injuries. And all teams have that happen - I'll keep saying it so next year when the "we are two silver bullett free agents away!" crowd has a wakeup just how forseeable it really was.

 

Nice start by Deduno though!