Who is Morneau's competition....

[John Bonnes]

... on the trade market?

 

The good news is that it doesn't appear to be Konerko. First, he's hurt. Second, he has 5-10 rights. And third, the White Sox at least say they don't want to trade him.

 

I know, people are down on his home run production, but I can see a team looking to fill a gap and add some veteran leadership taking a longing look in his direction.

[johnnydakota]

Justin is on pace for 100 RBIs and a .290 avg. while playing gold glove 1b...Just saying

[Kwak]

Morneau appears to have "solved his swing problem" and is slugging power hits. The month of July will be really important for him. I can envisions two scenarios where the Twins actually sign him to a contract for 2014 and beyond.

[Jeremy Nygaard]

I've heard Houston's Chris Carter's name thrown out there, but more as a right-handed power bat. I'm sure there are more names out there...

[Bark's Lounge]

Sure, the Twins could trade Morneau for a bag of peanuts... they will not get much more than that if a trade is made.

 

Morneau has meant a lot to this franchise over the last decade. Obviously he is nowhere close to being what he once was.

 

The thing is - Morneau has hit enough to be valuable to the Twins for the most part. Maybe instead of trading him for some Dollar store trinkets, the Twins should not trade him, play him everyday, and have a few month celebration in terms of saying our goodbyes and paying him the respect that he deserves.

 

If Morneau could garner a decent return on the trade market - maybe my viewpoint would be different. That is not an issue at this point.

 

Who knows, maybe Morneau's power bat will come alive in the second half of the season and he will end up with 20ish HR's, OPS .825 and have a grip load of ribbies... fingers crossed.

 

The real issue to me is unloading Willingham. He is holding back some young players who should be playing everyday, but they need to play him and get his engines roaring so he has some decent trade value. If the Twins cannot do that, it keeps the drain clogged that we expediently need to have wide open.

[howieramone1406390264]

If we trade Perkins we can get everything I wanted at the deadline. Morneau to me is a win-win. If he stays he gives us offensive this year. If he goes it means we got a lot. The Hammer's value is as low as it's going to go and we can trade him anytime in the next year when it's higher. As long as Arcia and then Hicks are not blocked, and they won't be, Hammer can't block anyone I see as part of our core moving forward. I wouldn't include what's best for Parmelee in my calculations.

[TheLeviathan]

Howard, Dunn, Morales come to mind. I think Morneau compares rather favorably especially with him being owed less money.

[diehardtwinsfan]

He's been hitting for some additional power of late, still not seeing tons of HRs, but the doubles are showing back up. There isn't much out there for competition, though unless Morneau goes on a Plouffe like performance in the next couple of weeks, I don't see him netting a whole lot.

[cmathewson]

The Leviathan has it right about competition. I just don't think he'll get moved. I think they want to give him a chance to get back to "normal" and see what they have at the end of the year. From what Ryan and Antony have said, they hope to keep him longer term, if he returns to average or above production for his position.

[Willihammer]

I think in lieu of a better option, at least internally, the best thing at this point would be to just re-sign Morneau.

[JB_Iowa]

At this point, I just want to see if he can stay healthy for the rest of the year. Even though he played in 134 games last year, I think most of us were a bit on "pins and needles" waiting to see what happened.

 

It's easy to just think about the devastating effects of the concussion when he was on such a roll in 2010 but you also have to remember the agony of August 2009 when many of us could tell something was wrong but Gardenhire just kept penning him in the line-up.

 

I'm anxious to see if his little power surge of the last few games can continue. I'm glad that the trade deadline is a month off so that we can see what develops.

 

My reaction a week ago was to let him play out the season so that he and the team could have a graceful parting.

 

But the last week has given me new hope -- both that the Twins could get something in return for a trade and that Justin could go to a team that has a chance of post-season success. His injury history still makes me leary about any kind of multi-year commitment to him (even though 32 still looks pretty young from my vantage point). But I've always liked him as a Twin and, in the same way that I hoped that Thome could get a ring elsewhere, I hope the same for Morneau because I think the odds of him playing well long enough to win one with the Twins are pretty slim.

 

And a lot can still happen to change the market in the next 3-4 weeks.

[Monkeypaws]

I would sure like to keep him around - I see him as kind of still being on the comeback trail. None of us know the depths to which he descended. I remember his swing looking all out of whack last season, and this season he seems to be consistently making good contact, having good at bats, and producing runs. If he gets 100 RBIs, i don't really care how many came from dingers.

 

He has an MVP mentality with men on.

 

.700 BA with bases loaded.

.333 with RISP and 2 outs.

.342 with RISP.

[Brock Beauchamp]

He has an MVP mentality with men on.

 

.700 BA with bases loaded.

.333 with RISP and 2 outs.

.342 with RISP.

 

Completely unsustainable and therefore irrelevant when talking about whether to keep Morneau. It's nice that he's been so RISP-y this season and driven in a bunch of runs but looking at someone who has gotten lucky and saying "we should keep him because he's lucky" is not a sound way to run a baseball franchise.

[Oxtung]

One of Willingham and Morneau need to get moved so that the young bats can all play consistently in the second half. Neither has much trade value currently. Willingham is under contract for 2014 and so has a chance to recoup some of that value. That makes Morneau the obvious trade choice in my mind. Perhaps Morneau would accept a reduced role with the team allowing Parmelee to move to 1B anyway. If he were willing to play backup/team leader/mentor and resign with the Twins that would be OK with me too. I doubt that is acceptable to him however.

 

While it is sad that Morneau's career has taken the turn it has the Twins shouldn't keep him just for a sentimentality reason. He was very well compensated for his efforts. The Twins owe him nothing. The future is forward, not backwards.