No Juice Podcast #34: Baseball's Winter Meetings

I give the Twins a B grade so far this offseason.  I think better of the Torii Hunter signing.  not so much because he is so great.  He is good and can be a good influence for Hicks to get over the hump and become a productive major league player.  He may be exactly the person to be able to do that for Hicks. But there also wasn't a lot of other options either.  Rios, Rasmus, Aoki, Hunter, between them I am fine with Hunter.  I would have liked Cabrera better but that's it and he was thought to go for 4 or 5 years 14 million range which is more than the Twins wanted to spend. 

As for the Santana signing, There aren't many options that are better and none in that price range so I give that signing a solid A.  If the Twins were going to go after Shields, Scherzer or Lester then it would be lower but seriously did anyone expect the Twins to even target Santana? 

I think the Twins biggest mistake was not signing Neshek to a 2 year 12 million deal.  granted that is a little high but if the Twins want a good reliever for the pen you might as well get one of the best from Minnesota that wants to be here.  and 2 years is not that long.  we probably could have had a small discount.  maybe 2/10 or 2/11 instead.  Yes I know there are other options so my expectations are increased for our bullpen next year since we missed this obvious signing.  I still expect another signing here too.  not sure who they'd target but they could use a solid arm till Burdi comes up.

What grade would you give the Guerrier signing?  He was effective for half a season in terms of ERA till his last 2 appearances and only cost 1 million.  I'd give his signing a C.

On Nolasco I still think it was an ok move and that he'll return to being a 12-15 game winner with close to 200 innings.  for last year I give his signing a D- (he did pitch ok coming back from injury to finish out the year) F before the disabled list appearance.

Kubel and Bartlett should have just started the season in the minors.