To Tank Or Not To Tank?

I *hate* the notion of tanking for tanking's sake, especially at this point in the rebuild cycle.

The Twins should move any player who can be traded and likely won't contribute to 2017 or even 2018. Abad, Nolasco, Suzuki, Kintzler, Plouffe, Milone, etc.

The Twins should consider moving Santana, Nunez, and Dozier but only if the offer is right.

You put your best young players on the field and let them play. If those players rally and assemble a competent baseball team, great. You're in a good position going into the offseason. If those young players collapse and tank the season, well okay. Now you have more information how to proceed in the offseason.

This should be about your best and brightest young players in Major League Baseball, not draft picks. The draft is correlated to the performance of your young players and wishing those players to do poorly is shooting yourself in the foot.

You lost me at "rebuild".

Eh, I'm tired of this argument... Not necessarily by you but the general consensus "the Twins haven't rebuilt".

There is more than one way to execute an organizational rebuild.

The end goal of a rebuild is to have a bunch of young players with upside as the core of your team. The Twins have done that. Roughly half of their position players are under 25 years old and project to be every day regulars. The other half of the position players are under 30 years old and have multiple years of control remaining.

Did the Twins screw up along the way? Sure, that's pretty obvious. Lots of bad contracts, several bad roster decisions.

But that doesn't mean they haven't executed a rebuild, albeit in a less-than-optimal manner (in my opinion).

No waves. No ripples. Just normal drafting and tired mediocre pitching added to dumpster diving waiver cast-offs. Call it a special rebuild if you like. I would say more posters post about a rebuild than no rebuild, and the consensus is the opposite, but it would need a poll to make either statement true. So we will keep our opinions and disagree.

The Twins haven't rebuilt in the manner you'd prefer. Hell, I agree with you.

But that's not the argument you made, is it? You took umbrage with the use of the word "rebuild" at all.

The Twins have rebuilt... Well, maybe not "rebuilt"... They're still in the process.

Notice I'm not claiming the Twins have done the best job possible with the rebuild. Hell, I won't even claim they've done a good job because there are soooooo many bad contracts that hinder the future, stuff that simply did not need to happen.

But the Twins have one of the youngest rosters in baseball and a handful of young, good players that only look to get better in time. That's a rebuild.

Simply building the farm system through your normal draft picks does not constitute a rebuild.

With a true rebuild, Perkins would have been traded at his peak. Willingham would have been traded after his first season.

We would have had more make good 1 year deals hoping to flip, instead of multiple year deals like Nolasco, Hughes and Santana.

Suzuki would have been traded at some point. Fien would have been traded after he showed that 1 or 2 ok years.

And, Terry never shied away from saying he intended to compete. Other GMs admit when they are rebuilding. San Diego just did, so don't tell me it was a lie he had to tell.

Everyone here continues to argue "the way I want a team to rebuild is the only approach that meets the definition of the word".

Rebuilding a team is to turn it over to young players that are cost-controlled and living or dying by the results they provide. However the Twins got there - and it was an ugly, frustrating ride - that's what they're doing.

We'll have to agree to disagree I guess. I see rebuilding as a process, you insist it is only a destination.
I don't think they intended to get where they are, I think they were sincerely surprised every single one of these years that they were bad.
Aside from trading Span ( I don't count Revere because I think that was a "baseball trade", I think they thought Worley made them better right away) I don't think they made a single move that pointed to rebuild.

It's also partially a process and the Twins frequently met the requirements.

- They didn't trade prospects.

- They stockpiled the farm system.

- They traded some veterans.

- For multiple years, they didn't commit long-term money to expensive free agents.

Listen, I get that you don't like the way the Twins rebuilt and, again, I agree with you. They did a lot of stupid crap and I disagreed with them on many occasions.

But. It. Was. Still. A. Rebuild.

I think you have your own special definition. Gutting and starting over.... that would be the definition in my book, even if it means some of the pieces are new different veterans as part of the rebuild. Plus it happens all at once. If you rebuild a house, you tear it down and rebuild. But you can redefine it if you like. I would call what you are talking about as a slow remodel. By the time you get to the last pieces you already have to start replacing your first pieces. Teams are always looking to get young and utilize the farm, and that is all that has happened.

That's a rebuild.

It wasn't a great rebuild but it fit the definition of the word.

Stop posting throwaway comments. Seriously. I never should have taken the bait but you reduced a multi-paragraph post into an argument over a single ****ing word.

And with that, I'm done with this thread.

Carry on with the conversation and sorry for the disruption.