Whammy

Probably a different topic, but it always amazes me when teams that are widely regarded to have completely depleted farm systems still find ways to pull off big trades. (Chicago, Detroit, Boston, NY, Toronto....)

There was obviously a lot of luck involved in that as well as good scouting, but the FO's hand was a bit forced on trading AJ since Mauer was coming. I don't think anyone at the time considered trading AJ for prospects a "game changing trade." It was viewed as trading a veteran who was blocking a prospect. In the end we happened to get tremendous value, though.

Two points: 1) If that was the Opening Day rotation, you wouldn't hear any complaining from me. I think we would all agree that is a long shot. 2) By downgrading our defense, we effectively downgraded our rotation.

That's why they waited until today to sign him.

I don't think anyone would claim that our offense projects to be the same or worse than last year. Unless we see some serious regression from multiple people, it has to be better. And our offense was decent last year, so that's good. The problem is, we've upgraded a team strength, and sacrificed other things. Defense. I can't possibly see a way that our defense is a good as last year. ESPECIALLY in the outfield, where I think we would all agree it is set to take a huge step back. Pitching. I don't even know what to say here because we've done NOTHING. Having Santana for the full year will hopefully help, I guess. Having Berrios waiting in the wings will be nice (when they eventually promote him). Nolasco? What's the plan? Milone? What's the plan? Duffey? What's the plan? Our best two SP from last year are probably going to start the year in the bullpen (May) and at AAA (Duffey). How is that progress? If our pitchers perform exactly like last year, they will give up more runs because our defense has taken a step back. Color me uninspired.

Bingo was his name-o

Beat me to it. I was going to go with "not A bad signing"

All three players they gave up seem to be consensus top 10 prospects in the White Sox system. Montas and Johnson in the 3-5 range and Thompson in the 8-10 range Fun Fact: Tryace Thompson is the brother of Golden State's Klay Thompson.

The poor keep getting richer.

Lawrie to 2B

I'd like this twice if I could

Rebuilds can work like the Twins are doing it and rebuilds can work like the Cubs are doing it. There's no guarantee of anything. But there sure is a lot more room for error with the way the Cubs are doing it. When teams bottom out, once they are ready to push for and make the playoffs, they are never going to get lucky enough to have players come through the system without any holes on the roster. The Cubs appear to have recognized and addressed holes that they felt they had. And in some cases said, "yeah, that guy that came through the system is good, but this other guy is even better." Even when the Twins were always contending for division crowns in the 00s, there always seemed to be 3-4 roster spots that were substantially below league average and perhaps below replacement level. I would argue, those 3-4 players significantly reduced the Twins chances of making it to, and winning, the World Series. I hope that will not happen this time.

Pirates lost former Twins' prospect Deolis Guerra in the Rule 5. Just noting it.

This thread title is totally a tease thanks to the truncated version in the main forum folder "mlbtraderumors: Twins Reach..."

Not sure if this is your research or not, but regardless of who's it is, it's nice work, and they are points worth making. My reaction to this is very much in line with DaveW's response. In my opinion there are about 5 general ways organizations are run in MLB. 1) Acquire talent by spending huge money - Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Angels, etc 2) Acquire talent by spending some money and trading prospects - Detroit, St Louis, Seattle, Toronto, Cubs, etc 3) Acquire talent via the draft - Houston, KC, etc 4) Movers and shakers with no fear - Tampa, Oakland, Atlanta, Miami, etc 5) The rest. Depending on the year, some teams go about thing slightly differently, but the teams I've listed have been fairly consistent with their approaches. The Twins are firmly in group 5. Group 5 is boring. Group 5 is frustrating. Which isn't to say that it can't work, but given the results from the last 15 years... good sometimes, bad sometimes, never great, it feels like maybe it's time to mix it up a little. I feel like in the last few offseasons they've maybe tried to mix it up. Hughes, Nolasco, Santana were all brought in on free agent contracts that, at the time, were the largest we've handed out. It helped improve an atrocious rotation. But results have been I'd say average. They've traded players, who were either still under team control or had very team friendly contracts (Span, Revere, Hicks). I wasn't a fan of the Hicks trade, but the jury is still out. The others I think we'd say have been relatively poor. At the end of the day, we've been in group 5 for so long that management just isn't that good at dipping its toe in the other groups. Terry Ryan is used to Group 5. Group 5 is safe. Group 5 doesn't get people fired. Terry Ryan is actually not bad at Group 5. But is Group 5 going to get us where we all want to be?

His ultimate value might be two more years of arbitration followed by a QO,

I keep seeing people talk about the Twins "needs" and how few they are and how if we don't fill those needs in the Winter Meetings, there's still plenty of time in the offseason. I agree there is still time in the offseason, but I think we've lowered our expectations for "need". The Twins need an anchor for the rotation, whether that's an ace or just a plain old #1, or a really good #2. The Twins are NEVER mentioned as being in the running for that type of pitcher. All these teams making big moves and improving their team.... They didn't NEED those players. They saw an opportunity to improve their team and they took it. In their minds, actually, they DID need those players, because those are the type of players that take your team to the next level. Treading water for teams like that is tantamount to failure.

They've been staying with the Mientkiewicz's in Chattanooga and commuting to Nashville.

Rumor of Mike Leake to the Nationals (via MLBTradeRumors): Washington has extended Leake an offer, Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com reports on Twitter. He adds that the team is “pushing” to get a deal done, reflecting the earlier report and suggesting that there’s serious interest from the Nats. MLBTR’s Steve Adams profiled Leake recently, explaining that his market appeal lies in a combination of age, health, the lack of a qualifying offer, and solid production. Both Adams and MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes have predicted five-year, $80MM contract for Leake, placing him among the 15 or so free agents with the greatest expected earning power. ------ my commentary ----- 5/80 for this ( http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/leakemi01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-) in the National League

Then... according to this list: http://m.mlb.com/news/article/157830358/top-10-prospects-available-in-rule-5-draft He's in the top 10

The impression I got from a Baseball America article looking at the top 40 or so Rule 5 candidates was that he wasn't likely to get selected. Edited to Add: http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/2015-rule-5-draft-preview-names-remember/ He was literally the shortest write-up of all the players listed

I heard the SD Assistant Ballboy has Minnesota on his list of five no-trade-clause teams

Twins rumors on MLBTraderumors.com have fallen into 3 categories 1) Middle of the road relievers they might be interested in (According to Darren Wolfson) 2) Guys the Twins definitely aren't interested in 3) Can we dump Nolasco

Since the Diamondback keep getting brought up.... They were getting $31M per year in local TV revenue. Now, with their brand new contract, they are getting $80M per year. The Twins are currently under contract with FS North for $29M annually (started in 2012)

What about Rosario's plus arm and plus-plus accuracy?