Brandon

I disagree with your assessment of their rotation. It's plenty deep and they have pitching to spare in that they can trade Ober. You didn't include Rojas. Their bullpen is vastly improved by season's end. They do need to replace Minter and add maybe one more reliever. C/ 1B/ DH is all a black hole now with Jeffers and Bell free agents and Lewis not a top or even average player. Larnarch can DH some and Clemens can be a 1B when Houston comes up. If the Twins can resign Jeffers we might be good though a better hitter getting added to the lineup will help too. Bench is passable. Of are good, Kreidler ok, and Cartini is a sunk cost but can at least be available to play I guess. Gotta let the kids play to see where we really are but the potential is there.

We also get Lopez back from injury, we get full seasons of Jenkins, Culpepper, and Rodriguez. We also acquired Nance at the deadline and he is a middle reliever we have for a full season. Our pen was pretty good after the trade deadline deals our rotation is shaping up well to. On offense we are downgrading at C unless we resign Jeffers. We need improvement at 1B too. Larnarch moves to mostly DH with some OF. I see lots of improvement you choose to overlook.

Depends on the cost. 2 year 16-18 million maybe assuming we get another reliever. But I would look elsewhere first.

I figure the 3.5 million buyout. To be honest, I did forget he had a buyout. I think they could trade the salary. He is a pretty solid backup I think. not a good thrower but a good receiver. We will get a Carlos Correa type return for him.

Killeroff was drafted under Terry Ryan.. and in the draft you take the best player available at the top of the draft period. Lackey was the best player at our pick. It wasn't even a contest. I don't think we would have to eat much of the contract either. A good backup C is hard to find

Or let's hope he accepts the QO. If he stays the Larnarch will likely be traded and I bet they try to trade Cartini and keep Jackson for the backup C. Those moves cancel about 12 million of the 33 million and Roden gets moved to DH.

The Twins made moves for next season during last season. Several relievers, a starter and promoting 2 OF and a SS so doing status quo moves puts the improvements on the three rookies, and not having the crap pitchers that cost us 10 wins or so early in the season. With a good C, and 1B and 2 releivers we should be an 87-92 win team with luck

To keep the budget more inline you might try to lineup on a trade for a low cost reliever instead of FA. I figured Clemens can hold down second till Marek Houston pushes Culpepper over there. No need to trade Ryan for Ramirez. Also Ryan > Sirotka. Bauers doesn't have the track record for the contract you propose. I think you could get similar production much cheaper. Goldschmidt or Suarez come to mind or Run Lewis/ Roden/ Larnarch / or Clemens combo I'm not picking apart all your moves. Just giving you some lower cost options to rework the budget to be more realistic for next season. 135 or max 140 million. We are not willingly going to 150 million.

We have a deep starting pitching rotation going into next season. We rebuilt most of the pen too. Next season we won't get 125 innings of 120 earned runs coming from the failures we cycled through last season on the way to finding some pen pitchers and Woods-Richardson implosion. We had the 2nd highest scoring offense in the league last season. And Buxton's health is key there and the only holes are C, 1B and possibly DH. So we deepen the pen and sign a C and 1B. I mean there are a bunch of depth moves to make and trade Ober for prospects or a releivers.... What am I missing?

Let's see our OF options include Larnarch, Keaschall, Roden, Buxton, Clemens, Martin, Jenkins, and Rodriguez. I think we have back ups for the backups there. At SS we have Kreidler and Culpepper. I guess he better make it. Or Houston is the backup plan here. Maybe keep Lewis to be a backup 3B in case Lee needs to backup SS if Kreidler has to start there for an extended time. Not a lot of depth at SS at the moment.

A sub 3 ERS is fine with me. I doubt any of the others are that much better. The improvements for next season come from a better bullpen from day 1. And health in the now deep rotation and improving youngsters in the lineup. At this point standing pat isn't status quo. For the off-season I expect 1 or two releivers, a C, and maybe a hitter like Suarez or Goldschmidt for 1B and DH

They will offer a QO. It's either a 1 year deal or he signs elsewhere for 50+ million and we get an extra draft pick Either way we get a prize.

I'm not operating above the norm until news breaks that we have a higher floor. There will also be more parity in revenue sharing if that happens. So the last 15-40 million can get spent after the lockout not before. And if payroll does need to go up. The Twins can frontload extensions to anyone, Lopez, Ryan, Jenkins, Culpepper, Keaschall. ....

I like bringing Banda back on a split deal cause he was on a roll when he went down so he can get hitters out and be an effective 6th inning pitcher. Sabato because he was good in AAA last year, you still want to see if there is any more elevation in his game and see if he could be a DH or 1B for the Twins at some point. Especially if they bring Lewis back, I would want potential replacement options for mid season. He could just be a AAAA type player. On a minors deal neither player is a big loss by signing. It's no loss if they don't sign either though.

I hope they resign Banda to a split contract. I also hope Sabato can be resigned to a minor league deal as well. Gray has a nice offensive burst and knocked in a lot of runs initially, but I feel he can move on and we'll be just fine I wonder who else gets chopped in the coming days?