Brandon

The list of who would be dropped should come from the following: Albers Diamond Worely Logan Darnell Brian Deunsing (non tender candidate) Edgar Ibarra Eric Fryer Hermann Colabello Mastroianni Parmelee I would think they would drop one of the starters with no options left first like Worely. They may nontender Deunsing though I doubt it. Ibarra, Darnell, and Albers are not considered strong prospects so I can see them being taken off to see if they can make it through waivers. Each of the offensive players still hold a little value though Mastroianni could be one to let go. Its nice to see the AAAA talent shrinking on the roster as we currently have 11 and that is expected to go to single digits and with all of the talent coming down the pipeline it will get interesting to see how creative we need to get to make the 40 man roster.

Right now we have the rotation and bullpen to win 82-88 games but the offense to win 65- 70 on a good year. I am gonna go with 75 at this point as next season still has a lot of development to do. The key to our record next year is obviously going to be our offense we'll go as far as they take us. Assuming we sign AJ to catch we need Sano to start out strong, Arcia to hit well, and Presley to get on base at a .350 or so clip to have an offense capable of .500 ball next year. The potential is there and that's a good thing but there are so many variables until they actually hit.

I think what the Twins should do depends on how they feel about Gibson. If the Twins feel Gibson is an answer they should be done for the offseason if not then They should sign someone like Pelfry or Capuano to a 1 or 2 year deal for around 5-6 million per. I suspect Meyer will be ready around June / July so we can trade Corriea if need be or replace an injured player or Gibson if he isn't cutting it. The rotation shapes up for 2014 this way. Nolasco Hughes Corriea Deduno FA or Gibson Diamond/ Worely/ Hendricks/ Albers/ May / Johnson of the above listed pitchers Diamond or Worely could be lost since they are out of options but one of these guys is the likely 6th and 7th starter next year I suspect that why we got Johnson. I think once the Twins sign a Catcher they will be done for the offseason though I would like to see them sign a better hitter than Doumit if there is one available for the DH spot. Mark Reynolds comes to mind as someone we could sign inexpensively to play some 3B/ DH/ 1B. He would cost what maybe 1-2 million with some incentives at most. He would be a huge power upgrade but comes with low average and lots of k's so it wouldn't be a huge upgrade or bug deal if we didn't get him. Maybe Buxton can be up by the allstar break and push Willingham to DH too.

I think they will keep the players they have options on and let one of the 3 out of option pitchers go or get dealt for minor league filler with potential upside. I say this because we could potentially loose 3 players in the spring if they don't make the roster which is kindof a lot.

Also Pierzinski K's in only 15% of his AB in his career so that will help lower the team K total a lot as we were historically bad in that department last year.

The big question about Hughes is going to be his durability. THe other issue would be the HRs he gives up which is going to be helped by the fact he is in target field and the last 2 years he averaged 2.2 and 2.6 walks per 9 innings. Hughes still throws what 92.4 MPH and K's 7.6 per 9. The big concern looking into next season is do we have a good enough swingman available to start when we need a 6th starter when someone gets hurt and more importantly now is how much is our offense going to improve next year as the Twins were 14th in the 15 team AL last season in runs scored.

I like the signing though I am a believer in Deduno if he is healthy for the 5th starter making the rotation for next season Nolasco Hughes Corriea Dedunno Gibson and others Though how likely is it that either Deduno or Hughes miss time for injuries? and We can always trade Corriea from a position of strength during the season if Gibson and or Meyer look to be ready. So signing 1 more pitcher is an option except Worely and Diamond are likely to be lost as they are out of options (though Diamond might be able to stay if they nontender Deunsing to save a buck or 2 and pitch in the pen) Also if they sign Pelfry and AJ Pierzinski then our payroll will likely be just over 90 million next year. We need to go buy some tickets and support that.

2 pitchers for 20 million per season. That brings us close to 79 million for next season. They still plan on signing a Catcher and it looks like they are getting closer to AJ Pierzinski signing. I am guessing he'll get a 1 or 2 year deal in the 7-9 million per season range. There is still talk of signing Pelfry and if all of that happens I may have to fly out to Minnesota and buy some tickets to games this year to financially support this type of spending behavior. (Yes I know my 100 in ticket sales plus concessions won't pay the contracts but its more than I spent the last 10 years In Minnesota).

Thank you John, THat is exactly what I was going for in this article. When I saw there was still this huge run differential I was surprised and didn't bother to look at the Pythag Expectation. This exercise was a back of Napkin just to see what a 4.000 era type for 200 innings would have meant vs what we pitched last year in terms of results. The 2nd 200 innings were harder to figure out so I guestimated. The offense however will have to pick it up a lot regardless of who we sign for pitching is what I took from this exercise. so my question is this for 2014. Where does the offensive improvement come from? We would need to score 80 more runs plus sign another 200 inning 4.00 era pitcher at this point just to be around .500 based on the Pythag Expectation.

Before his last 3 starts Deduno had a 3.18 ERA or Great rating as you put it. He can be a great 4th/5th starter who could win 12-15 games at the back of the rotation at 500k next year. The key is the health of his shoulder. He has the Stuff of an ace and the control of a AA pitcher. If he controls what he throws just enough he will be successful.

Instead of Trading for Bailey if we sign another SP (any number of them are still available) we could trade any of Gibson, Rosario, Theilbar, Swarzak, Pressly, Burton, Fien, Deunsing, Worely, Diamond, or even Corriea and even low A players galore for another starting pitcher. There are lots of trade scenarios for Tampa Bay and Chicago Cubs

If we get Hughes on a 2 year 16 million contract and Salty on a 3 year 27-30 million that may leave enough money available to wait out the market and get a 3rd pitcher at a lower price like Capuano for 1 and 6-8 million or Arroyo on a 2 year 16 -18 million deal. Or some other pitcher on a discounted rate which is probably a little overkill on the staff but makes for a good problem to have.

All evidence points to the Twins signing or getting another starter if you read all of the articles being written.

I can see Terry Ryan trading some of our depth at spring training for another organizational need. It wont be a big deal just a AAAA pitcher for a AAAA OF for example. But I suspect he will want to size them up during spring training before he makes those trades.

[TABLE] RK TEAM W L ERA IP QS ER R BB SO 1 Kansas City 86 76 3.45 1448.1 95 555 601 469 1208 2 Oakland 96 66 3.56 1452.0 92 574 625 428 1183 3 Detroit 93 69 3.61 1462.2 108 587 624 462 1428 4 Texas 91 72 3.62 1463.1 77 589 636 498 1309 5 Tampa Bay 92 71 3.74 1464.0 80 608 646 482 1310 6 Boston 97 65 3.79 1454.0 95 613 656 524 1294 7 Cleveland 92 70 3.82 1441.1 73 611 662 554 1379 8 NY Yankees 85 77 3.94 1447.1 84 633 671 437 1233 9 Chicago Sox 63 99 3.98 1455.0 90 643 723 509 1249 10 Baltimore 85 77 4.20 1453.0 78 678 709 473 1169 11 LA Angels 78 84 4.23 1457.2 87 685 737 533 1200 12 Toronto 74 88 4.25 1452.0 67 685 756 500 1208 13 Seattle 71 91 4.31 1465.0 83 702 754 478 1297 14 Minnesota 66 96 4.55 1450.1 62 733 788 458 985 15 Houston 51 111 4.79 1440.0 75 766 848 616 1084 [/TABLE]

Stats from which are shown in first comment as I couldn't post in the story because they took up too much space. http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/pitching/year/2013/seasontype/2/league/al In 2013 the Twins ranked at the bottom of the AmericanLeague in ERA. For 2014 we just signed a200 inning pitcher likely to have an ERA in the high 3.00’s maybe 4.00 how will that affect our pitching going into next year and how much will having a 2ndpitcher such as Capuano if not Garza affect the staff as well? Signing the first pitcher was HUGE. Last year we had 30 starts go to DeVries, Hernandez, Walters, and Hendriks for a combined total of innings 158.33 innings with 123 earned runs allowed. I know that there would likely have been a few spot starts with these guys this year and there were a few games they played well in, however replacing that production with the production of a pitcher who gave up 82 runs in 199 innings will end up up saving the team approximately 50-60 earned runs off of the total team ERA. With the 2ndpitcher it becomes a little harder to determine the effect without diving into different points of the season when decisions could be made such as would theTwins pulled the plug on Pelfry earlier with these 2 new pitchers on the staffas well? How many starts would Gibson receivedas bad as he pitched last year? How manystarts would Diamond have received? (remember he started off the same as lastyear through 5 starts then went down hill). I am guestimating that we would have saved another 20 – 30 runs even with Capuano starting over what we had last year (assuming 165 innings and 4.00ERA). (This would be a fun debatable point) That would have had the team giving up 643 – 663 earned runs in approx. 1450 innings for an ERA around 3.99 to 4.12. We would be just shy of having a 90 win potential pitching staff as Cleveland had the highest team ERA at 3.82 for 90 game winning teams. With Deduno likely to get more than 160 innings this year if his arm holds up and improvements from Gibson and the arrival of Meyer at some point next year and a bullpen that is not over taxed with reinforcements (numerous arms available inAAA) if necessary. Also I don’t know much about Johnson (the pitcher acquired from Pittsburgh a week or so ago) but I would rather he be our 6th/7th starter who gets calledup for spot starts with his 90+ fastball over Walters and his 88-89 mph fastball. I suspect we will likely have that pitching staff next season that can allow us to win 90 games if our offense produces enough to get us there. We scored only 614 runs last season good for 14th place in the AL. And that looks to be our big question fornext season once Terry Ryan finishes with the pitching staff.

Dougie has a quote from Garza that he isn't concerned that he lost a suitor as he states the Twns still have money to spend. Also I am glad that for once we are pillaging talent from other organizations via free agency instead of being other teams farm teams.

Here is our rotation as it stands now. 1: Nolasco 2: 3: Deduno 4: Corriea 5: Gibson/Meyer/Diamond/ Worely/ Albers/ Johnson and more with Meyer on the way at the allstar break. Now we can focus on signing Campuano or Pelfry and a catcher.

I was about to leave work now i have to sit here and find out who it is.

Wow 3 posts at the same time.

See mlb traderumors.com post the Twins on verge of signing someone significant. http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2013/11/twins-nearing-major-free-agent-signing.html

FYI this just posted http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2013/11/twins-nearing-major-free-agent-signing.html doesnt say who yet so stay tuned.

Here's a couple of ideas. 1. save option for when I am typing a post but need to put the project on hold for a day or so. (I am not a fast typer). 2. links to stats and research sites so we can go strait to the numbers to make are arguements and research faster and easier. 3. an interactive spreadsheet so we can download and update trade/ roster/ payroll ideas and post it. 4. Twins Daily Beer. nothing like a cold Brew when typing up a post and drinking an ice cold Twins Daily Beer in a bottle. ( at least 6% alc by volume) Also served at Bonnes future bar. 5. I'll have to go back to the drawing board for some more great ideas.

me too.

I view the Twins willingsness to forgo the draftpick to mean if they can get a discounted player due to draft compensation then they would do it. a la Lohse. Otherwise whats the Twins incentive to forgo the draft pick? There are lots of pitchers to sign even if they signed Pelfry and Campuano that would still represent a huge upgrade to the rotation. (Signing just Pelfry and Campuano will upset lots of Twins fans but it would be an upgrade and that shows how many choices we have to get the job done). THere's probably 20-30 pitchers that would represent an upgrade available at this point.