Brandon

The best reason to sign Donaldson? That would give us a lineup where our 3B Donaldson, 1B Sano, C Garver, and DH Cruz all had an OPS at or over .900. Add in other line up members Polanco, Rosario, Buxton, and Kepler who all had OPS over .800. Arreaz should be atleast a .750 OPS and our bench did well too. Add Moreland at 1B instead and our lineup I still strong but with Donaldson we are several levels above the Whitesox Even with all their improvements.

If we are not going to get a proven ace, I would rather have several pitchers who can break out to increase the odds that 1 does.

Do it. Sign both Walker and Wood then trade for Archer. All three could start the season with the Twins if Dobnak, Thorpe, Smeltzer, and Graterol need more minor league time.

I think the team MVP for the Twins will be Sano. He will hit .265/.380/.670. with a full season at 1B after we sign Donaldson. Sano becomes the first Twins hitter to top the 50 HR mark. With a full season of health, Buxton is 30 OAA (Outs Above Average) and has 10 5 star Catches and 20 OF assists. With 50 stolen bases and 21 triples Buxton I a close second in the MVP race. He has a .280/.350/.550 batting line. Polanco just duplicates his 2019 season in 2020 and that is only good for fourth place in the team MVP race as Donaldson comes in and solidifies most of the IF defense with GG Defense at third helping Polanco improve at SS and Donaldson hits 40 HRs and has a batting line of .270/.370/.580. Nelson Cruz starts to regress a little and doesn't quite make the top 5 in team MVP voting next season as being a DH only with only 39 HRs in 520 AB is a downturn from his 41 in 2019 I 100 fewer AB. Still his batting line of .280/.360/.550 is pretty solid. Kepler though is able to win a GG by staying in a corner OF spot.for a full season. Finally breaking through to the 45 HR plateau. With a batting line of .260/.330/.560 he gets 5th in team MVP. Berrios finally wins 20 games but that is more of a product of offensive improvement than an improvement from Berrios. Still his 3.10 ERA is the best of his career. There is great debate as to whether he is now an ace or a 1B starter. Odorizzi has another stellar season. He even pitches 6 innings in a couple starts and 7 innings once. Tyler Clipboard gets the top reliever of the year award as he is the biggest beneficiary of Buxton playing everyday in CF. Nothing but rain drops in the Twins OF so the 45% flyball rate gets caught. Including 6 HRs get reeled in with over the wall highlight catches. In fact 7 of Buxton's 5 star Catches comes with Clipboard on the mound. Because of this Clipboard pitches 72 innings and gives up only 12 earned runs. This season doesn't even register in the top ten team MVP discussion. Note: the Twins win the 2020 World Series.

The Whitesox look so much better on paper until you look further at how awful their bench appears. How bad will their team be affected by an injury to a starting player? The Twins just need to replace Cron and Gibson to return to status quo of a team that won a 101 games. That seems more than likely. The question for us is can we find that ace starter for the playoffs and can we sign Donaldson to be our improved offensive and defensive player. The answer to those two questions could push us to that 110 win team....

Schoop was already internally replaced and Cron is easy to replace. The questions now is are we able to sign Donaldson for our lineup which is a big upgrade and this one atleast looks competitive and what do we do about the one more spot in the rotation? Both answers could be huge upgrades or at worst someone to help keep status quo.

Paul Molitor was manager of the year a year before getting fired.

The Whitesox don't have any margin of error or injury. Even if they sign Edwin Encarnation.

I don't think signing those veterans I FA kept the Royals from resigning their core at free agency. The 5 year 80 million from the Brewers go Cain to leave, didn't Moustakas resign then get traded? They resigned Gordon and tried to resign their 1B to sizable contracts. Also you only name two prospects the Royals traded that won't make a team either. They went over 140 million in payroll to win. Shields also got a lot of money as a free agent. If the Twins max out their payroll this year, cruz and Gonzales comes off the books freeing up 22 million. We also can trade or nontender Rosario. And Odorizzi 17.8 million is also off the books. And we have multiple prospects ready to step in. So signing an aging free agent can hurt, it shouldn't criple us from making moves and shortening our competitive window.

It looks like the trade route is the way we are going. I do hope we sign Donaldson. I like the idea of going into the playoffs with the number 1 ranked offense. Solid rotation and bullpen.

If the Twins don't make the upgrades, then it makes it harder for me to justify upgrading my tickets to the ones that cost 3 & 4 times as much. That may not seem like much to the Twins owners but I know I'm not the only one who has to make deductions like this. Do I pay for the $10. Ticket, $25, or $100. If I feel the Twins are all in I will gladly buy the $100 tickets. Right now I am at $25 ticket. I want to feel like I should buy the expensive tickets to keep from missing out.

The next rookie who will slide in and be successful while being under the radar is Tyler Wells. Who remembers him from a year ago?

Clipboard is also a flyball pitcher which bodes well with our OF

We still need 1 more veteran starter. If we were rebuilding it would be different but since we are not we can afford 1 spot in the rotation for a rookie. We already have another open spot for 6 weeks or 5 or so starts. Let's get that 1 more starter whether it be Ryu, Keuchel, or even Terehen. And I will happily trust the 5th starter spot to a rookie.

The teams we could potentially trade for a pitcher due to budget or team is rebuilding include: SF, Col, Pittsburgh, Miami, Boston, KC, Det, Sea. Maybe Cubs.

I like signing Romo. I am good with signing another mid reliever as well. Kintzlers is available. As is Swarzak. Also I hope we go get either Ryu and sign a cheap 1B, or Donaldson, Wood and Smyley, or trade for an ace and sign a cheap 1B. And call it an off-season

I was just looking at Kintzlers stats and was thinking, we could sign him too. I doubt he costs too much.

or 80 million max. We were close but He just preferred everywhere else.

So on mlbtraderumors.com they report Washington is thinking to offer Donaldson 90 million over 4 years. We should be able to beat that if we don't sign Ryu and go with Keuchel or Wood instead. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019/12/nationals-rumors-bidding-josh-donaldson-bidding.html

D C. Twins,. Last year we had three teams tanking. Next year we may have two depending on what Chicago does. With 19 games against each means we should win 70% against a tanking team. That's 13.3 wins against each tanking team. Against a team competing we should fall in the 60-40 or 55-45 depending on how competitive they are so against the Sox I would go so far as to say we should win around 55% of the time with more moves by both teams. That comes out to 10.45 wins. Close to a 3 win difference. Allow for variance and now we are a 96-98 win team without regression. With regression. I would say we are a 90-95 win team. And the 87-92 is if we are in a division where there are no tanking teams.

If we want to upgrade it's gonna be for someone like Donaldson or if LA signs Donaldson we could trade for Turner.

Why trade for Seager when we can sign a similar 1B for 5-8 million. Lots of those to choose from...Moreland, Cron, Smoak, Thames to name a few.

I can see him here in Minnesota for the next 3 seasons. His career wont be long 4 to 6 seasons max. He is a solid 3rd string C that can play other positions. if he can OPS close to .700 he is OK as a back up. adding C means he can get away with a .680 OPS and still be valuable. I put the over / under on career at bats at 1500. I just hope he gets to do something fun in a World Series while he is on the team. That way he will be remembered forever in Minnesota.

With Rendon and Simmons in the IF, Keuchel makes a lot of sense. He won't cost as much either. While Bumgarner and Ryu would be nice. They already have Pujols, Trout, and now Rendon on the books for close to 100 million. That makes me think Tehran would be the 2nd pitcher they prefer, or someone in that range who can pitch 180 innings

The Twins would likely want another good bullpen arm or two. Romo and or Hudson or Bellatance.