ThejacKmp

I would much rather see the Twins take a shot at Johan Santana. His days of starting are over but wouldn't he be nice as a left handed reliever out of the pen, a place of need for the Twinkies? A nice little bookend to his career?

First of all .227/.261/.432 in September. You maybe included October? Also, last 20 games: .273/.314/.515/.829. That's a small sample but so is extending it to all of September. Months are just as arbitrary. Buxton started playing better end of the season. That may or may not carry over but the other dude is right and you are wrong.

I hope you're not talking about Brian Dozier because the plural in "a penchant for hot starts and slow finishes" indicates that there have been more than one of these types of seasons which is categorically untrue.

Wait is professional baseball more white than youth baseball? I can't think that that is true. Hicks has spent his whole life dealing with race, I'm sure, but I can't see how professional baseball was suddenly some different beast. Yes Black and Latino players are also a minority. But there is a long history of African American players in the majors and a long history of African American players helping each other out. MLB teams are (belatedly) getting official Spanish translators for every team but most teams have had a coach and players who can help Latino players transition. Heck, it seems like half the Twins team now speaks Spanish, which is awesome. Before Kepler was signed, three Germans had been signed by MLB teams, all the year before. Only one was in the minors for over a year. He ran into no Germans at any stage of the minors - maybe a teammate who spoke a bit of high school German? The food was different, he was thrown into U.S. high school - he had to adjust to a whole new culture on the fly. At age 16. He basically did the transition Park will make next year (minus the language) but a decade younger. What bothers me about what you're saying is that it focuses so much attention on race rather than experience. Race plays a big part of experience but you're making it paramount. Aaron Hicks grew up in the United States and is comfortable with its culture. He's grown up in a baseball-centric world and spent his whole life playing against the same kinds of people he plays against in the minors. Professional baseball was a continuation of his experience to date. Kepler may be a pasty white dude but he'd had none of that experience and the transition to professional ball was absolutely more jarring. This isn't the place to have some discussion of what race means in baseball and society but I don't think Max Kepler being white detracts from the fact that he had to undergo a sudden cultural transition upon moving to the states that Aaron Hicks never did (if you want to view it through a racial cultural lens, he's spent his whole life transitioning into that culture).

Here is the evidence. Sorry to use ERA but FIP in the minors isn’t something I care to go find since baseball reference doesn’t have it. ERA is good enough, especially with the K rates. Elizabethton: Berrios (age 18) 1.29 ERA, 14.1 K/9 Duffey (age 21) 1.42 ERA, 12.8 K/9 Cedar Rapids: Berrios (age 19) 3.99 ERA, 8.7 K/9 Duffey (age 22) 2.78 ERA, 7.3 K/9 Fort Myers: Berrios (Age 20) 1.97 ERA, 10.2 K/9 Duffey (Age 22) 4.02 ERA, 6.0 K/9 New Britain/Chattanooga: Berrios (Age 20) 3.22 ERA, 8.2 K/9 Duffey (Age 23/24) 3.41 ERA, 7.6 K/9 Rochester: Berrios (Age 21) 3.08 ERA, 9.1 K/9 Duffey (Age 24) 2.75 ERA, 7.5 K/9 Duffey has also given up more HR/9 at every step of the way. The key thing to me is the age thing – Duffey is young to be making it to the bigs and Berrios is over three years younger but Berrios is still better the whole way up. Duffey still has had a very nice minor league career (he’s recovered nicely from a dip in strikeout rate which I'm sure has a rational "he was working on his changeup" explanation) but only one of these guys looks elite. Duffey is merely a very good prospect (for which we are grateful) while Berrios is a guy you can have Cy Young dreams about.

Duffey was promoted because he had more experience (AAA at the time) than Berrios (AA at the time), because the Twins didn't want Berrios to pitch too many innings and due to service time considerations – not because he was better than Berrios. You have to remember that Duffey originally came up for just a spot start or two due to injury but as he pitched well and guys who had been scuffling were unable to come back, the Twins stuck with him. It’s kind of a strange thing where the guy you're most excited about (Berrios) doesn't get the call because you don't want to start that clock for just a few starts (if someone had been done for the year I imagine you would have seen Berrios because it would be worth the service time/innings things to see him push the Twins towards the playoffs). To Duffey's credit, he took the chance and excelled, putting himself in a position where he'll need a terrible spring to not make the MLB rotation. (Which is funny because if the MLB staff had been healthy last year and Duffey wasn't called upon, he'd have no shot at the rotation this year because Berrios would be the guy up first - he'd be stuck as the second guy up). Don't get me wrong, I’m super stoked about Duffey and if he can turn into a solid #3 starter (or maybe a poor man’s #2?) it will be amazing for the Twins. His emergence is one of the best storylines of last year for the Twins. But he’s not better than Berrios. J.O. is three years younger and has been better than Duff Man at every step of the organizational ladder. He has borderline elite strikeout capability and again, is sniffing the majors at age 21. Berrios could be a #1 starter if everything breaks his way. Duffey is a fun prospect but Berrios is better in every sense of the word. Service time is the only thing holding him back at this point.

1) "Frustrated that no stadium was forthcoming and that the team was losing money, Mr. Pohlad threatened to sell the team in 1997, and in 2001, he offered to sell the Twins to his fellow major league owners and fold the franchise." That's from his obituary. I could get you a ton of other times that he claimed the Twins were losing money - but refused to open the books to prove it. The Packers are publicly owned and they do depressingly well. We're not talking about having shareholders run it - the Twins organization would still have a GM and the same staff and run the same. The only difference would be that the books would be wide open and any profits received from public spending on stadiums would go to those who coughed up the money. It would actually have been easier to get a competitive Twins stadium built if the taxpayers knew that it was an investment in the long term profits of the team.

Nope. Not true. The Pohlad’s have gained an insane profit on the Twins. If I owned my house free and clear (I wish) I wouldn’t have that $300K or whatever. But I would be able to draw on the value of that property in the form of a mortgage or a loan. Thus, the immense appreciation of the Twins has turned into a large tangible benefit for the Pohlads. Yeah the book isn’t closed on the transaction but it’s just not true from an accounting sense to say that there has not been a profit. Value is value and not all wealth comes in the form of cash.

See this is where I have three issues: (1) All we have to go with is the Pohlad's word. The Pohlads have never opened their books - they said they were losing money and therefore they needed a stadium. We never had a way to confirm this (and this is true all over baseball, not just with the Pohlads) because they never had to prove it since they’re a private company. We just took them at their word and bought them a new stadium. Anyone who trusts Carl Pohlad’s word that the Twins were losing money should investigate how Carl made the money in the first place - foreclosing on farmers during the Great Depression. Or look at his tax fraud case, where he claimed the Twins were only worth $24 million - the IRS vehemently disagreed. This is a guy who never met a book he couldn't cook; a cold hearted businessman in every sense of the word. (2) I also don't get the "We need to make money on the Twins" party line the Pohlad’s (and other owners) have spouted for years. A sports franchise is a luxury item akin to a rare sports car or a sweet mansion – it’s not about how much money it makes you or whether it makes a profit, it's about the status symbol of owning it, the business deals that come along because you have access to sports glory. The Pohdads have tons of other businesses and sources of wealth, the Twins’ profits are a drop in the ocean. Run the darn thing as a nonprofit ya cheapskates. (3) Even if you trust the Pohlads that they aren't making money and even if you agree that a sports team isn't a luxury item and should make a healthy profit like any business, it's still B.S. The real value in sports franchises is in the appreciation of the asset. It’s the equivalent of complaining that the state needs to build you a new climate-controlled building to house all of the art in your private art museum because people aren't paying enough to come look at it and you're losing money on maintenance. Yeah, maybe you're losing money every year (if we take you at your word) but the value of that art is going up through the roof. Smilin' Carl paid $44 million for the Twins in 1984 - adjusted for inflation that is $91.25 million. The Twins are currently value at $895 million and you can bet that they would fetch a good bit more with the bull market for sports franchises globally (see the Bucks, Milwaukee). Even if Carl had run the team at a $20 million loss every year he owned it, he'd still have been $200 million ahead. And there's no way he ran it at a loss. These owners always claim they’re losing money but none of them are looking to sell a franchise. And when they do (Clippers, Bucks, Dodgers) the money involved always blows the supposed value out of the water. --------- This is why I've come up with the best solution. Sports are a private monopoly propped up by the government allowing them to squash competition – the NFL is a nonprofit for pete’s sake. Now I'm a pretty solid libertarian, fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I have no love of socialism - I teach high school and my favorite lesson all year is when I show the kids why socialism doesn’t work using their lunch program. They eat it up, pardon the pun. But I’ll stand with socialism on one point - we should nationalize the crap out of all professional sports so the taxpayers own them. We won’t steal them; we’ll pay fair market value. No one is getting robbed, the rich old white men can go back to counting their money. But that way, we can open the books and see what’s going on. If a stadium is really needed to make the thing more profitable, the taxpayers can make a decision to build one and make sure that they reap the rewards. You could support schools, roads and college education with profits from pro teams just like you do with taxes on alcohol, tobacco and marijuana. If an area doesn’t feel like supporting the team anymore or can’t make money, they can sell it to Los Angeles or London or wherever and the taxpayers can reap the massive windfall of the constantly appreciating value of a sports franchise. The point is that we have no concept of how the money works in baseball because it’s a truly unique American industry – private with closed books but massive amounts of public assistance. This isn’t a fair game and it’s being run at the expense of fans and taxpayers. It’s time to pull the curtains back on the Wizard and take control ourselves. There’s no reason for 100 old white dudes to take in all of this money, shifting the risk associated with stadium construction onto the taxpayers. Let’s nationalize pro sports.

To follow up with Arcia being a more important part of the Twins long-term success than we might think, if Mauer continues to struggle (and I’ve still got hope he comes back but its fading fast!) and moves into some sort of a bench/platoon/elder-stateman role in 2017, Arcia provides some nice insurance. If he seizes the day this year at age 24, the Twins could have a super fun lineup in 2017: R Buxton CF L Kepler RF R Sano 3B L Arcia DH R Park 1B L Rosario LF R Dozier 2B S Escobar SS R Murphy C You can easily quibble about the order there since that’s super hard to predict a year out (Arcia in the 4 hole is a best case scenario, Rosario and Kepler could easily flip, Dozier in the 7 hole seems like something the Twins might not do to a veteran fan favorite) but that’s a really fun right handed/left handed mix however you arrange it. And there’s so much power there. That’s also not even taking into consideration guys like Vargas, ABW, Polanco, Danny Santana or a rebounding Mauer being in the picture. Arcia is a key guy for the Twins future who is a bit forgotten. Rosario and Kepler and maybe Mauer are all guys who could potentially be really good LH hitters in 2017 but none of them profiles to be a middle of the order 30 HR/yr slugger like Arcia. If he develops this year that lineup gets super scary in late innings when you can't match relievers on them easily.

That's judging two players on a pretty narrow basis. This argument doesn’t pass muster when you examine it closer unless the sole way you judge players is by home runs – which I hope we’ve moved beyond. Power alone does not make a better player. Arcia has objectively been far, far better at every single rung of the ladder: Elizabethton: Arcia OPS 1.096, ABW .805 Cedar Rapids: Arcia OPS 1.124, ABW .844 Fort Myers: Arcia OPS .875, ABW .743 AA Ball: Arcia OPS .955, ABW .807 Arcia has also hit well at the AAA and major league levels for extended periods of time, which ABW has not done. And that’s not a matter of age since Arcia is only four or five months older (that shocked me by the way, I thought Arcia was much older than he actually was). ABW is likely a better fielding option than Arcia but it’s not like he has CF range – his best attribute is “not Arcia” in the field. Since you’re talking about a 4th OF who is likely to be replacing Miguel Sano a good chunk of the time (I assume Sano will move to DH/1B/3B whenever rest/injury allows), you’re not talking about some insane drop off in the Twins OF. And whatever that fielding advantage is, it is more than alleviated by Arcia’s significantly more polished track record. So I can’t see any reasonable argument where ABW is a better 4th OF option that Arcia. And that’s not even factoring in things like Arcia being out of options and ABW being chock full of options or that ABW hasn’t hit above AA pitching and can’t stop striking out. That said, don’t paint me into the ABW hater camp on Twins Daily - I’m super excited for him too. With some work on pitch recognition he could be an all-star. You can teach patience, you can’t teach that crazy amount of power. Even if he never does work out the strikeouts, he profiles as a really fun 4th or 5th OF and pinch hitter. So I’m not talking crap about ABW – I’m just saying that it’s ludicrous to say that ABW should be above Arcia on the depth charts. There is a very sizable gap between the two players and the Twins would be insane to rate ABW over Arcia. Arcia is criminally underrated - he is an elite former prospect who is incredibly young and has a really nice track record. Would not be surprised to see him have a breakout year if there is an early injury that gives him playing time.

As far as your last question goes, should we forbid him from changing his walk-up-to-the-plate music or from changing his sock color? Because those have an equal chance of screwing up his swing. If he doesn't hit well it won't be because of where he plays or what deodorant he uses or if he starts dating Jessica Simpson. It will be because the league figures something out about how to attack him.

(1) Michael Cuddyer is a terrible example because he had arguably his greatest stretch as a Twin in 2009 when Morneau went down and he switched to a new position, 1B, for the remainder of the season. Rather than being overmatched by his new position, he raked (OBP as 1B 1.052; as RF .817) and helped drag that Twins team back to the playoffs. He got MVP votes out of it. Clearly position doesn’t matter to Michael Cuddyer, who is comfortable playing wherever. (2) But let’s pretend that’s not the same because it’s when he was an old vet. So let’s go look at Cuddy as a youngster. Michael Cuddyer's OPS+ while playing mostly third from 2001 to 2005 was about 100 making him a pretty solid player - he didn't go into the tank because he played third. A more likely explanation for him hitting better in 2006 was that he turned 27 and entered his prime. (3) And let’s take an even closer look at Cuddy’s splits from that pre-RF time (2002 to 2005). In every year but one he hit significantly better when playing 3B than when playing corner OF. And that one season doesn’t weight it down - in aggregate he hit much better at 3B than as a corner OF. (4) And Cuddy is a terrible example for this anyways. Cuddyer played mostly 2B and 3B with the Twins in the minors, with less than 100 games in the OF. So he was moved to a position he was less comfortable with (like Sano may be asked to do) and then he hit better. A better example would be to find a player who played well at his natural position, was asked to move somewhere else where he sucked, and then moved back to his natural position and was great. The anti-Danny Santana really. (5) Did you ask a bunch of major leaguers and scouts? What is this feedback? How do you know so many managers and players? Because otherwise it’s just you making that claim and that doesn’t pass muster. That whole last bit sounds like one of those terrible columns full of platitudes and clichés that we all grew up reading in the Pioneer Press or Star Tribune. The point is that there is no evidence to show that a player’s performance in the field has huge effects on his hitting. As long as Sano is playing everyday he’ll be fine – being able to play OF makes that more likely and is thus a good thing.

But it's not on me to name an example, it's on the person claiming that struggling in the field will effect a player's hitting to provide evidence to support their claims. My whole point is there is no evidence for the claim, be it statistical or anecdotal. The fact that you can't come up with one example is evident that there is really nothing to back up this idea. There's a difference between a fact-based argument and "Well I think that this will happen." Evidence is what turns an opinion into a rational argument - and it's missing in this case. And throwing made up numbers about HRs dropping isn't evidence, it's just a fairy tale. Baseball teams shouldn't be run by the Brothers Grimm.

City taxes are high and you pay them if you work in NYC - so people who commute from Jersey or Connecticut still pay them. I am currently not making diddly but back then was in a different line of work and experienced the higher tax brackets. MN is significantly nicer than NYC.

You're not factoring in New York City taxes, which bump NYC above Minnesota. I know this because I lived there for two years and had to get very creative with my tax filings in order to evade them. But as my Grandpa always says, if you're not getting audited every few years, you're not doing it right.

I firmly believe we'll see Sano-Buxton-Rosario in the OF. Time will tell. Even if Buxton doesn't make the team because the Twins are insane I think you'll see Sano-Mastrionni/Benson/Sweeny-Rosario in the OF. This concept that Arcia has a spot without Buxton has never made sense to me. He would need a monster spring to get a starting job locked up. Otherwise I think the Twins have shown that they are willing to have a CF who can't hit much start the year with the idea that a young gun will come up. And I like Arcia. I just think he's a 4th OF this year pretty much no matter what.

Even two years in Kepler was an incredibly raw prospect. If you had dropped him into the amateur draft at age 18 he would not have sniffed the first round (interesting side topic on where he might have gone - my guess would be that 3rd/4th round where players with tons of potential but a low floor go?) like Hicks. Even with two years working with the Twins, Kepler was nowhere near the prospect Hicks was going in the mid-first round. And that's why I think it's pretty useless to compare the two. The type of prospects they were, the reasons for their original struggles and the nature of their AA year (Kepler's is far superior to Hicks' in every measurable way) all make it a pretty iffy comparison. And that's even ignoring the fact that saying "Player A did this so therefore we should worry Player B will too" is always a weird argument. Denard Span made a jump from the minors to the majors after an abnormally strong year (much more dramatic of a turn around than Hicks) and has been a very good major leaguer ever since he made the jump. That doesn't mean that Kepler will do well because Span did well anymore than it means Kepler will struggle because Hicks struggled. Kepler has a pretty unique path to where he is now and some pretty good evidence (both statistical and scouting/background wise) to support that he will be all right. Using Hicks as a cautionary tale seems dubious to me.

Sano has never been a guy who lacked confidence. He has professional at bats and isn't somebody prone to bouts of self-doubt (like a Hicks for instance). Even when he isn't hitting the ball, he goes up there and takes quality at bats. I have no worries that he is some head case who will fall apart because he's around grass instead of dirt. Also, name me a player whose hitting suffered because his fielding wasn't good. Even Knoblauch continued to hit when he became unable to throw to first. Guys regularly take their hitting woes out to the field but I can't remember seeing it go the other way around. If Sano doesn't hit this year it won't be because he's in the OF, it will be because pitchers are figuring out how to attack him. That said, I agree that Plouffe should also get some time in the outfield and I imagine the Twins will do some of that in spring training. He played 31 games out there in the majors in 2011 and 2012 and while I don't remember him being good, the stats and memory don't find anything to awful.

It's not Kepler's youth we're talking about, we're talking about experience. Those two aren’t the same. Hicks grew up playing in CA, home of the best youth baseball competition the world has to offer. His dad played in the high minors and he grew up in a culture where most of the kids he knew played baseball – and if they didn’t at least they knew how to play. He was scouted starting in his sophomore year and was drafted #14 overall with comparisons to Daryl Strawberry and Adam Jones – the real question was whether he was an outfielder or a pitcher. He did not have to make a cultural transition or move across the world when starting professional baseball. Kepler grew up in Germany, where most kids don’t know how to play baseball, let alone play it at a high level. His parents were ballerinas with no experience in MLB and while he played in top German leagues, the competition was incredibly weak. He had great potential and a nice build but was rated extremely raw by scouts and was a gamble since no one signed players out of Europe. He moved to the U.S. by himself at age 16, making an extreme cultural transition while finishing high school and working out with the Twins. Those are two insanely different paths. Hicks was a highly touted and polished high school prospect who had some struggles in the low minors before having a good AA season which earned him a promotion to the majors. Kepler was a raw prospect from Europe of all places who was expected to struggle. He did that but then had a fantastic AA season, fulfilling the Twins hopes that after a period of adjustment to American life and to playing against elite competition for the first time, he would develop into a stud prospect. Hicks’ path after AA success and Kepler’s future after AA success are not a good place for comparison because the context within which each happened is so different. When Hicks had his success, there were reasons to doubt it based on him struggling in the lower minors (though Span did the same thing and was fine). Kepler, on the other hand, is a prospect following the path the Twins hoped he would. It’s basically a story of regaining prospect status versus developing into a prospect. Kepler’s success may be a mirage but it won’t have anything to do with Hicks’s experience before him. To argue that is mistaken and neglects the historical context of the two seasons.

I see the parallels but I don't know that they're entirely spot on. Kepler is different than every other prospect because he came from Germany and did not have the background a typical prospect does - he had to learn a lot about the game. So it was expected that he would struggle some at first and then hopefully take a jump. Hicks was a first round pick overall who struggled for years and then took a jump. That's a horse of a different color - he was not expected to struggle as much as he did. His jump was also more suspicious because there isn't an easy explanation like there is for Kepler. I also think it's important to take the person into perspective. Loved me some Hicks but he had difficulty with the emotional side of the game. That's not to blame him - I'm surprised more guys don't have issues with this. They're in their early 20s and they're dealing with pressures and publicity no other person their age deals with. So not blaming him but he had a tendency to magnify the bad and make it worse. I've seen and heard nothing similar about Kepler - scouts and Twins staff have been marveling for years (long before he took his jump) about his poise and his ability to handle the mental things that Hicks had trouble with initially. That's not to say that Kepler may not struggle some and your suggestion that he gets some time in AAA is apt from a "prove it" perspective and from a service time perspective. But I just think it's important to notice that Kepler's jump was expected in a way that Hicks' wasn't and that Kepler's poise differentiates him from the Aaron Hicks Experience.

To be fair, no Major League team does this. It's not a Twins Way thing, it's a baseball thing. That will likely change in the next few years and I wouldn't be completely surprised if the Twins were the team that did it - you need a right hander and left hander with closing experience with the team. There can't be that many teams besides the Twins that have that. We also need to acknowledge that there is something to people having a defined role. We've all worked jobs where there is a comfort knowing what your role is, not being surprised by things. I don't think it needs to be paramount and would love to see the restrictions loosened but it's not totally insane. And again, I could see the Twins being the ones to change it - with a righty and a lefty its not too much of a stretch to say "you two have the 8th and 9th in some order" and have that be defined enough. Molitor seems like a guy who could do that and Jepsen would likely be on board - convincing Perkins would be the key and he is a bit of a whiner but there is a shot.

Yeah, if he hits well, no way that Kepler stays in the minors past June. He'd be the obvious call up if any of the following were injured: Mauer, Park, Sano, Plouffe, Buxton, Rosario . That's basically everywhere but catcher, second and shortstop and doesn't even include that he'd likely replace Arcia as the 4th OF (I'm assuming Buxton starts with the ML squad). I'm hoping for Twins health but it is pretty unlikely all of those guys are totally healthy. That's really why keeping Plouffe is not as big of a deal as out baseball-starved winter obsessing makes it. Plouffe really means that when someone gets hurt it's Kepler stepping in rather than . . . Reynaldo Rodriguez? Maybe ABW? The Twins lineup has remarkable depth this year (second and short are covered by Santana/Polanco while an injury at catcher doesn't mean sub .200 Chris Hermann/Fryer types). That's one of the big strengths for the Twinkies this year.

Oh man, if he's average that would be amazing, a huge pickup for the Twins. I'd settle for "not-disastrous" or "slightly above Arcia". I also think that this situation is a half year thing. Either an injury or a trade at the deadline (if Kepler is pushing up to the majors and Park/Mauer/Sano are all playing well, Plouffe will go at the deadline when some contending team will value that they can get a year and a half of control at a position of need) is going to shuffle the Twins fielding up a bit. And that's a good thing - the Sano to the OF thing just buys the Twins time to make sure that Park is a major league regular and to let the more-active in-season trade market open up (offseason teams have internal options they've talked themselves into and every free agent seems like the solution - halfway through the year some of those fail and teams are more desperate hopefully). Little risk, tons of reward for this approach.

Yeah and even after they won, they didn't have to sign him. But that's besides the point. The Park signing (especially for the terms) was amazing and no one should regret it. The real point is that the Twins had no way to know it was going to work out (you don't plan around winning posting bids) and before Park, there was no reason to trade Plouffe - he and Sano could coexist very nicely (though of course if you got blown away with an offer, you didn't NEED Plouffe, he was going to be shopped). Once they got Park, the Twins did everything right. They shopped Plouffe but didn't get a good offer. They didn't panic at that point and sell low, realizing that keeping Plouffe was the better option. They are now going to try Sano in the outfield (a place the Twins staff, professional baseball coaches paid to understand their players' abilities, think he can be acceptable). They have all of spring training (and the offseason workouts in Fort Meyers) to get an idea if they are right. If not, they can make the same trades they have available now or figure out who of Mauer/Plouffe/Park to bench or how to shuffle those guys in and out of the lineup (no way that Sano isn't going to play at least 5-6 times a week). Health is not a given nor is Park being ready for the Majors right away so the Twins have admirable depth at 1B/3B/DH (not even taking Arcia/Vargas into consideration). The Twins played this process perfectly and it's asinine to complain that they should have done things differently. I'm just so sick of people raking TR and the Twins through the coals on every decision because it's so much fun to naysay and nitpick. They had a curveball thrown to them when they won Park and they've done everything right since. The 3B market played out differently than they hoped and they didn't panic trade Plouffe. They know where they have value and they have plans and contingencies set up if those plans don't work. It's time to trust the Twins process, it's worked pretty well so far. The main thing this comes down to is "What would you realistically want to change?" Not win Park? That's insane, value is value. Trade Plouffe? That's insane, you don't sell low based on your hopes for Park/Sano's performance and health. Make Mauer/Plouffe your OF? There's no indication that either would be better than Sano (and of course you still have that option if you need it) and you'd weaken 1B/3B defense. Viva los Twins!