SwainZag

It's a vicious cycle if you don't have the young players in the ranks come join the big league club. You then fill the holes with waiver claims, minor league FA's and guys who really have no business being anything more than a backup player in the Major Leagues. You promote guys too early and hope they stick and bring in guys on the cheap hoping they can turn it around. With a 25 man roster slated to be stocked with players under the age of 28 and a lot more players moving their way up the ranks....the middle of 2014 was the beginning. 2015 should be fun to watch, even if there are some bumps in the road.

How many teams have players making decent money on their bench who aren't in a R/L platoon? If you carry 12 pitchers, you will carry a 4 man bench. You will have a backup C, which is taken care of with Suzuki/Pinto. A utility infielder, which for all intents and purposes Nunez is. A 4th OF, whom should have range, right now Schaefer is that guy. At this point I wouldn't mind these 3 as bench players with a 4th spot open. I don't see how a team that has players like Mauer/Vargas/Arcia all in the lineup can hang on a guy like Parmelee. He is fairly 1 dimensional.

I agree with this for the most part. I would like to a SP and and OF brought in and of course the bullpen revamped through some young internal arms, but really don't think the team needs to go throw big money around this winter. Before you say no improvement, same team, blah, blah, blah......here is the Opening Day Roster from last year, the guys in bold will not or will not likely be on the team. Big difference.....no? Kurt Suzuki Joe Mauer Brian Dozier Trevor Plouffe Pedro Florimon Josh Willingham Aaron Hicks Oswaldo Arcia Jason Kubel Josmil Pinto Chris Colabello Eduardo Escobar Jason Bartlett Phil Hughes Ricky Nolasco Kevin Correia Kyle Gibson Mike Pelfrey ?? Glen Perkins Jared Burton Casey Fien Brian Duensing ?? Sanuel Deduno Caleb Theilbar Anthony Swarzak That's 7 players on the wrong side of 30 all gone and 1 Florimon....and could include Pelfrey and Duensing. 10 of 25! 40% of the roster! A possibility of replacing 9 guys 30+ is pretty amazing. Certainly a gigantic shift in the make up of the team, especially because of the influx we are already seeing with the younger players.

I agree with this. I love having the option of speed and + defense off the bench, especially if this team rolls with a lineup that includes both Vargas and Arcia. I absolutely love how the Royals use Gore and Dyson so much late in the game, it brings an extra weapon to keep in your back pocket if needed.

One thing I want to mention about the Royals season besides from the obvious...........look how healthy they have been. All 9 of their regular starting lineup played in 130 or more games, their 4 regular starting pitchers all started 30+ times (The 5th spot was Chen to start the season, 7 starts, and replaced by Duffy, 25 starts) and their core 5 guys in the pen all appeared in 60+ games. It's a huge advantage to have basically your entire roster healthy all season and not have any lingering injury to any core part of your team.

Yes, his power/slugging is obviously the strong part of this game. He also struck out 23% of the time in 2012, 32% of the time in 2013 and 35.8% last year. He also hasn't played a single inning in a corner OF spot since 2009. I am just not sold on the guy being a 8M a year player. Even with his .735 OPS last year be was a 0.9 WAR player.

Before they are just overpaying for Rasmus, which one are we going to be getting? The one who hit around .225 with an OBP under .300 in 2011, 2012 and 2014 or the outlier in 2013 of .276/.328/.501? While he does have good pop, outside of 2012, 3 of his last 4 offensive years have been pretty meh. He did only play CF last season, but he was pretty terrible at that as well having a negative value. For a team on a limited spending budget, if overpaying for him is say....8-10-12M a year, isn't there better way they could spend the money? My 2 cents on Mr. Rasmus.

Ugh 13 man staff should happen in emergency situations only. There is no reason to only have 3 bench options during a game.

I was much in the camp that they should trade Suzuki instead of giving him the extension, but the silver lining on him reverting back to his career norms is that it would give Pinto every chance to show he could be the starter. As for Arcia, I could totally see that. That run he had in September was just a glimpse of what he can do!

Sano has more potential than Plouffe, but he IS a better player? Based on what grounds? That's a pure speculative assumption. That's how you go into a season with Hicks as your starting CF. You trade away both players that play the position and pencil in your AA player into the opening day lineup.

Well when I said that it was implying that Mauer is still on the roster. At this point with this Twins team, I still see there's no way they take on that contract. A pipedream? Sure. I'd love to see Kemp on the Twins, he fills a need for sure. I just can't fathom this organization ever making that kind of move.

A role player that just put up 4 WAR as a starter. Moustakas had an OPS of .652 Manny Machado had an OPS of 755 and Flaherty had an OPS of .644 Matt Carpenter had an OPS of 750 Pablo Sandoval had an OPS of 739 Trevor Plouffe had an OPS of 751 Weird how two of those teams will make the World Series, but none of them have a starting 3B for a World Series team.

What more is there to say about Willingham? The Twins signed him to a contract, he had a great year, he had an injury plagued year and then they trade him in 2014. His value was the highest in 2012, but how do you or anyone else even know what was offered? You can't automatically call him a failed signing because they didn't trade him at his peak. The same goes for Suzuki. For all we know they could have been heavily shopping him at the deadline but found no offers they found worth it. With a lack of catchers on the market and Pinto being a big question mark when it comes to defense, a 2 year deal isn't a big deal AND he still has trade value. How in the world could signing Suzuki be considered a failure? You want the team to sign free agents and when one doesn't work out you just yell fail. Who could point to Nolasco coming and having the year he did with the Twins? 6 straight seasons of a FIP below. I believe a lot of people were more on board with the Nolasco signing than the Hughes signing. It looked much more than just signing "just a name." Hindsight sure is 20/20 isn't it? When you have a lot of holes, the last thing you want to do is go throw free agent money to veteran players. That's how you run up a high payroll and not have wins to show for it. Whimmers has been riddled with injuries since being drafted and has never made it out of AA ball. Hendricks obviously didn't pan out, but he was never a big prospect to begin with. For a guy who can't throw strikes, striking out 153 batters in 130 innings in AAA last season sure was something then. Berrios is undersized, no hiding that but that doesn't mean he can't become a successful player. It didn't stop Pedro. Just throwing out Kohl because he is young? He pitched very well in his first full season. If you look for faults you can find them in any player, prospect or not.

True, though it was in AA and not AA. 19 HR in 233 AB is showing elite power. He also struck out 81 times, or nearly 35% of the time. I don't want to down play his power, but with low batting average and the high K rate....and being that it happened a full year ago, I still don't come to the conclusion "he is ready."

I really don't see in any universe the Twins taking on that contract. $105M over 5 years is still just insane.

How can you be so certain he is ready? Was it the .236 he hit with shaky defense a year ago? He hasn't played now in a full season, saying he is ready seems like quite the assumption, especially when you have a 4 WAR player who just had his best season playing 3B.

Willingham came in and put up a 3.2 WAR and an OPS+ of 143. He was an excellent signing for the 2012 team. He probably should have been traded and not extended, but that doesn't stop the fact that he was a quality FA signing and he did produce. Ricky is 1/4 of the way through his 4 year deal. You can't clamor for the Twins to spend money, sign an SP to a 4 year, $48 million dollar deal....and then berate them when he has the worse season of his career. That's the risk you take when signing free agents. Kurt Suzuki, a free agent signing. A quality free agent signing. 2.2 WAR and a fairly team friendly extension. You can't take that away from the team because they didn't trade him. He is still a quality free agent signing. Teams that have as many holes as the Twins do don't go out and signing big name free agents every year. It just doesn't work that way. Hendricks and Wimmers where never anywhere close to be as highly touted as May and Meyer alone. That doesn't include Berrios or a half a dozen other prospects in the Twins system. They are no good comparisons. I'll give you Aaron Hicks, even though I think the Twins screwed up big time with him trying to count on him when he wasn't even close to be ready for the majors. Of course not all prospects will work out, but calling them all just magic beans isn't correct either. Your statement makes it sound like 1 in every 1000 highly rated prospect works out. I would argue that Top 100 prospects end up working out a higher percentage than paying older veterans to 4-5 year deals. Just like you can't "wait for the fairy tale" of prospects maturing, you just can't throw money at free agents and just expect a great team. You used an example yourself: Ricky Nolasco.

This was written pretty early last season but I a really good read on Dozier's elite base running skills: http://www.fangraphs.com/community/all-your-bases-are-belong-to-brian-dozier/

Which Joe was the real Joe? Pre-2014 injury or post 2014 injury? I want to hope that after he came off the DL and hit .289/.398/.408/.805 is the Mauer we see next year and not before the all star break Mauer that struggled. I will say I think Joe is far from done. The kind of hitter he is which is high contact + good eye are the ones that stick around the longest, though I'd be lying if I said the increasing K/rate didn't bother me.

I'm hoping he gets a 4 year deal and they buy out his arbitration to be honest with ya. It would sign him through his 31 year old year, wouldn't have to deal with arbitration and would probably make for just as good trade chip down the road.

I think when most team's decide they are going to rebuild, it isn't coming off a division title. I will say there are probably very little people who will point to the off season after 2010 and say.....well great run guys, let's rebuild this thing. The 2011 team had a $112.7M payroll. I could go into how everyone regressed and only 3 regulars played in 100+ games or how Mauer and Morneau both missed more than half the season or how the bad Liriano showed up and Pavano aged quickly. Nishi was a bust. Nathan wasn't the same coming off of injury and Baker would only start 21 games. 2011 was a complete disaster in every way. So much hope...turned to rubble. High payroll, terrible results, a bad farm club. Not a great starting point 2012 going forward. You cite they have signed 1 solid free agent. How about Josh Willingham? Kurt Susuki? Ricky Nolasco? What players have they lost in the last 3 seasons for nothing? You can go back to Gomez and Hardy, everyone will agree those were mistakes, everyone will admit it. Every player you listed was a 2013 player. Instead of adding them they added Phil Hughes, Ricky Nolasco and Kurt Susuki. 2 of 3 of those were excellent signings. Was it a mistake not to grab an OF? Probably. Comparing waiting for prospects to bloom as "magic beans into a beanstalk" is pretty laughable. I think the fact that people think the position they were in after the 2011 season should be some magical turn around in 1-2 seasons back into a contender is funny to me. They put themselves into that position, but a lot things along they way didn't bounce their way for us to get to this point.

Iwakuma is interesting. Very good season last year. He will be 34 on opening day and has a $7M option for 2015. While he would be a very nice in our rotation, do you believe he would be anything more than a 1 year rental? If the M's did execute his option and trade him, would the Twins be willing to give a guy who will be 35 opening day 2016 a 3-4 year deal?

I agree very much so. Bourjos could also probably be had on a small, short term contract which is easily displaced when Buxton shows he is ready. With the way the Twins offense scored runs this year, especially in the August/Sept months, they could probably sacrifice a little to have a light hitting CF if they play defense like Bourjos.

Gore also was never a big prospect, hasn't hit above .250 since Rookie ball and is on the Royals specifically for defense and his pinch running abilities. He has played in 13 games with Kansas City and has two official plate appearances, zero hits but has stolen 8 bases. He isn't a future cornerstone for the franchise, he is a role player. There's a huge difference between him and Buxton.

I don't think anyone here thinks that a rebuild absolutely has to take being bad for multiple years, but at the place this franchise was after the 2011 season, I don't see how that team bounces back any quicker. I think many teams have proved that tossing money at free agents isn't how you build a sustained winner. This goes back to a point that has been beaten into ground that the drafting failures of the Twins between 2005-2009. Missed 1st round picks, not many gems found in later rounds, etc left the team lacking at the upper levels for young talent. I think there are just as many people who think you can instantly rebuild a winner than there are people who think it takes a few years to rebuild. I for one like the way they are rebuilding. You could argue that the Twins could have spent an extra 15M per year for the last 3 years and had 5-8 more wins. It would leave us with 3 straight 80+ loss seasons without the the high draft picks. A team who still lost more than they won, fans still bitching and the quality of draft prospects not as good.