Nick Nelson

I don't think you two necessarily disagree. He already said that their inability to develop/acquire shortstops has been inexplicable, I think he's just pointing out that this offseason wasn't necessarily the most opportune time to address the situation. And he may be right. Pitching needed to be their highest priority, and the area they concentrated their assets. Short of signing Stephen Drew, they weren't going to be adding a quality shortstop without trading too much away. That said, I don't understand why they didn't at least bring in a Bartlett type or two to give them some potential options. I'd like to get behind what they see in Florimon, but to me he just looks like another ill-equipped minor-league caliber player that they're putting their faith into, following in the footsteps of Nishioka, Casilla, Dozier and more.

Does anyone else find it bizarre that Joe Saunders is drawing so little interest? He's nothing special but he's been a pretty solid inning-eater throughout his career and those guys tend to get paid in FA (see: Jeremy Guthrie). No injury concerns that I'm aware of but maybe I missed something?

Parmelee is a better hitter than Revere. I don't know how you could argue otherwise. Their offensive value might be a little closer when you consider Revere's base-stealing ability but still. Parmelee was better in the minors and has been better in early MLB exposure. He's certainly a better fit in an offensive position like RF. Par for the course.

It's easy to not notice this because Span had a solid year, but the Twins were way below-average in CF -- .682 OPS vs. AL avg of .757. Right field was also hardly a strength, as they cycled through various lousy options early in the year before settling on Revere, whose production was fine for a great defensive CF but paltry for RF. Parmelee is an unknown quantity, to be sure, but at the very least he's a guy whose asset is his bat. He fits in RF. And while I admit I'm taking a bit of a leap of faith on Hicks, the bar was not set high by last year's .267/.325/.357 line in CF. Losing Span and Revere hurts the defense more than anything. I don't see them being huge losses for the offense given what the Twins have in terms of replacements.

I'm hearing a lot about how the Twins shouldn't be expected to improve offensively this year. Point me to a position other than LF where they are unlikely to improve or maintain. I'm not seeing it.

Looking around the AL, I see two other teams (SEA, OAK) without a decent SS locked in. Oakland's top prospect is a shortstop (Addison Russell) and Seattle's got a couple in their top 10. There is no team that has handled the position as poorly as the Twins and it isn't even close.

The Twins haven’t had a steady shortstop remain in place for two years since Guzman left in 2004. I understand that there’s a shortage of quality players at the position but that’s ridiculous and unacceptable. The vast majority of other teams in the league either have a solid fixture at SS or they have a guy in place who has a good chance to become one. What really bothers me is that the Twins don’t even seem to view their perpetual ineptitude at this crucially important position as a problem, because you have Terry Ryan claiming they’ve been “pretty good” there in seven of the last nine years and you’ve got them lining up Pedro Florimon as if he’ll be anything more than another failed stopgap that leaves them right back where they started.

Initial guess, though this can change a lot based on SP performances and FA pick-ups: SP: Diamond, Worley, Correia, Hendriks, Pelfrey RP: Perkins, Burton, Duensing, Fien, Robertson, Burnett, Swarzak C: Mauer IF: Morneau, Dozier, Florimon, Plouffe OF: Willingham, Hicks, Parmelee DH: Doumit BENCH: Mastro, Carroll, Butera, Escobar

I think you misunderstood his point. Not to speak on Mike's behalf but I'm pretty sure he's saying the notion that the Twins should "spend just to spend" is the strawman. No one is saying that.

Everyone understands that SS is a defensive position and the offensive expectations there are lower. That's why the average production there is lower than most others. But Florimon (like most guys the Twins have trotted out there over the past decade) is well below even that reduced average. Is it that much to ask for a guy who can play defense and at least has a chance to be average with the stick?

I don't know that the rotation is better on paper than it was a year ago, but they'll almost certainly perform better.

In one of his recent columns Mackey stated that Plouffe was (paraphrasing) "clearly one of the worst defensive infielders in the majors." Is that something that is widely agreed upon? He certainly had his issues there last year but didn't strike me as flat-out awful.

Mauer offers the most value at catcher, but his long-term health should be their single greatest concern at this point. Whatever the timeline is for thsi rebuilding effort, they're still going to be working around an aging $23M Mauer and if he wears down it's going to make things awfully tough. If the Twins were making a go of it this year I'd be on board, but since they seem to have little interest in competing I don't see the need to push him. Hopefully if things go south in the early months they'll at least make adjustments. No reason to have him catching regularly in the second half of a lost season.

There are plenty of reasons to think Correia and Pelfrey were not sexy pickups that do not relate to their strikeout numbers...

Those Mexican keyboards... yenno...

I think it's going to become clear in spring training that Gibson is one of the five best starters. Unfortunately, two of the guys he's better than (Correia and Diamond, IMO) are already locked in and Hendriks has the advantage of much more experience.

Fro and Lev: Just cut it out. You might think you're doing the world a big favor by pointing out how stupid everyone else is but no one wants to hear it. The "Ignore" feature is readily available if you don't care for what a particular user has to say. You don't need to publicly ridicule them in an effort to prove to everyone how smart you are. Much of this "snark" is neither clever nor funny, but simply mean-spirited. Piling onto a good-natured poster after he's politely asked you to stop repeatedly is pathetic and embarrassing. Why don't you let us worry about what will bring new users to the site and stop terrorizing/annoying the people who are already here?

You can view the page at http://twinsdaily.com/content.php?r=1335-What-in-the-Hell-is-a-Pedro-Florimon

"What in the hell is a Pedro Florimon?" -- professional baseball writer, doing research on projected starting lineups — Grant Brisbee (@mccoveychron) January 25, 2013 The above tweet from the wise-cracking and hilarious SB Nation scribe Grant Brisbee was undoubtedly written after he glanced over projected starting lineups across the majors and did a triple-take when he came to Minnesota's shortstop position. He's hardly the first. I've had multiple national baseball writers contact me this offseason asking some variation of, "The Twins aren't really going to give this guy a starting job, are they?" All I can do is shrug. Florimon's career numbers suggest he is not a major-league caliber player, and he certainly didn't look the part last year, but Terry Ryan has treated shortstop as a non-concern this winter. Possibly the GM is open to trying Brian Dozier there again, or considers Jamey Carroll an acceptable fallback, but Ryan hasn't even openly pondered bringing in someone to compete at the position. He's repeatedly talked about doing so with Trevor Plouffe at third. It's not clear what Florimon has done to earn this billing. He was waived by a 93-loss Orioles team after the 2011 season, and then passed on by 29 organizations when the Twins claimed him and outrighted him from their 40-man roster. He went on to up sub par numbers between Double-A and Triple-A, striking out at a Gomez-esque 25 percent rate, and then came up and played poorly with the Twins for a couple months. [ATTACH=CONFIG]3148[/ATTACH] At TwinsFest over the weekend, Ryan told a media luncheon that Florimon is "the athlete you look for" at shortstop. That may very well be true, and ostensibly the hope is that he'll develop as he ages into his prime and become a useful long-term cog on this rebuilding roster. But with Florimon, that really is a stretch. He's 26 and he's totaled over 3,000 professional plate appearances. He has established himself very firmly at the plate as a strikeout machine with minimal power and in the field as a flashy, skillful defender who makes a ton of mistakes. In order to provide meaningful value, he'll need to offer enough on defense to make up for all the outs he's likely to give away on offense. That's a tall order. He might be the biggest long shot the Twins have taken at the position since Cristian Guzman's departure, and that's saying something.

Given that he was pretty crummy even in Triple-A last year and his velocity has continually declined throughout his career, it isn't hard to see why.

I started spinning some ideas for 2013 Twins promos on Twitter today. Among my suggestions: Bring your kids out to the park on Sundays for a chance to pitch the 6th inning! 10-year reunion of the '03 team that won a playoff game! First 10,000 fans get a discarded ulnar collateral ligament. Anybody else have ideas?

Meh.

You can view the page at http://twinsdaily.com/content.php?r=1332-Calling-on-Capps