Nick Nelson

You can view the page at http://www.twinsdaily.com/content.php?985-Mauer-s-Not-Going-Anywhere

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2196[/ATTACH]Ask yourself this question, and be honest in your reply: If Joe Mauer were becoming a free agent this offseason, is there any chance – ANY chance, whatsoever – that he would fetch a six-year, $138 million contract? I think the answer is pretty clearly no. That's the prorated remaining portion of the eight-year contract Mauer signed with the Twins after a 2009 season in which he was arguably baseball's best player. He was 26, he was one of the game's most popular players and he was as healthy as he'd ever been. That was then, and this is now. In three seasons since, Mauer has hit .311/.393/.429 – impressive numbers but nowhere near the otherworldly stats he compiled in his MVP campaign. He has been besieged by injuries, missing a quarter of his team's games. And as he prepares to enter his 30s, he has already begun to transition away from catcher. Mauer is a great player and a tremendous asset. But any way you slice it, his value has declined pretty sharply over the past three seasons, which is largely a testament to how insanely high it was at the time he re-upped with the Twins. My point in all this is to say that no baseball team is going to give up quality prospects for the right to absorb Mauer's enormous and substantially risky contract. For all the hubbub about the catcher being put through waivers earlier this week – an extremely routine and procedural move that probably shouldn't have been reported in such provocative terms – the truth is that Terry Ryan would have been a fool not to expose Mauer to the league. He said as much himself. If some team were to go crazy like the Dodgers and offer up good young players to take on more than $100 million in salary commitments (extraordinarily unlikely since that bonanza was basically unprecedented), shouldn't the Twins at least hear them out? There is no downside to testing the waters, and certainly no player should be considered flat-out untradable by anyone when it comes to a rebuilding team. As you'd expect, Ryan got no bites. Because no team is in position to do what Los Angeles did. Had that wacky trade not gone down so recently, this "story" would have been a passing note rather than a daylong talking point. Mauer's oversized contract and full no-trade clause make it extremely improbable that he'll be moved, now or in the future. I mean extremely improbable – like Jim Carrey so-you're-telling-me-there's-a-chance improbable. It might be fun to daydream about what kind of impact such an outlandish move might have, but at the end of the day such thoughts are nothing more.

Did you miss the part where he indicted himself and took the blame? I don't think even he would disagree with your assessments of his actions (or lack thereof) within "all markets" up to this point, but that doesn't mean he can't get better. Last offseason he was guilty of being too confident in what he had. He won't make that same mistake again this winter.

Blackburn over the past two years averaged 150 innings with a 4.98 ERA and 1.52 WHIP while being affected by injuries (which were, in both cases, purportedly corrected after the season). Certainly not good numbers, but borderline palatable for a fifth starter and far better than the muck we've seen this year. When you take into account how sharp he looked in spring training, I think it's pretty tough to make the case that anyone truly should have expected him to be anywhere near as bad as he's been.

The basic fact of the matter is that if the Twins want an extra $23 million to spend on other things, they need to just spend it. There's no excuse for trading away their best player for nothing (and believe me, if they found a taker willing to absorb his entire contract, they'd get nothing in return) because they're unwilling to push payroll to $120M to get the players they feel they need to contend.

You can view the page at http://www.twinsdaily.com/content.php?975-Beacons-of-Light

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2170[/ATTACH]On the surface, this 2012 Twins campaign seems painfully similar to last season's train wreck. On this date a year ago, the Twins sat with a 56-77 record, which sadly compares favorably to their current 52-77 mark. Both seasons were marked by abysmal starts, midsummer rebounds and late implosions (at least the current squad is headed that way, with an 8-17 record since the start of August). Yet, looking beyond the similarly horrible results, this season has provided Twins fans with much more in the way of long-term reasons for hope. Last year, aside from the brutal on-field results, you had a front office that appeared lost, numerous injuries that placed the future outlooks of key players in doubt, and setbacks striking high-profile prospects throughout the organization. Here are some of the developments that have me feeling much better about the franchise's future than I did a year ago, even as the Twins continue to maintain their label as one of the worst teams in baseball. 1. Health This is big. Injuries were the No. 1 storyline in 2011 as the roster was ravaged by bad break after bad break. Seemingly minor ailments kept players on the shelf for weeks, team doctors conjured up bizarre diagnoses, and we began to wonder whether franchise cornerstones Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau were permanently damaged goods. Both those players have stayed on the field and produced this year, along with most of their teammates. In fact, free agent acquisitions Josh Willingham and Ryan Doumit have enjoyed unprecedented health. Clearly, the pendulum has swung in the other direction. One can certainly make the case that the team's awful performance in spite of many players avoiding injury is a bad thing, but there's no denying that team-wide good health is a positive harbinger for the future. 2. Chris Parmelee A person could hardly be blamed for not being sold on Parmelee's "breakout" last year, which involved a fairly solid second half in Rochester and a great final month with the Twins. The first baseman showed some nice signs, but not enough to overshadow four years of unspectacular performance in the minors, especially after he looked overwhelmed during an early stint with the Twins this year. Nevertheless, you simply can't overlook what the guy is doing in Triple-A right now. His .341/.460/.655 line with 17 homers (already a career high) is nothing short of jaw-dropping. His plate discipline has been superb and his power legit. Parmelee suddenly looks like a building block – one that gives the Twins a fair amount of flexibility going forward. 3. The Stacked Outfield Heading into the offseason, the outfield picture looked a little shaky. Denard Span had missed a sizable chunk of the season due to a concussion, while Jason Kubel and Michael Cuddyer were both likely to depart in free agency. As it turns out, Span has been healthy this year and the Twins have found two other guys who figure to be entrenched for the next few years in Josh Willingham and Ben Revere. On top of that, Darin Mastroianni has emerged as a great asset as a fourth outfielder. With all these players under control through at least 2014, the Twins are set in the outfield for several years, and that's not even mentioning top prospects like Aaron Hicks and Oswaldo Arcia who are rapidly rising. We're looking at a potential embarrassment of riches in the not-too-distant future. That's much different than any kind of embarrassment we were talking about last year. 4. Scott Diamond In a season where so much as gone wrong with the starting staff, it's easy to overlook just how impressive Diamond has been. Despite one of the league's worst strikeout rates, he continues to turn in strong outing after strong outing and he's not really slowing down – he'd notched five consecutive quality starts before being ejected in Texas last week, though he experienced another hiccup against the M's on Tuesday. I'll admit I'm somewhat skeptical that the lefty can maintain his minuscule walk rate going forward, but he's definitely a strike-thrower and his 55.3 percent grounder rate – seventh-highest in the majors – is no fluke. It's a good recipe for success even without the strikeouts; a recipe that should make Diamond a quality, inexpensive mid-rotation piece for many years. 5. Glen Perkins and Jared Burton Building a bullpen from the ground up can be a challenge, as the Twins learned last year. Building a bullpen around a couple of established, reliable late-inning arms is a different story, which is why it's hugely encouraging that Perkins has maintained – and perhaps even elevated – his brilliance from last year while Burton has emerged as an excellent righty setup man. These two look like a solid back-end core for Terry Ryan to build around, negating the need to overspend on an established "closer" while focusing on identifying hidden gems like Burton. 6. Trevor Plouffe Plenty of people are getting down on Plouffe now that he's slumping badly since coming off the disabled list, but I'm pretty bullish on him at this point. He's probably not the elite slugger that he resembled earlier this summer, but the comparisons to Danny Valencia are premature and misguided. Plouffe's offensive outburst was not totally isolated – he's been building up to this point for several years, showing steady improvement in the minors and majors as he's inched toward his physical prime. Now, at age 26, Plouffe is entering that prime and regardless of his current cold spell he looks like a player who can respectably hold down the hot corner for several years. The Twins have been in desperate need of such a player for a long time.

I'm already in 2 otherwise I'd be down.

You can view the page at http://www.twinsdaily.com/content.php?960-Bullpen-Evalutaions

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2117[/ATTACH]The Twins have been taxing their bullpen lately and are amidst a stretch of 20 games without a day off, so it makes sense that they decided to send down Matt Carson – who became the fifth outfielder after Denard Span returned Thursday – in exchange for relief help. The pitcher they called upon is Kyle Waldrop. This is his second time getting the nod this year, and he only missed a spot on the Opening Day roster because of an injury. It seems clear that the Twins are very high on him, but it's not very clear why. Standing 6'5", Waldrop gets a nice downward plane on his pitches and induces a lot of ground balls. In that sense, he's got some potential. At the same time, he doesn't miss any bats. For his career in the minors, Waldrop has averaged 5.7 K/9; for comparison, Nick Blackburn posted a 5.5 mark in his minor-league career. It's certainly possible for a reliever with a substandard strikeout rate to be effective if he limits walks and keeps the ball down, but Waldrop's K-rate is beyond substandard. Given that he's averaged 5.7 whiffs per nine innings (including 5.2 above Single-A) there's a good chance he'll rank among the most contact-heavy relief pitchers in the majors. Currently only two MLB relievers have a K/9 mark below 5.0 – two of them are on the Twins (Alex Burnett and Jeff Gray). Do they really intend to move forward with a bullpen filled with guys that can't come in and get a strikeout? At this point, the Twins' sole focus should be evaluating players for next year and beyond. In order to give Waldrop another look, they bypassed players like Anthony Slama – who is healthy again and back to putting up cartoonish numbers in Triple-A – and Deolis Guerra, who will be out of options next year. Guerra has a bloated ERA in Rochester right now thanks to a home run spike, but his 50-to-21 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 51 innings is far superior to Waldrop's horrible 16-to-13 in 39 innings. Given his previous ranking as a top prospect and his general success since converting to relief duties, you'd have to think that Guerra is more likely to be a long-term bullpen asset than Waldrop. Speaking of long-term bullpen assets, Gray very obviously is not one. Why is he still on the roster and holding some of these other guys back? Not only has he been one of the least effective relief pitchers in the game this year, he's 30 with a terrible track record and virtually no upside. His future with the organization won't last past this year (you'd hope) so why do the Twins continue to give him innings while missing an opportunity to work with younger arms that they need to make decisions on, such as Guerra and Slama? It's been one of the most befuddling aspects of this season, but hopefully it will cease to be an issue when rosters expand in a week.

Disagree. Having Butera around to take some starts lessens the risk of Mauer or Doumit suffering a late-season injury behind the plate. I don't really see why the Twins need five outfielders at this point.

I think the Twins are smart enough to know the answer to that is no without needing to some much of him in the majors.

Walters is on the DL, as are Baker and Pavs. Injured players are not included – the idea is to provide a snapshot of what the team's available depth looks like at this particular moment in time, which is why we'll be posting updated versions periodically. As I mentioned in the article, the top five are the guys currently in the rotation. Which pitchers are included among those spots is not subjective (though the ordering of them is, admittedly).

To be clear, I'm not saying they should actively try to lose. I'm saying the fact that a move might decrease their chances of winning (e.g. adding another sub-MLB starter who might take starts from Diamond) shouldn't really be a factor in their decision.

Considering that Diamond has already surpassed his previous career high for innings pitched, I would think that lightening his load from this point forward would actually benefit him greatly. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but pitching ain't the same as it was in Nolan's day.

Hermsen is on the fringe, but I think the Twins are going to move fairly slow with him. Doubt we'll see him up before midway through 2013 at the earliest. I think this list makes it clear that the Twins need a lot of help toward the top. At least 2-3 of the guys currently in the top five should be sitting on the outside as depth and insurance.

Two things to keep in mind here: a) There are a several guys who the MLB coaching staff should be getting a look at (in many cases to dismiss the idea that they should be pitching in the majors next April); and At this point the Twins benefit from losing more games. Adding in the fact that pitching less frequently reduces the risk of injury for everyone (last thing they need is Diamond coming up lame), I think a six-man rotation makes a ton of sense.

You can view the page at http://www.twinsdaily.com/content.php?947-SP-Depth-Chart-8-22