Cris E

Punto can play SS and 2b with a straight face. Hannahan can only handle the corners, and the bench is too short for that.

I think this is Marosi reacting to the crazy CF market, not Ryan making calls. MIN needs a rangy CF to cover for the performance art in LF and RF, where Willingham and Parmalee will be making folks pine for the days of Delmon in the corner. But if you insist on getting out of the box, I believe the ridiculous cost of young pitching makes a move for a decent young middle infielder a good idea. The Twins don't have good prospects anywhere near ready, not like they do in the outfield, and converting from a position of depth would make good sense. Moving Revere now is earlier than anyone would prefer, but it's going to be the right move at some point.

It's a swell idea for the teams, but players want to minimize risk too and they define risk as not getting paid. In an incentive-laden contract the team wins both ways: it's cheap if the guy performs and it only gets expensive when he plays really well. For a player there is a downside to playing badly. He'll mitigate that risk by giving back the high end because there are no guarantees about career length: most players can't assume they'll get another chance at a big deal. The other thing to consider is that it's not an either/or situation. The ratio of base pay to incentive can vary widely, so another team can play the same game but beat you by simply dropping a million or three from incentive down into base to improve the ratio. Finally there are limits on what you can incent for: playing time (AB, IP, etc) is OK , events (leading the league in something) and awards are OK, but starting in 2012 bonuses for "milestone" achievements are illegal (ARod hitting #650, Pujols getting #3000, etc) and the rather vague "personal services" riders are out as well.

Blech. No Stewart. Hire Hannahan as a coach. Kepplinger would be cool, but Chavez a little less so. The thing is he's not a 120 game player any more if there aren't DH appearances to be had. The Twins are totally backed up at any position other than 3B he might play. They can't park him in LF, for example.

So we now know we're not building towards 2013. There was always this implied "two good starters and we're in it" vibe and this belies that. As much as that seems obvious, if they'd managed to land, say, Santana, McCarthy *and* Meyers there would have been a real shot at .500. Trading top chip Span for non-2013 talent says not to hold your breath for the others either.

There's no way Brett Meyers lets the Twins get away.

I think they pick up a new SS before they sign a third pitcher, and I also think he won't be much better than the dreck we're sorting through already.

It's also been mentioned that ATL may still be in the market for Span even though Upton was signed. It sounds unlikely, but given Span's team friendly deal, he could be attractive enough to make it a Span for middle IF deal instead. ATL has some stellar young SS.

This hole is probably more important than a third SP. As mentioned, CIN has shortstops and pitchers and MIN has CF to move, so that could work. I'd love to see S Drew contacted. There are options.

Also, quit beating up on dumpster diving. It's not the way to fill all your needs, but Scott Diamond was a failed-but-kept Rule V. His record was nothing special but he turned out to be pretty good. Marquis sucked here, but his kid was seriously sick with something and he was hugely distracted. Later that summer he was what Ryan was hoping for when the deal was struck. Fledman constitues dumpter diving, frankly. The team needs a #1 and #2 plus more, so in addition to a big trade or FA signing, and beyond a third or fourth look at Duensing and his pals, they need to keep dumpster diving to fill this roster.

I think 1,2 and 3 will happen all at once, and the best pitcher they get will be via trade. It'll be Span + youth for an MLB player that carries a decent sized salary. We have a raft of good CF scattered across the organization and there are several pitching-rich teams that we line up with. If we're willing to take on salary, and we appear to have room, we won't have to give up full value in the trade. They'll also sign a good FA starter, but nothing from the top shelf.

Mark Buerhle has three expensive years left, but if the Fish were offered real players or prospects he might come with a scholarship. I'd make that call to find out

Perkins has been solid and pretty healthy since he gave up on starting and embraced the pen. Burton is some guy having a very good year. Cash in the latter and hang on to the former. But here's the deal with deals: I think Terry Ryan is going to leave the team intact for the most part. He sees a scenario where he just needs to sort out the rotation and they’ll be back in the mediocre AL Central mix. Just dump the one year contracts in July and focus on the rotation. He can restructure Baker’s deal, finally give up on Liriano, and they’ll have Gibson to look at, plus there’s the pile of Blackburn, Diamond and Walters to sift through. Assuming Baker is bad next year, Gibson gets a jump on his return in August 2012 and Liriano is traded that means there are enough arms to fill 3 spots at the back, so they only need two better than average starters. (As a secondary concern, maybe a 3b, a RF and possibly a C of the future.) The pitching alone is a lot to find in one offseason. But he’s got some chips to deal: everyone in their last year like Capps, Liriano, Doumit, as well as filler like Casilla and Valencia plus positions of depth like CF (Span or Benson or Revere or Aaron Hicks). Burton is a 2012 alien abduction season that should be cashed in immediately. There’s a lot of money coming of the books so they can afford to take on a real deal or even *gasp* sign a free agent. But he’s got Mauer and Morneau and Willingham and Span and a fair supporting cast of Dozier, Carroll, plus the wildly unlikely Plouffe. It could happen, and far faster and easier than a full tear down. Dumping the part of the team that's performing just to gather more cheap lottery tickets doesn't make a lot of sense when a lot of things are in pretty good shape.

How different did Hunter or^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Span look the day they were drafted? Top picks go to bad teams, and #2 is going to be worse than most. (EDIT: Hunter wasn't a top pick.)

John, back in the 90s I would have bet money that steroids and all the related compounds were running wild in baseball clubhouses. I could not have proven anything, but too much was changing too fast for any simpler explanation and I like simple explanations. (What's more likely: some subterfuge from the head office somehow being kept under wraps by the entire industry, or young, impulsive, competitive athletes latching on to promises of huge increases in performance at little cost?) Look at how the shape and size of the players changed between the 1991 Twins and the 1999 team. Look at how hard pitchers were throwing compared to a decade earlier. Look at the number and distances of HR and ridiculous spikes in what guys were accomplishing. As evidence, I wouldn't take it to court with me, but if any pro athlete tries to tell me he added 30 pounds of muscle by lifting weights and getting his rest I'm not going to believe him. Everyone I know believed they were doing something to get huge, and the only question was where the cheating line was at any given time. Other sports had proven that these drugs worked and baseball was merely catching up. I think everyone on this board thinks there are a significant number of players cheating in the NFL, and in retrospect it's kind of quaint to believe that somehow the guys that played baseball were morally above similar temptation.

What do you think some of the former Twins players like Dan Gladden and Jack Morris would say about that? I think they'd go into the same shell that Dan Serafini is in: guys in the game (or who want to be in the game) have to live in the baseball community and won't own up to anything specific. It's only when they've moved on that they talk about this stuff. It no coincidence that the only ones talking about this are completely out of professional baseball.

Tom Verducci's latest piece in Sport Illustrated goes deep into Dan Naulty's career and how much of it was enabled by steroid use. It's rather stunning. Thirty-three players appeared in at least one game for the 1994 Fort Myers Miracle. Only six of them reached the majors long enough to earn $500,000 in their careers. Half of those players are known PED users: Naulty, outfielder Matt Lawton (who tested positive in 2005) and pitcher Dan Serafini (who flunked a test in '07). There's quite a bit more, including a several other Miracle players who admit to steroid use. The notable exception is Dan Serafini, who doesn't see it as cheating at all (and he's the only one of the group still trying to stick in pro baseball.) Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/magazine/05/29/baseball.steroids/index.html

Ryan decided to go cheap and scrape the bottom of the Barrel, resulting in the total waste of 3 million dollars. I think they really felt that Marquis is a healthier guy than Bedard and stood a better chance of throwing 180-200 IP. The money was probably secondary given how much trouble the team has had with health over the past few years, and doubly so with Baker's elbow being a question mark over the winter. The problems with this roster have more to do with assumptions and evaluations than with cheapness.

Liriano to the pen means Burnett is on notice! So how did Burroughs look this week? Ready for a call up, or does Plouffe get a week to claim the job?

btw, this is sad news. He is one of the great players of all time, and this sucks. I don't know, when a team is losing they have to consider trading just about anyone. Capps is no different. Oh, you mean about Rivera. Yeah, that was pretty rough.

I mean it to the Twins, who seem to think that once a random team sprinkles a guy with Magic Closer Dust (capital MCD), they’re forever a different guy. Small point: As an organization, and one with a tremendous amount of continuity over the past couple decades, I have to object to the MCD comment. Going back almost 30 years to the days of Ron Davis and Keith Atherton, all of the the Twins' team leaders in saves came to the team with fewer than 10 career saves until Jon Rauch and Matt Capps popped up on Bill Smith's watch. (And Rauch was covering for Nathan and wasn't intended to be a closer.) This organization typically doesn't believe in the Dust. Capps was kept on because they had the money, he was a known commodity and it saved them a trip to the open market. But trading a talented young catcher for him was awful, and Mr Smith has had his keys taken away from him as a consequence. (OK, there were other things too, but the mindset has been rejected.)

There are two aspects to covering a team: reporting facts and providing analysis of them. And there are two kinds of facts as well, those that come from seeing events and looking at the record and those private events that are only known by the people involved. Anyone can do analysis based on the facts. The quality will vary depending on the talent of the writer, how much time is devoted to research or thought, and the quality of the facts being considered. But in general it takes no special access to form an opinion and spew it out there. And these days a lot of the fact reporting happens on its own as MLB churns out game reports and stats on the internet for free. So the only realm left that requires access is the behind the scenes stuff that pros like Mackey dig out. I know I'm in MN, not Florida. I'm in my car or office, not the clubhouse. I talk to the idiots sitting around me, not Terry Ryan or players or TK. I form all sorts of stupid opinions based on, well not a heck of a lot, honestly. But that's what people have been doing for decades out in the bleachers or down at the bar because that's what we're supposed to do. Players and reporters and others in the know have been ignoring us for a hundred years. But now, through the power and majesty of the glorious internet, my water cooler-grade opinion is available to the entire world and is harder for folks to ignore. I'm sympathetic to Mackey's complaints, I guess, but honestly, people in the game have been putting up with this stuff for ages. It isn't new and it isn't fair and it isn't any different from what players have said forever about columnists who couldn't possibly know the true story etc etc etc. There's no accountability and we couldn't know and, well, shut up and do your job Phil. It's how things work no matter how frustrating you find it. Move on.

They dont need to to play any games for a smart fan to see the Marquis, Carroll, and Capps signings were disasters!! They'd be a problem if these guys were blocking prospects, but none of the kid pitchers are blowing away the field and the closest thing we have to a MI candidate needs to spend some time at AAA. The deals are short, and only Capps sees himself as a premiere full-time guy, so when the time comes to have a talk with any of them it should go pretty well. These are not bad deals. If you want a situation where Ryan can really mess up, wait to see how he handles the logjam in the outfield, and particularly CF, in the next year or two. If he over-values Revere's hustle or feels compelled to stay with Span after the point when Benson or some other youngster has passed him by then you can call for his head. But signing journeymen to paper over holes for one or two years is what you need from a GM in this situation.

More likely is the idea that they want to get a good look at him now. During the season Gardy and his guys don't get to see minor league players, so they're probably spending as much time as possible now to learn what they can. He'll go to Rochester to work on things until someone can't cut it or gets hurt, and then he'll come up to play full-time until the crisis passes.

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