Shane Wahl

Some of you guys are nuts! Anyway, my motive was to bring in some fresh faces. Six new guys on the 25-man roster looks good to me.

1. Purges, DFAs, and Sorry, we tried you out too soon: Release Clete Thomas DFA Jeff Gray, Matt Maloney, Anthony Swarzak, and Sean Burroughs Option Chris Parmelee 2. An addition I wanted last November, and some promotions Sign Bobby Abreu incentive-ladenly to replace Thomas Promote Anthony Slama, Scott Diamond, and Jeff Manship to replace Gray, Maloney and Swarzak Promote Darin Mastroianni to replace Parmelee and Ray Chang to replace Burroughs 3. Set the damn lineup and rotation: vs. RH 1. Denard Span, CF 2. Joe Mauer, C 3. Josh Willingham, LF 4. Justin Morneau, 1B 5. Ryan Doumit, RF 6. Bobby Abreu, DH 7. Danny Valencia, 3B 8. Jamey Carroll, SS 9. Alexi Casilla, 2B With Chang backing up three infield positions (and 1B if needed), Mastroianni backing up all OF positions (and 2B if needed), and Trevor Plouffe backing up RF and 2B (and SS, LF, and 1B if needed) vs. LH, Plouffe in for Abreu, Mastro in some for Doumit and Chang in for Morneau. Starting rotation: Carl Pavano Liam Hendriks (letting him work it out at this level) Scott Diamond Nick Blackburn Jason Marquis Bullpen: Jeff Manship Anthony Slama Jared Burton Francisco Liriano Alex Burnett Brian Duensing Glen Perkins Matt Capps ROC is left with Revere Dozier Parmelee Benson Carson Bates etc. If Swarzak clears waivers, he replaces Diamond. If not, oh well. He's the Luke Hughes of the staff.

I keep seeing people talk about potential defensive replacements, but nothing about who replaces that OBP at the top of the lineup. No ones says ___ about it and it's rather annoying. Somehow people only focus on the defensive side here, which is bizarre. Given this team has Casilla, Plouffe, Doumit, etc., who are NOT OBP guys at all, it seems rather ridiculous to replace Span. And CDog is right about Span being a guy (with Mauer) to build around and have with the team when the plethora of young guys come up in the next three years. I see Aaron Hicks as the only likely replacement in the lineup for Span, at least right now (maybe Rosario and JD Williams by 2015) really anywhere close to being ready. I do think that some OF prospects should be involved in trading for a top pitcher. Trade from a strength with depth to fill a weakness. Leadoff is not a deep spot for the Twins. The depth is found in guys like Revere, Tosoni, Benson, Hicks, Morales, and Arcia--even an outfield, DH, and two reserve OFs from that group leaves one out of luck. Revere and Morales/Arcia might be of some interest to teams.

When fans boo the best overall player on the team, you know there are problems.

$56.5 million in value since 2008. Span has no replacement, that much is clear, so I am wondering why anyone would want to trade him.

The Twins drafted him last year in the 41st round. There is no way his stock has gone up that much. I am being rather optimistic for him at round 6.

Who knows? They may have suspected someone would pick him up and they may have thought he deserved a chance, a chance he wasn't going to get with the Twins.

Off the top of my head: C--Dan Rohlfing, Chris Herrmann 1B--Chris Colabello 2B--Eddie Rosario SS--Brian Dozier MI--Danny Santana 3B--Miguel Sano OF--Angel Morales OF--Matt Carson OF--Aaron Hicks OF--Evan Bigley OF--Lance Ray Pitchers: Scott Diamond, A.J. Achter, Michael Tonkin, Luke French, Steve Hirschfield, Cole DeVries, Deolis Guerra, Lester Oliveros, Jeff Manship, Casey Fien, Caleb Thielbar, B.J. Hermsen

What's funny is that, of course, the Twins traded Santana to the Mets, the team on the opposite end of the spectrum for players clearly not ready and who took awhile (Humber, Guerra--cross your fingers) or who may be ruined (Mulvey, Gomez) because of irresponsible Met player development thinking. And the Rays position players are moved a bit too fast, perhaps. Hmmm . . . DELMON!!

Yes, it is a Baseball Prospectus study done at the beginning of last season and it showed that the Twins promote position players slower than everyone else and the next closest was 200 plate appearances fewer. Pitching was close . . . I think the Twins were in the top three in slowest promoters there too. I guess I could just find the study . . . . http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=13018 Boom. I didn't reread, but I think the tentative conclusion was that the best players aren't rushed through nor are they moved very slowly.

I probably wouldn't care about not drafting a solid college pitcher with the 2 pick if I could rest assured that the Twins were going to chase a top 50 MLB pitcher on the market in the offseason or make a trade for one.

I will respond to both of you here, since there are similar things said. The performance aspect (Rochester being a bad team) isn't necessarily improved with these has-beens rather than prospects, and there might be more appeal for minor league teams to have prospects that people want to come out and see (any word on Beloit's attendance this year, for instance?). One thing I thought was an improvement over last year is that the Twins initially signed AAA player that were actually pretty good (Burroughs, Carson, Ramirez, Florimon, etc.) as opposed to the Chase Lambin and Jeff Bailey type. Thurston seems like the latter variety, but oh well. Revere is Exhibit A! I don't mean to say that they Twins should promote fast to MLB, but rather to get players at the highest level of MiLB and see how they perform. This means that I like in-season promotions (for many reasons, one of which is if they are going to move up a level at the beginning of next year anyway, it's good to prevent slow starts by having them be familiar with the next level already--see Aaron Hicks 2011, Michael Gonzalez this year, etc.) and I would have just liked Rochester to have a team of Revere, Benson, Tosoni, Parmelee, etc. last year for some period of time together. Now they are all over the place (Parm 2/3 time with the Twins, Revere up and down, Benson and Tosoni struggling (I know Tosoni is hurt, but keeping in mind last year) at AAA, etc. The general idea is that I like the team to stay in-house first, giving guys the opportunity to perform when they are already here as opposed to adding Clete Thomas, JR Towles, Joe Thurston, etc. Good lord, is Clete Thomas (aside from being a lefty) really going to be better than Matt Carson for the Twins? JR Towles rather than Danny Lehmann? Thurston rather than Florimon or increased time for Chang? Meanwhile, instead of AAA has-beens, why not find more Chris Colabellos to start at AA or lower and see what happens. Or under 25 guys who still might develop, but could use time at AA or A+ while promoting guys there up a level? I don't know the details of the Baseball Prospectus study about minor league service time. The 200 PA more than everyone else doesn't bother me as much if the stagnation occurs at higher levels in the system (and it just happens that players end up not being very good), but I get the sense that a lot of it happens a A/A+.

Zimmer/Appel (wait and see over the next 6 weeks), Top LHP available, Kevin Plawecki, P, P, 3B, P, MI, P, C, P, OF, P, 3B, P, MI, P, P, OF, P (just generally, obviously not so specific) should be the general direction. Boyd and Harrison set a good precedent last year.

T.J. Oakes is not that good. Maybe 6th round at the earliest. And that is both what will happen and what should happen. The Big 10 has a major pitching shortage. And there are plenty of high school arms out there.

Um, slow to promote . . . yes. So, how does jamming non-MLB caliber players into AAA do anything but exacerbate the problem?

I guess I don't really understand this. How is Rochester not the training ground for the Twins? Joe Thurston is not a worthwhile player and I don't understand how he won't be hurting prospects like Florimon. Dozier, Florimon, and Chang, in that order, are the healthy middle infield prospects at Rochester. I worry about players who aren't moved fast enough to AAA (does not need to be FAST, but 200 PA more than every other team (to MLB) seems gratuitous, or who skip it altogether. What the hell is Rochester . . . . just a half re-tread contingent to supposedly make that team competitive? Exhibit A: Ben Revere: Very little time in Rochester where he could refine his offensive skills. Why didn't they just sign someone like Clete Thomas or Darin Mastroianni last year to fill his role (and produce similar value) and let Revere develop against near-MLB pitching? Exhibit B: Chris Parmelee: what a ridiculous situation--he repeats everywhere along the way, including too long at New Britain last year and they SKIP Rochester based on nonsense limited stats from September and spring training (the latter is truly stupid to base much off of). And look at him now. Not even playing all the time and when he does it is sub-700 OPS. Exhibit C: Joe Benson: repeating like Parmelee until this year, but at Rochester clearly 1/3 of a year too late. How would it not have been better to promote him to AAA at the beginning of August last year to see what he can do there? Promoting guys in season has all sorts of benefits including psychological benefits. Exhibit D: Brian Dozier: what irony. He is promoted in season and continues his progress, perhaps even getting better with the move to AA last year. And HE is the guy that isn't up with the Twins now and didn't get the call-up last September? Weird. I don't understand this organization's attitude towards AAA at all. Thurston reminds me of last year when the Twins signed career minor leaguers just to make Rochester happy as though having re-treads is better than up and coming prospects.

But I thought Bobby knew EVERYTHING???

BB/9, HR/9, and BABIP are pretty significant though. The guy was extremely unfortunate to have that Rochester defense behind him. I think he will continue to improve this year and become a real option at the bottom of the rotation, and certainly better than they other options.

Yeah, why not promote Florimon and instead sign some younger guy from somewhere to be a AA fill-in? I don't understand why they jam down from the top instead of feeding into to bottom or in this case middle.

Trade talk is pretty dubious though. There's a lot that goes into it, and a lot of it is stuff we never hear about. Furthermore, there have to be willing trade partners. I don't know if many teams would have traded much for any of those guys due to 2012 salary or 2013-2014 salary (in Span's case . . . and his health) when they could just sign guys on the market for the same price. I doubt any of the three pitchers will be around in 2013 unless Liriano is in the bullpen, but I don't know if any of them are trade candidates, unfortunately. I cannot really see any problem with signing Willingham and Carroll. Not taking care of the pitching situation was and clearly is the problem.

Wow people make it sound so easy to be a GM and a manager! Who knew it was so easy!? Spideyo is generally correct here. Thrylos, rebuild with what this year? They could rebuild with Parmelee, Dozier and MAYBE Benson, but that doesn't seem like enough to rebuild as opposed to finding Carroll-esque stop gaps for 1-2 years while the above three get truly ready, Hicks gets there, Revere proves more, Tosoni, Herrmann, Gibson, Wimmers, Gutierrez get ready, etc. If everyone mentioned would have been at Rochester last year, then rebuilding would have been possible. Otherwise your rebuilding plan would involve throwing a whole bunch of AA guys out there.

He's hitting .389 with RISP. And slugging .667. Do those numbers mean nothing to the Mauer haters? There are four guys hitting well on this team. Why not focus negative attention towards the rest of the batters and the vast majority of the pitching staff.

"Is there a non-zero chance the Twins could trade Mauer's albatross contract????" Is there a non-zero chance that Twins fans will ever stop complaining about this contract when the guy was highly UNDERPAID for years and years and then had ONE bad year at the beginning of the contract? "Without trading the contract, this team will have little chance of competing until Joe is gone." This is just false. The Twins could compete spending as much as they are now . . . the problem is that they are spending too much on terrible-to-average pitchers.

JaDamion (JD) Williams is at Beloit (and slowly coming around this year after a great year last year) and may be faster than Ben Revere.

Swarzak is not going to be a good major league pitcher. I can't understand why anyone likes him. Diamond and Walters are interesting possibilities. I would like to see Deduno pitch more. I wouldn't mind seeing FA pitcher 1 (ha!)-Hendriks-Diamond-Blackburn (unfortunately)-Manship/Walters by the beginning of next year (and Gibson). The funny thing is that I think "rebuilding" in terms of the pitching staff might actually produce more wins than otherwise this year. Revere and Angel Morales may be the most likely trade candidates.