South Dakota Tom

When players and owners put pen to paper on the last collective bargaining agreement, the hope seemed to be that a combination of revenue-sharing and a luxury tax would work in concert to allow all organizations to field competitive teams. The players went along with the traditional formula of underpaying minor leaguers, and locking up younger players for pre-arbitration (3 years, or at least 2 years if you were a Super 2 - including a minimum 86 days and being in the top 22% of your same-year peers in service time in the most recent season). That was followed by three more years of arb eligibility. But after six years, all those players who had not already signed long-term deals would be free agents. They would have reached the open market, competing to divvy up all that shared money, with at least a few teams pushing up to - and past - the luxury tax. Teams weren't supposed to make deliberate decisions to sacrifice on-field performance in the hope of accumulating cheap young players, rising in the draft (and international bonus pool money), trading away players in their second- or third-year of arbitration for lower-level flyers. The recent success of Kansas City and Houston employing that strategy to draft or trade veterans for high-end controllable talent, then supplementing that core with an expensive free agent or two, and winning a World Series, has not helped matters. For when a team or two employs that strategy, it gives them an edge in the construction of a future ballclub, at the price of fielding their best possible current team. When over half the league simultaneously employs that strategy, you end up with a lot of very poor baseball - and a lot of veteran players seeking out roles on the few teams remaining who will even consider employing them. How do we fix this? How do we simultaneously bring in new players, reward veterans, encourage analytics in personnel, and avoid the bust-and-build strategy? There is no one answer, but rather, a combination of factors, that seem necessary. A spending floor - Every team would have a requirement to spend a percentage of revenues, approaching 50%. This idea would promote the service of free agents to make sure teams spend sufficiently. It would also allow smaller-market teams to creatively invest in arb- and pre-arb extensions to give their teams financial and personnel stability. I can imagine owners neither wish to advertise their revenues or their utilization of those, or have their hands tied in deciding how to construct their teams. How can we be required to spend money on players whose contractual obligations might serve to block a simultaneous core of younger players more in need of big-league development? Given the disparity in revenue from top to bottom, one could also imagine a scenario where this could lead to unfair monopolization. Are the Dodgers now required to spend twice as much as other teams? Aren't we going to hit a point where the floor for the top teams comes dangerously close to the luxury tax we don't want them to spend beyond? We Twins fans (as most other teams not pushing the luxury envelope) have seen some pretty questionable roster moves made solely based on economics and options remaining , but one can imagine a team having to retain a $12 million albatross rather than promote a rookie in order to stay above sea level. Draft order and draft compensation for lost free agents - I suggested a lottery system for the first three rounds in an earlier article. I saw another suggestion that the team that came closest to the playoffs would pick first, on down to the worst non-playoff team, and then finally the playoff teams from worst to first. The concern here is that teams could easily be stuck in hellish mediocrity for a long time, unable to select the top draft picks, and unable to elevate their seasons, perhaps because of a single poor long-term signing that weighs down payroll for seasons to come. I will confess that I like a little competitive imbalance - races in which all drivers have the same exact car are not interesting to me. Even with revenue-sharing, a luxury tax and a spending floor, some teams are going to be more able to sign premium players than others. That is fine with me - it is when this practice is combined with the lack of a spending floor and half the league serving as a development pool for the top 8 teams that it maligns the sport. Many other ideas have been floated - decrease the amount of time until free agency. Decrease the amount of time until arbitration eligibility. Increase the pay of every level of minor leaguers, and the minimum salary for anyone making a big-league club. Some ideas promote greater interest in the sport from a less-patient audience (the "bigger pie" theory) - fewer trips to the mound. A pitch clock. A 3-batter minimum for any pitcher. The universal DH combined with a 26-man roster with a 13-pitcher maximum (wait, you just killed the LOOGY but you want to double the number of jobs for the aging slugger?). A much smaller roster expansion in September, so late-season games don't become a substitution-fest. An international draft. Major league free agency taking place all in the week after the Super Bowl. I'm not convinced personally that drastic changes to the sport will do more to bring in new fans than it will to alienate traditional ones, though common-sense pace-of-play tweaks seem justified. Of all the items out there, to me, the salary floor is the key. Simply by requiring a certain amount be spent by each team allows minor leaguers to survive, young major leaguers to be compensated earlier and more highly, and still retains a share of revenue that every team is going to need to spend on the accumulation of veterans. All the other competitive balance measures fail if not coupled with a requirement, at least, to try.

I agree this is a ground-up, rather than a bottom-down, problem. The argument that you need to overpay in years and AAV for veterans because the owners got to underpay for them when they were coming up doesn't make economic sense for the owners. It is, however, the way that the system currently balances out the division of the pie. I think the notions of (substantially) increasing the minor league pay at each level, increasing major league minimums, and decreasing length of time until arbitration, and length of service until free agency will resolve most of this - especially if coupled with a competitive requirement to spend a certain portion of revenue on salaries for each team, and a sprinkling of anti-tanking measures (throw all non-playoff teams into a total lottery system for first three rounds of draft order, teams that don't spend the "floor" of their revenue don't receive revenue-sharing). The players have turned the conversation so far, but this is going to be a devastatingly difficult CBA to negotiate.

In the lineup projection thread, as well as Do-Hyoung Park's projected lineup (IIRC), we rolled with Parker, Reed, May, Hildenberger, Rogers, plus Mejia and Romero. That saved room on the roster for a 4th bench player (either Austin, Astudillo, or Duda). There also seems to be a consensus that we do not want to roll the dice on middling relievers, giving 30-40 innings to some spanking new signing over the development of the above list (as well as potential openers like Gonsalves or Stewart or Littell), or thwart the progress of Thorpe to make the rotation, or prevent Moya or Magill or Vasquez from having an open position to slide into because we added a contract that we are financially reluctant to shed, or waiting solely for injuries to create opportunities. Just saying, the "don't sign anyone but Kimbrel, but only if he's not too long or expensive, but we can't go with what we have, we haven't addressed the bullpen sufficiently" box is a tiny one, indeed. I am convinced there is better value in picking up a tanking team's best reliever mid-season than rolling the dice on anyone but Kimbrel, and am more optimistic than most on here about what we have now. Final note - I think everyone should have to file an "environmental impact statement" along with their suggestions - you cannot simultaneously say "go get this guy" without saying "dump this guy" if there is a roster consequence to your move. (So if we get Kimbrel, I move Romero back to AAA as a starter.)

And since I have 10 minutes before I need to pick up my daughter from school, I'll add one more thought. It is my position that the Twins would be better off now, in 2019, if they had NOT added Reed, Duke, and Rodney in the 2017-2018 offseason (not complaining about the logic of it, and coupled with the other acquisitions, the notion of solidifying the pen). Just that we'd know more now and I don't want to have to post this again in another year because we traveled the same road.

Can they be? Sure. We could get bounce-back years from Reed and Hildy, great performances from Rogers, May, Blake Parker, (not sold myself on Magill), and fill in the remaining two or three spots with some combination of Moya, Vasquez, Stewart, Gonsalves, Romero, Littell, Duffy (just when you think you can count a guy out, his curveball could become the wipeout pitch it once was), Jake Reed, Curtiss. Mejia could be a 5th starter or a reliever. That's a lot of guys for very few positions. I have argued previously that it is impossible to look outside the organization for 1-2 arms (Ottavino and Allen, in your example), and then give effective opportunity to the above list. Even with injuries and releases of the truly unproductive, the roster does not expand to give meaningful chances to 5-10 other arms. Signing two veterans to guaranteed contracts at modestly-high AAVs pretty much ensures that you cannot. In addition, those signings prohibit the type of roster manipulation, demotions and promotions of the un-tenured with options, even to attempt such a tryout or rotating door expansion of what is possible. Right now, I think Reed, Hildy, Parker, Rogers and May are fairly certain to start the year on the 25-man; assuming Mejia is 5th starter (and he's out of options), that leaves 3 spots open. I could justify adding one arm from the outside, but if we do more than that on major-league deals, we will probably not improve the unit to the degree where the addition outweighs the audition. We have to find out who we have and where we're headed with that glut of candidates already on the 40-man (or risk watching the best candidates float away in a season of anonymity). That strategy, I would argue, takes more guts and has a greater potential, than almost any multi-year reliever deal out there, regardless of dollars. As evidence, though I don't have the evidence in front of me, look at the guys who broke through last year to become valuable BP pieces around the league. Almost all of them came from within an organization and auditioned and became valuable while still 22-23 years old, not because they were acquired from outside.

http://twinsdaily.com/topic/32025-article-spending-the-twins-excess-cash/

While I understand the thrust of the article, there is a persistent and incorrect notion at its base - "with a leading team that has taken substantial steps backwards." It just isn't true. Cleveland has not gone backward; they still have a terrific starting rotation and signed Carrasco to an extension. They lost a couple of players, but have added others and saved money in the process. Summed up pretty well https://calltothepen.com/2018/12/16/cleveland-indians-are-winning-the-offseason/ Just the other day, there was an article on TD about the over/under for teams throughout the league. Twins 84; Indians 91 1/2. My sense is that Cleveland dangled those players to give the impression they were going to rebuild in order to compete one level higher against Houston/Boston/New York, but then shed salary via Encarnacion and Yan Gomes, picked up Santana, Jake Bauers, Kevin Plawecki, prospects, and financial flexibility. I might be proven wrong long-term, but as of today, we have neither improved sufficiently, nor Cleveland regressed sufficiently, to suggest anything other than a small dent in the commanding lead they possess.

The analytics of this team seem to indicate that short-term fliers are better than long-term investments. So long as the foundation of a team is solid, picking up extra pieces mid-season (when several teams are sellers and several pitchers have distinguished themselves for a half-season at least) makes sense. But if the foundation and the pieces you pick up in the off-season don't get you to the gambling zone in any given year, the wait and hope philosophy continues ad infinitum.

There was an effort to discuss this topic awhile ago, but I thought I would pick it up again now that the rumors and suggestions are increasing about what to do with the existing pitching staff, both starters and relievers. I'm not someone who lives and breathes Baseball Reference, but I think a strong statistical analysis is the best route to take in considering both 1) what the front office is thinking; and 2) what the needs and holes are with the existing roster. So let's assume that in a 162-game season, you will have 35-40 games a year that you will lose on the road without having to pitch a 9th inning, but you will have a dozen extra-inning games that will stretch the innings. Last year, we had 1443.1 innings pitched in the season; we know (from painful experience) that a handful of those will be pitched by position players (we had 3.2 last year), but given the numbers, let's ignore that for now. We need to fill 1,443 innings. My math (also from the Twins page on Baseball Reference) shows that 907 of those innings (thereabouts, as I didn't try to winnow out how many innings that Gabriel Moya threw as a starter rather than reliever, or several others, but spitballed it with those types of players) were pitched by starters. That averages 5.2 innings per start, and whether you use the opener strategy or a "traditional" starting pitcher, (then calling the "starter" the primary pitcher rather than the opener) you are hoping to get something close to that out of your primary/starter. That leaves room for optimism, as we can hope that the slate of starters picks it up a notch (whether that is 5 guys or 15 over the course of a season), but let's assume they don't, that we need 536 innings out of the non-starters. My quick South Dakota math tells me that is 3 1/3 innings per game. I am also going to assume that we will roll with a 13-man pitching staff, unless the starters are on track to bump their innings to a level where the remaining innings can be handled by 7 guys (and that doesn't appear to be the case, but if we get to a point where starters are putting in over 1,000 innings combined, we might). How can we best divide innings for our 8-person staff so as to make that possible? 1) Simple but wrong - that is 67 innings per reliever per year (and no, I don't assume that the same 8 guys will man the posts all season, but perhaps like a second unit in basketball, the substitutes will take the innings/minutes not played by the first string). 8 guys getting 67 innings per year means that within a 26-week season, each relief pitcher would pitch roughly 3 innings per week. 2) More specialized - A look at the "typical" workload of a closer shows that they average pretty close to that number - 65-75 innings per year, maybe 30-40 of which are in closing situations. I don't expect the Twins to vary significantly from that role, even if they don't have that player on their roster right now (I think they do in Trevor May). But for purposes of this analysis, let's say we do have a closer (whether May or Allen from the Indians or someone else, that can be debated) and that person pitches 70 innings. 3) Who does what? That leaves us with 466 innings. I think we can pencil in Reed (for all of these guys, let's just say "assuming health" without really assuming that all of them will stay healthy for the year) Hildenberger, and Rogers for 70 innings each. That's not unreasonable, given their traditional workloads, again citing this page: https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/MIN/2018.shtml#all_team_pitching. Now we're down to it. That is 280 innings pitched by the core four relievers, leaving 256 remaining innings for 4 pitchers. The names of those now-existing pitchers includes Romero, Stewart, Gonsalves, Moya, Littell, Slegers, Vasquez, Curtiss, DeJong, Duffy, and Magill (I'm assuming for our discussion that Mejia is our 5th starter, but you can change names if you want to). While only 4 of them can be on the roster at once, many of the remaining names have options and can be shuffled between leagues as need arises. 4) Opener strategy - if the team is indeed - as has been hinted - considering an opener strategy, it seems that Stewart and Gonsalves might be the primary candidates for those roles (lining up with Mejia and Pineda, possibly Odorizzi). If we utilized them for the typical 30 starts that your #3 through 5 starters get, and hoping for 2+ innings - once through the order and averaging a little over a hit and walk per inning means that you face 9 batters while getting roughly 6 2/3 outs or 2 1/6 innings per open). 2.16 times 30 equals 65 innings, so 130 innings with two openers. 5) We have now defined several spots (which can be intermingled or altered depending on performance), but we allot 907 innings to Berrios, Gibson, Odorizzi, Pineda and Mejia; we allot 280 innings to May, Hildenberger, Reed and Rogers; we allot 130 innings to Stewart and Gonsalves. That leaves - ta-daa! - 126 innings to be covered by two remaining pitchers with Romero and Vasquez and Moya as your primary candidates, the third of them stashed at AAA and the remaining names, plus potentials in Tyler Jay, Jake Reed, et al lined up behind. That strikes me as do-able, especially if Romero emerges as the long man to back up short starts from Berrios, Gibson or Odorizzi, and Vasquez/Moya as the short-stint lefty. 6) Now who do you want? Once whittled down to innings and performers for those innings, any discussion of a reliever or starter should also include the ramifications of what happens to the pecking order and opportunities for the above players. If we added a 5th starter, for instance, a Wade Miley (no offense, but please don't) and he took up his share of those 900 innings, either Mejia is bumped back into the core of 4 relievers, or one of the opener positions or one of the two remaining slots. Who should be bumped? Knock out Gonsalves for Mejia and leave the rest the same? Knock out Stewart? Move Mejia into Hildenberger's innings, Hildenberger into Moya/Vasquez's innings? Do we consider not giving Romero an audition in the regular season? While I think the strategy of strengthening the bullpen is a sound one, I get far more lost in the thinking process when I follow the logical chain and try to decide what this means for our chances of promoting from within or giving real opportunity to a slew of candidates. Best guess - no more starters will be signed (other than minor league contracts with an invite in case someone intriguing slips through the wintertime cracks), 1 more dependable reliever, only one opener (either Stewart or Gonsalves) to pair with Mejia, the other to start at AAA, plus Hildenberger, Rogers, May and Reed. Remaining two slots are taken by Romero as more of a long man and either Moya or Vasquez as the 8th arm/lefty. I think you also have to cut bait with some of the remaining names and keep your roster alive with players who could be optioned as the season progresses, even if that player isn't the one causing the gaping void. The more you fill this roster with veterans and guaranteed contracts, the more you make that flexibility impossible and are forced into waiver/release positions on players. I'd rather be in a position to take on someone else's unfortunate waiver casualty than be forced into one of our own. Happy holidays everyone!

It is difficult to distinguish this issue from the "we have money to spend" issue. I think that Mejia and Romero are the most-likely 5th starters right now, leaving the other of them to join the bullpen as a long man (or in some sort of opener role that has been discussed). If the top 4 of the o.p.'s post are likely bullpen locks, and you add Mejia/Romero to it, we are still 2-3 arms short. Moya and Vasquez, Stewart and Gonsalves, Curtiss, Magill and Duffy (not to mention Jay or Littrell or Jake Reed or DeJong) are all possibilities for those spots. I would feel comfortable suggesting there are 2-3 out of the first four listed above, at least to roll with early on (knowing that the list doesn't end there). Again, dollars aside, I think (somewhere, to varying degrees of dependability) there are 2-3 capable bullpen arms in that list, and if there are not, many of the above names would need to be jettisoned to make room for the outside help that would fill those spots. We are just not in a position to demand outside help and also have a reasonable tryout for young arms trying to move up. I am not optimistic that spring training would even shake this out in a fair and level competition given the number of names, muddied further if other names are added. It strikes me, however, that the team is going to get at least one additional bullpen arm this offseason, and the above group is going to compete for the 7th and 8th spots in the pen. I wish we would have seen more of this competition in a lost September, (and believe that we are more likely to find lightning in a bottle among that group than fishing in the free agent marketplace). It seems the front office strategy is to wait this out and supplement the core in any area of weakness, depending solely on how far the position players, starting staff, and existing bullpen options can keep us competitive. If we don't have the core, as has often been suggested, there isn't any one or two bullpen arms that is going to move the needle sufficiently to take us from mediocre (or worse) to competitive.

And please don't tell me we have to put Logan Forsythe on the radar; he was BABIP lucky for a month, but hardly a piece of the team we need to be.

Means 9 trips through the rotation for each starter, and got me to questioning what would be the best way to appropriate those starts from now - 117 games in - through the rest of the season. The clear emphasis must be on 2019 and 2020 and what will best serve the club moving forward. That is not to say that you stop pitching Berrios, Odorizzi, or Gibson; those guys need to stay in rotation and continue to demonstrate that they can last an entire season and get their 30+ starts in. Injuries create opportunities but lack of injuries cannot serve to block those same opportunities. I don't intend to break down every match-up and start, but more to the point, who do I want to see and how many times between now and season's end? Let's start by saying that if we maintain the existing rotation of Odorizzi, Berrios, Santana, Gibson and Stewart, that each would pitch 9 more times and the chart would look like this: Odorizzi (9) Berrios (9) Santana (9) Gibson (9) Stewart (9) First, I would identify those starters I want to see pitch (whose names do not appear on the above list). I have 4: Adalberto Mejia, Stephen Gonsalves, Fernando Romero, and Michael Pineda. At this point, Pineda can continue his rehab until he is a little more stretched out, but I would like to see him for the last month, so (in an ideal world) I'll put his number at 5. Romero can continue to pitch in AAA, though I would like him to get a taste of regular rotation work for the next few weeks until he hits his innings limit (he's at 129.1 now), so I would pencil him in to start 4 more times at the mlb level, starting now, and see where that puts him. That might, honestly, dovetail into the Pineda starts as a timetable. I am most interested in seeing Gonsalves pitch, so would put him down for 7 trips through the rotation between now and season's end. The only way to get to the final numbers below is to switch to a 6-man rotation immediately, to rest the arms of the regulars and give opportunities to the newcomers, so that's what I do. It still does not create sufficient opportunities for all four so something else has to give. The victim in all this is Ervin; until and unless he can get his FB back up to 92 (which he won't), he is injured and on a rehab assignment. There is an argument that you continue to pitch him to see if someone will give you a C prospect for him or save a million dollars with a pass through waivers and a trade, but I don't see that happening either. So here is what it looks like: Odorizzi (7) Berrios (7) Gibson (7) Gonsalves (7) Romero (4) Pineda (5) Mejia (4) Stewart (4) Santana (0) So I have my six-man rotation, with Odorizzi, Berrios, Gibson and Gonsalves getting regular rotation work through the end of the season. I have Romero pitch the next 4 times he is scheduled on regular (or 6-man) rest, followed by Pineda starting the remaining games through the end of the season, and Romero potentially available out of the BP for long relief and to ensure he gets to the innings limit they have set for him. I have Mejia and Stewart rotate through the final spot (Stewart for 4 more now, and then a well-rested Mejia for the last 4 while Stewart finishes out the season in the expanded BP as an additional long man). Not only will this give me a look at the 2019 candidates, but it will inform me whether the above group is sufficient to attack the upcoming season (and yes, we can always use a frontline starter, but the question is whether or not we need another pitcher in the Odorizzi/Lynn/Stewart mode as a veteran who will take regular turns in the rotation but provide fairly middling results, if we're not being too optimistic about them). The lost season is quickly dwindling away, and the vague notion that we'll get a chance to see all of these guys when rosters expand is not accurate. This needs to start now if we are to get any meaningful feedback - and any valuable information - from the wreckage of 2018.

Last year, Dodgers chose Forsythe over Dozier; while I think there are luxury tax issues, there are also issues relating to the Dodgers having to remove someone from the 25- and 40-man roster, which they don't have now. I believe a lot more of these trades come down to "I need someone NOT on the 40-man, a lottery ticket 3 years away, and someone who is on the 25-man roster because we don't have any high-minors position players who can hit their way out of a wet bag." (not saying Forsythe is much better, but at least he can fill a role while we see what Adrianza has).

4+ games, no runs scored on minor league Twins pitchers today. Can't remember ever seeing that.

Peripherally, BD has been the person loudest about the deadline moves made by the F.O., both last year and this. He needn't look farther than his own performance as a legitimate reason why the players and friends have been traded, though the vagaries of baseball don't mean that it is any more his fault than Miguel's or Jorge's or Byron's. My sense, however, from a leverage standpoint is that it would be better for the Twins to deal him for a couple of mid-teens prospects (or worse), to reflect on the entire league's estimation of his value. So rather than sign him for a Q.O. (which he doesn't deserve based on performance, and is very unlikely to receive on an AAV basis, in any set of circumstances, especially with draft compensation connected), they could desire to sign him to the short-term deal, but with reduced expectations on his part. I personally (despite the digs) believe that B.D. would be a solid member of the team for the next couple of years - especially after following Rochester's offense all year on this site. You trade him - what is your Plan B? Is there a better candidate to rebound at a reasonable cost than him?

“Victor Tademo out on a sacrifice bunt, left fielder Jacob Brown to third baseman Jared Gates. Alberoni Nunez scores. Charles Mack to 3rd. Victor Tademo out at 3rd. Victor Tademo out at 3rd, left fielder Jacob Brown to third baseman Jared Gates.” So my baseball/can't sleep mind just read this and wondered exactly what happened. This is the best I could come up with (with no peeking at box scores or other accounts): men on 1st (Mack) and 2nd (Nunez); Tademo tries to push a sac bunt past and to the 3B side of the pitcher (figuring if 3B has to handle the ball, the sac will be successful) and actually pushes it through the wickets of 3B (sac bunt, otherwise it would have been called a bunt base hit if 3B overran it or the bunt was pushed past him); guy on 2nd scores, guy on 1st makes it to 3rd as ball rolls into the back of the infield dirt; Tademo keeps motoring and ends up getting caught between 2nd and 3rd, thinking Charles Mack was going to try to score, and is out in a single throw from LF to 3B. Wheel play was on - 3B was supposed to play slightly in and down the line but not charge until ball got past P, so he could cover 3B if P got the bunt; SS was covering 2nd for potential 1-6-4 dp; 2B was covering 1st; 1B was charging and P went careening into foul ground on the 3B side and then to back up the C after he realized he wasn't going to field the ball off the bat. I mean, what else could it be?

I love that it is Tyler day today in A ball. These write-ups are great - pick whoever you want as P.O.D.

I don't disagree that a .650 OPS versus left-handers will improve Kepler's overall numbers. However, I think a .650 OPS still makes him a candidate for a platoon. The only reason that would seem palatable is that we would have very little with which to improve those numbers from our current reserves (yes, Grossman's numbers should be better than that, but having him on the roster doesn't energize me). I really like Zack Granite as a 4th OF, but I think the big picture answer is to continue to seek out a RH-hitting corner who can DH and play defense, making Grossman, Granite, and Vargas into one amalgamated player.

Let's see - two locks, one 99%, then 75, 50 - Ted,you've only come up with 4.61 pitchers for 5 spots. Are we filling the other 39% chance of one rotation spot with either "someone we haven't heard of yet" or "4 man rotation?" Maybe I just like math too much....

Which is sufficient "insurance" it strikes me, given the overall needs of the team and lack of 25-man and 40-man room (especially when you add the names of Hughes and May). An acquisition like Belisle becomes the equivalent of another Rule 5 pick because you can't move him out of the 25-man (I know, you can release him, but I'm guessing he'd cost enough that we'd be reluctant to do that). So roll with what you have plus the above, and my sense is that there will be a relief pitcher available from another team facing this exact same scenario, if things go badly. And that always makes a wonderful mid-season human interest story.

I don't see a great fit with the Rays. Not only is there the "once bitten, twice shy" syndrome but they are seeming to want to be blown away for any non-FA, which is not where we need to go in dealing for the future. Would Archer look good for four years? Sure, but would you trade Berrios right now for a couple-three minor-leaguers, even A-list guys? Darvish for money. Cole for prospects, or Cole/McCutcheon for more prospects (Kiriloff, Gonsalves, Thorpe and Gordon) plus one existing outfielder not named Buxton. One FA reliever (best available in February after the dust settles and panic sets in).

The very reason everyone is salivating over landing immediate help is the same reason the Twins have often been slow to do so. This is often a time that large contracts get signed, and the players who remain become a much better bargain, either in terms of contracts or trading of prospects. While we may not love the idea of waiting, and plenty of criticism will be heaped upon the front office if they don't sign someone of substance in the next few days, the price for a player who is not snatched up this week could drop. If that means the Rays start to panic a little, or Pirates, because the front line free agents and trades are made for starting pitching, maybe it saves us a prospect or two when we talk to them a week from now.

And pitch more than 20 innings in that stretch...

Gives me a real appreciation for the four-year run Ted Kluszewski had in the mid-50s; that list is a real who's who.....

Turning the corner, what do people think the $3M is worth to a team trying to lure Ohtani? Do we stand a substantially better chance of landing him with our bonus versus teams with $1M? Is it crazy of me to wish that we sell our bonus pool money for a nice return, and then sign Darvish, and land Ohtani for the lesser money we have (his being long-term goals of winning and branding rather than immediate guarantees? And does anyone think no one is talking to him about the "second" contact?)? So my wish tonight is that we sell the signing bonus money to a team for a top-10 team prospect because they think it matters; then we sign the 6-year $150M Darvish deal, and then snag Ohtani anyway. And sorry for Mr. Marte - but wanted to include all three subjects in this reply....