Rosterman

What you say is so true for the current team. The Twins have had four gret draft years (according to the numbers) and those players should all be in the high minors or on the cusp of the major leagues. But somehow that hasn't happened and the Twins still saw a need to fill AAA Rochester with minor free agents and guys we were talking about as little as two seasons ago still are in the minors and NOT near ready for the major league call. But that still doesn't mean they can be exposed or added to major league life. We are, afterall, looking at the future. For all the comments by a manager that he didn't want to play rookies because it isn't serving to the vets NOT to win, to management feeling we are a few pieces away from being competitive in 2017. Well, the strength of the team and organization is the prospect route, unless you have loads of money to throw away on hits and misses. You can always buy a team. But even that is suspect, with possible little return according to the dollars spent. You MAY be just as well served going with the unproven, the hungry, the guys you spent hours watching and giving bonus money to play pro ball because you believed they could be fashioned into a major league player. Something happened in development. We will see if the Twins do have prospects and who they lose in the Rule 5, the minor league portion of the draft, how many roster spots disappear because of minor league free agents that THEY DEVELOPED not having a 40-man spot. 40-man rosters can suffer when you have to protect players two years away from the minors. A lot can happen in that big jump to AA or AAA ball. Team management may shudder when they look at the results of Buxton and Berrios and a few others. But we didn't get to where the team is now because of them. We got there because of at bats to Park, injuries to numerous players, a pitching staff that has ONE starter with the others wallowing between a glint of greatness and many glints of just plain all-out badness. And still they lose. But part of the process is creating a player base that can survive the highs AND the lows, that play together, enjoying playing the game of baseball together, and then playing for each other as a team. If you have no prospects, or borderline prospects, you can afford to play the aging vets, the guys looking for that last big paycheck, the ones that give you some depth but are still the 41st-42nd-43rd man, at best, on any team's depth chart. But the Twins don't have to do that. They can throw Stewart and Gonsalves out there just as well as Albers and Dean. You can (wait...we don't want too many innings). Amidst a team that has players, it seems, no one really feels has value (Santiago, Suzuki, Plouffe amongst others) we add more players that most all other teams have already given a pass, while players that other teams are eyeing flounder in the minors.

It is always fun to see where predictions end. It's like looking at those Top Prospects lists we make every year and eventually seeing where they went.

If they add Park and put him on the 60-day, they get a 40-man roster spot. Assuming they might also get one with a trade of Suzuki, and possibly releasing someone, I would like to see Beresford get a shot. He won't get many at bats, unless you use him to spell someone in the later innings of a losing effort. Why Jamie? He has put up decent numbers this year and last. He's a longterm prospect. He has been a solid part of the organization. Maybe you want to keep him involved in the organization if he doesn't return to Australia. Besides, what can it hurt. He's a free agent anyways. Give him some major league money, a few at bats. If you don't keep him, someone will then be able to grab him. Yes, we should be bringing up as many prospects or future 40-man adds as possible. Some guys will be going to the Arizona League after the Lookouts pennant play. Some don't need to added to the 40-man (which would've still been the case of Berrios) until November fer sure. In the real world, I wish we were in a situation where we would want to see Burdi, reed, Jones, Hildenburger and Bard all come up in September to push aside everyone else and give us an advance look at the future and the past a rest. But there aren't enough roster spots, too many injuries to those youngsters, and not the way the soon-to-be-old-school Twins operate (or so we hope).

The flip side of player development is just that. You can have the multi-tooled players that you draft, but at some point, they all need some tweaking and work. All of them. Of course, you usually have a "Way" that you draft around, taking players to increase your depth, that MIGHT work in your park, that show skill sets that you think important vs. those you don't. Not all players are able to be tweaked, which is the downside of drafting and why so many of the 40-50 players taken each year don't last into, say, Year Three and maybe 5% ever ever make it to a major league game. That's a lot of money and time invested in players that have flaws and weaknesses and can't be molded. Sometimes you see such players in otehr organizations and they conform more to your "Way" than the other team, so you get a short cut at the other team's expenses. Or some guys just can't handle it. You are given a chance at 18 or 21 to embark on a career that in as little as 2-3 years and as many as 5-6 MIGHT see you making a million dollars a year. The dreams of baseball. The system as a whole works with 150 players a year and hopefully 2-3 graduate to some level of play at the major league level each year, with 40 dropping off the radar and another 40 filtered into the mix. It comes from the top down. The General Manager (or President of Baseball Operations) with his various Directors of Scouting, Minor Leagues, Player Personnel go forth to put together a major league team each year and a backup plan at each and every position and an organizational depth chart pipeline to keep things going over a 3-5 year period of time. I can be a coach or manager or a coordinator and work my butt off to teach a kid to play baseball, but if they don't wanna learn, or don't overcome issues, is it my fault? Yes, at some level it is...if that player goes elsewhere and thrives. Then you can question about how many guys were cut from the list that might've thrived given a different environment (which is why we have minor league free agency, the Rule 5, and ultimately independent league ball). But it starts at the direction the organization as a whole wants to take, laid out by the powers-to-be, and if you don't fit with that vision, and contribute players in your reports that mean what the "Way" is looking for, you don't stay, are canned, put in time until caught. The coaches and managers you hire in development land do come together with a shared vision and a shared outlook on how each and every player must move thru or out of the system. That is the basis of the game. If you have trouble getting a message across, there should be someone who can come in and try, and if not...pfuttt!

The Problems: Sano in the outfield, meaning no place for Arcia and the reps you gave Quentin and Sweeney were all a waste, too. And then, bammmmm, Kepler comes on board and you plug some time with Grossman, so some things look good. But Sano is not an outfielder, got behind in his reps and third, and becomes part of the DH mix-up. Park. Sometimes the Twins are pretty good at tantalizing us that they are on the cusp of keeping their own free agent, are negotiating for the best booty possible for their pending free agent, or reach out and sign the impossible to come and be the savior for the team. I still thing winning the Park thing was a surprise, and them signing him for the four years they did at what they did was an even bigger surprised. Then they knew not what to do with it all, and we end up losing Arcia, having Sano in limbo, Vargas showing he might be worth his keep and the Twins contemplating keeping Plouffe for one more season. Line Up Construction. Guys are all over the place. What are the match-ups. Did they work? Why so many K's. Are they not looking at pitches. No speed on the basepaths. Somehow, we did have one part of a season of excitement as Eduardo Nunez seemed to be a one-man wrecking crew in average, getting base, stealing bases, hitting homers and doing a better-than-though job of fielding before he came back down to earth as the utility guy Molitor felt he was in San Francisco. The rotation. It stunk. I though fer sure it would be better than it was. Maybe we would see 60-70 wins from the Big five +. Now we might not even see 30. One will hit 150+ innings. A disaster. An expensive disaster. Thus, Pushing Players. And still we have guys wandering the halls of A+ and AA rather than pushing harder to get them on the road to the majors. In the Twins way, most of these guys won't be around until 2018 now. Go figure. The bullpen. Rhyme or Reason. Overworked. Never have I seen so many pitchers used is so many games. The saving grace is that the Twins have used something like 20 guys in relief situations. 20 GUYS! Whew! Some are working a record amount of games (Pressly & Tonkin). There is not a long guy )think Swarzak) in the bunch. May was misued. Kintzler became the closer with no games to close. It seems th guys are on a rotation. No idea of matchups or situations. Who decides these things. And the future, for the second year, is still buried in the minors. So many names: Burdi, Reed, Hildenburger, Bard, Jones, Landa, Melotakis. We amazingly have seen Chargolis, who still is trying to get over his jitters. And Wimmers MAY be a good prospect, at last. And we got Pat Light, who is all over the place. The bullpen in 2017 promises to be more of the same, a patchwork of more (as someone calls Tonkin the 13th guy) end pieces than precision throwers. Management! Somehow they thought they had a winner. Not sure what they could've done. Everyone in the division seemed to have done something, and the White Sox even seemed improved but fell hard from grace. I personally thought ALL the teams might've been pretty close in the long run - 5 to 10 wins separating first from last. But what did I know. All I can say is that as a fan, I am excited about seeing more of the future, be they good or bad for now. I also look forward to seeing a new direction in management. Even if everything is totally torn apart and solid prospects are sent packing and money is thrown at more worthless free agents, and a big contract bombs, I will still be a Twins fan. It is, after all, a tough game, this major league baseball. Always more losers than winners. But it is a beautiful game when things happen well on the field and the teams play to a competitive balance.

But is there some coaching strength in the kinors. Is Dougie and Mike and Jake quality managers getting the msot out of the prospects. Do we hear good works about Chad Allen and Tommy Watkins? Is Jim Dwyer actually a solid hitting coach? Is Cliburn, Artega, Bonilla the real thing? Do the Twins have a solid analytical guy in Joe Vavra? I listen to Bruno talk on the radio and like it, but maybe he needs to be the minor league hitting coordinator, if we trust him with that responsibility. Some of these minor league guys have been around...forever. But looking at the major leagues...did we make right choices by bringing in new blood. We essentially have two pitching coaches in Eddie and Neil. We have three hitting coaches in Vavra and Bruno and Hernandez. We have Butch and Gene doing something. And we have one of the better hitters ever in Molitor who knows and loves the game...but does he know and love the players? He has worked throughout the Twins system, but I'm not sure what he is doing up here in Year Two. The lineup. Has he figured out where to bat whom when yet? Of course, the new GM will have some say in this. The new President of Baseball Operations could do a major housecleaning (or will be doing a lot of interviews of folks already with the organization). But something is amiss. You big guys are failing (Sano to some extent, Berrios who is still early, Buxton who was rushed) yet you can see success in Rosario, Kepler, Santana, Polanco. Wow! Those are 7 powerful names to have on a 25-man roster. We shouldn't be...this...bad.

But the Twins did go out and got better-than-average starting pitchers. Starting with Correia and continuing thru Pelfrey, Santana, Hughes, Nolasco. We, as fans, clamored that the Twins needed to spend money on PROVEN talent -- not just keep it in stockholder accounts. The pain was they we overpaid. We gave Pelfrey more years that necessary. We did the same with Hughes. The team, committed to being competitive, did what it took to get fan interest away from them stockpiling dollars from the cash cow of Target Field to actually putting some dollars on the field. That the powers-that-be are afraid to gamble $100 million or more, going back to the days of Hunter's contract demand and what it would've cost to retain Santana, is the kink. Who could've predicted that the majority of these paydays to guys who came here because of their payday would so totally go south for the Twins that they would be in a similar boat if they had fielded a staff of cheaper alternatives and One Big Stud. And we were competitive last year because...so many flukes.The top teams were heads-and-tails above everyone in their divisions, and pretty much all the other teams crashed and burned. Coming up from behind, we didn't crash because you couldn't be any lower than you were the year before. The sad point is that unless some guys perform brilliantly in the Fall League, we have this great crop of candidates: Gonsalves, SMejia, Stewart, Cederoth, Jay, maybe Wheeler, Romero, Slegers, Hurlbut, Jorge, LeBlanc, possibly fillers like Greenwood, Bencomo and the still young (25) Duffey. But NOT ONE of these guys is going to throw 150 innings this year and asking any of them to do 200 next year may be impossible. Yes, at this point, it would've been nice to see 2 or 3 besides Berrios get a call to the majors instead of whom we are throwing out there, even if we went with a 6-man rotation in September, and if the 40-man spots existed (yes, the dreaded 40-man, don't add anyone before their time...right now management is probably wishing they hadn't added Berrios until the need this November). It's thinking ahead, but I actually do wonder if the Twins suddenly saw the weaknesses in their drafting ways and were hoping that the BIG signings would carry them thru to 2018 and into 2019 with patchwork from other free agent starters while the offense carried the team. It all boils down to the disaster that became Meyer and May, two guys the Twins traded to be starters, that haven't become starters, and you can readily assume that if Meyer was still with the Twins and if May is converted, neither would be able to give us 150 innings in 2017, which shows you the time that was wasted doing whatever with these two talents. Yet we don't want to part with our prospect talent sooner rather than later, and although the checkbook is open to spend, anyone can spend money, but what you get in return for the money is the true value. And sometimes you overspend for quality because it is quality and maybe you have to hire one less assistant general manager or a couple less ushers and ticket people as your payroll goes beyond that 55% hogwash of your cash cow Target Field, now being replaced in the public eye by the Vikings boat full of human-interest cash machine.

So true. If the process doesn't work out, then the Twins have a lot of empty seats. But, hey, that 45% of their revenue that they don't spend on 40-man salaries has to be spent somewhere.

It's not the organizational meetings that is the Big IF on the horizon, it is the end of the World Series and then the Winter Meetings. Something has to be in place by then. If you are looking for a Director of Baseball Operations/President, then you are looking for a GM, probably two assistant GM's, a Director of Player Personal, a Director of Scouting and a Director of Minor League Operations, not to mention a Field Manager and then his coaching staff. That's an awful lot of jobs that could have major turnover in the organization on the side of baseball operations, and the trickle down could also come to all the minor league coordinator, manager and coaching positions, too. Whew!

I still don't understand totally why they couldn't get anything for Suzuki and Plouffe last year, and also this year. Okay, maybe I can. Cost vs. production. They are overpaid. They are not essentials. There are other comparable players in the whole world of baseball. Sadly, the Twins somehow have a roster of players that are replaceable at little or no cost, except that the Twins have put them on payroll at a cost that is not appealing to anotehr team (except for Dozier, and anyone that is a rookie).

Turner would be a good major league ready catcher if he catches a few more prospects that will be in the majors. He should be at Rochester next season. You can use him if you have someone else catching 90-100 games. Same with Mitch. With his time behind the plate, he is just a parttime catcher at this point and needs to learn to handle the major league staff, which may not be so hard in the immediate future as many of his minor league cohorts will be major league guys. If Suzuki leaves, I would like to see Garver and Murphy continue to handle the catching duties, only now in Minnesota. Centeno is fine, but I would not keep a 40-man spot reserved for him. You may keep him into the winter in case you need a free agent spot, but you could probably resign him as a minor league option. But there is NO room for Garver to be a DH or play 1B. And please don't have him play the outfield. He doesn't need to be...Chris Herrmannnnnnn!

Well, Albers and Dean. Sigh. Too bad Logan Darnell is again, injured, at month's end. Otherwise..... Sadly, I would rather see Wheeler and Mejia get the call. I expect both of those guys to contribute something in 2017. Don't get me wrong. I don't hate Albers or Dean. Good for them. But..... I guess two starts for Berrios to work on whatever it was Blyleven/Santana/ Allen/Guardado discussed with him. Would like to see Duffey work out of the pen and come back as a long man (why do we only egt an inning out of our relief pitchers...isn't Rogers AND someone long guys, or should be long guys, in games we are losing). I'm watching StubHub for CHEAP September seats for Twins games as they play their final 36, needing 22 loses to hit 100.

I still struggle to see where he will fit into Twins plans. Of course, that is up to the next general manager. We have Palka and Walker in the wings. We need to keep Vargas around or lose him. We can always claim Arcia the next time he goes thru waivers. We might be able to talk Ortiz out of retirement. We will resign Plouffe and move Sano to DH fulltime. Okay, problem solved. Let's move lots of bodies elsewhere. I wonder what will happen to that Twins commercial featuring Park that they filmed earlier this summer.

You have to know that ANY prospects promoted will have some rough times up here. That is what the coaches and the manager are around for, to make sure they do work out or...goodbye. Not every player is a rookie-of-the-year superstar in year one, or even year two. We do have arms like Gonsalves and Stewart and Jay and Cederoth and someday Jorge and Thorpe. Plus guys like Wheeler who can't be any worse than Dean/Duffey/Milone. But we won't know until they get a shot. And May will be a partial starter because he needs to stretch out and get his routine back together. What we have learned is that we shouldn't spend $150 million on three middle-of-the-order guys longterm.

College is all about baseball. Going for the extra bases.

I don't see the Twins spending $100 millin on Ramps. He is not...Mauer in his prime, fer sure. That is a lot of bucks for someone who is coming off a career year. Sadly, the Twins will stick with Murphy, which still means Garver will be in the mix. I just have a hardtime paying Plouffe whatever he will get in arbitration, unless you plug him in as a jack-of-all trades. Keeping Plouffe means you don't need Vargas and you don't need Park. You have to pony up and make the decision longer term. You keep Plouffe for a year and lose him to free agency, or sign him for 2-3 years in the $25-30 million range. Then you let Vargas walk (or sell him to Japan) and possibly do the same with Park. I don't see much trade interest in either, unless packaged with a prospect or two for some minor league depth...which is not out of the question as the Twins may have a prospect or two they can't protect this year or next. Pa;la will need to be a 40-man add. But like Walker, who he is slowly passing, he will have to spend time in the minors, which means you still keep Grossman (who is cheap) as well as Santana on the off-season 40-man. Both players are on the fringe for the team, so IF you do sign a free agent, you have some wiggle room. Although the Twins making a $$$ free agent splash will probably not happen. At this point, Santiago is a lost cause, it seems. He would be another Mike Pelfrey if you resigned him thru arbitration, not knowing what you get and expensive, even if he does produce. I don't see him pitching to 15-7 with a three-something era next season. You essentially save some money that you aren't paying him or Pelfrey, and cutting ties with Meyer, who didn't look like he would be a starting option next season (hell, he only threw how many innings this year) and likely to be bypassed as a bullpen option, was probably a godsend. The question with moving May to the bullpen is the ability to throw innings. Will he be able to do 130, 150? How is that decision made. It is also a tough call on Duffey, who could join Dean and Albers in free agent land. If Duffey is, indeed, the longman out of the bullpen, let's start looking at that now, today. See how he is coming into a game in the 6th inning. It may mean more Dean and Albers and Santiago in the rotation this season (but let's look at Meija and Wheeler, too), but if you are looking at changing roles for next season, do some looksee now. The bullpen as a whole looks pretty weak, depending on the return of Perkins. You forgot about Pat Light, Ryan O'Rourke and possibly Alex Wimmers. Those names alone offer some competition to a group that will is pretty even in the competitive throwing field. Pretty much all these names will get a looksee in spring training: Jones, Hildenburger, Reed, Burdi, Bard, Gonsalves, Besenitz, Melotakis and maybe even Greenwood. Few of those are probably ready to come out throwing at the spring training in the majors, but expect ALL of them to have an impact sometime in 2017...although I don't know where on the 40-man all will be placed. The new general manager will have a task. We have Plouffe and Mauer blocking players, yet some of those players (Park and Vargas) really don't have a lot of worth. Even Walker, in the mix, is not someone you are getting lots of calls about. We have questionable fielding at 3rd and SS if we place Sano and Polanco there, yet who are our choices? Better them than, say, a Plouffe who could walk (and would his stock be high in mid-season, considering he will be a free agent, than this season or last). Do you like Polanco over Escobar? What to do with catcher? Spend money on Ramos, forcing shot/longterm decisions on Murphy, Garver, Turner down to Murray and Navaretto. If Park would return to Korea or somewhere, would you do it? What if Buxton still struggles...is Granite a future answer? And pitching, pitching, pitching. Going into 2016, I actually felt that if healthy, the Twins had a rotation that would get us into the 7th inning. How wrong was I. And even though the bullpen has showed some life and strong arms, they still haven't been put to the test in keeping the Twins ahead in games and working in a win-win situation. Yes, you have pressure everyday when playing in the majors, but it is different when a win counts compared to just trying to stay in the game...or finish the game. Would like to see you take a run at the Twins 40-man roster, as well as current members of Rochester/Chattanooga. Are they keepers or fluff. Look at each membere of the team and try to judge their worth in the major league marketplace. If there was an expansion draft, who would the Twins lose. Who on the team would a general manager actually call to discuss as a trade possibility. Who are placesetters for 2017. Out of all the players on the 40-man and the two upper levels of the minors, who COULD find a place on any 40-man roster for a different team in 2017 and should the Twins go there. Those are the pressing looksees of the new general manager. Working with what the Twins have that may be of modest or little value, figuring out the possibilities of immediate prospects, and looking at system depth out towards 2018/2019.

Considering all the names the Twins grabbed from free agency for pitchers since that wonderful 2012 season where we had Marquis, Diamond, Liriano, Deduno, Walters, Hendriks, DeVries, Vasquez and Blackburn (at his worst)...The Twins went and spent money on Hughes, Nolasco, Santana, Pelfrey, Correia and Stauffer. They traded for Worley, Kris Johnson, Milone, Santiago, Meyer, May, Mejia and Hernandez. You can name one hand the names that came from the Twins system in the past five years. We spent a lot of money on some talent. We traded little to get some names back (except we have ahd a shortage of real centerfielders since the trading spree of outfielders began).

Brunansky did some talk on the morning show on KSTP last week about players having multiple coaches and how you, the team coach, deals with all those other people offering advice. The easiest is that everyone's remarks are funneled thru one person. The second best is Bruno's approach, where he listens to the player's take on the advice, why they are listening, asks about their feelings about what they are doing, and then goes forth from there, discussing how we should actually tackle this problem and the advice. The player, first, ahs to recognize that something isn't working. They should feel it, or see it, at some point.

Vargas got caught in a numbers crunch. Arcia got caught in a numbers crunch. How many more players will be caught in this numbers crunch. Do the Twins know who they have, who they should be looking at, whom they should be trying to trade for...say, more future depth and numbers crunch then. At some point bad play plus losses means you go beyond Boshers and Santiago and Grossman and such and do give moe mileage to rookies, or even rookies further down the on ramp. What you have on the field now is not doing it!

The toughest call is always on guys like Landa, Rosario, Walker and such. We have ahd Kepler and Polanco in similar situations (as well as Wheeler in the season past). They weren't ready for the majors and you know you may have to carry them on the 40-man for one, two or even three years before getting them up and seeing any results. But if you cut them loose, another team COULD grab them (not a Rule 5 situation) and stash them at the back of their 40-man roster, having one less year to worry about their development. That is the situation I see with Walker and Melotakis. I doubt either will make an impact in 2017. Landa and Rosario are even further out, and could see cutting ties with Rosario for now. But, we'll see. How important is that extra spot. The kicker is that the Twins may be adding still more guys like the above to the 40-man, who won't make a call-up or impact in 2017 and possibly not see much action until 2018. Suddenly, you have 6-7 "prospects" on your 40-man roster doing little for your team. The evils of being a loser and getting high draftpicks, or having a farm system that is developing players in the low minors and getting a stack-up on talent depth.

Twins have to make a hard decision on Park at some point.

Yes, they wasted three years not giving him more of an opportunity to shine. You ahd players down, and don't bring him up to sit on the bench. You let the reserve guys ride the bench. And knowing you had Dozier at second, you played him at second at Rochester...especially odd since you have NO TROUBLE playing others out os position. That they didn't bring him up and start him in the outfield is the understatement of the year!

I'm not arguing that Plouffe IS a valuable player and will play...somewhere...in baseball. I just don't see the Twins to make him one their five highest paid players and not really have a fulltime position for him to play. He becomes an expensive utilityman, who will be a free agent in 2018. And supposedly he didn't attract much worthwhile attention in 2015, and no one is breaking down the door to grab him in 2016 (not that someone won't sign him for 2017). It is just his value. If the Twins were to keep him, they should've signed him to that contract taking him thru year one of free agency. They should've not bid on Park. At worst, we would still have Arcia looking for time in the outfield and Vargas may be on the farm, still, wishing he did go to Asia. Okay, I CAN stomach Plouffe for a longer time with the Twins IF Sano is the fulltime DH. But that means you have to deal with the issues of Park, Vargas, possibly Walker. In some ways, I would rather allow Sano to get big as a DH and play there for the next 15 years than have him hold down third for at least two more years, which at this point is what the Twins will comfortably need before they can plug someone of equal offensive value (to Plouffe) into the position. He is just soooooo darn expensive. Worth $25 million? Worth $30 million. Send him walking and hope you can bring him abck for $6 million next year (as he builds his worth) or even $12-15 million for two years (that is if you don't have him on your arbitration roster which, again, releasing him right now). And, if handled such, does he really want to come back then.

Seven guys, seven different stories. Remember, arbitration rewards players whether they are good or bad. Again, we can go back to David Oritz. You can cut a guy 20% (unlikely) or go for the figure they present. Someone decides one figure or another. You can sign before arbitration, usually somewhere in the middle. Trevor Plouffe. Even with THIS season, he is pretty much guaranteed $9-10 million easily - if he enters arbitration with the Twins or with what ever team he could go to in the stretch. Like Santiago, this becomes an issue of how much actually or how they play for you. No way should the Twins go to arbitration with Plouffe, who will then STILL be a free agent at season's end. Their alternatives - Sign him to a 2-3 year contract. But if they really wanted to keep him, they had that option this past winter. He would still cost around $30 million to do so, or if lucky, $25 million. BUT -- AND IT IS A BIG BUT -- if he is released, his dollar amount might fall to as low as, say, $5-6 million next season (unless someone DOES offer him multiple years) as he tries to rebuild a value. Plouffe is not without value. But should he be one of the top five payroll expenses and not have a position on the team. Hector Santiago. Will he produce better than Nolasco has in the past for the Twins (and assuming he would also do better in the future). He would cost the Twins $7-8 million, depending on his final numbers, which will be skewed by his play for the Angels. If the Twins do let him walk, they essentially save $8 million on payroll to invest elsewhere. Letting a guy walk doesn't mean he will immediately re-sign with you for a lower amount. After his showings so far, you would let him walk and seek out a similar (and more trusting option) this winter. Tom Milone. No one wanted him earlier for what his 2016 salary paid him. Seems like no one really wants him now. Any innings you keep giving him in 2016 could be given to someone else pitching equally as sullen. But at least the NEW guy will be around. Tommy Milone might be lucky and get a 40-man spot. But it might just get an invite with a major/minor split. He will pitch again in the majors. But not sure how often. Brandon Kintzler. Go to arbitration. Reward him for some fine pitching this season. But no reason to extend him, unless he totally blows you away around June 15th next year and the young crop is still dusting their wings in AA and below. Same with Ryan Pressly. You've blown more money on names like Tim Stauffer with no return. Eduarco Escobar. Once again, Eduardo enters arbitration NOT as a starter, so his price is less than if he was holding down the shortstop position. That is a blessing. At $3-4 million and showing his consistency, he is still worthwhile to keep as a reserve infielder. You might be able to flip him next summer for a similar return that you got for Nunez. He has proven he can adequately start at a variety of positions as well as be that emergency arm out of the bullpen. Kyle Gibson. Again, he won't break the bank in his first year of arbitration. But no way does he get a multi-year contract. He just hasn't shown himself to be that good. (Think: Joe Mays, Nick Blackburn). If he is brilliant in 2017, you can still afford him in 2018. He might get expensive in 2019. You hope he has value at some point, but right now, you need his cost of offset a rotation that is still weak on experience. Kurt Suzuki is a free agent. No one wants him on a competitive team. You can absorb his weaknesses on a non-competitive team, because ultimately a loss is a loss in the loss column, no matter how bad the pitches are called or how many runners run. I'm sure he will get a job. Pure backup. Can't wait to see the dollar figure. Hey, he didn't do bad for the Twins. The Twins maybe overpaid him, but they overpaid a bunch of guys...so our only "yell" at the front office is that they didn't spend their money wisely. So, the Twins will free up one roster spot with Suzuki. They will lost three other players and THERE IS NO REASON FOR ANY OF THE THREE TO RETURN, unless you do get rid of names like Danny Santana, Robbie Grossman, Byung-Ho park, Tyler Duffy, Kyle Gibson. Where the whole mess gets complicated is WHO THE TWINS HAVE TO PROTECT. Do they protect guys who will come up in 2017. Or do they have to stash even more names to go with the likes of Walker, Rosario, Landa and Melotakis -- all who you can argue will make any impact in 2017, let alone start of the 25-man in 2018. Those are the tough calls with a system that does show promise, but still the guys aren't there yet (or the Twins are taking too much time developing them).

The Twins need to look at bubble guys this September: Harrison, Wheeler and Wimmers come to mind. Happily, they don't need to add Gonsalves, Stewart, burdi, Reed and such (but next year maybe). They have to move some guys like Thiorpe to the AAA roster, I think, to avoid the minor league end of the draft, which could be devastating to the Twins in some areas. Sadly, the Twins were forced, for some reason, to add Melotakis, Landa, Rosario, Walker. Now you can't remove them without sending them thru waivers and having another team give them a 40-man. Yet I don't see any of the four contributing greatly to the Twins in 2017 except as a callup, and not until 2018 seeing them on the 25-man roster at best. And I would argue that the the Twins COULD remove Walker and Rosario, as they are being passed by other prospects. Yet both could be tempting grabs for teams with less prospects in thir own system that need protection. Hapily, Palka is the closest to needing to stick at the major league level. The Twins are sadly stuck with Walker still on the 40-man. That's where the gamble sometimes backfires. You carry guys for a couple of years and hope hope hope they are major league players. The Twins also need to add Jones.