I read in the SI.com rumor mill that if the twins send santana to the yanks they will be asking for Robinson Cano.  I normally don't trust people with two last names, but I like Cano as a player.  Good power for a middle infielder, seems to be contending to the batting title most years, good defense.  I would prefer an outfielder because I think casilla will be ready to be an everyday 2nd baseman by 2009 at the latest. Maybe even next summer, so while cano is a good or even great player i don't think he fills one of our needs position wise.  If we also got one of their top pitchers (Joba, hughes, kennedy) it would be tempting. On the flip side, i'm not sure the yankees would want to make that trade. They are trying to rebuild and win at the same time, a task not many teams can accomplish.  So giving up one of two young guns in Cano and whatever pitcher would be involved seems counterproductive.  Having a stopper like santana would do wonders for the yanks come october, but at what cost? They lose one of their top hitters to get santana who they might not be able to keep after 08, although i doubt they will let  him get away due to dollar amounts.

In other news, JC Romero signed a 3 year/12MM dollar deal with the phils.  That sucks for them. 4 mil a year for a lefty setup guy. Pitches maybe 75 innings all year and he makes almost as much as joe nathan? What the f**k?

Has anyone noticed that the only people really advocating for Hunter's return are people who know next to nothing about baseball.  That is one thing i have noticed about twins fans, they almost care more about indvidual players than the team as a whole.  Anyone who has looked at Torii's stats knows that he only plays well when he is playing for a new contract.  This whole fan favorite thing is getting out of control. When i worked for the twins i got yelled at by numerous "fans" when the twins traded Doug M to clear up space for some lug named Morneau. How did that work out? Aside from letting go of Dortiz, which i don't recall anyone really complaining about, the twins don't let players go if they can't replace them.  Guardado and AJ were both all-stars but we barely skipped a beat after they left. Guzman left, we could have put a couch at short and it would have been just as good. Especially for 15mil or whatever he got. 

People are now talking about cuddyer.  He is going to get a big raise this year despite the fact he took a step backwards after 2006.  I'll let that slide since pretty much everyone except for Contract Year Torii took a step back.  The "fans" love cuddyer, but if he demands a big contract and shows no signs of returning to his 20 homer/100 RBI numbers, we shouldn't overpay him just because the ladies like him.  Everyone always talks about doing things the twins way in terms of players. Keeping players just because they sell jerseys is not doing things the twins way in terms of front office.

In summary- I have yet to see a good argument in favor of keeping Torii.  His giving the twins lots of good years and doing things in the community is a terrible reason to pay him 75 mil over 4 years or whatever he will get.  The twins have the pieces (prospects, extra payroll, etc) to replace him either through free agency or a trade.  I like cuddyer much better than hunter and am confident he will rebound from his disappointing but not downright terrible 2007 season. He is a great clubhouse leader, great defender and he will rebound at the plate next year.  I am convinced he was down because everyone was down.  He might be the kind of player we should try to lock up for a reasonable contract, and not keep him around for the wrong reasons.

For some reason i couldn't post a comment to the previous entry so i'm starting a new one.

I agree with you on Lowell. No way we get him. I didn't really bother wasting time with scenarios, no shot in hell. Especially now that he is a world series MVP. 

Rule V draft is always a good place to look to fill holes.  I believe that also takes place during the winter GM meetings, so we might have taken care of a good number of tasks by the time those meetings are over.

Everyone is clamoring to keep santana, while he is great I would rather have a good starting rotation, which we can still have without Johan (there is just less room for error among the other starters without that stopper in the rotation) AND a good offense (which i'm not sure we can have with Santana and without Hunter).  Having one great starting pitcher is good, and everyone says without a dominant number 1 starter you can't make it far in the playoffs.  Well we have proved in our recent trips to the playoffs that is not true. The year we got to the ALCS (2002 i believe) we had 4 very good starters, then the years we made it and lost we did have a dominant number 1 but not much else.  Again with the KG parallel, we know what we are going to get if we keep santna and tie up a bunch of money with him.  He will put up cy young numbers but still only get 15-17 wins and have double digit loses because we ill average about 3 runs per game all year.  Without him we might have some exciting young players to watch and surprise some people like the d-backs and rockies did last year.  Or the marlins a few years ago when they were in contention right up to the end, when everyone thought they were the worst team ever.  Also, we should fire scott ullger.

I read this article on the interweb, not sure how i feel about it.  Since it was posted last week, the Mike Lowell theory can be tossed.  I think trading garza would be a poor idea, but sending him to the NL is the best option if it has to be done. I have always been set on playing kubel in LF as oppsed to DH. He seems to respond better when playing in the field.  I can see the reasoning for letting Silva walk, if we can keep him on the cheap do it, but we have enough pitching depth where we shouldn't overpay for a 4th/5th starter.  Going back to Garza for Bay I'm not totally sold on Jason Bay. Its a good righthanded bat but at what cost? One of the top young pitchers in the AL not named Joba.  This article assumes we keep Johan so even sans Garza the rotation looks pretty good.

I guess in summary there are really two directions the team can go: Trade Johan, don't trade johan.  How the team is built for next year really depends on that move.  We could field a contending team either way in my opinion.  Without Johan we could add Kemp in CF, some decent prospects to fill holes in the minors and eventually in the Majors. Use the money we save from santana, hunter and silva to lock up current players and fill holes via free agency.  I kind of like that road better.  If we lock up santana we might have a Kevin Garnett situation on our hands. A great player, but again at what cost? Being unable to surround him with enough talent to win due to his contract.  Santana would be locked up so we would most likely lose Morneau and Cuddyer down the road and in about 3 or 4 years we are winning MAYBE 1 out of 5 games.  I say once the winter meetings come around we shop santana and pretty much take whatever we want from the dodgers which is totally possible. I can see us getting 4 very good young players, 2 or 3 of which could very well be major league ready.  Looks like BS is going to have baptism by fire.  Best of luck to him.

According to a report on ESPN, the Twins have not approached Torii Hunter with a deal since the end of the season. This is, of course, Hunter's side of the story; Fox reported during the season that Hunter turned down a deal for 3 years, $45 million, and Hunter laughed as if the deal either hadn't been offered, or the numbers were way off. But what struck me was what Torii had to say:

"There's other stuff, inside stuff, that people don't know about," Hunter told the paper. "Money has something to do with it, but trust me, that's just a percentage. We need to talk about stuff that needs to change before we start to get into deep talks."

I wonder what "other stuff" there is that's holding up a deal. It's possible (perhaps probable) that this other stuff is nothing more than the number of years on the deal, but the way Hunter phrased it makes it seem like he has issues with the team or the organization that he feels should be fixed before he makes a deal with them. I'm curious as to what he feels these issues are, and whether they're legitimate or he's just posturing for the media to make himself look like the good guy when he ditches us for the big bucks. The first part of his statement (read the article) definitely has that kind of tone.

I'm starting to think about what it'll be like when the most vocal and media-friendly player on the Twins is Michael Cuddyer. Torii Hunter has definitely used his time as the face of the franchise to boost his marketability and his perceived value to a team, oftentimes to the detriment of the team; this practice has increased drastically over the course of the last year, and that tells me it's time for Torii to go. If money is more important to him than the team or camaraderie with the other players, then the team (and the fans) need to demonstrate to Hunter what's actually important to the Twins.

I know the world series has barely started bu its never too early to think about the twins offseason moves.

1) Our own free agents:

Priorities here consist mainly of Silva and Hunter.  We should try to retain Silva, but word his he turned down a 3-year 21 million deal claiming he wanted 4. If we can get him for 4 years 28ish mil we might as well do it.  Word is he could get close to 10 mil a year, and i don't want anything to do with that.  But bottom line he ate innings (200+) and his era was around 4.2. He was maddeningly inconsistent for most of the first half but turned in some damn decent starts down the stretch. We have enough pitching talent to make him expendable especially with the emergence of Baker and to a lesser extend Garza (he didn't have as many opportunities as Baker last season).  So sign Silva if the price is right, but if the pattern of decent middle rotation starters getting paid like aces continues, let him go. 

Hunter is a different animal. He seems content on testing the waters of free agency and several teams will (over)pay for him.  I guess he has around 2 all-star caliber years left followed by several years of rapid decline.  Its going to take a 5 or 6 deal to sign him and chances are he will be nearly dead weight for 3 or 4 of those years.  It would be great to have hunter back, but do we really take him back just so the twins can sell jerseys and appease the casual fans who have come to love hunter. Or do we let him walk and make some good BASEBALL moves that might piss of the casual fan now, but in a few years when we have some stud player people say "We drafted him with the pick we got for letting hunter walk after 2007" And some kid will say "TORII Hunter, that old man whose albatross contract has crippled the yankees for the past 4 years, he used to be good?"

2) Outside free agents

I honestly have no idea what the market is like here. Mainly because the twins never shop in that market so i tend to ignore it every year.  Assuming we lose hunter, we will have to replace him with someone from outside the team. Span isn't ready and if we go into full on rebuilding mode we might as well trade Johan as well. Something i don't think we should do because I think we have the talent to win next year. Assuming we competently plug our gaping holes.  Mainly at DH, 3B and possibly CF.  Corey Koskie claims to be ready to play, and since he was useful as recently as last year (usefull=not Nick Punto) we could get him on the cheap to platoon at third, play some first and DH.  He can spell Buscher if he wins the job.  can't hurt to invite him to spring training for dirt cheap. If he does make the team it might appeal to some of those casual fans who are pissed we let hunter go even though it might have been the best move we could make. I'm not saying go give Koskie a contract but why not invite him to Ft. Myers and see if he has anything left in the tank.  If anything it might spark Buscher to have some competition and maybe he can learn a thing or two from Koskie. Koskie was a below average 3B then after some hard work became a pretty damn good fielder over in the hot corner.

4) Minor Leaguers

Lets face it, outside of pitchers its pretty thin down there.  We might have a few bench players, but not much in terms of filling gaps in the starting lineup at the major league level.

I read a buster olney entry today that suggested we trade Santana to the mets along with Jason Bartlett for Jose Reyes, young outfielder carlos gomez, and top tier pitching prospect Mike Pelfry.  Reyes is locked up for 3 more years for a total of less than 19 mil, with an option for 2011 for something like 10 or 11 mil.  i don't know much about gomez, but i have read that pelfry is good.  This might make sense if there is no way we can get him signed this winter.  I am a huge Reyes fan.  Imagine him at the top of our lineup with close to a 300 average and 70 steals.  Could be more since most AL teams aren't built around stealing/preventing steals. I love Santana and having a shutdown ace like is priceless, but lets be realistic.  If this deal comes along we would have to look long and hard at it.

It was really nice to see the Twins play well in a game that almost had a playoff atmosphere to it.  Earlier this year I was on the bandwagon of trading Nathan and promoting Neshek to closer.  As of right now I am less sure of this.  I am hoping that Neshek's numbers are down due to the fact he was overused and not due to the fact that other teams are figuring him out.  I have heard a lot of talk about him relying too much on one or two pitches.  This answer doesn't suffice for me, because why wouldn't anderson or gardy just take over and call the pitches from the dugout like they have done in the past.  One thing I know for certain is that Nathan has been lights out since taking the job and one of the best, if not the best closer in that time frame.  I know that the save is one of the most meaningless stats in baseball, but it takes someone with great stuff and mental determination to strike out the last two hitters when the bases are loaded with two outs.  Neshek may end up being a great closer, but if he isn't, the Twins would have major bullpen issues next year.  Anyways, even though the Twins have been out of it for a while, it has been nice to see that they don't just roll over.  Hopefully we can straighten out any clubhouse issues this offseason and get ready to make a run next year.

Torii Hunter agained questioned twins players toughness in a KFAN interview this week.  He claimed that this is a different group of players than when he arrived.  This seems to be the final nail in the coffin of torii's carreer with the twins.  It doesn't seem as though he wants to be here anymore, which is a shame because his leadership will be sorely missed.  However, I am disappointed in the way he approached this issue.  It is possible that our guys could do a better job of playing through injuries, but I don't think bashing them on the radio is the way to do it.  This seems to have been an ongoing thing with Hunter.  He says it a lot, but nothing gets accomplished. This means one of two things: either nobody respects Torii enough to rally around him and play hurt for the sake of the team, which I doubt, or they are actually hurt and cannot play without making the injury worse.  If Mauer, Morneau, etc. really could play they would.  Part of the problem might have been Mauer was too hurt to catch, but could still DH and Gardy didn't want to play two catchers.  But lately we have had 3 catchers (Mauer, Heintz, Lecroy) on the team, so that shouldn't have been a problem.  I highly doubt Torii will come back to a team that he fells doesn't have the drive or passion to win.  I don't think he is 100% accurate, but the team could have done a better job of appeasing him and making sure he knew all the facts about each situation.

Right now ESPN's Page 2 is running an article wherein fans of various teams complain about how they have it the worst. That rooting for their team is the toughest and most painful, and other fans just don't understand. The clubs included are: the Mets, Mariners, Braves, Red Sox, Pirates, Dodgers, Orioles, Tigers, Brewers, Cubs, and Yankees. That's right, fans of the Red Sox and Yankees think they have it tough. Well, I don't think any of these fans truly understand what misery is like.

During the 90's, we had an unbroken stretch of pathetic mediocrity, losing games left and right. From 1993-2000, we didn't win more than 78 games in a season. The league and the owner wanted to contract the team in 2001, ending the franchise for good. On a $24 million payroll, we managed to win 85 games, and from there we've had a good streak of winning seasons and have a number of good players on our team. But that streak of winning seasons is coming to an end, and there's little hope in sight. For the past 7 years, we've been able to develop good players, but we can't afford to keep them. Even while they're here, we can't afford to surround them with even average-level players.

Imagine getting to see the batting champion, MVP, and Cy Young winner playing on the same team, and then seeing every rally end when Nick Punto (having the worst single season in the history of baseball) and Jason Tyner (the lowest OPS of any outfielder in Major League history) end every rally. Imagine seeing those guys in the lineup over promising young players. Imagine your big offseason signings being Rondell White, Tony Batista, Ramon Ortiz, Sidney Ponson, and Jeff Cirillo, and imagine your big deadline trade being unloading your leadoff hitter who's hitting as well as anyone on the team because it'll save $2 million. And then imagine being expected to get excited about your chances.

The fans finally passed a bill for a new baseball stadium, spending $500 million of taxpayer money on it, and all ownership and revenue will go to the owner of the baseball team. During the debate, the promise by the owner was that spending would increase and we'd finally be able to keep our players. However, that doesn't look like it's actually going to happen, and even if it does it will be too late to keep our players and the increases will be less that the average increase in payroll around the league. We gave our owner a half a billion dollars, and he's going to respond by letting go of Torii Hunter and Johan Santana. We've been "rebuilding" for 15 years, and for the latter half of that we've managed to find some success. But the minor league system has been bled dry by the constant churning of the major league club, and there are no significant position players coming out of the minors for at least 5 years.

None of the clubs in this so-called "pity party" understand what it's like to develop quality players and lose them to free agency because they're too good for us to be able to pay them anywhere near market value. How would the Mets feel if they knew David Wright and Jose Reyes would soon be leaving and they have to replace them from within (or with bargain basement free agents). How would the Yankees feel if they'd had to replace Derek Jeter after they'd made him good, or hadn't been able to get their hands on Alex Rodriguez? How would the Red Sox feel if we'd been able to afford to keep David Ortiz, or if Jason Varitek had been willing to sign with the lowly Twins when we drafted him? How would the Cubs feel if Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez, and Carlos Zambrano had looked at the success they'd had with their team and said "take a hike, I'm going to go get paid!" Other teams don't know what it's like to lose all their good players; we root for our favorite Twins, knowing that they'll be gone in 3 years or less. Since the start of our streak of winning seasons, only Torii Hunter remains ... and he's gone after this season to "greener" pastures.

I love the Twins, and I wouldn't trade them for anything. But being a diehard fan of a team that refuses to even attempt to field a championship level team, even when over half the pieces are in place, is really hard. The Mets, Red Sox, Yankees, Cubs, and Braves know nothing of that pain.