If the Dominoes Continue to Fall

If the Dominoes continue to fall like they are on April 22, 2012 in Mid-Late June. What will the Twins Brass do? Will they ride it out or will they gut the roster - trading veterans and cutting middling players, bringing up the young fellas to test their engines?

Pros for Gutting the Roster:

• Getting a little value for the veteran starting pitchers and position players we have through trades. Maybe Span, Willingham or Morneau could bring something of exquisite value. All of the other veteran players - Pavano, Liriano, Marquis, Doumit, etc. won't fetch much, but something can be better than nothing.
  
• It gives the Twins a chance to see what they have in a Joe Benson, Ben Revere, Brian Dozier, Deolis Guerra, etc. and get them important MLB game experience.
  

Pros for Riding it out:

• The offense looks like it could be fun. We will still lose, but a 10-7 loss is better than a 10-2 loss.
  
• Trading Span, Willingham and especially Morneau could be a P.R. disaster.
  
• We don't have any depth in the minors to replace the theoretical starting pitchers we could trade. I certainly would not consider the brigade of starting pitchers we have at AAA or AA a treasure chest of Riches by any measure. Scott Diamond and Luke French are probably the cream of that crop. (Blah!)
  

It is only April and anything is possible, but if the dominoes continue to tumble over and it is appearing that might be this years trend something will have to be done to veer the course of this franchise in a direction that brings some kind of promise in the next 3 years.

Pavano is probably gone either way. It would only make sense for the Twins keep him beyond the trading deadline if they were in a pennant race. Otherwise, he's a great back of the rotation add-on for some team in need.

Doumit could go if there is another Buster Posey-like situation where a top-level team loses a starting catcher and the Twins could get some desperation value in return - but we wouldn't get enough back otherwise to justify the revisions to the organizational catching plans. (I'm assuming we have organizational catching plans.)