I wonder if some of this is about not using up an option for some of these guys?

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.

Molitor is managing, and doling out playing time, and talking like he is trying to win games. We are so far past that. This should have been an extended tryout camp since about May 15th. I would like to hear Molitor, or for that matter Antony give one coherent rational reason for the continued procession of Indy league players into Mpls, while we have guys running out of options in MiLB. For example, ABW, Palka, and Vargas. I don't know there option status, but they gotta be running out pretty soon. While I am not sure of ABW and Palka, I am fairly sure that Vargas will at least make a MLB DH. But I can say with a 100 % degree of certainty that the latest Shaefer is not going to help this team in the future. So why exactly is he here. One good rational reason, please. And for heavens sake, don't tell me it's to help the vets win, ugh!

Molitor is managing, and doling out playing time, and talking like he is trying to win games. We are so far past that. This should have been an extended tryout camp since about May 15th. I would like to hear Molitor, or for that matter Antony give one coherent rational reason for the continued procession of Indy league players into Mpls, while we have guys running out of options in MiLB. For example, ABW, Palka, and Vargas. I don't know there option status, but they gotta be running out pretty soon. While I am not sure of ABW and Palka, I am fairly sure that Vargas will at least make a MLB DH. But I can say with a 100 % degree of certainty that the latest Shaefer is not going to help this team in the future. So why exactly is he here. One good rational reason, please. And for heavens sake, don't tell me it's to help the vets win, ugh!

I would come up with a better example. Vargas has no trade value. I wouldn't get all that worked up over an exchange of the 25th man.

I think that is part of the issue.  The Twins are so reluctant to take risks with their prospects taht they are more willing to have them linger in the minor leagues (and extremely successful at those levels) than to have them struggle at the major league level.  This risk adversness is demonstrated by both the methodical way they advance minor league prospects and how quickly they decide to send a prospect back to the minor at any sight of struggle.

I also think that the Twins have a weird idea about competitiveness too, especially for a team that has lost more than 90 games five out of the past six seasons.  Their upper management/ownerhship believes if we just plug a Jamey Carroll or a Shane Robinson that will get us to a level of competitiveness acceptable to the fans.  Of course, these players were not good enough to create that competitiveness so the team loses both ways.

I have pointed out, many times in these forums, that one aspect of rebuilding a baseball team is time.  And one thing you need to do during rebuilding time is FAIL.  Obviously, no team is perfect.  But you have to get the players up quickly to make that determination.  I use the 1982 rebuilding as the model, and in 1982 the best Twins prospects at SS was Lenny Faedo and in CF Jim Eisenreich.

Faedo was a 22 year old in 1982 with very limited minor league experience.  He was a first round pick out of high school in 1978 and played in Elizabethton Rookie league as a 18 year old.  The next season, the Twins moved him up to AA.  He played one full season and part of the next, and was a late season call up by the Twins in 1980.  AS a 21 year old he played most of the year in AAA and in 1982 he was the starting SS for the TWins.  

Eisenreich was a 16th round pick in 1980 out of St Cloud St.  Played Rookie and A- ball in 1980, then a full season of A- in 1981.  In 1982 he jumped directly from low A to starting CF for the Twins as 23 year old with just 901 PA of minor league experience.

Could you imagine the current Twins management doing this?   But here is the point.  Eisenreich and Faedo were failed prospects (at least for the Twins).  If they would have waited until they had more minor league experience, conservatively advancing them one level at a time, their failure would have just occured several years later and pushed back were teh team could field more solid players like Greg Gagne and Kirby Puckett.

The point made about some of the more mid-level prospects is a good one.  NOW is the time to see if Jason Wheeler, Mitch Garver, and others  like them can play at the MLB level.  They have proven they can pitch or hit in the minors.  More "seasoning" isn't going to improve their skills.  There isn't a plethora of more talented players ahead of them.  And, in Wheeler and Garver's case, they are already 25 years old.  Why wait?  Why not take the chance, lose the games in a 100 loss year without any hope, and get solid evauluations on these players? 

The real story is that this approach should have happened 5 years ago.  But it didn't.  And the sad fact is that there is good liklihood of more losing down the road.