What does a successful off-season look like?
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Here we sit on January 10th and we are asking ourselves the same questions we have been asking since October 3rd, "Are the Twins going to trade Brian Dozier?"
So far this off season the Twins have hired a Chief Baseball Office and General Manager and signed Jason Castro to a 3 year $24.5M contract.
Since then they have non-tendered Trevor Plouffe and signed a handful borderline replacement level/minor league free agents.
In a normal off-season this would be big changes for the Twins organization. They released a long-time member of the team and signed a player to area of need. Good work!
But this off-season is different.
The Twins are currently in a position to deal a player who is probably at his peak value from an area where they already have a replacement ready to go. In return the expectation has been to receive a massive haul in prospects MLB ready pitchers to build for this team's future. But it hasn't happened that way.
Brian Dozier's perceived value doesn't appear to be as high as many have thought it should be. The only real suitor right now is Los Angeles and they are "low balling" the Twins. Did Falvey and Levine expect to make a Dozier trade sooner? Was this their main off-season priority are question I have to ask especially now with rumors swirling the Twins are ready to start the season with Dozier on the roster, would the off-season activity have been different if everyone knew Dozier was going to stay?
By keeping Dozier the on field product has only changed by adding a catcher. No young pitchers have been added to the future rotation pool of prospects, Jorge Polanco will be forced to play shortstop which is not his natural position causing the left side of the infield to be suspect.
If a Dozier deal was always known to be a long-shot, should the front office have been adding players through other means? Should Santana have been shopped more?
I don't like to give out grades before everything comes to fruition but this off-season could have a very large variance depending on what happens with Dozier. Keep him and do nothing else, this off-season would be a sub-par one, call it a C-. Trade him and receive the future players and it could swing into A grade territory.
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