Out With The Old

Dozier and maybe Santana brings back some young talent. Please move on from Plouffe. If Mauer does not want to waive his no trade just release him. Time to give Vargas and Park the at bats

Dozier should be traded for the right offer(you should be able to find a right offer this offseason). Plouffe you need to move on from, even if that is a non-tender. Mauer still has value and dumping him would have issues with trying to sell homegrown talent to stay here for less money. Reducing his AB's can and should be done. He is more of a 4 to 5 days a week player now to get best value out of him.

Santana I would trade for the right offer(hopefully that comes later in the winter, when clubs really find out how bad the pitching market is). If you do not get the right offer, hopefully he pitches well and you move him at the trading deadline if you are out of contention.

  On 10/11/2016 at 1:48 PM, belker said:

Mauer is '10 and 5' player (10 years of service time, at least last 5 with same team), meaning he automatically has a no-trade clause.  So any suggestion of trading him assumes that he would be willing to waive that and move away from his hometown team.  Usually, players that agree to this are compensated by one of the trading teams.  So the Twins would need to throw in more money or receive less of a return.  
Sooooo, not very likely he will ever be traded, unless he wants to go to a team heading for the playoffs IMO.

Details of Joe's contract:

http://www.spotrac.com/mlb/minnesota-twins/joe-mauer-527/

Full NO-TRADE clause.  Contract thru 2018.

I'm not too sure that Joe isn't able to be moved.  We really don't know how the organization feels about keeping him and we don't know how Joe feels about either moving on or retiring.  It is plain to see that the Twins are in total rebuild mode, and won't be in contention at any time during the final 2 years of Joe's contract.  Like many players facing the end of their playing days, perhaps Joe would welcome the opportunity to join a contending team that would provide him with a realistic opportunity to play in the World Series.  Now that he is a family man, perhaps he would prefer being able to play half of his games near his year round home.  There are options for both the Twins and for Joe to separate themselves and still enable both sides to hold their heads high.  1) Offer him $5 million a year for 10 years to retire and offer him a position as a roving minor league catching instructor.  2) Eat some of his contract and trade him to Boston (remember that Boston has spring training in Fort Myers where Mauer has a home) to take Papi's place as their DH.  3) Eat some of his contract and trade him to Tampa as a 1B/DH as Tampa is the team nearest Joe's Fort Myers home.  Start talking. 

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It might be best for Plouffe to prove he is healthy in the first half of 2017 and then he could be dealt closer to the trade deadline.

Boy I do not get this.

1. The Twins have a ton -- TON -- of players best suited to DH. If they are going to occupy the DH spot full time by one of Sano or Plouffe, then they're basically giving up on players like Kennys Vargas, given the presence of the unmovable Joe Mauer. 

2. Sano needs to keep learning in the field. People have been awfully quick to write off his defense. And granted, it's not good. But you have to give this kid more time to play that position, given his recent injury history and the fact that the Twins had him DH in 2015. Sano needs to play third base full time next year.

3. Third base is an easy position to fill, relative to other positions. The Twins can make trades for or sign cheap free agent third basemen if it becomes abundantly clear that Sano is not going to make it at third.

4. Plouffe has no future on this team beyond next year. He BARELY had any trade value last offseason, when he was coming off a strong season. Even if the Twins keep him until the trade deadline and he performs well, he's still not going to fetch much in a trade scenario. 

AND, the team would have spent $4 million to $5 million while blocking younger players from more playing time.

For the love of all that is holy, stop it with this keep-Plouffe stuff. He needs to be non-tendered. If the team can find someone willing to throw a low-level prospect at us for him, all the better. But this team needs to play young players and shed itself of guys who have little or no chance of being here in 2018. Period.

Moving Dozier to a different position at this point in his career seems pretty foolish.  Definitely trade him now before making a decision to lessen his skill level.

Trevor Plouffe has turned into an inconvenience to many. 

Is Plouffe a better defender that Sano at 3rd?  Absolutely no question. 

Can Sano develop into a better defender than he is now?  I never say no.  But, no, I highly doubt it.

Is Sano a better hitter than Plouffe?  Not really enough AB's to say for sure.  Overall, yeah, Sano could be.  Next season will be huge for Sano. 

Mauer:  See post #17.  The absolute best you can hope for is that Mauer's late season leg injury leads him to accept a contract buy-out.

Ervin:  The starting staff needs a veteran presence.  As does the position players.

Which leads to my final point:

Are Twins Daily readers really ready for a couple more seasons of large losses?  Dumping veterans for shiny, young plays seems like a great idea.  And maybe some of the younger veterans [Rosario, Escobar, Park ] can step up and become the new leaders. [ I think it might do Rosario a world of good]

IDK, but I'm more into seeing the development of Sano, Kepler, Buxton, Polanco, Berrios, Duffey, Rogers, Light, May, Chargios, Centeno, etc, etc., before lurching too far into a veteran dump.

You don't improve pitching by trading your best pitcher. You try to get more like him. Doze stays unless an offer blows our skirt up. Sano gets installed at 3rd.  Mauer stays.  Trevor is traded for whatever you can get for him.

Polanco is the SS, Escobar the utility guy. Grossman goes, and we take long looks at Gordon and Walker in ST. 

The idea of moving Dozier to the outfield is beyond dumb. No offense. We all say stuff that is dumb occasionally.  Middle infielders with power are very rare. 

If you're dumping Old you have to include Park on the list. He's going to be 30 and hasn't proven anything yet. I have no idea why people want to release Mauer to play Park. Park should be dealt to a team that doesn't have as many options at 1B and has a relief pitcher that looks interesting. They need to balance this roster and get rid of some all-bat players.