Otto von Ballpark

Not hard at all: injury. Heck, Nolasco was injured for much of 2014, to the tune of over a month on the DL and a ~67 ERA+ at midseason. Phil Hughes last winter wouldn't have met those qualifications. The Twins last winter also tried to add another veteran starter for $30-40 mil guaranteed late in the offseason. When you consider everything that's happened since then, improvements and injuries, and see our league-worst rotation IP and ERA ranks in 2014, I don't think the overall rotation picture has improved that much in the past 9 months. Considering the Twins failed to land such a starter at $30-40 mil late last offseason (even willing to surrender a pick for Ervin Santana), your preference would seem to be another Nolasco-type guarantee ($50 mil or more) or standing pat. I really don't see the harm in the third choice of taking another shot at a Hughes type performance for a modest one-year FA outlay (as reflected in the title and subject of this article )

I didn't mean everybody in my list was a "sputterer" but there are a couple in there, which you picked up on. Correia and Liriano got dealt in July or early August. Liriano even got bounced from the rotation in May of that same year. Why would those not be options for a sputtering Masterson? And even then, sputtering Masterson would only be blocking someone if we had FIVE or more healthy starters better than him at that point. You really want THAT scenario to be dictating our offseason strategy? (Not to mention, if we have 5 healthy starters better than that, and our offense hasn't collapsed, we are almost certainly somewhere in the playoff hunt and likely one or more of those starting options could be fortifying our bullpen.)

I'm not going to defend the Pelfrey re-sign, but in the summer of 2013 there was zero need to dump him just to claim his spot. We already had such luminaries as Pedro Hernandez, Andrew Albers, Deduno, Hendricks, etc. in the rotation around that time.

Your three "locks" include two guys who need to improve fairly significantly from 2014 (Gibson and Nolasco), not to mention the other "lock" who is a year removed from a 77 ERA+, 5.0 IP/GS season. There's a decent chance that one of those three will not be deserving of a rotation spot at some point during the 2015 season. And the three other guys that "need innings", two of them posted ERAs over 7 in their Twins auditions in late 2014, and two of them saw their 2014 seasons end prematurely due to "inflammation". And one of them has yet to pitch in MLB and just posted a pro season high of 130 IP. If Hughes, Gibson, Nolasco, Milone, and the FA acquisition are all healthy at the end of spring training, pushing May/Meyer to the pen or perhaps AAA, that's a good problem to have. If they are all still healthy and performing well after a couple months, that's an even better problem to have. If Meyer and May are also healthy and performing well at that point, that almost guarantees a good bullpen if we want to break them in that way, and gives us rotation reinforcements down the stretch in case of injury or trade opportunities. And it almost guarantees that no 2015 starts will go to Swarzak, Johnson, Pino, Darnell, Deduno types, which might feel like a bigger advancement over the 2012-2014 rotation quagmire than even last offseason's FA signings.

It's not that risky. Look at my examples again -- the Twins have repeatedly traded "sputterers" at the end of July or beginning of August in their last contract year. In the case of Liriano 2012, we didn't even have a ready replacement, but we dealt him anyway.

Berrios is irrelevant if we are discussing a short-term (i.e. 1 year guaranteed) deals for 2015. He K'd 6.2 per 9 at AA last year, and is almost certainly ticketed to begin 2015 there again. If everything breaks right for him, he can get a September call-up regardless of our MLB rotation, although his pro career high is 140 IP. Unless he misses time earlier in the year, my guess is Berrios doesn't pitch anywhere in September 2015. Meyer's pro career high is only 130 IP. I have no problem using him out of the pen until a spot opens up. I posted this elsewhere recently, but the Twins have a decent record of cutting bait on starting pitchers on one-year contracts (or in the last year of a multi-year deal). Ramon Ortiz was sent to the pen quickly, then traded; Ponson and Marquis cut, Hernandez and Correia traded... I think the argument that the Twins should sign a short-term bounceback candidate is predicated on the idea the Twins can fairly quickly cut/trade/demote him if he's not providing value to the MLB club and a better alternative is ready.

FWIW, I believe Johnson was the only one from this list that was a free agent last offseason, and he didn't throw a pitch in 2014 due to injury. (I'd have to imagine his deal will be incentive-laden, due to the vagaries of TJ recovery times.) Villanueva is the only other guy on this list to have been a free agent before, two years ago. Although he wasn't really a "bounceback" guy then or now -- looks like he's pretty much always been a modest swingman. It's possible someone will target him to be a full time starter (or full-time reliever) but probably more to fill the back end of a rotation than to be the next Hughes (which suggests upside to me).

Having too many bounceback candidates in our rotation is part of the reason we may want to add another -- the odds are low that they all return to form, so adding another is a cheap way to mitigate some of that risk. Also, some of the guys in this list actually have much higher upsides than our internal bounceback candidates. If we are hoping for a top of the rotation partner for Hughes (or replacement for Hughes if he regresses), it's probably not coming from inside the organization in 2015. (I will say that this list is probably stretching the definition of "bounceback candidate" -- Villanueva? Morales? What exactly would they be bouncing back to?) Pelfrey himself may not make such a list -- not only has he been injured or bad for 3 seasons now, he also had pretty mediocre peripherals before that too. Not saying he wouldn't be signed, but he couldn't realistically be view as having "next Phil Hughes" upside, if that's what we're looking for. Nolasco would be a better fit for that, but even he seems to have a pretty modest upside.

It was reported last winter that Masterson proposed some pretty reasonable extension deals that the Indians rejected -- 2/35 and 3/51 were the two I saw. Obviously even if he rebounds, his 2014 and older age could discount him further from those numbers, but he seems willing to forgo maximizing his earnings on the FA market in return for some security (like Hughes did?).

Guys on 4/32 contracts generally have much lower upside (that was Jason Vargas' deal last winter), and much higher downside given the length of the deal. I certainly wouldn't mandate a 1/8 bounceback contract every winter, but if you are not going to be a big FA spender, I see nothing wrong with some aggressiveness in that range. (And some bounceback guys come even cheaper than 1/8 -- Liriano was 2/12, Kazmir 1/1 or something.)

You are leaving off some options, notably: 3) The player performs well enough in his 1 year deal to be worth a qualifying offer next winter, either giving the Twins an extra draft pick if he signs elsewhere (and could have the domino effect of helping us to trade a competitive balance pick), or a good pitcher on a one-year deal if he accepts the QO.

For those that don't know, Baseball Prospectus keeps incredibly detailed injury information (injury type, dates, days/games missed, etc.) in the "Injury History" section of their player pages. Sure beats using Google! Here is Mauer's page, scroll down below the stats to find the injury history: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=31759 I should add, access to this info is all free -- you don't have to be a subscriber to Prospectus.

One challenge is apparently avoiding obnoxious Yankee phrases like "Core Four".

So, are you saying the Twins should have hired his Spanish-speaking brother, Raul Molitor?

Actually at 23 he was sentenced to a year in Salt Lake. Age 22 he was pretty much our full-time 1B, with a two-month intermission only for wrist surgery and rehab. Got a full year of MLB service time, I am pretty sure. It's what made his absence at age 23 all the more notable.

Not to nit-pick on this side discussion, but Ortiz debuted at age 21 (2.5 months shy of 22), Vargas at exactly age 24. By Ortiz's 24th birthday, he had over 1000 PA at AAA/MLB. Although performance-wise, so far Vargas has a higher MLB OPS+ and wRC+ than Ortiz through the same age, although Vargas benefits from a smaller sample. (Admittedly, Ortiz was better in the minors, even accounting for context, except for another Vargas small sample in low-A.)

But which one?

Yeah. Span is an outfielder too, which suggests less interaction with Molitor (Walker mentioned that as well). And Span really only would have worked with Molitor in the minors immediately after his failed Seattle gig when he returned to the Twins as a roving minor league instructor, and logic suggests that perhaps Molitor was not as active in that role initially as he would have been later, when he jumped to a MLB coaching spot.

Generally not a fan of a team hiring its former players or a manager hiring his former teammates, though. It's not necessarily bad, but it makes you wonder what the criteria is for the position (and makes you wonder how much the team really cares about the position). Especially when an organization/manager does a lot of this sort of hiring. Pitching coach seems like a particularly important position too.

If Chris Bosio is dismissed by Chicago with Maddon aboard, he could be a candidate. Molitor's former teammate in Milwaukee. The Cubs haven't be very good, but they've had some decent reclamation pitching projects recently -- Arrieta, Feldman, Maholm.

Pitching coach decision is going to be huge, I think. That will be a good indicator how much Molitor is really "manager material" and how much "outside thinking" he's bringing to the job.

Molitor has spent one year of his 15 years post-retirement working for another organization than the Twins. And it was disastrous and 10 years ago. Molitor was apparently considered for the Minnesota manager's job 13 years ago, but passed over for Gardy. Molitor was brought back to the MLB dugout for the first time in 10 years last winter, to be Gardenhire's bench coach after Gardy was nearly fired himself. I've got nothing against him and I wish him well, but he's not much of an outsider.

The video game perspective was the idea there would be an ordered list of prospects with a number attached, and increasing or decreasing the number would be the primary effect of these different approaches. Like I said, I don't think it's a major effect, but it's probably there and it's not necessarily a bad thing either. Think of it less like altering the trade, and more like altering a team's valuation of a player. If some team calls us about Eddie Rosario, I think that could/should alter TR's valuation of him, to some degree.

You're looking at it from a video game simulation perspective, which is problematic by itself, but there are a whole lot more outcomes that you're not considering. How about, if you call about trading for a minor leaguer, you're slightly less likely to actually land him than if the other team calls you? (Of course, once you factor in that the other team may not call you at all, it's probably a wash. But there are other ways to approach it too -- you can discuss other players before bringing up the guy you want, or you can discuss a player at the trading deadline and then revisit it later, etc.) Of course it varies too what kind of player you are calling about. Minor leaguers and less-heralded prospects are going to be affected by this much more than an established MLB player. For example, if the Twins called the Braves last winter about Gilmartin, maybe they don't simply give him up for Doumit, or at least not as quickly -- they had no pressing need to unload Gilmartin at that point, who required neither a 40-man roster spot nor much money, so any sign that he had more value to other teams might have caused them to re-evaluate. (Of course, the Twins could call the Braves about pitching help in general and find their way to Gilmartin indirectly... or more likely, they have Gilmartin and others on a list for every team which they reference whenever a trade inquiry comes in, and rarely target such players so precisely.) On the other hand, if it is the summer of 2001 and we call the Mets about Rick Reed, they're not going to hold out for more just because they didn't call us for Matt Lawton first. I'll admit, it's going to be a minor effect and perhaps undetectable given the multitude of other variables around trades, but given the lack of structure and many possible outcomes, I can't say there wouldn't be an effect. (A related approach and effect might be seen in teams that seek/offer lots of trades, versus teams that don't. TR's restrained approach might nab slightly higher returns and/or close deals quicker than a team that comes across as more reckless in its approach.)

For Maddon, or free agents -- I agree it's bunk. For player trades, I think it plays a part (although obviously a relatively minor one). It's a much less structured market.