S.

Getting an actual ace at the deadline is a surefire way to dismantle your entire farm system for a year or two of service

I guess we can all just be glad that we weren't the team that ended up with David Price

This reads like it was written by the Twins PR department.

So you're saying being decent in the regular season and then "competitively" getting crushed in the playoffs is better than winning the world series and then being bad for some years? I seem to recall us being bad for a lot of years without any playoff wins or a WS pennant. I seem to recall 5 and 10 years ago people talking about how we have the stock on the farm to be competitive soon and that we could augment that with some FAs or trades and be a postseason contender. And then I seem to recall us never augmenting with good players or even being remotely close to contending in the playoffs. If other people are happy to be "competitive" in the regular season with rosters that never actually have a chance of doing anything in the post season, I guess that is good for them, since that is all the Twins are going to provide any time soon. I think the majority of fans would prefer a pennant at damn near any cost.

Why is this exciting? We never gave him a real shot as a starter in the majors and I'm supposed to be glad that we moved him to the pen to make room for Martin Perez?

You look at our current roster and think we could compete with New York, Boston, Houston, etc in the playoffs? Or you think we could be competitive against the White Sox, Detroit, and KC in the Central? Because there is a huge difference between the two.

Trust us though, this batch of prospects that are going to be coming up in 2022 are the real deal this time and not like all the other failed prospects of the last 20 years, so start planning the parade!

You say "rebuild yet again" but when was the last time we did an actual rebuild? The last decade plus has just been various flavors of, "we're going to be competitive in 2-3 years once our prospects get here" and then 2-3 years later, those prospects don't pan out and we hear the same thing. They never actually rebuild.

The issue is that we don't sign big FAs, we don't trade any of our highly rated prospects for established players, and we haven't been successful developing many of our prospects for ages. It makes it challenging to build a solid core when your team isn't doing any of the things that would lead to said solid core. They seem to be operating under the hope that maybe one year all of our prospects will pan out at the exact same time, and also all of our bargain bin deals will work out that same year too. But with all the short term deals and no real established players, even if your team does decently 1 year (see: 2017), then the next year is just another crapshoot. They can talk about the long term plan, but lets be honest, what is the long term plan? To me, it just seems like hoping and praying and not actually doing any of the work to acquire players that would constitute a solid core.

But we aren't even doing a rebuild, we're just wallowing in mediocrity.

Honest question, because I don't read a lot of minor league news/stats/etc outside of stuff posted on here, but is there a reason people are so quick to push for Romero to the pen? It isn't like our starting staff is stacked and it still seems like he has the potential to be a solid starter. Am I missing some other info or what is the reason people want to move him to the pen already?

I agree, and I'm guessing very few people here would be upset if both of those IFs come to pass and we grab some other better RPs and this isn't our "late inning, high leverage" pitcher signing for the offseason. But those are two big ifs and I think it's a very reasonable worry that neither of those will be the case.

Numbers-wise, last year was about the exact same as he had been the previous two years as well, so I'd have a hard time calling his year lousy or a down year for him, since it was damn near identical to 2017 and 2016 Edit: Should probably specify, this is in regards to Kepler

Considering how low our payroll is, it'd be nice if we could maybe get some actually good pitchers. As TheLeviathan said, this move is ok IF there are other better moves coming. But I doubt there are.

It looks like Steamer is predicting 2.2 WAR for Buxton and 2.5 WAR for Sano, so that jives with your expectation. And I think most people would probably be pretty happy to get that sort of production from them after this last season, but that still would not qualify them as "top players in any roster" as the other poster put it. At the end of the day though, I don't think projections should stop us from acquiring other good players, which is my main issue here. Lots of prospects and players project to be stars. A lot less achieve that success. Lots of people love to talk about not wanting to block prospects or not wanting to sign good players to multi year contracts because you might have some prospect who pans out in a few years. But for every prospect that becomes a great MLB player, many more fizzle out and never amount to anything, or become replacement level players, or decent players but don't live up to their projections. My frustration isn't so much with Sano and Buxton specifically (though they definitely frustrated me plenty last year), but more the idea that standing pat is a good idea with this roster. Go get some more good players. If in a year or two years all of our current roster is playing well AND we got a bunch of prospects knocking on the door, then that's awesome. If you have multiple players for the same position who are genuinely good, there will always be teams interested. Players can be traded. Players get injured. Having lots of good players isn't a problem and I genuinely don't understand why lots of people on this board seem so averse to adding additional talent to a roster that features more than its fair share of mediocrity. Also, just to add - I assume it's a given but wanted to specify that these points aren't targeted at you personally, as I'm not going to claim I can remember who specifically has said what in all these offseason threads.