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.

Ok, then by what reasonable projections and/or multi season metrics are Buxton and Sano top players?

Are you basing this on their 2018 stats or just some hypothetical situation where they all play to their absolute ceiling? Because 2018 Buxton and Sano couldn't even make the Twins roster for most of the year, so they certainly wouldn't have been top players on any other roster. Rosario is absolutely a high quality outfielder, no arguments there. Kepler was also solid. Castro is not even remotely a "top player" In 2018, Castro produced -0.2 fWAR. He is the 69th ranked catcher by fWAR. Both Astudillo and Garver produced a higher fWAR than him. If you don't like WAR, then I think his .143 BA, .257 OBP, and .495 OPS speak for themselves. When you say 4 solid starters, who is your 4th? Pineda? You're ready to call him solid even though he hasn't pitched a single inning for the Twins, and hasn't pitched a single inning in general in over a year? I understand being optimistic, but there is no metric by which Buxton, Sano, and Castro would be top players on any roster at this point in their careers. Could Buxton and Sano become top players on any roster? Yes, it is certainly possible and I hope they do so. But as of right now, Sano is coming off a rough season (to put it nicely), and Buxton is coming off of a complete failure of a season, and your statement that they would be top players on any roster is 100% false.

Yeah, I'm certainly not an advocate for it, at least not with the current state of the central. Was a statement on where I think we currently stand, but I personally want us to sign some good players and if Buxton and Sano and all our prospects pan out, then that'd be even better. We can trade some to fill in other positions of need if we have the luck of having a surplus of good players for the same position. No such thing as too many good players.

A .500 team is the definition of mediocre, and Buxton and Sano "maturing" isn't suddenly going to turn us into legit playoff contenders with our current roster. How many position players do we have that are above average for their positions? Eddie Rosario is the only one who comes to mind at the moment. How many pitchers do we have that are above average? 4? You're telling me you're looking at this roster and you'd be frustrated if they added some more actual talent? Last season Jake Cave was our 7th highest WAR player (including pitchers) and Grossman was our 8th. 4th and 5th respectively for position players, with 1.5 WAR each. If we were far from mediocre, Cave and Grossman wouldn't be in our top 5 best position players.

Tanking usually results in good draft picks, where as I think we're probably going to be stuck in no man's land where we're not good enough to compete and not bad enough to get a good position in the draft.

Paying Gibson 4/60 right now seems absurd to me. That's more than we paid Ervin Santana, who had a much better track record. Gibson has never put together two halfway decent seasons in a row.

Taylor Rogers 2015 numbers in Rochester were in Rochester, not in the majors. 3.98 ERA in AAA. Maybe he would've been a successful starter in the majors, but we don't know that and to this point we have nothing to show us if he can consistently pitch multiple innings at a time in the majors. Looking at his AAA numbers from 4 years ago doesn't mean anything to me now. It is going to be 4 years since he has started. In the last 3 seasons he hasn't broken 70 IP in a year. Why are we just assuming he can ramp that up so much and perform as well as he's been doing in the majors? I also don't buy that the Rays blew anything out of the water. In fact, I doubt having an RP start the game before a starter sticks long term for anything besides September rosters/fringe situations/playoff shenanigans, but that's a whole different discussion I don't dispute that there is some middle ground and good RPs should be able to go multiple innings as needed. However, I absolutely do think taking your best RP and turning him into multi inning guy every outing is a waste. Sometimes you need your best guys out there for 1 out, sometimes you need them to get 6 outs. But if you want them available for as many potential high leverage situations as possible over the course of the season, you try to limit those 6 out appearances to when you really need them so they don't need extended days off and to ensure they're still going strong come August/September/October. I'd love to have a bullpen full of guys who were all as good at getting 1 out as they were at getting 6 and had the ability to go 100+ innings every season, but its an unrealistic ask. I'd love to just have a bullpen full of actually good RPs. That would probably be a good starting point. Jim Hahn, a few posts up, did a great job of detailing a few concerns that I also share about the idea of that role. In general, I think there are plenty of times where you want your best RPs to have the fortitude to stay out there for more than 1 inning when you really need it, but I don't want to take my best guy and turn him into some role player who isn't available 2/3rds of the time because he's constantly coming off of 2 and 3 inning appearances. I feel like the much more sustainable option is to build a bullpen with a variety of good pitchers. If you want one of them to go get 6 outs here and there, then thats no big deal since you're not risking burning out arms with 100 IP by having a few guys make a handful of extended appearances over the course of the season. I also don't think this is an unrealistic ask because we sure as hell have plenty of money we could be spending on good RPs, but it remains to be seen if we will do so.

In 2015 Taylor Rogers was a starter. 27 of his 28 Rochester appearances were starts. In your plan, he would absolutely 100% need to be stretched out as a starter. And how many days off is a RP going to require after pitching 3-4 innings? So now in your hypothetical situation, if Rogers is one of your best RPs, he is now only appearing ~2 times a week and you're left with your worse RPs for high leverage late inning situations for the other 3-5 games per week. If he isn't one of your best RPs and you're trotting him out there for 3-4 innings, then he is just a mop up man. I don't disagree with your general theory that your best pitchers should pitch more innings, but there is a limit to how many innings they can pitch before their results diminish. There is also a big reason a lot of failed starters become relievers: they can throw harder in short appearances, and they don't have to face the lineup more than once. So now you're taking guys who for many of them have not had success starting, but they have had success in the bullpen, and you're switching that up. Now they can't throw full gas because they need to face 2-3x more batters. If they're appearing for 2-3+ innings they're going to be facing the same hitters more than once. They now have all the problems they faced as a starter, but instead of having a fixed routine like a starter, they need to be ready to go at any time. They need to be able to jump in the middle of an inning, with runners on base, but they aren't going to be able to approach it the same way they previously were with their success as an RP because you're expecting them to stay out there 2-4x as long. Could it potentially work? Sure, but you're asking for a lot out of a bullpen built up mostly by guys who weren't good enough at working multiple innings to stick as a starter for the Twins. Which is saying something.

While I understand what you're saying in theory, in practice you're just going to end up blowing out all your relievers. When you say "find out what he can handle," all that means to me is that you're going to keep using your best RPs until they break down. Which I guess is a viable approach if you're pushing down the stretch to make the playoffs or pushing in the playoffs to win the world series. But if you have RPs signed for multiple years, trying to increase their innings by 2x from one year to the next seems like a good way to blow out their arms, or end up with a bullpen full of relievers in August and September who are already cooked and won't be able to produce down the stretch (or in the playoffs, though realistically I don't think thats anything we need to worry about in 2019). I do agree that you shouldn't keep trotting out garbage just because of sunk cost or because of some reputation that they've built from years past when they were a completely different pitcher, but going the opposite direction and hugely increasing pitchers innings because they're pitching well isn't a sustainable approach to me. Do I agree that the RP pitching well should get more innings than the Matt Belisles of our roster? Absolutely, but I don't think it is even remotely reasonable to assume you can just send most relievers out there for 100 or 120 innings every year and expect them to hold up over the long term. And likely many of them wouldn't hold up over the short term or are going to start losing velocity and all of a sudden they aren't your best relievers anymore because they're already worn down in July.

How good can he be if he was DFA'd? The best of the garbage heap isn't exactly going to move the needle on our pitching problems.