S.

Parise and Sutter to the Wild ring a bell?

29 other teams don't have the same need for decent starting pitching like the Twins do + a boatload of payroll flexibility now and in the future if we wanted to sign a longer term deal. Also, taking my post and changing a few words is not a compelling argument for your side. Clearly you're clueless though, so I'll leave you to your unfettered optimism.

So you're telling me that if we offered Marcum $5-$8M or so, which is still completely reasonable in my book, that he still would have preferred to go to the Mets? The METS? I understand that sometimes players take lower pay to go to contenders or to be close to home or whatever, but it's absolutely ridiculous to think that we've been making good, competitive offers to pitchers since the 90s and every single one of them turned down said good offers because they "did not want to come to MN". Also, do you honestly think that somehow the Twins are the only team who has figured out how to silence the media and these pitchers' agents from talking about these good offers we've made?

I seem to recall subtle mentions of us pursuing some pretty darn good pitchers. It's a damn shame that we have so many of them that we can't sign more without fear of blocking all of those other pretty darn good pitchers we have clogging up our system.

I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. A 1 year contract with Marcum would have somehow affected the promotion of mystery players we don't even have yet, but should draft? Or is your concern that May and Meyers are going to both fly through the ranks and somehow Walters and DeVries were going to block them from being able to pitch in AAA in 2013?

Improving our embarrassment of a rotation for relatively cheap makes great sense any way I look at it. It's not like I think that signing Marcum magically makes us contenders or a .500 team, but it potentially gives fans something worth watching every 5 starts in a season that is shaping up to offer very few things for us to get even remotely excited about. And as twinsnorth stated, who exactly is a 1 year contract blocking? Hell, even a 2 or 3 year contract wouldn't have been blocking anything besides guys who wouldn't even sniff the major leagues on about 27 other teams.

Diamond, Worley, Butera, Correia, Pitching Machine/Blackburn.

As if having Correia on your team isn't bad enough, we had to give the guy a 2 year deal? For $10M? When we already have a handful of league minimum guys who can put up the same type of numbers? Christ. Someone punch me in the face, because that sounds like a lot more fun than watching Correia get starts for 2 years. And just think, if Blackburn puts up some almost, not quite, halfway terrible numbers in AAA, we just might get the pleasure of seeing Correia and Blackburn together in our rotation in 2013! While it may not strike fear into opponents, it certainly will generate plenty of terror for the fans.

I can dig that. Today has been a good day.

I'd honestly prefer he plays so bad that they can't even consider calling him up to pitch for the Twins again. I'm sure that sounds awful, but we already know what Blackburn has and it ain't good. I'd much rather have them trot out Deduno/DeVries/Walters/Hendriks/etc than Blackburn at this point. Edit: Ok, that was probably a bit mean. If he could put up 2008/2009 type of numbers, he'd be fine for eating some innings. I dont see it happening though.

I'll have to wait to see the price tag before final judgement, but I certainly like the move if the price is right. FYI, Seth, looks like you accidentally added a "have" in the first sentence: According to Darren "Doogie" Wolfson (via twitter), the Minnesota Twins and representatives for Jared Burton have are very close to an agreement for a contract extension.

Personally, I don't see how Dempster would give fans any additional reason to show up.

But...but...he's fast.

Agreed on both fronts. If there were some better FA options I could definitely see us getting Marcum on a multi year deal, someone on a cheap one year deal (Liriano comes to mind), and a SS. Unfortunately, I envision them trotting out a middle infield of Carroll/Dozier/Florimon for a good chunk of the year, then potentially trying for a young SS at the deadline in a Willingham or Morneau trade if their value is up. Though, TR has surprised me today. Maybe we'll be seeing a trade for a SS before the start of the year.

As has been said many times already, Revere was certainly fun to watch but only a fool wouldn't be happy about this trade. Now I'd love to see us sign Marcum to a 3 year deal to have a solid, veteran arm in the rotation to go along with the young guys who will be coming up over the next 3 years. A shortstop that doesn't make me weep would be nice too, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.