It is past time for another Twins diablog, ostensibly round three in an ongoing conversation about the state of the hometown nine, with participants including yours truly, Warning Track Power blogger and Rake staffer Brad Zellar, and sports maven freelance writer David Brauer. We had similar bits just before the season started and over Memorial Day.

This time it is a bit truncated, in that I made my first post to Zellar and Brauer yesterday afternoon, in between the Twins 1-0 loss on Tuesday and their 3-2 loss on Wednesday. Zellar responded late last night after covering the game at the Dome, and Brauer is currently M.I.A. but will probably speak his mind in the comments section. Same thing goes for my subsequent posts on the subject, and hopefully Zellar's, and hopefully yours.

For the record, my proposal for the Twins to start retooling for next year is hardly a surprise, given my ongoing belief that the team just didn't have enough to contend this season anyway. But Zellar, perhaps in the throes of post-game depression (he does live and die with the Twins on a pretty visceral level), raised at least my eyebrows by proposing, or perhaps just entertaining, a thorough housecleaning.

Read on and then toss in your two cents...

Britt Robson

Fish or cut bait? That's the question facing the Twins on July 18, 93 games into the season, when they are seven back of Detroit and six behind Cleveland with 69 to play. If the Tigers played a smidgen above .500 the rest of the way (36-35), the Twins would have to go 42-27--a higher winning percentage than any current MLB team possesses--just to tie them. And even then, Cleveland would have to also descend into mediocrity rather than continue on with their current status quo.

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Obviously I'm in favor of cutting bait. And that means dealing Torii Hunter for the best prospect(s) the team's notoriously wise scouting system can identify.

Before continuing on, it is time for me to eat a little crow on Hunter. I have kept waiting for him to come back to earth and be the dunderheaded free-swinging, guess-oriented, unclutch hitter I've come to know and suspect. But after more than a year now of quality at-bats and solid run production, it is time to believe Hunter's pronouncements of maturity. In last night's excruciating shutout loss to Detroit, Hunter was 0-2 with a lefty on the mound in a scoreless game--exactly the kind of situation when he used to go for broke (and be broken). But four straight times he ignored the meanandering nibbles from Nate Robertson and drew the walk. Bravo. And while his defense may have slipped just a titch, it is still close to Gold Glove-caliber.

The problem isn't with Hunter's current production, it is what he'll command on the free market, especially in terms of contract length. Today happens to be Torii's 32nd birthday. He is going to be offered a contract with a minimum of five years on it for a minimum of $75 million. If the Twins do a deal that pays a 37-year old outfielder at least $15 million in 2012, how much are Justin Morneau, Johan Santana and Joe Mauer worth at that time? Or forget about 2012; if anyone thinks Morneau and Santana aren't a tad curious about how the Hunter situation works out, they're the same starry-eyed lovelies who think the return of Rondell White will happen, let alone help. You give Hunter a fat contract and you simply can't keep both Morneau and Santana.

At least Hunter's biggest media cheerleader, the Strib's Jim Souhan, understands this. When I was on the radio with him late last month, he strongly intimated that Hunter is a greater priority than Santana, on the standard line that Hunter plays every day but Santana is one out of five. As someone who would like to blame either the ganja or the tequila for my deranged opinions on the Orioles Eric Bedard soon eclipsing Santana as the premiere pitcher in the American League (in the comments section of Brad's Warning Track Power blog), I disagree with Souhan. But even so, Souhan's argument is strengthened by the surfeit of pitching prospects in the Twins minor league system and the total absence of quality outfield candidates.

But back to the original, overriding topic. There is always the possibility that the Twins will neither fish nor cut bait, but simply play out the string this season without an attempt to upgrade in either the short-term or long-term with new personnel. In fact, Terry Ryan's temperament and past history would indicate that's the most likely outcome. I think I'm on record in the last two roundtables as saying that if the team does indeed intend to challenge for the AL Central crown, they clearly need a bat, and the season thus far reinforces that view. Does anybody envision Ryan renting a dangerous bat in exchange for one of his precious pitching prospects?

That's why Hunter needs to be dealt, as soon as possible, while his value is still high. And I'd also flip Luis Castillo for a solid prospect. Ditto Rincon or, more plausibly, Matt Guerrier, because a boatload of contenders need bullpen help. I think the Twins have proven that their coterie of scouts assess talent as well or better than any club in baseball. Stockpiling some promising pieces and making a run next year, when all of their key pieces will be another year deeper or nearer their primes, is the smart way to go.


Brad Zellar

It's always viewed as heresy to trade a good player in his prime, but, like most heresies, the long view usually makes the actual act look, at the worst regrettable, and at best, much ado about nothing.

When you think about the great fleecings in Major League history you're usually talking about a decent or even great player being traded for a bunch of guys who nobody'd much heard of at the time. The Pierzynski trade, for instance. And, yeah, I know there are exceptions, but they're actually pretty rare. What I'm saying is that after the fact you generally remember the guys you'd never heard of at the time --Jeff Bagwell, for instance, or Joe Nathan, or Francisco Liriano.

I think Torii Hunter is as good as he's ever going to get. All available evidence--and there's a lot of it--suggests that he's at the age where decline is inevitable, and can be marked. He's sure as hell not worth how much it's now going to cost to keep him. I still believe the Twins erred in not moving him before this year. At this point he becomes a rent-a-player, and savvy as Minnesota's scouting people might be, they're still not in the bargaining position they would have been a year or two ago, so I don't realistically have any idea what the hell they could get for him --or, for that matter, who the hell they'd play in his absence.

That said, I don't see any way they can keep him beyond this year, not after Ichiro's contract.

And the Twins obviously have bigger questions beyond the hole Hunter would leave. They also have other (big) fish to fry in the budget department. Everybody talks about Morneau and Santana in the same breath as Hunter, but there's also the Mauer contract to consider, and the situations of Joe Nathan, Michael Cuddyer, and, now, Pat Neshek.

After tonight's (Wednesday night's) one-run loss to the Tigers, which cost the Twins another game in the standings and provided the latest indicator that this just isn't a team built to contend right now, it seems plenty apparent that Terry Ryan and company need to recognize that their real job at the moment is providing a better supporting cast for their young stars and up-and-coming arms. The farm system might be stocked with pitching, but there's virtually nothing in the way of offensive help on the horizon, and offensive help is what this team desperately needs.

Terry Ryan has done a terrific job, but it's times like this that I wish we had a different, even more reckless, general manager. And along those lines, here's some serious heresy: how much could the Twins get for Johan Santana on the open market right now? A lot, I'm supposing, a shit load. Particularly if they can think creatively (and rationally) enough to recognize that by trading him they're essentially freeing up hundreds of millions of salary down the road.

It would hurt, sure, but how many pitchers of Santana's caliber manage to just keep doing it year in and year out? He already has a lot of innings under his belt --this year should mark the fourth straight season of 200+ innings-- and, yeah, he has great mechanics and is in terrific condition, but pitching is hell on the human arm, and the odds overwhelmingly suggest that he's due at some point in the next two or three years to run into some arm trouble.

Already this season we've seen him laboring in unaccustomed fashion. His fastball isn't quite what it used to be, and some of the inflated pitch counts and prolonged at bats we've seen this year are an indication of that. The 15-pitch at bat Carlos Guillen (in which he fouled off ten of Santana's pitches) had in the fourth inning of tonight's game was the sort of thing we've seen more often this year than in any other season.

Very, very few pitchers ever end up justifying gigantic, long-term, guaranteed contracts. It's just the reality of the game, and the Twins aren't the sort of team that's in a position to gamble on the durability and continued excellence of a starting pitcher, no matter how good he might presently be. They've got pitchers. They got more pitchers coming. What they need right now, and into the future, are some guys who can hit the fucking ball.

All right, I'm just in a hog-wild, if-I-ran-the-zoo frame of mind (those last couple games will do that to a guy), but if you put any stock at all in Billy Beane's philosophy you likely wouldn't hesitate to unload Joe Nathan to the highest bidder and install Neshek in his place.

Neshek has been phenomenal, he clearly has stones, and he's got the nasty stuff and freak-show intangibles to be a closer.

Closers are overrated: look at the guy who was on the mound for the Tigers at the end of the game tonight (Todd Jones) --he's wearing his eighth different Major League uniform, had a brief stint with the Twins, and is on his second go-round with Detroit.

Or look at Joe Borowski in Cleveland. Or Francisco Cordero in Milwaukee.

Also, yes, absolutely, go ahead and see what you can get for Castillo and Rincon. The Twins can call up Alexi Casilla and throw him out there at second or third --he can swap around the rest of the year with Punto and Rodriguez.

I'd hang onto Guerrier, just because the guy has been so tremendous this year after being forced into a bigger role in a pinch. But if the organization has shown one consistent knack over the years, it's the ability to find and groom guys just like Guerrier (and Neshek, and, for that matter, Rincon).