i follow the twins prospects quite closely since i live in MN, but before this year i never even heard of luke hughes, so is he just a 1 year wonder or is he for real?

The more I think about it, the more I think the Twins will keep Young. He still has a chance to turn into a serious power threat, and his value is down. If the Twins make a trade in the outfield, I’m starting to think it would be Cuddyer. Basically, I don’t expect them to make a trade. I think they will carry five OF (Span, Gomez, Kubel, Cuddyer, Young), and everyone will get a little time off, a litte DH time, and we will do a lot more pinch hitting.

That said, if it were available, I would pounce on Encarnacion and Bailey. I have trouble believing we could get both, but maybe we could throw someone else in, like Perkins or a minor league position player.

I’d take the Reds deal as well, although it might take another piece to get Encarnacion and Bailey. I like Atkins, even though his splits don’t look great. After watching Span, Gomez, and Casilla feed off of each other’s energy, I think bringing in Cano would be pure poison. Hardy would be great, but do the Brewer’s need a corner outfielder? And Uggla—I’m kind of intrigued but feel like he is going to evolve into a corner outfielder or DH type. I just can’t get over that All-Star game performance.

The Mariners could be in the market for a corner OF if Ibanez signs elsewhere (likely).
It might be hard to trade a controllable young player who may still blossom for a one year rental, however. Isn’t that the worst nightmare? Years from now, when Young is headed for the Hall, people might say, “Yeah, and the Mariners were his third team. In fact, he was traded for a guy named Adrian Beltre—remember him?”

Having a guy with his potential (good and bad) is like having the queen of spades in your hand while playing Hearts.

He’s got too much potential to trade now… he’ll be fine…

unless someone blows us away which isn’t likely. Delmon has a ton of potential but I can’t believe after the average season he had anyone will give us a great deal involving major league ready talent. Cuddyer is expensive and coming off an injury riddled season I don’t know if we’d get what he could be worth.

I think there’s a perception that Cuddyer is injury prone even though he played 144 games in 07 and 150 in 06. In 05 he played 126 and I think that was mostly due to it being his failed 3B experiment season. I have no reason to think Cuddy is going to miss games like he did this past year. He had a freak accident on a sliding play and hopefully he will just slide feet first (him and Casilla both) and then an even more freak injury when he broke his foot. Unless some GM sees that and feels the same that Cuddy just had some bad luck this year I don’t think we’ll get what we want for him.

It seems like Gardy is not too inclined to use Kubel against lefties and with his awful splits I can’t say that’s a bad decision. That gives Gardy more opportunities to get both Cuddy and Young in a game. Plus having one of Cuddy/Young/Kubel on the bench gives us the best consistent pinch hitting option we’ve had in a long time. I’m very inclined to go with Seth Stohs model of playing time for these guys.

This is a very interesting situation. It really all depends on if we get a good enough offer.

Five guys for four positions is not a surplus, even if they’re all studs — and they’re not:

One hits .250 and shows little interest in trying to learn;

One struggled in the minors for years and then had one good year, so it’s a little early to consider him a sure thing either

One still hasn’t rebounded from an injury from, what is it, four years ago now

One’s long-predicted stardom is based entirely on minor league stats, which showed a steady decrease even before he hit the majors

One is aging, injured, and average.

I’m not slagging on them — I think they’re all good players. There’s just not a sure thing in the lot of them.

And even without injuries, five guys for four positions is about right just to give them each some days off. But given the high probability that at least one if not several will hit the DL next year, or get sent to the minors for sucking, I wouldn’t say there’s a surplus of outfielders.

I’d be just as happy to see them sign or trade for a solid right-handed power hitting DH/OF as I would to see them land an infielder. It’s a lot easier to find a DH or corner outfielder with power than an infielder. You’d probably get more bang for your buck by doing that and going with the young gloves in the infield.

One other thing — until Gardy starts fining people for sliding head-first I wouldn’t consider any position overstocked. If last season didn’t prove head-first slides aren’t worth the risk, nothing will.

After years of seeing Denard Span slagged on this site more than anyone since Luis Rivas, suddenly everyone is treating him like he’s such a sure thing we should trade away players to make room for him. Span had a great year, but it was his first one ever, so let’s wait and see.

Span was mocked for years, fairly I thought at the time, for never putting up numbers in the minors that came close to justifying his hype as a first round draft choice.

I’ve learned from this that maybe scouts do see more than numbers do sometimes, and that maybe potential can be spotted before it blossoms. And that’s pretty cool.

But I’ve also seen people get over-excited by small sample sizes before and then be surprised when the player regresses. A good example is Boof Bonser.

The line here on Bonser was always that he might be pretty good, but wouldn’t very likely be great, because he only had two pitches and didn’t have great control. When he pitched solidly in the majors, it was a pleasant surprise, and that was great. But then somehow he became a sure thing on this site. I don’t know how many posts about the Twins precarious post-santana rotation had him penciled in as a solid, dependable starter; the most common word was “stud.” He’d only had one year with an ERA under 5 at the time, and that year he pitched 100 innings.

Bonser now has gone from decent prospect to sure-thing stud to a bum who’s not even in the conversation for the starting rotation and should be dumped, when all along, he probably just should have been viewed as a decent but not great player who could probably carve out a decent career as a reliever or back of the rotation starter.

Now, it’s Span’s turn. What happens if he hits .260 next year? Would that be such a shock, really? Would it mean he was suddenly a bum? Or just that he is and always was a good defensive outfielder who might always have trouble holding his own against major league pitching, but who has a lot to contribute as a fourth outfielder and spot starter?

I’d love it if the scouts were right, and he’s harnessed all those tools once and for all. His plate discipline is really admirable; Gomez shouldn’t be allowed to start until he makes a concerted effort to emulate him. He might even become an average-hitting CF. But the idea that Span will ever be an average-hitting corner outfielder seems way premature.

But he’s already better than Gomez. Personally I’d start Span in center and send Gomez to AAA until he proves he can take smart at-bats. They had no trouble doing that with Bartlett, who was way more mature as a hitter. It’s embarrassing to their whole philosophy of doing things the right way, doing the little things, situational hitting, yadda yadda, when two starters are out there trying to get by on athleticism alone, and they don’t seem bothered that they’re not getting the most out of their abilities. That’s what AAA is for, IMO. The emergence of Span removes any reason for wasting Gomez’s service time on indulging his boneheaded decisions instead of making him work and learn to earn his turn.

When you’ve got a lot of good young talent that you see as pretty comparable, and one has a solid MLB debut, it might indeed be a good time to trade him. If you are right that the guys behind him are just as good, you can trade him while his value is at the peak, and replace him without a big dropoff.

I actually wondered at the time whether we should trade Bonser while his stock was high. So what if he pans out for someone else, as long as the guy you got for him pans out too. I actually like seeing Garza do well — I think it increases the value of all our other young pitchers as trade commodities. If you have a reputation for unloading your overhyped duds at inflated prices, your next round of prospects will be valued lower. But if you have a reputation for trading value for value fairly, your prospects should fetch more. So to me the issue isn’t whether you “win” or “lose” a trade, it’s whether the guys you get pan out. Once you’ve traded a guy the best thing he can do is kick ass, as far as I’m concerned. (Unless he’s a jerk who demands to be traded; I loved watching Knoblauch flame out.)

But back to trades. Nick Blackburn had a really solid year. Can he keep that up? Sure. He’s a solid prospect. Will he? Quite possibly. But if you can trade him at a price that assumes he WILL keep it up, you’ve come out ahead, and should go for it. He’s kind of at his upside right now.

Perkins, too, is a valuable left-handed arm to have as a potential starter or long reliever. But if someone wants him as a starter in their rotation, and will trade a starter at another position for him, why not? I have no idea what these guys will fetch, but either of them is worth more in the real world than Carlos Silva was, so a good young player looks cheap compared to $10M per year.

If we had not one to replace them, we’d be crazy to give up cheap, young, good pitching, the most valuable building block in the world. But if Duensing, Mulvey, Humber, Swarzak are seen as at about the same level, why not?

Slowey is harder, for me. Blackburn and Perkins seem like they’re good, but will never be much more than that. It would be painful to trade Slowey for an average third baseman and watch him give another team ten years of Radke level pitching. But since he’s far from guaranteed to do that, if someone were to trade for him as if he were worth a young Radke, I’d do it.

Hell, Liriano should be available too, if someone were willing to value him as the Liriano of 2006. I wonder what he’d fetch? It would have to be a lot, given his upside.

Anyway I agree, we should trade young pitching if the price is right. Maybe Young wasn’t the right guy to trade Garza for, but he was a top slugging prospect at the time, and that’s the only way we’ll ever get a slugger. If it’s easier to replace a young pitcher than find a true slugger, you shouldn’t be afraid to go back to the well.