This has been bugging me all off season, and then even more as Edwin Jackson signed a one year deal and the Twins have watched reliever after reliever sign elsewhere.

There is absolutely no excuse for the Twins to cut their budget in the 3rd year of their new stadium. While Joe Sheehan uses the Royals as a specific example, this absolutely applies to the Twins as well:

"The Kansas City Royals, like the other teams in the smallest markets in baseball, collect money from ticket sales and local media rights. They also get equal shares of nationally generated revenue, such as for Sunday Night Baseball or the postseason or the All-Star Game, even if they rarely if ever show up in those slots. On top of that, they get free money just for existing. Yet the Royals' 2011 payroll (just north of $38 million, according to Cot's Contracts) was lower than it was in any year since 2005, low enough to nearly guarantee a profit if no one showed up at the park.

The conversation about these matters tends to use a language --- "what we can afford", "in our market", "fiscal responsibility" -- that clouds what is happening, which is that spectacularly wealthy men, women and companies can invest in their product, but they often choose not to. The fact is, everybody who owns a major league team -- when MLB isn't making spectacularly bad choices about who gets to own a team, anyway -- is wealthy enough to make investments in the product that can improve the win-loss record without sweating whether the team will have positive cash-flow in the short term. The financial benefits of talent investment tend to accrue in future years for one -- a good team in Year One brings people to the park in Year Two, and so on -- while every team appreciates over time."

http://cnnsi.com/2012/writers/joe_sheehan/02/06/owners.money/index.html?eref=sihp&sct=hp_wr_a3