FanPost

Looking ahead

Going into the week of Thanksgiving, the Twins had yet to respond to the fans' requests to sign free agent pitchers. This past week, however, the Twins signed both Ricky Nolasco and Phil Hughes to contracts that will help bring the Twins' 2014 payroll to an estimated $78MM. Assuming the $40MM number that was being thrown around at the beginning of the off-season is still the limit to spend, Terry Ryan and the Twins' FO still has about $20MM to spend. How might they spend that money? I think it might go like:

  • A.J. Pierzynski: 1 year, $7MM
  • Matt Garza: 5 years, $65MM

Or at least that's how I would spend it. Garza was worth $22MM in 2011 and $11.2MM in 2013 according to Fangraphs, so $13MM/year is pretty fair. After all these moves, you might end up with a rotation and lineup like this:

Rotation:
SP1: Garza
SP2: Nolasco
SP3: Hughes
SP4: Gibson
SP5: Meyer/Correia

Lineup:
C: Pierzynski/Pinto
1B: Mauer
2B: Dozier
3B: Plouffe
SS: Florimon
LF: Willingham
CF: Presley
RF: Arcia
DH: Doumit/Pierzynski

If I were the Twins I would also at the least check in on Granderson. When Hicks' bat finally catches up to his glove, you can shift Granderson to LF and move Willingham to DH seeing as he isn't a great defender anyways. And if the Twins opt not to sign Granderson and Hicks' bat doesn't catch up to his glove, Denard Span would be a free agent in 2015 should the Nationals buy his contract out for $500K.

UPDATE: The Twins are apparently out on Pierzynski, so ignore the parts that mention him.