Just a bit of fun on a Friday morning, as I continue my baseball reading.
After thinking about it the other day, I've decided that some good could certainly come out of it. While I'm going to leave the reasons why not to you, I'll toss out some reasons why:
1. Acquiring Brian Roberts would give the Twins a good player, both offensively and defensively.
2. The acquisition of Roberts would allow the Twins to slide Alexi Casilla over to shortstop, where hopefully he can serve as admirably as he's done at second so far. This would offset one of the team's biggest weaknesses, shorstop, while simutaneously upgrading at second base.
3. The aquisition of Roberts would not only give the Twins a better option to lead off, but would allow the Twins to slide Carlos Gomez down to the 9-hole. From this position his offense isn't quite as exposed, while he's still near enough to the bigger bats that they can move him around and drive him in when he does reach. It's still a good place in the batting order to utilize speed.
Roberts, 2B
Casilla, SS
Mauer, C
Morneau, 1B
Cuddyer, RF
Kubel, DH
Young, LF
Buscher, 3B
Gomez, CF
4. The acquisition of Roberts would give the Twins further options as to how to deal with their infield depth: Brendan Harris, Nick Punto, Adam Everett and even Mike Lamb would be put into positions of either bench depth or being removed from the roster. Trim the fat.
5. Consistent run support comes from consistent offense. As great as Buscher and Casilla have been, they don't have the track record of Roberts. Roberts would consistently give the Minnesota offense more opportunities to score.
Agree or disagree? Roberts is 30 now, making $6.3 million this season and is scheduled to make $8 million in '09, at age 31, in the final year of his contract. The contract also includes a four-team limited no-trade clause.