Going into 2013 the Twins have one of the top seven or eight farm systems in baseball. They're talented youngsters are led by a slew of position players and a couple of pitchers who are commonly viewed as guys with #2 type ceilings, although even then there's room for optimism. Our Top 10 this season is pretty impressive, and even looking down through the rest of our Top 25 and beyond there are players who you could see making contributions. That bullpen could look pretty incredible in a couple of years.
With that in mind, and considering it's an off-day, I'm taking a moment to fill our heads with grand notions. Here is what the Major League roster for the Minnesota Twins could look like in 2015, with age-X season listed in parenthesis, if the roster were populated with nothing but internal options.
C - Joe Mauer (32)
1B - Chris Parmelee (27)
2B - Eddie Rosario (23)
SS - Danny Santana (24)
3B - Miguel Sano (22)
LF - Joe Benson (27)
CF - Aaron Hicks (25)
RF - Oswaldo Arcia (24)
DH - Trevor Plouffe (29)
Bench C - Chris Herrmann (27)
Bench IF - Pedro Florimon (28)
Bench IF - Brian Dozier (28)
Bench OF - Darin Mastroianni (29)
SP1 - Kyle Gibson (27)
SP2 - Alex Meyer (25)
SP3 - Vance Worley (27)
SP4 - Trevor May (25)
SP5 - Scott Diamond (28)
CL - Glen Perkins (32)
SU - Jared Burton (34)
MR - Jose Berrios (21)
MR - Michael Tonkin (25)
MR - D.J. Baxendale (24)
MR - Brian Duensing (32)
LR - Pedro Hernandez (26)
Obviously this is all a bit silly. Even with all of this talent, they wouldn't be competitive in 2015 with this kind of a roster. As the Twins phase these players in, they'll need to be surrounded by veterans who are, we all hope, talented in their own right. As exciting as it is to pretend that all of these guys will be good enough to make this team competitive in 2015, we run into a few logistical issues.
At least half of the rookies on this list with either not make it to The Show, or will do so but fail to make the impact we're all hoping they'll one day make.Additionally, that roster is wicked cheap. The Twins would have plenty of opportunity to surround some of these star players with established stars. But it would also mean that all of these guys would go through arbitration and free agency at the same time, and can you imagine the royal flustercuck that would cause leading up to 2020?
Minnesota has a deep and talented minor league system, and this list is designed to point that out but it isn't a tool to preview what the team could actually look like in 2015. It's just not feasible.