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Over at Friarhood, a great Padres site, Steve Adler and Drew Silva put together a fun exercise. Essentially, just like in certain fantasy baseball leagues, you have a payroll for your team. Your job, should you choose to accept it, it to put together a team within your budget.
I've gone through Twins history, position-by-position, and I've done my best to pick out the five best players from eleven positions. Rankings have been adjusted for a combination of performance and legacy (things like All-Star teams and playing meaningful post-season baseball), and for the most part I've tried to stick guys at the positions where they logged the most innings while with the Twins. Mostly, it should be a list of the five best players at each position.
There are 11 positions. Your budget is $33.
In case you don't have a pen and paper handy, here's the matrix to give you a hand. What will your team look like? Also I'm sorry but I couldn't make Ron Davis worth negative dollars. My dad won't mind, though. He's a fan.
Player | $5.00 | $4.00 | $3.00 | $2.00 | $1.00 |
SP | Bert Blyleven | Brad Radke | Johan Santana | Camilo Pascual | Jim Kaat |
C | Joe Mauer | Earl Battey | Butch Wynegar | Brian Harper | A.J. Pierzynski |
1B | Harmon Killebrew | Kent Hrbek | Justin Morneau | Don Mincher | Doug Mientkiewicz |
2B | Rod Carew | Chuck Knoblauch | Nick Punto | Brian Dozier | Tim Tuefel |
3B | Gary Gaetti | Corey Koskie | Rich Rollins | Steve Braun | John Castino |
SS | Zoilo Versalles | Greg Gagne | Roy Smalley | Leo Cardenas | Cristian Guzman |
LF | Larry Hisle | Dan Gladden | Shane Mack | Jacque Jones | Gary Ward |
CF | Kirby Puckett | Torii Hunter | Jimmie Hall | Cesar Tovar | Denard Span |
RF | Tony Oliva | Bob Allison | Tom Brunansky | Michael Cuddyer | Matt Lawton |
DH | Paul Molitor | Chili Davis | Jim Thome | Dave Winfield | Randy Bush |
CL | Joe Nathan | Rick Aguilera | Eddie Guardado | Jeff Reardon | Ron Davis |