Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Pipe Dream


On Wednesday, the news broke that the Twins were on the verge of trading Matt Garza, Jason Bartlett, and Eduardo Morlan to the Tampa Bay Rays for Delmon Young, Brendan Harris, and Jason Pridie. While this is considered a relatively minor trade of promising prospects (Garza and Young) among the rest of the baseball world, it sent shockwaves around Twins Territory…especially in the House That Toast Built.

While technically the deal is not official (at least not at press time), it was on ESPN’s Bottom Line with the famous lead-in “sources say”. In the sports world, that means it’s pretty much guaranteed to happen. The proposed deal incited two major reactions from Twins fans:

1)This must mean that a Santana trade is on the horizon
2)I can’t believe the Twins actually traded a highly regarded pitching prospect

This somewhat low key trade has caused thousands of phone calls, text messages, message board posts, and water cooler conversations all over the Upper Midwest. People are throwing around names like Reyes and Hughes as potential Twins in 2008. At the very least, it’s caused the Twins to take over the lead sports story away from the Vikings/Timberwolves/Wild/Gophers.


Of course, we here at TK on Toast have already spent an entire evening analyzing the details of the trade (“Young is only 22 and has an absolute cannon for an arm”), trashing the guys allegedly on their way out (“You know, Bartlett was never that good and Garza hasn’t proven anything yet”), and posing numerous hypothetical situations for what the 2008 Twins will look like. After much discussion, we have come up with the following moves that need to be made that will make us a very exciting and dangerous team not only next year, but for years to come as well.


Closed-circuit to Bill Smith (an avid TKOT reader):
Yo Smitty, it’s Q. First of all, love the trade. TR would have never pulled the trigger on this, so kudos on separating yourself from him right out of the gates. Second, I know I’ve told you before not to take any of the Twins rants, ramblings, and ideas that get thrown out on here seriously, but this is legit. So get out a pen and paper, follow our lead with this, and be the hero that takes us to a World Series.


Move #1: Trade Johan and Juan Rincon to the New York Mets for David Wright, Mike Pelfrey, and a player to be named later. There was a report from an unnamed source on ESPN.com today that people should not count out the Mets in the Santana Sweepstakes. Considering that Reyes was supposedly on the table before and the Twins weren’t biting, a guy could read that to mean they would consider including Wright in the deal. Plus, we sweeten the pot a little with Rincon (and thus get rid of his $4.5 million contract next year) since New York could use some serious bullpen help.


Move #2: Sign Aaron Rowand to be our everyday centerfielder. While he’s not extremely young (30), he would bring a little bit of veteran leadership to a team that appears to be heading toward a youth movement. He’s also a solid defensive player that would soften the blow of losing Hunter (and occasionally cause flashbacks when he makes his yearly highlight reel catches). We’ll have plenty of money to pay him once we have Hunter, Santana, and Rincon off the books, so that won’t be an issue either (side bonus, these moves also clear up enough room to sign Morneau, Cuddyer, and Nathan to extensions).


After today’s trade and those two moves, you’d be left with the following as your 25 man roster for the 2008 season:

Batting Order
2B—Alexi Casilla
C—Joe Mauer
3B—David Wright
1B—Justin Morneau
CF—Aaron Rowand
RF—Michael Cuddyer
DH—Jason Kubel
LF—Delmon Young
SS—Brendan Harris

Bench
Mike Redman
Jason Tyner
Garrett Jones
Brian Buscher

Left Out
Nick Punto

Rotation
Francisco Liriano
Boof Bonser
Scott Baker
Kevin Slowey
Mike Pelfrey

Bullpen
Joe Nathan
Pat Neshek
Jesse Crain
Matt Guerrier
Glen Perkins
Nick Blackburn

Now that’s the kind of team that could be in the running through August next year (and falter in September), and then mature into a title contender in a very short amount of time. Yes sir, that right there, that’s a pipe dream…

1 comment:

Dogg said...

Absolutely love it. Smitty, hope on the TK pipe dream and roll buddy!