Ok, so I’m going to enter a fantasy world knowing this will never happen, but let’s just take a second to see what a little spending could get Minnesota this upcoming year. To the Pohlad kids: Do you want to take a shot to win the World Series this year and open up Target Field with a World Series banner for pops? This is what you do:
1) Sign Ben Sheets – his health problems seem to scare teams away but we seem to flock towards injury riddled players. By all means, he’s a excellent pitcher who fills out our rotation, making our staff one of the most lethal in baseball. It seems like he’ll go for $8-10MM a year and is a Type A player (and we may be able to get Type A pick compensation back when he leaves). If we were even considering giving Jarrod Washburn $10.35MM a year, we could certainly consider giving Sheets that kind of dough.
Here would be our rotation to start our 2009 season:
1. Liriano
2. Sheets
3. Baker
4. Slowey
5. Blackburn
2) Trade for Adrian Beltre – Send Perkins and other pitching prospects in a deal to the Mariners. Beltre would be the perfect fit our team: a huge bat and stellar defense. However, this is one guy that I’d hope to lock up for a few years rather than just being a one year rental. He does have a no-trade clause with the Twins, but that just means we need to fork up a little more money. Pohlad’s, that banner would look awfully nice in our new stadium.
Here would be our lineup to start the 2009 season:
1. Span
2. Casilla
3. Mauer
4. Morneau
5. Beltre
6. Kubel
7. Young
8. Punto
9. Gomez
3) Sign an 8th inning setup man. Our relief should get better this year as they were overworked last season, but having one more reliable guy in the bullpen is necessary to give us that deadly late inning combination that we’ve become so accustomed to this decade. It makes it really easy knowing that if you have the lead late in the game, you can turn off your television at 10:30 p.m. knowing you won’t wake up disappointed.
4) Sign Manny Ramirez and deal for J.J. Hardy – ok, I’m just kidding…but isn’t it sad that some teams actually think that way? Can we at least lock up Joe Mauer? I don’t want to have to hear the Red Sox and Yankee fans hype this up for the rest of the season.
……
That’s it.
It would be quite a bit of work and we all know the front office likes to hibernate during the offseason, but it would instantly make us one of the favorites to be still playing ball in November. We wouldn’t have a weak spot in our rotation, we would have filled a huge hole at 3rd base with power and defense, and we would have secured a better option in the 8th inning than Crain or Bonser. It’s a long shot, but that’s the fun in dreaming.
