Twins Celebrate Giving Season Early

Of course it is December, and Christmas is still over a week away, however the cold of Minnesota winter’s can’t stop the Minnesota Twins from employing the giving spirit as it relates to baseball. With pitchers and catchers looking to report in just a few short months, Twins fans have been given an opportunity to change their outlook on the franchise.

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For the past few seasons, plenty of those around Twins Territory have heard the narrative that the club is just a season away from competition. Terry Ryan has preached that the club is actively looking to win and get better, despite being in a clear rebuilding mode. That being said, 2015 is shaping up to be a season that a legitimate turnaround should be expected.

As the Twins have gone out and signed Torii Hunter as well as Ervin Santana this offseason, the payroll complaining has come to a point where it needs to die. In the last two seasons, the Twins have spent over $130 million on three pitchers, while spending roughly $60 million on two acquisitions this offseason.

Introducing new players into the fold, and former ones such as Hunter, the Twins have positioned themselves to have veteran talent play alongside their up and coming stars. Expecting both Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano to make their Twins debut out of spring training is likely not going to happen, however both should be at Target Field sometime this summer.

There is more than enough reasons to expect guys like Brian Dozier, Danny Santana, Kurt Suzuki, and even Kennys Vargas to regress at the plate in 2015. That being said, it should also be expected that Ricky Nolasco can return to a competitve level along with other pitchers stepping up. The hope would be that Minnesota would have less injuries to deal with as well. Should the team be able to even out the regression with steps forward in other areas, this Twins team should be much better than the product put on the field in recent memory.

Looking at the landscape of the AL Central, the Twins have actually played the division relatively tough. With more talent in the organization (although the division has gotten better as a whole as well), expecting the Twins to be somewhere near .500 is a very fair thought. My projection would see the Twins battling for a wild card spot late in the summer on the absolute high end, and within a game or two of .500 as the floor.

Considering what Twins fans have been subjected to recently, this has to be viewed as a step in the right direction. Don’t expect Paul Molitor to go reeling off multiple AL Central titles right out of the gate, but the organization is progressing in the right direction.

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