Twins Winter Meetings Day 3: Yes, the Twins do have representatives in Nashville

If you’re tapped into the Minnesota Twins talk in the Twittersphere, you’ve probably read (or tweeted) panic over the Twins’ lack of action at MLB’s Winter meetings.  The Twins need to add players (specifically, starting pitchers) to their roster.  Unfortunately, cheap, quantity, and quality pitching are not meeting in the middle.

It’s the “cheap” part that’s been especially difficult.  On Wednesday, the Twins lost out on Joe Blanton.  Blanton wasn’t close to an ace pitcher, and yet he was priced far out the Twins’ league.  Heck, he wasn’t far behind reigning NL Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey:

Each new tweet, column, and comment seems to point to a decreased possibility of a Twins’ FA signing.  However, according to a few media members at the meetings, the Twins still hold out hope for signing one or more of the following at a reasonable rate:

• John Lannan
• Francisco Liriano
• Brett Myers
• Mike Pelfrey
• Joe Saunders

The Twins’ self-imposed budget ceiling and the higher-than-they’re-worth rate that starting pitchers are signing for are indications that a Twins FA signing is looking less and less likely.  The Rule 5 draft is set to start at 10:00 AM ET on Thursday.  Tuesday night, I speculated that the Twins would bargain shop during the draft, and I now expect at least two players to be picked up in the morning draft.

Is this maddening for the Twins fan?  Absolutely.  But it seems Twins GM Terry Ryan is being as prudent as possible with limited resources in a poor market.