Explaining The Minnesota Mentality: Part One

Minnesota Twins fans are as patient a fan base as there is in baseball. Sure, other fans have suffered through longer droughts (The Royals) or fire sales (The Marlins). Few franchises, regardless of sport, however, have had to deal with the Minnesota Twins' infuriating impulse to stand pat.

This is no new phenomenon. Even when the Twins were in danger of losing 100 games in the late 1990s, fans were promised a bright and glorious future...someday. That day came in 2002, when the Twins long-awaited young stars led the team to the playoffs. Since then, the Twins have won the division four times, yet have never made it further than the ALCS, and have only done so once.

Over the same time period, the Twins have attracted exactly zero big time free agents. Agents like Scott Boras are considered persona non grata as far as the Twins are concerned; they've had just one of his clients, Kyle Lohse, since 2000.

Players like Adrian Beltre go out of their way to avoid the Twins, despite the fact the Twins have yet to finish less than third and have more division titles than the Cubs and Mets and the same number as the Angels since they reemerged as a true contender in 2002.

This has been a slow offseason for everyone outside of New York, but the Twins have been especially quiet even by their standards. It has gotten to the point where even the supposedly even-keeled beat reporters are calling for something to be done.

The Twins had the 25th lowest payroll in baseball last year, aren't adding much to it this year, and will soon get the revenue boost associated with opening a new stadium, so money shouldn't be the object. Even the notoriously Scrooge-like Carl Pohlad can open his wallet wider than this.

Nor should the issue be talent. The Twins have five young pitchers, the eldest of whom is still just 27, with space pieces like Boof Bonser who may still have trade value, just lying around. They have former uber-prospect Delmon Young, whose poor season last year certainly hurt his value, but didn't destroy it. The parts to make a deal are there, so why not do it?

First: The Twins are committed to value.

Casey Blake was on the Twins radar from the moment the Phillies lifted the World Series trophy, so what went wrong? The Twins refused to pay more than what they believed to be fair market value for the aging third baseman, and would not add an extra year onto the deal.

The Dodgers, ever willing to overcommit, gave Blake the years he wanted at a price he could live with and with that, the Twins best hope for a relevant signing went by the way.

This applies to trades as well. The Twins could easily have had Adrian Beltre, Garrett Atkins, or any other third baseman not named A-rod by now, if they were willing to compromise. However, dealing Kevin Slowey and Denard Span to patch a hole makes almost no sense. Neither Beltre nor Atkins will be such an upgrade that it would be worth trading two young starters, both of whom were critically influential during the Twins race for the playoffs last year.

This is the primary reason for the signing of Nick Punto. Punto is slightly above average overall, below average at the plate but with a stellar glove, and provides the veteran presence the Twins seem to cherish.

So, rather than pay exorbitant prices for someone like Rafael Furcal, the Twins were willing to sacrifice comparatively little quality for a larger savings.

In hard economic terms, they felt that the marginal benefit of upgrading to Furcal was much lower than the marginal cost. This makes perfect sense if the money is then reallocated to signing, say, Orlando Hudson. What is eating Twins fans alive is that money that isn't spent in one place seems to disappear back into the vault from whence it came.

Second: The Twins are committed to organizational development

Whereas big name free agents avoid the Twins like most guys avoid their exes, minor leaguers love the Twins.

Every year, someone unexpectedly breaks camp with the Twins or gets a call up early in the season and gets a real chance to make their mark with the team. This is part of the reason why the Twins zealously protect their younger players from other teams: They believe that each player above A-ball could make a substantial impact in the near future.

For younger players, this means that hard work and solid production may well be rewarded with a September call-up, and generally produces a great amount of loyalty in young players. Rarely, if ever, do the Twins' minor leaguers chirp to the media about being mistreated or undervalued. Matt Garza was one of the only players to ever voice such concerns, and his tenure with the Twins was surprisingly short.

Nationals' GM Jim Bowden famously asked for Garza and Scott Baker as the starting price for the rental of Alfonso Soriano at the 2006 trade deadline, which would have been ridiculous for any team, but Bowden would have been better off asking for the Metrodome and the deed to the Mall of America. Dealing young pitching is simply off the table about 99 percent of the time.

When they do decide to sell, as they did with Matt Garza, the young talent generally goes one at a time and with a chance of a huge return.

Conclusion (for now): The Twins key operating concepts make them fundamentally ill-suited to compete in the current fee agent climate, and to a lesser extent, make them poor trade partners.

When Terry Ryan was the GM, no one wanted to trade with the Twins for fear of becoming the next Brian Sabean, whom Ryan fleeced in the Liriano/Nathan/Bonser for Pierzynski. His successor, Bill Smith, was more active last year, but that will almost certainly be an aberration rather than the norm.

Smith has the same love for young talent that Ryan did, and the same compulsion to keep them happy, which will inhibit his ability to trade potential for big name players the way the Mets did for Johan Santana.

The need to see real value in their players proportional to their contracts will hamstring the Twins free agent dealings for as long as that policy remains in place. None of the major free agents are worth anywhere near what they received, and that's why the Twins won't pay to play.

Put another way:

Is CC Sabathia really good? Yes.

Would I want him on my team? Yes, no question.

Is he worth between 10-20 million dollars per year more than, say, Scott Baker? Not a chance.

So, given these limitations, are the Twins simply on a long, slow march to insignificance, punctuated only by brief glimmers of hope when a young player miraculously comes through? Hardly.

In part two, I'll show why the Twins organizational philosophy, with a few tweaks, is the foundation for a World Series caliber team in the near future.