Season-ticket holders peppered Twins general manager Terry Ryan with questions during an hourlong conference call on Tuesday, according to the Star Tribune.
Per the report, Ryan said there isn’t a player on the team or in the farm system that can’t be traded — including prized prospects Miguel Sano and Byron Buxton.
“I don’t think we’ve got any untouchables. Those guys are pretty talented, but … you’d have to consider pretty much anything,” Ryan said during the conference. “It would be difficult to trade those guys, because both of them are on a fast track.”
Ryan stated that he would make adding talent through free agency would be a priority.
Ryan added that there “isn’t any excuse for the lack of talent right now.”
There may not be an excuse, but pundits saw this downfall coming back in 2011 — the first of three straight 90-plus loss seasons. This is what ESPN’s David Schoenfield wrote on Aug. 30, 2011.
It may be time to scrap that strikes-and-defense approach. What we learned this year is how much the Twins relied on Mauer and Morneau. And if they don’t return to their previous levels, this is a franchise that has a lot of rebuilding in front of it. None of the younger players on the team project as stars and the farm system isn’t highly rated. The new riches were spent carelessly in 2011.
The “new riches” Schoenfield mentioned was a reference to the income from a brand new Target Field in 2011, which helped the Twins become a team with a payroll of more than $113 million.
The payroll has shrunk ever since, dwindling to $100 million in 2012 and just $82 million this season.
With just $46 million on the books for next season, Twins CEO Jim Pohlad told the Pioneer Press in mid-September that he’s “willing to spend any amount of money on a current year contract.”
Fans will have to wait and see what the Twins do with all that money.
