Minnesota Twins interim GM Terry Ryan fired a second free agency salvo Friday as the club inked C-1B-RF Ryan Doumit to a one-year, $3 million deal. The deal, which is pending a physical scheduled for next week per Pioneer Press Twins reporter John Shipley, also includes unspecified performance-based incentives. Jerry Crasnick had tweeted earlier Friday that the former Pittsburgh Pirate was choosing between two teams, with the Seattle Mariners apparently drawing the short straw in the Doumit derby.

Since taking over the helm from Bill Smith just over a week ago, TR (too many Ryans to keep straight here) has been more active on the free agent market than in the past, as he officially inked infielder Jamey Carroll on Wednesday and had been linked to Doumit and Josh Willingham – both Matt Sosnick clients – as well a number of other free agents. The scaled-back budget doesn’t appear to be much of a deterrence to TR; after all, if expenditures settle in near the $100 million mark, that would still be nearly $30 million more than he ever had to work with during his first go-round with the club.

It’s an encouraging development for fans of a team desperate for good news following arguably the worst season in Twins history.

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When it comes to developing in-house talent, Minnesota has a reputation for being rather conservative with the annual amateur draft, both in terms of investment dollars and in the type of player that the organization gravitates towards. In recent years, the club has supplemented its amateur draft talent with a foray into the international free agent market. So far, it’s working out well for the Twins with four international free agent signees among the Top 10 prospects, and another drafted out of Puerto Rico.

1. Miguel Sano, 3B/SS
BORN: May 11, 1993
EXPERIENCE: 2 seasons (Reached Rookie+ in ’11)
ACQUIRED: 2009 international free agent
2010-11 TOP 10 RANKING: 3rd

SCOUTING REPORT: Sano is sandwiched between Joe Mauer and B.J. Garbe for second place on the list of the highest bonuses handed out to amateurs by the Minnesota Twins ball club. Thankfully for Minnesota, Sano appears to have a little more Mauer in him than Garbe. He has outstanding bat speed and a smooth stroke that should eventually lead to 70 power on the 20-80 scouting scale. Defensively, he’s outgrown shortstop and there is some concern that he might also eventually get too slow for third base (He’s 6’3 230 lbs now). Sano should provide enough offense for first base but it would definitely hurt his defensive value.

YEAR IN REVIEW: The infielder had an explosive offensive season while spending his second year in short-season rookie ball and he’s definitely ready for the next challenge. His power output was off the charts with a .345 ISO rate but he had the strikeout rate to match (26.3%). His batting average was helped by a healthy BABIP and he’s not going to continue to hit .290-.300 if he keeps whiffing at the same rate. Sano did not excell defensively at either third base (15 errors in 48 games) or shortstop (11 errors in 16 games).

YEAR AHEAD: Sano will look to continue to refine his approach, which includes improving against breaking balls. He’ll be playing in a less offense-oriented league so it will be interesting to see what his power numbers look like by the end of the season. Defense is something he’ll definitely want to focus on and it remains to be seen how long the organization sticks with him on the left side of the infield.

CAREER OUTLOOK: As mentioned, Sano could very well outgrow the hot corner and move to first base (or possibly left field). A right side of the infield featuring Sano and Eddie Rosario could be quite exciting. Don’t be shocked if he becomes one of the top prospects in all of baseball before too long… and eventually a star player with a middle-of-the-order bat for Minnesota.

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On Tuesday, we took a quick look at the competitive balance in the MLB, and I made the claim that baseball may have more parity than most leagues, but it also has want of greater balance. During the course of the piece, I made this statement:

The NFL has decided it wants payroll to have essentially no impact on winning, so teams basically trot out the same amount of money every Sunday and hope their money was better-spent. Is that what the MLB wants?

Aft’wards, Paul Swydan pointed out to me that indeed NFL salaries are not flat. Despite their hard cap, their hefty revenue sharing, and their tight spandex pants, the NFL still exhibits nearly a $77M gap between the biggest and lowest payroll — impressive, but still nothing compared to the MLB:

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October is the month. October is the month you have to survive if you are a general manager of a losing team. Survive that month and your chances of making it through another season skyrocket. In fact, looking through the prism of past firings, the distance between October (Andy MacPhail) and November (Bill Smith) is greater than a mere sum of the days.

Comb through the Baseball America executive database and add in the missing information, and you’ve got something like 59 general manager firings since 1950. That might not seem like a large sample, but a firing is a rare occurrence. Many general managers come to the end of a contract on a flagging team and are allowed to leave. Most others resign if the writing is on the wall. A firing suggests a difference in opinion about the team. It’s a jarring, rare moment, born of conflict.

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Yesterday afternoon, Jayson Stark considered the question, “Is the MLB’s competitive balance a joke?” His answer was a rather blunt no:

MLB’s competitive balance is NOT a joke.

It beats the NFL.

It beats the league formerly known as the NBA.

And … I can prove it.

Stark’s method of proving it — plucking facts from the recent playoff series and comparing them generally to the NFL and other major leagues — was less than rigorous. In general, I agreed with his assertion: Parity in the MLB exists naturally far more than any other sports league.

HOWEVER, if my foot has less gangrene than your foot, does that mean I don’t need a doctor? No. I probably still need a doctor, and I probably need to stop playing barefoot tag on Rusty Nails Pier.

Relative success does not necessitate absolute success. And frankly, I feel the “parity” in the MLB indeed has a gangrene of sorts, a disease that is causing only specific segments of the league to rot while the rest hum along uncaring.

Of course, it is one thing to suspect something and demand more research, but it is another to pull the sabermetrician stocking over your head and answer that suspicion with a Falcon Punch of data.

Let’s do just that.
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Some of the following twirlers can really play the game of ball called base!

In 2011, a total of 272 different pitchers started a game in the MLB — that’s an average of 9 starters per team. In other words, five starters is not enough. Successful MLB organizations need pitching depth — and lots of it. Some teams may need a 7th or 8th starter for only 1 game, but ask the Boston Red Sox how important 1 game is.

For teams in the need, the 2012 starting pitcher free agent list has some value and some worthy risks out there, but as with every year, no team should expect the free agent market to have all the answers. The following list, though not exhaustive, runs down the most important names of the 2012 free agents:

Top Tier — Starters who promise big contracts and big seasons.
C.J. Wilson (LHP, Age 31 next season, free agent)
CC Sabathia (LHP, 31, may opt out)
Hiroki Kuroda (RHP, 37, FA)
Edwin Jackson (RHP, 28, FA)
Mark Buehrle (LHP, 33, FA)
Javier Vazquez (RHP, 35, FA)

The Obvious One, Mr. C.J. Wilson, finally promises to pull in that contract big enough to purchase his long-awaited solid-gold rocket car. Wilson, the heat-hurling lord of the lefties figures to have at least two very impressive suitors — the New York Yankees and his present team, the Texas Rangers. Since becoming a starter two years ago, he has posted a combined 10.5 WAR, sporting an ace-worth 3.24 FIP this year.

Not only does Wilson have a shot to break the bank, but there appears to be a chance that twirling titan CC Sabathia may opt out of the final four years of his contract with the Yankees. Sabathia has been yawningly awesome through his 10-year career, never posting a FIP- higher than 96 and assembling a career-best 2.88 FIP in 2011.

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The corner outfielder often gets lumped into the mix with the first basemen / designated hitter types. You might call that part of the market the ‘last piece saloon.’ But, Raul Ibanez aside, corner outfielders need to be able to run a little bit, too.

Oh, would you look at that, Ibanez is a free agent. But who needs a corner outfielder at all? Depending on how they put their team together, the Braves could maybe use another outfielder. The Red Sox have an opening, but after their last high-priced acquisition in the outfield, and their plethora of in-house options, it might not be a priority. Both Chicago teams are a maybe, with the NL version more probable. Do the Dodgers have any money? The Giants will sign one for sure. The A’s will wait for a bargain, as they always do. The Mariners have to be considered dark horses for any piece of offense. The Nationals could try again. That pretty much defines your market, and it’s a pretty decent one in terms of demand.

What does the supply look like?

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Justin Morneau’s frustrating season is officially over.

After a number of nagging injuries to its first baseman, the Minnesota Twins decided to shut down its former All-Star for the remainder of the year. Though Morneau struggled through a number of injuries this season, he admitted he never fully recovered from a concussion that he suffered July 7, 2010, when he got kneed in the head while trying to break up a double play. The injury cost him 78 games, destroyed his season and perhaps led up to the moment last month when he said he again began feeling concussion-like symptoms — this time after diving for a ball but not hitting his head. “That’s kind of what makes this whole thing scary,” Morneau told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “It’s a simple play — diving for a ball — that brought this stuff back again.”

Now the 30-year-old will be back to square one heading into 2012 — and perhaps so will the Twins and Major League Baseball.

Morneau started for Minnesota on Opening Day this year, but he struggled mightily in his return to the lineup. A homer-less April was a harbinger of things to come for Morneau — who stumbled to a .227/.285/.333 slash line in 288 plate appearances over 69 games. Add to the concussion symptoms a strained wrist and neck surgery and you have what Morneau has called a “year to forget.”

Morneau’s inability to recover from his concussion is troubling for the Twins, but it also presents a major problem for MLB. While league officials have been proactive with head injuries — instituting a seven-day disabled list this year that’s specifically designated for traumatic brain injuries — concussions are a significant problem for many baseball players. The Twins certainly are aware of these issues: Former Twin Corey Koskie went through a similar situation when he was with the team Milwaukee Brewers and was forced to retire. Mike Matheny also retired for similar reasons. Now with Morneau’s situation, the Twins — and MLB in general — might need to be even more proactive when it comes to concussions.

The implementation of the seven-day DL is not not enough. While the DL move — which requires neurological testing — is a step in the right direction, it seems like too little time to accurately judge whether a player is fit to return to action. Players easily can be transferred to the 15-day DL if they fail to recover in time, but might the seven-day DL put more pressure on teams and their players to rush back from head injuries?

Brain injuries affect each person differently, meaning there’s no single solution on how to effectively treat concussions. Case in point is Morneau, who clearly hadn’t fully recovered from his 2010 concussion (his second recorded TBI in the majors prior to his August injury) and perhaps now is even more susceptible to head injuries. But for every Morneau, there’s a Jason Bay, who remained symptom-free after suffering a concussion around the same time last year as the Twins’ slugger. Despite the difference in recoveries, one thing is certain: As we learn more about the effects that concussions have on the human body, it’s clear that these injuries need to be handled carefully.

And it’s important that MLB adapt a strategy to ensure that its players receive proper treatment before returning to the field. Major League Baseball has shown a willingness to combat concussions; let’s hope the league will continue to show a willingness to further evolve as more information about these injuries comes to light.

The Minnesota Twins have had a brutal 2011 season, to say the least. After winning the American League Central in both 2009 and 2010, they have plummeted into a tie for last with the Royals at the moment. There have been number of factors in the Twins’ collapse this season, from Joe Nathan‘s injury to Tsuyoshi Nishioka‘s injury followed by awful performance to Francisco Liriano’s control problems and more, but none loom larger than the injuries to Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau. Many observers have understandably concluded that it might be time for the Twins to “blow it up.” However, in his Friday column for ESPN Insider (summarized for non-subscribers here), Buster Olney reports that the Twins aren’t necessarily going to hit the reset button. While that does not necessarily back up the “All In” in the title of Olney’s column, that the Twins are even considering doing such a thing is intriguing.

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The American League Central is pretty weak. Of all the teams in the division, only Cleveland has a positive run differential as of today, and that’s by only one run. A number of factors probably contribute to the divisional weakness: lower average budgets than some of the coastal divisions, poor decision making, and perhaps some bad luck. The division, however, is surprisingly strong this season in one area: shortstops. Can any other division compare?

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