Team Postmortem: Minnesota Twins

Record: 66-96,  -174 Run Differential

Summary: Let's start with a bit of history. Back when Bill Smith took over as General Manager in 2007, the Twins were a good team with a highly regarded player development system. They had had a great farm system and a solid cheap core of talent. By the end of the 2011 season, Smith had destroyed the farm system, filled the roster with overpriced and under-performing contracts, and, to top it off, had gotten essentially nothing out of the Johan Santana trade. Smith was fired, and replaced--as crazy as this sounds--with his predecessor, Terry Ryan. Ryan immediately set to work rebuilding the franchise from the ground up, letting players like Joe Nathan and Michael Cuddyer leave to Free Agency and trading guys like Francisco Liriano, Ben Revere, and Denard Span. The downside of this is that the Major League team is a bit of a wasteland, basically consisting of Joe Mauer (still awesome) and a bunch of filler players or prospects who are not quite ready yet.