Mauer, btw, I shot an interview with while he was still in HS.  Good kid even back then.  Love to see him behind the plate in Wrigley, but he's homegrown, so that's not likely under any circumstance - the fan outrage here would be unbelievable.

Yeah, anyway, the Twins aren't going anywhere this year.  And I'm still shaking my head over the Garnett thing.  At least KG has a chance for a ring now, and no one I'd met in the NBA deserves it more.  Here's a little tale from a pregame shootaround interview some years back (no names):

One of the other players had brought his young son (nice kid - I'd estimate 4-6 years old) in, and that was fine, but some of the other players were in another part of the locker room, not visible but within earshot, and they were cussin' it up but good.  KG tells them to knock it off "while the little guy is here" - doesn't work.  He tells them again, same result.  He turns to me, waiting there with my Betacam, ready for the interview CF to form, and tells me to roll on it.  They shut up very quickly.

He didn't really have to do that.  Yet he did.  KG is a class act and even if he's now in Celtic green, I wish him well.

so if we have say 72 tied up in those 6 guys and say another 15-18 in zambrano we'd have approximately 15-23 million additional left over for 18 roster spots

unfortunately while we could roster a bunch of AAA guys we cant pay them AAA salaries

since we could guess on average the rest of the AAA bunch would make about 600,000 a year, we're looking at 9-11 additional million in salary

so now we have 1 roster spot left and if our budget is 110 million we'd have 13 million at most left (87 on current 7 players, 10 on AAA squad)

i dont think 13 million annually gets you Santana

which is why i'm saying we'd have to have a drastic change in ownership's view of payroll and/or get rid of some of the current payroll to be able to afford another superstar level talent