Twins' top pitching prospects wasting away in minors

By Jason Grey, Special to SI.com, FantasyBaseball.com

One down, two to go.

That's the way many fantasy players are looking at the Minnesota Twins starting rotation lately.

The Twins have as much young pitching talent as anyone in the game yet, as they have done in recent years, continue to block their prospects a little bit longer than they should with veterans with little upside.

Now, this is a fantasy column, so I'm not going to get into all the machinations of service time, and how GM Terry Ryan needs to be careful about starting player's clocks so that he can maximize his limited budget. I'm also not going to go into a full-blown rant about Ron Gardenhire's love of veterans over younger players that would put Dusty Baker to shame. I already did that one a few years ago.

As fantasy players, we always try to abide by the maxim that "talent eventually wins out." We trust that players with supreme talent will eventually get the roles and responsibilities that their talent dictates they should, though it sometimes takes longer for organizations to realize what may already be obvious to some.

To take an example from another organization, fantasy players have Milwaukee's Ryan Braun stashed away because we feel that his talent is too good to keep ignoring forever at Triple-A. When a team is starting the offensively challenged Tony Graffanino and Craig Counsell at the big league level -- ostensibly for Braun to work on his defense -- while Braun is raking at Triple-A and has made just two errors, we trust as players that teams will eventually see the light.

The Twins eventually do, but as anyone who saw Joe Mays blocking Johan Santana for the better portion of a season when Santana was clearly ready to move out of the bullpen, or Doug Mientkiewicz and even worse, Jose Offerman, blocking Justin Morneau when Morneau had proved he was ready for major league pitching, it sometimes takes a while for things to sink in. Offerman was DHing and hitting cleanup to boot. The less said about that, the better.

It just seems like for Twins prospects it can take longer than perhaps it should for that talent to eventually succeed. Not because they are not ready, but because they don't get their opportunity.

I said it in March and I will say it again: The Twins had no less than four pitchers that I would have taken in a heartbeat over three they started with, even in the short-term. After Santana and Boof Bonser, there is no question in my mind that the next three starters should have come from the group of Glen Perkins, Scott Baker, Matt Garza and Kevin Slowey. I'm talking right out of the gate on Opening Day. Worst, and I mean absolute worst-case scenario, you give them a few starts at Triple-A to get their feet wet and then bring them up.