Twins will try to make all their pieces fit

The Twins so far this offseason have sub­tracted three out­field­ers while add­ing two catch­ers and a first base­man. It's not ex­act­ly the i­de­al re­make of the ros­ter.

The chal­lenge of fit­ting the piec­es to­gether into an ef­fec­tive offense next spring falls to man­ag­er Paul Mo­li­tor. And he sounds in­trigued, if un­der­stand­a­bly un­cer­tain 10 weeks be­fore camp opens, about how he might do it.

"It's going to be a little tricky," Mo­li­tor said Wednes­day. "We all know there are going to be some things that we are, at least in the­o­ry, going to at­tempt with­out knowing what the re­sults will be."

In fact, there might be more un­cer­tain­ty about what next sea­son's Twins will look like, and who they can count on, than there has been in years. Not only do they face the nor­mal unpredictability in­her­ent in bring­ing up so many young, in­ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers, but they are also gam­bling on the cross-your-fin­gers ad­just­ment of Ko­re­an su­per­star Byung Ho Park to a high­er level of base­ball.

And then there's the no­tion of whit­tling their crowd of cor­ner in­field­ers, four of them for two po­si­tions and a DH, by send­ing last year's team MVP, 22-year-old third base­man Miguel Sano, to the out­field, a po­si­tion he has nev­er played in five seas­ons as a pro­fes­sion­al.

The Twins don't even know which out­field spot he will oc­cu­py.

"Right now, we are very com­fort­a­ble with [Trev­or Plouffe] at third and mov­ing Sano to right," General Man­ag­er Terry Ryan said. That de­ci­sion was made, Ryan add­ed, be­fore the Twins even placed a bid on Park, be­cause they have no plans to dis­place Plouffe or first base­man Joe Mauer.

"Being an in­field­er on the left side of the di­a­mond most of his play­ing days, there's some­thing about see­ing the ball come off the bat from the same side of the field that might make a little bit easi­er tran­si­tion. And you can throw in what's more dif­fi­cult to play in your home park, left or right," Mo­li­tor said. "Left is prob­a­bly a little big­ger [in Tar­get Field], but right has a few more tricks to it. I would say right now, left field is what I would be lean­ing to­ward."

Can such a large man (260-plus pounds) with zero ex­peri­ence han­dle a new po­si­tion? Coach Butch Da­vis worked with him in the out­field oc­ca­sion­al­ly last sea­son, Mo­li­tor said, "to help him get com­fort­a­ble read­ing balls, tak­ing angles. It's a re­al­ly small foun­da­tion that he has, but if the guy is as ath­let­ic as we think he is, you hope he can catch the rou­tine fly ball."

At least he's will­ing to try. The Twins ex­plained their plans to Sano short­ly af­ter the sea­son end­ed, and he em­braced the move. "He said, 'Yes sir,' " as­sist­ant GM Rob An­to­ny said. " 'I love third base, but you tell me where to play and I'll pre­pare to play there.' "

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Who might start a­long­side him? That's an­oth­er ques­tion with multi­ple-choice an­swers, even af­ter the Twins cut Shane Robinson, trad­ed Aaron Hicks and lost To­ri­i Hunter to re­tire­ment.

It's a lot to sort out, but that's the point, Ryan said. It's clear he is con­cerned about the offense, eighth-best in the AL in scor­ing last year, which ex­plains his in­sis­tence that he has no plans to trade Plouffe and in­stall Sano at third base.

"I know peo­ple want to talk about the pitch­ing, but we've got to score more runs. We had too many nights where we scored once or twice and didn't do much else," he said. "… I want to length­en the lineup, not give up good hit­ters. We need to get some com­pe­ti­tion going here, get more guys hit­ting."

That's the most ob­vi­ous, if the most dif­fi­cult, so­lu­tion, as Mo­li­tor ad­mit­ted.

"We'll try to piece it to­gether. We do have some re­peti­tive parts, as far as DH-type play­ers, but we're going to just do the best we can to make it work," Mo­li­tor said. "If it pro­duc­es of­fen­sive­ly, I don't think we'll have any trou­ble mak­ing a lineup out every day."