Patrick Reusse: Brain trust got lost on 'Twins way'

The clichés continued to fly on the national panel shows and on FSN telecasts and, yes, even in the local print media until the end of the prior decade:

The Twins were an organization that many major league teams were attempting to emulate. The Twins were able to put together a winning roster at reasonable rates through astute player acquisition and player development.

And once assembled, these players succeeded by playing the game right -- throwing strikes, making the plays in the field, advancing runners.

The Twins way ... we were still gushing about it well after the fielding and base running had turned mediocre, and well after the minor league system had stopped sending high-impact players to Minnesota.

Denard Span is a good player. Ben Revere can be an asset. Trevor Plouffe had a couple of intriguing weeks with the long ball.

High-impact player? The Twins haven't introduced one of those to the lineup from their system since Jason Kubel came to stay during the 2006 season.

Oh, yeah, the disaster that exists today -- we should have seen it coming way back in the winter of 2007-08, but the excellence of Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau, and the ability to piece together a competitive starting rotation and build bullpens enabled the Twins to cover up the sins being committed with trades, drafting and development.

Yet, when you look back, you wonder how the Twins -- not just Bill Smith, as the new GM, but his brain trust -- could have consented to trading starting pitcher Matt Garza for outfielder Delmon Young as the main pieces in a deal with Tampa Bay on Nov. 28, 2007.

If there ever was a "Twins way," it was based on the philosophy of Tom Kelly, the manager from September 1986 through the 2001 season. And his No. 1 tenet was:

"If you don't have starting pitching, you can't compete."

The Twins proved this when they ran out of starting pitching and went through eight losing seasons from 1993 to 2000. A return to competitiveness in Kelly's final season of 2001 was fueled by starters Brad Radke, Eric Milton and Joe Mays.

There's another bromide that Kelly shares with every person on a baseball payroll: "You never have too much starting pitching."

No Santana. No certainty with Liriano. And, yet, the Twins decided to trade Garza, just turned 24 and the starting pitcher with by far the best arm in the organization, for a righthanded bat in Young to replace the departed Torii Hunter.

And then on Feb. 2, 2008, the Twins traded Santana to the Mets with another outfielder, Carlos Gomez, as the main piece. He came with three undistinguished pitching prospects: Phil Humber, Kevin Mulvey and Deolis Guerra.

Five years later, Garza, now 28, will attract a large ransom if the Cubs choose to trade him by the July 31 deadline. Garza's won-loss record is 47-46 since he left Minnesota, but he has made 138 starts, pitched 867 2/3 innings with 790 hits allowed and a 3.75 ERA.

The Twins have no starter in the same ballpark when it comes to Garza's super-fecta of starts, innings, hits and ERA.

You can go many directions in blasting the Twins front office for the current, pathetic product. And yet nothing hurts more the November day in 2007 when someone in a baseball strategy meeting came up with this brainstorm: