My weekly Timberwolves recap didn’t get too much love from anyone, which I thought was a shame, because I really liked it pretty well.  So if you want to read the definitive unliked column about Kevin Love, you can’t do better than this one.

The Twins had some money to spend this offseason, and apparently wanted to spend as much of it as they could, as quickly as possible, for the worst pitcher they could find.

Kevin Correia may be a very nice fellow, but he was the Pirates’ fifth starter for the past two years. He cannot strike out anyone, and he is not demonstrably better than the Twins’ gigantic pile of mediocre pitchers. Liam Hendriks, Cole De Vries, Samuel Deduno, P.J. Walters – all of these guys could give the Twins exactly what Correia gives them, and they can do it for the league minimum, instead of the two-year, $10 million contract the Twins gave Correia.

For more complaining in this same vein, head over to Twinkie Town, where I called Correia “the National League version of Nick Blackburn.”

The baseball winter meetings are over, and the Twins’ activity in Nashville was restricted mostly to trading Ben Revere to the Phillies for two young pitchers.

Really, Revere and Vance Worley were about the same level – both had been in the majors about the same amount of time, and both were middling at best. Worley is about a #3 or #4 starter, while Revere is a study in extremes – he might be the fastest guy in the majors, and he might have the best glove, but he also has the least power and the worst arm. Trading the two even-up might have been fair, but the Twins got Philadelphia to throw in Trevor May, who was one of baseball’s top 100 prospects last season.

That’s a pretty good trade for Minnesota, and through the magic of fake screenplays, I looked at both sides’ possible reaction to the deal.

As always, this appeared first at RandBall.

Denard Span has been traded, Ben Revere has been traded, and one assumes that Justin Morneau and Josh Willingham probably are not buying green bananas at the moment; yes, the Great Twins Rebuilding Project appears to be more or less in full swing. With that in mind, it’s probably important that we get on top of the argument that will likely dominate the airwaves come fall: should Ron Gardenhire be given a contract extension, or should he be allowed to begin his inevitable second career as a television analyst for professional bowling?

Barring a number of breakout seasons from young hitters, and possibly the free-agent signing of Sidd Finch to fix the rotation, the Twins are shaping up to play another year without a post-season run. There have been many fans who’ve wanted Gardenhire fired for years for various supposed crimes, but even the most ardent Gardy supporters cannot ignore a team that’s lost 195 games in two seasons. Moreover, it seems unlikely that Gardenhire is the man to oversee a youth movement. The manager is famously hard on young players; I seem to remember him blaming Jason Bartlett for, at various points, defensive mistakes, offensive ineptitude, lack of “fire in the belly,” and in one memorable rant, for construction delays at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe.

It’s tempting to remember Gardenhire’s first team, the 2002 AL Central winners, as a bunch of young pups that the manager molded into a fighting unit, but the 2002 team was basically the same as the 2001 team that Tom Kelly had nearly wrenched to a playoff berth. Though every starter on that team was under 30 years old, virtually every player was in his third or fourth professional season. That team was, in some ways, where the 2016 Twins are shaping up to be – still young, but with plenty of games under their belt.

My advice is to decide now which way you’re going to go. 85 wins would be a heck of an accomplishment for the Twins in 2013 – 85 being the number that Kelly’s 2001 team won in his final season as manager. If Gardenhire can clear that bar, then he should stay for certain, I’d say. And if not – why, let’s start that rumor mill. Let’s start throwing out names: Paul Molitor, maybe… Ozzie Guillen’s not doing anything… hey, maybe Jake Mauer!… What about if Mike Grant doesn’t get the St. John’s job – wait, I’m getting my rumor mills confused…

On with the links:

*Parker Hageman breaks down starter Vance Worley, who’ll be the only major-league manifestation this year of the Span and Revere trades.

*The Economist is not so quick to glowingly eulogize Marvin Miller, the former head of the MLB Players’ Association. While the players did end the odious reserve clause under Miller’s leadership, the magazine points out that these gains did nothing for either young players or – especially – minor-leaguers.

*I want nobody but Chuck Klosterman examining the larger implications of the Popovich/Spurs/rest day/NBA imbroglio.

*Katie Baker on the current state of the NHL lockout is a must-read. Key quote, and key thing to understand about the negotiations: “For all the sound and fury, it seems clear the question of who will come out ahead in this deal has been settled: Almost all of the meaningful movement to this point has come from the players’ side.”

*And finally: Here’s why the UFC is the only sport that’s actually being killed by its TV contract. (NOTE: language warning for that, only because UFC president Dana White’s quotes are printed verbatim.)

The Wolves won twice and lost once in the fifth week of their season, right in line with their current level of talent and level of play. It was a calm, normal, average week for the Wolves – but that sense of normality is about to get upended, thanks to Ricky Rubio’s impending return.

I did some writing at Twinkie Town for the Winter Meetings. As the week kicked off, I summed up what the Twins were after: pitching, pitching, and some more pitching. By Tuesday morning, the Twins had been linked with every pitcher in the world, but by Tuesday evening, it looked like Zack “Zach” Greinke was holding things up.

By today, though, not only had the Twins not bought out the market, they hadn’t bought much of anybody. Apparently, the team hoped that big names would sign early in the week, leading to lesser lights being available later, but now the team appears to be waiting to shop at the Jason Marquis Memorial Free Agent Pitching Clearance Sale.

UPDATE: You write in advance about nothing, and then the Twins trade Ben Revere for two pitchers.

Minnesota Stars captain Kyle Altman may well be the team’s most important free agent this off-season – but, as it turns out, the Stars not only have to compete with other soccer teams for his signature, but with the possibility he’ll go to medical school.

As an aside: Altman was an all-star last year, and probably should have been one in 2011. He was a two-time first-team D3 All-American in college. And he’s doing all of this while also being a genius and taking deferrals from medical school. In conclusion, we have to say that Kyle Altman is better than you at whatever it is you’re doing, and if he shows up to take your job, you should probably just let him instead of getting embarrassed.

NOTE: These links appeared at RandBall, your home for humanity.

Baseball’s Winter Meetings are this week, and I think you’re about to see a split in the Twins fan base – one that pits fans of the 2013 Twins against the fans of the 2015 Twins.

The 2013 Twins fans expect Terry Ryan and company to come back from the Winter Meetings with at least the beginnings of a competitive starting rotation for next season. The Twins are woefully short on starting pitching and everyone knows it; they have only Scott Diamond set for next year, and he’s no more than a #3 starter, at best. 2013 Twins fans know that the team needs to fill the top end of the rotation, and so they’re looking towards guys like Dan Haren and – even though they know this is hope beyond reason – Zack Greinke. They figure that the Twins, who have around $70 million committed for next year, have $30-40 million to spend in free agency this year, and they expect it to go towards putting the team back to the top of the AL Central next year.

The 2015 Twins fans, however, are mostly hoping that Josh Willingham gets traded this week. They see that pitching has so far been outlandishly expensive on the free-agent market this winter, and as Nick Nelson at Twins Daily points out, the kind of high-dollar, high-risk signings the Twins need to make would leave the Twins with zero room for error. For these fans, it’s time to deal Willingham for any pitchers, minor-league or major-league, that they can get, and to operate with an eye on restocking for three years down the road. These fans will be less concerned with another 90-loss season, and more concerned about Kyle Gibson’s development and whether Joe Benson can bounce back and the possibility that Aaron Hicks could make his major-league debut in 2013.

Neither side is right and neither side is wrong, but they represent two very different ways of looking at the future. The 2013 Twins fans can’t stand the losing, and are less worried that the wrong moves now could doom the Twins for a decade; the 2015 fans wish to plot for the future, while ignoring the worry that this would be the beginning of a Royals-style 25-year rebuilding project.

*On with the links:

*Grantland’s Katie Baker made a visit to what she called “Eden, or as it’s more popularly known, Minnesota,” to watch some Gopher hockey – both men’s and women’s. I don’t suppose that many of the people reading this are NHL fans but not college puck fans already, but if there are, I just want to say to those readers that there’s plenty of room on the Gopher hockey bandwagon for all of you.

*I really cannot get enough of the Vikes Geek writing sarcastically about Christian Ponder. Discussion question: if all else were equal, would you take the perennially terrible Alex Smith over Christian Ponder? If you’re even thinking that over right now, there’s your answer.

*Michael Weinreb is writing about Big Ten expansion in this column, but for me the interesting thing was a pair of charts showing the per-capita population of football recruits in America, by state. For Gopher fans, I must tell you, they are terrifying.

*And finally: Is anybody really sure what what pass interference actually is anymore? (Clearly, NFL referees, especially the refs in last week’s Bears-Vikings game, are a little weak on the concept.)

In week four, it became apparent that Minnesota’s biggest struggle is the ability to shoot the ball from more than five feet away from the hoop.

A Wolves team that was a shocking 5-2, and had players coming back from injury, is now 6-8 and has almost a full complement of players. To say that disappointment is rising would be an understatement.

The Minnesota Stars began their offseason by picking up contract options on 13 different players, including the core of their defense and exciting young winger Miguel Ibarra. However, questions still remain, mainly regarding free-agent team captain Kyle Altman and the team’s lack of any options at forward.