FanHouse Carlos Gomez

Footprints in the Snow is FanHouse's look at the paths to be forged by MLB teams this winter as they look ahead to 2010.

If I wanted, I could copy and paste the main points of the Brewers "Footprints in the Snow" from last year and they'd still be valid. After losing CC Sabathia and Ben Sheets, the Brewers failed to address their pitching woes and dropped from 90 wins and the wild card to 80 wins and a long winter.

Their offseason this year should follow a similar track, only now with the added pressure of Prince Fielder's ticking free agency clock. The Brewers are experiencing the worst feeling a small-market club can; that of the window closing. What can (or will) GM Doug Melvin do to avoid squandering his team's chances?

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The Minnesota Twins didn't wait very long after being knocked out of the 2009 playoffs to begin working on their 2010 team. They made a trade that not only alleviated the surplus of outfielders on their roster but also may have filled the shortstop position for years to come when they sent Carlos Gomez to the Milwaukee Brewers for J.J. Hardy.

While that trade could turn out to be a key move for the Twins and their future, it's not the only task the team has on its plate as they prepare for life in a new stadium next season. At the top of the list of things general manager Bill Smith should be working on right now is signing catcher Joe Mauer to a contract extension, and depending on who you ask, Smith may have already started doing just that.

In Advanced Scouting, MLB FanHouse's professional talent evaluator breaks down offseason moves from a scouting perspective.

It hasn't taken long for the Hot Stove to get heated up as we roll past the World Series. Some key players have already been locked up and some high upside trades have already gone down. What do these moves mean for each club involved and how will the players dealt respond to their new homes? Just as significant, how important will the prospects dealt turn out to be?

From Mark Teahen headed to Chicago, to the Carlos Gomez for J.J. Hardy swap, to Bobby Abreu's new deal with the Angels, each move had a distinct impact. Perhaps the most interesting of these, however, was Jeremy Hermida being shipped to Boston. For the price of a pair of young lefties, the Red Sox took a gamble that may prove very worthy.

It was no secret J.J. Hardy was likely going to be traded this offseason, but most believed the Brewers would use him to acquire some desperately needed starting pitching help. Instead, they have opted to move him to Minnesota for a young center fielder -- Carlos Gomez.

Hardy, 27, fell out of favor with the Brewers this past season as he failed to meet his previously set offensive standards. He ended the season with an abysmal .659 OPS and the Brewers have uber-prospect Alcides Escobar waiting in the wings (he hit .304 in 38 big-league games last season). Thus, it made sense to move Hardy, who did hit 50 home runs in his previous two campaigns, for help elsewhere.

Fantasy baseball draft season is coming, so you best be prepared by delving through every major player on each team. Fantasy FanHouse is here to help with a quick once-over.

Meet the...

Absolute best team in baseball that you've never heard of. The Twins don't spend a lot of money nor do they make a lot of headlines. What they are good at, however, is winning. The Twins won the American League Central Division every year from 2002 to 2004 and again in 2006. In 2007 they finished third in the division and in 2008 they lost a one-game playoff to just miss the post season. This team wins with a small-ball, almost National League feel or approach.

For a while there, it was looking like we weren't going to have any exciting pennant races this September. About a week ago, all of the races were threatening to wrap themselves up neatly and leave us with a final weekend free of drama. Earlier tonight, we had a lot of NL drama. While all of the NL shenanigans were going on, the Twins were making sure at least one race in the AL is going down to the wire.

It didn't always look like that. The White Sox breezed into Minneapolis this week with a 2 1/2 game lead in the AL Central. Even after they lost the first two games of the series, they were sitting pretty with a 6-1 lead tonight after a six run explosion in the top of the fourth. Things fell apart from there as the Twins were spurred on by a triple by Carlos Gomez in the fourth that scored a run and allowed him to score, then a two-run game-tying triple by Denard Span in the seventh, and finally a walk-off single by Alexi Cassilla in the eleventh.

After dropping three straight to the Twins, the White Sox head home to close out the season with three games against the Indians and a makeup against the Tigers, if necessary. The newly minted division leaders will stay at home in Minnesota to play the Royals. Yeah, the White Sox are in trouble.

The 2008 season has been a great one for Cliff Lee, despite the fact that just about everything else has gone wrong when it comes to the Indians team he plays for. Lee has rebounded from a horrible 2007 campaign to go 11-2 with a 2.43 ERA this season, and was just named the AL starter in the All Star Game. So you would think that he'd probably be in a pretty good mood, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Apparently the success and newfound fame has gone to Cliff's head, because he doesn't think he should have to move around or field the ball anymore. That can be the only reason why he got mad at the Twins' Carlos Gomez on Sunday after Gomez laid down a bunt in the first inning.

Gomez attempted to bunt on an 0-2 pitch in the first inning but pushed the ball too close to the mound. Lee fielded the ball, threw him out, then said something to Gomez after the play.

Lee and Gomez then jawed at each other after Gomez reached on an infield single in the third.

"I was just trying to do my job and he ... jumped on me,'' Gomez said after the Twins won 4-3. "He say, 'Stop bunting.' But not like that. With bad language.

It seems that no matter how many times we see it, baseball fans just never learn. Every spring baseball fans and experts alike say that this is the year that the Minnesota Twins are going to finish below .500 and at the bottom of the AL Central. Then summer comes along a few months later, and there they are. Sitting on top, or near the top of the division while the rest of us scratch their heads.

Though it happens every season, it still catches us all by surprise, but this season has been the most baffling of all. There is just no way that the Twins should be sitting at 40-36, only a game and a half behind the first place White Sox. The obvious reasons for this are that the team said goodbye to both Johan Santana and Torii Hunter during the offseason, and that Francisco Liriano has spent his time on the disabled list.

Still, it's not exactly a new phenomenon that teams carry on and continue playing well after saying goodbye to their stars. The Athletics have been doing it for years along with the Twins, so we know it can be done. The difference between these Twins, though, and the Twins and Athletics teams of the past is how they're doing it.

The guys who were supposed to replace what was lost have been horrible so far, yet they're still winning.

The Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee has long been rumored to be haunted. Adrian Beltre has talked about his alleged brushes with the supernatural while staying there, and several members of the Minnesota Twins are just as spooked. From Phil Miller of the Pioneer Press:

Livan Hernandez swears this actually happened. He was sitting in bed, watching TV, when the remote control suddenly hung in midair next to him, and turned off the set. "What you have to do," he explained matter-of-factly, "is get (the remote) back and put it back in the same place and turn on the TV. Then it will go away."

[...] "If you wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes you can feel something in bed with you," Hernandez said. "You can touch it. But if you open your eyes, there's nothing there."

It's not clear whether Hernandez is telling the truth or simply doing his best to scare coach Jerry White, who was so spooked he couldn't fall asleep all night, or the impressionable rookie Carlos Gomez, who claims to have experienced some of Pfister's spookiness first-hand on Friday. Gomez said his iPod repeatedly turned itself on and started vibrating on a table in his room, which scared him so much that he bolted from his room and arrived at Miller Park hours earlier than he needed to simply to avoid being alone. (Yeah, I know, it sounds like someone was simply calling his iPhone, but I'm guessing he ruled that out.)

Carlos Gomez is full of energy. He was fun to watch as a New York Met, and has impressed people with his tools in Minnesota (even though his splits are less than impressive at .268/.296/.399). But the man who's the one who's "under the gun" in Minnesota might miss some time on the disabled list with a bum wrist ... the same wrist that kept him out of action this weekend against Colorado.

"I'll find out today what he feels like throwing the ball," Gardenhire said. "He says he feels better today. But I'll get another center fielder if it's going to be two or three more days, probably." (...)

With Gomez still sidelined, Craig Monroe got the start in center once again. But Gardenhire hinted that the team likely will call up outfielder Denard Span from Triple-A Rochester should it look like Gomez's wrist injury might linger.

Span, 24, impressed the Twins' coaching staff during his first stint in the Majors in April, and he's been on a recent hot streak offensively for the Red Wings. Heading into Rochester's game on Sunday, Span was batting .457 over his last 10 games. He's hitting .378 with a .486 on-base percentage in 24 games with the Red Wings.

But in 31 AB's in the majors this season, Span's splits are such: .258/.324/.258, so despite Span's minor league numbers, I doubt highly that Carlos Gomez will become the next Wally Pipp.