More veteran pitchers? Really?

If there's been a theme to the blog this week, it's how age and experience play into the Twins pitching problems:

• The Twins lost almost a half-decade's worth of pitchers drafted in early rounds;
• They have one of the league's oldest staffs;
• Most, if not all, top-rate rotations have a home-grown foundation;
• One of their more impressive pitching prospects has a bum elbow despite being handled with care.

So it's been a topic prominent in my mind this week. I am convinced that the Twins aren't going to spend their way out of their pitching hole -- not because they are unwilling to spend the money, but because spending the money doesn't work.

The solution is to draft better, develop better, and get a bit luckier than they've been with the process of growing their own pitchers. They need to display the patience with Trevor May (for example) that they never had with Liam Hendriks (for example).

I saw a tweet this week from a season-ticker holder who said he was renewing, but "spend it on a pitcher." That's a self-defeating piece of advice. The Twins have a rotation jammed with such veterans as Ricky Nolasco, Mike Pelfrey and Tommy Milone; to get good, they need to create room for, and use, such high-end guys as Alex Meyer and Jose Berrios. Another veteran just gets in the way.

A splashy offseason in the pitching department will be an offseason gone offtrack. That's not a sexy prospect, and it may not do much for ticket sales, but it's reality.