my dad has always said this
"stupid ideas come from people with stupid brains"
I think what happened was the twins front office bought into a lot of the stuff being said about them and their farm system... Especially around 06-09 or so when they were still able to ride the "Draft and develop" praise from media etc.
Then you started to see indecision on an enraging level from that point on.
06... they had a pretty good shot at alfonso soriano at the deadline.. and they didnt give someone up.. was it garza? Twins won the division and were a bat away probably from being able to advance.
07... this is the super bad one in my opinion.... and the deadline where i think terry ryan decided to retire. The twins needed a third baseman.. they had just brought the division to within like a game and a half on deadline day. Declaring themselves buyers... they then trade away their leadoff hitter Castillo away for... Drew Butera (who could have been had for literally anything) and dustin martin.. who's never played a second here.... Then they didnt bother to acquire ANYBODY... there was a big bat out there but we didnt even need one of those.. just a 3B would probably have given us a chance. Morgan Ensberg was had for nothing. Ty Wigginton commanded a higher price but was still there. the big sin there though was declaring themselves buyers and then to sell and do nothing later. It highly likely cost them any chance of signing santana, it made torii want to go and disgruntled pretty much the entire team. season took a nose dive from there.
Then around 2010, i cant remember if it was 2010 or 09 but there were cliff lee rumors floating around.. with seattle... and they were trying to move lee and we needed an ace pitcher. The two names that i heard floated quite a bit were Kevin Slowey and Ramos.. those being the names the mariners wanted and probably some other prospects too. The twins refused to move either of them.. instead opting to make the ill fated matt capps trade (not because capps isn't good, he's a good pitcher.. just not worth our best offensive prospect) and slowey basically had a 2011 that cost him ANY value whatsoever. yes, it would have been a rental.. but those guys are both gone now anyways...