Building a professional baseball team full of stars comes down to money -- making the right contract decisions at the right time, getting young players locked up in contracts that makes them and the team happy, and getting the right mix of experience and potential.

I'm not a huge football fan, so this time of year is dreary for me. (At least the Vikings are good this year. I can handle watching them.) There is so little baseball coverage in the newspapers and even online.

But I took heart this weekend in a USA Today-produced news magazine special edition that featured 2012 projected lineups of all Major League Baseball teams. The articles told about the financial positions of each club and predicted who of the current players would still don their team's uniform three seasons from now.

For the Twins, Joe Mauer and several other current Twins were on the 2012 list. I like their predictions, and if the Twins secure the projected lineup, I'd agree with the team's moves. And it just goes to show us again that Mauer is not just the MVP this year -- he is the future of Twins baseball.