Joe Mauer

Joe Mauer is the face of the Minnesota Twins. His list of credentials is impressive.

In six full seasons of Major League Baseball he has earned three batting titles, three Gold Gloves, four Silver Slugger awards, four All-Star game appearances and was named league MVP in 2009. He's been featured on the cover of Sony's PlayStation MLB the Show for 2010 and again this year.

Ever wonder how you could spend close to a quarter billion dollars on a baseball team (assuming of course that you are not the New York Yankees)?

Try filling your roster with these players and you would have an excellent start.

Here's a quick run down of the highest paid player at each position entering the 2011 season.

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Our 2011 fantasy baseball projections will be released one-by-one until the top 100 players have been revealed. These rankings consider past achievements, current performance and expected future results based on standard 5×5 H2H settings.

It's hard to believe it has been 20 years since the Twins won their second World Series Championship.

Known as the "Worst to First" series because both the Minnesota Twins and the Atlanta Braves finished the 1990 season in last place in their divisions only to advance to the pinnacle of the baseball world in 1991.

Even with the exodus of such players as C.C. Sabathia, Curtis Granderson, and Zack Greinke the past few seasons, the AL Central certainly has no shortage of talent. Some of those star players simply don't get the attention they would playing in either of the Eastern divisions.

This division has sorely lacked parity the past few seasons, with a sizable gap existing between the top three teams and the bottom two, and this list reflects that. Whereas the Tigers, Twins, and White Sox combine for 20 representatives on the list, the Indians and Royals combine for just 5.

The Minnesota Twins are coming off a banner season.

They won their sixth American League Central title since 2002, opened Target Field, which ESPN named the "best fan experience in all of sports," and set an attendance record of over three million fans.

So what will define 2011 for Minnesota Twins fans?

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In sports, when a team looks too far ahead or dwells too much on what has already happened, they often fail in the present.  Sometimes it’s off the field issues, sometimes it's injuries, sometimes it's egos and sometimes it is just plain bad luck.  A trap season is the perfect storm of all these variables and more.  The 2010 Minnesota Vikings defined a trap season better than maybe anybody ever.

As the 2010 season approached, it was expected that the American League Central division race would come down to the final games. The division had been decided by a tie breaking 163rd game in 2008 and 2009, so there was no reason to believe that 2010 would be any different.