MINNEAPOLIS -- Another long offseason is almost at an end as the calendar prepares to flip to February, leaving less than two weeks until Spring Training gets underway for the Twins in Florida. With Josh Donaldson officially in tow and the club's key position players all healing on schedule, the Twins should be primed for a productive camp with only a handful of questions remaining around the roster.

But still, as this week's questions for the Twins Inbox showed, there's plenty of lingering concern around Twins Territory about the state of the starting rotation amid early debates about the battles for the final few spots on Minnesota's 26-man roster. Let's dive right in.

I'm pretty sure around half of the responses for this week's Inbox were some variant of this question. It's tough to prognosticate how a slow trade market will continue to evolve, and that's something both president of baseball operations Derek Falvey and general manager Thad Levine have been open about as they've spoken of these discussions. What we do know is that the Twins are still poking around the market to see if any deals could materialize.

The immediate need for the rotation is in the early part of the season before Michael Pineda (suspension) and Rich Hill (elbow surgery) plug in the gaps, but the Twins don't really need more depth at this moment; if there's a point for improvement, it's probably in another front-of-the-rotation arm that can make an October impact.

There's a balance to be had between making a more urgent trade and giving 10 or so of those early-season starts to an acquisition, or in evaluating how one or more of the young pitchers -- Randy Dobnak, Devin Smeltzer , Lewis Thorpe -- handle that workload with both 2020 and the future in mind. Keep in mind that Jake Odorizzi, Homer Bailey and Hill are all eligible for free agency again following this season, so one or more of these young arms will need to develop and step up in the long term.

If you really want a gut feeling, my sense is that the pitching staff isn't done yet, but that doesn't mean that something needs to get done before Opening Day.

There's just about no chance of a four-man rotation to start the year. That only worked last season because of an extremely unorthodox schedule with a generous distribution of off-days, and that's not the case this season, when the Twins start the year with eight games in eight days.

One thing that pitching coach Wes Johnson said at TwinsFest was that it might not necessarily be fair to characterize this situation as two rookies holding down starting roles until the returns of Pineda and Hill. The Twins view Smeltzer, Dobnak, Thorpe and Sean Poppen as Major League-capable arms, and though there might only be room for one or two of them at a time, things could also come down to playing matchups and tendencies by rotating those four between the Majors and Minors as needed, as well.

There's obviously still a lot of fluidity in the situation with Poppen coming off the injury that sidelined him for the end of last season, and it remains to be seen how the competition will shake out in Spring Training and which will come north with the club. But it's looking as though all four should impact the Major Leagues for stretches early this season.

My expectation is that Mitch Garver's plate appearances will go up, and the games played will slightly rise into the 100-110 range (he appeared in 93 games last season), and more of those will be starts, as he only started 73 of those games in 2019. Garver said at TwinsFest that he expects to earn the "bulk" of starts behind the plate but did understand and ultimately appreciate manager Rocco Baldelli's measured usage of the catchers last season.

I think the timeshare between Garver and backup Alex Avila will be more skewed towards Garver than it was last season with Jason Castro, but there will still be a hefty division of duties. It would surprise me if he was a significant factor at first base early in the year, with Marwin Gonzalez available as a primary backup, but if injuries force Gonzalez into a regular starting role somewhere, Garver would make sense as the next man up to fill in at first base.

No, there is not.

Assuming no injuries, there should only be room for two of those three on the Major League roster unless the Twins get weird and break camp with 14 position players, and the early regular-season schedule just isn't set up for the club to do that. So, behind the eight starting position players, Nelson Cruz, Gonzalez and Avila, there are only two remaining bench spots.

I'm inclined to treat Ehire Adrianza as a lock until proven otherwise. He's the best defensive shortstop on the roster, he's a switch-hitter with good contact ability, he posted a very solid .765 OPS last season for a utility man and -- most importantly -- he's out of options.

If Jake Cave makes the team, he'll be the fourth outfielder and likely leave Gonzalez to be a primary backup in the infield. If Willians Astudillo makes the team, he'll keep Garver and Avila fresh while beefing up the depth at first and third, pushing Gonzalez to serve as the fourth outfielder. There are arguments to be made for both, and that should be one of the few position-player battles of intrigue this spring.

To the extent that a former top prospect can be considered a "dark horse" of any sort, I'll answer with Fernando Romero. If you assume that Brusdar Graterol makes the Opening Day roster (which is far from a foregone conclusion) alongside Taylor Rogers, Tyler Duffey, Trevor May, Sergio Romo, Tyler Clippard and Zack Littell, that leaves one bullpen spot left to be determined, likely between Romero, Matt Wisler and Cody Stashak.

Romero hasn't been talked about as much this offseason after his struggles in '19, but his stuff has never been in question. Have you seen how that fastball moves? He could still be a very solid bullpen piece if he gets his mechanics and command under control. He is working an uphill battle because Stashak has had Major League success and -- more importantly -- Wisler is out of options. But it's much too early to rule anything out, as evidenced by Ryne Harper coming north with the club last season.

I don't think I even glanced at the RBI total for any player in baseball at any point last season, so I'll leave that one out. As for the last part, the measurement of success is too subjective for me to speculate.

Best starter: José Berríos

Best reliever: Taylor Rogers

Home run leader: Miguel Sanó

Batting average leader: Luis Arraez

Team MVP: Byron Buxton