Fire Gardy

Don Mattingly’s ex-wife after her arrest for drunkenly showing up at his house.

Joe Nathan has made it clear he would like to sign in the neighborhood of a 5 year deal and “doesn’t have to push his salary limits”. Does that mean he will play for below market value?  That is great, but do we need a high priced closer when we will be playing very meaningful games?  I think Neshek, or to a lesser extent Crain and Rincon could be just as effective on a .500 team as Nathan.  Depending on the deal, both its dollar value and length, I could be convinced to keep him.  It does feel good to have Nathan warming up to pitch the ninth.  I remember the days when we had LaTrine Hawkins and “Everyday except for weekends and major holidays” Eddie.  That made for some long, nerve racking ninth innings.  I don’t want to go back to that.

On an unrelated note I read an interesting fact in the paper this morning.  The Giants won the Super Bowl in both January of 1987 and January of 1991. The Twins won World Series titles in October of both of those years. And if I recall, in 1991 we were coming off a down year. I’m just sayin’…….

Now that we enter the worst month in the wide world of sports, we really have to dig for things to discuss.  Fortunately (or unfortunately) Gardy and Nick Punto supply us with enough fodder to last a lifetime. 

One of the biggest questions going into the season is what crazy scheme will Gardy come up with in order to weasel Punto into the lineup on a regular basis.  Here is how i see it, he will rotate him through 4 positions: second, third, short, and DH. Since Gardy has no idea what a DH is supposed to do, I will give him a hint. They hit.  He no longer has jason tyner to use in the DH spot, so he sees Punto as his next best option.  Kubel should get the bulk of the DH ABs, with Rondell White 2 backing him up. That is all.

I don’t know how much stock to put into this (scroll most of the way down), but I thought it was interesting:

One of the most uttered sentences in baseball lately, once it became clear the Yankees preferred keeping Phil Hughes to trading for Santana, was: “Phil Hughes had better be good.” Yankees GM Brian Cashman has, essentially, staked his job and reputation on Hughes, since Principal Son Hank Steinbrenner obviously would have voted to deal for Santana. If the Yankees sputter and Hughes doesn’t make an impact (at age 21, remember), don’t expect Steinbrenner to show much patience — with Hughes or his GM.

If Hughes has a down year this year, could it be possible that Hank will lose patience with him and potentially deal him next year for considerably less than Johan Santana?

I realize that it’s just a little early to start talking about next year’s Hot Stove, but I’d like to get this out in the open now. Because I’ve repeatedly been irked by the trend I’ve noticed lately regarding the way teams treat the Twins in trade negotiations. The Nationals said they wanted Garza+Baker+Slowey for Soriano. The Red Sox said they wanted Garza+Baker for Wily Mo Pena — one week before trading him to the Nats for a PTBNL. The Rays wanted Garza+Bartlett for Delmon Young — one week before trading the equally talented Elijah Dukes to the Nats for a PTBNL. The Mets thought Lastings Milledge was too valuable to give up for Johan Santana — until they traded him to the Nats for scraps. The Yankees thought Hughes was too much to pay, the Red Sox thought Lester and Ellsbury were each too much to pay.

And now Jayson Stark is already fanning the flames under a possible dumping of Hughes, presumably to a team other than the Twins, and presumably for a player less talented than Johan Santana.

It can’t be something lacking in the Twins’ negotiating strategy that urges teams to demand so much — they’re demanding it and they walk away when we try to talk them down. It can’t be that our farm system is so good that they think it’ll be easy to pick from it — we have only three prospects in the top 100, and two of them were just acquired in the Santana trade.

Is it possible that teams are just gunshy about dealing with the Twins because of the reputation for getting good deals? Will that reputation start to go away now that a new GM has taken over and has made two trades that were each criticized by the media and the fans? (Certainly one was criticized more than the other.)

I don’t know. All I know is that when the Yankees trade Hughes for a fourth outfielder or something, I’m going to be really, really mad.