Fire Gardy

The Twins designated Craig Monroe and Livan Hernandez for assignment yesterday. They were replaced with Randy Ruiz and Francisco Liriano.  Ruiz started right away and was the DH.  He went 1 for 3, scoring on Mauer’s homer.  He did have a prodigious strikeout where he swing through three fastballs.  He put up good numbers in AAA, and Monroe put up pathetic numbers with the Twins. I have no problem with this move.  We needed someone to come in an mash lefties, or just mash in general.  Might as well give Ruiz a shot at some ABs.  I hope that Kubel still gets the bulk of DH at bats, but it will be nice to have someone who can hit on the bench and not have MIKE REDMOND as our DH against left handed pitching.  I don’t think Ruiz actually owns a baseball glove, but I don’t care.

This Liriano move is also a good one. We replaced a bad player with a better one. Seems like a no brainer, and I think the twins waited too long to make this move. After his first few starts which were quite good, Hernandez was a 5.3 ERA pitcher.  For all of may, june, and july, LIVAN WAS A 5.3 ERA PITCHER! That is terrible. I don’t like the excuse that he is a veteran presence. We have other veterans, coaches, and advisors, how will the loss of one player who barely speaks english affect team chemistry? If I were on the Twins I would be upset if they continually trotted out a 5.3 ERA pitcher, something that clearly doesn’t give us the best chance to win. This move does. We upgraded our rotation and bench in one day.  I think the next move is to DFA lamb when cuddyer comes back, but I have a feeling Ruiz will head back to Rochester, unless of course he is playing really well.  Then we would have no choice but to DFA Lamb.  This all assumes that the current roster stays healthy, which is a big assumption.