Ty-onara
Well, that didn’t take long. All sources indicate that the Twins are not going to pursue Ty Wigginton. Apparently his price tag was higher than Blake’s. He is 4 years younger, so he should make more than Blake. That’s basically what he is, a younger version of Casey Blake. This leaves the Twins with few to no options to upgrade the infield. I think we should accept that, and move on. The only other option is Mark Derosa of the Cubs. Nick and Nick weighs that option in his blog today, so I won’t delve in too deeply. He has a few main points, I’ll summarize:
- DeRosa only became a full time player 3 years ago, so despite being 34 he still “has a lot left in the tank”
- While primarily playing 2B, he also has logged a considerable amount of innings at third, playing slightly below average defense at both. This means we could try him at third, or play him at second and move Casilla to short and go with the Buscher/Harris platoon at third, moving Punto to super-utility.
- Had a career year last season, so will probably regress.
- Twins will undervalue him since he doesn’t play great defense, or isn’t really fast, and will offer the Cubs a garbage package, and the Cubs will laugh at us and tell us to go home.
- “The Fab 5″ are off limits, but someone of the Bonser/Humber variety is not.
Joe Nelson was recently non-tendered by the Marlins. He also appears to be the prettiest girl at the dance. In 2008, Nelson was 3-1 with a 2.00 ERA in 54 innings. He had 60 strikeouts to 22 walks, and gave up just 5 homers. He also sported a healthy 1.18 WHIP. While he is 34 years old, he doesn’t have too many innings at the major league level, and has about 700 total professional innings under is belt. That really isn’t that many, and as far as I know he has no history of arm trouble. Could 2008 be a fluke? Yes, it very well could be. The fact that he has 19 teams chasing him does not bode well for the Twins. Unless he prefers pitching for Rick Anderson and an organization that value pitching above all else, over pitching for the highest bidder. Which I doubt. Especially since he is 34 and hasn’t had a big payday yet.
Brandon Lyonis another option. In 2008 he pitched 59 innings, with 44 strikeouts to 13 walks and 7 homers. Very similar to Nelson. He was the D-backs closer for the first half, racking up 26 saves before losing the job. My concern with Lyon is he might take a job where he can be a closer. Nelson might be in the same boat. Both have closer-ish numbers, and might take more money and go to a bad team so they can be the ace of the bullpen.
The Twins should be courting both of these guys heavily. I would prefer not to go into the season assuming Bonser or Humber will be effective setup men. I think Bonser canbe, but when it comes to Boof, assume nothing. If they decide to go after a free agent relief pitcher, they might have to trade one of Bonser/Humber since both are out of options. Lets lay out who I think will be on the opening day 25 man roster so we can figure out how many roster spots we have:
- C- Mauer, Redmond (2)
- IF- Morneau, Casilla, Punto, Buscher, Harris, Tolbert (?) (6)
- OF- Span, Gomez, Cuddyer, Young, Kubel (5)
- SP- Baker, Liriano, Slowey, Blackburn, Perkins (5)
- RP- Nathan, Guerrier, Crain, Bonser, Humber, Mijares, Breslow (7)
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Don’t forget about Jones, our Rule 5 draft pick. If we want to keep him, he’s got to be on the 25 man roster too.
I doubt we could get anything for Boof or Humber, but I think it’s worth looking into. We’ve got too many pitchers to waste our time with guys who aren’t meshing with the system or working out.
I don’t agree that we should be chasing free agent relievers who are in the market for Closer Money. Our bullpen isn’t bad despite gross underperformance last season. And reliever talent is so fickle that it’s simply not worth paying the premium to get guys who had a good walk year — it’s more than possible that neither Nelson not Lyon are as good as Crain in 2009.
Also, I’d order the relievers like such:
Nathan, Mijares, Breslow, Crain, Guerrier, Humber, Bonser.
The Marlins offered Nelson 800K for 2009, if have to give him a 3 year deal at over a million per, I’d say no dice. Especially since this guy came out of nowhere in 2008. I’d be willing to pay more for Lyon, since he has a track record. I forgot about Jones, whose spot does he take? My guess is we end up offering him back to the Yankees, then working out a trade for a low-level non-prospect or something. To keep him in the minors. I’m not a fan of keeping a guy on the major leauge roster just because we have to. We have good people in AAA who can help develop an arm, why waste a roster spot on someone who really should be in triple-A? That is what pissed me off about Bass last year. The ONLY reason he was on the team was because he would have to go through waivers (correct me if I have that process wrong) in order to be sent down to AAA, I think we had a similar situation with Garrett Jones. The difference was, somone made Gardy send Jones to AAA, and shocker, he cleared waivers. But that is neither here nor there. My guess is one of Mijares/Breslow starts the season in AAA, I think having both of them on the 25 man roster gives us the best bullpen, but I think Gardy and the staff will feel they “owe” roster spots and innings to Crain and Guerrier. And probably Boof.
Breslow was very consistent and surprisingly effective last season. If the Twins “owe” any reliever a roster spot, Breslow’s at the top of the list.
I agree that the bullpen grossly underperformed, and I have faith that Boof will eventually (hopefully sooner rather than later) find his groove as a relief pitcher- Anderson can fix him, if anyone can.
It’ll be interesting to see how much Ty Wigginton eventually signs for. Maybe he won’t find any takers at his preferred price.
I agree that Breslow was great last year. However, they didn’t use him nearly enough, the same goes for Bobby Korecky who languished in AAA. Meanwhile a clearly broken down Crain and Guerrier were still getting regular work. Nothing against those two as they have been great in the past, and I think at least one of them will rebound in 2009. Its that logic that got Nick Punto regular at bats for the entire 2007 season. He is an upstanding member of the team, but if he is struggling sit him down. Don’t keep handing him his regular workload.
I believe that everyone should have to battle for their spot every year. From all-star to Nick Punto. Rincon was kept on the team way too long, and they used him in important situations long after he stopped being effective.
I don’t think the Twins “owe” any of the players anything, least of all playing time. That’s something the players earn via the most cold-hearted and amnesiac “What have you done for me lately?” process possible.
And while Breslow and Mijares were both great last year, and are lefties who can get righties out and go a full inning (or more), and if anyone starts the season in the minors it’ll be one or both of them.
The problem with trying to send Boof or Humber down is that they both have value high enough that someone will definitely take them off waivers, but not necessarily high enough that someone would offer something we want in trade. They’ve put us in a tough spot — and the only way they can fix it is by pitching well. For once.
I also don’t believe the Twins should “owe” anbody anything. But using Gardy logic, he tends to keep guys around too long because they did things well in the past. Punto and Juan Rincon the best examples. I think this is a terrible way to do things, but it does seem to be how the Twins operate. At least a little bit.
Very true. Gardy definitely disagrees with me about owing players. And it’s not just him — every year under Terry Ryan when it was time to put together the 40 man roster, he’d keep lesser players who had “put in their dues” in order to “reward them,” rather than protecting the players who were actually good. (Invariably, the good unprotected players would be taken away, and the crappy protected players would soon wash out or be hit by a car or something. Has anyone else noticed how many of our minor leaguers seem to be rehabbing from shoulder injuries suffered in car accidents? Why isn’t this being investigated?)
Punto and Rincon are just the most recent examples. Tyner, Luis Rodriguez, Lew Ford. It may have been why Randy Ruiz got no respect — he was new to the organization and hadn’t paid dues. Delmon probably suffers the same fate.
Pridie is the next guy the Twins are going to like more than they should — we’ve tried to acquire him a few times in the past, and we finally just went and overpaid for him just so we could have him, despite the fact that he’d demonstrated that he wasn’t going to live up to whatever potential he may or may not have had. Also Tolbert.
Ugh.
If the Twins start the season with Breslow in AAA (barring a bad Spring Training showing, of course) to save money or keep Boof/Humber or whoever, I will be convinced that they are not serious about contending or winning the World Series. Luckily, I don’t see that happening.
The Twins are always more interested in making sure they have their June 1 upgrades than they are in putting the best team on the field on April 1.
The Twins have proven they like to have a more “veteran” team in the early part of the season. Not sure why. This time around, instead of crappy “vets” from the outside (Hernandez, Batista, etc), they plan on sticking with “proven” people who play “the Twins way” (Guerrier, Crain, thankfully not Guardado). While I have nothing against Guerrier or Crain, I think it is clear their best days are behind them, and they deserve a shot, but if they don’t produce we CANNOT hesitate in kicking them to the curb. This will open up a door for the new wave of promising Twins players like Breslow and Mijares.
FunBobby: the good news is, I expect both Guerrier and Crain to bounce back. So your Opening Day scenario doesn’t fill me with dread (I suspect it doesn’t bother you too much, either- possibly because Juan Rincon no longer pitches for the Twins).
What reason is there, besides “hope,” to expect BOTH Guerrier and Crain to stop sucking?
Guerrier looked so bad at the end of the year that it couldn’t have been a fluke. He looked done for.
Crain wasn’t recovered from his shoulder surgery, or so they say, but he sucked in the season before his surgery.
I wouldn’t be surprised if one or both of them are gone after this season. We don’t need to overpay for mediocre veterans, even if they came up through our system.
If there’s anything we learned from the Rincon saga, it’s that we need to be a little quicker to cut our ties with dead weight once it dies. Especially now that AAA and AA are both filled to the brim with arms.