Dealing with Crain
According to Joe C, the Twins have decided what to do with Jesse Crain.
http://blogs2.startribune.com/blogs/christensen/2009/06/16/tuesday-lineups-crain-crede-cuddyer-span-updates/
Apparently the expectation that he may have been pitching through an injury were incorrect, as rather than put him on the DL, the Twins have optioned him to AAA. I’m posting from my non-multitasking iPhone, so I can’t check if he still had options or if he had to pass through waivers, but I expect that we’d have heard about it if we’d put him on waivers.
While this comes as a welcome move given his awful performance lately — coming to a head, of course, on Sunday in Chicago when there were 20000 Twins fans in the stadium who knew we’d lost a few minutes before it actually happened — the fact that he was replaced by Perkins is interesting.
It leaves Gardy one bullpen arm short of where he normally likes to be, and may open the door for one of the starters to move into a bullpen role.
Swarzak can’t come back up until 10 days after he was sent down, unless someone else goes onto the DL. Them’s the rules.
So my guess is that one of the following two things will happen:
1) Liriano’s next start will be his last chance to stay in the rotation. If he doesn’t pitch well, he goes to the pen and Span goes on the DL to make room for Swarzak.
2) If Liriano pitches well, Swarzak stays in the minors and we bring up a right handed reliever when we send down Morales (note that he hasn’t played yet). Hopefully this is Slama rather than Humber or Morillo. Also, Duensing is a possibilty if they don’t care about having an extra lefty (they shouldn’t).
The most likely scenario, naturally, is that I’m totally wrong here and the plan is something completely different. The second most likely scenario is that the plan is meaningless because everything will change between now and when it matters.
But this is just my reaction to this excellent news.
Now we get to be relieved of wailing when Crain comes into games, and Cuellar and the Cliburns get to try to work their magic on his busted mechanics.
What are your thoughts?
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Span was (finally) diagnosed today with Vestibular Neuronitis. Will probably be DL’d and out for a while.
My thoughts?
DFA Redmond, option Butcher and Tolbert, call up Tolleson, Huber (until Hughes is healthy) and Delaney. Give Perkins a couple of starts. If he doesn’t cut it, send him to the pen, get Henn down/out and call up Swarzak as the 5th starter
I am fairly convinced that Crain has shoulder issues… that said, I’d love to see him work with Cuellar to add a change up.
And as long as Span is down, call up Martin
I’m all for dropping Redmond in favor of Morales, but I think it’s a political decision in that they want to keep Redmond happy so he coaches for the Twins organization at some point in the future. I’d be curious to know how they could sell the “we think you suck, but we still love you” angle to him. That’s why I think they don’t DFA him.
I think Perkins has demonstrated more of an ability to stay in the rotation than Liriano. He has more of a propensity to simply have an off day and suck from the start — but Liriano is ALWAYS dominant for the first 2-3 innings, then ALWAYS crappy the rest of the way. And when I say “crappy” I mean REALLY crappy, as in people are batting .350 against him the second time through the lineup. And when I say “the rest of the way,” I don’t mean a long time; he gets knocked out early pretty often.
That’s why I lean toward moving Liriano to the bullpen instead of Perkins.
I don’t know if Tolleson has shown enough to get called up, or how much he’d benefit from some more seasoning in the minors. But I’m fully supportive of pretty much anything that gets rid of Buscher and Tolbert. I’ve had more than enough of them.
I think we need to make a bunch of moves to make this team better. I”m sick of hovering around 500 when we have a guy hitting 400 with power. We should be way better. Overhaul the bullpen, get rid of Tolbert and Buscher. Have we made any moves yet this year that weren’t due to injury? Casilla I guess.
That was just due to shittiness.
But also dropping Humber helped. That wasn’t due to injury.
So Pridie was in fact called up, which I assume is because he’s on the 40-man roster and he’ll be a “filler” for the OF, or in case Cuddy goes down with his finger problem…
But I agree on the Liriano situation, perhaps one more start and there might be some more moves, Liriano to the Pen and Swarzak back up would be an easy solution and I’m not sure how much longer Morales will be up here…but I’d rather have him on the bench than Tolbert/Buscher.
I’m sure it’s because he was on the 40 man roster and they felt it was important to actually have a 4th outfielder again. And despite the fact that everybody knows he can’t hit, I’d rather have Pridie give it a try a few times instead of Tolbert or Buscher, given that we KNOW how much they suck.
I didn’t expect Span to get put on the DL this soon, but I guess they must have finally got a diagnosis.
So do we keep rocking with Harris leading off? Facing a righty tonight, but I assume we’ll keep essentially the same lineup we had last night, just wish we had Span so we could sit Young down for a day and have him start tomorrow, wishful thinking!
Harris SS Mauer C Morneau 1B Crede 3B Kubel DH Cuddyer RF Young LF Punto 2B Gomez CF
I moved Punto up to break up the righties a bit in our lineup, not that it’s a big deal I guess…