Fire Gardy

Last week everyone was down, and the impression I got was that the Twins were in the process of losing a bunch of fans for the season; after sweeping the White Sox, some of those fans might be sticking around for a little while longer. Last week it was clear to everyone — including the front office — that the team needed to add players in order to stick around in the divisional race; now, though, the front office doesn’t seem to be in panic mode any more. I can’t say the same thing about the #Twins stream on Twitter, though. After spending some time following that, I’m pretty sure the sky is falling. If it hasn’t fallen already.

The big acquisition the Twins failed to make in the last week was Freddy Sanchez. He’s a solid second baseman who can hit for average and has a vesting option for next year (which he’s sure to get). He would have been a defensive improvement at 2B over Casilla, and could have slotted very nicely into the 2-hole between Span and Mauer, alleviating Gardy’s fear of batting Mauer second. I thought getting Sanchez would have been huge, and that the Twins should go after him.

Well, he was traded yesterday, and (in case you feel like being surprised) it wasn’t to the Twins. He went to the Giants. And before everyone gets their blood boiling about it, this was definitely one of those times when the Twins were legitimately outbid. We all know it’s the Twins’ constant position that acquiring people in trades costs too much, and every GM is asking for way too much, and blah blah blah, the result is that they didn’t do anything and then the guy gets traded for a couple of nobodies who’ll never make it to the majors. This is not one of those times. The Giants gave up a pitcher named Tim Alderson, who at 20 years old is holding his own at AA in a hitting-friendly environment with guys 2-3 years older than he is. He was rated as the 26th best prospect in all of baseball. The Giants gave up a whole lot for the privilege of paying Sanchez $11M through 2010, and I don’t think the Twins should have tried to outbid them.

In all likelihood, the fact that the Giants gave up so much says to me that the Twins were serious about getting Sanchez. That Smith offered a pretty good package, and the Giants’ GM is a more aggressive guy and is going for it this year and tried to shoot the moon. I think it’s better to make no deal than to make a bad deal, and giving up more than Alderson was a pretty bad deal. At least our involvement is going to kill the Giants in 3 years and make Sabean look like even more of an idiot than he already looks. That counts for something, right?

With about 36 hours or so left until the trade deadline, I don’t think the Twins are going to make any moves. I think Smith spent most of his time trying to get Sanchez, and I think offering so much* and getting turned down probably rattled him. As you can probably tell, I’m not high on Smith’s emotional strength. So what I’m saying is don’t get your hopes up that there’ll be a new face in the locker room this weekend — we’re going to have to get by with what we’ve got, just like every year.

* Yes, I’m going to assume we offered a lot until I hear otherwise. As I mentioned, if we didn’t, then there’s no reason to think Sabean would have given up Alderson.

And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s kind of a part of the identity of the Twins, year in and year out. You can scream as loud as you want that the team owes you something, but they consistently contend and make money, and they wouldn’t do either of those things (consistently) if they threw a bunch of prospects away at the deadline every year.

I think a much more interesting development, one that might give us some hope, is Duensing’s start last night against the White Sox. I’d always kind of liked him as he was coming up through the minors (as a starter), but he’d performed extremely poorly in the majors in his 9 relief appearances. I was not confident at all that he’d be able to do much in his start, and thought we’d get our doors blown off. Instead, he looked pretty good. His best pitch is his curveball, and he hadn’t been using that as a reliever — it looked pretty good to me in his start. He shut the White Sox down for 5 innings, giving up just 2 solo homers (a young Twins pitcher prone to giving up home runs? No way!), and kept us in the game. And he didn’t get knocked out after 5 IP — he’d thrown only 64 pitches, which is pretty efficient work. He’s just not stretched out right now after spending a bunch of time in the bullpen.

In my opinion, Duensing has earned another start, and I think it should come at the expense of Liriano. He continues to look bad, and now he’s hurt his forearm. Time to shut him down for a while and see what we’ve got in Duensing. If he can stretch out a little and give us what we got last night over 6-7 innings most times out, we’ll win a whole lot of those games. I’m just a little wary of the fact that he only struck out 2 guys — that’s what Perkins and Blackburn were doing during their periods of success, and it turned out to be unsustainable.

We’re in second place, two games behind an extremely flawed Tigers team that’s clutching to its winning ways, and has been doing it longer than I thought they could. I still expect them to fall apart at some point in the next couple of months. The Twins are in a pretty good spot right now. And while adding a guy or two would sure help, it’s really not worth getting so worked up over.

Really, what did you expect?