Verlander'd

22 days into the month and this is only the 5th post of July here at TBS...our apologies. My excuse is that I was on vacation for awhile and while that one is pretty weak, Matt's excuse is that he has been busy spreading HUGE news...our very own Matt Larson will be a brand-new dad soon! Congratulations to him and to his wife Ali! That's very exciting stuff, can't wait to meet his new daughter, due sometime in mid-January.

After a nice 5-day break from humanity up in the North Woods of Wisconsin, I returned yesterday to a pleasant surprise...the Twins hadn't dropped in the standings! Yay. I didn't get to catch last night's game, but in reading the box score this morning, one thing was clear...the Twins got Verlander'd. 8 innings, 5 hits, 1 run, 9 strikeouts, 0 walks...looks like a Verlander line to me. With the loss last night, the Twins have now lost 10 straight games against the Tigers dating back to last year. If the Twins want to be in the AL Central race come Monday morning, they had better reverse this luck quickly, starting tonight against Max Scherzer. The Twins throw Brian Duensing out there tonight and Duensing has pitched well in July so far with 2 wins and a 2.01 ERA in 22.1 innings. Scherzer hasn't had very good luck against the Twins in his career with a 9.13 ERA in 4 career starts against our hometown team.

The Twins get Jason Kubel back tonight after an extended stint on the DL. Kubel was pretty much the Twins lone bright spot during the first two months of the season, hitting .310/.355/.465 with 30 RBIs in the first 52 games of the season. He hasn't played in a Major League game since May 30th when he went down with a foot injury. During his most recent 5-game rehab stint with Triple-A Rochester, Kubel 6 hits in 18 at-bats with a HR, 2 RBIs, 3 walks and 4 Ks. Hopefully he can provide a spark to an offense that has struggled lately, scoring 5 of more runs only twice in 9 games since the All-Star break. Kubel's activation means that Scott Baker, Denard Span and Justin Morneau (and Kevin Slowey) are the only Twins' players that remain on the disabled list. Baker is expected to be activated for a start tomorrow against the Tigers.

During the "critical 12-game stretch" to start the 2nd half, the Twins are 5-4 so far which isn't great, but it means they haven't lost any ground either. They are currently 6 games out of 1st with 64 games left to play. In order to get to 85 wins, which is how many I believe it will take to win the division this year, they need to go 39-25 (.609, 99-win pace)...not an impossible task,  but getting more difficult with each loss. To put it in perspective, the Tigers only need to go 33-31 (.515, 84-win pace) in their final 64 games to get to 85 wins. If Bill Smith decides to add a piece or two within the next 9 days, I'd like to see what we can get in the way of serviceable relievers. That said, my confidence in Smith to make a savvy trade or two is not very high. Hope is still alive though, Go Twins!

Now is the Time to Play it Smart

At 18-37, the Twins are effectively out of the race for the AL Central crown...this is not new news. They're 15.5 games behind Cleveland coming into play today and the astronomical win-loss record they would have to put together from this point forward to win even 90 games is on the edge of ridiculous (for those that are curious, they'd have to go 72-35 from here on out). Everyone and their mom around the interwebs is talking about how the Twins are likely going to be sellers come the trade deadline and while I don't disagree with that sentiment, it can not be said emphatically enough that now is the time for the Twins to be smart and play their cards right.

When you're a "seller" that means a) things haven't gone well for you this year and b)you're not expecting them to get better quickly enough to contend. In terms of getting a good deal, that leaves you at a disadvantage. When you're a seller, you're essentially trying to dump salary or perhaps get a load of prospects in return for a more valuable Major Leaguer. The one thing the Twins absolutely need to keep in mind throughout the next two months is that they have both Michael Cuddyer and Joe Nathan's salaries coming off the books at the end of the season. That's $21,750,000 in salary between those two players alone. In addition to that, Jason Kubel, Matt Capps, and Jim Thome's salaries are also expiring at the end of the season, good for another $15,400,000 off the payroll number. In total, that's $37,150,000 in salary coming off the books at the end of the season, which is about 33% of the current payroll figure ($113M). Granted, yes, you would have to replace those guys, but aside from Kubes you can probably pretty easily replace that production at a fraction of the cost.

So what's the point I'm trying to make? What I'm trying to highlight here is the fact that the Twins don't absolutely NEED to be sellers. Sure, it would be nice to get a couple of prospects for Kubel or Slowey, there isn't much debating that the farm system is in need of an influx in talent...but it isn't worth trading either player unless you're getting something decent in return. The Twins will have enough flexibility with the payroll at the end of this season to make a lot of changes, they don't need to make bad deals now to preemptively try and patch up the holes on a terrible team. The people in the Twins' front office need to be both shrewd and smart right now because for as bad as things look, there is no reason to panic.

I don't think there is much debate that the middle infield is of utmost concern for this team going into next season. That said, considering the investment that the Twins have made in Tsuyoshi Nishioka, it's unlikely that they will be in the market for a 2nd basemen in the off-season. Here's one option that's intriguing:

Kelly Johnson - 2B - Diamondbacks - 29-years-old
Johnson has had somewhat of a down year so far this season, but he owns a career .794 OPS and is a solid defensive 2nd-baseman as well. Johnson has legitimate 20-25HR power and though he does strikeout a lot, he has managed a career .347 OBP. Johnson is set to make $5.85M this season, but could probably be had for $6-$8M per and would be an immediate upgrade over any of the options the Twins currently have at 2nd base.

As for Shortstop, the Twins clearly have a need there. Here are some of the better options:

Jose Reyes - SS - Mets - 27-years-old
Though this is likely a long-shot for the Twins, it's at least worth mentioning that a shortstop of Reyes' caliber will likely be on the market at the end of this season (provided he doesn't re-sign before the end of the year). Reyes has a solid .774 career OPS and while he's no gold-glove at shortstop, he would be light-years better than anything the Twins have, both offensively and defensively.

J.J. Hardy - SS - Orioles - 28-years-old
I find this scenario unlikely as well, considering that a) the Twins traded him away for two garbage relievers and b) there were rumblings that the coaching staff wasn't that impressed with Hardy. The Twins would have to be stupid not to consider this option, however, because the fact of the matter is that the Twins are getting schooled this season on the importance of middle-infield defense and Hardy, when healthy, is about as good as it gets at shortstop.

Rafael Furcal - SS - Dodgers - 33-years-old
While Furcal is an older option, his .285/.350/.410 hitting line would fit nicely into the Twins lineup. With Furcal, the question is always "can he stay healthy" as he has seen significant DL time in 3 out of the last 4 seasons. When he has been healthy he been a good producer offensively and his glove, well, it's been good enough (.965 career Fielding% at SS). The tricky thing with Furcal is that if he reaches 600 PAs this year (unlikely), his $12M option for 2012 become automatic. I can't see the Dodgers picking up a $12M option on him otherwise, so it's likely that Furcal will be a free-agent at the end of this season.

Other options include Yuniesky Betancourt, Ramon Santiago, and Jack Wilson, but to be completely frank, none of those options are much better than the middle-infield options the Twins have had this season.

Given that the Twins will likely have $20-$30M to spend during this coming off-season, using $8M-$10M of that money to fix their shortstop problem should be a no-brainer and they really couldn't go very wrong with any of the three options above. I would be ecstatic to have Reyes, but I find that to be so unlikely, it's not even worth getting excited about. The bottomline with all of this is that the Twins don't need to be aggressive sellers in the next two months and, in fact, they shouldn't make a deal unless they're getting quality in return. Bill Smith could go a long way in repairing his image with Twins fans if he makes patient, smart moves this year that end up paying off next year or down the road.

Dear Twins Front Office...

So you had to go and make a deal, that's understandable, I mean, we were all kinda eagerly waiting to see what you would do, hopeful of maybe landing a Lee or Oswalt type but more realistically expecting a lesser pitcher like Lilly or Carmona. Imagine my surprise when I received a text from 'domedog' last night saying that you had traded away one your most valuable trade pieces AND another minor leaguer for...Matt Capps? I fancy myself a fairly rational guy and I also think I have a decent grasp on some of the more advanced stats. Just so we're clear, number of career saves is NOT, I repeat, not an advanced stat. Given what I've seen here, with you trading Ramos (and Testa) for Capps, you rational must have been something like, "Capps has a lot of saves, and he was an all-star, so he will be able to help the Twins down the stretch."

I guess my question is, you do know that every team is required to have a representative at the all-star game (I mean, even the Royals (i know right?) had a player there) and that being an all-star, especially these days, doesn't mean much right? Another question might be, you do know that 'saves' is one of the most fickle stats in baseball and that they are much more situational than substantive...right? Yet another question would be, "HOW DOES THIS TRADE IMPROVE THE TEAM?" Here's some other opinions on the matter, they're almost universally against it:

Aaron Gleeman - summarized: you paid too much for something that's not that different than what you have

Josh's Thoughts - summarized: WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?

Twins Geek - summarized: general hatred of the trade broken down into 8 parts

Over The Baggy - summarized: Bill Smith is perhaps wise, but doesn't listen to his own good advice

Twins Target - summarized: a positive review of the trade, the only one I could find (didn't check the papers)

So there you have it, 80% unfavorable, 20% favorable, and that's a very brief sampling, by no means exhaustive, but I'm gonna go out on a limb on say that the opinion of the trade among fans is mostly unfavorable.

In the Over The Baggy piece, I was particularly surprised by a quote that came from you Bill, when you said, "There is a fine line between patience and impatience or patience and panic, you don’t want to overreact either way." Really...because this move strikes me as ill-conceived and poorly thought out. Not only that, it wreaks of impatience. Gleeman did a nice job, as he always does, of breaking down the trade from a statistical standpoint and no matter how you look at it, this trade doesn't make sense. Bill, you've done an ok job trying to fill Terry Ryan's shoes and even Ryan didn't always pull the right strings, but I'm fairly confident that he wouldn't have made this deal.

My thoughts on the deal? If it doesn't make the team obviously better, and it costs you what is arguably your most valuable trading piece, then why make the deal? It just seems like a deal that didn't need to be made. My suggestion is to hire Aaron Gleeman or someone with a similar grasp on sabremetrics to help you in avoiding a mistake like this in the future.

Yee-haw! Twins Win 19-1

Two days, 39 hits, 29 runs and most importantly, two wins. Playing the bottom-feeders of the American League can be a great confidence boost, as can a 19-1 rout. I have to say, it was great to watch, it's been awhile since the Twins had that big of a laugher. I thought the most encouraging and impressive performance of the night (aside from Liriano's dominant outing) was Joe Mauer going 5 for 5 with 7 RBIs. For a guy who's been having an off year by his standards, it was a great step in the right direction. It was also a night of 4s for young Danny Valencia who hit a grand-slam with 4 runs, 4 RBIs and 4 hits. Since Liriano's 1.2 inning debacle against Detroit on July 9th, he has only give up 2 runs in 21.2 innings, striking out 22 while only walking 6.

Congratulations to Matt Garza, former Twin pitcher who threw the 5th no-hitter in the Major Leagues this year and first in Tampa Bay Rays history. After having been no-hit 3 times in the past two seasons, it's good to see the Rays get one, too bad there were only 17,000 people there to see it...

Twins trade news has become almost non-existent lately. Roy Oswalt said yesterday that he doesn't care which team he goes to, as long as they are a contender and are will to pick up his $16MM option in 2012. I still doubt the Twins land him, mostly because of that high price tag. Dan Haren was traded to the Angels over the weekend and promptly proceeded to get beat AND get hurt in his debut last night. Doesn't look too serious though.

The Twins are now 8-4 since the All-Star break which is encouraging. They've scored an average of 6.6 runs over those 12 games and given up an average of 3.6 which is a solid recipe for winning baseball. Twins starting pitchers have been the eventual game winners in 5 out of the last 6 games and came within mere outs last night of a 3rd shutout in their last 6 games. Tonight is Carl Pavano v. Bruce Chen, hopefully the hot hitting continues.

Come On Guys...

Step 3 to getting back into 1st place was "win the winnable games." These last two games qualify as the Twins were/are playing ONE OF THE WORST TEAMS IN THE AMERICAN LEAGUE. Not only are you now right back to where you started the 2nd half at 3 1/2 games out 1st, you've lost two games that should have been easy victories. This team is infuriating. Last night, right after the Twins scratched back to tie the game at in the 7th, Jose Mijares comes in, walks the leadoff guy and coughs up what turned out to be the winning run.

Come on Twins, what more do you need? You have the new stadium, you have ~40,000 people at every home game, you have the awe-inspiring lineup, you have all the tools to be a winning baseball team yet you continue to stumble and sputter at the WORST times. Admittedly, I don't get to watch many Twins games on TV. I live in Chicago, I don't have MLB.com's season pass so save for the rare nationally televised game, or when the Twins are playing the White Sox, I don't get to watch. But in the games I have watched, this team seems to lack urgency. It would be a tough argument to call their play on field "lazy" but it wouldn't be a stretch to call it 'uninspired.' In the recently concluded White Sox series, they seemed to have a little fire, which seems all but gone in this current series.

It's hard to say what kind of impact the absence of Justin Morneau has had on the offense. The Twins are 4-6 in the 10 games that Morneau has so-far missed, but they've been on a similar trajectory for the past month and half. The reports of late have not been that encouraging and it's looking unlikely that he rejoins the team this weekend. Concussions are tricky things so the Twins will probably be careful with this injury.

The Twins made it official today that Nick Blackburn will be replaced by Brian Duensing in the rotation and Duensing will start Saturday against the Orioles. Unfortunately, Blackburn will now be pitching out of the bullpen when I wish they would just invent an injury for him and send him back down to Triple-A for "rehab" starts...for the rest of the season. Twins Geek illustrated just how bad Twins pitchers have been over the past month and a half, with Blackburn leading the way. In an ideal world, Duensing would duplicate his effort from last season and provide the Twins with a 3rd reliable starter. If not, pretty much anything is better than the garbage Blackburn was throwing out there. And the Twins gave him how much money?...oh my.

The Twins continue to be pretty quiet in the trade market, which isn't a bad thing, but I think they waste an opportunity to improve this year's team if they don't make a trade. We don't need an ace, we just need some consistency.

Why the Peavy Trade is a Bad Trade

Living in Chicago, I've listened to the sports talk radio guys here fawn over Jake Peavy much the same way they have fawned over Jay Cutler since he was traded to the Bears. No doubt, the Peavy to the White Sox was one of the surprises of this year's action leading up to the trade deadline, but when you look at this deal through the critical lens of reality, the conclusion I am left with is that this was a bad deal for the Sox to make. Numbers don't lie so let's take a look at them.

Peavy has pitched for the San Diego Padres for his entire career up until now and, thus, has benefited greatly from pitching in PETCO Park, which everybody knows is one the most pitcher friendly parks in all of baseball. To me, the home/road splits for Jake Peavy foretell what is to come.

Career Home ERA: 2.83

Career Home WHIP: 1.092

Career Home BAA: .219

Career Home BAbip: .288

Career Road ERA: 3.84

Career Road WHIP: 1.299

Career Road BAA: .246

Career Road BAbip: .289

Another reason I don't think that Peavy will look the same with the White Sox is the fact that he will be playing against American League opponents instead of National League ones. What are his stats against the American League?

Career Interleague ERA: 3.29

Career Interleague WHIP: 1.172

Career Interleague BAA: .235

Career Interleague BAbip: .281

The above numbers show what the White Sox can expect when Peavy finally starts pitching for them, which will probably not be until 2010. Peavy's ERA is a full point higher when not pitching at PETCO, and not only that his numbers against American League opponents are substantially higher overall. No doubt he will continue to be a valuable pitcher, but the Sox are not getting the lights-out, ace-type of pitcher than merits trading away 4 pitchers, 2 of whom have major league experience.

Clayton Richard was, at the time of the trade, in the starting rotation with the Sox and had performed decently with a 4.65 ERA in 14 starts. Aaron Poreda was considered to be the Sox #1 prospect and had compiled a 2.65 ERA with 244Ks in 281 innings in the minor leagues. Dexter Carter was another highly-touted propect in the Sox system who had compiled a 2.80 ERA with 232Ks in 186.2 innings at Rookie and Low-A ball. Adam Russell, the 4th player traded to the Padres in the deal, was the "worst" out of the bunch but still had a decent minor league track record, loggin a 3.82ERA with 400Ks in 556.1 innings during 6 minor league seasons.

If I'm the Padres, this is a major win. First of all, you got rid of a guy who was going to make $56 million dollars between now and the end of the 2012 season. Second, you got Clayton Richard, who can step into the rotation immediately (and probably benefit greatly from pitching in such spacious confines). Thirdly, you got 2 of the White Sox top 10 pitching prospects, one of whom is probably going to be pitching for you as soon as next season.

Like I said, when you look at this trade through the lens of reality, you see how much of a gamble this is for the Sox, not only in what they gave up to get Peavy, but also in how much they are expecting of a guy who is a) coming from the one of the best pitchers ballparks in the National League and b) has a history of injuries. U.S. Cellular Field is one of the top 5 most hitter friendly parks in baseball AND it's the American League. My prediction, Peavy falls on his face, can't wait to watch it happen.

All stats provided by Baseball Reference.