Arbitration deadline day and other notes

Today is the deadline for teams to offer arbitration to free agents, which in turn ties into draft pick compensation for Type A and Type B free agents.

The Twins have a decision to announce — I'm sure they've made it already — on Carl Pavano (left), who is a Type B. (Orlando Cabrera is a Type A, but his contract specifically forbids his team from offering arbitration if he's a Type A, so there's no decision to make there.)

A list of Type A and Type B free agents can be seen here.

If the Twins offer Pavano arbitration, they'll get a draft pick if he signs elsewhere. If he accepts, the Twins are committed to re-signing him; the ballpark estimate is that it would be a $7 million deal, and the Twins might well be willing to go that route.

The other aspect of today's deadline is that the free agent market is essentially frozen until suitors know if someone like Placido Polanco will cost them a draft pick. (The conventional wisdom is that the Tigers will not offer Polanco arbitration for fear that he'll accept; they have a prospect they think is ready to slide in at second base.)

This deadline, plus the winter meetings next week, should start things moving again in the player market.

* Joe Mauer and the Great American Marketing Machine are preparing to embrace. Mauer is now a client of IMG for sponsorships and endorsements. Ron Shapiro will continue to handle Mauer's playing contract.

This is the most tangible sign to date of something that's been in the air — the notion that Mauer intends to make a push in the commercial field.

Charley Walters (Pioneer Press) suggested several days ago that Mauer would be more attractive to corporate America if he played in a bigger market. Aaron Gleeman (Circling the Bases) suggests that more endorsement dollars would make it easier for Mauer to decide to stay. Take yer pick.

I figure that if Payton Manning can become an advertising icon out of Indianapolis, Mauer can be one out of the Twin Cities.

* I've always enjoyed Patrick Reusse's work, but I'm beginning to re-think that. First came his unwarranted slam of Joe Nathan after the playoffs, now this Thanksgiving Day putdown of ST colleague Joe Christensen:

Gentleman Joe is a Star Tribune baseball writer and also the Twin Cities' leading advocate for OPS, a make-believe number that Bill James acolytes have embraced. How often must we say this, Joe? Runs scored and RBI mean something; OPS doesn't.

Reusse is becoming the press box equivalent of those medieval popes who tried to quash the heretical notion that the earth orbits the sun. Ignorance is one thing, sir; willful ignorance is another.

Around the division: Indians

The Cleveland Indians fell apart almost completely at the end of the season — 7-25 in September/October — and ended the season at 65-97. This wasn't the worst record in baseball (Washington lost 103) or even the worst in the American League (Baltimore lost 98, and Kansas City also lost 97), but it certainly wasn't good.

So naturally the organization:

• is likely to make no significant player moves this offseason, and
• replaced manager Eric Wedge with Manny Acta, who had himself been fired by those 103-loss Nationals in mid season.

Naturally.

Actually, the first is more explicable than it sounds. Cleveland, by the time of its collapse, had already done a pretty through job of exchanging its "today" players for "tomorrow" players. "Today" players being the guys who are on the roster for purposes of immediate contention but don't figure to be long-term foundation pieces. Maybe, like Casey Blake, they're getting onto the wrong side of 30; maybe, like Victor Martinez, they're going to become too expensive for the payroll.

So the challenge for Acta isn't so much 2010 and 2011 as 2012. He has the task of developing Justin Masterson into a top-of-the-rotation starter, the assignment of figuring out which of Lou Marston and Carlos Santana is the catcher of the future, the mission of picking the right place for Matt LaPorta (left field? first base?).

Then there are the reclamation projects. Is there any hope for Fausto Carmona? (Not unless he finds command of the strike zone.) Will Travis Hafner ever return to his 2004-06 levels of production? (He's going to be 33 and he's hit 21 homers the last two years combined, so no.) What's with Jhonny Peralta? (He's a good hitter for a shortstop and a mediocre one for a third baseman, so if Cleveland's sold on Asdrubal Cabrera as its shortstop, Peralta isn't helping them.) Can Grady Sizemore bounce back? (Yes. And he will.)

In most of these cases, the point isn't having these players help Cleveland contend. It's establishing enough value to exchange them, too, for players who will someday help Cleveland contend. (Sizemore and maybe Carmona are the exceptions.)

Wedge got canned because the Indians, who came oh-so-close to beating the eventual World Series champs in 2007, never really contended in either 2008 or 2009. Now CC Sabathia is in New York (by way of Milwaukee), Cliff Lee is in Philly, Martinez is in Boston and Acta is in Cleveland, with far lower expectations.

Kansas City isn't going to contend this year because there's little evidence the front office knows what it's doing and why it's doing it. Cleveland isn't going to contend either, but there is a discernible plan.

Poll stuff

Just 17 votes in last week's poll on who in the AL Central looks right now to be the chief threat to the Twins. Maybe it was the holiday; more likely, it was just an uninteresting question.

Anyway: Nine (52 percent) picked the Chicago White Sox; six (35 percent) the Detroit Tigers; two (11 percent) Cleveland Indians; zero (0 percent) the Kansas City Royals.

I'll finish the "series" around the division Monday with Cleveland.

Meanwhile ... the Hall of Fame ballots have been announced. This is the year the Veterans Committee considers managers, executives and umps; players will be next year. So no chance for Tony Oliva or Jim Kaat this time around. The Veterans Committee lists are here.

And this week the BBWAA ballot was released. That list is here.

The new poll concerns only the six players and managers on the ballots with Twins connections. Which, if any, should go in?

Around the division: Tigers

This has been the winter of rumors for the Tigers.

During and immediately after the general manager meetings early this month, there was a definite Detroit emphasis to the rumor mill. Every day, a new player: First, pitcher Edwin Jackson (13-9. 3.62 in 214 innings) was said to be available. The next day, center fielder Curtis Granderson (30 homers in an otherwise disappointing stat line) was supposedly being shopped. Then a Miguel Cabrera to Boston rumor got started.

The national baseball media is running with this theme for an obvious reason. Detroit's attendance slid about 25 percent last season. The Michigan economy isn't getting better. The Tigers have one of the highest payrolls in MLB ($119 million-plus, according to ESPN.com).

Adding one and one and one together, the conventional wisdom is that the Tigers need to shed payroll. And since the likes of Dontrelle Willis, Jeremy Bonderman and Magglio Ordonez are essentially untradeable — too much money, not enough production — the only way to drastically cut payroll is to dump the usable veterans.

I doubt a fire sale is brewing, however. That doesn't appear to be Mike Ilitch's style. The Detroit pizza magnate (Little Caesar's) has shown a willingness to lose money on his sports teams to win.

The Tigers didn't win enough last season. But the real salary problem is in the likes of Willis ($10 million to go 1-4, 7.49) and Ordonez (9 home runs for his $19 million), not in the guys who can actually play.

The Tigers will shed some money this winter. They're unlikely, for example, to re-sign Placido Polanco, and disappointing mid-summer pickups Jarrod Washburn (above) and Aubrey Huff are definitely not returning.

Perhaps the Tigers will trade Jackson or Granderson — or even Cabrera. But if those guys are moved, it will be in a baseball move, not just moving a contract off the books.

Around the division: Royals

The temptation when contemplating Kansas City is to swipe Bill Terry's line before the 1934 season, when the Giants skipper retorted when asked about the Dodgers, "Is Brooklyn still in the league?"

But the Dodgers made Terry pay for his wisecrack at the end of the season, sweeping the Giants to help the Gas House Gang Cardinals win the pennant.

And, for that matter, the Royals last season helped the Twins win the divisional title by sweeping the Tigers in mid September.

I'll sum up the Royals thusly: They have Zack Grienke (above), Joakim Soria and Billy Butler — a true ace starter, a top-flight closer, and a legitimate middle-of-the-order bat. Beyond that, not much. David DeJesus is an OK left fielder, and Alberto Callaspo is a pretty good hitter for a second baseman, and a pretty poor fielder for a second baseman. And those are their next two best players.

Worse: They have a management team that says one thing and does another. They talk about improving the on-base percentage, and everybody they bring in swings wildly at everything.

The latest case in point is Tug Hulett, an infielder who'll turn 27 in February, a .194 hitter in 75 major league plate appearances. The Royals cut him loose this month; the Boston Red Sox picked him up.

Why did the Red Sox claim him? Because Hulett has a .394 lifetime on-base percentage in the minors.

At 27, Hulett isn't going to become a star. Two other organizations have disposed of him. There's got to be a reason for that.

But if a front office says it wants to improve its OBP, and it's carrying infielders along the lines of Willie Bloomquist (.308 OBP) and Luis Hernandez (.284) and Yuniesky Betancourt (.274), you'd think .394 would get their attention.

It didn't. It doesn't. And as long as Dayton Moore (general manager) and Trey Hillman (manager) continue to operate this way, there's no need to take the Royals seriously.

A Twins fan's thankful twelve

The Yankees won 103 games last year, which means they LOST 59 times. Joe Mauer hit .365, which means he made outs in 63.5 percent of his at-bats. You can always find something to gripe about, and I do so too often.

But today is Thanksgiving, and a day to be grateful for the good things we have. I could make a list trite and profound of such things in my life, but this is a baseball blog, so I'll stick to the diamond.

Twelve things for which this Twins fan gives thanks:

1. That I get to watch Joe Mauer play on a daily basis.
2. That everybody involved is making reassuring noises about Mauer's future in Minnesota.
3. For 28 years of knowing tonight's game won't be rained out.
4. For a future of fresh air and real grass.
5. For Denard Span's consistently professional at-bats.
6. For Michael Cuddyer's willingness to vacate his preferred position for the sake of the team.
7. For Ozzie Guillen, who drew the venom from the Twins-White Sox rivalry without losing the competitiveness.
8. For the energy and enthusiasm Carlos Gomez brought to the ball park every day the past two seasons.
9. That the Twins were able to exchange Go-Go's unopened tool box for a quality shortstop.
10. That the Twins' best player doesn't get stinkin' drunk during a crucial series.
11. That Justin Morneau and Pat Neshek sound good to go.
12. That spring training is just 87 days away.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Thanks for reading.

Around the division: White Sox

The White Sox so far this offseason have had a theme, and that theme is infielders.

They have:

• Traded two players handed infield jobs at the start of 2009 — Chris Getz (second base) and Josh Fields (third base) to Kansas City for veteran Mark Teahen. Teahen is to be their third baseman.
• Said Gordon Beckham, who dislodged Fields and emerged as one of the American League's better rookies, would play second base.
• Signed Omar Vizquel (photo above) to be a reserve infielder and mentor to incumbent shortstop Alexei Ramirez.

Taking them one at a time:

Off his track record with the Royals, Teahen is exactly the kind of guy Twins fans should want the White Sox to accumulate. He was not a particularly productive hitter for Kansas City, and he's not a sensational fielder either.

But ... I haven't given up on him as a hitter, and it may be he'll blossom. The White Sox' stadium is much more hitter friendly than the Kansas City park, and the Royals the past few years have shuttled Teahen from position to position.

Beckham sounded OK with moving to second base, although the general feeling is that he'd rather be the shortstop, the position he played as an amateur. And there's no shortage of people outside the Sox camp who think he should get that chance, Ramirez having had a rough season with the glove at short last year.

But even in his shortstop days, Beckham was viewed as a guy who would play his way off short sooner or later. "Alexei's better than Gordon at short," was GM Kenny Williams's six-word answer to the question of why not Beckham at short and Ramirez back at second, where he played in 2008.

Which is where Vizquel comes in, at least in theory. The 11-time Gold Glover spent last season playing a similar infield reserve role with the Texas Rangers — where part of his job was mentoring rookie shortstop Elvis Andrus.

It might be a good cop-bad cop routine for Ramirez, with manager Ozzie Guillen (himself no slouch of a shortstop glove) continuing to ride Ramirez hard and Vizquel patting him on the back.