Trade deadline day

The Twins put on a big on-field production well before
the gates opened to unveil this. An emailed press
release would have sufficed.

Three things happened Tuesday that have me believing this morning that this will be a quiet trade deadline day for the Twins:

• Justin Morneau took part in the Tuesday press conference that revealed the logo for the 2014 All-Star Game;
• Mike Pelfrey had a poor start;
• Brian Duensing was even worse in relief.

Morneau, Pelfrey and Duensing are three veterans on expiring contracts. The Twins might be interested in retaining any of the three for 2014, but they might not — and there doesn't appear to be a great deal of demand for any of them.

That Pelfrey merely made his scheduled start suggests that he's unlikely to be moved. If a Pelfrey trade were truly in the works, the Twins would probably have used the offday to work around him, thus saving a start for the team trading for him.

The big right-hander is the one of the three who would most fit the 2014 Twins, and Tueday's clunker aside, he's been pretty good since coming off the disabled list this month (2.28 ERA in his four previous starts). Plus he's said for public consumption that he'd like to stay here.

But he also has Scott Boras as his agent, and Boras seldom skips an opportunity to take his clients into free agency and into the arms of the highest bidder. "Winning" a bidding war for a non-star is akin to losing.

So it would make sense for the Twins to trade Pelfrey now. Of course, that requires a trading partner. That may not exist at the moment.

Waiver-wire deals next month — akin to the move that brought Carl Pavano to the Twins in 2009 — are more likely than straight forward trades today for the Twins.

And now that I've said that, watch the Twins make some deals this afternoon, which would serve to illustrate how little I know.