I said last week that the Monday print column would be about the trade of Oswaldo Arcia, and so it is. A tangent or two I didn't follow in that piece:
I expected that Tampa Bay would try to protect its pitchers by restricting Arcia to designated hitter. But his first two games with the Rays came in right field.
Arcia drove in four runs in those two games. The Rays lost them both anyway; they have lost 11 in a row, a depth even the Twins haven't plumbed this year.
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One of my first thoughts at the news that Arcia had been traded to Tampa Bay for a player to be named was: "Maybe they can get Hu back."
Chih-Wei Hu is the Taiwanese right-hander the Twins sacrificed last year to get Kevin Jepsen from the Rays. I hadn't checked in on him this year, so that thought prompted a stat check.
Conclusion: Not very likely. Hu, now 22, plays for Montgomery in the Double A Southern League (same league the Twins have their Double A affiliate in), and he put up a 2.34 ERA in his first 13 starts. He also has one Triple A appearance, which didn't go as well as his one Triple A appearance last year did.
Arcia will have to be mighty productive in Tampa Bay to merit an upper-level prospect as productive as Hu has been.
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Tyler Duffey had been pretty brutal in recent starts, but he sure had a good one Sunday: two hits and no walks with eight strikeouts in eight innings.
Whatever inclination the Twins might have had to move Duffey out of the rotation has probably been shut down now.
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