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.

A summer night, measured in outs

A quick preliminary note: I now contribute an editorial this week to The Free Press' opinion page. What follows is this week's offering, which published today. I'm making it do double duty because (a) it's an appropriate topic for the blog and (b) I can use a light stretch in blog duty these days. And I explain all this to forestall any suspicion of plagiarism.

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All-star games, by their nature, are about spectacle and celebration more than competition. They are, at least in theory, the best players showing off their skills.

Tuesday night's baseball All-Star Game gave us its usual subtle reminders of how it differs from its counterparts in our other major sports — not least of which is that baseball's is played in midsummer, while the others come in the dead of winter.

One bat Mariano Rivera is unlikely
to break: the All-Star Game MVP
trophy.

In the all-star games of the NFL, NBA and NHL, defense is an afterthought, making the "contest" a higher-scoring imitation of a real game (or, in the case of the NFL Pro Bowl, a mockery of the sport).

On Tuesday night, the American League held the National League's hitters to three hits, and the score was a baseball-like 3-0.

The difference might come down to this: The other games are played to a clock. Baseball is played to defense. Outs are baseball's unit of time. The game is its own timepiece.

Not that the All-Star Game today is laden with competitive fire or the subject of intense fan interest. Baseball has, for a variety of reasons, largely muted the differences between the American and National Leagues. Pervasive television and chronic interleague play gives the fans, casual or otherwise, far more opportunity to see stars pitted against each other than was once the case. The rosters are overloaded, and the managers are intent on getting as many players as possible into the game, thus limiting the exposure of the very best players.

But the "midsummer classic" still retains its ability to please and thrill — as in Tuesday's welcome and farewell for the retiring Mariano Rivera.

Moments like that will keep the All-Star game going for a long, long time.

Notes, quotes and comment

Commissioner Bud Selig had a backdrop of former
All-Stars for the announcement Wednesday that
Target Field would be the site of the 2014 All-Star game.
Behind the commish: Tony Oliva, Rod Carew, Roy Smalley
and Paul Molitor.

 

This was the least-well-kept secret in sometime, but it's official: The 2014 All-Star Game will be played in Target Field.

Call me jaded, but in this era of interleague play and cable, the All-Star Game itself doesn't interest me as much as the Futures Game does. The All-Star Game is now a promotional vehicle for Fox; the Futures Game is a glimpse of, yeah, the future.

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Also not a surprise: Scott Diamond on Wednesday dropped his appeal and began serving his  suspension. By dragging the process out beyond his Tuesday start, he pushed the time of his next start into September, when the rosters are expanded.

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What is a surprise: San Deduno didn't walk a man in his seven shutout innings Wednesday. Ninety-eight pitches, 68 strikes — better than two strikes for every ball. I didn't think that kind of performance was possible from him.

Until he does it regularly, though, I'll consider this one a fluke — a fluke that had some help from the Seattle hitters.

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Jeff Gray was outrighted to Triple A on Wednesday, which opened a spot on the 25-man roster for Chris Parmelee, who promptly stepped into the lineup as the right fielder. (He went 1-for-5 with two runs scored.) With Denard Span again day-to-day with his shoulder/collarbone issue, I would expect Parmelee to get a lot of playing time in right field (with Ben Revere playing center).

The Twins now have three openings on their 40-man roster. One will certainly be filled come September by P.J. Walters, who is apparently about ready to come off the 60-day disabled list.

As with Nick Blackburn, I don't see the Twins outrighting Gray only to turn around and restore him to the 40-man roster so that they can have him in the majors in September. I would think they could find something else to try.

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Lester Oliveros, the hard-throwing relief prospect acquired last year in the Delmon Young trade, had elbow surgery Wednesday that blew into something more than removing bone chips. It turned into Tommy John surgery, which pretty much wipes out his 2013 season.

Joe Mauer, All Star first baseman

Joe Mauer singles leading off the ninth inning in
his only All-Star Game at-bat Tuesday.

Well, the drama got sucked out of that All-Star Game in a hurry. After the first inning, the only things that could pique my interest was (a) trying to determine the most nonsensical thing to come out of Tim McCarver's mouth and (b) Joe Mauer's appearance.

My choice for the former would be some babble during Elvis Andrus' ninth inning at-bat about all the different versions of "Kansas City" and Andrus being the only Elvis to play in the World Series. Identifying Fernando Rodney's change-up as a tailing fastball was pretty good too. But there were probably other highlights that I missed, because I was working and only occasionally had the opportunity to really listen.

And Mauer entered as a first baseman, got one at-bat, and singled to center. Which makes him 3-for-9 in All-Star games. Not that there's any great significance to that.

Waiting for Mauer to play is an example of why baseball is loathe to give up the every-team-is-represented rule. They don't want to snub a media market and lose viewers. (Although that happened to Miami this year; the injury to Gioncarlo Stanton wound up removing the only Miami Marlin on the NL roster.)

But hey, it counts, right?

Mid afternoon commentary

One of the most common suggestion to fix the All-Star Game (fix as in repair, not as in rig the outcome) is to lengthen the break to four days.

Thing is, that would give us another day without meaningful games, which means there would be another day in which the main topic of baseball conversation would be how to fix the All-StarGame.

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New trend: I have received two emails this year, proportedly/implictly from the fathers of Twins players, defending their young'uns from criticism, be it mine or others. My favorite line: "(The player) has never let me down."

I find this odd, pleading the merits of one's son to a small town columnist/blogger as if he had any real influence on the Twins decision makers. If the player in question is capable of succeeding in the majors, it will happen with or without my say-so. 

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Here's a well-reasoned piece from John Bonnes on why Michael Cuddyer will be back with the Twins in 2012. Of course, the piece assumes that (a) Cuddyer will be a Type A free agent after the season and (b) that the Twins either stay in the race the rest of the way or are underwhelmed by trade offers.

Trying to read the future for Cuddyer with the Twins, I think, requires reading the future for Jason Kubel and Delmon Young as well. And that's grist for a future print column.  

All-Star speculation

Each team is guaranteed at least one player on the All-Star team. It's been quite a while since the Twins needed to use that mercy rule -- not since 2000 -- but this time around Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau and Joe Nathan, three fixtures, aren't realistic candidates.

Much of Denard
Span's value is in
his defense, and
that gets short shrift
for All-Star selections.

The Twins best all-around player this season, at least according to the statistical analysts, has been Denard Span. But Span (a) is out indefinitely with concussion syndrome and (b) looks better in the analytic stats than in the traditional ones. He's a singles-hitting center fielder who is rated highly in Wins Above Replacement in large part because of his defense (Baseball Reference's version makes him the best defensive player in the AL, the third best position player and the fifth best overall, but more than half that value comes from his glove).

Jason Kubel has had a good season at the plate, but (a) he's currently on the DL also and (b) has considerable competition among corner outfielders and DHs. Those kinds of players populate the leaderboards, and he's not there.

Pitchers? Scott Baker has been Minnesota's best starter, but a 5-4 record and 3.24 ERA isn't standing out this year. Francisco Liriano has the no-hitter, but he also has a 4-6 record and an ERA well above 4.

Few set-up men get
All-Star bids, but
Glen Perkins has been
stellar for the Twins.

This might be a good team for Ron Washington to think "need" from. What might he need on his roster in the game? A lefty specialist in the bullpen? Glen Perkins would not be a traditional All-Star type of selection, but he might be somebody to call on if Ryan Howard's up in a big situation with a right-hander on the hill. If Washington wants a pinch-runner, or a defensive sub in his outfield, Span makes sense (assuming he's available to play).

And, of course, there's Bud Selig's insistence to the managers that they have a multi-position player on their roster. Michael Cuddyer would fit that bill. But so would Michael Young, who is one of Washington's players and is hitting his usual .300+.

Bottom line: There isn't an obvious choice from this team, and who is picked will probably depend on what the All-Star roster needs after the election winners are in place.

All-Star game

* Typical Joe Mauer: A line-drive double (to left field) to drive in the game-tying run. Scored another run. And he saw 14 pitches in his three plate appearances. Ichiro saw the same number; nobody on either team saw more.

* Somebody at the AP identified the pitcher Mauer's talking to at right as Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers. Uh, no — Hamilton's an outfielder. That's Roy Halladay of the Toronto Blue Jays.

On the other hand, maybe it was Hamilton, and that's how the National League scored three runs in the second inning.

* Joe Nathan turned what started out as yet another routine inning for the AL pitchers into a nail-biter with a walk and a single. But he struck out Ryan Howard to end the threat.

*Justin Morneau was 0-for-2 but had a near extra-base hit denied in the ninth inning.

*And that greatest of the Mankato Mashers, Curtis Granderson, came through big-time for the AL with his eighth-inning triple.

Box score here.