A lost life, a lost game, a lost job

Worse things happened in the Twins organization the past 24 hours or so than Wednesday's game, although that was plenty bad.

I refer to the death of Paul Bargas, the left-handed pitcher the Twins acquired from Colorado in exchange for Jose Morales after the 2010 season. Bargas never threw a pitch for the Minnesota organization; he was found during spring training 2011 to have a brain tumor. There was talk last winter that he was ready to try to play again, but ... it didn't happen. He was 23.

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The highlight, or lowlight, of
Jeff Manship's tenure this time around
was the day he pitched with the name
on his jersey misspelled.

Jeff Manship pitched one inning Wednesday, giving up three runs. This pushed his ERA up to 10.27, and the Twins optioned him back to Rochester and called up Kyle Waldrop.

I thought Waldrop was likely to make the team during spring training, but he strained his right elbow in the final week or so and spent quite a while on the disabled list. He had a 1.29 ERA in Rochester (14.3 innings) since returning, but that comes with suspect walk and strikeout rates (five walks, five K's).

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Leading up to Wednesday's nooner, Cory Provus, after talking about White Sox starter Chris Sale, told us that Twins starter Nick Blackburn "is also throwing the ball well."

This was a rather bizarre claim, considering that Blackburn's ERA entering the game was 7.45 and he had just one quality start in his 11 outings. Blackburn's 4-4 record had more to do with run support and bullpen help than his work. (And things didn't improve Wednesday.)

Provus has been a sizable upgrade on John Gordon. But talking up Blackburn's season just erodes credibility.

A new voice of summer

Cory Provus inherits the lead radio job for the Twins.

The Twins are likely to make many moves this offseason. Few will be as important to the fans as the one they made Thursday, when Cory Provus was named to replace John Gordon as the lead radio announcer.

Provus has been with the Brewers for the past few years, and it's possible that I've heard a smidgen of his work, but if so it wasn't particularly memorable. But while I don't really know how he'll do in the Twins booth, I have to assume he'll be an improvement over Gordon's inattentiveness.

Tell me where the base runners wound up after the play, Cory — heck, tell me specifically if the ball was fair or foul — and we'll be fine.

Provus represents a major move for the organization because the broadcasters are a significant, perhaps primary, connection between the fans and the games, and because the Twins history suggests he's going to be around for decades, even generations. He's 33. He could be in the booth for the next 40 years or so.

The radio gig may not be as prominent was it was when Herb Carneal was in his prime, because far more games are on TV today then when I was becoming a fan, but it remains important, remains prestigious -- prestigious enough for Ryan Lefebvre, the lead TV guy in Kansas City, to consider the job. (As a newspaper guy, I was amused to see that the Star Tribune played a piece saying that Lefebvre was the leading candidate prominently on the sports front, but played a follow-up report that he wouldn't get the job inside.)

Herb and Halsey Hall fed the interest of the young me some 40 years ago, Halsey, Herb, Gordon -- these are the men who've led the radio crews, who've given voice to Minnesota summers. Now that role, or what remains of it with the rise of daily cable game broadcasts, falls to Provus.