#OldFriends watch

A number of ex-Twins signed minor league deals in recent days.

* Logan Forsythe is now in camp with the Texas Rangers.

Off what we saw during his 50 games with the Twins last year after they got him in the Brian Dozier trade, it might seem surprising that he had to settle for a minor league deal -- he was solid defensively, with a noticably better arm than Dozier, and had a .356 OBP, which would look mightly good on this squad.

But he had little power -- six extra base hits in those 178 at-bats with the Twins, all doubles -- and hasn't really hit for two seasons. Plus he's 32. So, yeah, he's not somebody you sign with the intent of sticking him in the lineup.

* Trevor Plouffe re-upped with the Phillies.

The former first-rounder, also 32, got 12 at-bats last summer for the Phils and spent most of the season in Triple A. I don't know that the Phillies are thilled with Maikel Franco at third base, but I also know that Plouffe isn't a superior alternative.

I'll give Plouffe credit for perserverance, though. The man has made, per Baseball Reference, more than $22 million in his major league career. Presumably he doesn't have to take life in the minors for the income.

* Francisco Liriano returned to the Pirates on a minor league deal.

Pittsburgh is where "Frankie Franchise" turned himself around about six years ago. In 2013-2015 he racked up a 3.26 ERA in 510 innings. Not a workhorse, top-of-the-rotation guy, but a really good rotation piece. But things went sour for him in 2016 and the Pirates unloaded his contract on the Blue Jays, and he's been bouncing around since.

If he has a major league future, it's probably as a reliever. The Tigers had him in their rotation last year, and there wasn't a lot to like in his numbers. And he's 35 now, which seems kind of impossible.

A minor-league deal seems right for him at this point. The head-scratcher is his tale of not getting any offers at all -- and then seven, all pretty much identical, arrived on the same day.

It's not collusion if 30 teams have 30 different formulas that all conclude that 2+2=4. It is odd that everybody would run the numbers on Liriano on the same day.

Notes, quotes and comment (Game Two edition)

A taut pitchers duel Wednesday turned into home run derby late, and the winning team may well feel a bit worse about itself afterwards than it did before the game.

The bullpen was certainly not a weakness for the Houston Astros during their 101-win regular season, but A.J. Hinch certainly cannot feel confident in his relief staff right now. Closer Ken Giles and All-Star setup man Chris Devenski had difficulty closing out the Dodgers in Game Two, and those struggles have precedent. Devenski has pitched so far this postseason to a 8.44 ERA, Giles to an 8.22 ERA.

Hinch found a way around those struggles at the end of the ALCS -- using Lance McCullers, starter, for four innings of relief work in Game 7. It's likely that the rotation shift the Astros announced before Game Two -- McCullers will start Game Three on Friday, with Charlie Morton pushed back to Saturday -- was designed to make it possible to bring McCullers back in a Game Seven or even Game Six in relief.

But for that to matter the Astros need to get that far. And Hinch has only one Justin Verlander in his rotation. He needs his bullpen to do a better job.

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Each team has a starting pitcher who will presumably spend his 50s and 60s (and probably part of his 40s) going to Cooperstown one weekend each summer to sit on the veranda of the Otesaga Hotel swapping stories with other legends of the game.

It's a plauable assertion that the starts of Clayton Kershaw for the Dodgers and Justin Verlander for the Astros are must-win games for their respective teams. Lose one of their starts, and the series gets much more difficult.

In that sense, each team got the minimum they needed out of the first two games.

---

The Astros have two former Twins on their active roster for the Series: Francisco Liriano, the sole lefty in their bullpen, and catcher Juan Centeno.

Liriano came in a deadline deal with the Toronto Blue Jays. He was a struggling starter with Toronto (6-5, 5.88 in 18 starts) and he's been a struggling reliever for the Astros (4.40 in 14.1 innings spread over 20 appearances). Most striking to me in his stat line with the Astros: 10 walks to 11 strikeouts.

Centeno got just 57 major league plate appearances this season (and more than 250 in Triple A). His primary purpose, presumably, is as a security blanket that will allow Hinch to deploy Evan Gattis as the designated hitter in the three Houston games.

Ex-Twins watch: Francisco Liriano

The Toronto infield gathers around Francisco Liriano
after he was hit in the head by a line drive Saturday. Liriano
was removed from the game and taken to a hospital
but cleared to fly with his teammates to Toronto.

It was a frightening moment Saturday when two former Twins teammates faced each other in the eighth inning of Game Two of the Toronto-Texas series. Carlos Gomez smacked a 102-mph line drive off the back of Francisco Liriano's noggin, with the ball flying into center field for a base hit.

Liriano remained on his feet but was pulled from the game, then taken to a hospital by ambulance but was there cleared to fly back to Toronto with the team.

The big lefty was having a difficult season in Pittsburgh when the Pirates traded him to Toronto in a deal that seemed more about dumping his contract than the return.

He went 2-2, 2.92 in 49.1 innings with the Jays, eight starts and two relief outings, then picked up the win in that extra-inning wild card tilt with Baltimore. There had been some chatter leading into that game that Liriano would be a better choice to start than Marcus Stroman, but obviously manager John Gibbons didn't see it that way. 

Liriano is presumably a power arm in the bullpen who can go multiple innings for the postseason, and that's a valuable weapon.

Ex-Twins watch: Francisco Liriano

Francisco Liriano delivers a pitch in what proved to be
his final start for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

One of the many deadline deals on Monday saw Francisco Liriano shipped from Pittsburgh to Toronto -- back to the American League for the guy Minnesotans knew as "Frankie Franchise" a decade ago.

It's been a rough season for the lefty, who seemingly found a home in Pittsburgh after years on inconsistency in the AL with the Twins and (briefly) White Sox. In 2013-15, Liriano put up a 3.26 ERA for the Pirates while going a combined 35-25, and his underlying statistics said he was actually pitching to that level.

This year: 5-11, 5.46 and leading the majors in walks allowed.

The Pirates even included two of their top 10 prospects in the deal, which returned Drew Hutchison -- who, yes, won 13 games last year for the Blue Jays but had an ERA of 5.57 and had all of 12.2 major league innings this year.

All of which suggests that the Pirates didn't think they could easily fix whatever is going wrong with Liriano and wanted out of the remaining year-plus of his contract -- and that there wasn't much of a market for him.

Contemplating Francisco Liriano

Francisco Liriano fires Sunday against the New York
Mets, He struck out 12 in six innings.

The Monday print column was in large part a review of the new book "Big Data Baseball," and in the process I mentioned in passing that author Travis Sawchik describes what the Pittsburgh Pirates did to repair Francisco Liriano's pitching.

Liriano, of course, spent years with the Twins, alternating between periods of dominance and periods of futility. He was traded to the White Sox in 2012 (in a deal that brought Eduardo Escobar to the Twins) and signed with the Pirates as a free agent during that following offseason. He's still with Pittsburgh, racking up a 16-8, 3.02 mark in 2013 and a 7-10, 3.38 line in 2014. (The Twins shelled him on Wednesday this week, but on Sunday he struck out 12 in six innings against the Mets. He is 2-4, 3.86 so far this year.)

His ERA in seven (full or partial) seasons with the Twins was 4.33; his ERA with Pittsburgh, including Sunday's outing, is 3.29, more than a run lower. So yeah, the Pirates have gotten more from Frankie than the Twins did. What did they do? And could the Twins have done the same things?

Sawchik offers three specific changes. One I think might be irrelevant, a second makes sense to me and the third I find dubious enough that I suspect the Pirates fed him a bill of goods.

The three changes:

• They had him raise his arm slot under the theory that a more overhand delivery would limit his wildness "east-west," or inside-outside. 
• They paired him with a superior pitch-framing catcher (Russell Martin), whose adept receiving got him a handful of extra called strikes a game.
• They had him drop his four-seam fastball and replace it with a two-seam fastball (sinker).

The arm slot thing, maybe; but the fact of the matter is, Liriano still throws fewer pitches in the strike zone than anybody. (And he tops the charts in getting hitters to chase pitches out of the zone.)

The pitch-framer, absolutely. Martin is near the top of the charts in that stat annually, and the Twins have not made that a priority when choosing catchers. If Martin got him, say, one extra called strike an inning, that's huge. The difference between, say, a 2-1 count and a 1-2 count is tremendous.

The specifics of the pitch repertoire, I question.

The Twins of Liriano's time, with Rick Anderson as pitching coach, were big believers in the two-seam fastball. I have to believe they pushed the two-seamer on Liriano. Whether he brought it or not is another matter. (I think he did, at least at times.)

Beyond that, I think the pitch the Pirates encouraged Liriano to throw more often was the changeup. Last year, according to Baseball Info Systems. Liriano threw only 43 percent fastballs. He threw 32 percent sliders and 25 percent changeups. In 2011, BIS says, he threw 52 percent fastballs, 29 percent sliders and 20 percent changes -- and I have a hard time believing he threw 20 percent change ups at any time with the Twins.

New pitching coach Neil Allen is a more vocal proponent of changing speeds than Anderson was. Allen might have been more effective with Liriano than Anderson was. We'll never know.

Winter Meetings, Day Three: Rumors and rumors of rumors

For a brief while Wednesday, it sounded as if the Twins had landed Ervin Santana. Then the New York writer who had sounded that alarm backed off, and things died down.

For the record, as I have no real objection to signing Santana in and of itself . I do object -- strenously -- to the continued accumulation of veteran arms for the apparent purpose of keeping guys like Alex Meyer and Trevor May in the minors.

Sign Santana? How about getting rid of Mike Pelfrey first? Ryan has said this week that Pelfrey is coming to camp as a starter "and we'll go from there." We know where we're going from there. The veteran will have his squatter's rights on a rotation job, and they won't pull the plug on him until mid-May. That's the established pattern.

I won't trust the Twins to make the right call on Pelfrey until he's gone.

---

The Twins reportedly made a pitch to Francisco Liriano, but the lefty re-signed with Pittsburgh. Can't blame him. There's a comfort level there. He's had success there.

Ditto Pat Neshek, who signed with Houston. Supposedly the Twins were looking to bring him back, but the separation between him and the Twins was ugly enough that I would think he'd be reluctant to return.

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Rule 5 draft this morning. That might wind up being the highlight for the Twins at this winter meetings. Considering some of the free agents they've been linked to (Kyle Kendrick?), that might not be a bad thing. Doing nothing is preferable to signing Kendrick.

Notes, quotes and comment

Because three colors aren't enough.

Word leaked out almost a week ago that the Twins were going to change the home uniform -- most notably, dropping the pinstripes, adding gold as a drop shadow to the letters and numbers and reversing the name from red with blue outline to blue with red outline.

The new look was officially released Monday, and I'm no more impressed with the result than I expected to be, which was not much at all.

My take on this stuff is: Simple is better. The uniforms I think look best -- the Tigers, the Royals, the Yankees, the White Sox  -- are two-color schemes, white and something. The more colors you're working with, the busier the design becomes.

Which might be why they dropped the pinstripes. to clean up the design some. I prefer the pinstripes to the gold.

The gold is supposed to mimic the Kasota stone of Target Field, and I suppose that, as one who has now lived in Mankato more than half my life (and spent most of my career here) I should like that. But the stone is good enough. They don't have to put it on the uniform too.

Ah well. There are worse changes coming. Someday MLB is going to start putting ads on uniforms. I expect they'll let the NBA go first with that, but it's coming. That will be a monstrosity. This is not.

---

Francisco Liriano, of whom I wrote in Monday's post, declined the qualifying offer Monday. So did the other 11 free agents who received QOs.

Another ex-Twin, Michael Cuddyer, not only declined his one-year $15.3 million QO from the Colorado Rockies, he signed a two-year deal with the New York Mets for $21 million.

Nothing with Cuddyer this offseason has made any sense to me. I was surprised the Rox made the qualifying offer to begin with. I figured Cuddy was pretty much a lock to accept it. I could not imagine the Mets giving up the 15th pick in June's draft to sign him. Wrong once, twice, thrice.

So discount this next prediction as much as you wish: The Mets will sign at least one more of these QO free agents, onthe basis that it's easier to swallow giving up a second-round pick for Cuddyer.

The Rockies clearly read the market better than I, or most outsider observers did. They're getting a compensation pick. We'll see if the Mets have the better read on Cuddyer's next two years.

Financially, it's an ... interesting decision by Cuddyer. Subtract the Rockies' qualifying offer from his Mets deal, and he's effectively playing in 2016 for $5.7 million. This leads me to surmise that he's leaving some money on the table, that he'd make more if he went year-to-year.

But I suppose that if he has another 49-game season in 2015 he might get Jason-Kubel'd and find that he didn't have a 2016 season.

Plus there's this: The Mets believe they're on the cusp of contention. Cuddyer has, with this contract added in, made roughly $100 million in his career. He can afford to chase a ring.

A high price for innings

Today is the deadline for Francisco Liriano (and 11 other free agents) to accept or decline their $15.3 million qualifying offers.

Liriano is perceived to have a difficult choice. After two strong seasons with Pittsburgh, the lefty might be in position to cash in with a sizable multi-year deal. But ... the qualifying offer means his new team would have to surrender a high draft pick, And Liriano has not been noted for his consistency or predictability.

Here's something else about the former Twin that might give a possible suitor pause: Even while compiling a combined ERA with the Pirates of 3.20 the past two seasons, Liriano has pitched 161 and 162.1 innings. Even the higher figure is barely enough to qualify for the ERA title.

He's been effective, certainly, but he's hardly a durable innings-eating ace.

Assuming that the Pirates expect Liriano to bear roughly the same workload in 2015 as he has in 2013 and '14, they're offering to pay him something in excess of $930,000 $93,000 per inning, or $310,000 $31,000 per out. That doesn't sound like a bargain to me.

Of course, there are other alternatives. If Lirano accepts the qualifying offer, it cuts off his free agency -- but he and the Pirates would still be free to work out a longer-term deal, probably at a lower "average annual value" than the $15.3 million.

Whatever choice Liriano makes, I won't weep for him. I don't see a lot of downside to a one-year deal for $15.3 million. If he turns it down today and finds a weaker market for his services than he expects, that's his fault.

(Update: A reader who is obviously better at basic math than I am kindly notified me of the error in my per-inning and per-out calculations. While I am embarrassed, I still doubt that $15.3 million is, or should be, a market rate for 160 or so innings.)

Take the money and run

Michael Cuddyer
was limited to 205
plate appearances
in 2014, but he got
a qualifying offer.

Monday was the deadline for teams to extend qualifying offers to their free agents. This was only a theoretical issue for the Twins, as their only free agent at this point is Jared Burton, and he's a free agent because the Twins declined to pick up his option, which was a fraction of the $15.3 million price tag for a QO.

In all, 12 players were extended qualifying offers, which is a tick above average (a total of 22 offers in the first two years of this system). No player accepted the qualifying offer the past two winters, but I expect at least one will this year.

Old friend Michael Cuddyer should. Emphatically so. That the Rockies made the offer astounded many outside observers. Cuddyer will turn 36 before Opening Day, he's started to have some injury issues, his defensive abilities have declined ... and the qualifying offer means a team will have to surrender a high draft pick to sign him.

I don't think that's happening. Cuddy should learn from the experience of Kendrys Morales, Nelson Cruz and Stephen Drew last year and take the QO. The down side: He's guaranteed $15.3 million. I wish I had a bad choice that would be that rewarding.

Who else would be well advised to take the money and run? In my view:

• Cruz got burned last year; he turned down Texas' QO and wound up with a one year deal in Baltimore for a bit more than half the Texas offer. He led the majors in homers, true, but he's still the same player who couldn't find a market last winter. 
• David Robertson is a closer. Yeah, he had a good season for the Yankees. Few teams are eager to commit that much money to a ninth-inning guy, much less surrender a draft pick for the privilege. 
• Francisco Liriano is an interesting case. He's had two good years for Pittsburgh. But has that erased his reputation for inconsistency? Are teams willing to commit dollars and years to him -- and give up that draft pick to boot? And even if there is a market, Liriano might be better off sticking in a place he's been successful. This is a more difficult call, frankly, than Cuddyer, Cruz and Robertson. 

The other eight ... well, I don't think any of them are likely to accept, although I suspect that some will find the market less welcoming than they expect. 

Notes, quotes and comment

Francisco Liriano wears a Negro Leagues throwback uniform
honoring the Homestead Grays during a recent start.

The Twins on Thursday released blogosphere idol Anthony Slama.

Anthony Slama is
29 and a free agent.

Slama put up dominant numbers at every stop in the minors (until this year, when he was awful), but the Twins never trusted his ability enough to give him a clean shot in the majors. They didn't see ERAs of 1.38 with 59 strikeouts in 39 innings; they saw mediocre velocity and mediocre command. They saw a pitcher who didn't get his outs on strikes, and they doubted that would work in the majors.

And -- not that seven innings is definitive proof of anything -- his limited opportunities in the majors matched the pessimistic view of his skills.

It should also be noted that Slama spent much, maybe most, of the 2011-12 seasons on the Triple A disabled list, which made it easier for the Twins to bypass him when looking for bullpen reinforcments. Why call up somebody who keeps getting hurt?

The Twins exposed Slama to the Rule 5 draft each of the past two offseasons, and nobody bit, suggesting that the Twins' take on him was matched by other organizations.

---

I'm rather surprised, given how many people seem to blame Ron Gardenhire/Rick Anderson for the Twins pitching woes, that this piece on Francisco Liriano's resurgence in Pittsburgh didn't get more play on my Twitter feed.

According to Howard Megdal, the Pirates pitching coach increased Liriano's hip turn early in his delivery. This supposedly both (a) improved his control and (b) increased the movement on his pitches.

Ray Searage, the Pittsbugh pitching coach, doesn't have the reputation or longevity of Anderson or Don Cooper, the White Sox pitching coach. But if he did indeed fix Liriano, he accomplished something the other two could not.

---

LaTroy Hawkins' next appearance will tie him with
Sparky Lyle for 24th on the all-time games pitched list.

Former Twin LaTroy Hawkins on Thursday made his 898th major league appearance, which ties him with former Twin Jim Kaat for 25th on the all-time games pitched list. Number 21 on the list: Eddie Guardado (908), who this weekend will be inducted into the Twins Hall of Fame.

Hawkins is second among active pitchers, trailing only Mariano Rivera. Rivera is fourth on the all-time list and the leader among right-handed pitchers. No. 1 is (former Twin) Jesse Orosco (1,252), followed by Mike Stanton and John Franco.

The Hawk, 40, pitches now for the Mets, his tenth team in the majors. He's never been in one place for more than two years except with the Twins (nine seasons). Presumably he'll pitch as long as anyone will have him.

Three left-handers: Diamond, Duensing, Liriano

Scott Diamond: Will
he be the starter
or Opening Day?

LaVelle Neal tweeted Friday afternoon that Scott Diamond, who had elbow surgery in December to remove a bone chip, "has begun his throwing program but it's really iffy if he will be ready for Opening Day."

Obviously it would be ideal for him to make all 32 or 33 starts, but in the grand scheme of things it's more important for Diamond to be healthy when he takes the mound. If he isn't ready to pitch the opener on April 1, so be it.

Given Ron Gardenhire's preference for a veteran for the opener, I rather expect him to give the ball to Kevin Correia anyway. True, he's not close to being the best starter in the likely Twins rotation, but he is a veteran. And besides, whoever gets the ball on April 1 figures to be matched against Justin Verlander anyway. The Twins aren't particularly likely to win that one.

---

At the end of the 2012 season, Terry Ryan said (more than once) that Brian Duensing and Anthony Swarzak had been told to prepare this winter to compete for rotation jobs.

Since then, of course, the Twins have signed veterans Correia, Mike Pelfrey and Rich Harden and traded for Vance Worley. And, as noted earlier this week, Swarzak has broken a couple of ribs and won't be ready to throw when camp opens next week.

I never really took Swarzak's candidacy very seriously. Duensing is another matter.

Duensing is a theoretically viable candidate because he's had some success in the past (2009-10) as a starter, and because he's left-handed.

He's been much better as a reliever the past two years, largely because he's struggled to get right-handed hitters out. My theory last winter, which is still my notion, is that he needs a better change-up.

If that's the case, it should be pretty easy for the Twins to decide this spring if he's a realistic option for the rotation or if he should be in the bullpen. If he's got a good change going, he can start. If he doesn't, he'll be of greater use as a lefty-killer out of the 'pen.

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Friday morning's post contained a reference to Francisco Liriano's on-again, off-again deal with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Friday afternoon it was reported, again, that the Liriano deal has been finalized.

Since this time the Pirates themselves have said it, I guess it can be believed.

Notes, quotes and comment

Tampa Bay this week designated shortstops Reid Brignac and Elliot Johnson for assignment, removing them from the 40-man roster and starting the clock ticking for some sort of disposal of their contracts.

Last year I would have been in favor of picking up either; now I'm ambivalent. Both are good-field, no-hit types; so are Pedro Florimon and Eduardo Escobar, or at least they figure to be. I don't know that the Rays refugees would be a true upgrade over the unproven guys, and their periods of team control would be significantly less.

---


MLB.com on Thursday released its Top 20 list of Twins prospects, and certainly in the Top 10 there's no significant break from the consensus.

The same 10 show in the top 10 of every list I've seen, and in these groups: Miguel Sano and Byron Buxton are the top two; No.3-6 are some order of Oswaldo Arcia, Kyle Gibson, Aaron Hicks and Alex Meyer; No. 7-9 are some order of J.O. Barrios, Trevor May and Eddie Rosario; and Max Kepler takes up the rear.

The divergence begins after Kepler. The MLB list has three pitchers in the Top 20 -- Corey Williams (16), Ryan Pressly (18) and Hudson Boyd (19) -- not in Baseball America's top 30. BA listed middle infielders Jorge Polanco (14) and Levi Michael (16) in its Top 20; MLB.com com didn't, but did squeeze Niko Goodrum into its list at No. 20 (while expressing doubt that he'll stay in the middle infield).

Consensus of the type seen in the Top 10 tells us something; divergence of the type seen in the Second 10 tells use something else. MLB.com ranks guys whose big league futures, if any, are clearly in the bullpen over almost all the middle infield propects in the system; Baseball America didn't. I think BA has the more correct idea there.

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Francisco Liriano was reported in December to have reached a deal with the Pittsburgh Pirates; then it hit a snag over an injury to his non-pitching arm. A couple of weeks ago it was reported that the two parties had rewoked the deal. Well, it still hasn't become official.

And meanwhile, the Pirates have signed Jonathan Sanchez, another left-hander with outstanding stuff and sub-optimal "pitchability." I begin to wonder if Liriano's deal is going to happen, or if the Pirates are moving on.

--

Recent ex-Twins free-agent signings: Jon Rauch with Miami; Kyle Waldrop on a minor-league deal with  Pittsburgh. I continue to believe Waldrop can be an effective reliever, but I also understand that there are a lot of marginal guys like that, and I can't be all that critical of the Twins for looking elsewhere.

One way of looking at the Waldrop departure is that the Twins essentially swapped Triple A relief arms with Pittsburgh: The Pirates got Waldrop, the Twins got Tim Wood (much earlier this offseason). Wood had a big year in Triple A in 2012, but the Pirates never saw fit to call him up. We'll see how they fare in new environments.

Ex-Twins' (mis)adventures in free agency

Spring training is less than a month away, and an impressive number of former Twins are either still trying to find teams or have just landed jobs (or, in some cases, opportunities for jobs).

The market is slim for players who had a big role in turning the Twins from a 90-plus win team to a 90-plus loss team, it would appear.

A quick rundown:

Delmon Young is only 27, but the promise has tarnished.

Delmon Young, last seen bopping postseason homers for Detroit, was nevertheless quickly cut loose by the Tigers. He signed Tuesday with Philadelphia for a piddling (in baseball terms) $750,000 plus more than $2 million in bonus clauses, some of which are apparently tied to making weight at six different weigh-ins over the course of the season.

It always amazes me when a major-league athlete in any sport has weight problems. It was one thing back in the day when players worked offseason jobs to make ends meet; today, when being a jock is a full-time, year-round job, getting out of shape to the extent that Young appeared to be last season signals a significant lack of self-discipline and/or interest in his job.

And he's paying for it. The guaranteed money is a mere $50,000 more than Drew Butera signed for. That speaks volumes to how little interest there was in Young.

The Phillies intend him to be their regular right fielder, but the contract structure suggests that he'd do well to avoid his usual lousy start. The Phils don't have a whole lot committed to him.

Kevin Slowey is
on the player union's
pension committee, but
he isn't on anybody's
40-man roster.

Kevin Slowey, last seen going on a minor league disabled list in the Indians organization and never returning, signed a minor-league deal Wednesday with Miami. The Marlins have lots of openings, but Slowey hasn't pitched much, or effectively, the past two years.

The bridges between the Twins and Slowey were well and truly burned in 2011, but I'd still rather have him than Kevin Correia — which speaks less to my diminishing faith in Slowey's ability to pitch than to my conviction that the Correia signing will be a disaster.

Francisco Liriano's deal with Pittsburgh finally became official this week, long after it was reported. The lefthander apparently fractured his right arm in a bathroom fall, and the two sides had to rework the deal to give the Pirates some protection should that injury for some reason be an issue. It shouldn't. The issue, as always with Liriano, will be throwing strikes.

Matt Capps remains unsigned. So does Jon Rauch, whose departure from the Twins predates their collapse. And, of course, Kyle Lohse is still out there for any team willing to pay the penalty, with agent Scott Boras supplying this awkward metaphor to excuse the length of time his client has been dangling:

It doesn't matter what time dinner is when you're the steak.

Well done, Mr. Boras.

More Twins pitching developments

Rich Harden has a career record of 59-38, 3.78, most
it coming with the Oakland Athletics.

Friday had a number of developments on the pitching front for the Twins, but little of the activity seems likely to mean much, Let's look:

Diamond has elbow surgery: The team announced Scott Diamond had a bone chip removed from his left elbow on Tuesday.

The view here is that minor surgery is a procedure that happens to someone else, but this is a rather low-risk operation, and Diamond is expected to be ready for spring training in roughly two months. He won't, however, pitch for Team Canada in the World Baseball Classic, which probably disappoints him.

The Twins sign Rich Harden: It's a minor league deal with spring training invite, so the Twins aren't staking a whole lot on him. Which is good, because his history is that he's not going to pitch a whole lot.

Harden has only qualified for the ERA title once (2004) and last pitched effectively in 2009. He didn't pitch at all in 2012. How much, if anything, he has left at age 31 is to be seen.

He goes into the non-roster invitee pile with much of last September's rotation, but my guess is that, unlike the other three I listed Friday, Harden either will make the major-league team or be released. If he can pitch, there's no point in wasting his innings in Rochester.

Francisco Liriano to join Pirates: And so much for the notion that the Twins might bring back the enigmatic southpaw.

While there will always be some residual affection for "Franchise," this is probably for the best. The Twins never found a way to connect his stuff to the strike zone. Neither could Don Cooper, the esteemed ptiching coach for the White Sox.

If he finds himself in Pittsburgh, good for him and good for the Pirates. It seems time to stop imagining that it was going to happen in Minnesota.

Ex-Twins watch: Francisco Liriano

Francisco Liriano gets the hook Tuesday against Cleveland.

Francisco Liriano started Tuesday for the White Sox. He didn't make it out of the fourth inning: 3.2 innings, seven hits, four runs — and the loss.

Losing Tuesday's game dropped the White Sox into a tie with the Tigers for first place. A bit more than a week ago, Chicago had seemingly left the Tigers for dead; now it's all even.

Liriano's ERA for the Sox is 5.39, and he's had just four quality starts in 11 starts -- with two of those good outing coming against the Twins. Liriano's White Sox ERA is now worse than his ERA with the Twins this year.

I don't think this was what the White Sox were looking for when they traded for him in July. I don't think this is what Liriano and his agent were hoping for in his free agent walk year.

And yet, as I looked Monday at this list of pitchers heading into free agency ... well, it's lacking in good bets.

I'm using Scott Diamond as my yardstick here. Who on this list figures to be better than Diamond over the course of the contract? I'm thinking, of course, in terms of the Twins. If they can come up with two starters who are better than Diamond — who has his flaws — they're contenders. If Diamond's their best starter, they aren't.

Free agents, by definition, are veterans with some miles on their treads. Zach Greinke is easily the best of this lot; everybody else comes with issues.

Liriano is comparatively young; he's talented; he doesn't figure to break the bank. He left on good terms. And he's looked very good in his two starts against the Twins, which feeds into their Craig Monroe Syndrome (a tendency to misjudge players who do better against the Twins than against the rest of the league).

When the Twins traded him, I couldn't imagine that they would have any interest in bringing him back this winter. Now I can imagine it.

Francisco Liriano and the Sox

Francisco Liriano delivers Saturday in a
familiar setting but an unfamiliar uniform.

A day or so after the Chicago White Sox traded for Francisco Liriano, Sox general manager Kenny Williams said that the organization, and specifically pitching coach Don Cooper, "(sees) some things from (Liriano) we think immediately will show some better results."

From this distance, it appears that something was: Pitch him against the Twins.

Liriano has had two starts against the Twins since the trade; 1-0, 2.77, with 17 strikeouts and 11 baserunners in 13 innings. On Saturday he made a short-notice start and threw seven one-hit innings against his old mates.

Against everybody else since coming to the South Side, Liriano is 2-1, 5.97. He had pitched his way out of the Chicago rotation, just as he had early in the year with the Twins.

Liriano was only starting Saturday's game because the first-place White Sox got rained out of a Thursday game with the second-place Detroit Tigers and the game is to be made up today. The weather washed out a mano-a-mano matchup between Chris Sale and Justin Verlander; the two aces pitched Friday instead, making each unavailable for today's makeup.

The Sox chose to push rookie Jose Quintana, originally scheduled to start Saturday, back a couple of days to face the Tigers. (He'll be opposed by Doug Fister.)

That backdrop — Liriano losing his rotation spot, the rainout in a crucial series, the reshuffled rotation to have Quintana face the team Chicago has to beat — made ridiculous Dan Gladden's analysis of the White Sox' likely playoff rotation.

Sale and Jake Peavy are the obvious top two guys, but then, proclaimed the Twins radio broadcaster during Saturday's game, it's got to be Liriano. How about Quintana, prodded Cory Provus. "Too young," said Gladden.

Quintana is young (23) and inexperienced, and the White Sox have handled him rather gingerly of late. He's also more reliable than Liriano, which is why he's getting the ball today.

The ruins of a rotation plan

When the Twins this week outrighted Nick Blackburn to Triple A, removing him from the 40-man roster, it meant that the all five members of the projected rotation were gone.

"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry," but the question rises: Were the Twins rotation plans all that well made to begin with?

Scott Baker is coming
off ligament replacement
surgery and will be a
free agent this winter.

Scott Baker was the first of the five to fall; he didn't make it out of spring training. He'd had elbow problems last year, didn't have surgery, couldn't muster his usual velocity in camp, had surgery -- and once the surgeon opened the elbow, he found more damage than expected, and performed Tommy John surgery.

Fairly or not, this fit an apparent pattern of missed diagnoses and undertreatment. We'll see this again.

Next out was Jason Marquis, signed in the winter to a one-year deal as a free agent. He was awful with the Twins -- 8.47 ERA in seven starts with more walks (14) than strikeouts (12), and the Twins released him. He signed with San Diego, and he's had an ERA of 4.04 in 15 starts with a BB/K ratio of 28/78.

Marquis seemed a curious addition at the time of his signing, and I never really viewed him as anything more than a pricey holding piece. Nobody should have expected him to be as bad as he was before the Twins dumped him; even with his competent numbers with the Padres, his overall numbers aren't all that good.

Carl Pavano went on the disabled list after 11 starts; his ERA was an even 6.00, and his velocity was missing from the time camp opened. He was moved to the 60-day disabled list (and off the 40 man roster) in late July, and his hopes of pitching again ended this month with a new diagnosis of a bruise on his humerus bone.

Francisco Liriano, the Twins big tease.

Pavano had been a durable workhorse for the Twins since they acquired him in 2009 despite a lengthy injury history. I can't fault the Twins for expecting another season of 200-plus innings from him, but ... all pitchers are injury risks by definition, and 36-year-old pitchers with marginal stuff are probably more vulerable than most.

What stands out, again, is how long this lingered. Pavano voiced some frustration this month that it took three months to find the problem.

Francisco Liriano was, again, Mr. Inconsistent. He had an excellent spring training, stunk in the early part of the season, spent some time in the bullpen, returned to the rotation, pitched better, got traded in late July.

He's done well with the White Sox. Good for him. I have to believe the Twins aren't going to be free-agent suitors for him. Counting on him in the past hasn't yielded much but headaches.

And finally, Blackburn. Those of us who believe in what the leading indicator stats say about pitchers knew when the Twins signed him to a four-year contract that it was a bad bet. And so it has proven.

The failure of any one of these five cannot really be called a surprise. They all carried their individual risk, be it injury histories or performance track records. That all five collapsed so utterly -- the lowest Minnesota ERA in the group was Liriano's 5.31 -- is.

One could reasonably have anticipated going into training camp that one, two, even three of these guys weren't going to succeed. All five? That seems extreme even for a confirmed pessimist.

Today, it's Liriano vs. the Twins, and the trade deadline

Francisco Liriano comes out
for the White Sox's batting practice
Monday at Target Field. I'm not
sure they found a cap that fits.

I fully expect that today's matchup will be so overhyped in Minnesota that you'd think nobody ever before got traded and then faced his former team.

It happens from time to time, however. And it happens tonight, when Francisco Liriano takes the mound in Target Field to face his former teammates.

As I post this, we don't know for sure which of his former teammates he'll face. The nonwaiver trading deadline is at 3 p.m. our time, and there are rumors of interest in Denard Span, Justin Morneau and Josh Willingham.

That teams are interested in trading for them is a given. Whether any are seriously bidding is another. There were, according to Terry Ryan, a goodly number of teams interested in Liriano, yet the offer Ryan thought was the best was reckoned disappointing to many fans.

Moving Liriano for small change made some sense; moving Span, Morneau or Willingham for pittances does not.

My sense of things is that other teams are mainly interested in profiting from a fire sale. I suspect that some teams eying Morneau in particular figure that the Twins may want to dump next year's salary and open first base for Chris Parmelee, who is having a big season in Triple A.

I will be surprised if that proves to be the case. My guess is that the Twins will not make a notable trade before the deadline. But I've been wrong before.

Further thoughts on the Liriano trade

Francisco Liriano and
pitching coach Rick Anderson
in 2011.

My Monday print column on the Francisco Liriano trade of Saturday night can be found here. It's short, deliberately so; it was a tight sports section, and between Vikings training camp and the Olympics, there was plenty of other things to fit into the limited space.

So I'll expound further here.

---

The wonders of social media reveals that a vocal number of Twins fans believe the Twins didn't get enough for Liriano. They expected more than a couple of Grade C minor leaguers.

Chalk this reaction up to what I think of as "Dick Bremer Disease" — the tendency many, if not all, of us have of taking a player's best short-term performance and holding that as the yardstick of his talent.

I saddle Bremer with the name, perhaps unfairly, because back in 2002, Torii Hunter hit .371 in the first month of the season, and Bremer latched onto that performance as a legitimate measure of Hunter's ability. It took years before Bremer stopped talking about Hunter as a guy who could hit for a high average.

Hunter wasn't a legitimate .300 hitter, of course. He just had a particularly good month.

Twins fans latched onto Liriano's periodic strong stretches and held those times to be who he is. About a half season of 2006; the last two months of 2008; most of 2010; his recent stretch of good starts this year. All told, a bit more than two seasons worth of quality pitching.

Two seasons — over a seven-year period.

Yes, Liriano was brilliant in 2006 until he got hurt. That isn't how the rest of baseball sees him, because he has too many other stretches in which he was awful, injured or both.

We may value Liriano as the wunderkind of '06. The rest of the world doesn't.

---

You may have seen elsewhere that Baseball America this winter ranked Eduardo Escobar, the shortstop the Twins got in Saturday's trade, as the White Sox' No. 10 prospect. The value of that ranking is somewhat diminished by the fact that BA regarded the Sox system as the weakest in the game.

Pedro Hernandez wasn't to be found the BA rankings for the Sox, but that's because he was included in the San Diego system; he came to the White Sox in the Carlos Quintin trade in late December. He was No. 23 on the Padres list.

Hernandez, as I indicated in the print column, is the acquisition I have the most hope for. The scouting reports I've seen on him say he has command, he has a quality change, and he has gained velocity in the past couple of years, from 87 mph or so to 90-92 mph.

Jeff Manship was
6-2, 2.35 in
Rochester this year.

What isn't clear is the quality of his breaking ball, and whether he can develop a usable one may determine his future as a major league pitcher.

---

Escobar and Hernandez are now on the Twins' 40-man roster; they cleared a spot by putting P.J. Walters on the 60-day disabled list, as they did last week with Carl Pavano. Walters last pitched on June 13, so he can't be reactived until sometime in mid-August — and as far as I know he won't be ready before then anyway. 

Jeff Manship got the call to replace Liriano on the 25-man roster. He may get to start; while Brian Duensing had a successful outing Sunday filling in for Liriano, the Indians are particularly vulnerable to lefties. It will be interesting to see which way Ron Gardenhire goes with this one.

A farewell to Frankie: Liriano traded

Francisco Liriano: 50-52, 4.33 in his
exceedingly up-and-down Twins tenure.

The deal went down soon after the Twins clobbered Cleveland Saturday night: Francisco Liriano goes to the Chicago White Sox for a left-handed pitcher (Pedro Hernandez) who appears to be more command than power, and a good-glove, no-hit shortstop (Eduardo Escobar).

Both players have seen some major league time with the Sox; both are being sent immediately to Rochester.

The trade will be the topic for my Monday print column, so I'm not going to delve any more deeply than this into it tonight.