What you get for $5 million

The Twins traded for Jaime Garcia on Monday. They traded him away on Sunday.

They gave up Huascar Ynoa, a talented teenage right-handed pitcher struggling to find his footing in rookie ball, to get the veteran southpaw. Baseball America ranked Ynoa as the 29th best Twins prospect coming into the season; he probably wasn't going to move up those rankings had he remained.

When they flipped Garcia to the Yankees, they received two pitchers, each much more advanced than Ynoa. Zack Littell is thought to be the better prospect; he's a right-hander who has dominated at two levels this year, High A and Double A. I like pretty much everything in his stat line.

Zack Littell's 2.27 xFIP is tied for 1st among 150 Eastern League pitchers w/30+ IP

His 1.64 BB/9 is 8th.
His 6.5 K/BB is 3rd. #mntwins

— Mike Berardino (@MikeBerardino) July 30, 2017

Baseball America rated him No. 24 in the deep Yankees system this spring. MLB Pipeline immediately slotted him at No. 16 in a thinner Twins farm system.

From this spring's Prospect Handbook:

.... Littell's fastball sits 89-91, touching 93, and plays up because of high spin rate and advanced command. His main secondary offering is a true curveball that flashed plus, and he rounds out his three-pitch arsenal with an average to above-average changeup. ...

Littell is not on the 40 man roster, but he will be added; they will not expose him to the Rule 5 draft.

Seth Stohs on Sunday noted the loaded rotation at the Twins Double-A affiliate in Chattanooga:

Chattanooga SPs right now:
Stephen Gonsalves
Fernando Romero
Felix Jorge
Zack Littell
Dereck Rodriguez
Kohl Stewart

— Seth Stohs (@SethTweets) July 30, 2017

The Twins also acquired Dietrich Enns, a lefty who is on the 40 and in Triple A and appears to have been injured a for a fair part of the season (just 45 innings in seven starts). He does not show up on anybody's prospect rankings.

BA on Enns:

A 19th-round pick out of Central Michigan in 2012, Enns is a classic touch-and-feel lefthander, although he has shown the ability to push his fastball to 94 mph. Enns’ changeup is probably his best pitch. Enns also throws a curveball, but he mostly relies on location and adding and subtracting to succeed. He profiles best as a lefty specialist.

So, to summarize: The Twins started with Ynoa, talented but raw and risky, and wound up with two more advanced pitchers, at least one of whom is generally regarded as a better prospect.

The difference in the payoff for Garcia: The Twins are paying the bulk of the $4.2 million remaining on Garcia's contract. If you toss in Ynoa's $800,000 signing bonus, the Twins have invested about $5 million in Littell and Enns (and one start of Garcia). That's first-round money.

Lots of moves, lots of criticism

The Jaime Garcia trade finally went down Monday. The trade itself is OK, with one curious aspect. The roster ramifications of adding the veteran lefty starter have, in my opinion, been mishandled.

I discussed in the Monday print column why such a trade was a logical move. Two (to three) months of Garcia will cost the Twins Huascar Ynoa, a 19-year-old Dominican signed in 2015 for a $800,000 bonus. He has to this point put up a 5.26 ERA at Elizabethton (25.2 innings), not that Appy League stats matter. Ynoa is a strong armed project who might make it and might not, a genuine lottery ticket. The major league team has a chance at a playoff spot and it desperately needs competence in the back of the rotation. Giving up Ynoa for Garcia is sensible.

Plus it probably saves me from having to learn to spell Huascar Ynoa.

Less obvious is the addition of "Quadruple A" catcher Anthony Recker. He's 33, he has accumulated 630 major league plate appearances over seven seasons, he landed on the 40-man roster via the trade and I don't really see the point. I would not only rather have Chris Gimenez than Recker, I'd rather have Mitch Garver. (At this point, I might rather have Garver than Gimenez, but that's another matter.) The Twins now have five catchers on their 40-man roster, which seems excessive (Jason Castro, Gimenez, Garver, Recker and John Ryan Murphy).

The Twins, as noted in Monday's post, pushed Craig Breslow off both the active roster and the 40-man roster after Sunday's game. I had expected that they would fill the 25-man spot by bringing back Rule 5 pick Justin Haley from the disabled list. Instead they recalled Alan Busenitz and returned Haley to Boston. Nothing against Busenitz, but I don't care for abandoning the Haley project at this point, even though they almost certainly would have to carry his Rule 5 restrictions over to next season.

Dumping Haley does open a second 40-man roster spot, and they needed that to accommodate the addition of Recker -- assuming that they needed to add Recker. Meanwhile, it's worth noting that last winter the Twins exposed catcher Stuart Turner to the Rule 5 draft and lost him to Cincinnati; in a very real sense, this series of roster moves amounted to trading Turner for Recker. Turner hasn't done much for the Reds, but he's still there, and he's about eight years younger than Recker.

Recker, at least for now, is assigned to Rochester. Garcia, obviously, needs to be on the 25-man roster. And the Twins got there by optioning Kyle Gibson to Rochester for the second time this season. They're going to stick with Bartolo Colon in the rotation.

I've little good to say about Gibson's pitching this season. He remains a highly frustrating pitcher. But if it's a binary choice -- I have to start either Gibson or Colon -- I'd go with the guy with the 6.08 ERA on the season (94 innings) over the guy with the 8.00 ERA (72 innings).

Pedro Martinez, who knows more about pitching than I ever will, backs his countryman Colon:

I saw Bartolo's stuff, and I think he is getting back on track. He can use this start to build up for the next.

— Pedro Martinez (@45PedroMartinez) July 25, 2017

I will say this for Colon: He made his first two starts against some stiff lineups, the Yankees and the Dodgers. Those were not cupcake assignments. Gibson's seven shutout innings in his most recent start came against a much softer lineup (Detroit).

I would go with Gibson over Colon, which is not claiming that either is an optimal choice.

Foreign players: Ready set, sign!

Wednesday was the first day the 2014 class of non-draft eligible players could sign, and there was quite the rush.

The Twins had two fairly prominent signings:

Huascar Ynoa, a right-handed pitcher from the Dominican Republic who Baseball America ranked as the No. 14 prospect in the class and  Jean Carlos Arias, left-handed hitting outfielder, also of the Dominican Republic. They are both 16 years old, so there's no point in expecting anything immediate out of either.  That's the general rule with the non-draft signings. They are typically very young and very raw. Ynoa has an interesting background. His brother Michael holds the record for largest bonus given an undrafted free agent; Michael Ynoa hasn't come close to the majors yet, but the Oakland A's put him on their 40-man roster to keep him from getting snatched up in the Rule 5 draft. He has, for the second straight season, an ERA above 7.5 in high A ball.  We can guess the Twins hope little brother can do better than that.