Picking up the White Sox' discards

Last season it was Joe Crede; the White Sox let him go after the 2008 season because they couldn't rely on his balky back. The Twins signed Crede and got 370 PAs of low production and plenty of day-to-day lineup absences before his back went out for the rest of the season.

Now it's Jim Thome, now deemed too one-dimensional by the White Sox front office. The Twins signed the veteran slugger on Tuesday.

It's an eminently reasonable contract — $1.5 million plus up to $750,000 in incentives. "Eminently reasonable" in this context means that if or when the the Twins conclude that he's just too one-dimensional to carry, he can be disposed of without great financial pain.

Which is what I expect is going to happen at some point this summer. I ranted about this before. Without being overly redundant, it's real difficult to have 25 percent of your "position player" reserves be somebody who can't play in the field.

Ron Gardenhire, quoted in the Star-Tribune story on the signing:

"A guy like Jim, he's not going to just come off the bench. We'll get plenty of at-bats for him. Kubel's my DH, and Delmon's my left fielder, and we all know that going into it, and Jim's going to play a role off the bench and spot play at DH."

That sounds like Gardenhire last spring talking about his outfield. As it turned out, he locked Michael Cuddyer, Jason Kubel and Denard Span into the lineup and spent most of the year trying to find a hot hand between Carlos Gomez and Delmon Young. When Young got going, Gardenhire locked Young into the lineup as well. There weren't "plenty of at-bats" for Gomez — he came to the plate less often than Crede.

There won't be "plenty of at-bats" for Thome either. That's just not how Gardy rolls.

I suspect this signing precludes the addition of a veteran infielder. Maybe it was a fallback because there wasn't going to be a signing of a veteran infielder.

Work through it: Say the Twins sign Crede. Now the bench is:

• Reserve catcher (Jose Morales or, if his wrist is an issue, Drew Butera)
• Reserve outfielder (Jason Pridie)
• Thome
• Brendan Harris (who just signed a two-year contract)

The obvious candidate in the regular lineup for Thome to pinch-hit for is Nick Punto. OK, so Thome pinch-hits and draws a walk. Now what?

• He's about as slow as anybody in baseball other than the Molina brothers, so you have to pinch run for him. The one guy on that bench who runs well is Pridie.
• Somebody has to play second base now, and the closest thing to that on this bench is Harris, and we know what Gardenhire thinks of that option.

Suddenly this one move has consumed three of the Twins' reserves. No, having Thome as a pinch-hit specialist means that either Matt Tolbert or Alexi Casilla is on the team, to pinch-run and to play second in Punto's stead. Which means Harris is the third baseman.

Morneau done for season

Tragic number down to 14 entering Tuesday. Twins win, Tigers win on Monday.

And the slim possibility of the Twins catching Detroit got a bit slimmer Monday night with the word Justin Morneau has a stress fracture in his lower back. It's supposed to heal on its own, but it will take three months.

In a sense, of course, the Twins have been doing without Morneau for quite some time. He's hit just .201 since the All-Star break. The home run rate was down only a little bit, but he wasn't doing anything else well.

And even so, this is pretty clearly his third best season. Not quite as good as 2008, and certainly not up to 2006 standards, but better than the rest.

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He's not the only infielder down for the count. It's pretty clear now that Joe Crede has flailed at his last pitch of the season.

I can't imagine a team willing to bank on him to play third base for 2010. This is the third straight season cut short by back miseries for him. He's had two major surgeries.

Crede was handled carefully this year by the Twins. Only once did he play in more than 10 games in a row. He was essentially day-to-day all season. And when he didn't start, he didn't play; Ron Gardenhire operated on the basis that even if he was properly stretched out when the game started, by the time the seventh inning rolled around he was probably stiffening up.

There were a lot of days, between the insistence on carrying 12 pitches, Crede's balky body, and other bumps and bruises, that Gardenhire had just one or two position players available to play off the bench. It was an oft-overlooked handicap all season.

Notes, quotes and comments

"I was looking at the Little League [World Series] game this morning [on television], and they were playing better than we did. It was more fun."

—White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen after the Sox lost 10-0 Saturday to the Yankees. it was one of the kinder things he said about his team.

* Jake Peavy didn't make it though the fourth inning of his most recent rehab start. Meanwhile, Clayton Richard, pulled from the White Sox rotation and dealt to San Diego as part of the Peavy deal, is 3-1 for the Padres. (He really isn't pitching very well, however.)

* Matthew Pouliot of the Circling the Bases blog ranks the Twins 12th in current talent generated by its organization. This is a different concept than the Young Talent Inventory I wrote about here earlier in the week. This is about players the Twins originally signed.

* One mildly amusing sidelight to the idea that the Twins may import Brad Penny to be a teammate of Carl Pavano's (at least for a month) is that both pitchers were (at different times) romantically involved with actress Alyssa Milano. Locker rooms being what they are ...

* Phil Rogers of the Chicago Tribune speculates Joe Crede is contemplating retirement after his recurrence of back problems.

*Poll results: Twenty-two people responded to the question about which free-agents-to-be the Twins should try to retain.

Ten (45 percent) said Orlando Cabrera; nine (40 percent) Carl Pavano; seven (31 percent) none of them; two (9 percent) Crede; and 1 (4 percent) Mike Redmond.

New poll up.

In-Crede-ble

The word Tuesday night about Joe Crede's back, twice surgically repaired, was vague but ominous: There have been post-surgical changes.

What those changes are isn't specified, but they can't be good. He wouldn't have gotten the MRI Tuesday had his back been flexible and pain free.

So: He's hurting, and the MRI indicates that the back structure is different than it was after the surgery.

I'm not surprised. As a man who has had a herniated disk, I have kept an eye on Crede, and I believed much of the season that his flexibility was limited. It was most noticeable on ground balls to his backhand side — he was frequently a tick late, and displaying body language that suggested he knew he should have reached the ball. That's the move, defensively, that puts the most twist on the back.

At risk of jumping to conclusions, I assume he's done for the season, maybe even done for his career.

The Twins, as I wrote in the Monday print column soon after Crede signed, have options. The Brian Buscher-Brendan Harris platoon the Twins used at third in the second half of 2008 figured last winter to be just as productive offensively as Crede — and, given how poorly Crede hit, might have been better at the dish.

As Plan Bs go, Buscher and Brendan isn't Bad.

But there's a Plan C that might tempt the Twins. Danny Valencia is supposed to inherit the third base job next spring. They might chose to hasten that timeline.

But I think Harris/Buscher makes more sense. Alexi Casilla appears to have secured the second base job (at least until his next brain cramp); combined with the presence of Orlando Cabrera at short, that makes Nick Punto the utility man, and makes it easy to use Harris and Buscher and, yes, Punto to cover third. Harris against left-handed starters, Buscher agaisnt right-handed starters, Punto for defense.