Waving the white flag

The only position
Eduardo Escobar didn't
play for the Twins
was first base.

Eduardo Escobar is gone, to the Arizona Diamondbacks for three players in A ball.

Ryan Pressly is gone, to the Houston Astros for two guys who have at least reached Double A.

Also gone is any pretense that the Twins still harbor playoff ambitions.

Escobar was on his way to his new team before the Twins took the field in Boston Friday evening. His departure saddens me, as I suspect it does every other Twins fan. Escobar is a fun player, eminently likable, and far better than any of us imagined he would be when the Twins got him from the Chicago White Sox in 2011.

Escobar filled the gap at third base and in the middle of the lineup opened by Miguel Sano's failures earlier this season. Now Sano, his minor league reboot apparently complete, gets a fresh shot at the job. It seems odd to say this about a guy who has long been seen as the future of the franchise, but I am not enthused about that. I have come to regard Escobar as a more reliable and productive player than Sano.

Ryan Pressly
was the Twins' best
Rule 5 selection
since Johan Santana.

But ... Escobar is a free agent to be, the Twins picked up three lottery tickets for him, and it's wise to  to get a handle on what Sano 2.0 is like. I want to hope that the Twins re-sign Escobar this winter, but that probably would require them to pull the plug on Sano, and I believe they still have too much invested in Sano.

As for Pressly: There are sabermetric analyses that regard him as one of the better relievers in the game. That's not been backed up by the results.

I'm eager to see how Houston uses Pressly. Their late-inning relief situation has been pretty ugly all year; closer Ken Giles's postseason woes carried over to this year, and the Astros sent him to the minors a bit more than two weeks ago. The Astros have had no shortage of pitching imports revise their approach and step up their game -- Charlie Morton, Justin Verlander, Garret Cole -- after arriving in Houston. Maybe the Astros see something they can tweak with Pressly.

As for the return for the two ... well, I'll grapple with that in another post on another day. Right now, the fan in me is grieving too much for the amateur GM to emerge. On the face of it, the Twins appear to have gotten better prospects for Pressly than they did for Escobar, because Pressly is still under team control in 2019.

Or not adding Jamie Garcia

Reports of the Twins trading for Jamie Garcia proved to be greatly exaggerated. The Mexican lefty started Friday night in Los Angeles, allowing three runs in seven innings to the mighty Dodgers and even hitting a grand slam -- for the Braves.

The supposedly imminent deal was on the rocks by Friday morning, with the Braves said to be shopping the 31-year-old around to other clubs. I'm in no position to evaluate what went wrong, but with so many reporters -- national and local -- all reporting the same thing Thursday night, I have to assume there was fire behind that smoke.

And this presumably near-deal suggests that the Twins are indeed in the market for a rental starter, despite Thad Levine's earlier statements that the front office is focused on players who would help in 2018 and beyond. (Garcia is a free agent after this season).

A rental makes sense (properly priced, of course). The Twins need to deepen their rotation; right now the fourth and fifth starters are Kyle Gibson (6.29 ERA coming into tonight's start) and Bartolo Colon (8.18 ERA between Atlanta and Minnesota). News flash: Those ERAs are not good.

Assume for the moment that the Twins pick up a rental starter akin to Garcia. Even with Rental X joining Hector Santiago in free agency after the seasons, and even assuming that the Twins nontender Gibson, the Twins would still enter the offseason with:

• Three effective 2017 starters (Ervin Santana, Jose Berrios, Adalberto Mejia)
• Two rehab projects (Phil Hughes, Trevor May)
• Five good to reasonable prospects currently in Double A or Triple A rotations and thus presumably nearly ready (Fernando Romero, Stephen Gonsalves, Felix Jorge, Kyle Stewart, Aaron Slegers).

They'd probably like to add a veteran arm on a one-year deal to open the season. That would allow them some flexibility with the rehab projects and not be forced to rush a prospect. But that list has 10 2018 starters. They can afford to target a 2017-only addition, especially if that rental doesn't cost them Romero or Gonsalves.

Hello, Jepsen; good-bye, Hu

Chih-Wei Hu with Cedar Rapids in
2014. 

The Twins did make a bullpen trade Friday afternoon: Kevin Jepsen from Tampa Bay for two minor league pitchers, Chih-Wei Hu and Alexis Tapia.

The trade addresses the biggest need on the roster. I'm lukewarm on it only because I had already developed an emotional investment in Hu, who I saw last summer in his full-season league debut in Cedar Rapids. Having been impressed by him before I ever read a scouting report gives me a sense of discovery. (Tapia is a Venezuelan pitching at Elizabethton; I don't know enough about him to say anything beyond: He's a 19-year-old arm in Rookie ball, and good luck with that.)

But really, I cannot complain about this deal. Jepsen isn't a big name, but he does fill an immediate need: He's a power arm who has pitched in late innings for the Angels and the Rays. This is the kind of trade I said Friday morning I was looking for.

Kevin Jepsen, 31,
has a 2.81 ERA with
the Rays this season.

Hu, 21, has a chance to be a major league starting pitcher. He has four average pitches with good command of each. He was, to my self-trained eye last summer, much more polished than the higher-bonused high draft picks who started the day before and the day after, Ryan Eades and Kohl Stewart. Personally, I would rather have Hu than Eades; perhaps the Twins or Rays agree, perhaps they don't. They agreed on Hu.

Having praised Hu, I have a hard time seeing where he would fit in a future Twins rotation. As matters stand, the Twins have seven big-league starters (counting Trevor May in the bullpen and Ricky Nolasco on the disabled list). Of those seven, only Mike Pelfrey is not under team control for not just 2016 but 2017. Plus the Twins have Jose Berrios and Tyler Duffey pushing at the door from Triple A. Even at the High-A level where Hu's been so effective this year, the Twins have a bunch of starting prospects -- Eades, Stewart, Stephen Gonsalves, Tyler Jay, Aaron Slegers, Mat Batts -- who certainly aren't markedly worse pitchers than Hu and most of whom got bigger bonuses when they signed.

I'm not eager to give up Hu. But this deal helps the chances of the 2015 team snagging that wild card berth, and it doesn't do obvious damage to the long-term outlook.

Later on Friday, the Twins demoted both Danny Santana and Jorge Polanco, a pair of moves that opened roster slots for Jepsen and Trevor Plouffe, back after the birth of his son Teddy. I'll probably use the Monday print column to comment on that.

The ticking clock

As I compose this, there are less than 12 hours to the trade deadline. There has been an expectation for days that the Twins would do something to at least shore up their bedraggled bullpen, if not shortstop or catcher.

And so far, nothing.

What I said here Thursday stands on Friday: I don't want a short-term deal with prime prospects. The 2015 Twins have a chance to make the playoffs, but the real window of opportunity is down the road still. Certainly one has to give something to get something, but the price still needs to be right.

History is worth remembering, and history tells us that:

• The most successful mid-season deals for the Twins have waiver-wire pickups after the deadline; and
• The vast majority of pre-deadline trades don't swing the pennant race or postseason.

Carl Pavano and Orlando Cabrera in 2009 were August acquisitions that worked out pretty well. The Matt Capps trade the following year was more about the postseason than the division race, and the Twins never got him a lead in the playoffs.

A Thursday rumor connected the Twins to Justin Upton (San Diego outfielder). I don't see the fit. Another rumor had the Cubs pushing hard to move shortstop Starlin Castro, just 25 but hitting .237 with a poison pill contract. As troublesome as shortstop has been for Minnesota, I'd rather go with the current grab-bag.

And neither Upton nor Castro would address the biggest problem on this roster: A low-octane bullpen. That's not, in truth, a problem that needs a big name player to resolve. A minor deal -- the right minor deal -- will do the trick. We're all waiting on that one.

Unsolicited advice to the Twins on the trading deadline

The Twins are not exactly playing inspired baseball these days -- the clown-show sixth inning Wednesday, with its "wild pitch" through Kurt Suzuki's legs and the three-run Little League homer, being a particularly atrocious example -- but they are still, barely, in a playoff spot at the moment.

For all the speculation and angst about the nonwaiver trading deadline Friday, the Twins have yet to make a move, and the rumor mill has not connected Minnesota to many if any big names. (My own speculation about Jonathan Paplebon was so wildly inaccurate in so many ways that I'm embarrassed to think about it now.)

If the Twins make no trade this week and ultimately miss out on a wild-card berth, I'm good with that. If they trade Max Kepler or Jorge Polanco for a bullpen rental, I'll have to see a World Series trip to be satisfied with the move, and that sort of outcome is not guaranteed.

These are the key facts:

• The Twins are nine games behind Kansas City in the division. They're not catching the Royals.
• That means their door into the postseason is a wild card berth, That's a one-game crapshoot.
• Unlike Kansas City and Detroit, their realistic time is down the road a bit. 

This is prime time in the Royals' cycle. They need to make their push now, because key parts of their lineup are in late arbitration years or approaching free agency. The Royals management recognizes this; that's why they traded much of their farm system for two to three months of Johnny Cueto and Ben Zobrist, and it's why they're treating Salvador Perez as a disposable asset. Flags fly forever, and the Royals don't care if Perez is a wreck in five years; he won't be there by then anyway.

The window is closing in Detroit, regardless of whether they trade free-agents-to-be David Price and Yoenis Cepedes. Their farm system has been neglected, the core of the roster is aging and the financial commitments to Miguel Cabrera and Justin Verlander in what figures to be their decline phases are staggering.

The Twins, on the other hand, are a team in transition with better days ahead. I genuinely don't want them making short-term moves except in the bullpen, and I certainly don't want them trading away prime prospects for rentals. Trading a good prospect for a multi-year fix at shortstop or catcher, yes, but that's more likely a wintertime move than a deadline deal.

I'm comfortable with treating outfielders Oswaldo Arcia and Adam Brett Walker as trade chips for short-term bullpen help, because I don't see either being part of the outfield future anyway. Those two are, or should be, well behind Byron Buxton, Eddie Rosario, Aaron Hicks and Kepler. If, as I increasingly expect, Torii Hunter returns, Arcia and Walker are even further back. Arcia's out of options next year anyway,

The next question is whether Arcia can demand anything in return. The market for platoon designated hitters (Arcia's optimal role) has always been limited, and this isn't Earl Weaver's American League. Walker might be another matter; if he gets his strikeouts under control he might be the next Nelson Cruz. But that's a big if.

Random comments before the trading deadline

Giving away outs on the basepaths: Sam Fuld is
picked off first base by Danny Duffy in the fourth inning.

Well, that was a pretty ugly loss by the Twins Wednesday night in Kansas City. Two baserunners picked off. Another runner thrown out at the plate by, oh, maybe 15 feet or so.

The moment Brian Dozier took off I was yelling "No no no" at the TV set, and Scott Ullger should have doing the same, because it's possible Dozier could actually hear him. And then I remember the story from the 1975 World Series of Don Zimmer, third base coach for the Red Sox, yelling "No no no" and Denny Doyle hearing it as "Go go go."

Meanwhile, another day slips off the calendar toward the nonwaiver trading deadline, and still no action involving the Twins. I do believe something is going to happen before the deadline this afternoon. But I suspect it won't involve Kurt Suzuki or Josh Willingham. Maybe Kevin Correia (teams are always looking for pitching, although Correia is not a playoff-caliber starter). Most likely, one of the middle relievers -- Brian Duensing, Jared Burton and/or Casey Fien.

But I have a lousy record on guessing trade deadline stuff. Terry Ryan has done deadline deals, but most years he waits until August and the waiver period. That's when Justin Morneau moved last year. So while I expect something to happen today, I recognize that it might not -- and just because it didn't happen in July doesn't mean it won't happen in August.

A few other items:

• The word from the New Britain Rock Cats about J.O. Berrios: He's fine. No discomfort today. Nothing to see here. Alrighty then. Let's see when he starts next, and what happens when he does. I hope that's accurate. 
• Hudson Boyd, a high draft pick in 2011 who hasn't risen above Low A ball and has been relegated to relief work in Cedar Rapids, was suspended indefinitely for unspecified violation of team rules. The Twins had four picks by the end of the second round of that draft: Levi Michael, Boyd, Travis Harrison and Madison Boer. I'm not very optimistic about any of them at this point.
• I've been known, in years past, to hit Davenport, Iowa, to see a Midwest League game (home team: Quad Cities River Bandits). On Wednesday night, their game was interrupted when a possum invaded:

The @QCRiverBandits' game was briefly delayed today when an opossum took the field. Seriously. Photo: @QCBanditPhotog pic.twitter.com/rBlgFnZ8ih
— MiLB.com (@MiLB) July 31, 2014

That might have been more exciting to see than watching the Twins' base running tomfoolery.

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.

Buy or sell? The latter, with reservations

Scott Diamond was the winning pitcher Thursday
for the Twins, raising his record to 5-6 —and raising
his ERA to 5.27.

The Twins on Thursday beat the Chicago White Sox to sweep the three-game series and cap off a 6-3 homestand. Their record, on the first official day of summer, stands at 33-36, and while they're fourth in the AL Central, they're just six games behind the first place Detroit Tigers.

Which led to a Phil Miller story in the Star Tribune to the effect that as the jockeying for July trades gets started, the Twins don't know if they're buyers or sellers.

For me, it's not that difficult a call. I came into this season believing it was about building something for future seasons. I still believe that.

As Aaron Gleeman pointed out Thursday on Twitter, the Twins are 10-2 against the White Sox and Milwaukee Brewers, which makes them 23-34 against everybody else. That doesn't look like a 2013 contender to me.

I'd advocate selective selling. The front office needs to determine who on the current roster fits on a 2015 contender and who's in the way of the 2014 transition to a lineup built around Joe Mauer and prospects Oswaldo Arcia, Miguel Sano, Eddie Rosario and maybe Byron Buxton.

Peter Gammons has had a few Twins related comments on his Twitter feed this week: on Wednesday morning he mentioned Glen Perkins as a potential trade target for closer-starved contenders. On Thursday he followed that up with a two-parter:

GM: "Terry Ryan isn't going to trade Perkins without a big haul. They're going to be good quick. Best player in minor league ball (Buxton ) ...

Sano's already in double-A and he and Rosario are on the fast track, they've got pitching coming. Terry doesn't make mistakes."

Those observations fit my view of the Twins' situation. Certainly the major league team has some holes. But the farm system is nearly ready to crank out some primo fixes for those holes. The Twins shouldn't — and I'm sure Ryan won't — be getting in the way of that process.

Twins quiet on deadline day

Francisco Liriano in his White Sox debut.

The nonwaiver trading deadline passed at 3 p.m. CDT with nothing more done by the Twins.

Terry Ryan is taking some criticism for not following Saturday night's trade of Francisco Liriano with the purging of more veterans, but I'm fine with Tuesday's inaction.

Things may well have been different were Carl Pavano and/or Matt Capps sound, but they're both on the disabled list. (It's permissible to trade a player on the disabled list, but it doesn't happen often.) Pavano is a free agent after the season, and Capps can be if the Twins don't exercise their option. They fit in the "move 'em or lose 'em" category; Ryan would have been a motivated seller, as he was with Liriano.

It's a different story with the Twins who were rumored to be involved in trade talks at the deadline -- Josh Willingham, Justin Morneau, Denard Span, Jared Burton, Glen Perkins. These guys are all under team control through 2013 at least. As long as the Twins are comfortable with the payroll space those guys eat up, Ryan didn't have to move any of them now.

Ryan's been pretty vocal about what he wants in a trade: Top-end pitching prospects with which he can reconstruct the rotation. Those guys, with one exception, weren't getting moved at the deadline. The Tigers did send Jacob Turner to Miami in the Anibel Sanchez/Omar Infante trade; I really doubt Detroit would have sent Turner (the No. 9 overall pick in 2009) to a division rival. And Jim Callis of Baseball America says Turner's status has faded.

Ryan is right to hold out for what this organization clearly needs. No need to create new holes in the roster if you're not fixing the roster's biggest problem.

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.

Views on the AL Central trades

Kenny Williams just made the dumbest trade in baseball history or one of the smartest. The health of Jake Peavy (left) will be the deciding factor, and nobody has labeled him the second coming of Mark Prior.

— Chicago Tribune baseball writer Phil Rogers in Saturday's column

If Toronto ace Roy Halladay had gone to the Angels or Red Sox, his new team could have outpitched anyone in a series in this year's postseason. But Halladay went untraded. Now it's the trio of (Justin) Verlander-(Edwin) Jackson-(Jarrod) Washburn who can out-pitch any other AL team and lead the Tigers to victory in a playoff series. That is, presuming the Tigers can score at least a few runs.
— Detroit Free Press Tigers beat writer John Lowe in Saturday's column

...(O)f the teams that spent July selling off, nobody reeled in the quality haul of prospects the Indians did. They collected six solid young players who are either big-league-ready now or will be shortly (Chris Perez, Justin Masterson, Carlos Carrasco, Lou Marson, Jason Donald and Jess Todd). And they built both the (Cliff) Lee and (Victor) Martinez deals around younger, 6-foot-5 flame-ballers who both project as No. 1 starters — Jason Knapp and Nick Hagadone, respectively.
— ESPN.com's Jayson Stark on the Cleveland Indians

(The White Sox are) going to show up on a lot of other people's "Winners" list after pulling off that sneaky Jake Peavy deal about four seconds before the deadline. But is "winner" really the right term for a team that just dealt a big package for a guy who (A) might not throw a pitch until mid-September (if then), (B) is going from the NL to the AL, (C) is moving from Pitching Heaven (Petco Park) to a pitcher's worst nightmare (The Cell) and (D) is adding more than $55 million to the payroll through 2012?
—Stark again.

More on the trading deadline

This blog's readers poll points to the middle infield as the biggest weakness on the Twins.

My belief all season has been, and remains, that it's the bullpen depth.

Friday's 11th inning meltdown (six runs) underlines that belief.

Bobby Keppel: A leadoff four-pitch walk, two singles, no outs. Gone.

Jesse Crain: Three singles, one walk, no outs. Gone.

R.A. Dickey: A single, then — finally — three outs.

The first two guys are the top alternatives to Jose Mijares and Matt Guerrier, who have been quite good this year but are in danger of being overworked.

I don't have a serious argument with the Orlando Cabrera trade; obviously, the middle infielders (Nick Punto, Alexi Casilla, Matt Tolbert, even Brendan Harris) haven't hit.

But I have more confidence in Punto and Casilla than in Keppel and Crain.

---

The Twins weren't the only AL Central contender wheeling and dealing Friday before the nonwaiver trade deadline.

Detroit traded for Jarrod Washburn (above); the White Sox finally got Jake Peavy.

The Washburn trade doesn't strike me as much of an upgrade for the Tigers. They gave up Luke French , like Washburn a left-handed flyball pitcher, and a minor leaguer who didn't figure to be a factor for Detroit this year.

Washburn, unlike French, has a track record. He's racked up far better numbers this season than in recent years (2.64 ERA). Washburn has been aided considerably this year by the Seattle outfield defense, which frequently features three legit center fielders. The Detroit stadium is just as spacious as Seattle's, but the Tigers' outfield speed, especially in the corners, don't compare.

The Twins were hot for Washburn last year, a notion that struck me then as borderline insanity. He's been far more effective this year, but even if he maintains his current success, I won't criticize the Twins for staying away this summer.

The Peavy trade may not do anything to help the Chisox this year. The former NL Cy Young Award winner has been on the DL since early June with a strained tendon in his foot; before the trade, his agent said there was no timeline for his return. Now Peavy is talking about being ready by the end of August.

Meanwhile, the White Sox lose a piece of their current starting rotation in Clayton Richard. And a first-rate pitching prospect in Aaron Poreda.

And Peavy has benefited mightily from pitching in a very pitcher-friendly home park in San Diego. Last season, for example, he had a home ERA of 1.75 and a road ERA of 4.28. Now he's going to have a launching pad for a home park.