Brian Duensing as a bullpen cornerstone

The Twins have a lot of openings in their starting rotation.

Not so with their bullpen.

Even without Matt Capps (who'll be a free agent with the Twins declining his option), Carlos Gutierrez (claimed on waivers by the Cubs) and Kyle Waldrop and Luis Perdomo (outrighted), the Twins can still fully stock their relief corps effectively with the pitchers on hand.

Brian Duensing had
a good season as a
relief pitcher, a poor
one as a starter.

Assuming, that is, that Brian Duensing is a reliever rather than a starter.

Closeer: Glen Perkins
Setup 1: Jarrod Burton
Setup 2/LOOGY 1: Duensing
MR 1: Casey Fein
LOOGY 2: Tyler Robertson
MR 2: Alex Burnett
Long man: Anthony Swarzak

Nothing wrong at all with the top four, or with the long man. The weak spots are Burnett, whose good 2012 ERA (3.53) is out of whack with his lousy walk and strikeout rates; and Robertson, who hung a few too many sliders to good left-handed power hitters and got burned. As the fifth and sixth men in a bullpen, they're acceptable, but not in more prominent roles.

But Duensing is supposed to be a contender for the starting rotation, and if he's not in the 'pen, the Twins lack a good southpaw specialist. Robertson has the stuff for that job, but not the consistency. I would be reluctant to make him the primary lefty in the bullpen.

The rotation is, correctly, the primary concern. But if the Twins seriously consider Duensing part of the solution -- and I'm not sure he is -- they would do well to have an alternative to him in the bullpen. It's something to keep an eye on this offseason.

Three pieces of pitching news

The Twins on Monday had three pitching related news items. None of them moved the process forward significantly, but in the absence of anything bigger to chew on, we'll chaw on them:

Nick Blackburn in
2012: 4-9, 7.39.

Scott Baker. The Twins formally declined his option Monday, which means he'll be a free agent on Friday. There is open and mutual interest in Baker remaining with the Twins, and I expect it will happen.

Nick Blackburn. The Twins had indicated at season's end that he was having his elbow checked out, and on Monday they announced that he had it scoped. Minor surgery, in the sense that it happened to somebody else and isn't expected to keep him out of spring training.

Nobody's blaming Blackburn's horrid 2012 on his elbow, but it couldn't have helped either. I remain wary of him, and I think that the Twins would be willing to hand him off for either payroll relief or a minor prospect. I also think nobody else will give them either for him.

P.J. Walters, outrighted last week, quickly signed a minor league contract with the Twins with spring training invite.

He rejoins the cast of characters I project to be in the running for the fifth starter spot, with Blackburn, Sam Deduno, Cole De Vries, Liam Hendriks and probably Brian Duensing. My guess is that, as was the case last year, he'll open in Rochester and hope for another opportunity.

Detailing last winter's rotation trades

A.J. Burnett went from persona
non grata with the Yankees
to top-of-the-rotation with
Pittsburgh last winter.

In the Monday print column I said, without going into detail, that last offseason 10 pitchers who had made it through a full season in a major league rotation were traded:

... six of them were traded for one of the others. Two of the other four brought back prospects who themselves wound up in major league rotations during the season.

Which means that only two established starters went in trades that didn’t involve either another established starter or a major-league-ready prospect.

This is where I detail this information. The links are for the starting pitchers involved in the trades.

Trade 1: A.J. Burnett goes from the Yankees to Pittsburgh for a pair of minor leaguers. The Yankees pick up more than half Burnett's salary, and he goes 16-10, 3.51 for Pittsburgh.

Comment: The Yankees wanted to dump Burnett after a couple of frustrating seasons in which the righty racked up ERAs of 5.26 and 5.15. The deal worked well for the Pirates.

Trade 2: Trevor Cahill goes from Oakland to Arizona with Craig Breslow for Jarrod Parker, Ryan Cook and Colin Cowgill. Cahill goes 13-12, 3.78 for the Diamondbacks; Parker goes 13-8, 3.47 for the A's, and Cook makes the All-Star team as a reliever (6-2, 2.09, 14 saves).

Comment: Cahill (and Breslow) did for the Diamondbacks what they expected. Arizona still loses the trade, because Park and Cook are better, younger and cheaper.

Trade 3: Gio Gonzalez and a minor leaguer goes from Oakland to Washington for Tommy Milone, Derek Norris, Brad Peacock and a minor leaguer. Gonzalez makes the All-Star team and goes 21-8, 2.89 for the Nationals; Milone leads the A's in innings, goes 13-10, 3.74, and Norris becomes the starting catcher.

A second trade in which Oakland's Billy Beane traded a young starter about to make big money for younger, cheaper talent. Both sides got what they needed; both teams made the playoffs. 

Trade 4: Colorado trades Jason Hammel and Matt Lindstrom to Baltimore for Jeremy Guthrie. Guthrie goes 3-9, 6.35 for the Rockies and is dumped to Kansas City in an exchange of problems (Jonathan Sanchez, who we'll meet later); for the Royals, Guthrie goes 5-3, 3.16. He's going into free agency. Hammel goes 8-6, 3.43 in 118 innings for Baltimore with some time on the disabled list; he's one of the keys to their surprising season.

Comment: Hammel and Guthrie aren't great, but they are both better pitchers than their career stats indicate. They've generally been on bad teams and often in unfavorable environments. Guthrie has been suggested in some corners as a potential target for the Twins. They could do worse.

Edinson Volquez was once
traded for Josh Hamilton.

Trade 5: San Diego sends Mat Latos to Cincinnati for Edinson Volquez, Yonder Alonso, Yasmani Grandal and Brad Boxberger. Latos goes 14-4, 3.48 for the Reds with a career high in innings pitched and remains under team control for another three seasons. Volquez goes 11-11, 4.14 for the Padres and leads the majors in walks allowed.

Comment: This trade, for San Diego, was about the hitters, Alonso and Grandal. Volquez had had three injury-plagued seasons coming into 2012, and his 180-plus innings was a bonus. Latos was what the Reds sought.

Trade 6: San Francisco trades Jonathan Sanchez to Kansas City for Melky Cabrera. Sanchez was brutal for the Royals — 1-6, 7.76 — and they swapped him in midseason to Colorado for Jeremy Guthrie. Sanchez was even worse in Denver (0-3, 9.53).

Jonathan Sanchez is coming off
two brutal seasons.

Comment: Ugh. Cabrera, of course, was having a huge season for the Giants until he tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. But just clearing Sanchez out of their rotation was a plus for the Giants.

Trade 7: Miami sends Chris Volstad to the Cubs for Carlos Zambrano and a lot of cash. Big Z goes 7-10, 4.49 for the Marlins; Volstad goes 3-12, 6.31 with the Cubs.

Comment: It's a safe bet Miami won't pick up Zambrano's option for 2013 ($19 million-plus). The hope there was that Ozzie Guillen would be able to harness his countryman's temper and talent; if there's a market for Zambrano as a free agent, I sure hope it isn't Minnesota. Volstad was waived by the Cubs and picked up by Kansas City last week. They can have him.

So ... Ten established starters plus two "major-league-ready" starters in these trades. I would say that Burnett, Latos, Gonzalez, Cahill and Volquez met or exceeded expectations; that Volstad, Sanchez, Guthrie and Zambrano were disappointments; that Hammel was good but of limited durability; and the rookies, Prker and Milone, met or beat expectations.

Those don't seem to be prime odds for improving your rotation via trades.

Pic of the Week

Miguel Cabrera contemplates the plight of his
Detroit Tigers team during the ninth inning of
Game Three — the second straight shutout defeat
for the American League representatives.

Miguel Cabrera had a single Saturday in Game 3 of the World Series. But in what may have been the single most crucial at-bat of the series — bases loaded, two out, Cabrera against Ryan Vogelsong in the  bottom of the fifth inning — Miggy popped up harmlessly.

The Triple Crown winner hasn't done much at the plate. Neither have his teammates. Through three games, the Tigers have yet to take the lead. They've scored three runs, all in the first game, and two of them in a garbage time ninth inning that they entered trailing 8-1.

But Cabrera is the big man, the figure everybody's looking to, and his response Saturday night wasn't good — he fled the stadium after the game and avoided the media.

The Giants are up 3-0 in the series, and they haven't played their ace — Matt Cain — yet. That comes tonight.

Mike Redmond and the Miami managerial job

Mike Redmond in 2009, his final
season with the Minnesota Twins.

Mike Redmond, who played 5 years with the Twins as Joe Mauer's backup, is widely assumed to be the front runner for the Marlins' manager's job, which was opened by the dismissal of Ozzie Guillen.

Redmond definitely wants to manage in the majors, and there are only 30 such jobs. Plus he played for the Marlins for seven years — yes, Twins fans, he played more for the Fish than for the Twins — and was part of a World Series winner there (2003, when he backed up Pudge Rodriguez), so there's a genuine attachment between the man and the franchise.

Still, there are not many less attractive managerial jobs than Miami's. It's not that one can't win there — the Marlins have, after all, two World Series titles in the past 15 years. It's that the internal politics of working for Jeffery Loria are essentially impossible.

The Marlins haven't had the same manager for two opening days since 2010, when Fredi Gonzalez opened his fourth and final season. In 2011 it was Edwin Rodriguez, in 2012 Guillen, and in 2013, it will be Redmond or somebody else.

It hasn't exactly been a managerial graveyard; both Gonzalez and Joe Girardi have gone on to some success elsewhere after running afoul of Loria's misguided Steinbrenner impersonation. Still, I would think a good managerial prospect — and Redmond probably is one such — might well decide to hold out for a more stable working environment.

Switching my postseason rooting interest

Prince Fielder, tagged out in the second inning Thursday
by Buster Posey, is a great hitter but considerably less than
that as a baserunner or defensive player.

I intended to root for the Detroit Tigers in this World Series. I really did.

American League as opposed to National League. Big Ten country as opposed to California. The best uniform in baseball. The best pitcher in baseball.

I wore my Tigers cap to work Wednesday evening. And as soon as the first game started, I found myself pulling for the Giants instead.

Part of it, I'm sure, was that my immediate supervisor is a big Detroit fan, so there was an opportunity to needle him. Part of it likely comes from rooting against a Twins division rival so much during the regular season.

And a big part — maybe most of it — is aesthetic.

The kind of baseball represented by the Tigers — a couple of bashers in the middle of the lineup, a rotation of power arms, sloppy defense and poor baserunning — doesn't hold a lot of appeal for me.

The Giants, on the other hand, are the team the Twins aspire to be. The real difference between the Giants and the Twins, obviously, is the starting pitching; San Francisco got 160 starts from its top five starters this year, and even in their best seasons, the Twins haven't gotten that kind of durability and quality. But the lineups — both teams emphasize contact hitting over power (the Giants were dead last in baseball in home runs), both teams value gloves, both teams have a superstar catcher in the middle of the order.

The Twins hitters had the second-fewest strikeouts in the American League; the Giants had the second fewest in the National League.

Rooting for the Giants feels a good bit like rooting for the Twins. It just feels better than rooting for the Tigers. And I'm going with it.

First moves in reshaping the roster

Matt Capps: 1-4,
3.68 in 2012 with
14 saves.

The Twins announced on Wednesday their first roster moves of the offseason:

• They will not pick up their option on Matt Capps;
• They lost relief prospect Carlos Guterriez on waivers to the Chicago Cubs;
• They outrighted outfielder Matt Carson and right-handed pitchers Jeff Manship, Luis Perdomo, Esmerling Vasquez, Kyle Waldrop and P.J. Walters;
• They restored pitchers Scott Baker, Cole De Vries and Carl Pavano from the disabled list. 

Capps, Baker and Pavano will be free agents after the World Series, but for now they remain on the Twins 40-man roster. The others aren't, and many of them will also become free agents. For now, the Twins have 35 players on the 40-man roster.

I wouldn't rule out the Twins re-signing some of these guys. Walters and Waldrop might be of interest on minor league deals, and Capps' option was too pricey ($6 milion) for the role he would play if he returned.

But I don't expect any of them to be re-signed. If Capps does return, it will be for less than the $4 million he got in 2012, and without the promise of the closer's role. I think he'll look elsewhere. And for the others, being taken off the 40-man roster implies that they'd be behind the pitchers they did retain.

Walters, for example, would rank behind DeVries and Sam Deduno in the rotation pecking order, and the indications are that those two, and probably some others, will at best be duking it out for the fifth starter spot.

I'm slightly disappointed in the outrighting of Waldrop; I'd rather see him in the 2013 bullpen than Alex Burnett. But both are fringy middle relievers.

Some other notes:

Carlos Gutierrez, a
first-round pick,
never reached the
majors with the Twins.

Baker, who had Tommy John surgery around Opening Day and did not pitch, and the Twins are said to be making progress on a contract. It's uncertain Baker will be ready to pitch in the majors when the 2013 season begins.

Gutierrez was a first-round pick in 2007 who only appeared in 10 games last year for Triple A Rochester because of injury. The Cubs took a flier on him, but I'm not sure why they'd prefer him to Waldrop. They're both sinker-ballers with low strikeout rates, but as far as I can tell, Waldrop is the better of the two.

Vasquez put up some interesting numbers as a starter in Triple A, but given several starts in September in the majors displayed a reluctance to throw a breaking ball. Perdomo throws hard but without any real clue.