Busenitz down, Duffey up

As the Twins discover that, yep, they do too need a long reliever. ...

LaVelle Neal assured somebody on Twitter that this year's bullpen is better than last year's. "Going through a rough patch," the Strib reporter said. Perhaps, but that's assuming that the expiration dates haven't been hit on Fernando Rodney and Zach Duke, ages 41 and 35 respectively.

I was a bit surprised two weekends back when the Twins added a relief arm. They were, at the time, in the middle of a series of snowouts and looking at four days in a row without games. The bullpen was, if anything, overly rested at that point.

And then they had a 16-inning game in San Juan. And then they transformed one of those relief arms into the fifth starter (demoting Gabriel Moya to activate Phil Hughes). And the bullpen is pretty beat up.

Bad games and bad series happen, even to the best teams, and one ought not overreact to them. But the Twins really feel like a different team without Byron Buxton in the lineup.