It could be worse, Twins fans

Ozzie Guillen was one-and-done as the manager in
Miami, where he led the Marlins to the division cellar
despite a drastically expanded payroll and sabotaged the
team's marketing strategy by expressing admiration for
Fidel Castro's longevity.

The Twins have been terrible the last two seasons. They had the worst record in the American League both years. They've been bad.

They have, however, kept some semblance of dignity, which cannot be said of at least a couple of teams.

The Miami Marlins on Tuesday, for example, fired Ozzie Guillen in their latest lurch of impulse management.

Last year around this time, the Marlins gave the White Sox two minor leaguers for the right to sign Guillen to a four-year contract. Now they've canned him with three years left on the deal and $7.5 million yet to pay — and they concede that the Fidel Castro flap at the beginning of the season played a major role in this decision.

Of course, had Marlins done their homework, they would have known that Guillen had said similar things about Castro in the past. Even without knowing that specific, they had to have known that Guillen talks. A lot. And sometimes — "sometimes" being definable in his case as about once a week — he says something his bosses really wish he hadn't.

If they couldn't live with that, they shouldn't have hired him.

His successor, whoever the sucker is, will be the Marlins' fifth since early 2010.

In another piece of Marlins news/embarrassment ...  the city of Miami has a contingency plan for the death of Fidel Castro, and city officials have suddenly realized that it's outdated. Part of the plan is to use the Orange Bowl for public rallies/protests.

Only there is no Orange Bowl anymore. It was torn down to make room for Marlins Park.

And, says the mayor, Marlins Park won't work as an alternate location:

I don't think the Marlins would want that. Knowing them, they would charge to protest.

The Marlins aren't alone among major league franchises in finding new levels of stupidity to plumb.

The Pittsburgh Pirates have instituted a bizarre Navy SEALs approach to treating their prospects.

The latest piece of this ongoing saga, detailed by Dejan Kovacevic of the Pittsburgh Review-Tribune, was "Hell Week" -- and the injury of one of their top prospects.

The piece really must be read to comprehend the extent of the lunacy, but the upshot from Kovacevic is this:

I know about the above because I continue to hear from prospects worried about injury (some among the team’s most expensive draft picks), from parents who wish their sons had never signed with the Pirates, from angry agents, even from men who answer to [assistant general manager Kyle] Stark and GM Neal Huntington.

I’ll repeat: The Pirates’ development system is the laughingstock of baseball.

The Twins have problems. They don't have the compulsive stupidity of the Marlins or Pirates.

Ozzie Guillen meets Miami politics

Ozzie Guillen's big mouth and quick tongue may this time
have gotten him into more trouble than he can handle.

On Monday, in a quick comment on the Ozzie Guillen "love and respect Fidel Castro" flap, I said: "I'm not sure there are enough fire extinguishers to put out this blaze."

On Tuesday, the Marlins recalled their field manager from a road trip, announced a five-game suspension, and put him in front of the cameras to issue a bilingual apology.

I doubt it will be enough. For one thing, as emotional as Guillen was on Tuesday, his Time comments are quite similar to those he made about four years ago in a Men's Journal piece, so the sincerity of Tuesday's disavowal is open to question.

For another, he's bucking two major tides in the local politics of Miami, which has little in common with what we're familiar with in Minnesota:

• The Cuban exile community has established a groupthink that makes even a nuanced discussion of Cuba, the Castros and U.S. policy almost impossible, and Ozzie doesn't do nuance;
• The new Marlins stadium, unlike Target Field, has been a disaster for the local politicians who supported it.

The scene outside the Marlins
Stadium during Guillen's
mea culpa press conference.

This is a baseball blog, not a politics one, but as a (long-ago) poli-sci major I find the multi-decade stranglehold a relatively small but concentrated voting bloc has on a piece of U.S. foreign policy fascinating. For roughly 60 years, our policy on Cuba has been one of regime change — Castro out — and it has failed at every turn. Yet the passion of a few hundred thousand voters in Florida and the details of the Electoral College has hijacked 11 administrations on the subject. I suspect that the diaspora harbors the notion that when the Castros are gone they can return to Havana and remake the island; I doubt that's realistic.

The point is: The exiles are used to getting what they want in U.S. politics on Cuba. Nobody with White House ambitions wants to cross them. Ozzie Guillen's views on Castro, malformed or otherwise, are irrelevant to anything real, but he has crossed the local community, and that's a problem for his employers.

All the more so because that community already had animosity toward Guillen's employers. The new stadium, built in Little Havana despite neighborhood opposition, has already ended the political career of the mayor who championed it and triggered a federal investigation of its financing.

Miami pols reflexively curry the favor of the exile community. They have also learned that bashing the Marlins plays well. This flap is a two-for-one opportunity.

And the great irony in all this is that Guillen lives there in the offseason. Somehow he managed to be oblivious to the political tripwire that surrounded him when he took the Miami job.

Thoughts on opening weekend

The Twins saw far too much of this during their series
in Baltimore.

Item: Twins get swept in Baltimore.

I think: There wasn't much of a silver lining to this series at all.

There are three American League teams with 0-3 records, and the other two are the Yankees and Red Sox. If the Twins have the same record as those two teams all season, I think Twins fans will be pleased with the season. But the Yanks got swept by Tampa Bay and the Bosox by Detroit, and those figure to be significantly better than the O's.

And now the Twins face a really daunting stretch of opponents: Angels, Rangers, Yankees, Rays, Red Sox ... 16 games against five really primed rosters.

It's easy to imagine this season spiraling out of control in April. Again.

Item: Ozzie Guillen tells Time magazine he "loves" Fidel Castro.

I think: Given Guillen's outspoken disdain for Castro-wannabe Hugo Chavez in his native Venezuela, I'm inclined to chalk this up to Guillen's mouth running out of control again.

If he were still managing the White Sox, this would be an exceedingly minor blip on the radar. But he's managing in Miami, where Castro is a hot-botton topic. I'm not sure there are enough fire extinguishers to put out this blaze.

Item: Johan Santana throws five shutout innings against the Braves.

I think: I listened to some of it via my iPad, and Santana was pretty clearly out of gas at the end of his stint. He probably didn't top 90 mph with his best fastball.

But it's good to see him back, and effective. A different kind of effective, to be sure, but effective nonetheless.

Joe Girardi overthought things in
the first inning of the first game
of the Yankees season.

Item: Joe Girardi opens himself to serious second-guessing.

Opening day, CC Sabathia on the hill for the Yankees against the Rays. In the first inning, with two on and two out, Girardi orders Sabathia to walk Sean Rodriguez intentionally to bring up Carlos Pena.

The Rays radio announcers reportedly immediately start trying to decide if Girardi is the biggest over-manager in Yankees history. They're still trying to figure it out when Pena's fly ball clears the right field fence for a grand slam.

I think: The numbers give some justification for Girardi's move. Rodriguez hits lefties well; Pena does not. That's why Rodriguez was hitting in front of Pena.

But just because I might do this in a Strat-O-Matic game doesn't make it the thing to do in real life. Sean Rodriguez ain't Albert Pujols, and CC Sabathia ain't Scott Diamond.

If Girardi doesn't trust Sabathia to get the likes of Rodriguez out in the first inning of the first game of the season, what does that tell his pitcher? What does that tell his team?

Girardi has a squad sufficiently talented that he doesn't need to prove that he's the smartest man in the room. Doing as little as possible would be the wisest route.

The end of the Ozzie era in Chicago

Ozzie Guillen, looking for his way out.

Ozzie Guillen is, finally and fer sure, out as manager of the Chicago White Sox. He had a good run there -- third most wins as a White Sox manager (behind Al Lopez and Jimmy Dykes), managed the only Chicago World Series winner in the past 94 years — but eight years is a long time for a high-pressure manager.

What comes next? For Guillen, it's fairly obvious:  He'll land in Miami as the manager of the Marlins. So will most of his coaching staff — but not pitching coach Don Cooper, who the White Sox are retaining. It will be interesting to see how Guillen fares without Cooper. The Sox have, during Guillen's run, had remarkable success at keeping their starting rotation healthy. Nobody knows how much credit to give anybody for such an accomplishment, but my guess is that Cooper and trainer Herm Schneider deserve more than Guillen.

Before hiring a new manager, the Sox should first decide: Stick with the current approach or blow the roster up and start over? I will be surprised if they take the rebuilding route, for two reasons:

• General manager Kenny Williams doesn't appear to be wired that way and
• The large financial commitments to Alex Rios and Adam Dunn (among others) aren't easy to dispose of.

Just as the Twins are committed to Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau as the core of their team, the Sox are anchored to Rios, Dunn and Paul Konerko.

Tony LaRussa has been linked to the Sox job for years, but the decision to keep Cooper probably rules LaRussa out; LaRussa isn't going anywhere without Dave Duncan as his pitching coach.

Dick-n-Bert, on the Twins telecast Monday night, touted Joey Cora, Guillen's bench coach, as a candidate; while I think Cora's a reasonable candidate elsewhere, Williams will probably prefer to sweep all of Ozzie's guys out the door.

Managerial musical chairs

This morning's USA Today had a story on the likelihood of a mass of managerial changes, which ties in to a recent post here about Scott Ullger and his ambitions.

Bobby Cox is retiring after
29 years as a major league
manager -- 25 with Atlanta,
four with Toronto.

Dave Nightengale's piece conveys the false impression that managers used to have greater job security than they do now. In reality, managers today who have any real success get far more rope than in the past. A big part of the coming upheaval comes from a group of 20-year managers who are leaving on their own behest --Joe Torre, Bobby Cox, Lou Piniella, maybe Tony LaRussa, possibly Dusty Baker.

Some other comments:

*Nightengale mentions Joe Girardi's contract status with the New York Yankees -- signed only through this season. I don't think he's going anywhere. George Steinbrenner is dead, and his infantile emotionalism was buried with him. The people running the Yankees now are not going to dump Girardi on a whim. And for his part, Girardi knows that, so long as the rest of MLB allows the Yankees to hold such a massive financial advantage over everybody else, whoever manages the Yankees has one foot in the Hall of Fame.

If Ozzie Guillen leaves the White Sox
for Florida, will bench coach Joey Cora
go with him, or get a managerial job
of his very own?

* According to Nightengale, Ozzie Guillen in recent weeks told people in the White Sox organization that he would resign after the the season, then changed his mind.

Nightengale, in an on-line only piece, predicts Guillen will decamp for the Florida Marlins job. I'm pretty sure that would be a mistake on both sides, and I think Ozzie is too smart for that (I won't say the same for Marlins owner Jeffery Loria, who is apparently set on getting Guillen).

And Nightengale figures Guillen's successor on the south side will be Tony LaRussa. Jerry Reinsdorf loves LaRussa, but I don't think a one-and-fly guy is a good idea.

---

Fascinating stuff in the Dodgers divorce trial: On Monday. Jamie McCourt (a lawyer herself) testified that she never read the postnuptual agreement in which the Dodgers franchise was declared to be husband Frank's sole property. Bad for her, right?

On Tuesday, the lawyer who drew up the agreement said he changed it AFTER it was signed, switching the Dodgers from community property to sole property. Incredible. Equally incredible: he told the court he saw no reason to tell Jamie McCourt of the change.

The words unethical and incompetent come to mind -- for Jamie McCourt, for Frank McCourt, for their lawyer ... for pretty much everybody involved in this unseemly mess.

The Dodger divorce is working for at least one guy: A law student at the University of Minnesota from L.A. who has chronicled the entire travesty on his blog.

Ozzie being Ozzie

I suspect a lot of us expected some delicious bluster from Ozzie Guillen after Tuesday's game. Didn't happen.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

''Those guys are better than we are,'' manager Ozzie Guillen said.

And Guillen said that before the 9-3 loss to the front-running Minnesota Twins.

''They play good all year long, and they're a good team,'' Guillen said. ''Remember, we were 12 games behind them, and we caught them. We got them. We just let them go.''

Ozzie Guillen: I have seen
the future, and it is not good.

In retrospect, we shouldn't have expected what we always expect from Guillen. Sure, he's quite willing to rip his players to the media. But he only does it when he's said the same things to their faces, and he doesn't do it when he thinks the team's psyche is too fragile — which is probably the case right now.

The notion of Ozzie the Nurturer may contradict the caricature we have of him,  but he's not a one-note manager. He's lasted too long for that to have been the case.

---

What happens this offseason with the reality-show Sox is an interesting question. There are consistent rumors that the Florida Marlins want him as their manager. Guillen and his boss, general manager Kenny Williams, have had public spats over such trivia as Twitter and what rounds their respective sons were drafted in. Williams might decide he's had enough of the high-pressure job with or without Guillen.

But my belief remains that both Guillen and Williams will stay as long as Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner, wants them to. And Reinsdorf likes them both and has before told them to work out their own problems.

Two managers, two quotes and the wisdom of "Bull Durham"

Ron Gardenhire on the White Sox, 7-0 since acquiring Manny Ramirez:

Ozzie Guillen: Full of ...
deep thoughts

"You try not to think about them. I mean everybody's watching them, and all you do is yell at the other team because they're not getting them out. That doesn't help."

Ozzie Guillen on the Twins, 6-1 in that same span:

"I don't think (the Twins) even think about us, to be honest with you. They worry about their game, they play their game. They should worry about themselves and not worry about us. We're the ones that have to worry about them. We're behind them."

Crash Davis to Nuke LaLoosh:

"You just got lesson number one: don't think; it can only hurt the ball club."

Around the division: Chicago White Sox

While the first-place Twins were playing the disappointing but still dangerous Angels this weekend, the second-place White Sox had a three-game set in Kansas City.

In theory, this was a chance for the Sox to make up some ground. Instead, they slid a game further back — and did it in excruciating fashion, as all three games went extra innings, with a backdrop of bad blood toward one of the umpires and frustration with the TV rules.

The saga begins with Friday night, when the game began despite the expectation of drenching rain. The rain came, and stayed, and washed out what little had been accomplished.

The crew chief, and hence the man responsible for calling the game, was Joe West. The Sox had a run-in with West in May, and in the wake of Friday's rainout weren't happy with the decision to start the game to begin with.

But:

• Generally speaking, it's not the umpires' decision until the game starts. Up to then, it's usually the home team's call. (There are exceptions, and maybe this was one.)
• If Ozzie Guillen expected heavy rain, he didn't have to start Edwin Jackson. He could have deployed one of his middle relievers.
• Jackson threw just seven pitches before the game was called. Seven! Sure, he warmed up beforehand but still ... this is a guy who threw 147 pitches earlier this season to get a no-hitter, and now he's burned for five days by a seven-pitch outing?

My take: Ozzie messed this one up.

Saturday: Because Fox has an exclusive TV window on Saturday, the rain-out was rescheduled as a nighttime double-header. First game started after 6 p.m. It went extra innings, with the Royals winning. The second game went extra innings, with the Sox winning (and Tony Pena, normally a middle reliever, going seven innings for Ozzie).

Sunday: A 1 p.m. start, meaning three games in 22 hours — and extra innings again, meaning 31 innings in those 22 hours. Royals win.

All kinds of deliciousness for me in this mess of a series.

• Both Rany Jazayerli and Joe Posnanski put up blog posts in praise of Yuniesky Betancourt. OK, lukewarm praise.
• Hawk Harrelson spent Sunday — pretty much all game, apparently — ripping West on the air.
• Ozzie Guillen issued a profane rant. Shocking, I know.

Oh, one more thing about the Sox: Ace lefty reliever Matt Thornton hasn't thrown a pitch since Jim Thome's homer last week and may be headed to the disabled list.

Guillen and Thome, Part II

Ozzie Guillen had a pregame rant Wednesday on the subject of Jim Thome not being with the White Sox.

As I said, or at least implied, in the previous post, I agreed with the intent of making the White Sox roster more versatile. Thome is a one-dimensional player. It's a mighty important dimension, however.

A few Ozzie points I wanted to comment on specifically:

* He cites the White Sox' record in interleague play. Yes, the Sox had a very good run against the National League. I'm inclined, however, to assign the credit at least as much to the incredibly soft schedule the Sox (and Tigers) had, especially as compared to the Twins.

* He specifically says that the Thome he saw the past few years couldn't have hit Thornton's fastball as he did last night.

* He suggests that White Sox fans ought to miss Jermaine Dye at least as much as Thome. But: Dye is out of baseball, as a right-handed hitter he wouldn't fill the left-handed power void and there doesn't seem much cause to second-guess the Sox for not bringing him back.

I don't know if he's reopening the notion that Dye didn't get an offer he liked because he's black. Thome accepted a $1.5 million (with incentives) deal from the Twins; supposedly Dye turned down some offers as too low for a player of his stature. If so, Dye violated a bit of Jim Leyland wisdom offered several years ago to a journeyman player on a hot streak: Don't price yourself out of the game.

Where Ozzie (and I) went wrong on Thome

The common off-day angle on this Twins-White Sox series was Jim Thome. It was a story that more or less wrote itself:

• Thome had played for the White Sox (2006-2009);
• The Sox toyed with bringing him back as a free agent during the winter and chose not to, with manager Ozzie Guillen explaining that there wouldn't be sufficient at-bats for him;
• The Twins signed him to a low-priced one-year deal with no commitment on playing time;
• He has mashed with Minnesota (17 homers, .593 slugging percentage in 253 plateappearances);
• The White Sox are believed to be looking now for left-handed power.

Conclusion: The White Sox screwed up.

Maybe so. I wasn't enthused about the Thome signing at the time myself. I was concerned about how his inability to play in the field would thin the bench and reckoned that the White Sox had concluded that age had eroded his hitting.

Guillen, for political reasons, was never going to say anything like We think Thome can't hit lefties or a good fastball anymore. But that was likely part of their thinking when they shipped him to the Dodgers last August, and even more so this winter.

Thome is a one-dimensional player. He can't run and he hasn't played in the field in years. He has to hit to help a team.

He has helped the Twins.

Tuesday's 10th-inning game-winning home run came off a hard-throwing lefty-handed reliever (Matt Thornton) — exactly the kind of guy I figured would eat Thome up. He had two singles earlier in the game against John Danks, a left-handed starter. Thome's playing time against southpaws has been limited, but in his first 60 plate appearances against lefties (56 at-bats) he hit four homers and slugged .500. Lot of strikeouts, few walks — but he hasn't been Jacque Jones helpless against southpaws.

I don't know how well Ron Gardenhire would be doing at juggling playing time if Justin Morneau had remained healthy. He had turned to playing Michael Cuddyer at third base in order to get Thome, Jason Kubel, Delmon Young and Cuddyer all in the lineup at once, and I didn't think it was helping. The defense suffered, and Cuddyer wasn't hitting.

Guillen, meanwhile, isn't backing down on his preference to have players who can play in the field and run a bit. And it isn't like the White Sox have lost all their power.

Here's Guillen after the game on the Thome homer:

''I will take that matchup again, Maybe Thome will hit a home run again. He's hit about 600 home runs. Jim Thome is a home-run hitter, he's a very strong man, he's been doing it for a lot of years. If [center fielder Denard] Span hit that home run in that inning, then I would be crying here. But Jim Thome hit it, you go shower and go and get it [tonight].''

Ozzie, race and economics

Ozzie Guillen last weekend unloaded an Ozzie rant, which is to say it was in more or less equal parts bombastic, profane, self-serving and wise.

This one touched on race — specifically the notion that professional baseball exploits Latin players:

"Don't take this wrong, but they take advantage of us. We bring a Japanese player and they are very good and they bring all these privileges to them. We bring a Dominican kid, (bleep) you, go to the minor leagues, good luck. Good luck. And it's always going to be like that. It's never going to change. But that's the way it is."

Guillen has a knack for mixing up his pronouns — in one sentence "us" is Latin players, in the next "we" is major league baseball, and "they" refers to both the teams and the Asian players.

But the argument is clear. It's largely factually correct. It includes some misinterpretation of those facts.

Gullen's off-the-cuff monologue — I wish I could find a complete transcript of the 25-minute session — appears to have had three main points:

1) Not enough has been done to teach immature Latin players of the problems with steroids and other performance enhancers.

Guillen here muddied the waters by claiming that he is the only one doing anything about it; I don't have to accept that claim to note that almost all the positive PED tests popping up now involve Latin players in the low minors. There is a problem there, and it has not been fixed.

2) Asian players get preferential treatment and more help handling the language barrier, including interpreters.

The interpreter part, I think, is the result of market forces.

Players such as Ichiro and the Matsuis and Dice-K were already stars in Japan. They came to American ball for the money and the challenge, but it was their choice. They had options. They go straight to the major leagues because they're older, mature, ready to do that. Some hired their own interpreters; some had an interpreter provided as part of their contract.

The typical Latin signee is young — 16, 17, probably no more than 18 — and has few if any alternative routes to a better life than baseball.

Baseball teams (and other employers) have always exploited players who lack leverage — the young and uneducated. As Guillen said, that's never going to change.

I do think that teams have done a better job of providing structured English and acclimation classes to their young Latin players. Some learn the language fairly easily (Johan Santana); some don't (Cristian Guzman). It doesn't seem particularly practical to hire individual interpreters for each Latin player.

So, yeah, the Asian player and the Latin player face similar language barriers, and they tend to deal with it in different ways. They reach the majors, if they do, in different ways. Those differences are partially individual, partially structural — but probably not racial.

3) These young and uneducated players are force-fed into an unfamiliar culture and often dumped at an early age — an age at which American collegians are just entering pro ball.

Factually true, and rooted in the youth of the Latin signees — which in turn in rooted in the far less-formal baseball training systems in their homelands.

American kids have Little League, high school ball, VFW ball, Legion ball, college, amateur town ball — all of which provide structured training for those athletes talented enough for pro ball. The Dominican Republic does not. The baseball structure there is whatever the major league teams have put into place.

So the teams sign young athletes to get them under their control —why would the Red Sox spend their resources to train a player for the White Sox? — but too young to know for sure that they're going to emerge.

A U.S. collegian enters older and more mature. He is a safer wager — and often a more expensive one, because he has more options. And when teams have invested more money in a player, they have reason to take care of that investment.

One other point to consider in all this: It is highly unlikely that Ozzie Guillen is the only Latino in baseball who believes that the deck is stacked against players of his background. If his voice is the one being heard, it's because he is loud by nature, and because he is secure enough in his position and accomplishments to speak up.

Notes, quotes and comments

Alexi Casilla has been getting quite a bit of playing time at shortstop this spring.

Part of that, no doubt, is that J.J. Hardy has been shelved with a leg strain. Somebody's got to play short when Hardy isn't.

But even beyond that, Casilla's out of options, and if he's going to stick with the Twins as a reserve player they need to feel comfortable with him at multiple positions. He's seen significant playing time in the majors only at second.

For that matter, if the Twins expect to trade him, other teams have to see him play other positions well.

---

Jack Morris, doing radio on an exhibition broadcast this week, talked about how a closer has to be able to get a strikeout when he needs one.

Truth of the matter is that pitching — starting, closing, set-up, mop-up, whatever the role — really boils down to three things: Avoiding walks, avoiding home runs, getting strikeouts.

Those are the "three true outcomes." You do all three things well, you're a star. Do two of them well, and baseball will make you a rich man.

Joe Nathan has been outstanding at all three. Nobody else in this bullpen has a track record of excellence in all three.

---

White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen on Texas counterpart Ron Washington's admission of cocaine use:

"As long as they don't test for vodka and Corona I'm fine."

Guillen said more than that, of course. But that was the amusing line.

Twitter me this

Ozzie Guillen is on Twitter now, posting such gems as 3 day of Spring Training and im already boreddddddd and Estoy lleno un anisito no cae mal ustedes que viene prendan fosforos.

Because he's Ozzie Guillen, and because he has earned a reputation for having no governor between his brain and his tongue, and because it's really easy to be misunderstood in 140 characters, this is seen as risky business.

To which Ozzie says (not, obviously, as a tweet):

"I guess I can't have fun. I flunked in school five times, and I never had as much trouble as I'm having right now. Why do I have to explain to people why I'm doing this? Like I said, I talked to (general manager) Kenny (Williams) about it, it's not anything that involves the ballclub.

"There are a lot of people in baseball that have Twitter. Why me? Why do I have to explain why I have Twitter? Obviously, I know I'm the manager of the team and the face of the ballclub, but there are a couple guys out there, I won't say any names, that have Twitter.

"I guess they're not famous, or people don't care about it. The one thing I promise people, well I don't have to promise, but (owner) Jerry (Reinsdorf) and Kenny. It's nothing to do with the White Sox. I hope I don't have to say I got in a fight with my wife last night.''

I hope not too, Ozzie.

Notes, quotes and comments

One reason the Mark Rosen notion — that the Twins and Joe Mauer have the framework of a deal in place awaiting the final details — made sense was the possibility that the two sides were working on a schedule of deferred payments.

That theory was shot down Monday by Jim Pohlad:

We try to stay away from deferred compensation. There's a ton of real-life examples of that kind of thinking. It's either going to be somebody else's problem, or we'll worry about it later. Eventually, you've got to worry about it and then, at that point, it affects your current operation. So it's really not a good thing. In the end you've got to pay the money no matter what. You may as well try to do it when the player is playing for you.

Another indication that the Pohlads are in it for the long haul. Many of the deferred comp cases came from owners who intended to sell the team before they started paying out big bucks to players no longer active.

I think the Pohlads are right to stay away from deferred comp. But it does raise the question: If Rosen's report was accurate, what would be delaying the deal?

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When is a retired number not retired? Usually it's when the player himself returns to uniform. If Rod Carew, for example, had taken the Twins batting coach position a few years ago when it was open, he'd be wearing his retired No. 29.

In the case of the Chicago White Sox, however, it's more open. On Monday the Sox announced that Omar Vizquel would wear No. 11 — officially retired in honor of Luis Aparicio, the Hall of Fame shortstop. (With, I should add, Aparicio's blessing.)

Vizquel has worn No. 13 through his career, but that's Ozzie Guillen's number, and the manager was keeping it.

---

The Yankees inked veteran OF Marcus Thames to a contract Monday, adding to a crowded field of candidates for the left field job.

Given the Yankees affection for veterans, the general expectation is that Thames and Randy Winn will platoon in left. Then there's Brett Gardner, who is faster than the other two — and the NUN, New Ulm Native Jamie Hoffmann, the forgotten outfielder on the champs' roster.

It gets increasingly difficult to see how the Yankees can carry that many outfielders.

Meanwhile, I keep looking at the Twins roster and seeing a need for a reserve outfielder who can play defense ... and wondering if there's a fit there for Hoffmann.

What are the White Sox thinking?

The above cartoon is from "Smells Like Mascot," a cartoon blog on Chicago sports with a heavy emphasis on the White Sox. And I'm using it because

• I've used both of the Jim Thome photos I have the past two posts and
• It illustrates the real complaint White Sox fans have with the team's disinterest in bringing Thome back.

From Sox Machine, a blog listed on the sidebar:

There are reasons on passing on the Gentleman Masher himself. He lost something off his bat speed, he missed more fastballs, his contact rate overall dropped, his strikeout rate increased, and he lost something off his isolated power, too. He’d still be productive with another year of a gentle decline, but he’s a risk to fall off a cliff, get hurt, or both.

Which matches my primary concern about adding Thome: The White Sox know him better than the Twins do. I think they think he's washed up, just as they thought after 2008 that Joe Crede couldn't stay in the lineup.

The problem isn't with deciding they can do better than Thome. It's that the plan Ozzie Guillen espouses seems so ludicrous. Andruw Jones? Omar Vizquel? Mark Kotsay?

It's a three-headed DH combo with more Gold Gloves to its past than extra-base hits in its future. OK, that's probably an exaggeration — but not by much. Who could have imagined Vizquel and his 11 Gold Gloves wrapping up his career as a designated hitter?

Win first, football later

Tragic number update: Seven. The Twins won Saturday, and so did the Tigers, who bounced back from a 5-0 White Sox lead to win 12-5 and set Ozzie Guillen off again when he found his team watching college football games on TV afterwards:

"[Do] they think the season's over for them? Yes. If they think the season's over for me, no. And I'm going to make it clear. It's a bunch of [bleeps] out there watching football games like a piece of [bleep] with no pride the way they [bleep] play, and that's embarrassing."

And a few more choice sentences, the upshot of which may be: If the White Sox players want to watch NFL games in peace after their game with the Tigers today, they'd better win.

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The Twins haven't faced Zach Greinke this season. That changes today. The presumptive AL Cy Young winner is to finish his season with two starts against Minnesota.

I suspect that, if the Twins are to win the division title, they will need to find a way to win at least one of the the Greinke games.

Detroit has faced Greinke five times and won two of those five games — despite the fact that Greinke's ERA against the Tigers is 1.00.

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Poll results: Some blog readers believe.

We had 21 votes in this week's poll. Ten (47 percent) said the Twins will win the AL Central; nine (42 percent) said the Tigers; two (9 percent) said it doesn't matter 'cause the Yankees will win the first round easily.

The new poll is actually multiple polls —MVPs, Cy Young, Rookies of the Year. The Monday print column will be on Joe Mauer and the AL MVP race. I hope to blog in the coming week on the other awards, but I suspect a flu bug is about to grab me by the respiratory tract, so we'll see how energetic I am.

Around the division

The Kansas City Royals are playing pretty well this month. They're moved out of the cellar, they took five of six from the Tigers earlier in September and they have a 13-9 record for the month that actually understates how well they're playing now (four of the losses came in the first five games of the month, so they've won 12 of 17).

And naturally, the Twins have six games to go with this resurgent bunch.

We've seen this before. The Royals seem to relish the spoiler role. Remember 2006? K.C. swept the Tigers in the season-closing series to keep them from winning the division title. Remember last year? The Twins lost two of three to the Royals in the final series of the season and were forced into that 163rd game.

Today's starter for Kansas City, Robinson Tejada (above), is no small part of their surge. They stuck him in the rotation this month, and in four starts he's 3-0 with an 0.81 ERA and striking out more than a batter an inning.

Is Tejada for real? Probably not. He's been kicking around for a while with minimal return. Maybe he's figured something out. But then, some people thought the same thing last September about Kyle Davies. He turned last year's brilliant September (4-1, 2.27) into 8-9, 5.27 this year.

What matters right now isn't whether Tejada can be an effective rotation piece for the Royals in 2010, but whether he can stifle the Twins tonight.

* Detroit LOOGY — that's Left-handed One-Out GuY — Bobby Seay is a hurting unit and is to have an MRI on his throwing shoulder.

The Detroit Free Press calls Seay the Tigers' top lefty reliever, and certainly Jim Leyland turns to him frequently in game situations. Man has six wins and 28 holds. Still, Fu-Te Ni appears to have pitched better than Seay this season and may be a more-than-adequate replacement.

* The Cleveland Indians are done playing the two contenders, which is probably a good thing considering how poorly they are playing. The Tribe has now lost 11 in a row; the franchise record is 12, and this is a franchise that had what seems in retrospect to be a 40-year losing streak.

General consensus is that Eric Wedge is finished as Cleveland manager after the season.

* Chicago manager Ozzie Guillen, in a postgame rant I quoted here last week, declared of his players, "If they quit on me, I quit on them." General manager Kenny Williams seemed to echo that line of thought Wednesday:

"I know who’s quit and who hasn’t, who’s willing to sacrifice. Listen, it’s hard to win. Winning and success, whether it be baseball or any other facet of life, if you are not willing to sacrifice, you’re not willing to put in the work, you’re not going to be successful. You’re just not.

"We’ve got some guys here who know all about sacrifice. Some have to be taught. And I hope the guys that know about it are teaching some of the other guys. If not, that’s where your coaching staff has to step up. But you’re not getting anywhere in life, period, if you don’t understand that the work has to be put in."

Neither Williams nor Guillen are naming names.

An underlying point here: There are some people who look at Guillen's diatribes and figure this is a manager who's turning off his players and losing his clubhouse and thus destined to be fired. Other than in the sense that all managers are destined to be fired, I don't see it. It sure sounds like Guillen and Williams are in agreement on the major point here.

Notes, quotes and comment

It's a typical week for the White Sox coming to Minnesota. You spend a nice day here and get your [rear] kicked. I don't see anything different ever since I started managing this club.

— Pale Hose skipper Ozzie Guillen after the Twins completed a three-game sweep on Wednesday.

Comment: Guillen took over the Sox for the 2004 season. Under his guideance, the White Sox have a record of 484-429, .530 (and, of course, a World Series title). Against the Twins, the Sox are 52-53, .495. That breaks down as 29-23 for Chicago in their park, 23-30 in the Metrodome.

Which leads us to another Ozzie quote from Wednesday:

I want to see these piranhas in a different lake next year. I want to see these piranhas hit in 20-below.

* The New York Times says Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz were among the positive tests in the 2003 "confidential" tests.

Comment: Anybody surprised by this hasn't been paying attention.

* Rany Jazayerli opines that his favorite club, the Kansas City Royals, should deal Alberto Callaspo to the Twins. (You have to get almost to the end of a lengthy post to get to this part.)

Before I delve into this: Jazayerli may nor may not understand the Twins approach; if he understands it, he certainly doesn't buy into it. And I don't believe that he offers any real insight to the thinking of the Royals front office; indeed, if Rany's got a strong viewpoint on something, the odds are that the Royals think almost exactly the opposite. So this is no reason to believe there's anything cooking here.

That caveat given: There's no way the Twins are dealing Ben Revere for Callaspo. The only way they'd consider doing Carlos Gomez for Callaspo is if the Twins believe Callaspo is a better defensive player than Jazayerli does. Delmon Young? The Twins might not have been willing to make such a swap last winter; I think they would now.

But ... when the Twins traded for Alexi Casilla (they sent J.C. Romero to the Angels for him), Callaspo was still in the LAA organization. I remember at the time wishing the Twins had landed Callaspo or Erick Aybar in that trade (I saw them play for Cedar Rapids one summer night in 2003 and was very impressed with both).

I don't know if the Twins asked for Callaspo at the time and were turned down; I don't know if they preferred Casilla. If they liked Casilla more in 2005, they might be reluctant now to decide they were wrong then.