I don't know about you but I was rather surprised when I found out that the Twins had signed Livan Hernandez. They actually spent a fair amount of money on a player who's name is recognizable to a casual fan like myself.
I follow the Twins pretty closely but I don't keep up on the rest of the league the way I use to. So up until this point, I didn't really recognize any of the players the Twins had brought in this off-season. The one exception was Delmon Young and that was only because he'd thrown a bat at an umpire while he was in the minors.
So now the Twins have a solid veteran pitcher to anchor their rotation. He's on the back end of his career but I think the team can realistically expect 10-15 wins, around 200 innings, an ERA in the 4 to 5 range and 100 to 125 strikeouts out of the "32-year-old" Cuban. The question I have is why did the Twins make this fairly significant move?
I've thought about it and I've come up with three answers: The first is preservation. No matter what happens, the team will have to trot some one out to the mound 162 times this season. If all you've got is a bunch of inexperienced kids, there is the potential for things to get ugly. You don't want young pitchers, who have never pitched a full major league season, to put too much strain on their arms. What's more, you don't want to shatter their confidence if they go through a stretch where they're getting shelled every time out. Having Hernandez around to take the ball once every five days will give the team some much needed flexibility in how it spreads the starts across its otherwise young rotation.
The second reason is credibility. After bidding farewell to established major leaguers such as Carlos Silva, Torii Hunter and Johan Santana, the latter two being all-star calibre players, the organization had to demonstrate to their fans that they were going to make some effort to be competitive this season. I predict a small bump in ticket sales as a result of this move and I don't think that would be unjustified. If everything works out as well as it possibly can for the Twins this year, they could be a .500 team.
The third reason the organization made this move is because it could. When you take away the salaries of Santana, Hunter and Silva, there's a substantial savings. Even with the addition of Hernanadez, the Twins payroll will be around $55 million. That's about $16 million less than last season. Who knows, with all that extra money the team might finally sign that big bat they've been missing all these years. I don't think it will happen but if it did this could actually be an interesting season.
