Peter Simon's Minnesota Twins fan blog

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?

Continue reading "Surprise, Surprise! Twins Sign Hernandez"

New Twins GM Bill Smith really mishandled the Johan Santana trade.  He could have acquired Melky Cabrera and Phil Hughes from the Yankees or Jacoby Ellsbury and Jon Lester from the Red Sox but he thought he could get more.  So he held out in an attempt to get the two AL East teams to out-bid each other in their pursuit of Santana's services.  This bidding war never materialized and as spring training approached Santana got restless.  At the risk of sounding like Sid Hartman, a friend of mine, who follows the team quite closely, told me that Johan went to the organization and insisted that they trade him immediately or he would hold out when pitchers and catchers reported to Fort Meyers in couple of weeks.  The Twins were stuck and the best they could do was get four prospects from the Mets in exchange for the best pitcher in the game. 

Continue reading "Twins GM Needs To Learn From His Mistake"

Prospects.  We're talking about prospects.  Not major-leaguers!  Not major-leaguers!  Not major-leaguers!  We're talking about prospects.  The Twins traded the best pitcher in the game and for what?  Prospects.  Not major-leaguers with proven track records in the show.  They traded him for prospects.  How the hell can you make your team better by trading Santana for prospects?

I just got off the phone with Allen Iverson, who's actually quite a big Twins fan, and this is what he asked me.  I didn't have an answer for "The Answer".  I don't know how you trade Johan Santana and only get four prospects.  If you're a Twins fan like Allen and me, you've got to prey that this deal doesn't go through.  Surely the Twins can get more than this for the best left-handed starting pitcher since Tom Glavine. 

Continue reading "Prospects?"