Where have you Juan Rincon?

Following last week's news that Juan was "offered" an assignment to Class AAA Rochester (which was duly rejected as Rincon is going to test the free agent market), it got me thinking about Juan and how important he once was to our bullpen. (Interesting note: "Rincon" in Spanish means "inside corner"; that's like having a boxer named "Bob Uppercut.") Juan broke in with the Twinkies at the tender age of 17 and played all 12 years of his MLB career with your home town team getting the call up in 2001. By 2003 he was a regular out of the bullpen, was one of the best set-up guys around, and was a key player in one of the best bullpen's in baseball during the latest Twins Renaissance.

However, the controversy that surrounds Juan's time with the Twins was his ten game suspension in 2005 for roids. Let's see how that has played out through his numbers:
Throwing out his 2001 and 2002 figures (he appeared in 14 games total over those first two seasons in the Bigs), his ERA from 2003 to this year was:

2003 - 3.68
2004 - 2.63
2005 - 2.45
2006 - 2.91
2007 - 5.13
2008 - 6.11

Those figures alone would lead one to draw the conclusion that Rincon benefited from being on the juice. What is odd to me is that the Twins re-signed him to a one year deal for $2.48M over the off-season. His name did surface in the Delmon Young/Garza deal but he was never moved. Why would you pay $2.48M for a guy who had that brutal of a year in 2007? Obviously the Twins brass and coaches thought he would return to form and would be important in the bullpen with the departure of Santana. If Rincon magically happens to pop up on some other AL Central roster (crazier things have happened) I wouldn't mind facing him a few times a year.