Twins: Rumblings

To temporarily stop the Vikings obsessing, a couple pre-Winter meetings Twins notes:

1. Apparently, we're courting Casey Blake. I think he's a better player than Lamb, but haven't really looked over the stats. He has, however, been an everyday position player for a long time, which is certainly an advantage over Lamb. If we can avoid giving him a third year, I'm not terribly opposed to this one. He's past his prime at 35, but he's not a total washout already who we're just praying will find new youth after bathing in the waters of Lake Minnetonka. Rather, we're hoping he doesn't fall off the cliff in terms of production. I think he'd likely be better than a Buscher/Harris platoon - those guys just aren't everyday 3B's, and Blake fitting in could allow us to move Buscher and/or Harris in other trades.

All that said, my preference is (and always has been since Koskie left) that we go out and spend some significant money on a legit younger 3B with power. From what I've ready, however, the organization is now at the point where they feel they have a couple legitimate prospects who should be ready for the show in another couple years, so the situation is a little different than it has been in recent years.

2. There's talk of trading someone (don't know who, but uninformed speculation seems to be centered around guys like Slowey and Blackburn as centerpieces) to Milwaukee for J.J. Hardy. This is very intriguing, I must say. He was off a little this year from his breakthrough in '07, but that kid can play and would be a good fit on the Twins.

3. All the talk right now is that we've given up on Delmon and are looking to move him. This is infuriating for two reasons, both fairly obvious. One is that we just gave up Bartlett and f-ing Garza to get him one year ago. The other is that he's 23 stinking years old and hit .300 this season. Maybe he won't be a 35-homer guy like projected, but there's every indication that this kid will hit .320 with 40 doubles for at least a 5 year stretch at some point. He's got a cannon that's been wasted in left field, and now Gardy's out publicly talking this week about how he wants to start Span, Gomez and Cuddy in the outfield. Span's due to come down to earth, Gomez is clearly being held to a totally different standard than Young for no good reason, and Cuddyer's at the tail end of his effectiveness, and, frankly, overrated and by extension grossly overpaid. We need to be dangling Cuddyer out there, along with Kubel, not Young.