The Other Shoe Drops

This is as close to official as it gets - and we now can be virtually certain that Francisco Liriano will be sitting out the 2007 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery this off-season. I don't want to talk a lot about this - frankly it's too depressing. However, I expected it, and have been encouraging fans (and the Twins front office - although I'm pretty sure they have better things to do than read my blog) to prepare for a Liriano-less 2007. That's why I advocated picking up Carlos Silva's option - the Twins are going to have rotation spots aplenty to give out to young guys in the spring, and having a veteran option like Silva will be a positive.

One disquieting thought on the whole Liriano situation - is it possible that the Giants knew Liriano had a potentially serious problem with his arm? One that wasn't a problem (yet) at the time the trade was made but which was likely to cause a problem in the future? If so, it's possible that they discounted Liriano's value and threw him into the Pierzynski trade knowing that they were placing less value on him than the Twins. I'm not saying that it was wrong for them to do that - I'm just putting forth the suggestion that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't as bad a trade on their end as it looked. Of course, even if it were just Bonser and Nathan for Pierzynski, it would still have been a steal - so it doesn't exonerate them of extremely poor decision-making. It just might make things slightly less egregious.