Goodbye Randy

La Velle reported last night that Randy Ruiz was waived by the Twins yesterday, removing him from the 40-man roster and making him a free agent. While I found Ruiz to be an interesting player (if you remember, I was rather enamored of him during spring training), and I'm glad the Twins gave him a shot at the big league level this year, I also am not upset by this development. Ruiz would not have made the big league roster in 2009 barring a catastrophic series of injuries, and he's old enough that it doesn't look like he's going to suddenly break out as a must-have player. Keeping him around didn't really make a lot of sense, so I support the move.

Of course, if you wanted to read something more into this you probably could come up with a conspiracy theory or two. The Twins might be on the verge of signing Casey Blake and might think Dennys Reyes could accept arbitration, for instance, in which case they would have needed to clear one spot on the 40-man. Or, they might have wanted to make some extra room going into the Winter Meetings so that they had spaces available in the event of a trade that netted them more players than they lost. This is all idle speculation, though; I don't actually think the Twins needed much of an ulterior motive to part ways with Ruiz.