Kubel Re-Ups

In an off-season that has been disturbingly light on Twins news, today's announcement that Jason Kubel signed a two-year deal with a 2011 team option was a jolt -- a reminder that the Twins are, in fact, still operating a baseball club in Minneapolis and that Spring Training is just around the corner.

It's hard to evaluate this deal without knowing the terms, and as of yet they haven't been disclosed (probably since the deal isn't official just yet). However, my immediate reaction is positive. Kubel does not appear to be headed towards the stardom that was predicted for him when he was an up-and-coming prospect in the farm system. Nonetheless, he is moving towards becoming a very solid big league player who retains the potential to break out and have at least a few special seasons. Last year, Kubel hit .272 with an 806 OPS and 20 homeruns. Those are respectable numbers, and if he can dublicate them over the next few years I'll be perfectly happy with the result (unless we overpaid for him, which we'll find out later).

Of course, the Twins didn't have to buy out Kubel's last arbitration years -- but in so doing they gained cost-certainty and presumably answered the question of whether Kubel remains in the team's plans in light of the "glut" of outfielders on the roster. I like the fact that the Twins are sticking by him. I'm sure I'll have more to say on this topic once the terms become available and there's something to really evaluate. As I said, though, I like the idea of getting cost-certainty on Kubel and of keeping him around to DH and play in the field on occasion. Consider that a conditional thumbs-up while we wait for news on how much was actually spent to keep him around.

Welcome Back, Eddie! UPDATED

Imagine my surprise when I returned home today and discovered that the Twins have reacquired Eddie Guardado! I know a lot of Twins fans were clamoring for a bullpen move, and this seems to have been about the best move available. Guardado was having a very solid season with the Rangers, posting a 3.65 ERA and 1.11 WHIP in 49.1 innings spread across 55 games.

Certainly, the Twins didn't give up anyone overly important to the team, as the Rangers picked up rookie league pitcher Mark Hamburger in the transaction. The write up on La Velle Neal's strib blog mentions that there are talent evaluators in the Twins organization who feel that Hamurger could make the big leagues some day -- but if that happens, it's going to be a long time from now. The Twins are trading a marginal prospect who has a shot at the big leagues for a proven (albeit old) lefty who can help in the 7th and 8th innings.

While I'm generally supportive of the trade, then, I wonder who is going to be sent out to make room for Guardado. None of the pitchers seem like obvious choices -- Guardado could replace Craig Breslow outright, but Breslow has a 2.36 ERA and 1.19 WHIP this year, so he's pitched better than Guardado and that wouldn't make much sense. He could also replace Boof Bonser, but they fill very different roles in the bullpen so that wouldn't make much sense either.

Instead, it seems likely that the Twins will expand back to 12 pitchers tonight. There seem to be three possibilities for who could get sent down: Mike Lamb, Adam Everett, and Randy Ruiz. With Alexi Casilla back in the fold, and with Nick Punto and Brendan Harris both capable of playing short or third as needed, the obvious answer seems to be Everett. Lamb and Ruiz fill niche roles that others in the organization don't necessarily fill adequately. Everett is a spare part, a player who is wholly redundant.

So long as the Twins don't make a puzzling move to make room for Guardado, then, I fully agree with this move. Guardado should bolster a bullpen that obviously has been struggling, and in a straight up exchange of Guardado for Everett on the roster, the Twins are better off with Guardado. I give this one my enthusiastic support, even if I don't expect Guardado to be brilliant. The bottom line is that he should help the team, and that's all that matters.

UPDATE: Now that was a bit unexpected. The Twins have designated Mike Lamb for assignment to make room for Guardado on the active roster. While I identified Lamb as a possible casualty in the original post, I thought it made more sense for the Twins to cut Adam Everett. I've rethought things a little bit -- I had identified Lamb as filling a niche role, for instance, but that "niche" was a left-handed corner infielder. Lamb, after all, occasionally played first base when Justin Morneau was the DH. On second thought, however, Brian Buscher can probably fill that role equally well.

The other possible argument against cutting Lamb is that the Twins are on the hook for nearly $4 million through next season. Obviously Bill Smith felt that there was no place for Lamb with the team in the future -- even though this season's poor performance is a bit of an aberration in Lamb's historical performance. It would have been easier to cut Adam Everett -- but Smith made a tougher decision. I only hope that Lamb doesn't catch on somewhere next year and hit .300 with 20 homers.

As for Everett, this was probably the final hurdle that he needed to jump to stick with the team for the rest of the year. From my standpoint, I don't really know what he brings to the team, and if I were the Twins GM I almost certainly would have cut him instead of Lamb. Still, I don't think Smith made the wrong move so much as I think he made a somewhat unusual and bold move.

Hernandez Done in Colorado?

Livan Hernandez has now made three starts for the Rockies since being rather unceremoniously dumped by the Twins at the end of July. Forget about the argument over whether he should or not have have been signed by the Twins at the beginning of the year -- we've had that argument already. Far more interesting to me is whether any team should have bothered to actually pick Hernandez up when the Twins cut him.

The easy answer is to look at what Hernandez has done since joining the Rockies. Simply put, he's been miserable -- he lasted just 2.2 innings while allowing 9 earned runs in his first start, went 6 innings and allowed 6 earned runs in his second start, and yesterday allowed 6 more earned runs in 3.2 innings. That's an ERA of 15.32 in three starts. Based on that alone, the answer is clearly no.

Of course, that's the kind of "analysis" that I despise -- looking solely at the results doesn't tell you anything about the process that went into making a decision. Good things can happen to teams that make bad decisions, and bad things can happen to teams that make good decisions. After all, if there's a 99% chance that something will happen, that still means that once out of every 100 times it doesn't happen, and vice versa. In purely economic terms, the person who buys a lottery ticket made a bad investment whether he wins or not. This kind of analysis frustrates some people who prefer to look only at results, but if you don't analyze the process behind the decision-making you don't know whether a team (or GM or Manager or whoever) is consistently making good decisions or is just getting lucky (or, alternatively, if your criteria for evaluating decision-making is flawed).

With that in mind, what do I think of the Rockies decision to get Hernandez? On the one hand, they had nothing to lose. Hernandez didn't cost them a player (a far cry from the year before, when the Rockies inexplicably gave up Matt Macri in exchange for the horrendous Ramon Ortiz), and the prorated portion of his salary (a little over $1.5 million) isn't going to break the bank for a team. The Rockies felt that they needed a pitcher who would give them innings to take some strain off the bullpen -- and following the same logic that caused the Twins to sign Hernandez in the first place, the Rockies pulled the trigger and acquired a player with a reputation for eating innings.

The problem is that the Rockies must have ignored Hernandez's performance in June and July, when he had an ERA well over 6.00. Giving credit where it's due, Hernandez did go 6 innings or more in 7 of his 11 starts during that span -- but if he's giving up 5 or 6 runs consistently in those starts, how valuable is that to a club? Remember, the Rockies started August just 8 games back in an NL West that at the time looked fairly weak. The Dodgers and D-Backs have been playing better of late, but the Rockies are still just 9 back.

Believe it or not, I'm forced to conclude that this wasn't a horrible decision by the Rockies. If you look at the 15.32 ERA, and if you remember how harsh I've been on Hernandez and how vociferously I argued that his performances for the Twins weren't worth a damn, you might wonder how I arrive at this conclusion. Really, though, it's all about expectations and needs.

The Rockies should have expected Hernandez to post a 6.00+ ERA -- he'd been doing it consistently for two months. They could NOT have expected that in three starts he'd be as dreadful as he has been. The Rockies did not have any other options that could have been expected to outperform Hernandez (a significant difference with what the Twins were doing), and since they were down by so many games they had to take a chance that Hernandez would be able to step in and give them a chance to win some games. In fact, they did win in Hernandez's second start, when he gave up 6 runs in 6 innings. If he had been able to regularly post 6 run starts while allowing 4 or 5 runs, the Rockies may have been able to win some ballgames with him starting.

Somewhat surprisingly, then, I find myself in the position of excusing the Rockies. Hernandez was never going to be a stud for them -- but that's not what they needed, and hopefully not what they expected (there was some breathless chatter from the local papers when he was picked up, but I attribute that to media hype and not to the guys who actually do this for a living). Unfortunately for the Rockies, they took a shot and lost.