Carl Pavano continued his solid spring Tuesday, going four scoreless innings to bring his spring total to nine, having allowed just four hits, one walk, and nary a run. While listening to him mow down Pirates hitters, I wondered at the fact that Pavano hadn’t gone in any of the myriad fantasy drafts despite being [...]

Ok, I have to drive to St. Louis in the morning, so these will be some pretty cursory thoughts with deeper analysis to come.
The Twins did what I hoped they wouldn’t and reportedly have traded J.J. Hardy to the Baltimore Orioles.
Despite assertions to the contrary, I felt like this was pretty much a foregone conclusion [...]

The Twins waited until almost the 11th hour to announce which free-agents-to-be would receive offers of arbitration, coming out with their list less than two hours before the deadline.
When the list finally came out, just three of the team’s potential free agents had been made offers of arbitration. Three others were notably absent from the [...]

News came Friday morning that the Twins were getting their options in order in anticipation of the rapidly approaching end of the 2010 season.* The Twins announced they would be picking up Jason Kubel’s $5.25 million deal and had declined Nick Punto’s $5 million option for the 2011 season.
*I said on Seth Stohs’ podcast that [...]

It’s unlikely that the Twins will boast the AL MVP in 2010—Justin Morneau had a legitimate shot given his first half and Joe Mauer has been among baseball’s best in the second half, but the full-year efforts of Robinson Cano, Miguel Cabrera, and Josh Hamilton make it extremely tough to believe that a Twin will [...]

In case you’ve been living under a cave: 2009’s first overall pick, one Stephen Strasburg, is about to make his debut for the Washington Nationals.
Strasmas (hat tip to @SacksJacked) has become baseball’s newest Holliday (or Halladay if you prefer) and Tuesday will mark the first time it’s celebrated. Strasburg’s starts will still be specticles for [...]

Is umpiring an impossible job?
Wednesday night’s multiple incidents of Adventures in Umpiring—the more famous one in Detroit and the one that actually cost a team a game in Seattle—have once again brought the debate about instant replay out of the shadows and into the public spectrum. In a statement released Thursday, Bud Selig said that [...]

If the early AL voting totals told us that Yankee fans had been voting en masse, early NL voting puts Cardinals fans and Phillies fans in a dog fight for voting primacy. The AL votes were close to my expectations at all but two positions, but the NL totals are varying wildly from the real [...]

It’s now been about a month since MLB opened All-Star voting. If I had my druthers, we’d just now be passing out ballots, but, as usual, no one asked me. Instead, the first press release with voting totals emerged Monday afternoon. Until now, this exercise has been pretty academic, but once those results came in, [...]

Yes, the Twins are having bullpen issues, just like everyone expected they would.
Well, not quite. Jon Rauch has filled in admirably for Joe Nathan, posting a 1.28 WXRL so far, which is good for fifth in the American League. The closer hasn’t been the Twins’ issue, but it does relate to some of their troubles. [...]