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Ultimately Liriano has chosen to be represented by his agent and should certainly be held accountable for statements made on his behalf, but it sounds like Liriano expressed frustration with still being at Rochester--understandable given that he's 8-0 with a 2.53 ERA over his last 10 starts there--and his agent fanned the flames by making a formal complaint. Luckily for Liriano it appears as though both Ron Gardenhire and Bill Smith have directed most of their vitriol at his agent. Here's Liriano's take:

Those certainly don't sound like the words of someone who's the driving force behind a grievance alleging a serious offense, so Liriano should probably be cut some slack. It seems unlikely to me that service time has played the biggest factor in the Twins' handling of Liriano. Instead, it's probable that they feel guilty about the way he was rushed to the majors in April and because of that are going out of their way to avoid bringing him back before he's completely ready this time around.

In April the Twins called up Liriano from Triple-A despite both his on-field performance and advice from the Rochester coaching staff suggesting that he was far from ready. He predictably bombed, going 0-3 with an 11.32 ERA before being sent back down with all sorts of confidence issues and new questions about his long-term outlook. As recently as three weeks ago he turned in back-to-back poor outings at Rochester, so it's tough to argue that they've kept him at Triple-A significantly longer than necessary.

Toss in the fact that Scott Baker, Kevin Slowey, Nick Blackburn, and Glen Perkins are all pitching well and Livan Hernandez's horrible ERA apparently doesn't bother any of the team's decision-makers, and it's easy to see an explanation for why Liriano remains at Triple-A that has little to do with service time. Plus, if the Twins were so concerned about managing his service time at all costs they never would have given Liriano a rotation spot in April to begin with.

Keeping Santana in the bullpen years after he'd shown himself to be the team's most dominant pitcher was overkill. Letting Bartlett beat up on Triple-A pitching for a third straight season while Castro stunk at shortstop was overkill. Asking Liriano to make a few extra starts at Rochester to instill confidence that he won't be a mess if the Twins call him up this time is totally different. Plus, would you rather have Liriano in the Twins' rotation for the past few weeks or for all of 2012?

You won't find anyone more eager to dump Hernandez from the rotation than me and no one cries louder for young players to be given fair shakes, but being overly cautious with Liriano is a no-brainer and if keeping him at Triple-A for a few extra weeks means delaying his free agency an extra year, that's an easy call to make whether the Twins did it on purpose or not. Hopefully his agent's grievance will be deemed spurious and Liriano will be called up soon, so the focus can shift to his improving stuff.

So far the same is true of Kubel, which is why despite being one of his biggest supporters you'll never see me complain about Craig Monroe starting over him against a left-hander. With that said, it's worth noting that Gardenhire played Jones every day despite his complete inability to hit lefties, while Kubel has basically always been a platoon player. In seven years with the Twins, 23 percent of Jones' playing time came versus lefties, whereas Kubel has batted against a southpaw just 16 percent of the time.

In addition to their nearly identical struggles against lefties, Jones and Kubel have also posted similar career numbers against righties. Jones has hit .290/.340/.476 in 3,897 plate appearances, while Kubel has hit .275/.328/.463 in 887 plate appearances. My guess it that Kubel will surpass Jones' numbers against righties, because he's still just 26 years old (Jones had his two best seasons at 27 and 28) and is improving the further away he gets from knee surgery, but so far they've been very close.

Elite left-handed batters tend to be good enough overall that they remain strong options against lefties despite the big drop in production. However, when it comes to non-elite left-handed batters like Jones or Kubel teams can usually get better production against lefties from even a mediocre right-handed batter. Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer are certainly elite left-handed batters, yet even they've been mediocre at best versus lefties during their careers.

Mauer has hit .326/.419/.504 against righties and .291/.352/.367 against lefties, which is a 20-percent drop in production. Morneau has hit .296/.369/.534 versus righties and .258/.304/.437 versus lefties, which is an 18-percent drop in production. Kubel and Jones are similar in that they've been 17 percent and 22 percent worse against lefties, respectively, but the difference with Morneau and Mauer is that they're good enough overall that they remain relatively productive after the versus-lefties drop.

Gardenhire is correct in the sense that the physical act of "leading off" tends to be vastly overrated in terms of importance, but the much bigger issues are that Gomez a) makes a tremendous amount of outs and rarely gets on base in front of the Twins' best hitters, and b) is on pace for 125-150 more plate appearances than he'd get batting ninth. Gardenhire has ignored those issues because Gomez runs very fast, but to steal his own line: "I always find that amazing how much emphasis gets put on that."

Next, here's a follow-up note from July 14:

And finally, here's the latest tidbit from yesterday:

To recap: First the Twins talked amongst themselves and decided that they'd be interested in acquiring one of the AL's better all-around third basemen. Then they actually contacted the Mariners to discuss a potential trade for Beltre. And finally they realized that the Mariners weren't going to trade him cheaply, thus ending the potential for a deal. Throughout all of that my e-mailbox and the comments section here were filled with the same question: "Why aren't you talking about the Beltre rumors?!" That's why.

My hope is that Smith was just sticking up for Hernandez and being literal with his response, because certainly at the most basic level 16 wins are far better than 10 wins. If instead the man in charge of running the team honestly believes that "a guy who's 16-8 with a 7.00 ERA" has out-performed "a guy who's 10-15 with a 2.80 ERA" ... well, then the Twins may not be in the greatest hands (and Smith may not think much of Bert Blyleven's Hall of Fame case or Scott Baker's "loss" yesterday afternoon).