AaronGleeman.com

Twins starting pitchers combined for a 5.00 ERA during the past two seasons to rank dead last in the league and they head into the offseason with only Scott Diamond locked into a rotation spot. Terry Ryan has said he'd prefer to address the rotation via trades, which is no surprise for a team that's basically never pursued free agent pitching beyond bargain-bin shopping, but if they do decide to dive into the free agent pitching pool the water is reasonably deep.

In an effort to figure out the Twins' options I've separated the free agent pitching class into three categories: Top-of-the-rotation starters, middle-of-the-rotation starters, and back-of-the-rotation starters. Below are the back-of-the-rotation starters, which I view as a No. 4 or No. 5 starter on a contending team and a group the Twins hopefully won't be looking to overspend on in the name of simply adding veterans regardless of upside.

• Joe Saunders - LHP - 175 innings - 4.07 ERA - 4.25 xFIP - 112/39 K/BB

Kansas City saved the Twins from Jeremy Guthrie, but Saunders is a similar mix of durable mediocrity and lots of pitching to contact. Toss in the fact that he avoided getting knocked around in a pair of playoff starts and he's a name to watch as a potential overspend. Saunders would be a perfectly decent one-year pickup, but among the 113 starters with 500-plus innings since 2008 he's 104th in strikeout rate and 100th in xFIP, one spot ahead of Nick Blackburn.

• Scott Feldman - RHP - 124 innings - 5.09 ERA - 3.87 xFIP - 96/32 K/BB

Run support and luck allowed Feldman to win 17 games in 2009 despite a 4.08 ERA, but in three seasons since then he's been ineffective and injured with a 5.15 ERA in 297 innings. His secondary numbers this year were actually pretty good, but for a 6-foot-6 guy with above-average velocity he's never generated many strikeouts. And while he's done half his pitching in Texas' hitter-friendly ballpark Feldman's numbers on the road haven't been any better.

• Roberto Hernandez - RHP - 14 innings - 7.53 ERA - 5.39 xFIP - 2/3 K/BB

Formerly known as "Fausto Carmona" before getting busted for a false identity last winter, Hernandez missed the first four months and was then shut down after three starts with an ankle injury. Once upon a time Hernandez was a very promising young pitcher, but it turns out he was never actually all that young and since 2008 his ERA is 5.06. His ability to induce ground balls is intriguing, but Hernandez doesn't miss many bats and has always had awful control.

• Jeff Francis - LHP - 113 innings - 5.58 ERA - 4.07 xFIP - 76/22 K/BB

Francis broke into the big leagues throwing in the high-80s and the No. 9 overall pick in the 2002 draft had plenty of early success, but shoulder problems have left him working in the mid-80s and the results haven't been pretty. He's adapted by becoming an extreme strike-thrower, trailing only Cliff Lee for the best walk rate among left-handed starters since 2010, but there's very little upside attached to Francis at this point.

• Jason Marquis - RHP - 128 innings - 5.22 ERA - 4.03 xFIP - 91/42 K/BB

Marquis signed a one-year, $3 million deal with the Twins last offseason and was as bad as a pitcher can be, posting an 8.47 ERA with more walks than strikeouts. They released him after seven starts and Marquis quickly landed in San Diego, where he was the guy the Twins thought they were signing with a 4.05 ERA and 79/28 K/BB ratio in 94 innings before breaking his hand. I wasn't very enthused by the Marquis acquisition back then and suffice it to say a sequel is unlikely.

• Kevin Millwood - RHP - 161 innings - 4.25 ERA - 4.42 xFIP - 107/56 K/BB

Millwood is exactly the type of veteran, low-upside free agent pitcher the Twins have pursued in offseasons past. He looked finished after a terrible 2010, but has thrown 215 innings with a 4.18 ERA since then and at age 37 his strikeout rate remained reasonably close to his career norms. If he were one of the Twins' primary additions it would be a disastrous offseason, but as a cheap one-year stop gap at the back of the rotation Millwood wouldn't be the worst idea.

• Kevin Correia - RHP - 171 innings - 4.21 ERA - 4.34 xFIP - 89/46 K/BB

Correia was an All-Star in 2011, which is pretty funny considering he finished that season with a 4.79 ERA and has a 4.54 career mark. That includes a 4.49 ERA for the Pirates during the past two seasons and Correia's once-decent strikeout rate plummeted to 4.6 per nine innings over that span for the lowest rate in baseball among right-handed starters. He doesn't miss bats, doesn't induce a ton of ground balls, and doesn't have great control.

• Freddy Garcia - RHP - 107 innings - 5.20 ERA - 4.06 xFIP - 89/35 K/BB

After an excellent start to his career Garcia looked finished at age 31, but he's stuck around into his mid-30s by re-inventing himself as a slop-thrower. His fastball has averaged just 87 miles per hour during the past three seasons, yet over that span Garcia has a 4.42 ERA in 411 innings and his 7.5 strikeouts per nine innings this year was his highest rate since 2007. Much like Millwood he has zero upside, but as cheap stop-gap options go he'd fit as a fifth starter.

• Chris Young - RHP - 115 innings - 4.15 ERA - 5.36 xFIP - 80/36 K/BB

Young has basically never been healthy, topping 175 innings once in nine years, but after missing most of 2009-2011 he came back to make 20 decent starts for the Mets. His average fastball clocked in at 85 miles per hour, which doesn't fit his 6-foot-10 frame, but even at his peak Young worked in the high-80s. Despite all the injuries Young has a 3.79 career ERA and more upside than Millwood or Garcia, but that isn't really saying much and a fragile fifth starter isn't ideal.

• Carl Pavano - RHP - 63 innings - 6.00 ERA - 4.48 xFIP - 33/8 K/BB

Pavano tried to pitch through a shoulder injury with disastrous results, spent the final four months on the disabled list, and took some veiled shots at the Twins' medical staff on his way out the door. That doesn't necessarily rule out a return to Minnesota, but Pavano's velocity and strikeout rates were worrisome even before the arm problems derailed him and at age 36 he looks like a potential stop gap fifth starter at best.

• Carlos Zambrano - RHP - 132 innings - 4.49 ERA - 4.84 xFIP - 95/75 K/BB

It's hard to imagine Zambrano being worth the trouble at this point. He's still just 31 years old, but heavy workloads from early in his career mean it's an old 31 and Zambrano's velocity and strikeout rate are free falling. He issued a career-high 5.1 walks per nine innings and while that wildness may have helped him remain relatively tough to hit Zambrano had a 7.62 ERA with more walks (38) than strikeouts (27) in his final nine starts before a demotion to the bullpen.

• Derek Lowe - RHP - 143 innings - 5.11 ERA - 4.59 xFIP - 55/51 K/BB

Lowe has always been a pitch-to-contact, ground-ball guy, but his strikeout rate reached comically low levels at age 39. He was traded by the Braves, released by the Indians, and relegated to bullpen duties by the Yankees, so he's clearly running on fumes. However, he did still manage the second-highest ground-ball rate in all of baseball at 59 percent and that alone makes Lowe a potentially useful fifth starter if he's not totally washed up.

• I'm pretty convinced that it will rank somewhere between incredibly embarrassing and utterly humiliating, but at Paul Allen's urging and in the name of good radio "Girls Gone Gleeman" is a dating game-style show that's going to happen on KFAN live from the state fair next month. I'll pass along full details later, but in the meantime you can listen to us brainstorming on the air yesterday (mixed in with a bunch of Twins talk during an hour-long segment).

• Based on this St. Paul Pioneer Press headline for Ben Goessling's article, the Twins now have the same problem that's plagued bloggers.

• Join the club, Demi.

• Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David more or less shooting the shit for a day is basically perfect.

• Delmon Young has a gorgeous new mustache, which more than makes up for his .700 OPS.

• Zubaz, white limousines, pitching machines, and Minnesota fashion icons of the 1980s.

• I've given up trying to explain Jason Marquis since the Twins released him.

• Behold, the most Carlos Gomez thing in the history of Carlos Gomez things.

And of course the at-bat ends the only way the at-bat could possibly end.

• I give Michael Phelps credit for not being afraid to further his stoner reputation.

• Kevin Love apparently stays awake on flights to document his Olympic teammates sleeping.

• I'm thinking about trying to put $100,000 together just to hang out with Hakeem Olajuwon.

• Gordon Ramsay making $38 million per year may seem like a lot, but that breaks down to less than 50 dollars per television show.

• On a related note, as a loyal Twitter follower seeing Chelsea Peretti make a brief cameo as an unhappy diner on Hell's Kitchen cracked me up.

• Cal Ripken Jr.'s mother was abducted at gunpoint and Orioles manager Buck Showalter shared a similarly scary story about his mother.

• Warning: Don't use the bathroom around Michael Morse.

• Pirates prospect Starling Marte debuted last night and homered on the first pitch he saw.

• I like to watch Ted Berg make sandwiches.

• As a kid I often wrote stuff on my mom's old typewriter for absolutely no reason other than it seemed fun, but as an adult I'm not quite pretentious enough to install this on my laptop.

• Here's a Google Chat transcript of what happened when my mom asked me why Twitter wasn't working yesterday afternoon:

I waited another half-hour to fess up, and only because Twitter finally started working again.

• Interesting news in the online sportswriting world, as former Fanhouse founding editor and Yahoo! director of blogs Jamie Mottram has a new job with USA Today Sports Media Group.

• An original baseball blogger, Jon Weisman, celebrated 10 years of Dodger Thoughts.

• Now that Alex Rodriguez is old and injured, what are his chances of breaking Barry Bonds' all-time homer record? I'm glad you asked.

• It turns out the mask makes everyone as scary as Bane.

• The Trade Deadline Rises.

• Movie recommendation: The Prestige, which is the film Christopher Nolan directed in between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. It somehow flew under my radar until now, but has a few of the usual Nolan favorites in an interesting story and is well worth a $1.99 rental on Amazon.

• Speaking of the usual Nolan favorites, this made me laugh.

• Thanks to Barnabas Piper for naming Gleeman and The Geek as one of his favorite podcasts.

• According to this completely scientific poll, AG.com is the second-best "sports blog" and I'm the ninth-best "sports talk radio personality."

• Every day hundreds of people arrive at AG.com via search engine queries and most of them are Googling stuff like "Gleeman" or "Twins blog." I'm also amused by the weird and seemingly random searches that lead people here, so here are some of my favorites from this week:

- "Chuck Knoblauch fat"
- "Dick Bremer hates Kevin Slowey"
- "B.J. Hermsen salary"
- "Rene Tosoni salary"
- "Dana Wessel hair"
- "Kate Bilo age"
- "Evan Longoria dating Kate Upton"
- "Why does Matt Capps suck so badly"
- "Is eating a pound of carrots really zero points"
- "How many children does Brett Myers have"
- "Sasha Gray blog"
- "Patrick Reusse diet"
- "Jay-Z is not left-handed"
- "Kathy Kepler ballet"
- "Is a .199 batting average good"
- "Jenna Fischer covered post-it notes"

And then there were like 500 variations of "how to lose 150 pounds."

• Finally, in honor of Paul Allen describing me to potential dating game applicants as having "a George Michael beard" this week's AG.com-approved music video is "Faith":

This week's blog content is sponsored by Ballplayer: Pelotero, a controversial new documentary about baseball prospects in the Dominican Republic starring Miguel Sano as a 16-year-old.

• Francisco Liriano had a 9.45 ERA, .346 opponents' average, and 21-to-19 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 27 innings over six starts when the Twins demoted him to the bullpen in May. Since rejoining the rotation he has a 2.67 ERA, .155 opponents' average, and 35-to-12 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 30 innings over five starts. It's hard to imagine the Twins re-signing the impending free agent, in which case he has another half-dozen starts to build trade value.

• As if the Twins' farm system wasn't weak enough already now four of their top 10 prospects in my preseason rankings are on the minor-league disabled list. No. 7 prospect Kyle Gibson is still making his way back from last year's Tommy John surgery, No. 9 prospect Alex Wimmers is trying to rehab an elbow injury of his own to avoid the same fate, and now No. 2 prospect Joe Benson and No. 4 prospect Eddie Rosario are both sidelined for extended periods.

Benson fractured his left wrist and surgery will keep him out until mid-July. Rosario was struck in the face by a teammate's line drive and is expected to miss six weeks after surgery to insert a metal plate above his lip. Benson had already been demoted from Triple-A to Double-A and wrist problems often linger, so his injury is the bigger long-term concern. Rosario's injury is also a shame, because it sounds gruesome and he was hitting .293/.363/.473 at low Single-A.

• Sadly the "Free Anthony Slama" movement has been put on ice, and not because the Twins finally called him up after years of dominating in the minors. Slama is slated to miss six weeks after a line drive broke his leg, potentially ending his season with a 0.40 ERA, .175 opponents' average, and 37-to-12 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 23 innings at Triple-A. He'll be 29 years old before next season and has a 2.24 ERA with 172 strikeouts in 141 career Triple-A innings.

• No. 42 pick Luke Bard was the last remaining holdout among the Twins' top 11 draft picks and the Georgia Tech right-hander agreed to a deal yesterday, meaning just two weeks after the draft they've signed every player selected within the first 250 overall picks. No. 2 pick Byron Buxton is expected to make his rookie-ball debut within a week, so the earlier signing deadline as part of the new collective bargaining agreement has worked well for the Twins.

• Ben Goessling of the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports that in preparing scenarios for the No. 2 pick the Twins narrowed their list to Buxton, Carlos Correa, Mark Appel, and Kyle Zimmer. Most pre-draft speculation had them choosing whichever one of Buxton or Appel didn't go No. 1, but in reading between the lines it seems like they were set to take Correa if the Astros had taken Buxton. And there was lots of organizational disagreement about the best player.

• In examining the Twins' draft it was obvious that they went out of their way to get power arms, even if they came in the less-than-ideal form of college relievers. Sure enough vice president of player personnel Mike Radcliff admitted that was the plan going in, saying: "Pitchability and playability, maybe we overemphasized that. Maybe we emphasized that for too long. It added up. This year, we went for the more presentable qualities."

• Going into the draft Mitch Brown seemed destined for the Twins, as they had six picks in the top 100 and the local right-hander from Rochester Century high school was regarded as a consensus top-100 player. General manager Terry Ryan even scouted him in person multiple times, but then the Twins passed on him at 32, 42, 63, and 72. Brown wound up with the Indians at 79 and signed for an above-slot bonus of $800,000.

• They also repeatedly passed on Gophers right-hander T.J. Oakes, who was selected by the Rockies in the 11th round and signed for $100,000. Oakes is considered a marginal prospect, placing 292nd in Baseball America's pre-draft rankings, but the Twins liked the 6-foot-5 starter enough to draft him in the 41st round last year as a sophomore and have a history of picking Gophers. Oakes had a 2.31 ERA and 78-to-15 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 97 innings as a junior.

• Released by the Twins with an 8.47 ERA and more walks (14) than strikeouts (12) in seven starts, Jason Marquis signed a minor-league deal with the Padres and made one Double-A start before returning to the majors. Marquis and his agent were smart to choose an NL team with MLB's most-pitcher friendly park, but this is crazy: Through three starts he has a 1.86 ERA and 20/8 K/BB ratio in 19 innings, including his first double-digit strikeout game since 2001.

• Waiver claim Erik Komatsu became expendable once the Twins decided to recall Ben Revere from Triple-A a month ago, so the Rule 5 pick was designated for assignment and predictably the Nationals accepted his return. Komatsu had more upside than the guy he replaced as fourth outfielder, Clete Thomas, but there wasn't much fit for him on a roster that includes both Revere and Denard Span. He's back at Triple-A for the Nationals.

• Speaking of the Rule 5 draft, Terry Doyle is headed to Japan after the Twins selected him with the No. 2 pick only to send him back to the White Sox in spring training. Doyle rejoined the White Sox at Triple-A with a 2.83 ERA and 71-to-18 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 76 innings, including a near no-hitter against Rochester, but they agreed to release the 26-year-old right-hander so he could sign with a Japanese team. A fitting end to an all-around weird story.

• Phil Dumatrait, who was pitching in Rochester's bullpen after spending much of last season with the Twins, announced his retirement at age 30. He spent parts of 10 years in the minors and finishes with a 6.20 ERA in 151 career innings as a big leaguer, but the 2000 first-round pick had enough smoke and mirrors to post a 3.92 ERA in 45 appearances for the Twins last season despite an ugly 29-to-25 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 41 innings.

• Kevin Mulvey also called it quits, becoming the first player from the Johan Santana trade to retire. At the time of the Santana deal Mulvey was 23 years old and the former second-round pick looked like a potential mid-rotation starter who was billed as close to MLB-ready, but he posted a 7.90 ERA in 27 innings as a big leaguer. He was a bust, but the Twins managed to get some value out of Mulvey by trading him to the Diamondbacks for Jon Rauch in mid-2009.

• Ben Nicholson-Smith of MLB Trade Rumors crunched the numbers on every team's payroll commitments for next season and the Twins have the 13th-most money already spent at $65 million. This year's payroll is around $94 million, which represents a 17 percent drop from last year's $113 million.

• Trevor Plouffe isn't the only Twins hitter putting up big numbers since May 15. Through that date the Twins' lineup scored an average of just 3.3 runs in 36 games, but in 31 games since then they've averaged 5.2 runs.

• Alex Burnett has a great-looking 2.16 ERA, but he's gotten it done with a ton of smoke and mirrors while posting a horrid 13-to-9 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 33 innings. Burnett's strikeouts per nine innings have plummeted from 7.0 in 2010 to 5.9 in 2011 to 3.5 this season, which is the lowest mark by any reliever in baseball.

• Jim Thome has hit .315 with 61 homers and a .640 slugging percentage in 194 career games against the Twins. He hit .266 with 37 homers and a .562 slugging percentage in 179 games for the Twins, producing the highest Isolated Power in team history.

• Paul Konerko (.431) and Joe Mauer (.415) are the only hitters in the American League with an on-base percentage above .400.

• Justin Morneau is hitting .310 with a .595 slugging percentage against right-handers and .091 with a .197 slugging percentage against left-handers.

• Lew Ford, who last played in the majors for the Twins in 2007 and is now 35 years old, has hit .383/.450/.626 with five homers and four steals in 28 games at Triple-A for the Orioles.

• John Sickels of MinorLeagueBall.com took a trip to Beloit to see the Twins' low Single-A team and had some interesting thoughts on a variety of prospects, including a pre-injury Rosario.

• ESPN.com ranked the 25 best single-game performances in postseason history and two of the top three spots belong to Twins.

• I was a guest on the Bucs Dugout podcast, talking about the Twins and my decade blogging about them with host Charlie Wilmoth.

• And if you haven't listened to this week's Gleeman and The Geek episode yet, the show was a good one as my guest co-hosts Parker Hageman and Joe Nelson subbed for Wally Pipp.

This week's blog content is sponsored by DiamondCentric and their new "Plouffe There It Is!" shirt, which is available in men's and women's sizes. Please support them for supporting AG.com.

Cole De Vries was the Gophers' ace in 2006, going 7-3 with a 2.42 ERA and 72-to-32 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 93 innings to earn All-Big Ten second-team honors, but the Eden Prairie native went undrafted before signing with the Twins. He debuted at low Single-A in 2007 and moved up to high Single-A in 2008, faring well in both stops, but then struggled at Double-A in 2009 with a 4.53 ERA, .291 opponents' batting average, and 90/46 K/BB ratio in 138 innings.

At that point the Twins shifted De Vries from the rotation to the bullpen and had him repeat Double-A in 2010, but he was even worse there and also got knocked around in his first taste of Triple-A. Combined between the two levels De Vries posted a 5.79 ERA with 113 hits and 39 walks in 92 innings while serving up 12 homers. At age 26 he was in danger of being released, but instead the Twins sent him back to Double-A and something clicked the third time around.

Serving as New Britain's closer he saved nine games with a 2.28 ERA and 33/5 K/BB ratio in 28 innings, earning a promotion to Rochester. He came back down to earth, but remained plenty effective at Triple-A with a 3.90 ERA and 42/18 K/BB ratio in 62 innings. He still wasn't on the prospect radar, still wasn't on the 40-man roster, and still wasn't protected from the Rule 5 draft, but at age 27 he finally earned a chance to start a season one step from the majors.

And not only did De Vries begin this year at Triple-A the Twins decided to shift him back into the rotation there. When injuries and ineffectiveness destroyed the MLB rotation depth his Triple-A rotation-mates Liam Hendriks, Scott Diamond, and P.J. Walters got calls to the majors and De Vries kept plugging along in Rochester with a 4.24 ERA and 37/7 K/BB ratio in 47 innings. They dipped down into Triple-A again to replace Jason Marquis and De Vries got the nod.

De Vries' big opportunity comes more as a result of the failure of others than his own success, but that surely doesn't make finally reaching the majors with his hometown team at age 27 any less satisfying for an undrafted career minor leaguer. And he did his part by persevering through some rough times and improving as a pitcher even while bouncing back and forth from role to role and level to level.

As we'll see in De Vries' major-league debut tonight his raw stuff is underwhelming, including a high-80s fastball that failed to miss many bats in the minors and may have big-league hitters drooling. However, after walking 3.3 batters per nine innings between Double-A and Triple-A in 2009 and 2010 he sliced that to 1.9 walks per nine innings at the same two levels in 2011 and 2012. He's hittable, but at least he throws strikes and in the Twins' world that means a lot.

As an undrafted 27-year-old extreme fly-ball pitcher with a high-80s fastball and a 4.65 ERA between Double-A and Triple-A the odds are heavily stacked against De Vries having any kind of sustained success in the majors, but it'll be awfully difficult to pitch any worse than the $3 million mess that was Marquis. Hopefully he can follow Diamond and Walters as an unexpected spark for the rotation and either way De Vries simply reaching the majors is a helluva story.

This week's blog content is sponsored by Curt's Salsa, a locally owned salsa company that believes in fresh ingredients and rooting for the little guy. Please support them for supporting AG.com.

• Sunday on Gleeman and The Geek we talked about Jason Marquis' latest clunker of a start and how much longer the Twins could possibly stick with him in the rotation. It didn't take long for an answer, as the Twins designated Marquis for assignment seven starts into a $3 million deal given to the 33-year-old veteran who was supposed to help stabilize a shaky rotation. Minnesota native and former Gophers star Cole De Vries was called up to take his spot.

Marquis now goes in the same pile as Ramon Ortiz, Livan Hernandez, and Sidney Ponson, each of whom were signed more for their veteran-ness than ability and got booted from the rotation after performing terribly. Those four pitchers combined to cost the Twins around $12 million for 303 innings of a 5.88 ERA and in each case the terrible performances were entirely predictable, although certainly Marquis was even worse than anyone could have expected.

He posted an 8.47 ERA and allowed 33 runs in 34 innings with more walks than strikeouts and nine homers, as opponents hit .371/.434/.629. To put that in some context, consider Albert Pujols is a career .325/.417/.609 hitter, so Marquis basically turned every batter he faced into a souped-up version of this era's best hitter. He wasn't throwing strikes, he wasn't keeping the ball in the ballpark, and he ranked dead last among MLB pitchers in swinging strikes.

When the Twins signed Marquis this winter I called it "an uninspired pickup made necessary by payroll slashing" and noted how odd it was for Terry Ryan to praise his ability to "throw the ball over the plate" when in reality his career walk rate was identical to Francisco Liriano's at 3.5 per nine innings. Marquis' awful control shouldn't have been a surprise, but all the homers from a ground-ball pitcher were unexpected and turned a questionable signing into a disaster.

• Unfortunately the Chris Parmelee situation played out exactly as I'd feared when the Twins chose to focus on an impressive September call-up and strong spring training while dismissing a mediocre track record. They had Parmelee skip Triple-A despite hitting just .282/.355/.421 in two seasons at Double-A and then relegated him to the bench when he predictably struggled in the majors, demoting him to Rochester when Justin Morneau came off the disabled list.

Parmelee was and still is a decent prospect with some long-term upside, but at no point has he ever looked like a potential star and it's silly to expect a 24-year-old to go directly from slugging .421 at Double-A to thriving in the majors. Hopefully the less than ideal development decisions won't keep him from getting back on track in Rochester and hopefully the Twins will cease taking such short-term views of their prospects.

• Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus wrote an article for ESPN.com about the minors' best power-hitting prospects and 19-year-old Twins phenom Miguel Sano sits atop the list:

For one scout, "the list begins and ends with Sano." Signed out of the Dominican Republic for $3.15 million in 2009, Sano hit 20 home runs in 66 games in the rookie-level Appalachian League last year. As one of the youngest players in the Midwest League this year--the toughest offensive circuit among full-season leagues--expectations, at least statistically, were tempered.

Apparently nobody told Sano, though, as he leads the Midwest League in home runs (11) and total bases (85) while hitting .287/.406/.625 in 38 games. He just turned 19 last weekend, and for players this young, power is usually overwhelmingly on the projection side of the ledger. We haven't see this kind of in-game power from a player so young in low Class A since Giancarlo Stanton was known as Mike.

Giancarlo Stanton hit .293/.381/.611 with 39 homers in 125 games at low Single-A in 2008 as an 18-year-old and was in the majors five months shy of his 21st birthday, quickly emerging as one of the league's top sluggers. He's now 22 years old with 290 career games for the Marlins and has hit .263/.344/.523 with 65 homers, trailing only Pujols, Manny Ramirez, and Alex Rodriguez in Isolated Power among all active right-handed hitters.

• Nick Blackburn is back on the disabled list, although this time at least it's not an arm injury. Since signing a four-year contract extension in March of 2010 he's thrown 343 innings with a 5.31 ERA and .306 opponents' batting average. During that time Blackburn's strikeout rate of 4.3 per nine innings is MLB's worst among all pitchers with 250-plus innings. He's making $4.75 million this season and under contract for $5.5 million next year.

• P.J. Walters has gone from Triple-A depth to spot starter to being secure in the big leagues based on two decent starts and the Twins reaching the bottom of an already shallow barrel for rotation reinforcements. He's allowed four homers through 12 innings with the Twins, which gives Walters a total of 16 homers allowed in 63 career innings as a big leaguer and ranks as the sixth-highest home run rate in MLB history among all pitchers with 60-plus innings.

• One-time top prospect turned minor-league veteran Joe Thurston signed with the Twins for Triple-A depth in late April, but went 4-for-43 (.093) in 15 games and was released last week. They also cut Triple-A first baseman Aaron Bates, who re-signed with the Twins after hitting .316/.408/.439 in 106 games for Rochester last season only to hit .238 in 28 games this year. After back-to-back 90-loss seasons got their manager fired Rochester is on a 62-82 pace.

• Wilson Ramos, whom the Twins misguidedly traded to the Nationals for Matt Capps in July of 2010, will miss the remainder of the season with a torn ACL in his right knee. That lessens the chances of Ramos' departure haunting the Twins, but it doesn't actually make the trade less bad any more than, say, selling your house for $100,000 below the market rate only to see the new owners accidentally burn it down makes that decision less bad.

• Lew Ford, who last played in the majors for the Twins in 2007 and is now 35 years old, signed a minor-league contract with the Orioles and took over as the leadoff hitter and center fielder on their Triple-A team. Since being dropped from the 40-man roster by the Twins in late 2007 he's played for multiple organizations at Triple-A along with the independent league Long Island Ducks and teams in Mexico and Japan.

• Steve Tolleson never reached the majors with the Twins, getting dropped from the 40-man roster in February of 2010, but he had a brief cup of coffee with the A's that year and the 2005 fifth-round pick is now back in the big leagues with the Orioles. Tolleson was no more than a marginal prospect, cracking my annual top-40 list just once at No. 37 in 2010, but he always looked capable of being a useful utility man.

• San Diego's ex-Twins middle infield is no more, as the Padres released Orlando Hudson with about $5.5 million remaining on his contract and placed Jason Bartlett on the disabled list. Hudson quickly latched on with the White Sox, who're his fifth team in five seasons, and he's apparently going to play third base for the first time in his career.

• Old friend J.C. Romero may finally be finished at age 36. He debuted for the Twins in 1999.

• In blanking the Twins last week Indians right-hander Derek Lowe became the first pitcher to throw a complete-game shutout without a strikeout since Scott Erickson in 2002.

• Sano, Eddie Rosario, and Oswaldo Arcia are the only hitters in the Twins' entire farm system with an OPS above .800, and none of them are above Single-A or older than 21.

• Ben Revere had just one total extra-base hit in 23 games at Triple-A, so naturally he has four extra-base hits in four games back with the Twins. Play right field, hit for power. Easy!

• Not only is he hitting .360 in nine games since being recalled from the minors, Drew Butera became the sixth position player in Twins history to pitch when he mopped up in Sunday's blowout loss. Better yet, Butera averaged 91.1 miles per hour with his fastball, topped out at 94.4 mph, and struck out Carlos Gomez in a scoreless inning. Butera's average fastball clocks in higher than Marquis, Blackburn, Walters, Carl Pavano, Scott Diamond, and Liam Hendriks.

This week's blog content is sponsored by Curt's Salsa, a locally owned salsa company that believes in fresh ingredients and rooting for the little guy. Please support them for supporting AG.com.