I wonder how many players the Twins have claimed but were low in the pecking order and have not been reported in the press.

its only been about a year since Bill Smith has taken over in the GM role. If managers are given a grace period, I would think the GM role would have a bit of a longer leash. They cant just dump everybody and hire 20 new players in a year. Im willing to give Billy Smith another offseason to make any judgements.

Here's the part that has part of my brain begging me to just start ranting incoherently about this whole thing like some raving lunatic: they were apparently pursuing Washburn to shore up the bullpen. So, no go on Bradford, a fairly effective reliever at a decent price, but balls out on Washburn so that they can turn Perkins into a reliever? God, the stupid. It burns!

I don't disagree with that. But there's also too much conventional/conservative thinking that could easily prevent the team from making the right moves to significantly improve the roster, both now and in the long run. In hindsight this Washburn incident is more troubling than surprising. Having missed the boat on making a smart move or two before the trade deadline when we had two clear opportunities to improve (RH bat and setup relief), the FO now seems to be willing to make a dumb move just to demonstrate that they're not overcome by inertia. We got lucky in this case that their conventional thinking about the value of our own starting pitching, and Seattle's demonstrated propensity to overvalue their white elephants, prevented the deal from happening.

I guess this move makes a little sense if Washburn's contract expired at the end of this season, but to commit to $10mm next season is ridiculous considering there are already 5 youngsters holding down the rotation. How is Washburn any better than Boof or Livan?

Bradford wasn't worth a claim, but Washburn is? WTF?

It would make some sense if Washburn was actually good, but I don't think that Smith really has much ability to evaluate players. I have faith that the Twins have a lot of smart people in their organization (particularly scouts at the lower levels), but I don't have much faith that Bill Smith is the right guy to lead them.

I mean even Joe C. is publicly scratching his head on this one.

Not all free agent signings are Jarrod Washburn and Carlos Silva for $TEXAS. Signing free agents and making good decisions are not mutually exclusive.

All kidding aside, I should make the byline more prominent.

I guess that means I should recommend that the post author name get some more prominent styling - I skimmed right over it in this case

Also, Washburn is far from their worst problem in the rotation. In fact, he's probably been their second or maybe third best starter. I'm sure Silva was put on waivers, but no one was dumb enough to risk taking on that contract.

The Mariners' biggest problem is how much they gave for Bedard. I think they are using that as a standard comparison for prospects they get for veterans.

Now, that's just plain mean. But, yeah, there's obviously a pattern here. They are trying like hell to sucker someone and in the process, they've been unable to cut their losses. The Mariners can put Washburn out there again, but this time it would be irrevocable waivers. If they were smart, they'd do that. Would the Twins claim him? Maybe, but they'd have to hope that the Yankees wouldn't claim him first. (I'm hoping that the Yankees would claim him first.) The Mariners need to be torn down, but I don't think their front office is willing to admit that yet.

In this regard, the Seattle GM has much in common with the average commentor on the Strib blogs. I believe another reason Bill is having so much trouble getting a deal done is that other teams really covet our young pitching and are unwilling to deal with us unless we give some of it up to them. When he was trying to get Belte, Seattle's rumored demands were far from reasonable. If that's the case, then I'd rather see Billy stand pat and roll the dice with what we have this year than make a deal that hurts us in the future. Also, Seattle's FO is just a total mess right now. They want to get rid of their white elephants, but they expect top dollar in return.

"Hmm, I've got an expensive, under-performing pitcher. There's no reason another team wouldn't give up a cheap, talented starter for him."

On the other hand, Jarrod Washburn? Seriously? It doesn't take any advanced metrics to see this guy is not any better than any of our current starters. And he makes 20 times as much money. Even if you do have the money to spend, do have to just throw it away?

The STrib reported that the Twins were wanting to put Washburn in the rotation and send one of the starters to the bullpen. Yeah, that's what the Twins need, another long reliever. Perkins and Blackburn are probably the two men lowest on the list for starters, but Blackburn has consistently performed well all year and Perkins just pitched eight shutout innings against the Yankees and neither of them would appear to be of any help in the eighth inning. You need a guy who can miss a lot of bats for that spot. The only two starters with that kind of repertoire would appear to be Liriano and Baker. The Twins have repeatedly said Liriano is not an option for the bullpen, which would leave Baker. And I would have to say that if we were to start a playoff series tomorrow, you would probably want Baker to start Game 1. Do you really want to replace your best starter with someone worse than your five current starters so that you can put your top starter in a role he's never held to make a probably marginal improvement in the back end of the bullpen. Oh, and it will cost you $13 million.

Another scary thought is since the Twins were "negotiating" with the M's, it would appear they were not only willing to take on the $13 million, but they were also willing to give up at least one player for him. That player better have been Bass, since he was the odd man out and would have been placed on waivers anyways.

And I don't buy that the Twins were counting on the Mariners to pull Washburn back. The Twins never operate in such a risky way. Remember when Terry Ryan refused to make an offer to Eddie Guardado or LaTroy Hawkins until he had dumped Eric Milton on the Phillies. He wasn't going to spend money he didn't have yet.

But here's the other thing: the White Sox and the Twins aren't both in that "win now" boat. Both teams might be outperforming pre-season expectations, but that doesn't mean they're in the same position as organizations. The Twins shouldn't be getting caught up in the moment and significantly changing their organizational plan simply because the division is up for grabs right now, and they definitely shouldn't be altering that plan to block a division rival that is currently lucky, but ultimately trending downward in the long run. The White Sox have fairly good reason to be desperate and willing to take chances. The Twins should be very pleased with where they are already and not changing course simply because of what others are doing.

This brings me back to the original question. If the Twins accept that getting rid of Livan for nothing was addition by subtraction (and they had to, or they would have pulled him back off waivers), then how does adding an even worse pitcher simply so a rapidly fading rival can't get him even make any kind of good sense? The GMs of the Mets, the White Sox, and the Yankees can make moves like that because their organizational situations are different that what Bill Smith has at his disposal, and because those teams are aging, on their way down, and probably don't have much to lose in relation to where they're headed. The Twins not only don't have those resources to squander, but they're not even in a position where they should be thinking about moves like this yet.

I think you mean SBG?

Regarding why the White Sox might want Washburn, Washburn is bad, but he's probably a tad above replacement level and they really want to make the playoffs right-now-this-very-moment. Clayton Richard could be about as good as Washburn right now, but this is his first year above A-ball and I can understand why the White Sox would have reservations about throwing him into the mix right now. Lack of starting pitching depth was a big reason that the Sox didn't get a good PECOTA-projected win total at the beginning of the season, but so far they've been able to dodge that bullet. Plus, the Twins might fear that while the Mariners were completely unreasonable by demanding one of their young starters in return, the Mariners might be enamored with some Pale Hose non-prospect. Their demands for Washburn were so bizarre that I have a hard time trying to figure out what they are thinking.

What a crazy deal - no strong play at a couple of decent relievers, and then this bluff at Washburn? I almost agree with Carter Hayes - why not let 'em start Washburn?

If we ended up with Washburn, I'd be very very frightened.

That's what I don't understand, though. If Washburn is as bad as the guys at USSM think he is, and if being saddled with Washburn would have been such a massive mistake for the Twins to make, isn't that this a situation where Bill Smith should have stood back and let the White Sox play Russian Roulette by winning the Washburn claim?

Granted, it's certainly within the realm of possibility that Washburn recaptures a bit of his age-30 2005 form (which is his only solidly above-average season since age 27/2002), but that possibility has to be pretty minuscule. Even if Reinsdorf is planning on throwing around cash like he's bailing out banks, there has to be an upper limit to what he's able to spend. The far better odds would seem to be that Washburn continues to stink (or gets even worse) going forward and the $13 million he would be owed by the White Sox becomes a burden which might prevent them from adding someone who actually would help either this year or next.

It just seems like Bill Smith and the Twins got a little too caught up in their own strategery and it very nearly blew up in their faces. I guess that doesn't necessarily automatically vault them in to second worst-run status, but it's not exactly confidence-inspiring.

I'd like to think that he knew that he wasn't going to get Washburn's contract handed to him and that he was just blocking Washburn to ChiSox...but I'm not sure yet whether or not to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I wouldn't have done it, but the Twins had talks with the Mariners, so if they knew that the Mariners were asking for a lot back in return for Washburn, that's a bit of a different story.