Dealing with Crain
According to Joe C, the Twins have decided what to do with Jesse Crain.
http://blogs2.startribune.com/blogs/christensen/2009/06/16/tuesday-lineups-crain-crede-cuddyer-span-updates/
Apparently the expectation that he may have been pitching through an injury were incorrect, as rather than put him on the DL, the Twins have optioned him to AAA. I'm posting from my non-multitasking iPhone, so I can't check if he still had options or if he had to pass through waivers, but I expect that we'd have heard about it if we'd put him on waivers.
While this comes as a welcome move given his awful performance lately -- coming to a head, of course, on Sunday in Chicago when there were 20000 Twins fans in the stadium who knew we'd lost a few minutes before it actually happened -- the fact that he was replaced by Perkins is interesting.
It leaves Gardy one bullpen arm short of where he normally likes to be, and may open the door for one of the starters to move into a bullpen role.
Swarzak can't come back up until 10 days after he was sent down, unless someone else goes onto the DL. Them's the rules.
So my guess is that one of the following two things will happen:
1) Liriano's next start will be his last chance to stay in the rotation. If he doesn't pitch well, he goes to the pen and Span goes on the DL to make room for Swarzak.
2) If Liriano pitches well, Swarzak stays in the minors and we bring up a right handed reliever when we send down Morales (note that he hasn't played yet). Hopefully this is Slama rather than Humber or Morillo. Also, Duensing is a possibilty if they don't care about having an extra lefty (they shouldn't).
The most likely scenario, naturally, is that I'm totally wrong here and the plan is something completely different. The second most likely scenario is that the plan is meaningless because everything will change between now and when it matters.
But this is just my reaction to this excellent news.
Now we get to be relieved of wailing when Crain comes into games, and Cuellar and the Cliburns get to try to work their magic on his busted mechanics.
What are your thoughts?
