Trade Deadline Passes

Look familiar to you? Perhaps this will jog your memory. Notice the date on there? That's right, it's 2005. AKA the last year that the Twins didn't make the playoffs.

I was all set for (and indeed headlong into writing) a vitriolic rant about how dumb a move this was by TR, what a hopeless message it sends to Twins players and fans about this season and beyond, and how he must be either crazy or out-and-out lying through his teeth to do a thing like trade a consistent veteran bat in a still-manageable playoff hunt and subsequently try and assure everyone that he's not giving up on them. But it's already been done. If you want piss and vinegar and name calling, go read the comments in Joe's blog. The only bit of that you'll find here is that Terry Ryan shall henceforth be known as Teri Ryan, until he grows a pair of balls. Trading Castillo was a sensible, businesslike move that probably won't in itself cost us any wins and will in essence stick a newer, younger, cheaper version of Castillo in his spot a few months earlier than planned. But as a wise man said, Teri, don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining. You deserve to do business as you see fit, but we, the fans who have invested in this team's near and distant future, deserve at least a little credit not to be taken for suckers.

Instead, I'd like to take a look for the future's sake at the player OFT acquired in last year's deadline trade, Zach Ward. You may remember this trade better as the one in which the Twins finally scuttled the derelict S.S. Kyle Lohse, but Ward, considered at the time a very solid young pitching prospect but remaining currently in A-ball, nevertheless has in interesting story to tell from his stats (courtesy of Baseball America):

W	L	ERA	G	GS	CG	SV	IP	H	R	HR	ER		SO	WP	AVG	WHIP	STR%
2	14	3.03	23	15	0	1	101.0	94	43	3	34		84	7	.242	1.17	.250

The W-L numbers are not a typo; he really is 2-12. Neither is the ERA; it really is 3.03. And of 43 total runs, 9 are unearned. This guy's team must have some sort of wicked vendetta against him; either that or he makes his starts against teams solely comprised of major leaguers on rehab assignments. Prior to a July 12 Fort Myers Miracle Ramblings, post, Ward's teammates scored a whopping 12 runs in 12 starts (8 runs in the previous 11), getting shut out 5 times. Since then he has two more losses and his ERA is 0.11 lower, so I assume the story has gotten no better. The rest of his numbers are fine if not overly impressive for an A-ball pitcher. The most promising stat at this point has to be HR allowed at just 3 in 101 innings; it's at least encouraging to think of a prospect who won't let the ball fly out of the ballpark at a Slowey-esque rate. Hell, at this point we could probably bring him up to the big league club just to give Garza, Baker, Silva and Santana someone to talk to about getting hosed by your offense.

So what happens now? The players will just have to keep playing; hopefully every Twin can bring out his inner Jason Tyner this week, put this front-office unpleasantness behind him and hit the baseball where a fielder can't catch it. The fans will still be rooting for the home team; we don't need some guy at a press conference to tell us we're in a playoff run, do we? And Teri Ryan and the front office had damn well better have a plan in case another one of our players go down. Grow, thumb, grow!