iminnesota55

I agree it comes down to Deduno or Worley with Diamond as a reliever, but why not keep both? I think a six-man rotation makes a lot of sense. Nick Nelson wrote about it way back in January, but I think the same logic can still apply with some success in the present situation.

Why is anyone even discussing Inge? When he was released by the Tigers last year, the Twins didn't make any kind of move for him. If we didn't want him last year, why would we want him now?

So this is it. This is what the bottom of the barrel feels like. The Twins' pitching has been so atrocious this year that I actually found myself excited when the news came that Brad Penny was released by a Japanese baseball team and the Twins might be able to pick him up. Even assuming Penny repeats his aweful performance of last year, his ERA of 5.30 and WHIP of 1.56 is still better than 4 of the 8 pitchers that have made a start for the Twins this year. And what's worse is that even without pitching in MLB yet this year, he has just as many wins as four of our starters. It is probably only going to take a minor league contract to get him, so why not take a flyer on him and see if he pans out the way Carl Pavano did his first couple of years in Minnesota. If the Twins did pick up Brad Penny, it would give us the two lowest strikeout pitchers in the Majors (percentage-wise since begining of last year--see Nick's Contact Kings post, http://twinsdaily.com/content.php?523-Contact-Kings) but if Penny can get us some cheap quality starts, great. If he doesn't work out as a starter he can always provide some desperately needed depth in the bullpen. It can't be any worse that what we have now, right?