Hall Of Famer Rod Carew recently had successful heart and kidney transplant surgery, the Twins have announced. Carew is expected to fully recover. “After a 13-hour procedure that started shortly after midnight Pacific time, Rod is resting in recovery,” the Twins wrote in a statement. “We ask that all of Twins Territory and the entire baseball community keep Rod, his wife Rhonda, and the entire Carew family in your thoughts and prayers as Rod recovers.” We at MLBTR wish Carew and his family the best. Here’s the latest from the Twins organization.
- The Twins are looking for experienced bullpen help, Phil Miller of the Star Tribune writes. The 2016 Twins didn’t have an especially young bullpen, but they did lean hard on less experienced players, including Taylor Rogers, J.T. Chargois, Michael Tonkin and Buddy Boshers. “It seemed as if the Twins had tremendous arms in the bullpen, but not a lot of experience. A lot of young guys coming out of the bullpen into extremely stressful situations,” said new GM Thad Levine at a fan event Wednesday. “We’ve got a lot of plus arms out there, but if you have veterans for the eighth inning, ninth inning, they can shoulder the load and take the stress off the kids.” The team hopes to improve its veteran leadership in the rotation as well, although they might get some veteran pitching help from players they already have — new chief baseball officer Derek Falvey said on Wednesday that the team was hoping for more help in 2017 from closer Glen Perkins and starter Phil Hughes, each of whom missed much of 2016 to injury. Perkins had surgery to repair a torn labrum in June, and Hughes had surgery in July for thoracic outlet syndrome; Miller says Hughes is the further along of the two.
- The Twins also have a good veteran starter in Ervin Santana, although if he winds up in the headlines this winter, it might be because he’s headed elsewhere. The Twins have received calls about Santana, Jon Heyman of Fan Rag tweets, noting that the Twins (who won just 59 games last season) don’t deem anyone untouchable. That doesn’t mean Santana (who’s controllable at reasonable salaries through 2019, including a team option in the final year) is a great bet to be traded — just last month, the Twins’ new front office understandably characterized Santana as the sort of player they would like to add to, not to deal. Speculatively, though, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the Twins dealing Santana for younger talent and then adding one or two cheap veterans to replace him in the rotation. Santana would be a particularly attractive trade piece this winter due to the poor free agent market for starting pitching, and it would be easy to imagine a team like the Astros, who have lately been connected to various starting pitching trade candidates, having interest. Given Santana’s years of control remaining, though, keeping him would also be a reasonable route. Santana’s 2016 performance was one of the Twins’ best — he posted a 3.38 ERA, 7.4 K/9 and 2.6 BB/9 in 181 1/3 innings.
Good luck Mr Carew, it was great to see you at Twin fest last year. Great man
Wonder if Ozuna would be enough for Santana
id rather have pitching prospects over an outfielder with only 3 years of contol
Miami doesn’t have much in its system. You probably wont see a better offer from Miami. My thought is that is that Osuna has more value than Santana, but its a fairly good match up.
idk about more value soild starting pitching is always value its a good offer but twins are looking for pitching and short stop if anything and also control for 5 or 6 years
Marlins are looking for a much better return than Santana for Ozuna. Would be terribly disappointed if that’s what the Marlins would get for Ozuna. Not a good trade at all.
if you look at the difficulty RH hitters are finding on the FA market, it stands to reason the trade value will not be all that high, either. Osuna’s only plus over those players is that he can play a reasonable CF.
Probably, but the Twins don’t need Marcell.
We don’t want any outfielders. Log jam if we traded for him.
Rod Carew was the best PURE hitter I have ever seen. The Bat was a magic wand in his hands. The currently dead art of bunting for base hits was a talent he had no peers for. My prayers are with him on his recovery.
Can mostly agree. Carew and Boggs a handful of years later. carew was by far the best combo of Bat and speed, tho lets not forget a oft forgotten braves kid name of Ralph Garr for a half dozen seasons as well.
During a time when owners and players still sometimes finished careers with 1 team? Had Twins not been saddled with a broke owner in Calvin Griffith, Carew just might have finished his career as a Twin.
Regardless of Griffith’s money Carew wouldn’t have been a Twin for life, unfortunately. Calvin was racist and that was part of the reason why Rod wanted out of Minnesota. Griffith made racist comments towards Carew and others which led to the trade.
Best wishes to Rod Carew. No showboating. No steroids. Just talent and class all the way.
I feel like Santana could be moved but definitely wait for the right offer keeping him to headline the staff for a while could be beneficial but if there is a deal involving a young pitcher under long-term control take it
How can a you say the Twins had too many young bullpen arms throwing in stressful situations when you only won 59 games? When you are 20 games out of first at the All Star break you are simply trying to get through the rest of the season. High leverage situations happen during meaningful games. How many meaningful games are there during 100 loss seasons?
exactly you have to be a somewhat competent team to really evaluate high-leverage situations