Twins (finally) Take Care of Business

They’ve finally signed Tiger-killer Carl Pavano, like we expected they would all along, for a near-bargain price of $16.5 million over two years. That should help ease the pain of Matt Capps‘ hefty raise. With a little less than a month to go before pitchers and catchers report, the hot-stove season has pretty much come to a close in the AL Central. The White Sox have made some good moves, but the Twins have mostly struggled to keep the team together. Pavano and Thome, at least, aren’t going anywhere. The Twins bullpen will be a little weaker, having lost four free agents, but still as good as the Tigers have. Our biggest hope is that Minnesota’s moves in the middle infield backfire spectacularly and cause them to fall back to the pack.

Bill James projects a slight dropoff from Pavano due to less luck on balls in play and flies staying in the park. He should still be good for 12 wins and a 4.16 ERA. Given what we’ve seen in the past, 5 of those wins will probably come against Detroit. I had really hoped that someone else would offer him the $35 million he wanted and let us see him less next year, but perhaps they were scared off by his Type-A status. The free agent market is often unkind to ‘marginal’ Type-A’s.