Casey Fien

The Winter Meetings are set to begin later today in Washington D.C. No time during the year, with the exception (maybe) of the July trade deadline, are there more rumors. Some are real. Some are baseless. But it is a fun time of the year for baseball fans.

Each day, we'll have an official thread for the day. Use this as an area to discuss any rumors you hear or read, or a place to mention transactions as they happen. Obviously if (or when) the Twins make any transactions, we'll have a full article on it, but this is a good place to discuss moves and rumors from around the league. Be sure to check back frequently.

Let's get to the rumors:

May is upon us. While the Minnesota Twins lost again on Sunday, May 1, I would certainly assume that they are ready to be done with April. An 0-9 start and an overall record of 7-17 is something that the Twins would like to move past.

The Twins’ bullpen wasn’t good in April. I think we can all agree with that, and the number of blown saves alone would illustrate it well. Obviously any time that a late-inning bullpen guy has a bad outing, it is likely to cost the team the game, or at least lessen the odds of the team winning.

But one thing I wanted to know going into the season, something I’ve been curious about for years, is how often can the manager call to a guy in the bullpen and that reliever got the job done. In other words, how reliable is the pitcher? If Paul Molitor calls on Ryan Pressly in the 7th or 8th inning how often did Pressly leave the game having done his job?

Tuesday night is Jose Berrios night and what might be the longest wait of our life is finally over. While you watch his debut - and keep your fingers crossed that the rain stays away - take a look at three players in the organization who had good showings over the last seven days.

The Twins lost again on Wednesday night to fall to 4-11 on the still-young season. After starting 0-9, the team rattled off four straight wins before losing the last two days to Milwaukee. Just over a week ago, I wrote about the Twins bullpen failure during the first week of the season. Today, I am going to update you on how things have been going. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t do it a day earlier probably.

And let’s be honest, the bullpen is not the only reason that the Twins are struggling. The offense has at least started hitting for some power of late, but there have been many missed opportunities. Defensively, the team is a mess. Adding to that, the team’s closer, top utility man, and third baseman/clean-up hitter are injured.

But let’s get back to the bullpen. I wrote that it was unfortunate that I didn’t write this a day sooner. Why? Because last night, four Twins relievers entered the game and none of them really threw well. They certainly weren’t helped by their defense, but the results for each just isn’t where we, or they, would want them.

The Twins lost their season opener to the Orioles, 3-2 on a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth yesterday by Matt Wieters, who up to that point had been 0-4 and left five stranded on base. The game featured a couple of very promising performances, a few discouraging ones, a play that baseball geeks love to debate and weather shenanigans.

We learned on Wednesday night that the Twins had elected to tender contracts to all six of their arbitration eligible players. Several members of that group were a given, namely: Eduardo Escobar, Tommy Milone, Trevor Plouffe and Kevin Jepsen. Eduardo Nunez was a little iffy but he did fine in his limited role last year and he'll probably cost the least of the bunch.

The most noteworthy decision, in my mind, was tendering Casey Fien.