Nick Nelson

The master nails it again.

With Butera in the lineup and Morneau going against a tough lefty, Twins might have a tough time generating offense tonight. Hopefully the good Frankie shows up.

Here's the other thing I didn't touch on in the article: As long as the Mauer is here and taking 25% of the payroll, the Twins need to build around him. I believe they stand a better chance of winning a championship behind Mauer right now – while he's in his physical prime – than in 3/4 years when he's aging into his 30s. This must be a consideration.

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[ATTACH=CONFIG]1301[/ATTACH]You'd figure a team that lost 99 games last year, and now finds itself on pace to lose 96 this year, would instill little confidence in its fan base. Yet, as we creep up on the season's halfway point, I find myself feeling rather optimistic about the Twins' future. No, I don't believe the club is going to miraculously climb back into the AL Central race this year. But I do think that, given some of the positive signs we've seen, the path back to contention is looking shorter than we once may have feared. Coming into this season, the Twins were in a state of disarray. A disastrous 2011 had caught them like a sucker punch, sullying their reputation as an organization to be emulated and prompting a major front-office shakeup. Alarming question marks swirled around several of the roster's key players, many of whom were amid long-term deals that had the potential to become quite burdensome. Given the number of health concerns attached to position players, and the see-what-sticks approach taken with the pitching staff, no one really knew what to expect from the lineup, the relief corps or the rotation. Fortunately, two of those units have proven solid. The bullpen has been a very pleasant surprise for the Twins, with a WHIP ranking fifth in the majors. Glen Perkins and Jared Burton give them two legitimate back end relievers who are under control for multiple years, Brian Duensing continues to excel as a lefty specialist, and several guys have emerged in the minors as possible blocks with which to build around those three (not to mention all the college relievers drafted earlier this month who figure to be fast risers). All in all, the outlook for this unit is fairly bright. The offense, after a slow start, has also come into its own. The Twins lead the majors in hits this month, and several embattled players are alleviating concerns through their performance on the field. Denard Span, Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau have all been relatively healthy and productive; along with Josh Willingham, Ben Revere and Trevor Plouffe, this gives them a quality core that is entrenched beyond this season. Granted, the starting pitching is a mess, but that appears to be the only thing holding the Twins back at this point. Building a rotation isn't easy, of course, but the ability to focus on a specific area – as opposed to the across-the-board retooling required during this past offseason – makes returning to contention far less daunting. If the Twins can keep the lineup and bullpen together for the most part, they could find themselves back in the mix as soon as next year IF they get significant improvement from the starters. That's obviously a substantial "if," but between Scott Diamond, Liam Hendriks, Kyle Gibson, Nick Blackburn and some freed up money (from departing starters like Carl Pavano, Francisco Liriano and Scott Baker) to hypothetically put toward a deep free agent pool, the Twins may have some decent options available. It's enough to make you think twice about the notion of trading away guys like Willingham, Morneau and Span (or Burton and Perkins), who could all contribute to a revival next year if they're still around.

The Pirates had a chance to sign Willingham during the offseason just like everyone else. He drew very little interest. Are we really convinced that three months of good performance will suddenly have teams clamoring to give up a great prospect for his contract? Especially an NL team that won't be able to slide him to DH within the next couple years? (Frankly, he should probably be there already.) Moreover, when have the Twins (or any team) ever traded a guy during the first year of a three-year deal when he was performing well? I can't think of any precedent for it.

His WPA isn't negative or neutral, it's positive. And two of the guys ahead of him in that category are Alex Burnett and Jeff Gray, which has to make you question using that metric as the sole determinant of a player's effectiveness. How many games has Perkins cost the Twins this year? One? And that was back in early April.

Cole was the No. overall 1 pick last year and Taillon was the No. 2 pick the year before. I think you're setting your sights a bit high. There's no package the Twins could realistically produce that would pry either of those players away from Pittsburgh.

You keep saying this, John. I'd love hear some explanation for it. Perkins is blowing people away.

Nine hits and two walks in six innings qualifies as "pretty good"? How far our standards have fallen.

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[ATTACH=CONFIG]1266[/ATTACH]It took almost six hours, but the Twins were able to avoid a sweep at the hands of the Brewers on Sunday. To do so, they needed to overcome another non-quality start from Nick Blackburn, who yielded four runs over six innings in what sadly qualifies as one of his best outings this season. The right-hander's results weren't bad until Corey Hart took him deep for a three-run homer with two outs in the fifth, but he had been dancing on a tight rope all day. Milwaukee put runners in scoring position in each of the first four innings only to come away with one run; indeed, Hart's back-breaker seemed inevitable. It was a typically ineffective effort from Blackburn, who has turned in only one quality start in 10 outings this year. Granted, this isn't necessarily an earth-shattering development. We've seen him struggle before. But in past instances, his periods of turmoil have directly coincided with arm ailments, as his two worst seasons have both been followed by surgeries. This year, Blackburn's health did not seem to be in question while he cruised through spring training with a 2.12 ERA and 0.88 WHIP in 17 innings, but his performance since the start of April has been inexplicably dreadful and hardly reminiscent of his glory days. In 2008 and 2009, Blackburn was a valuable starter – an inexpensive, above-average innings-eater. During that period, he made up for high hit rates by commanding the zone and hitting his spots relentlessly, averaging around a walk per game. This season, he has issued multiple walks in seven of his 10 starts and thrown a career-low 60 percent of his pitches for strikes. Blackburn routinely ranks as one of the most hittable pitchers in baseball, and that's certainly been true this year; his opponents' batting average of .329 is nearly 20 points higher than any qualifying starter. A guy like that simply can't survive with mediocre command, and that's where he's at right now. We're not seeing many signs that it's ready to turn around, either. Unfortunately, the Twins have little choice but to stick with him at this point. With Carl Pavano and P.J. Walters both on the disabled list, the club is already short on starters. Beyond that, they have a vested interest in letting Blackburn work through these issues and try to recapture the form that made him effective in the past. Like it or not, he's under contract next year for $5.5 million, and if the Twins are going to swallow that money and cut bait they'd better be completely certain he doesn't have it in him any more to produce the way he did in his early years. I'm not ready to jump to that conclusion yet, and neither are they I'm sure. But the team's patience can't last forever. Especially with a guy who hasn't been able to put together a full season since 2009.

This is a response to this post and to all posts like it: We don't want to censor people around here, but we also don't want this community to be viewed as one where libelous accusations are freely thrown around. If you actually have some sort of legitimate evidence pointing to PED use from Mauer, or if you want to examine the topic earnestly, then it's fair game. But needless comments like the one above bother people -- we've received multiple complaints about this particular one. I'm not going to delete it, but please just refrain from that kind of thing in the future.

Morneau's first day off since returning from the DL on May 16.

Could be, although it seemed to me like he was just missing his spots in the middle innings.

Revere is a swinger. He's not going to take a lot of walks, that's never been his M.O. Best you can hope for is a high average and a subsequently strong OBP, like what we're seeing right now. Expecting a .400-plus OBP is a little ridiculous -- there are only a handful of players in baseball who can do that.

I saw that interview, and I remember him saying something about being determined to throw the first pitch in the zone every time, "even if it's a cookie." That seemed like something you would not want the opposing team to hear. FWIW, MLB hitters this year have a .224/.266/.346 line after falling behind 0-1 in the count. So not exactly .185, but still it's obviously advantageous to get that first strike.

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[ATTACH=CONFIG]1234[/ATTACH]On Thursday night, Scott Diamond allowed four runs over six innings against the Phillies. It qualified as arguably his worst start since being called up back in early May, but it was hardly a disaster and would have kept the Twins in the game had the offense mustered any kind of production against Joe Blanton. Even after turning in just his second non-quality start in eight tries, Diamond remains the class of the Twins' rotation. His recipe for success up to this point has been quite simple, and it's one that he strayed from against Philadelphia: Keep the ball in the park. In the four starts where he has not allowed a home run, he is 4-0 with a 0.00 ERA. In the four starts where he has allowed a home run, he is 1-2 with a 4.56 ERA. Nine of the 12 earned runs tallied against the lefty have crossed on homers, including all four on Thursday. That trend won't last forever – he's holding opposing hitters to a clearly unsustainable .175 average with runners in scoring position – but his ability to limit the long ball has clearly been a big factor in his effectiveness. And fortunately, that trait has proven to be very sustainable over the course of his professional career. Before yielding two home runs against the Phillies on Thursday, Diamond had coughed up only four in 44 1/3 innings this season. Last year, even when he was getting knocked around in the majors as a rookie, he gave up just three bombs in 39 frames. In the minors, opponents went deep against him 31 times in 600 innings – a sparkling average of one home run per every 18 innings pitched. Grounders never travel over the fence, so for a pitcher that lacks strikeout stuff they are a powerful weapon. Diamond entered his latest start with an elite 61.1 percent GB rate. Only two qualifying MLB pitchers top that number. The 25-year-old hung a couple pitches on Thursday night and paid for it, but overall the outing should not be viewed as a discouraging one. The biggest keys to his success thus far have been throwing strikes and burning worms; even though he issued two walks and surrendered two bombs against the Phillies, he threw 65 of 100 pitches for strikes and induced 14 ground balls in six innings. If that's his idea of a bad night, I'll take it.