By my count, that’s how many days remain in the regular season, which ends Sept. 28, with the Twins hosting Kansas City at the Metrodome.

Anyone following the AL Central is probably trying to unscramble the brain today after Tuesday night’s developments in Chicago and Seattle.

What a convergence of forces: Jim Caple publishes this piece for ESPN.com, the Twins finally try Joe Nathan for a five-out save, only to have it backfire, and the Tigers are left to cope after closer du jour Joel Zumaya blows a two-run lead in the 14th.

Caple makes some great points, calling the closer role “The most overrated position in sports.” But it’s almost like the baseball gods were there to remind everyone (in the AL Central, at least) how devastating last-inning losses can be.

(*) Former Twins GM Terry Ryan recently described the intricacies of the trade deadline to our former colleague Steve Aschburner in an interesting piece for SI.com. I haven’t seen Terry much this season, and I miss him. He was at the Metrodome last week, and several of us flocked to his table in the media dining room.

Aschburner’s piece is in Ryan’s own words, and I can just hear him saying this:

It sounds like hot air, but you really do want both sides to feel good about a trade. You don’t want to burn the other team, however, you might do that. You want to have some integrity. The relationships of the general managers is, I won’t say close across the board but it is ‘gentlemanly.’ You want to be able to come back to that guy, pick up the phone again next week or next month.

I’ve written about many of Ryan’s deals now that it’s easy to look back and see how one-sided they were for the Twins (Eric Milton-to-Philly, A.J.-to-San Francisco, Chuck Knoblauch-to-New York, Bobby Kielty-to-Toronto, etc.) and never once did he gloat. And never once did you sense his ego had been damaged if you questioned him over his lack of impact trade-deadline deals late in his tenure.

(*) Twins pitching prospect Brian Duensing is blogging about his experience with the U.S. Olympic baseball team. Duensing struck me as another genuine person during spring training. He was college teammates with Joba Chamberlain and Alex Gordon at Nebraska.

Duensing’s not a bad lefthanded pitcher, either. He probably is seventh on the current Twins’ starting pitcher depth chart behind the Current 5 and Boof. In other words, Duensing could be a factor in September if this staff is hit by injuries, etc. I look forward to reading about his experiences from Beijing.

(*) The Twins will try to pick up the pieces today, with Nick Blackburn (8-6, 3.56 ERA) pitching opposite Seattle lefty Jarrod Washburn (5-10, 4.77). That one starts at 3:40 p.m. Then, at 7:11, Justin Verlander (8-11, 4.49) takes the mound for Detroit against Chicago’s John Danks (8-4, 3.31).

(*) Finally, birthday wishes today to Vicki Olson, the greatest mother on Earth.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 11:34 am and is filed under Around MLB, Twins thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.