The other day, a Twins loyalist reacted to an uppercut thrown here at Juan Rincon — “After using all their relievers (and Juan Rincon) on Saturday night… — by commenting: “Hey let’s keep harping on Juan Rincon because that never gets old. Yes I’m being sarcastic.”

I am a patient blogger. Having seen 180-190 games from spring training through the end of the postseason back in my baseball covering days, I understand that things usually have a way of working themselves out. As frustrated as I can get with Jesse Crain, I know that he’s coming back this season from a serious arm injury and there are going to be some tough times on the way to full recovery. I known that if Francisco Liriano spends the rest of the season in Rochester, it may be the best thing for his career. I know that Michael Cuddyer isn’t a .225 hitter and Nick Punto isn’t a .290 hitter, despite Cuddyer’s slump and Punto’s 2006 season.

But it has reached the point where, when watching the Twins with Ms. Baseball and Juan Rincon starts warming up, she typically curses and I try to remain calm by calling out “Sight gag!”

After last night’s buzzkill performance, it’s time for Twins management to take a stand for their fans and for the rest of the roster.

In an organization that has pitching depth, there’s simply no place for a pitcher who has devolved into a consistent and ongoing liability. For the Twins to demote Boof to the bullpen, which is happening with Scott Baker returning to the rotation this week, and still say they need to carry 13 pitchers because of the upcoming schedule is hooey.

Some numbers? In his last nine appearances, Rincon has walked nine batters and given up 13 hits in 8 2/3 innings. Of the five batters he’s struck out, three came when he did mop-up in that ridiculous 19-3 loss at Detroit the weekend before last. His two-batter stint last night went enter-double-wild pitch-single-exit. After the Twins had rallied within 4-2, he needed less than 5 minutes to give back a run to the Orioles. The wild pitch came when the Orioles batter was squared to bunt, so Rincon essentially performed the sacrificial rite for him.

Because Rincon has more than five years of major league service, he can refuse an assignment to the minors and the Twins would have to designate him for assignment if they wanted to drop him. That’s what happened to Jacque Jones in Detroit and Frank Thomas in Toronto earlier this year. The teams releasing them still are obligated to pick up their salaries, minus a percentage of baseball’s minimum wage. So the Jays are basically paying Thomas to play for Oakland and the Tigers are doing the same for Jones with Florida.

Recently, in an unusual case, center fielder Cory Patterson (an eight-year veteran) agreed to go to Cincinnati’s Triple-A team after struggling with the Reds. There may be some covering for the player here, but Reds manager Dusty Baker said that Patterson came to him and thought it was a good idea to go to the minors when the Reds called up prospect Jay Bruce “to get my act together and change some things.”

Rincon could make that same offer.

If the Twins released Rincon and nobody picked him up — and I can’t imagine a real demand for his services right now — the Twins would be on the hook for the remainder of his $2.475 million salary. With the season about one-third over, they’d be eating about $1.6 million.

Would that be so much worse than paying him for what he’s done so far this season?

other people are here too

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 6:57 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.