Quick Notes: Nov. 28, 2010

This past Tuesday was the deadline for teams to offer arbitration to their Type A and Type B free agents. The Twins offered arbitration to Carl Pavano (Type A), Jesse Crain (B), and Orlando Hudson (B). They declined to offer arbitration to Matt Guerrier (A), Jon Rauch (B), and Brian Fuentes (B). Pavano, Crain, and Hudson have until this coming Tuesday to accept or decline the offer.

Some fans believe that Orlando Hudson has a "gentlemen's agreement" with the Twins to decline the arbitration just so the team can collect the draft pick. It's a fairly common thing, so I wouldn't be surprised. We'll see.

I'm most interested in what Carl Pavano does. It sounds like a lot of teams are interested in him, so if he doesn't accept, he'll have plenty of offers to consider. But I'm hoping that he likes the Twins so much that he'll accept, which buys the team time to come up with a multi-year deal.

I'm also interested in what will happen with Matt Guerrier. The Twins probably did him a favor by not offering arbitration. If they had, teams may have been unwilling to sign him since he's a Type A free agent. Having to give up a high-round draft pick may have been too costly to sign a middle reliever. So this scenario makes it pretty unlikely that the Twins will try to re-sign him. Too bad; I like him -- probably more than most fans do.

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Late Thanksgiving night and early Black Friday morning, we heard that the Twins earned the exclusive negotiating rights with Japanese middle-infielder Tsuyoshi Nishioka. The Twins have to pay his team, the Chiba Lotte Marines, reportedly $5.3 million just to talk to him. The Twins have 30 days to come to an agreement, but since they're the only MLB team allowed to talk to him, there's no reason to believe that they won't sign him. If they can't sign him, they do get their damage deposit bid money back. Joe Christensen of the StarTribune has lots of great information about Nishioka and the whole process.

There are a few questions surrounding his potential signing. Will he play 2B or SS? Will this make a difference in whether the Twins offer JJ Hardy a new contract? What about Alexi Casilla and Matt Tolbert? (Ok, I was kidding about Tolbert.) And what if Hudson accepts arbitration?

Another pressing question is, how many different ways will Bert Blyleven pronounce his name? And how bad will Dan Gladden butcher it? Most importantly, what in the world will Gardy's nickname for him be?