Well, Saturday Night Was Eventful

I suppose you probably already know by now that the Twins traded Francisco Liriano, but I'm going to talk about it anyway.

As I was thinking about getting ready for bed on Saturday night (yeah, this was at about 10pm; I'm a fuddy-duddy), I went to check Twitter quick before plugging in my phone. And in the five minutes since I had previously checked Twitter, it had exploded with news that the Twins had traded Frankie to the White Sox.

Wait, what? No! Not the White Sox. Anyone but the White Sox.

Ok. So here's the scoop: The Twins traded Francisco Liriano to the White Sox for two prospects -- infielder Eduardo Escobar and lefty pitcher Pedro Hernandez.

All the buzz about these prospects wasn't terribly promising. But, overall, this isn't a horrible thing. I imagine that Terry Ryan didn't really want to trade to a division rival, but he probably felt this was the best deal he could get.

It sounded like neither the team nor Liriano's agent were interested in an extension. So to get two prospects in exchange for him isn't bad, rather than getting nothing for him if they had kept him just to see him walk away in the off-season. And because he's a pending free agent, the offers from other teams were probably not stellar. He's also still prone to inconsistency and other teams know that. It's not a great deal, but I don't think a great deal was ever going to be available.

PJ Walters was moved to the 60-day DL to make the second space on the 40-man roster. Jeff Manship was recalled to complete the 25-man roster.

Chicago's pitching coach, Don Cooper, has a great reputation. It'll be interesting to see how, or even whether, Frankie responds to him. I'm also curious to see how he and his new catcher A.J. Pierzynski work together; A.J.'s not known to be terribly patient with his pitchers.

Oh, and he gets his first start in a White Sox uniform on Tuesday against the Twins. 

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I almost forgot; it's been so long since we've seen him --

On Friday, the Twins have placed Trevor Plouffe on the DL, retroactive to 7/21, with a bruised right thumb.

He jammed it while batting a over week ago. This is another example of an unnecessary delay in putting a player on the DL so that someone else can fill out the roster. But, this time, I think Plouffe is at least a little to blame. He tweeted right after it happened that he's had this before and it got better right away, so I imagine that he probably kept telling the coaches that he was getting better when he really wasn't. I understand that it's frustrating to be left out of the line up for such a seemingly minor thing, but if he can't even grip a bat, he's not much help.

Danny Valencia was recalled to take his place on the roster.