I’d be open to moving anyone else, but I would not move anyone for middle relief, and I would not go out looking for a closer. If the Twins want a closer, they have one, his name is Glen Perkins (But I like him better as a set up guy, because Gardy is not afraid to use his best reliever whenever he needs him).

Unfortunately, I’m losing almost all confidence I may have once had that the Twins front office can tell the difference between really good young talent and magic beans.

What’s worse, if Bill Smith actually moves forward with the rumored trade of Span for relief help and/or a SS who’s every bit as bad as the one he imported from Japan, I’ll be convinced that, not only can he and his assistants not tell the difference between good young talent and magic beans… but I will actually believe they see good young talent when they are looking at magic beans.

With the very questionable record of talent evaluation the Twins organization has recently, as a fan I think I’d prefer they do nothing. It’s the only way I feel at all comfortable that they won’t make things worse in both the short AND long term.

Trying to take the optimistic view… if the Twins could play .633 ball (their mark since June 2) over the final 59 games, or even if they could play .615 ball (their mark since ending a 6-game losing streak on June 28) over the final 59 games, they would wind up with 84-85 wins. If they keep up their .583 July pace, they’ll finish with 82 wins. I’m not that confident that they could maintain a +.600 clip against the upcoming schedule, but if they could do it, well, they might still have a chance in the end. But they probably will need to kick it back up a notch, and they still really need Detroit to stumble.

The Tigers are on pace for 86-87 wins; if they post a 29-30 record down the stretch, they’d wind up with 84 wins. So the Twins could play very well down the stretch and still only have a shot at nipping the Tigers at the wire if Detroit plays something like .490 ball. If the Tigers heat up a little to play .575 ball from here on out, they’ll finish with 89 wins–and the Twins would have to go 41-18 (.695) to match that.

It could happen that the Twins will play very well over the last two months while the Tigers collapse, or that the Twins might even get so crazy-hot that a pretty good finish by Detroit wouldn’t be enough, and the Twins will win another division flag in a wild finish. As a fan, I hope that might happen. If I were the GM, I don’t think I could plan as if that’s likely to happen.