Jose Morales Traded, Site News, Blyleven News

Starting off with the Twins news, the Twins sent backup/3rd catcher Jose Morales to Colorado today in exchange for lefty Paul Bargas. Morales had a pretty much exactly average year at AAA this year for the Twins, and though he had a couple hot streaks in the past, his bat didn’t justify keeping him on the roster over Drew Butera, who may be a god awful hitter but is really good with the glove.

In return, the Twins got Paul Bargas, who had a 1.12 WHIP and struck out 8.5 batters per 9 innings as a 21 year old in the South Atlantic League. Bargas has pretty decent stuff, though you have to take his numbers with a grain of salt because pitchers (especially lefties, and especially college guys) with any kind of breaking pitch will dominate low level hitters. Still, Bargas looks like he might develop into a useful bullpen piece, which would be more than a solid return for Morales.

In site news, a big thanks and a hearty welcome to Josh Hill, who formally joined a couple days ago. If you have been to the site at all you have noticed a couple posts of his already and I am sure there will be much more of his good work in the future.

Lastly, one of my favorite writers around, Jonah Keri, had my favorite player ever, Bert Blyleven, on his podcast recently. You can go to Jonah’s website to listen to the link, or you can subscribe to it on iTunes (and if you want a regular RSS for the podcast, look in the comments of the post I linked to). A big thanks to Jonah for being an advocate of the most deserving HOF eligible candidate not currently in, and to you readers: you want to listen to his podcast all the time. Trust me.