Kelsie Smith is reporting in the Pioneer Press that the Twins are very close to making room for Francisco Liriano. The story is a bit confusing because Smith jumps around with the shifting sands of opinion from the Twins front office. But it is clear that Assistant GM Rob Antony's most recent statement suggests that they will find a way to make room on the roster for Liriano. They have not ruled out putting him in the bullpen or even a six-man rotation, but it does not appear that any of the current starters is going anywhere for the time being, again, according to Antony.

To me the story just doesn't add up. It's as though Antony talked to Kelsie Smith and then tried to recant part of his claim that a call-up was immanent. My hunch is something is brewing involving one of the starting pitchers and that will be resolved before July 31. That is how they will make room for Liriano. They just don't have all the facts yet because the deal is not done, so Antony is only telling part of the story.

Your thoughts?

The Twins have done a great job of patching holes left by injuries. But one hole they have not patched was left by the Pat Neshek injury. Gardy refuses to leave his starters in long enough to bridge to Joe Nathan. And he refuses to bring Nathan in before the ninth inning. So on this team, the eighth inning set-up guy is a key role. Let's face it, the Twins don't have anybody who can do the job right now.

Exhibit A: June 30.

The Twins have a 4-1 lead going into the seventh inning. Glen Perkins has pitched masterfully, throwing 80 pitches through six innings and holding the Tigers to one run while striking out 7. After getting the first out, he gives up a bloop single and Gardy jumps out of the dugout with a quick hook. Jesse Crain comes in, gives up a hit and a walk and leaves in favor of Dennys Reyes, who promptly allows Perkins' base runner and one of Crain's for two runs. Then Guerrier comes in with the Twins clinging to a 4-3 lead and proceeds to cough up the tying and wining runs. He was lucky to get out of there without giving up more. The Twins lose 5-4.

Exhibit B: July 8.

It's the seventh inning and Nick Blackburn is pitching a gem. He's only thrown 85 pitches with two outs in the bottom of the seventh, but when Boston manager Terry Francona brings in Sean Casey to pinch hit for the Sox back-up catcher, Gardy calls on Reyes, who gets pinch hitter the last out of the seventh, preserving a 5-2 lead. Then Reyes gives up a lead-off double to Ellsbury and Gardy brings in Guerrier, who again had nothing, giving up Reyes's run and three of his own, allowing the Sox to storm back to a 6-5 victory. The most memorable moment for me was the Manny Ramirez homer, which was a letter-high fastball on the inside part of the plate. I could have hit that ball for a homer. So that's two games in nine days in which Guerrier had nothing at all on his pitches and even less control of them. The result was predictable: another loss for the Twins.

I think we can conclude from that that Guerrier is not suited to pitch in those situations. And as Exhibit A shows, Crain isn't ready for that role either. He's still coming back from shoulder surgery. Last night's debacle makes it obvious that Brian Bass is not the answer. And tonight Reyes showed why he is not either--he's only good for one batter at a time. So the Twins have nobody to bridge the gap between starters and the closer against tough teams. If I'm Bill Smith, I'm looking for a guy who can shut the door in the eighth. If there's one thing that stands between this team and a championship, it's the hole left by Pat Neshek's torn elbow ligament.

Any ideas about whom to pursue as the trade deadline nears? I wonder if Huston Street is available, and at what cost.

This is not the first time I've written that. And I'm sure it won't be the last. But a recent column by Fox Sports' village idiot hit close enough to home for me to write it again. Dayn Perry is a moron. Feels good, doesn't it? One more time, Dayn Perry is a moron. Ah, I feel better already.

I feel good enough to put down the put downs and pick up some reasoning. So here goes. Perry uses a clever combination of talent evaluation and stats to demonstrate that the Twins have been extraordinarily lucky this year. Let's start with talent evaluation. The Twins won 79 games last year with largely the same talent, except that team had Torii Hunter in center field and both Johan Santana and Carlos Silva in the rotation. He says, truthfully, that the only one of those three to return anything in trade was Santana, and that that return was widely panned. He also points out that Francisco Liriano was returned to the minors after three disastrous starts. And he notices truthfully that Pat Neshek is lost for the season with an elbow injury. So it is almost beyond belief that the team is on a pace to win 90 games, 12 more than it won with its now-departed best player and best pitcher.

So how is it that everything he says is true, yet the Twins appear to be more talented than they were last year? As usual for Perry, he only presents the side of the argument that supports his opinion. He doesn't say anything about  the talent the Twins added since last year. He says nothing about Nick Blackburn,  Kevin Slowey, Glen Perkins, Carlos Gomez, Alexi Casilla, Delmon Young, Brian Buscher, Brendan Harris or any of the other additions to the team.

When you only present facts that support your side of the argument and you don't even consider facts that run contrary to it, you run the risk of making yourself look like a fool. Perry surely did that with his talent evaluation.

Just as he only presents one side of the argument in his talent evaluation, he also ignores crucial facts when delving into a numerical analysis. His main argument seems to be that the Twins' record is three games below their Pythagorean. Therefore, the Twins are due for a regression. It is true that teams statistically tend towards their Pythagorean.

But any evaluation of the team's Pythagorean must take into account trends, not mere year-long averages. Since the team added Alexi Casilla, it has been playing at or above its Pythagorean, and that trend is accelerating as the team adds other pieces such as Buscher and as both Gomez and Young develop at the major league level. In short, arguing that a team will regress to its Pythagorean only works with stable rosters and teams that have not shown significant improvement month to month in the ratio of its record to its Pythagorean. But this team is outscoring its opponents well above its record, particularly during this streak. There is no statistical reason to think that the trend will not continue.

The upshot is, you guessed it, Dayn Perry is a moron. But not from lack of trying and not from writing anything false. His fallacy is to stack the deck in the favor of his arguments without any consideration for facts that dispute his argument. A more reasonable position is to consider all the facts before jumping to conclusions. It's just too much work for some of these writers to actually do the research and find out why a team appears to be playing above its head. It's far easier just to spout the same old tired facts you gathered in the off season, toss in a collection of stats and call it a day. That's a recipe for making yourself into a moron.

According to ESPN.com, Ron Gardenhire was fined for slow play over the weekend. Just another case of Charlie Reliford's vendetta against the Minnesota Twins.

What makes this so ridiculous is the Twins consistently lead the league in short games. Their pitchers throw more strikes than just about every team. Their hitters swing at more first pitches than just about every team. They rarely step out of the box or call time. The pitchers work fast. And the team tends to play at a fast pace overall. Prior to the weekend, Gardy had a team meeting about picking up the pace, after the team got caught up in the White Sox's lethargy.

Fining Gardy for this is like the time they fined Robert Smith for excessive celebration. For those who don't know, he typically just handed the ball to the ref after touchdowns. One time, he got a little excited and spiked the ball. He was fined. If they want to make a lesson out of a manager, why not take a guy who's team plays the longest games, like Terry Francona, who's guys step out of the box after every pitch, or Ozzie Guillen, who's guys amble around the field like they're walking in th park.

The conventional wisdom, spouted incessantly by DickNBert, is that the Twins are struggling this year because they're so young. According to Bert, young players are more prone to mistakes, and, more often than not, these mistakes cost the team ballgames. While this makes sense, I'm not so sure it's right. There are four reasons why it's not entirely true:

Mike Lamb Looking for an offensive scapegoat? Look no further. Lamb is easily the biggest disappointment of this season. He had one good stretch when we hoped he would turn a corner. But then he went into the tank. His line (.225/.262/.305) is comparable to Punto's last year, which was why we got Lamb this year. But his defense is much worse.

Fortunately, the Twins are adjusting their personnel to match his struggles. Matt Macri is now taking every start against lefties. And after Brian Buscher gets up here today, he'll start taking some starts against right handers. If Lamb--the oldest position player on the team--doesn't start hitting, he'll be relegated to a bench role, used mostly as a pinch hitter.

Juan Rincon The longest tenured pitcher on the Twins staff has been just putrid this year. Inexplicably, Gardenhire let him try to pitch his way into form in close games for the first two plus months of the season. This cost the Twins several games, though Rincon did not take the loss in many of them for two reasons: First, he came into a lot of one- and two-run games when the Twins were behind and proceeded to put the game out of reach for the opposition. Second, when he came into games with runners on base, he let all 9 of them score, leading to additional losses for starters such as Nick Blackburn.

Coming into the year, the bullpen was supposed to be the strength of this team. Pat Neshek got hurt, leaving a big hole that they tried to let Rincon fill. He has failed miserably. It is no exaggeration to say that 90 percent of the bullpen's failures are on Juan Rincon. He has singlehandedly turned a solid unit into a disaster. He will be DFAd today to make room for Buscher. He'll probably reject the assignment to become a free agent. Good luck in the Mexican League Juanie.

Adam Everett This guy was supposed to soften the blow for losing Jason Bartlett in the Delmon Young trade. Unfortunately, he's been hurt most of the year. That's the trouble with aging veterans, they're more injury prone. When he's tried to play with the injury, he's been really bad. He appears to have lost at least a step after breaking a leg last year. And his arm is just a noodle. Nobody expected Bartlett's bat out of Everett, but we did expect him to catch the ball. He hasn't,and the shortstop position has been a revolving door all year. For a sinker-ball staff, that's not a good thing.

Livan Hernandez We can blame Twins management for expecting this guy to be the staff ace. I'll be honest, even with his recent struggles, he's exceeded my expectations this year. But that's not saying much. I expected him to be a fifth starter. Whatever he is, he's not an ace. An ace is supposed to stop losing streaks. Livan has perpatuated them. I found it laughable that Bert would blame the young pitchers like Blackburn and just ignore that Livan has been really bad lately, to the point that many of us are calling for Liriano (a youngster) to replace him.

Those are the four biggest disappointments of this year. And they're all veterans. So Bert, how can you blame the youngsters constantly? They're the ones making the plays that lead to improbable victories, or putting the team in a position to win. Sure they make mistakes, but they make more plays than veterans can even with their mistakes.

Just thought it would be fun to chat about the draft, especially from the Twins perspective. You can find the latest and greatest on ESPN. As expected, the Rays took Tim Beckham (no relation).

I think the Twins will take Brett Lawrie if he's available with 14. I'd like to see Conor Gillespie and Jamile Weeks (relation) 27 and 31 with Hand in the second round. But we'll see how the board works out.

Even though he really smacked the ball around in spring training, Revere didn't make it on the Beloit roster to start the year. The Twins claimed it was because they wanted him to work on his defense in Extended Spring. As a result, he still is not listed among the leaders in the Midwest League. But his numbers are just sick:

.427/.464/.611/1.075

That's after having three consecutive three-hit games over the weekend. At first, the Twins said under no circumstances would hey promote him this year. But I'm thinking the Midwest League is just too easy for him and he should end up in the FSL by the all-star break. Thoughts?

I'm normally a nice guy. really, but I have a low threshold for incompetence. And Telly Hughes oozes incompetence. I've only briefly noted a few mistakes and his gerenal bumbling ways over the time he's been sideline reporter for Fox Net North. Most of his mistakes you can chalk up to a rookie. But tonight, I just have to say something. He was his usually bumbling self during the game. No big deal.

But It was the postgame that made me cringe. First, he kept referring to Slowey's CG as his second major league win. He seemed to be unaware that Slowey won four games last year. Then, when interviewing Gomez, he referred to this as his first four-hit game since he hit for the cycle. Wrong again. Gomez went 4-5 on May 22nd against Texas, exactly one week ago.

Imagine standing there, waiting for the reporter to interview you, and then having the guy say inaccurate stuff during the interview. I half expected Slowey to say, " Actually Telly, I had four major league wins last year," or Gomez to say, "I have four hits a week ago." But they just answered the questions and didn't correct him.

I've been pining for Marney's return. Last night they revealed for the first time that she is just easing back in after a maternity leave. Then Souhan made a complete ass of himself on the air with her and we have to deal with LaPanta and Hughes again tonight. I sure hope Marney comes back for the home stand. This postgame show is tough to watch.