Update, 7:50pm
The Braves are shopping Jair Jurrjens to eight to ten teams, and Martin Prado to even more. Minnesota has to be involved on some level, right? Right?
Let's update on the latest on any number of Twins targets, as the first day of the Winter Meetings rolls on.
Matt Capps
Jon Heyman of SI.com says it's official: the team has re-signed Matt Capps. The deal's apparently for one year and an option. The Twins will not, of course, receive a draft pick as compensation. OUR VIEW: This is one year and an option year too long, plus there's one too few draft pick in the deal.
You know, you wouldn't necessarily think that a 99-loss team would spend so much time trying to retain its own players, would you?
Josh Willingham / Michael Cuddyer
It seems the Twins are trying to push Cuddyer into a decision by courting Willingham. MLB.com's Rhett Bollinger says the team will meet with Willingham's agent, Matt Sosnick, on Thursday - IF the club doesn't reach a deal with Cuddyer first. Bollinger also tweets that the team has not yet met with Cuddyer's agent, Casey Close, but will "soon." It feels to me right now like the Twins have the leverage - Willingham and Cuddyer are the same age, Willingham can hit both lefties and righties, and re-signing Cuddyer would cost the Twins the draft pick they'd get if he signed elsewhere. One begins to get the idea that Cuddyer's in the same boat as Carl Pavano last year - high hopes that end in taking few years back with the same team as before.
Mark Buehrle
Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports tweets that the Twins have made an offer to Buehrle, but it's not as strong as those from the Marlins, Rangers, and Nationals. Buehrle wants a no-trade clause, which the Marlins won't give him, but the Nationals want him badly and the Rangers have all sorts of TV money to throw around, so I'm not sure the Twins' lowball offer strategy is going to work. We will see.
Pedro Florimon
The Twins claimed Baltimore's Double-A shortstop off waivers, according to Bollinger via MLB Trade Rumors. Florimon is "flashy but erratic," writes Tim Dierkes, so I guess the Twins have a Carlos Gomez in the system at shortstop now.
Carlos Guillen
As we mentioned before, the Twins apparently have contacted his agent, according to ESPN Deportes via MLBTR. Guillen is old (36) and probably got hurt right now as I just typed this. I get the feeling that this is the Twins doing their homework in case they manage to miss out on Willingham, Cuddyer, AND Jason Kubel. Also, for humor purposes I would like to refer to Guillen as "Otis Nixon Mark 2" from now on.
Jason Kubel
Phil Mackey of 1500 ESPN tweets that the Twins have met with his agent. We've heard surprisingly little about Kubel so far. His agent must be just as loquacious as Kubel is.
Kevin Slowey
John Shipley, from the Pioneer Press, tweets that Terry Ryan says the team is considering him as a starter. This is probably good; Slowey makes a better terrible starter than he does a terrible reliever.
Hisashi Iwakuma / Tsuyoshi Wada
Bollinger says the team has talked to the agents of both Japanese pitchers. Hopefully those were some routine talks.
Everybody
The Marlins are making a big push to sign him. Sign who? It doesn't matter. They're trying to get ahold of Christ's agent just to see what it would take to sign him. They're in on everybody. Their payroll could end up being $250 million next year.