Jason Pridie Topic Page

The Twins have been shuffling things around a bit the past few days as they deal with injuries and struggling players. Here's a rundown of what's happened.

On Friday the Twins activated Nick Punto from the DL and optioned Alexi Casilla to AAA to make room. It was the second time this season that Casilla has been demoted.

On Saturday the Twins optioned Anthony Swarzak to AAA right after his 7 shutout innings against the Cubs. The Twins recalled catcher Jose Morales to take his place. With several hitters on the DL and the fact that Joe Mauer is often being used as DH on his offdays, Ron Gardenhire wanted to have a 3rd catcher. The move brought the Twins' pitchers down to just 11. Morales has not played in either of the 2 games since being recalled.

Carlos Gomez has some big shoes to fill after beating out Denard Span and Jason Pridie to replace Torii Hunter in center field. By the way, he was also the centerpiece in the Johan Santana trade. The comparisons to Hunter will come instantly as he'll be sharing center with Hunter when the Angels open the season with a 4-game series at the dome. Although, if you ask me, the real pressure is on Torii Hunter, who needs to prove to the Angels that he's worth the 5-year $90 million contract they gave him. Let's look at what we can expect from Gomez:

The speculation of the weekend culminated in Monday's official announcement by the Twins that they have signed Joe Nathan through 2011 with a team option for 2012. For a team who's recent history has been to let star players go when they enter their most expensive years, this should come as a pleasant surprise. It's really hard to get too upset over this; every fan wants their team to retain its best players.

First, my apologies for falling off track the last couple days with the player projections. Thursday's announcement of the iPhone SDK completely hijacked my attention. Anyway, I've managed to redirect myself back to baseball and the goal is to get several projections done this weekend, so I can keep them going throughout the week.

I thought I'd interrupt the steady stream of projections posts to recap what's been happening down in Florida.

The Twins lost their first official game of the preseason, to the Reds by a score of 6 to 1.

The response to the 6 player trade centered around Matt Garza and Delmon Young has been mostly positive. Here's what some other Twins bloggers had to say about it:

A huge trade with the Tampa Bay Rays appears to be imminent. The reported trade would send Matt Garza, Juan Rincon and Jason Bartlett to Tampa Bay in exchange for 22-year old former first-round pick Delmon Young, Brendan Harris and former Twin prospect Jason Pridie.