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The Twins, on Saturday, optioned Matt Tolbert to AAA and informed Jacque Jones that he will not make the opening day roster. That leaves the final bench spot to Alexi Casilla.

It doesn't come as much of a surprise that, despite Casilla's underwhelming spring, he got the final nod. Casilla was out of options, meaning he would have had to clear waivers in order for the Twins to keep him. Jones had a far better spring, but hasn't shown much in recent seasons at the big league level and the Twins could freely send him to Rochester.

The Twins on Monday designated RHP Luis Ayala for assignment and called up 27 year-old RHP Bobby Keppel from AAA Rochester. In the grand scheme of things, the move is probably pointless. They've basically swapped one bad pitcher for another one. Still, the move raises a few questions in my mind.

I'm not sure what the Twins were expecting when they signed Ayala to a 1-year $1.3 million contract in the offseason. His numbers this year have been almost perfectly in line with his career marks, but apparently Bill Smith and Company have decided that's not what they're looking for. If they expected the 31-year old to somehow defy numbers posted in over 350 career big league innings, they're absolutely insane.

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.

The big news of the week was Francisco Liriano's demotion to AAA Rochester, which came as no surprise after his 3rd start of the season lasted just 2/3rds of an inning. However, the biggest problem for this team this year (and all of last year) was it's offense.

With Kevin Slowey questionable for his next start and Francisco Liriano's cycle in the rotation aligning with Slowey's, there's been much speculation that Sunday could mark the return of Liriano.

The Twins offense impressively took back Toronto's five run lead by scoring 2 runs in the eighth and 3 runs in the ninth. The fought threw 13 innings, but in the end they came up just a bit short and the Jays won 9 to 8. The large deficit, not surprisingly, was the result of Ramon Ortiz.

Sidney Ponson's stint with the Twins appears to be over. He has been designated for assignment to AAA Rochester and Garret Jones will be called up to replace the active roster spot.

Scott Baker wasn't perfect in his return from Rochester, but he pitched just well enough to pick up the win. Baker gave up 3 runs through 6 innings—good enough for a quality start. The Twins' bullpen was perfect to finish out the game. Pat Neshek, Juan Rincon and Joe Nathan each pitched 1-2-3 innings in order. The victory moved the Twins within 6 games of the wildcard, but they still have two other teams wedged between them and the White Sox—Toronto and New York.

With Shannon Stewart due to come off the DL in the next week, a decision is going to have to be made as to who will go down. Jason Kubel was called up to fill Stewart's roster spot, so an obvious option would be to send him back to Rochester, but is that the best decision?

The Twins dropped the final game of the series with the Blue Jays. The game recap can be seen in the scoreboard area.