Empty the Bench

As a Twins fan, it’s going to be difficult to watch all season with the ‘What if?’ of Francisco Liriano looming the entire time. Because Liriano, one of the top three young pitchers in baseball, will be out for the entire year after his Tommy John surgery, Minnesota will be scrambling this spring training to cobble together a lineup behind the best pitcher in baseball, Johan Santana. He can be penciled in at the top of the rotation for the Twins and any fantasy team out there lucky enough to get him, but it gets cloudy after the former Cy Young winner.

Carlos Silva had a disaster of a season last year (11-15, 5.94 ERA, 1.54 WHIP and just 70 Ks), but the hope is that he can return to his form of the 2004 and 2005 seasons when he was very steady (25-16, 3.74 ERA with only 44 total walks in 391.1 innings including a mind-boggling 9 walks in 2005 over 188.1 innings). They also found a nice surprise last year in rookie Boof Bonser (that’s not a typo), who they had enough confidence in to start in game two of the ALDS versus Oakland. Bonser (7-6, 4.22 ERS, 84 Ks in 100.1 innings) could actually be a decent pickup in the last round of fantasy drafts for larger mixed leagues or AL-only drafts. He’s unspectacular, but reliable. After that, there’s a bit of a falloff. ‘A bit’ in the same way that Rosie O’Donnell is ‘kinda’ fugly.

Minnesota will be searching to fill the four and five spots in the rotation this spring, and there are four likely candidates. Veterans Sidney Ponson (Yes, that Sidney Ponson, the alcoholic who once punched a judge on the beach) and Ramon Ortiz (Yes, that Ramon Ortiz, who hasn’t been under a 4.43 ERA or had a decent season since 2002) have been signed in the hopes they can eat innings, but neither is even worth discussing at this point. Ortiz is basically a lost cause and Ponson is more likely to eat his teammates than innings.

Another rookie from a year ago, Scott Baker, will be considered. Baker showed a lot of promise early in the year, especially in an impressive 7 innings in a 5-1 victory over the New York Yankees, but he fell apart as the season went on and ended up with an ERA north of 6. Expect him to get called up in the middle of the year after the Twins have given up on Ponson and Ortiz, but don’t expect any fantasy relevance to come along with him.

Cue Matt Garza. Garza could, and probably should, be in one of the final two rotation spots. In his first appearance of the spring he retired all six batters he faced and showed no ill effects from the stiff neck that has been bothering him. If Garza does make the rotation, fantasy owners should keep an eye on him as he is the best prospect in the Minnesota system (Which is the best farm system for pitchers in baseball). He has excellent stuff (38 K in 50 innings), great velocity (reaching 97 mph most games) and could post very good strikeout totals. Hopefully the Twins get to see what Santana, Liriano, Bonser and Garza can do together in 2008.