If you don't know who Francisco Liriano (right) is by now, it's time to get familiar real quick.
He's not only the top pitching prospect in the Twins organization, ahead of potential studs Scott Baker, JD Durbin, Travis Bowyer, Boof Bonser and others, he's one of the top pitching prospects in all of baseball.
The Twins got him in the Joe Nathan-AJ Pierzynski trade.
He's lefthanded, throws in the high 90's, and is 4-1 with a 2.15 ERA since getting called up to AAA a month ago. Oh, and he's 21.
Entering this season he had struck out 347 batters in 319 minor league innings.
Some scouts have dared to call him, 'The next Santana, only better'.
The trade deadline is 2 hours, 40 minutes from this writing, and ESPN's Buster Olney reports that the Twins can have Alfonso Soriano if they are willing to part with Liriano.
I'll go on record right now that if the Twins make that deal, and assuming that they don't plan on keeping Soriano beyond this year, that it would be a monumentally bad deal. The kind of deal that could send us back towards a 1993-esque downward spiral. And that one took 8 years to get out of.
If the Twins actually tried to keep Soriano, then maybe I could live with it.
But Liriano is just soooooo good. And with Torii Hunter likely out for the year, this season is looking more and more like a lost cause.
Why trade away the top prospect in the game for a rent-a-player for a season that isn't going anywhere anyway? Makes no sense at all.
Either way, the Twins are apparently going to make a deal of some kind.
Olney was just asked on TV to name one team that guaranteed will make a deal by the deadline.
He said the Twins.
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