The Overlooked Benefit of Losing Neshek and Bullock

Teams always need pitching depth, so it was certainly puzzling to see the Twins attempt to outright Pat Neshek and trade flamethrower Billy Bullock for the rights to keep Scott Diamond. However, while we were all raging about losing Bullock, this trade allowed the Twins to quietly remove Diamond from the 40-man roster. This means that the Twins now have 2 open spots on their 40-man roster.

The first options I see for the Twins would be to fill these spots with any combination of Kyle Gibson, Carlos Gutierrez, and Kyle Waldrop (my guess would be Gibson and Waldrop). However, as Seth Stohs pointed out to me, it’s very possible that the Twins will search for any other castoffs from the other teams around the league in case someone intriguing pops up.

Right now is a time where all teams are finalizing their rosters, and inevitably some players will be released, or will refuse assignments to the minors. I don’t consider this likely, but the Twins may find someone worth looking at and will extend a 40-man roster spot in order to lure a player into the organization. However, I still feel that they’ll remain in-house with just giving up the spots to one of those three pitchers I mentioned above.

We all knew that Gibson would be in the majors at some point this season, but we rarely talked about how he wasn’t on the 40-man roster. Someone would eventually be removed to make room for him, and now that roadblock has been passed. So while we may still express our displeasure over losing Bullock and Neshek, remember that it likely just made room for two of our pitchers of the future.