Fogo de Ciao

It's never easy to lose a fan favorite in a trade. Eduardo Escobar, in the final year of his contract, leading all of baseball in doubles, versatile in the field, was a valuable trade piece for a Twins team well out of the playoff picture. The Twins get three Class-A prospects in return from Arizona, but what do they lose?

Escobar had no problem making himself the clubhouse glue, whether he was playing the role of AAAA bench guy, then fill in utility guy, then first man off the bench, and the last three seasons as the everyday Shortstop. His obsession with Fogo de Chao eventually led to his own dugout drink, #cagejuice, which is essentially water he liberated from the restaurant in the weeks following the team's trip to Puerto Rico, where he met with Nicholas Cage. Twins fans will miss Eddie's #Fogopower and his leadership on and off the field. I hope the Twins try to sign him again in the off-season.

The Twins also parted ways with lights-out reliever Ryan Pressly. He was originally a Rule V draftee from the Red Sox org., and after a year stashed at the back of the bullpen, he was sent to the minors. Similar to Escobar, Pressly worked very hard to move his way up the ladder to eventually become an anchor of the Twins bullpen. I was surprised to find this was the only Pressly card I owned, but middle relievers have a tough time making it onto cardboard. The Astros gave up two AA prospects, a pitcher and a Center Fielder, to get the hard throwing righty. Pressly's still under his first MLB contract, giving the Astros control for a full season beyond this one.

So the question is - Who is next? Brian Dozier, another Free Agent, has drawn interest from many clubs, most recently Cleveland and San Francisco. Gibson has been mentioned in lots of rumors, from New York to Milwaukee and several others. It would take an aggressive offer to get him. The new guys in the Twins' bullpen are likely all available, Duke, Rodney, Addison Reed might not raise eyebrows, but could help out contenders looking to shorten the games down the stretch.

Which Twin do you wish your team would trade for?

A Completely Arbitrary Shopping Spree

I was reading some trivia on pitchers and came across Rick Wise, who I didn't know about before, but now how can I forget? Without looking it up, who can tell me why Rick Wise (especially post 1971) was a total badass?

Shopping on COMC with a small balance can be a real blast - sort by lowest price first, then just play with the filters for a while. I was browsing 60s and 70s vintage after adding Rick Wise and eventually was looking at Curt Flood cards when I stumbled upon this Senior League Commissioner card, complete with bat rack mini collection awesomeness.

Of course baseball's more endearing (and enduring) senior was Minnie Minoso, and the Senior league made me want to check to see if there were any oddballs of Minoso on the site.

Of course there was! This True Value hardware issue was just what I wasn't looking for!

As long as I was on the site, why not look for some other mini collections? Any card that features Lord Stanley's Cup is all right with me! And hey, a Canadian Hockey Team winning it all just seems like a natural thing, yeah?

As much as I want to be Completely Arbitrary, I'm also Highly Subjective when it comes to the MN Twins. I didn't have Escobar's Topps Update Rookie card yet, so I had to fix that before he becomes a superstar.

If I'm going for a complete Escobar Experience, I also want to include his pre-rookie cards with his first team on the South Side. The bottom right hand signed card actually came from a trip to my LCS, rather than from COMC.

Last but not least, I had a little bit left in the tank, so I filtered by memorabilia and Hall of Famers and just checked for any bargains. I didn't want one of the multitude of plain white swatches, so I decided to look for a bat.

Well, Upper Deck says it's legit, please don't tell me that it turned out that all these relics were fake, the card was so cheap I wouldn't be surprised but I still don't want to know! Tony Gwynn was a big part of my childhood. Growing up in MN as a Kirby Puckett fan, I always thought of Gwynn as his National League counterpart, and I rooted for Tony whenever I had the chance.

Thanks for stopping by!