Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Done defending Delmon

For those of you who have stuck with Cold Omaha over the last few months of inactivity – we say thank you. Since you are still here, you probably know we’ve loved Delmon Young’s potential for awhile now and we think he is going to be a productive major league hitter.

Someday.

But it isn’t going to happen for him in a Twins uniform.

Sure, there was a time when our man-crush on Delmon almost rivaled the love affair we have for Jason Kubel’s game. But Delmon is floundering here in Minny and while he probably won’t benefit much from a change of scenery in the short term, the Twins will most definitely benefit if they deal him and pitcher Phil Humber for any kind of bullpen help they can get.

The Twins can’t get any offensive consistency with Delmon in the lineup. He takes too many bad swings, he’s less than athletic in the outfield, and he’s a liability on the base paths. The bullpen is leaky and the lineup needs some consistency. You can’t have consistency with four outfielders battling for three spots. You just can’t.

We don’t do much any research for this site, so we don’t know whether Delmon has any options left when it comes to being sent down to the minors. But sending him down would be a good alternative for the Twins right now.

It would be better for the Twins if Delmon could be slow, make errors, and swing at the first pitch and pop-out down at AAA for awhile instead of doing it in clutch situations with the big club.

And remember -- we are a fan of Delmon. But one way or another, its time for him to go.