MLB Roundup 1/1: Twins sign two veteran pitchers

Twins sign a pair of veteran starters

The Twins were a 100-win team in 2019, but they haven’t been very aggressive in trying to stay there in 2020. While the White Sox have gotten appreciably better and the Indians still have plenty of talent, Minnesota had done, well, basically nothing. They needed some rotation help, and got that on Tuesday. It’s not exciting help, to be fair, but they signed veterans Rich Hill and Homer Bailey. Hill will get $3 guaranteed with a chance to earn $6.5 million more in incentives. Bailey will be guaranteed $7 million. The former is the better pitcher here without a doubt, but he is also down with an injury that is going to force him to miss a significant chunk of time early in the year. The midway point of the season is the earliest we’ll see him in 2020. Bailey is healthy and coming off his first 30-start season since 2013, and he was actually solid last year. I’m not particularly optimistic about that keeping up — most of the success was with the A’s and they’ve had some weird magic with veteran starting pitchers the last couple of years — but it’s a worthy risk at a cheap price. The Twins now have four solid and healthy starters (one very, very good on in José Berríos and another good on in Jake Odorizzi) plus two guys in Michael Pineda and Hill who won’t start the year in the rotation but are set to be added in later.

Sox Spin: Two things here. For one, this probably takes the Twins out of the David Price running. I’m not at all sold they were actually in on it at all the begin with, but if they were, this will end that. Second, if and when the Red Sox do trade Price, the free agent options to replace him are getting very, very slim.

Tyler Thornburg signs with the Reds

Tyler Thornburg has found a new home, folks. The former Red Sox righty has signed a minor-league deal with the Reds. Thornburg, of course, cost the Red Sox a lot to acquire, immediately got hurt and was never able to recover from that TOS surgery. There’s no such thing as a bad minor-league deal, but given Thornburg’s history here I had to mention this today.

Sox Spin: I just explained it.