Milwaukee was in Washington last night when Neal Cotts learned that he was traded to the Twins. So he took a nice drive up the beltway to join his new team.
Twins-Orioles: Cotts joins team, Hughes update
The Twins are going for their third straight road win, which would be their longest of the season.
August 22, 2015 at 9:53PM
Cotts was a lefty specialist with the Brewers, I'm guessing because they had Will Smith around. Lefties are hitting .185 against Cotts while righties are at ,283 with a .839 OPS. Hmmm.
But Cotts is pleased to have moved up the wild card standings while joining the Twins.
``It's nice to be in a situation where the team is fighting for a spot in the wild card," Cotts said. ``Fortunately, I've had a couple opportunities in my career to be in those kind of spots. It's going to be a fun last month and hopefully I can help out in any role I can and go from there."
Molitor left Cotts a message after last night's game and just huddled with him before he spoke with the media jackals. Molitor will use Cotts in different roles. He could be a LOOGY one day, then pitch longer the next.
The important thing is that Cotts is experienced and has won a World Series while with the White Sox in 2005. From that standpoint alone, the Twins upgraded when they added Cotts for a PTBNL or cash then sent out A.J. Achter. Cotts is available to pitch today.
The Twins are on the hook for the remainder of Cotts' $3 million contract, which comes out to $704,919.
Molitor also revealed that righthander Phil Hughes is not recovering from his sore back as quickly as they hoped. Hughes is back in the Twin Cities, doing pool work but has not attempted any baseball activities. I think it was a foregone conclusion anyway that Tyler Duffey would start against the Rays next week anyway, but this cements that.
Duffey will draw Chris Archer on Wednesday.
And Happy Birthday to Molitor, who turns 59 today.
Twins
Byron Buxton, CF
Brian Dozier, 2B
Joe Mauer, 1B
Miguel Sano, DH
Trevor Plouffe, 3B
Eddie Rosario, LF
Torii Hunter, RF
Kurt Suzuki, C
Eduardo Escobar, SS
Kyle Gibson, RHP
Orioles
Manny Machado, 3B
Gerardo Parra, RF
Adam Jones, CF
Chris Davis, 1B
Matt Wieters, C
Jonanthan Schoop, 2B
Steve Clevenger, DH
J.J. Hardy, SS
Henry Urrutia, LF
Chris Tillman, RHP
The Twins executive was on hand with Cleveland when Mark Shapiro did the double, and Shapiro noticed then his ability to “connect across every role in the organization.”
