One of the first half-dozen or so starts of his career was against the Twins, if I recall. I had to go back to Chicago to meet with my dissertation advisor and whilst killing time in a hotel room with MLB.com, I watched him carve up the (utterly terrible) 2011 Twins and feeling that sense of despair when an AL rival finds a young talent that's going to kick Minnesota in the shins over and over and over and over again. It was a pretty overstated feeling then, as Twins would probably face him once or twice a year in Seattle but it felt like a big deal. And it definitely feels overstated now, as he got traded to New York in a hilariously weird prospect-for-prospect challenge swap where they both basically flopped.

Eight years later, he's a Twin and I get these very occasional flashes of enthusiasm that I'd absolutely and relentlessly mock if a fan of some other team generated it over some other obviously faded talent.

But since the upside of 2019's rotation incumbents is "deeply boring but potentially sort of effective" and since hardly anybody is reading this anyhow, maybe it's okay about penciling in a guy who is:

a)still only 30
b)throws like an actual power pitcher, hard everything
c)averaged more than a strikeout per inning even in bad years
d)seems to have been victimized by some "eh" defense as a Yankee

I'd have to be an idiot to expect more than 150 innings and the Twins would have to be even bigger idiots to pretend that whatever good occurs in 2019 means he should be brought back on some sort of longterm engagement. But I'm starting to believe this could actually be sort of fun.

Also fun: reading Baldelli's credulous wonderment yesterday regarding the spin on Pineda's slider after he was busted in 2014 for cheating with pine tar. Like, there's at least one obvious answer Rocco.