Acquired 7/12/1999 from the free agent pool.

The quest for cheap saves never ceases. See Wayne Gomes (success), Antonio Alfonseca (success), and Orber Moreno (failure so far) for details on this strategy.

OK, so the bang-for-the-buck that any team is likely to get from Aggie these days isn't so hot, and it was no surprise to anyone that he's no longer in Minnesota. But you know you play in a small market when you have to issue press releases reassuring everyone that you're not going to trade Mike Trombley just to dump his salary. Sounds to me like the Twins plan to trade Trombley to a contender for the stretch run anyway and then use their earlier statement as evidence that the trade was a good one. It goes like this: "We got such excellent value for Mike that we couldn't pass it up. We already told you that we wouldn't trade him just to slash payroll, didn't we?"

Sure, it sounds farfetched now, but did anybody else really believe that the Marlins would part with Mantei?

Of course, all this is gambling that if the Twins do trade Trombley, Guardado will be the closer in Minnesota. But that much at least seems like a pretty safe bet.

Update 10-14-1999: As it turned out, the Twins never traded Trombley in 1999 and the Zingrods released Guardado, which in retrospect was premature. He was the first pick in the 2000 preseason expansion draft, and the lucky owner was not the Zingrods.