Much has been made of two prominent ex-Twins -- Francisco Liriano and now Justin Morneau -- helping the Pirates to their first winning season since 1992 and pushing toward a likely postseason berth. The contributions of Nick "LNP" Punto for the first-place Dodgers has also been noted.

But in case you missed it, another Twins player has become the least likely contributor of all toward a playoff push.

Danny Valencia's season began with whispers that he was prominently connected to the Biogenesis scandal. But in early August, he was reportedly cleared of any wrongdoing and was not on the list of players suspended in connection to the PED mess.

Since then, albeit while not playing every day, Valencia is a ridiculous 23 for 42 (.548) with the Orioles, including four homers and seven doubles. He had a three-run, game-tying home run in the eighth inning last night against the Yankees, a game Baltimore ended up losing to fall 2.5 games back in the Wild Card chase.

For the season, Valencia has 8 homers in 112 at bats and an OPS over 1.000.

This, of course, is after his numbers plummeted from a .799 OPS as a surprisingly good Twins rookie in 2010 to .677 in 2011 to .497 last season split between Minnesota and Boston.

AP photo

He's also keeping up on Twitter, though we can find no evidence lately of his trademark "swag" or any related word in his feed. Maybe he's letting his swaggy play speak for itself?