All talk, no action on Twins trade front

OAKLAND, CALIF. — Twins General Manager Bill Smith said he was disappointed he couldn't make a deal before Sunday's nonwaiver trade deadline and sounded determined to sort through some potential waiver moves, starting Monday.

"There are a lot of good players that are going to pass through [waivers]," Smith said. "We're going to have to be careful, smart, and aggressive trying to improve this club."

After hearing so much talk about a deal that would have sent Denard Span to the Nationals for closer Drew Storen, Twins players learned they hadn't made any moves -- not even something minor to address their bullpen -- just before starting their series finale against Oakland.

The Twins grabbed an early three-run lead against Brandon McCarthy, but the Athletics reeled off seven consecutive hits off Carl Pavano in the third inning and cruised to a 7-3 victory at the Coliseum.

"We came up empty [on the trade front]," manager Ron Gardenhire said. "So it was one of those days where you try to keep your head in the game, but there's a lot of stuff swirling around here, and I don't know if that affected us."

The fourth-place Twins lost the final two games of the series and fell seven games back in the standings again, a deficit that looked even bigger after the moves made by the first-place Tigers (adding Doug Fister and David Pauley) and second-place Indians (adding Ubaldo Jimenez and Kosuke Fukodome).

"I think the worst thing we could do is panic and start making deals because somebody else started making deals," Smith said. "As much as we wanted to improve this club, I'd rather make no deal than a bad deal."

The Twins talked to the Blue Jays about reacquiring righthander Jon Rauch and made several inquiries about other relievers, but in the end, they didn't feel the prices were right.

It seemed to hurt the Twins that they don't have many attractive prospects sitting at Class AA or Class AAA. The Rangers added two setup men -- Baltimore's Koji Uehara and San Diego's Mike Adams -- but yielded two pretty good prospects in each deal.

The Twins couldn't drum up much interest in Class AAA Rochester righthander Kevin Slowey, so teams kept asking for players from their big-league roster -- Span, Kubel, etc.

"For us to make moves, we were going to have to lose players out of this clubhouse," Gardenhire said. "So, no, I'm not disappointed we didn't lose players, but to add players would have been good too."

The team's veterans have been critical of the front office over the years for not doing more at the trade deadline, but closer Joe Nathan didn't sense much anger this time.

Instead of losing Span, the Twins announced that they plan to activate him from the disabled list in time for Tuesday's game against the Angels. Nathan said it will be good to have their leadoff man back.

"We've definitely shown we can get back into this thing," Nathan said. "We can get on one of those runs we've had before. Anything's possible. We've still got a bunch of games within the division."

And they'll be playing them with a familiar cast.