Joe Nathan used his veto power to nix any possible trade the Twins might make with him during this season. That's the basic fact from Joe C's excellent story. Here are five thoughts we had about the surrounding information:

1) The fact that the Twins came to Nathan with the idea of nixing his veto power over any trade (garnered because he is a 10-year MLB veteran with five years on the same team) a mere 30 minutes before the deadline is, well, bungled. No other way to put it. The Twins have been out of the race for weeks. If they considered trading Nathan to be a real possibility -- and apparently they put him through waivers in August already -- this should have been settled long ago. Or at least longer than 30 minutes before a deadline.

2) This paragraph: "The Twins insisted they didn't have a deal cooking. They were just checking to see if Nathan wanted to move to a contender." Then why not check with him last week, like they did with Jim Thome?

3) We don't really begrudge Nathan for saying no. He's earned the right, and he was a critical part of the Twins' success from 2004-09 before his injury. He's in an odd situation with his option year coming up. Going to another team doesn't make any sense for him leverage-wise. Sometimes you have to be selfish -- the good kind of selfish -- and that's what we see here.

4) There is clearly no way the Twins can bring Nathan back for his $12.5 million option price next year. But if they're already on the hook for a $2 million buyout, maybe at least talking to Nathan (who turns 37 in November) about a restructured deal to stay here isn't so crazy. If he's comfortable here and isn't trying to break the bank with what will likely be his last multi-year contract, we could see some middle ground. Again, the numbers have to work -- based on Nathan's age, we wouldn't do more than 2 years at $6-7 million per season.

5) The extremely bad luck and timing of Nathan's injury cannot be overstated in terms of it's overall impact on the Twins. Without it, the Twins almost certainly don't trade Wilson Ramos for Matt Capps, which means they would have a great situation with Joe Mauer and Ramos sharing time at catcher/DH (and Mauer potentially playing some 1B as well). They don't clog up this year's payroll with about $20 million going to an on-the-mend Nathan and a very hittable Capps (let's not forget that the bullpen's failures, particularly early in the season, contributed mightily to the hole from which the Twins could never escape). Again, not Nathan's fault. Just a really bad series of events.