Swing and A Miss: Minnesota Twins Lose Out on Tampa Bay Rays' Akinori Iwamura

Well, there goes one article from the offseason que. The Rays, finding themselves with a surfeit of infielders, seem to be on the verge of dealing second baseman Akinori Iwamura and another player to the Pirates for reliever Jesse Chavez. However, for much of the day, it looked like the Twins might have achieved an offseason before the season even officially ended. Iwamura got off to a solid start, hitting .310/.377/.406 before tearing his ACL in May. One might think that such a line might earn him a shot at producing that well over a whole season, and had the Rays infield not performed so well without him, it might have. Even missing as much time as he did, Iwamura was the Rays' sixth most productive offensive player, and he can play multiple infield positions, so how did he find himself as the Rays most expendable piece? The simple answer is that of the five players above him in terms of VORP, three (Evan Longoria, Jason Bartlett, and Ben Zobrist) play the positions that Iwamura could ... (link)