Earlier this month, Craig Edwards contended in a post at this site that the Twins really needed starting pitching. Actually, “really, really” was the precise verbiage he used. That’s two reallys. The addition of some rotation depth was an urgent matter for the Twins’ success, Edwards claimed.

The timing of his post helps to explain the urgency. Just the day before, reports indicated that Ervin Santana would miss roughly the first month of the season. Santana was an important part of a Twins club that unexpectedly qualified for a Wild Card game last season. For a team that entered the offseason with something less than a full complement of major-league starters — and which had little margin for error in a division also featuring the Cleveland Indians — the loss of the staff’s nominal ace for any amount of time would be damning.

Last night, the Twins went some way to addressing their lack of rotation depth. Marc Topkin gets right to the heart of the matter in this post on social-media platform Twitter dot com:

By the version of WAR calculated with FIP, Odorizzi produced just one-tenth of win last year in 143.1 innings. He didn’t fair much better by the run-allowed version of that metric (1.1 RA9-WAR). He had also just won his arbitration case against the Rays, entitling him to $6.3 million in 2018. For a Tampa Bay club that appears to have no interest in adding — and, in fact, appears intent on subtracting — payroll.

Clearly, that 2017 edition of Odorizzi isn’t the one Minnesota has endeavored to acquire. Steamer calls for him to produce 0.9 WAR in 2018. ZiPS calls for precisely double that mark. The average of those yields something like a one-and-a-half-win pitcher. That renders Odorizzi the Twins’ third- or fourth-best starter and certainly represents an improvement over whatever replacement-level option the club would have deployed at the very end of the rotation.

The cost, besides the $6 million that Odorizzi is owed, is SS Jermaine Palacios. Palacios has some virtues. According to lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen, however, he may not stick at short, putting pressure on a bat that has been volatile at the lower levels of the minors. Longenhagen will have a fuller report on Palacios later.

As for this deal, Travis Sawchik will have a fuller report on that later, as well. For the moment, it appears as though the Twins have addressed a need at little cost. Perhaps one might say they only really need a starting pitcher now. Just one really, in this case.