Livan Hernandez

Reliever Aaron Heilman was acquired Friday by the Arizona Diamondbacks from the Chicago Cubs for two minor league prospects. The 31-year-old right-hander was 4-4 with a 4.11 ERA in 70 appearances last season, striking out 65 and walking 34. He spent six seasons with the New York Mets before he was traded to Seattle last December, then was dealt to the Cubs the next month. Chicago gets 24-year-old left-hander Scott Maine and 23-year-old infielder Ryne White. Maine, a sixth-round draft pick in 2007, was a combined 4-5 with seven saves and a 2.90 ERA with Double-A Mobile and Triple-A Reno last season. White, a ... Read Full Story

Billy Wagner's perfect return to the mound came at the expense of Livan Hernandez. The comeback of the New York Mets' former closer wasn't a surprise, but the fact that it cost Hernandez his spot on the club caught a few teammates off-guard. Johan Santana showed up at Citi Field on Thursday and had no idea Hernandez had been released. Along with most of his teammates, the ace left-hander was in the dark about Gary Sheffield's unhappiness regarding his contract, too. None of that affected the performance of Wagner, who was activated from the disabled list before Thursday's game against the Atlanta Braves and ... Read Full Story

Sans veteran ace Johan Santana , youngster Matt Garza and Carlos Silva , the Minnesota Twins agreed Tuesday to a one-year, $5 million contract with Livan Hernandez , who hopes to earn an extra $2 million in performance bucks. Not only does he spike the collective age of the young Twins rotation, but he also brings experience and even some talent. And he's El Duque 's half-brother, so that's cool. Last season, the Cuban righty... who turns 33 on February 20th and is totally single, ladies... went 11-11 with a 4.93 ERA in 33 starts for the Arizona Diamondbacks . As a two-time All-Star ... Read Full Story

If This Guy's Your Ace, It Could be a Long Year When perusing the interwebs earlier this week, I stumbled across the following headline on the Pioneer Press Web site: "Livan Hernandez in line to start Opening Day for Minnesota Twins." This is not the type of thing you want to see if you're a Twinkies fan, which could be why the article is tagged as one of the "most emailed ." It likely ascended to those ranks via thousands of Twins fans forwarding the link to their friends with accompanying copy of "we're f-ed," or something along those lines. Which got us to ... Read Full Story

…because he didn’t have great control anyway. Last night I scrambled to my laptop as the Colorado-Diamondbacks game was about to start to break the news to the world (more like to have it in writing in case the game was decided on an umpire’s call) that the home plate umpire, Larry Vanover, has the stingiest inside (for righties) side of the plate out of all MLB umpires. Here are the results from the pitch data for last night. It’s not as glaring as it might be because Hernandez really didn’t test that side of the plate very much- but when he did, Vanover ... Read Full Story