The Minnesota Twins traded the best pitcher in all of baseball this past offseason when they sent Johan Santana to the New York Mets. They also dealt one of their top pitching prospects as they sent Matt Garza to the Rays. They lost Carlos Silva to free agency. Yet there is hope in the Twins' rotation, and its name is Francisco Liriano.

The twenty-five year old left hander is coming off of Tommy John surgery and there is no doubt that his performance this spring will be one of the biggest thing on the mind of fantasy owners everywhere.  He's got off to a late start too, but not because of his arm rather a visa problem that got him to Florida nine days late. Still, many of the reports surrounding Liriano have been encouraging.

The Twins Insider reported on Monday that team officials clocked him at 97 MPH twice on the gun in a recent bullpen session and that he was consistently in the 92-95 MPH range. Liriano threw well during the offseason in his native Dominican Republic and appears set to start mowing down AL hitters again soon.

Rod Gardenhire and the Twins on banking on Liriano being ready, he's going to have to be if they are going to compete in the tough AL Central. The team added veteran Livan Hernandez earlier this month to add to the array of young arms - Kevin Slowley, Boof Bonser, Scott Baker. Liriano is going to carry some risk entering the '08 campaign, but it comes with the opportunity for very high rewards.

Liriano was impressive when we last saw him in '06 when he posted a 12-3 record while pitching 121 innings. He finished that year with a 2.16 ERA, 1.000 WHIP, and 144 strikeouts.  Still, he's never pitched more than that in this league and is coming off one of them most major injuries you can have to a pitcher's arm.

Where Liriano falls in this year's fantasy drafts is a huge question. In the GSI Mock Draft I was able to get him with the 121st pick and as my third starter (behind Erik Bedard and Matt Cain). That may be early for some to have three pitchers, but for the value I couldn't pass it up.  I am banking on Liriano being a solid #2 fantasy starter this season. Even with the injury he's a safe bet for 12-14 wins in about 160-170 innings and E.RA under 3.50 and a WHIP barely over 1.000, and those are the modest numbers. The later in Spring Training your draft is, the chances are the earlier in the draft Liriano will be selected.

The biggest problem at the Sprint Cup race in Fontana, California last week wasn't the rain fiasco; it was the large number of empty seats. This problem is nothing new  to the track either. Since the Auto Club Speedway opened, attendance has been lower than expected and it is clear it isn't getting better. Maybe the track should cut down to one race, maybe they shouldn't race in California the same weekend as the Oscar's, maybe they shouldn't hold a race there a week before the Las Vegas race or just maybe the area doesn't want a track. Whatever the reason for the poor attendance, major changes could be on the way to address the problem.

Gillian Zucker, president of the speedway, announced that possible reconfiguration of the track is being discussed with the goal of creating a two-mile restrictor plate track. The process would be extremely expensive (upwards of $10 million) with additional banking and new soft walls needing to be installed, but the hope is that the tight racing that has made Daytona and Talladega famous will save the floundering attendance figures.

Zucker said that the idea of creating a third plate track on the Sprint Cup schedule came from Michael Waltrip, which isn't a shock considering all four of his career wins have come on plate tracks. Most drivers don't like giant, multi-car wrecks, so I imagine Mikey is in the minorty on this proposal, but the fans might think otherwise.

Personally, I don't want to see another plate track. Plate racing is geared toward the fans that only watch the end of a race and those that tune in the hopes of seeing a big wreck, neither of which I really care about anyway. At plate tracks, drivers can cruise around in last place, half a lap behind the leaders and charge to thr front with 20 to go. It makes 90% of the race meaningless. Adjustments are minimal at best, and good equipment and pure luck trump actual driver ability and strategy. Why do you think Mikey has four wins at plate tracks and hasn't even sniffed victory lane at any other track?

I like tracks where every lap matters and cars can be adjusted and go from the back to the front and vice versa. California has that already, and it isn't a bad race to watch. There was plenty of two-wide racing in last weeks event, Carl Edwards made a nice late-race charge past Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson to win and Kyle Busch must have passed 100 cars.

I don't think the problem is the track configuration, but if track officials are determined to make a change they should go with something original. Leave major differences in the banking between each set of corners or make drastic progressive banking to create even more racing grooves. Give the fans soemthing they have never seen. Going from a duplicate track of Michigan to a duplicate track of Daytona and Talladage, isn't a very revolutionary idea. 

Rotoworld.com is reporting that Randy Moss and the Pats have agreed to a long-term deal. Citing two NFL sources, AOL Sports' Sean Jensen reports Moss is expected to sign a "multi-year deal" to stay in New England. Jensen writes from Minnesota, so he probably has close ties to Moss or his agent. Jensen believes the contract is expected to be for three years and $30 million with $12-15 million guaranteed. A lot of news that comes out at this time of year is misdirection, but this makes sense. Jensen adds that impending free agent Lance Briggs is slated to sign with San Francisco.

Was there really any doubt that Moss wasn't coming back to New England. He and Tom Brady both set NFL records and came up bitterly short of perfection. The Pats are going to have to pay a higher price this time around though. With Moss and Asante Samuel both needing to be paid, Roosevelt Colvin was let go earlier this week.

It will be interesting to see how bliss things will be in New England with Moss if the team starts losing a few game. Regardless, Moss deserves to be paid. He proved many critics wrong and re-emerged in a storybook manner in 2007 and once demands consideration as the league's top wideout.

You had to believe this was eventually going to happen.  Big Ten representatives could only paint a positive picture of the Big Ten Network for so long, and eventually one of them was going to get fed up with defending them and unload.  Monday, the man that did just that was Michigan State men's basketball coach Tom Izzo.

"I think it has been a PR nightmare.  And, it has hurt all of us...we have so many things right now that we're trying to fight - the price of tickets, the economy of the state - and then we throw this at them...it bothers me."

Good.  It's about time someone spoke out on this.  It's an absolute joke how difficult it's become to see a game if you're a Big Ten fan when you have Time Warner cable.  And while the major cable companies need to bear some of the blame in this whole mess, the Big Ten Network couldn't possibly have handled the last 18 months any worse than they have.  They've demanded outrageous rights fees, and refuse to allow cable systems to put the network on a sports package tier.

BTN has been using absolutely deplorable techniques to try and sway public opinion, by using the revenue sport coaches as nothing more than shills for the network and having them tell cable subscribers 'call your cable company and tell them to carry the BTN, Go [insert team nickname here]'.  They went on and on about how the network would show more than just garbage games but wouldn't prevent the public from seeing all the biggest games (go ask anyone that tried to watch the OSU/Wisconsin football game how that worked out), but then took out full page ads in newspapers telling people in Big Ten markets about the games they're missing out on (here's a thought - maybe if you spent less money on full page ads, you'd be able to charge lower fees and get the network on the air).

Someone needs to explain how this network is staying afloat.  There's no way they're bringing in nearly the amount of money they need to survive, and they've got to be burning money faster than a Hillary Clinton staffer on a Dunkin' Donuts run (while I appreciate having women's volleyball in HD, I'm not really sure it's necessary - though maybe they could loan a couple HD trucks to CBS for the men's basketball tournament).  Plus, they've got a 20 year contract with the Big Ten conference, and this year they're obligated to pay the league $6.12 million.  Industry insiders said, when the idea was first floated, that the BTN either knew something they didn't, or they were making a colossal mistake.  We may soon find out who was right.

Tom Izzo's been one of my favorite college coaches for years.  He's a great recruiter, a top game manager, by all accounts is a great guy, and has some extremely cool friends over at Action 4 news.  He just moved up a few spots in my mind with this one.  You stay classy, Tom Izzo.