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Joe Nathan will have Tommy John surgery on his ailing right elbow and miss the entirety of the 2010 season, the Star Tribune is reporting today. Nathan played catch with Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson earlier this morning and still felt significant pain in the injured elbow, so he made the almost inevitable decision to have surgery on the elbow in hopes of returning to the field as soon as possible in 2011. The Twins have already said that they'll first look internally to replace Nathan and with Jon Rauch and Matt Guerrier coming off of excellent seasons for the Twins in 2009 and Pat Neshek looking to return from his own Tommy John surgery, which cost him most of 2008 and all of 2009, that seems like the best place to start. If those options don't work out, there are several closers expected to hit the trade market at some point this season that could help the Twins.
None of those pitchers will be Joe Nathan, though. Since arriving in Minnesota in 2004, no one has saved more games than the 246 saves Nathan has with the Twins. That's three more than Mariano Rivera. If you don't like saves as a stat (I really don't), then you can say that Nathan has a better ERA (1.87 to 1.90), more strikeouts (518 to 424), and a better OPS against (.526 to .535) than Rivera. Even if you don't feel comfortable coming right out and saying that Nathan has been the best closer in baseball since the start of the 2004 season, it's hard to deny that he's in the top two.
This is all a fancy way of saying what everyone already knows; the Twins will really miss Nathan this year. They may find an adequate replacement on their own staff or in a trade with someone else, but they won't find someone that's Nathan's equal.
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