Being a Twins fan can be tough.

I watched Johan Santana and Torii Hunter (and to a lesser degree, Carlos Silva) walk from the Twins this year. You may or may not be big fan of any of those players, but that was a meaty part of the Twins right there.

Even Carlos Silva, the third, lesser regarded player mentioned, was a very important part of the Twins pitching staff last year. Check out these stats. This shows that Silva covered a huge portion of the total pitching time of the Twins. And then, of course, it also completely stands out how important Santana was to the Twins pitching staff. That guy was never on downtime. And 2007 was one of Johan Santana’s down years.

Here’s the Twins 2007 Pitching Stats, from Baseball-Reference.com:

And now I have managed to wander into paragraph #4 before actually talking about the player in the headline.

Carlos Gomez is the guy that is propped up as the return savior of the disappearance of all these guys.

He’s the only guy in the trade that is on the Twins MLB club roster right now.

He’s playing hard, showing great promise, and making a good presence. This alone is helping the Twins convince the rest of the world that trading Santana might not have been that bad of an idea.

Yeah.

If Gomez is running the bases, he’s usually got dirt on his Jersey. That has to be a good sign. He’s also filling Torii Hunter’s shoes out in center field. It’s not an easy slot to fill.

And, not to mention, Gomez is wearing Brad Radke’s number.

When Brad Radke retired in December 2006, the Twins didn’t reassign his jersey No. 22. But new Twins outfielder Carlos Gomez will wear it this season.

If Gomez pans out and keeps up his exciting reputation, he’ll solidify the Twins hustle approach and be the payoff for losing all of Hunter, Santana and Silva.