"In many ways, the Twins' trade deadline addition this season was old business, brewing since Joe Nathan went down with an elbow injury in March.

"We really never replaced Joe Nathan when he went down," general manager Bill Smith said. "Jon Rauch stepped up and did a tremendous job for four months, but we never replaced him with anybody from outside the organization. We're confident that Matt Capps is the right guy."

Capps was acquired Thursday for top catching prospect Wilson Ramos. He came in Friday and closed a 5-3 victory, improving to 3-3 with a 2.68 earned-run average and 26 saves this season.

Nathan had ligament replacement surgery on March 26 and the Twins quickly named Rauch the closer, in large part because he had the most closing experience on the staff — 17 saves with Washington in 2008. He eclipsed that mark with 21 saves in 25 opportunities this season, but it was never clear that Rauch was the solution there, especially as he struggled in July.

The team gave Rauch only one save after July 11, and his earned-run average for the month was 5.40.

"He was our closer," manager Ron Gardenhire said Saturday. "I can't ever predict the future, if we were going to go get somebody. We named him our closer. It was plain, cut-and-dried. It kind of came on kind of sudden in spring training; there was not a whole lot of planning that went into this."

Rauch on Saturday again declined to talk about the Capps trade. "