AaronGleeman.com

2010-03-16T00:59:00.002-05:00

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2010-03-16T00:05:00.011-05:00

AG.com NCAA Tournament Pool

I created an NCAA basketball tournament "office" pool for AG.com readers, which you can sign up for by clicking here or going to www.madness.nbcsports.com and entering in the following information:

Pool ID: 2884
Password: Mila

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-03-15T00:05:00.000-05:00

Twins Sign Span To Long-Term Deal

All is quiet on the Joe Mauer front since false reports from Mark Rosen and Dan Cole claiming that an extension had been agreed upon, but that hasn't stopped the Twins from handing out other long-term deals. Last week Nick Blackburn inked a four-year, $14 million contract with an $8 million team option for 2014 and over the weekend Denard Span agreed to a five-year, $16.5 million deal with a $9 million team option or $500,000 buyout for 2015.

For both Blackburn and Span the Twins basically pre-paid for their remaining team-controlled seasons while securing a team option for their first season of free agency, with the only real difference being that Blackburn has accumulated one more year of big-league service time than Span and thus would have been eligible to hit the open market one year sooner. In other words, only the addition of a 2014 option for Blackburn and a 2015 option for Span alter how long the Twins would have been able to keep them.

Blackburn's contract struck me as an unnecessary risk without much upside, as they already controlled him through 2014 anyway and his skill set makes decline more likely than a breakout during the life of the deal. Because of that, committing $14 million up front when the Twins could have just taken things year-to-year with him is a questionable tradeoff in exchange for a bit of cost certainty and an $8 million team option on a 32-year-old Blackburn for 2014.

Span is a different story even through the contracts are nearly identical, because he's currently a clearly more valuable player than Blackburn despite being two years younger and also projects as more likely to maintain his performance long term. Not only is Span at $16.5 million for 2010-2014 more likely to be a bargain than Blackburn at $14 million for 2010-2013, there's a much higher chance that the Twins will actually want to retain Span for $9 million in 2015 compared to Blackburn for $8 million in 2014.

Here are the contract breakdowns, with "MIN" standing for minimum-salaried, pre-arbitration seasons, "ARB" representing arbitration-eligible seasons, and "FA" equaling free agency (numbers in millions):

             MIN2    MIN3    ARB1    ARB2    ARB3    FA1
Blackburn            0.75    3.00    4.75    5.50    8.00 option
Span         0.75    1.00    3.00    4.75    6.50    9.00 option/0.50 buyout

All of which isn't to say that Span's contract is a no-brainer for the Twins, because as someone whose big-league career consists of just 238 games in less than two full seasons and has been dramatically superior to his underwhelming minor-league track record there's some risk there too. He's gone from hitting .287/.357/.358 in the minors to .305/.390/.422 in the majors, upping his walks by 25 percent and showing 60 percent more power with 10 percent fewer strikeouts to emerge as an ideal leadoff man.

However, he's better and younger than Blackburn with less likelihood of a decline and far more upside, making him a much more viable and impactful long-term building block. And even my once-prominent (and warranted) skepticism of Span being the real deal has all but vanished during the past two years, so while the risk of up-front money outweighed the reward of cost certainty and delayed free agency for Blackburn taking the same plunge with Span was a lot more worthwhile. Now, about this Mauer guy ...

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-03-12T00:10:00.008-06:00

Link-O-Rama

There's a lot of wackiness within this story about a guy getting stabbed at a Shutter Island screening, but one question really stood out: "Why would someone bring a meat thermometer to a movie theater?"

Mattel is now producing a Mad Men line of Barbie dolls, depicting Don Draper, Roger Sterling, Betty Draper, and of course Joan Holloway. According to a lengthy New York Times article "the dolls are part of a premium-price collectors' series for adults that Mattel calls the Barbie Fashion Model Collection," which senior vice president for Barbie marketing Stephanie Cota says "do a great job of embodying the series." Yet oddly the design doesn't do a great job of embodying ... well, Christina Hendricks' body.

This might be the end of the line for Eddie Guardado. And no, he's not a closer option.

My best ridiculous analogy this week was how Milton Bradley is just like Britney Spears, but actually one of his recent quotes sounded exactly like me: "I pretty much stayed at home, ordered in every day, never went anywhere." Does that make me the Bradley of bloggers or him the Gleeman of outfielders?

You guessed it ... Frank Stallone.

I'm gradually getting more comfortable doing radio interviews via phone, so this week I was a guest on three different shows. Wednesday afternoon I talked Twins on KFAN with Paul Charchian, who was subbing for Dan Barreiro. Yesterday morning I did a segment with John Hanson and friend of AG.com Darren Wolfson on KSTP. And last night I spent an hour chatting with Seth Stohs on his great podcast, with "Big Poppa" by The Notorious B.I.G. and "Superfly" by Curtis Mayfield as my intro songs. Naturally.

It looks like KSTP didn't make the show available for download, but to listen to the KFAN segment just click here and zoom forward two-thirds of the way through until I come on. And definitely listen to Seth's podcast, because we basically had an hour-long conversation about the Twins that covered all kinds of topics. Oh, and if you haven't already, check out Seth's excellent Minnesota Twins Prospect Handbook, which is sort of like my "Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010" series on steroids.

Speaking of local sports radio, friend of AG.com Phil Mackey just announced that he's leaving KFAN for a job at KSTP, where he'll team with Patrick Reusse starting at noon each day. I like Phil a lot, he's a funny, smart guy who's good on the air, and he's big into both baseball and poker while also covering the Vikings beat for KFAN, so KSTP did well to add him to the lineup. Reusse's head may explode the first time Phil brings up Ultimate Zone Rating or xFIP on the air, though.

Kelly Brook has stepped up her game after controversially being left off the candidates list following last week's Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com shakeup.

My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail:

The outtakes are pretty funny too.

In one of the oddest casting choices in recent memory, Jonah Hill has a part in the Moneyball movie playing someone other than Jeremy Brown. And in semi-related news, if they ever make Jake Peavy's life into a movie Jeremy Renner probably shouldn't even have to audition.

Since losing 90 pounds a few years ago only to put the weight back on I've unsuccessfully re-started a weight-loss program countless times. My latest attempt began February 1 and things have gone well so far. I'm down 37 pounds, which is obviously a ton of weight to drop in just six weeks and has a lot of people asking how I've done it. Diet and exercise definitely help, but the biggest key is being fat enough that 37 pounds doesn't even make that much of a dent. Once you master that aspect, the rest is easy.

One nice food discovery this time around is the low-calorie pasta from FiberGourmet.com. I'm a big pasta and rice eater, but in the past have always cut them out of my diet when trying to lose weight. I'm still not eating any rice and have cut way back on the pasta, but stumbled across the products while searching for low-calorie options last month and have decided that it tastes about 90 percent as good as regular pasta despite having 40 percent fewer calories thanks to a huge increase in fiber.

I realize the above paragraph may sound like an advertisement, but I can assure you that I'm not getting paid to say that. In fact, the only real downside to the low-calorie pasta is the cost, which ends up being about three times as much as regular pasta once shipping fees are included. Anyway, if you're trying to limit calorie intake and can't live without pasta, I recommend giving it a try. I bought a 12-pack sampler, which is three types of pasta plus macaroni and cheese. Buy some and maybe they'll send me more!

Speaking of diets, native Minnesotan, former Gopher, and current Mariners backup Jack Hannahan had an amusing quote when asked about losing 18 pounds during the offseason: "I know why people don't like losing weight. You have to eat food you don't like."

I'd proudly wear about 99 of these shirts, if only they made them in XXXXXXXL.

Bob Ingrassia of Minnesota Public Radio created a ranking of the Top 50 Minnesota Baseball Blogs and I'm proud to say AG.com tops the list. I'm not exactly sure of the criteria used for the ranking system other than it seems to be based on stuff like site traffic, RSS subscriptions, and inbound links, but who am I to quibble with results like that? Anyway, along with further inflating my ego the list is also a handy guide to the Twins blogosphere. If you like AG.com, odds are you'll like many of the other blogs listed.

What do Jason Kendall, an ex-wife named Chantel, and Rod Stewart's son have in common?

Check out Rotoworld's annual Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide, because I'm the editor, and along with Matthew Pouliot, Drew Silva, D.J. Short, Craig Calcaterra, Thor Nystrom, and other writers spent an insane amount of time working on the product for the past few months. So if you're a fantasy baseball player please consider buying it. Just last month we received the "Best Online Draft Kit" award from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, so it'll definitely be worth the money and also keeps me employed.

I'm not sure if I actually like HBO's new series How To Make It In America, but the show's soundtrack has been great every week.

Along with his usual excellent writing work for Basketball Prospectus, friend of AG.com Kevin Pelton has a new job as a front office consultant for the Indiana Pacers. Nathan Jawai for Danny Granger?

I'm addicted to WhatIfSports.com's great Hardball Dynasty game and we're starting a new season in "Gleeman World 2" soon, with a couple franchise openings. Hardball Dynasty is not a fantasy baseball game, but rather a simulation of running a fictional MLB organization from rookie-ball to the majors. It's incredibly detailed and time-consuming with a steep learning curve, so first and foremost we're looking for owners with Hardball Dynasty experience, although anyone is free to express interest in a spot.

Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is the theme song to the aforementioned How To Make It In America, "I Need A Dollar" by Aloe Blacc:

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-03-11T00:05:00.004-06:00

Radio, Radio

Yesterday afternoon Paul Charchian subbed for Dan Barreiro on KFAN and had me on as a guest to talk about the Twins for 20 minutes or so. We mostly discussed Joe Nathan, but also touched on a few other topics, and the segment was very enjoyable. If you missed it live, you can listen to the interview on KFAN.com. Just click here and zoom forward two-thirds of the way through the clip, when I come on.

This morning at 8:00 a.m. I'll be calling in to KSTP-1500 to chat about Nathan's injury and the Twins with Doogie Wolfson, which is always a good time. You can listen online by clicking here, and hopefully they'll also make the clip available to download afterward.

And last but definitely not least tonight at around 9:10 p.m. I'll be appearing on Seth Stohs' podcast, which is an absolute must-listen for any Twins fan because in addition to talking to fellow bloggers like me he typically has one or two players on each show as well. You can listen online by clicking here and Seth always makes the show available for download afterward.

UPDATE: Seth tells me that I can pick a song for my intro on the podcast, which now strikes me as the most important decision of my life. My first thought was something by Otis Redding, just because he's awesome. My second thought was "Big Poppa" by Notorious B.I.G., but upon inspection it may not work because he doesn't get to the hook until after some swearing. My third thought was "Stand Up" by Steel Dragon, which plays when Nathan comes out of the bullpen. Suggestions? Funny, serious, whatever.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-03-10T00:08:00.012-06:00

Life Without Nathan: Closer Likely Facing Tommy John Surgery

When closer Joe Nathan left Saturday's spring training debut with pain in his surgically repaired elbow the Twins hoped it was merely scar tissue breaking up, but after flying back to Minneapolis for an MRI exam he's been diagnosed with a torn ulnar collateral ligament. Nathan is expected to rest for a couple weeks in an effort to find out if can possibly pitch through the pain, but more likely than not he's headed for season-ending (and at age 35, perhaps career-threatening) Tommy John surgery.

There's no getting around the fact that losing Nathan would be a huge blow to the Twins. Since arriving in 2004 as part of the famed A.J. Pierzynski deal he's been arguably the best reliever in all of baseball, saving 246 games with a 1.87 ERA and 518 strikeouts in 418.2 innings spread over 412 appearances. During that six-season span Nathan's adjusted ERA+ of 236 is the best of any pitcher with 300 or more innings, and Mariano Rivera at 234 and Billy Wagner at 202 are the only others above 200.

Nathan is irreplaceable because no other reliever will be able to match how consistently fantastic he's been with yearly ERAs of 1.62, 2.70, 1.58, 1.88, 1.33, and 2.10. He is not, however, irreplaceable simply because of the role he filled. Closers are made, not born, and despite what you may hear from people looking to build the role up into some kind of mythical test of wills the primary characteristic needed for handling ninth-inning duties is being a good pitcher. Period.

Nathan has been a great closer, but before that he was a starter moved to the bullpen because of arm injuries and had just one season as a setup man. Eddie Guardado was also a failed starter who spent a decade as a middle reliever before getting a chance to close, and then saved 86 games in two years. Rick Aguilera is another former starter turned reliever, and was 27 years old before recording his first save. Being an established closer isn't a prerequisite for being a successful closer.

Losing a great pitcher like Nathan hurts because the Twins don't have an equally great pitcher to take his place, not because the role he filled is much too vast and important for a mere mortal. Nathan was a mere mortal before assuming the role, as were Guardado, Aguilera, and so many other top closers. Nathan has converted 90.7 percent of his chances with the Twins, which is amazing, but the MLB-wide success rate for all closers is 86.5 percent and all but the disasters are usually around 80 percent.

Nathan has had 45.2 save opportunities per year and by converting 90.7 percent of those chances he's averaged 41.0 saves. An "average" closer converting 86.5 percent would have 39.1 saves and a "poor" closer converting 80.0 percent would have 36.1 saves. Per season that equals 1.9 fewer saves at 86.5 percent and 4.9 fewer saves at 80.0 percent. And it's important to remember that not every blown save ends in a loss, so being without Nathan will likely cost 3-4 wins including his work in non-save spots.

Ron Gardenhire hasn't dropped any hints about the replacement closer because he's still holding out a slim hope that Nathan can pitch through the injury, but bullpen depth was one of the Twins' strengths coming into spring training and he has several decent options from which to choose. I'd likely go with a closer-by-committee approach based on matchups, at least initially, but my guess is that Gardenhire's preference is to find one man for the job even if it takes giving a few guys tries before settling on him.

Matt Guerrier has been setting up Nathan for the past six seasons, with a 3.31 ERA in 389 innings as a reliever, but his raw stuff isn't exactly overpowering and more importantly his valuable ability to make multi-inning appearances or rescue other pitchers from mid-inning jams would likely cease given how Gardenhire has used his closer. In terms of raw stuff Jon Rauch is much more similar to Guerrier than Nathan even if standing 6-foot-11 with neck tattoos makes him look like a closer.

With that said, Rauch has more closing experience than the rest of the fill-in candidates combined and even if that basically amounts to just 17 saves with the Nationals two seasons ago I'll be surprised if it doesn't play a big factor in Gardenhire's decision making. Rauch as a closer is obviously far from ideal, but he has a 3.59 ERA in 363.1 innings as a reliever, including a 3.60 mark last year, and was indeed right "around 80 percent" when given regular save chances in 2008.

Jose Mijares had a good rookie season with a 2.34 ERA in 62 innings and was often billed as a future closer while coming up through the minors thanks to raw stuff that sits a step above guys like Guerrier and Rauch, but Gardenhire seems unlikely to trust a second-year pitcher in the ninth inning right away. Mijares also allowed right-handers to hit .283 with a .791 OPS last year while completely shutting down fellow lefties, so for the short term at least he's probably best suited for a semi-specialist role anyway.

Once upon a time Jesse Crain was also thought of as a future closer and still has the mid-90s fastball for the job, but he's hardly been consistently reliable even as a setup man and spent six weeks of last year at Triple-A following a midseason demotion. Setting aside whether Crain could handle closing I'd be shocked if Gardenhire trusted him enough to give it a try, which is also why prospects like Anthony Slama and Robert Delaney aren't realistic options.

Francisco Liriano may be an intriguing closer candidate, but if he looks good this spring the Twins will want him in the rotation for 200 innings rather than the bullpen for 70 innings and if he isn't impressive in camp they surely won't be handing him late leads. Pat Neshek emerged as Nathan's top setup man in 2006-2008 with a 2.91 ERA and 142 strikeouts in 121 innings and might be the leading candidate to step into the job if not for the fact that he's coming back from a Tommy John surgery of his own.

Neshek's recovery is said to be going well and his spring training debut last week was promising, but he hasn't thrown a regular-season pitch since May of 2008. Tossing him right into the ninth-inning fire is highly unlikely and probably ill-advised. And while his vulnerability to left-handed batters was grossly exaggerated before the surgery he certainly benefited from being used in spots that weren't heavy on lefty sluggers. He'd benefit from that now more than ever, but it isn't doable for a one-inning closer.

Before the surgery Neshek would have been my choice to step in for Nathan and even after the surgery if healthy he'd be a good fit in a closer-by-committee situation with Mijares, but with his status up in the air and no need to rush him into anything it's a moot point. And of course Gardenhire is unlikely to use multiple, matchup-based closers anyway. At some point pining for Mijares, Neshek, or Mijares/Neshek could make sense, but for now Gardenhire may lean toward Rauch and I'd find it hard to disagree.

Whatever happens the bullpen's depth has the Twins remarkably well-positioned to handle losing their stud closer and any decision Gardenhire makes will likely result in less of a game-saving dropoff than most people seem to think. Nathan has been spectacular, but the role he's filled is so rigid and fawned over that the gap between truly "great" and merely something resembling "mediocre" in the ninth inning is typically overstated and often unpredictable, with last year providing a pair of prominent examples.

MLB's best save percentage belonged to Fernando Rodney, a 32-year-old career-long setup man with a 4.28 ERA who went 37-of-38 for Detroit. Philadelphia won 93 games and the NL pennant despite one of the worst closer seasons ever by Brad Lidge, who went 0-8 with a 7.21 ERA and MLB-high 11 blown saves. Nathan's injury drops the Twins' playoffs chances, which is difficult to stomach after a productive offseason had the team looking so strong, but they can definitely survive and even thrive without him.

And maybe the Twins will stumble upon their next great closer in the process.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-03-09T08:10:00.006-06:00

Breaking News: Nathan Likely Done For The Year

My NBCSports.com/Hardball Talk colleague Craig Calcaterra reports live from the Twins' clubhouse in Fort Myers that Joe Nathan has a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow and will likely undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery. Before going under the knife he'll rest for 2-3 weeks to see if he could possibly pitch through the injury, but Ron Gardenhire called it a "significant" tear and Craig notes that "everyone's body language and mood is that they're pessimistic and surgery is going to happen."

Damn. Just ... damn.

UPDATE: I'll have much more tomorrow, but for now here's my quick take on the closer options.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-03-08T00:02:00.000-06:00

Nathan Gets An MRI, Blackburn Gets A New Contract

There were two prominent bits of Twins news over the weekend, as Joe Nathan left Saturday's game with soreness in his surgically repaired right elbow and Nick Blackburn signed a four-year, $14 million contract with an option for 2014. I'm hesitant to comment much on Nathan's status until further details are known, but he flew from Fort Myers to Minneapolis yesterday to undergo an MRI exam and the hope is that the pain was from scar tissue breaking up following October 20 surgery to remove bone spurs.

As the 35-year-old closer put it: "We're going to get some pictures just for some peace of mind." Joe Christensen of the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that doctors will compare his current MRI results to his pre-surgery exam and proceed from there, with a couple days of rest to deal with the scar tissue qualifying as the best-case scenario and going under the knife again to fix a separate injury looming as the worst-case scenario. And no reason to panic in the meantime.

While the Twins hold their breath waiting for word on Nathan's elbow, they signed Blackburn to a deal that could keep him in Minnesota through 2014. However, he was already under team control through 2013 via arbitration eligibility. Rather than being a true "extension" the contract pays him $750,000 this season, pre-pays $13.25 million for Blackburn's three arbitration-eligible years in 2011-2013, and then gives the Twins an $8 million option for his first season of free agency in 2014.

Cost certainty during the arbitration process is important for the Twins and the deal ensures Blackburn won't file for a big salary following a particularly strong season, but because they're paying for what he will do rather than what he has done the downside is that cutting bait is no longer a choice if injuries or poor performances strike. The ability to delay free agency for another season also has value, although there's certainly no guarantee that they'll want to pay $8 million for a 32-year-old Blackburn.

When he was coming up through the minor leagues I pegged Blackburn as little more than a potential fifth starter or long reliever, criticizing Baseball America for ranking him as the Twins' best prospect as a 26-year-old in 2008. Since then he's significantly outperformed my expectations, beginning his career with back-to-back solid and (nearly identical) seasons as a durable middle-of-the-rotation starter who led the team in innings both years:

YEAR     GS      W      L      ERA        IP     SO     BB     HR     OAVG
2008     33     11     11     4.05     193.1     96     39     23     .292
2009     33     11     11     4.03     205.2     98     41     25     .290

You'd be hard-pressed to find many starters who began their career with more similar seasons and it's easy to see why the Twins think Blackburn is a big part of their future. However, his minuscule strikeout rates and high opponents' batting averages put him at risk to age poorly and the underlying numbers in his performance are closer to a 4.50 ERA than a 4.00 ERA. Toss in the fact that they could've controlled him through age 31 with no upfront commitment and the deal has some risk without much upside.

Blackburn has been a solid, dependable mid-rotation starter and is now entering just his third season, so the tendency is to assume that he'll naturally either maintain his performance or get better. He may do exactly that, in which case locking him up through 2014 at a total cost of $22 million would look like a steal, but many people felt the same way about Joe Mays and Carlos Silva once upon a time before the often sobering reality of low-strikeout pitchers without heavy ground-ball tendencies set in.

I'm generally in favor of locking up young players to long-term contracts, but logically not every instance of doing so is by definition a smart decision even if a certain segment of the fan base will automatically default to that assumption. In this case cost certainty comes with the risk of Blackburn tripping on the fine line he's walked thus far and there isn't a ton of value in having the right to pay him $8 million as a 32-year-old, so I would've gone year-to-year with him and let things play out from there.

That the Twins feel differently certainly isn't surprising because they're likely focused much more on his 4.04 ERA through 66 career starts than what his lack of missed bats and modest number of ground balls say about his chances of keeping that up for another 125 starts. I've been wrong about Blackburn through two seasons and hopefully I'll also be wrong about his next four or five seasons, but to me this is an unnecessary commitment with less upside and more downside than perhaps meets the eye.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-03-05T00:08:00.005-06:00

Link-O-Rama

I see so few films in theaters that my reviews here are usually of the pay-per-view variety, but taking a few days off from work last week allowed me to check three new(ish) movies off my list ...

Avatar featured mediocre acting, cheesy dialogue, and a derivative, predictable plot, but that mattered little because the damn thing was so amazing to look at. The special effects are miles beyond anything I've ever seen before and the 3-D viewing experience was much more worthwhile than I expected, even if you feel silly wearing glasses like this for three hours. The movie is a C-minus, but the movie-going experience was an A-plus, so ... Grade: B-plus.

I was so intrigued by the preview for Shutter Island that I bought the book and read all 360 pages in one sitting a few weeks before it came out, but ultimately that probably kept me from liking the movie more. Dennis Lehane's novel is excellent and for the most part the film follows it closely, but not going in with a clean slate takes something away from the intrigue and a few places where Martin Scorsese veered from the book bothered me. Grade: B-minus.

As a showcase for the always awesome Jeff Bridges and a spotlight onto his highly underrated career Crazy Heart succeeds and then some, but he can only carry an otherwise mediocre film so far. He was great and the music was actually pretty good considering I'm not a country fan, but the basic plot was done better by The Wrestler, which was less predictable with fewer film cliches and doesn't suffer from having Maggie Gyllenhaal in every other scene. Grade: B-minus.

Speaking of reviewing movies, among other things Will Leitch's story about the great Roger Ebert makes me think I should probably do a better job replying to e-mails.

Eric Hinske spent $5,000 and 45 hours getting his entire back tattooed, but he then canceled out the whole badass effect by wearing Banana Republic boxers in a photo showing off the ink.

Unfortunately for Ric Flair, his wife knows that "to be the man, you've got to beat the man." Wooo!

Next time you're reading a LaVelle E. Neal III article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, consider that he likely wrote it while sitting on the toilet.

Friend of AG.com and new ESPN play-by-play man Jon Sciambi offered some reasonable advice for how his fellow baseball announcers can incorporate new-school stats and analysis into broadcasts. In related news, Dick Bremer just asked someone what OPS stands for.

Without fail, this cracks me up every year: Rich Eisen from NFL Network running the 40-yard dash at the scouting combine:

It's probably a bad sign when someone who looks like this with his shirt off runs you down after a head start. Not that I could do any better.

My ode to a personal favorite and the most underrated hitter of all time.

There are several new developments on the Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com front. First and foremost, after 20 months with the title Keeley Hazell has been bumped from the throne in favor of ... Mila Kunis. Kunis is a longtime OFGoAG.com candidate, finishing fourth in the balloting that gave Hazell the crown in mid-2008, and has really stepped her game up of late by both continuing to look fantastic and doing nice work in The Book of Eli. She's also the first Jewish titleholder, which should make my mom happy.

Despite losing the crown Hazell will remain an OFGofAG.com candidate, because while her production has slipped she continues to play at an All-Star level and seems like a solid bounceback candidate in 2010. Unfortunately the same can't be said of former OFGoAG.com Elisha Cuthbert, who lost the title in late 2006 and has now been removed from the candidates list. It was one helluva run, but Cuthbert just isn't getting the job done any longer and it's time to move on.

Cuthbert's spot on the candidates list has been filled by actress/model Diora Baird, who you may have seen in Wedding Crashers and Two and a Half Men. She's also had smallish roles in a whole bunch of other movies and television shows, but her candidacy is primarily due to a) looking spectacular, and b) showing a good, quirky sense of humor on Twitter. Baird beat out Aubrey Plaza in part because having two candidates from NBC's block of Thursday night comedy seems like overkill even if they employ me.

Ron Swanson would not approve of what's going on in the Cactus League.

True or false: Even with the threat of viruses and malware the Star Tribune's website is still far better than the St. Paul Pioneer Press' website.

On a related note the Star Tribune has added the TwinsCentric quartet of John Bonnes, Seth Stohs, Nick Nelson, and Parker Hageman to their blogging lineup, which is pretty great in addition to making me kind of jealous. Congrats, guys.

Over at NBCSports.com, Circling the Bases has switched its name to Hardball Talk in a synergistic effort to better fit with Pro Football Talk and Pro Basketball Talk in the branding department. The actual content of the site hasn't changed any, so you can still find me, Craig Calcaterra, and Matthew Pouliot blogging all day, every day. Hardball Talk has a new Twitter feed too, so check that out for all the links to our stuff. And thanks for supporting CTB/HBT in our soon-to-be-completed first year of existence.

Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle did a nice job describing why Men of a Certain Age on TNT was so good (and so underrated) in its recently completed debut season. Good acting with a solid mix of laughs and drama despite small-scale storylines, which is why it ranked second to only Modern Family as my favorite new show.

I'm amused by the notion of Christina Hendricks being something other than extraordinary looking at any point in world history. However, she's been declared ineligible for Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com status on account of being too much woman for anything with "girl" in the title.

I'd take half as much for my 2,200 square feet.

For anyone with a fantasy draft coming up, I wrote a pair of Rotoworld columns examining my favorite AL-only hitting sleepers and NL-only hitting sleepers. My pitching sleepers are coming next week, and of course Rotoworld's online Draft Guide is still something you should buy. Please.

New blog to check out: The Bat Shatters, which is written by "two Twins fans and a Yankees fan."

Some of the highlights from my NBCSports.com blogging this week:

- Arizona signs Upton to five-year, $51.5 million deal
- Strasburg to debut next week, but still likely headed for minors
- Will the Reds have room for Alonso and Votto?
- No. 2 pick Ackley looking good in move to second base
- Turnbow and the 'exploding' big toe
- Lee misses early games to attend rodeo
- Piniella still has high hopes for 'The Fook'
- Cubs likely to let Lee hit the open market
- Mets sign Calero to minor-league deal
- Baldelli re-joins Rays ... as a coach

Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is Gnarls Barkley's live, low-key version of "Who's Gonna Save My Soul?":

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-03-03T00:08:00.002-06:00

Twins Notes: Slowey, Casilla, Jimerson, and Man Strength

Kevin Slowey missed the final three months of last season after wrist surgery to, as he describes it, "cut down some tendons and pull out some tissue and bones that were no longer necessary and just kind of floating around in there." His recovery process included around four months of rehab, but even now Slowey told David Dorsey of the Fort Myers News Press that the two screws surgically inserted into his wrist may keep him from ever feeling the same:

I don't know that I'm going to ever feel the same like I did before. But that's OK. You know, I've got two screws in my wrist. So I shouldn't expect to feel like I felt before. ... I hope that things go well. I expect to go out and compete. If things don't go the way I want them to, it won't be because of any lack of preparation or lack of effort.

Prior to the wrist injury Slowey went 26-15 with a 4.36 ERA and 239-to-48 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 312 innings spread over 54 career starts to emerge as a crucial long-term part of the Twins' rotation at age 25, so obviously that quote is kind of a buzz kill. Slowey tends to be relatively blunt when interviewed, so hopefully he was painting an overly pessimistic picture of his status, but even late last season there were rumblings about the screws hurting his range of motion. For a control pitcher, that sounds scary.

Aaron Hicks is 19th on Baseball America's annual top 100 prospects list, with Wilson Ramos (58), Kyle Gibson (61), and Miguel Angel Sano (94) also cracking the list. That sounds about right to me, as they were the first four names on my list of the Twins' top 40 prospects and in reviewing the system as a whole on Monday I called them "four of the top 75 or so prospects in all of baseball." If you're curious, Braves outfielder Jason Heyward and Nationals starter Stephen Strasburg topped BA's list.

David Brown of Yahoo! Sports spent some time at Twins camp last week and as always came away from it with some amusing stories, including Ron Gardenhire heckling Justin Morneau about Olympic hockey, Delmon Young joking that he shed 30 pounds this offseason "to be able to catch the balls hit to the warning track" off Carl Pavano, and standing 6-foot-11 making Jon Rauch just the second-tallest right-handed relief pitcher in the clubhouse. Too much good stuff for me to quote it all, so check it out.

John Shipley of the St. Paul Pioneer Press notes that Alexi Casilla surrendered his jersey No. 25 to Jim Thome in exchange for "a very nice" Rolex watch. Thome may have been better off just waiting out Casilla, because he's out of minor-league options and seemingly doesn't have a place on the Opening Day roster. Casilla will try to increase his versatility by getting some spring reps in the outfield, but Nick Punto will be around as the backup infielder and actually has a little MLB experience in center field too.

After losing Jason Pridie via waivers the Twins inked Jacque Jones and now Charlton Jimerson to minor-league deals, presumably as outfield options for Rochester. Two years ago I talked to a Triple-A pitcher who called Jimerson "the best player I've ever played with" and then repeated it after I stopped laughing long enough to realize he was being serious. I can sort of see how someone could form that opinion just by watching Jimerson, who looks good and has tons of athleticism, speed, and power.

Jimerson is a good center fielder and has averaged 25 homers and 40 steals per 150 games between Double-A and Triple-A. Unfortunately he also has perhaps the worst approach at the plate in all of pro baseball, averaging 203 strikeouts versus 29 non-intentional walks per 150 games. In his last stint at Triple-A, two years ago, Jimerson had an absurd 80-to-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 55 games. Seriously, in 219 plate appearances for Seattle's affiliate in Tacoma he whiffed 80 times and drew three walks.

Not surprisingly Jimerson also batted just .233 with a ghastly .250 on-base percentage and .688 OPS, although if you're not into sweating that small stuff he did go deep 11 times and swipe 14 bases. All of which is a long way of saying that Jimerson is a 30-year-old with a .258/.312/.456 career mark in the minors who swings at everything and would be laughably overmatched in the majors. However, as Bob Matthews of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle points out, Jimerson is also worth rooting for.

Perhaps joining Jimerson in Rochester is Mike Maroth, who got an invite to spring training as part of his minor-league deal. Maroth was once a decent back-of-the-rotation starter for the Tigers, but is most famous for being MLB's last 20-game loser and hasn't pitched in the majors since posting a 6.89 ERA in 2007. He caught the Twins' eye by going 3-0 with a 2.60 ERA in the Puerto Rican winter league, but even that included a poor 15-to-13 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 35 innings. He's just filler at age 32.

Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Twins were also close to inking Brett Tomko to a minor-league contract, but he opted to re-sign with the A's. Tomko put together a half-dozen good second-half starts for the A's last season, but then suffered an arm injury that he's still recovering from and was 6-19 with a 5.81 ERA over the previous two seasons. He's also 37 years old, so it wasn't much of a loss.

Last but definitely not least, John Sickels' lengthy interview with Howard Norsetter is a must-read, if only because the Twins' international scouting coordinator uses the phrase "man strength" in referring to skinny shortstop prospect James Beresford. They not only covered a wide range of topics, Norsetter gave really interesting, thoughtful responses. Whether you want to learn more about specific prospects or the international scouting process as a whole, the interview is a fantastic read.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-03-01T00:03:00.001-06:00

Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010: System Overview

My annual series ranking and profiling the Twins' top 40 prospects concluded last week, so here's the complete list, along with links to each individual write-up and an overview of the whole system:

 1. Aaron Hicks, CF                21. Alex Burnett, RP
 2. Kyle Gibson, SP                22. Robert Delaney, RP
 3. Wilson Ramos, C                23. Luke Hughes, 3B
 4. Miguel Angel Sano, SS          24. Ben Tootle, RP
 5. Ben Revere, CF                 25. Deolis Guerra, SP
 6. Angel Morales, CF              26. Shooter Hunt, SP
 7. David Bromberg, SP             27. Trevor Plouffe, SS
 8. Danny Valencia, 3B             28. Michael McCardell, SP
 9. Matthew Bashore, SP            29. Reggie Williams, 2B
10. Billy Bullock, RP              30. Estarlin De Los Santos, SS
11. Rene Tosoni, RF                31. Derek McCallum, 2B
12. Chris Parmelee, RF             32. Jose Morales, C
13. Adrian Salcedo, SP             33. Chris Herrmann, LF
14. Joe Benson, CF                 34. Bobby Lanigan, SP
15. Jeff Manship, SP               35. Danny Rams, C
16. Tyler Robertson, SP            36. Josmil Pinto, C
17. Carlos Gutierrez, RP           37. Steven Tolleson, 2B
18. B.J. Hermsen, SP               38. Anderson Hidalgo, 3B
19. Anthony Slama, RP              39. Loek Van Mil, RP
20. Max Kepler, CF                 40. Joe Testa, RP

Most years at least a handful of significant prospects from my top-40 list exhaust their rookie eligibility or leave the organization via trade, but last season only Anthony Swarzak, Brian Duensing, and Jose Mijares graduated to the majors and only Kevin Mulvey was dealt away. That atypical lack of turnover combined with the addition of high-end talent like Kyle Gibson, Miguel Angel Sano, Matthew Bashore, Billy Bullock, and Max Kepler makes the 2010 list much stronger than the 2009 version. And different.

For the past few years the Twins' minor-league system was long on depth and short on star potential, but the opposite may now be true. While the system still lacks elite MLB-ready talent--Danny Valencia is the only top-10 guy who seems likely to play a big role in the majors this season--the Twins boast four of the top 75 or so prospects in all of baseball thanks to using their past two first-round picks on Aaron Hicks and Gibson, dropping a record bonus on Sano, and Wilson Ramos' continued progress.

On the other hand the second half of this year's top 40 seems weaker than previous versions, although certainly that's a tough thing to accurately gauge. Of course, if given the choice strong in top-end talent and weak in mid-level depth is clearly preferable to the opposite and the potential shift in organizational strategy is a positive one. Taking more chances and spending more money on high-upside prospects is absolutely the way to go for a team that may never out-spend the big boys for major-league talent.

As an organization the Twins have long thrived at churning out potential mid-rotation starters, but it now appears to be a relative weakness within the system and instead their minors are flush with outfielders (Hicks, Ben Revere, Angel Morales, Rene Tosoni, Chris Parmelee, Joe Benson, Kepler) and relievers (Bullock, Carlos Gutierrez, Anthony Slama, Alex Burnett, Rob Delaney). However, some things never change and they still haven't figured out how to develop middle infielders who can field and hit.

Sano was officially signed as a shortstop, but has about as much chance of reaching the majors at the position as I do and may not even stick in the infield once his 6-foot-3 frame fills out (sadly my 6-foot-2 frame has already filled out too much). And after that the best SS/2B prospects are Trevor Plouffe (27), Reggie Williams (29), Estarlin De Los Santos (30), and Derek McCallum (31). I've blogged about the Twins and their prospects since 2002, and young infielders have been a weakness the entire time.

Last year at this time I described the Twins' system as "right in the middle of the pack" amongst all 30 teams, but they're now safely in the upper half and probably in the 10-12 range. With that said, the main problem with making those team-to-team comparisons is that young non-prospects get totally ignored. In other words, prospects are technically only "prospects" until they play regularly in the big leagues, at which point they simply become "young major leaguers."

There aren't as many lists ranking those guys, but the future of a team is clearly about more than which youngsters retain prospect status by not using up their MLB-defined rookie eligibility. For instance, had Swarzak thrown just nine fewer innings last year he'd be eligible for this list, but his long-term potential doesn't change because he's absent from the top 40. With all that in mind, here's an organization-wide view of key Twins who're 29 years old or younger, including both prospects and non-prospects:

CATCHER:                   FIRST BASE/CORNER OF:      CENTER FIELD:
Joe Mauer, 27              Justin Morneau, 29         Denard Span, 26
Wilson Ramos, 22           Jason Kubel, 28            Aaron Hicks, 20
Jose Morales, 27           Delmon Young, 24           Ben Revere, 22
Danny Rams, 21             Rene Tosoni, 23            Angel Morales, 20
Josmil Pinto, 21           Chris Parmelee, 22         Joe Benson, 22
                           Chris Herrmann, 22         Max Kepler, 17
 
SECOND BASE:               SHORTSTOP:                 THIRD BASE:
Alexi Casilla, 26          J.J. Hardy, 27             Brendan Harris, 29
Matt Tolbert, 28           Miguel Angel Sano, 17      Danny Valencia, 25
Reggie Williams, 22        Trevor Plouffe, 24         Luke Hughes, 25
Derek McCallum, 22         E. De Los Santos, 23       Anderson Hidalgo, 21
 
RH STARTER:                LH STARTER:                RELIEVER:
Scott Baker, 28            Francisco Liriano, 26      Pat Neshek, 29
Kevin Slowey, 26           Glen Perkins, 27           Jose Mijares, 25
Nick Blackburn, 28         Brian Duensing, 27         Jesse Crain, 28
Anthony Swarzak, 24        Matthew Bashore, 22        Billy Bullock, 22
Kyle Gibson, 22            Tyler Robertson, 22        Carlos Gutierrez, 23
David Bromberg, 22                                    Anthony Slama, 26
Adrian Salcedo, 19                                    Alex Burnett, 22
Jeff Manship, 25                                      Robert Delaney, 25
B.J. Hermsen, 20                                      Ben Tootle, 22
Deolis Guerra, 21                                     Loek Van Mil, 25
Shooter Hunt, 23                                      Joe Testa, 24

Plenty of players aren't listed above, but that should provide an outline of the Twins' depth at each spot.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-02-24T00:05:00.000-06:00

Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Other entries in Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010 series: 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, 26-30, 31-35, 36-40.

5. Ben Revere | Center Field | DOB: 5/88 | Bats: Left | Draft: 2007-1
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2007     RK     216     .325     .388     .461      0     16     13     20
2008     A-     374     .379     .433     .497      1     28     27     31
2009     A+     517     .311     .372     .369      2     19     40     34

Any prospect would look great while leading the minor leagues in batting average like Ben Revere did in 2008, but hitting "only" .311 last season showed why his long-term upside is limited. That mark still ranked second in the Florida State League, yet Revere couldn't even crack a .750 OPS thanks to just 34 walks, two homers, and 19 total extra-base hits in 121 games. The good news is that Revere's blazing speed and excellent contact rate should allow him to maintain lofty batting averages.

The bad news is that even if he hits .300 in the majors Revere's secondary skills would basically make him Juan Pierre. In fact, their minor-league stats were very similar at this stage. Both spent age 21 at Single-A. Pierre hit .320/.366/.390. Revere hit .311/.372/.369. Pierre homered once, stole 66 bags, and had 38 walks versus 37 strikeouts. Revere homered twice, stole 45 bags, and had 40 walks versus 34 strikeouts. Being the next Pierre certainly isn't a bad thing, but it's not really a great thing either.

And right now that appears to be Revere's ceiling, which doesn't leave much room for error if he's only able to hit, say, .280 in the majors. Any thoughts of Revere developing the power to move beyond Pierre territory to comparisons with a higher level of speedy, weak-armed center fielders like Kenny Lofton or Johnny Damon have been all but extinguished and pitchers will never be afraid to throw him strikes, so the most likely way to improve his outlook would be upping his walk rate from bad to mediocre.

4. Miguel Angel Sano | Shortstop | DOB: 5/93 | Bats: Right | Sign: Dominican

Considered by many to be the premier international prospect available last year and one of the most advanced bats to come out of the Dominican Republic in a long time, Miguel Angel Sano saw multiple teams end their pursuit once MLB was unable to confirm his age. Instead of signing along with the rest of the top international players in July he waited until September, choosing the Twins over the Pirates and several other teams for a $3.15 million bonus that was lower than expected.

Of course, $3.15 million is still by far the highest bonus that the Twins have handed out internationally and ranks as the second-most any team has ever given to a Latin American prospect outside of Cuba. Investing in international prospects is incredibly risky, but the Twins should be applauded for spending the money to land Sano and ultimately his signing bonus is less than Nick Punto makes per season. And at the age of 16 the consensus is that Sano has almost limitless upside offensively.

In fact, praise for his bat is strong enough that no one seems to care that he has little shot of sticking at shortstop (or even third base). He's already 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds, which obviously led to the doubts about his age, but even if he's actually 18 or 19 the signing is a worthwhile risk. Had he been eligible for the draft Sano almost surely would've been a first-round pick and perhaps a top-five selection. He's yet to play a minor-league game, so believe it or not his spot on this list is actually sort of conservative.

3. Wilson Ramos | Catcher | DOB: 8/87 | Bats: Right | Sign: Venezuela
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2007     A-     316     .291     .345     .438      8     26     19     61
2008     A+     500     .288     .346     .434     13     38     37    103
2009     AA     214     .317     .341     .454      4     20      6     23

Promoted to Double-A as a 21-year-old after thriving in the low minors, Wilson Ramos missed around two-thirds of the season with finger and hamstring injuries while continuing to show tons of promise in the 54 games he was healthy enough to play. Ramos hit .317 with 20 extra-base hits in 205 at-bats for a .795 OPS in a league where the average mark was .717 and the average hitter was 24. Oh, and he's also a catcher who gunned down over 40 percent of steal attempts for the second straight season.

Ramos has never walked much and basically swung at everything last year, drawing six free passes in 214 trips to the plate. At some point he'll have to be more patient to take full advantage of his offensive potential, but a 21-year-old hacking away versus Double-A pitchers is expected and Ramos did hit .317 while cutting his strikeout rate in half. Plus, after the season he went to the Venezuelan Winter League, where in addition to batting .332 with 12 homers and 14 doubles in 54 games he drew 21 walks.

Solid defensive reviews, excellent throw-out stats, and consistently strong batting make Ramos one of the best catching prospects in baseball. He's a career .294 hitter and has shown plenty of pop despite pitcher-friendly environments and being young for every level. Ramos has played just 54 games above Single-A and catching prospects have a notoriously high flameout rate, so there's no need to question where he'd fit on a team with Joe Mauer quite yet, but a healthy, productive 2010 would change that.

2. Kyle Gibson | Starter | DOB: 10/87 | Throws: Right | Draft: 2009-1

Initially a consensus top-10 pick who Baseball America ranked as high as the fourth-best player in last June's draft, Kyle Gibson fell into the Twins' lap with the 22nd pick after a late-season dip in velocity led to the discovery a stress fracture in his forearm. Once he received a clean bill of health Gibson held out for top-10 money, eventually signing for $1.8 million literally minutes before the August 18 deadline and too late for the 6-foot-6 right-hander to make his pro debut.

Despite pitching through the injury in a hitter-friendly environment that averaged over 11 runs per game, Gibson was 11-3 with a 3.21 ERA and 131-to-19 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 106.2 innings during his final year at the University of Missouri. He works primarily in the low-90s with his fastball and also features a pair of plus off-speed pitches in a changeup and sharp slider, throwing everything with great command and some sinking action.

He doesn't quite project as a dominant ace, but just about everyone seems to agree that he's capable of becoming a strong No. 2 starter and should move very quickly up the minor-league ladder. Thanks to their willingness to gamble a bit on what proved to be a short-term injury the Twins were able to nab an experienced college starter who'd been projected as a top-10 pick for several years, and Gibson fits the organization's preferred strike-throwing mold with better raw stuff than their usual control artists.

1. Aaron Hicks | Center Field | DOB: 10/89 | Bats: Switch | Draft: 2008-1
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2008     RK     204     .318     .409     .491      4     18     28     32
2009     A-     297     .251     .353     .382      4     22     40     55

Prior to the 2008 draft Baseball America called Aaron Hicks "the finest prep outfielder-pitcher prospect in the greater Los Angeles area since Daryl Strawberry." Most teams liked Hicks as a pitcher, but the Twins picked him 14th overall as a hitter and he made an immediate splash by batting .318 with power and patience at rookie-ball after signing for $1.8 million. Rather than jump straight to full-season action last year the Twins kept him in extended spring training until June and then sent him to low Single-A.

Hicks played 67 games alongside No. 6 prospect Angel Morales in Beloit's outfield, but failed to match his great debut by hitting just .251 with four homers. The good news is that his glove received positive reviews in center field and he drew 40 walks in just 297 trips to the plate, proving that the surprisingly strong plate discipline he showed in rookie-ball was no fluke. In fact, he had the second-highest walk rate of any hitter in the Twins' entire minor-league system. As a 19-year-old in his full-season debut.

Rarely is such a patient approach found in a teenager, let alone a teenager billed as a "five-tool talent." He has plus speed with an absolute cannon for an arm and is expected to develop 20-homer power as a switch-hitter, which along with a strong walk rate would make him pretty close to a perfect all-around player. At this point Hicks is far more about projection than performance, but his OPS was solidly above the Midwest League average as a 19-year-old and any way you slice it his upside is tremendous.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-02-22T00:05:00.002-06:00

Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6

Other entries in Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010 series: 1-5, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, 26-30, 31-35, 36-40.

10. Billy Bullock | Reliever | DOB: 2/88 | Throws: Right | Draft: 2009-2
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2009     RK      7      0     1.23       7.1       3      0      10      1
         A-     26      0     2.73      26.1      25      0      35     12

Going heavy on college pitchers in last June's draft included snagging University of Florida reliever Billy Bullock in the second round. Initially a starter, Bullock moved to the bullpen last year and became the Gators' closer while posting a 2.64 ERA and 50-to-22 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 48 innings. His control is spotty and no one seems to think much of his off-speed stuff, but Bullock also regularly works in the mid-90s with his fastball and was frequently dominant for one of the best teams in the country.

Keith Law of ESPN.com called him "the top college closer in this draft class" and Bullock dominated in the low minors after signing for $522,000, saving 11 games with a 2.41 ERA and 45 strikeouts in 33.2 innings between rookie-ball and low Single-A. Because of their preference for polished strike-throwers the Twins typically lack high-upside power arms in the minors and Bullock was frequently projected as a top-50 pick before falling to them at No. 70 overall, so he's a very nice addition to the system.

Harnessing his raw stuff and developing better off-speed pitches will be key for Bullock, but 35 walks in 82 innings between college and the low minors last year shows that his control is at least reasonably decent and ultimately his fastball is what got him drafted. Early success this season could put Bullock on the fast track to Minnesota, but whether or not he's able to continue simply overpowering everyone once he gets to Double-A or Triple-A will be the big test.

9. Matthew Bashore | Starter | DOB: 4/88 | Throws: Left | Draft: 2009-1
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2009     RK      1      0     0.00       2.0       3      0       2      0

Selected last June with the supplemental first-round pick the Twins received for losing Dennys Reyes via free agency, Matthew Bashore signed for $750,000 but appeared in just one game at rookie-level Elizabethton before being shut down with an elbow injury. He had bone chips removed, but is expected to be fully healthy for spring training and will likely begin this season at low Single-A. If healthy Bashore has a chance to move quickly through the Twins' system because of his extensive college experience.

A three-year starter at Indiana University, the 6-foot-3 left-hander tossed 95 innings last season with a 4.07 ERA and 108-to-30 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He won't light up any radar guns, but Bashore has an above-average fastball with the plus command that the Twins always target in starters and was one of the better pitchers in the Big Ten while going 5-1 with a 2.36 ERA in conference play. Bashore finished his Hoosiers career tied for the school record with 248 strikeouts.

John Manuel of Baseball America has compared Bashore to fellow Big Ten left-hander and Twins first rounder Glen Perkins. Their pedigrees and repertoires are definitely similar, but Perkins had far better college numbers, was generally a more consistent Big Ten performer, and reached Double-A midway through his age-22 season. Bashore turns 22 in April, so given his brief pro debut it'll be tough to follow the same path, but assuming no more elbow issues his overall upside certainly seems Perkins-like.

8. Danny Valencia | Third Base | DOB: 9/84 | Bats: Right | Draft: 2006-19
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2007     A-     271     .302     .374     .500     11     26     28     54
         A+     250     .291     .332     .422      6     16     16     48
2008     A+     251     .336     .402     .518      5     28     27     43
         AA     287     .289     .334     .485     10     30     18     70
2009     AA     252     .284     .373     .482      7     25     31     40
         AAA    282     .286     .304     .454      7     31      8     37

In less than four years Danny Valencia has gone from 19th-round pick to the presumed third baseman of the future in Minnesota, which is remarkable given that his minor-league production has been closer to good than great. He's hit .299/.354/.480 with an average of 16.5 homers per 500 at-bats, which while certainly a solid performance is hardly the stuff of an elite prospect even without accounting for the fact that Valencia is already 25 years old and accumulated nearly 2.5 strikeouts for every walk.

He's had strong batting averages at every level, but Valencia doesn't possess especially great power, strikes out quite a bit, has averaged just 45 walks per 600 plate appearances, and had an ugly 37-to-8 strikeout-to-walk ratio over 71 games in his first taste of Triple-A. To be clear, Valencia is a good, solid prospect. However, the notion that he has obvious star potential or is even a sure thing to become an above-average regular in the majors just isn't supported by his track record.

Certainly many prospects fare better in the majors than they did in the minors, but usually that group doesn't include guys who post an .833 OPS despite being relatively old for each level and reach the big leagues at age 25. That he's touted as the long-term answer at third base may say less about Valencia and more about how bad the spot has been since Corey Koskie or how few of the Twins' quality hitting prospects are MLB-ready. He looks like a .270 hitter with 15-homer pop, few walks, and a decent glove.

7. David Bromberg | Starter | DOB: 9/87 | Throws: Right | Draft: 2005-32
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2007     RK     13     11     2.78      58.1      45      4      81     32
2008     A-     27     27     4.44     150.0     149     10     177     54
2009     A+     27     26     2.70     153.1     125      6     148     63

Named the Twins' minor league pitcher of the year in 2009 after leading his league in strikeouts for the third straight season, David Bromberg has gone from 32nd-round pick to one of the system's top arms despite not fitting into the preferred strike-throwing mold. In fact, from rookie-ball to the majors he led the entire Twins organization in walks last season with 63 in 153.1 innings. Of course, he also ranked second to only Scott Baker with 148 strikeouts and opponents hit just .230 with six homers off him.

Moving up to Double-A figures to provide a big test for Bromberg's run of league-leading strikeout totals and overall performance, because his low-90s fastball isn't overpowering and fairly neutral ground-ball rates suggest the homers will start flying eventually. He can offset what will likely be fewer missed bats and more homers with improved control, and ultimately that may be the key to whether or not Bromberg can develop into more than a potential mid-rotation starter.

At just 22 years old there's plenty of time to cut down on walks and at 6-foot-5 there's seemingly plenty of room to project increased velocity, which along with a big-breaking curveball leaves the right-hander with as much upside as any Twins pitching prospect short of perhaps 2009 first rounder Kyle Gibson. However, recently the Twins have been kind of hit (Matt Garza, Francisco Liriano) or miss (J.D. Durbin, Shooter Hunt) with their few starter prospects who, like Bromberg, aren't strike-throwing machines.

6. Angel Morales | Center Field | DOB: 11/89 | Bats: Right | Draft: 2007-3
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2007     RK-    143     .256     .357     .405      2     11     12     44
2008     RK     218     .301     .413     .623     15     28     26     72
2009     A-     418     .266     .329     .455     13     40     30    104

After a monster 2008 at rookie-ball Angel Morales moved to low Single-A for his first full-season action and got off to a brutal start while battling multiple injuries. He turned things around by hitting .340 after July 1, led Beloit in homers and steals, and finished with an OPS that was 12 percent above the league average, including 40 extra-base hits in 115 games for a .189 Isolated Power that ranked 62 percent above par for the Midwest League. And he did all that as a 19-year-old.

Morales' flaws were also on full display, as he rarely walked and struck out 104 times in 418 trips to the plate. Whiffing in 25 percent of his plate appearances actually represented improvement from Morales striking out 32 percent of the time in rookie-ball, but his inability to make consistent contact and control the strike zone are definitely worrisome. Of course, an unrefined approach at the plate is common for a teenage hitter and the former third-round pick's other tools are very impressive.

His power potential is immense, with 28 homers and 68 total extra-base hits in 559 at-bats during the past two seasons despite playing in extremely pitcher-friendly environments, and Morales' speed has led to 27 steals per 150 career games and a reputation as a solid defender in center field. He could eventually slide over to right field full time, especially if he remains with the Twins, but Morales also has a very strong arm. He's certainly far from a finished product, but Morales oozes upside at age 20.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-02-19T00:05:00.001-06:00

Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010: 15, 14, 13, 12, 11

Other entries in Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010 series: 1-5, 6-10, 16-20, 21-25, 26-30, 31-35, 36-40.

15. Jeff Manship | Starter | DOB: 1/85 | Throws: Right | Draft: 2006-14
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2007     A-     13     13     1.51      77.2      51      4      77      9
         A+     13     13     3.15      71.1      77      5      59     25
2008     A+     13     13     2.86      78.2      68      0      63     20
         AA     14     14     4.46      76.2      90      8      62     24
2009     AA     13     13     4.28      75.2      72      2      45     20
         AAA     8      8     3.22      50.1      53      1      30     17
         MLB    11      5     5.68      31.2      39      4      21     15

Selected in the 14th round of the 2006 draft and lured away from Notre Dame with a $300,000 signing bonus that was more like third-round money, Jeff Manship hit the low minors like gangbusters but has since seen the steady deterioration of his numbers with each move up the organizational ladder. While not uncommon, in Manship's case the consistent level-by-level slippage in his strikeout and walk rates have left him looking like little more than a potential back-of-the-rotation starter or middle reliever.

His big-league debut came in August, first as a low-leverage reliever and then into the rotation for five late-season starts, but Manship struggled with a 5.68 ERA and 21-to-15 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 31.2 innings while averaging just 89.8 miles per hour with his fastball. Prior to that he had a 4.09 ERA and 137-to-61 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 202.2 innings between Double-A and Triple-A, so without delving all the way back into Single-A days it's tough to find signs of upside and Manship is already 25 years old.

More than 50 percent of Manship's balls in play have been grounders in each of his four pro seasons and like just about every Twins pitching prospect his control is pretty good, so he's certainly not totally without value. Somewhat similar to Anthony Swarzak in that Manship is MLB-ready yet it's unclear if he fits into the Twins' plans as a fifth starter, reliever, or trade piece. He'll compete for the final rotation spot this spring before likely heading to Triple-A, where he'll be near the front of the line for a call-up.

14. Joe Benson | Center Field | DOB: 3/88 | Bats: Right | Draft: 2006-2
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2007     A-     507     .255     .347     .368      5     31     49    124
2008     A-     290     .248     .326     .382      4     23     24     73
2009     A+     327     .285     .414     .403      5     18     46     74

Joe Benson hit just .254/.337/.386 through three pro seasons and missed half of 2008 with a stress fracture in his back while repeating low Single-A, but the Twins moved him up to high Single-A last year anyway and the 2006 second rounder fared surprisingly well. Benson hit .285 after batting .260, .255, and .248 in his first three seasons and upped his walk rate by 60 percent. Unfortunately he was limited to 80 games because of another injury, this time a broken hand suffered punching a wall in frustration.

Aside from that wall Benson has been unable to make consistent contact, whiffing 140 times per 600 plate appearances for his career. Along with the high strikeout rate and low batting average he's also a terrible base-stealer despite possessing good speed, which is why last season's walk increase is key for Benson's development offensively. Defensively he's considered a solid center fielder, but because of a strong arm and the organization's log jam at the position he may end up in right field long term.

He won't be 22 years old until next month, so Benson still has time on his side, but inconsistency and injuries continue to make him more about tools and potential than actual production. That's not such a good thing for someone entering his fifth pro season, yet if Benson stays healthy and performs well in 2010 he could be knocking on the door to the majors at some point in 2011. His tools put him closer to being a big leaguer than the mediocre numbers suggest, but at some point that ceases being enough.

13. Adrian Salcedo | Starter | DOB: 4/91 | Throws: Right | Sign: Dominican
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2009     RK-    11     10     1.46      61.2      60      1      58      3

Signed out of the Dominican Republic as a 16-year-old two winters ago, Adrian Salcedo began his pro career in 2008 by dominating in the Dominican Summer League, posting a 1.65 ERA, .198 opponents' batting average, and 50-to-8 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 65.1 innings. He moved up a level to the first rung on the American minor-league ladder last year and had equally ridiculous numbers in the Gulf Coast League with a 1.46 ERA and 58-to-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 61.2 innings.

By themselves even those great numbers wouldn't be enough for Salcedo to rank this highly, because plenty of pitchers have insanely good stats in rookie-ball and the Twins' entire GCL pitching staff (which also included No. 18 prospect B.J. Hermsen) had a combined 2.46 ERA last season. What makes his insanely good stats particularly impressive is that Salcedo was just 18 years old--which is young even for the youngest league--and more importantly has the raw stuff to match.

Despite packing only 175 pounds on to a 6-foot-4 frame, his fastball is already regularly in the low-90s and can reach the mid-90s. Salcedo complements the plus heater with what John Manuel of Baseball America calls "a mid-80s power breaking ball" and also has an effective changeup for a teenager. His stats are amazing, his stuff is already very strong, and between his age and body type there's plenty of room for projection. As far as teenage, rookie-ball pitching prospects go, Salcedo is a really good one.

12. Chris Parmelee | Right Field | DOB: 2/88 | Bats: Left | Draft: 2006-1
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2007     A-     501     .239     .313     .414     15     43     46    137
2008     A-     289     .239     .385     .496     14     27     52     83
2009     A+     501     .258     .359     .441     16     44     65    109

Chris Parmelee is all about power and patience, which makes him stick out within an organization that stresses just about everything else and has generally shied away from players like him. Of course, the Twins selected him with the 20th overall pick in the 2006 draft, so presumably they still like Parmelee despite his lack of resemblance to just about every other prospect in the system. And as long as they're willing to look past the strikeouts and low batting averages, there's still plenty to like.

Parmelee stayed healthy last season after missing half of 2008 with a wrist injury, moving up from low Single-A to high Single-A while leading the Florida State League in walks and ranking third in homers. Despite the lowly .258 batting average Parmelee's overall production was 15 percent above the league average and his Isolated Power was 65 percent above par. Pitcher-friendly environments mute his raw numbers, but Parmelee has a ton of power and loads of plate discipline. That's the good news.

The bad news is that most of MLB's best low-average sluggers actually hit for solid batting averages in the minors. Adam Dunn hit .304, Pat Burrell hit .303, Matt Stairs hit .293, Troy Glaus hit .288, Carlos Pena hit .283, and most of the other prominent guys were above .270. In other words, a .250 average in the minors may get Parmelee compared to Dunn or Burrell, but guys who hit .250 with big power in the majors typically hit at least .275 with big power in the minors. Until that happens, he's a question mark.

11. Rene Tosoni | Right Field | DOB: 7/86 | Bats: Left | Draft: 2005-36
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2007     RK     286     .301     .407     .428      3     20     32     48
2008     A+     170     .300     .408     .414      1     11     21     30
2009     AA     490     .271     .360     .454     15     44     45     98

After drafting him in 2004 out of a Canadian high school and in 2005 out of a Florida junior college, the Twins had Rene Tosoni skip low Single-A and spend his first full season at high Single-A in 2008. He hit .300/.408/.414 with nice strike-zone control despite being one of the Florida State League's younger players, but was limited to 42 games because of a broken foot. That setback didn't stop the Twins from moving him to Double-A last year and Tosoni stayed healthy while hitting .271/.360/.454 in 122 games.

Tosoni hasn't shown a standout skill yet, but seems to do just about everything pretty well. He's hit .287 through 963 plate appearances as a pro, draws a fair number of walks without tons of strikeouts, has above-average speed, flashed more pop than expected last year, and is considered a good defensive right fielder who may even be passable in center field. And obviously the Twins really believe in Tosoni after drafting him twice and promoting him aggressively.

Taken alone a .271/.360/.454 line at Double-A certainly doesn't predict stardom, but Tosoni was 12th among Eastern League hitters in OPS while being younger than all but one of the guys ahead of him. His overall production was 12 percent better than the league average, which along with good defense and being young for the level of competition makes him a very solid prospect. Putting together a similar year at Triple-A could thrust Tosoni into the Twins' plans for 2011.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-02-17T00:11:00.002-06:00

Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010: 20, 19, 18, 17, 16

Other entries in Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010 series: 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 21-25, 26-30, 31-35, 36-40.

20. Max Kepler | Center Field | DOB: 2/93 | Bats: Left | Sign: Germany

Signed out of Germany in July just four months after his 16th birthday, Max Kepler received the largest bonus ever given to a European position player at $800,000. His parents, American-born Kathy Kepler and Polish-born Marek Rozycki, met while starring together in the Berlin ballet, leading to an intriguing upbringing for their baseball-playing son. Twins scout Andy Johnson first saw Kepler when he was 14 years old and described him running to first base "like a galloping baby deer."

After signing he came to the United States, enrolled in a Florida high school near the Twins' facilities in Fort Myers, and got his feet wet by playing in an instructional league. Kepler recently got his GED, but is still living with his mother and plans to take a few classes at a local junior college. In other words, he's a long way from the majors and may not even see full-season action until 2012. For this year he'll likely stay behind in extended spring training before making his way to the rookie-level Gulf Coast League.

Kepler is on this list almost by default because his physical tools draw rave reviews and the Twins just paid $800,000 for him as a 16-year-old, but it's tough to rate him any higher without some game action to base things on. What little we do know is that Kepler is already 6-foot-3 and said to be a very graceful athlete with good speed and some pop at the plate. Along with Miguel Angel Sano he represents a big shift in the Twins' pursuit of high-end international talent, but right now he's an expensive lottery ticket.

19. Anthony Slama | Reliever | DOB: 1/84 | Throws: Right | Draft: 2006-39
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2007     RK      6      0     2.45       7.1       2      0      10      1
         A-     21      0     1.48      24.1      15      0      39      9
2008     A+     51      0     1.01      71.0      43      0     110     24
2009     AA     51      0     2.48      65.1      46      5      93     32
         AAA    11      0     3.45      15.2      11      0      19      8

It took until just months before his 26th birthday, but Anthony Slama was finally promoted to Rochester late last season. Clearly the Twins have little faith in the former 39th-round pick despite his absolutely incredible minor-league numbers, but his performance screams out for a chance to prove whether he can get major-league hitters out. There's nothing particularly noteworthy about Slama's raw stuff, yet in 183.2 career innings he has a 1.86 ERA and 271 strikeouts while allowing just 117 hits.

Getting his first taste of the high minors at age 25, he began last season as the closer at Double-A and converted 25 saves with a 2.48 ERA, 93 strikeouts, and .201 opponents' batting average in 65 innings. Promoted to Triple-A in August, he saved four more games while racking up 19 strikeouts and allowing just 11 hits in 15.2 innings. Slama's walk rate rose significantly last season, but nearly a quarter of his free passes were intentional. He handed out 31 non-intentional walks in 81 innings, which is just fine.

I'm certainly not going to suggest that Slama is destined for stardom, but Pat Neshek should've shown the Twins that pitchers who repeatedly put up amazing numbers in the minors despite underwhelming raw stuff can't simply be dismissed. Slama's numbers aren't merely great, they're truly spectacular, and his raw stuff is hardly horrible. If a 2.67 ERA, 112 strikeouts, and .203 opponents' batting average in 81 innings between Double-A and Triple-A aren't enough to get Slama a shot in Minnesota, it's a shame.

18. B.J. Hermsen | Starter | DOB: 12/89 | Throws: Right | Draft: 2008-6
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2009     RK-    10     10     1.35      53.1      32      0      42      4

B.J. Hermsen initially projected as a possible second rounder during his senior season of high school in Iowa, but a broken collarbone suffered while playing football and expectations that he'd play college ball at Oregon State dropped him into the sixth round. Eventually the Twins lured him into the pros with a $650,000 signing bonus that beat the money given to their second-round pick, and Hermsen made his debut last season in the rookie-level Gulf Coast League.

He was nearly unhittable in 10 starts, with a 1.35 ERA, 42-to-4 strikeout-to-walk ratio, .171 opponents' batting average, and zero homers allowed in 53.1 innings. He also induced a grounder on 52.5 percent of his balls in play, which is important because despite his 6-foot-6, 230-pound frame and promising velocity in high school Hermsen topped out in the low-90s last season while racking up a modest 42 strikeouts in 53.1 frames.

Of course, at just 20 years old he has plenty of time to add a few miles per hour to match his imposing presence on the mound and focusing on velocity or strikeouts is perhaps picking nits given his overall performance. Don't expect Hermsen to move all that quickly through the system, but he definitely has a very high long-term ceiling and a few more missed bats this season could propel him near the top of this list for 2011.

17. Carlos Gutierrez | Reliever | DOB: 9/86 | Throws: Right | Draft: 2008-1
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2008     A+     16      0     2.10      25.2      23      0      19      7
2009     A+     11     10     1.32      54.2      37      1      33     22
         AA     22      6     6.19      52.1      62      6      32     24

Carlos Gutierrez went from the rotation to the bullpen at the University of Miami following Tommy John surgery in 2007 and became one of the best closers in the country, but when the Twins took him with the 27th overall pick in the 2008 draft they talked him up as a potential starter. That plan looked genius when Gutierrez posted a 1.32 ERA in the rotation at high Single-A, but he struggled mightily following a midseason promotion to Double-A and was shifted back to the bullpen.

He works primarily with a low-90s sinker that induces a ton of ground balls, and at the time of the draft Baseball America noted his "rudimentary" off-speed stuff, which is why few projections had him going in the first or even second round and Gutierrez's odds of sticking as a starter are slim. However, there was no real harm in letting him give starting one last try and Gutierrez can still move quickly through the system if the Twins make him a full-time reliever again this season.

His strikeout numbers have been underwhelming, which is what you'd expect from a sinkerballer with lacking secondary pitches, but Gutierrez's worm-killing ability is for real with 61.4 percent of his balls in play being grounders through 132.2 pro innings. That would've ranked as the second-best ground-ball rate in the AL last season and is enough to make Gutierrez a promising relief prospect despite sub par strikeout and walk numbers. The question is whether he can be more than a solid middle reliever.

16. Tyler Robertson | Starter | DOB: 12/87 | Throws: Left | Draft: 2006-3
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2007     A-     18     16     2.29     102.1      87      3     123     33
2008     A+     15     15     2.72      82.2      78      3      73     31
2009     A+     26     26     3.33     143.1     139      7     103     51

Tyler Robertson ranked No. 3 on this list heading into 2008, but missed half that season with shoulder problems and then was mediocre while repeating high Single-A last year. He posted a solid 3.33 ERA in 26 starts at Fort Myers, but managed just 103 strikeouts in 143.1 innings for by far the fewest missed bats of his career and allowed right-handers to hit .285 against him. The good news is that Robertson stayed healthy, throwing the seventh-most innings of any pitcher in the Twins' minor-league system.

Robertson's unorthodox throwing motion has created skeptics since the Twins made him a third-round pick in 2006, with his 2008 arm problems, inconsistent velocity, and falling strikeout rate lending further evidence that the left-hander's mechanics are a legitimate issue. On the other hand he has a 3.03 ERA as a pro and will likely begin this season at Double-A as a 22-year-old, so Robertson remains a plenty good prospect despite the issues dragging his stock down over the past two years.

More than half of Robertson's balls in play have been on the ground every season and he's been death to left-handed hitters, holding them to a .197 batting average with zero home runs last year and a .210 mark for his career. Ground balls and shutting down lefties make it likely that Robertson can transition nicely to the bullpen if concerns about his durability and struggles against righties continue, but for now he definitely still has a chance to develop into a solid middle-of-the-rotation starter.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-02-15T00:07:00.000-06:00

Twins Notes: Perkins, Morales, Butera, and Snow

Joe Christensen of the Minneapolis Star Tribune penned a lengthy, well-done article detailing Glen Perkins' strained relationship with the Twins stemming from his arm injury and the team's subsequent service-time shenanigans. While the two sides officially settled the grievance filed on Perkins' behalf by the players' union, the 25-year-old left-hander is clearly still upset about the whole thing costing him as much as $500,000 and sounds like someone who expects to be traded:

I guess I really found out the hard way that it's a business. I spent my life cheering for that team. I got drafted by them and got to the majors quick, and two weeks later we're in the playoffs. I had a really good year in '08, and everything was rosy. You find out the hard way that it doesn't really matter.

I think I'm more prepared for this year than I ever have been. I feel like I'm going into an uphill battle [for a roster spot], but I'm fine. My arm's healthy, and I feel like I'm a major league pitcher. I'm sure if they don't think that, then someone else does.

I'm hardly plugged into the Twins' front office, but have heard from multiple sources "with knowledge of the situation" (as reporters so often phrase it) that the team is basically just waiting for Perkins to show that he's healthy this spring before trading him. Perkins simply isn't good enough for the combination of injuries, inconsistent performance, and an off-field grievance not to cause a team to sour on him and the Twins apparently tried to trade him to the Padres for Kevin Kouzmanoff earlier this offseason.

Last week the Twins had to clear a spot on the 40-man roster for Orlando Hudson, and presumably one of the reasons for dropping Jason Pridie rather than Drew Butera is that Jose Morales sounds less and less likely to be ready for Opening Day following wrist surgery. Morales began experiencing wrist problems in September, but waited until last month before deciding on surgery and then for some reason delayed actually going under the knife for another two weeks.

At best he'll be cleared to resume baseball activities in mid-March and even a slight setback would rule him out for Opening Day, so the Twins will likely need a third catcher to begin the season. Butera was seemingly placed on the 40-man roster for just this type of situation and the Twins previously talked him up as a great defender behind the plate, but now LaVelle E. Neal III of the Star Tribune reports that "there are some concerns about Butera's catching skills."

Butera has hit .214/.296/.317 in the minors, including .211/.268/.292 in 99 games at Triple-A last year, so if his "catching skills" are anything less than amazing he's essentially a worthless player. His place on the 40-man roster was a mistake to begin with and now the Twins are hesitant to even let him fill in for Morales, with Ron Gardenhire beginning to stump for Wilson Ramos. Butera is awful, but I'd hate to interrupt Ramos' development and start his service time just to back up Joe Mauer for a couple weeks.

Early on this offseason there was speculation about the Twins re-signing Orlando Cabrera, mostly because Gardenhire repeatedly made it obvious that he'd love to have him back. Instead the front office dealt for J.J. Hardy to replace him at shortstop and then signed Hudson to start at second base, which is the only other position Cabrera has played. Cabrera ended up signing with the Reds for a one-year deal that guarantees him $3 million and includes a mutual option for 2011. Twins were smart to pass.

Dave Cameron of Fan Graphs wrote an intriguing article about Mauer's unique, opposite field-driven hit chart and suggests that teams should employ separate infield and outfield shifts to neutralize him.

Whoever runs the Twins' official Twitter account posted two photos of a snow-covered Target Field:

Click the picture to see the full-sized versions. I bet at least half that snow will be gone by Opening Day.

Unfortunately my day job precluded me from actually being involved in the project, but that won't stop me from recommending that anyone who likes this blog should get the recently released Twins Annual 2010 from Maple Street Press. I've previously worked with Maple Street Press on a couple of non-Twins publications and know that they always put out high-quality products, and their inaugural Twins offering is spearheaded by John Bonnes and features a great writing lineup from the blogosphere and beyond.

In addition to the Twins Geek, the list of contributors also includes Seth Stohs, Nick Nelson, Phil Miller, Howard Sinker, Parker Hageman, Phil Mackey, Darren Wolfson, Judd Spicer, Josh Johnson, Stew Thornley, Jim Thielman, Andrew Kneeland, Dan Wade, and Adam Peterson. You get 128 pages full of great Twins writing, full-color photographs, and top-notch design work for just $12.99, all while helping to support a blogosphere that churns out so much great content for absolutely free all year. Go buy it.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-02-12T10:05:00.001-06:00

Link-O-Rama

It was fun while it lasted, but apparently I'm no longer cool.

HitFix.com's Daniel Fienberg wrote a slew of lengthy, excellent essays celebrating the best television shows of the past decade. If you're as into great TV as me, I'd suggest starting at his No. 1 show and then working your way through the whole series.

If you only read one story today about an MLB player's grandfather starting a drunken brawl with cops by groping an NBA player's wife, make it this one. You're welcome.

I'm not normally apt to pick on my fellow fatsos, but this could be my only opportunity to actually look good compared to an NFL first-round pick.

I'm worried that the unique stipulations in Ronnie Belliard's new contract with the Dodgers may give NBCSports.com and Rotoworld some ideas.

I'm not sure we're totally ready for him, but Mini Daddy is about to take over the music world:

You know a video is good when you can't understand a single word and don't care one bit.

I'm not sure how to explain it, but this absurd "day in the life" of former Red Sox backup catcher Doug Mirabelli really cracked me up.

Public service announcement: One of the most underrated television shows ever, The Larry Sanders Show, is now available on Hulu. Hey now!

And if you're already a The Larry Sanders Show fan, then this story will make you sad.

Rotoworld got a couple nice shout-outs recently. Peter Gammons told SI.com that "there are some people with great thoughts and minds writing for Rotoworld" and Cardinals pitcher Blake Hawksworth described how he "got on Rotoworld" to learn of the team re-signing Matt Holliday.

Speaking of Rotoworld, our annual Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide is now available. I'm the editor, and along with Matthew Pouliot, Drew Silva, D.J. Short, and several other writers spent an insane amount of time working on the product for the past couple months, so if you're a fantasy baseball player please consider checking it out. Just last week we received the "Best Online Draft Kit" award from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, so it'll definitely be worth the money and also keeps me employed.

Some unfortunate news about the Mad Men cast for the upcoming season, although staring at these pictures will probably wipe it from your memory.

Three words: Ron. F***ing. Swanson:

And it's reassuring to see that even in real life he's "a simple man who likes pretty, dark-haired women and breakfast food." Words to live by. And maybe even die for.

Grant Desme has me thinking about quitting this whole writing thing for rabbinical school.

As if the combination of a post-apocalyptic wasteland and a longtime Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com candidate didn't put The Book of Eli far enough into my wheelhouse, one of the early scenes featured Denzel Washington listening to Al Green. Only the lack of Chinese food and Joe Mauer kept the movie from essentially being custom-made for me and the whole thing was visually stunning, but somehow it just missed being a great move. I'd instead call it good, hugely enjoyable, and intriguing. Grade: B.

While the film falls just short of being great the aforementioned Mila Kunis gets an A-plus, because in addition to looking fantastic she did a very nice job with kind of an odd role. She's been on the Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com short list for quite a while now and seeing The Book of Eli may have convinced me that she's ready for the throne, although a couple new contenders have emerged lately. I'll get into that further next week, but for now you can study Kunis' case here and here and here.

Kunis may be gaining on her, but reigning Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com Keeley Hazell won't give up the title without a fight.

Friend of AG.com and former KFAN radio personality Doogie Wolfson has landed a new gig working with Joe Schmit at the local ABC affiliate. Always nice when good stuff happens to good people.

Speaking of KFAN, they may finally have competition in the local sports radio scene after yesterday's announcement that KSTP-1500 is becoming an ESPN affiliate. Unfortunately it sounds like the shift to all-sports mostly just means adding a bunch of syndicated ESPN shows rather than new local voices, with the bulk of KSTP's in-house programming still consisting of Patrick Reusse and Joe Soucheray.

Earlier this week a college student e-mailed to inquire about an internship. I'm thinking about doing it, Kramerica-style:

Think how much better my blogging could be with an actual chicken.

The highlight of my week: Dennis Scott sent me a message on Twitter. To celebrate, I watched this.

Vikings play-by-play man Paul Allen got kind of worked up announcing Brett Favre's interception.

When he's not busy designing the banner for this blog, Dan Olson is getting back on the mound after an 11-year hiatus in the hopes of impressing at an MLB tryout camp.

In ranking the 10 best "parents' basements" among baseball bloggers, Sam Hutcheson pretty much nailed my living conditions.

Some of the highlights from my NBCSports.com blogging this week:

- Dykstra is back, with some more can't-miss investment advice
- Another sad 'Dykstra on investing' update
- Chipper and McCann think Heyward is ready
- Indians may give rookie Brantley a shot in left
- Yankees find their platoon bat in Thames
- Erstad may have made his last scrappy out
- Shields unlikely to be ready for spring training
- SABR is giving away a free baseball book

Finally, in honor of Stephon Marbury being washed-up enough to have access to all the tea in China this week's AG.com-approved music video is Richie Havens covering "Tupelo Honey" by Van Morrison:

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-02-10T00:05:00.000-06:00

Twins Waive Jason Pridie, Sign Jacque Jones

Forced to clear a spot on the 40-man roster after signing Orlando Hudson last week, the Twins waived Jason Pridie and lost him to a claim by the Mets yesterday. Someone in the front office was a big Pridie fan because the Twins actually acquired him twice, first as a Rule 5 pick in December of 2005 and then as part of the Matt Garza-for-Delmon Young swap with Tampa Bay in November of 2007. Unfortunately, for all his supposed tools Pridie just never showed that he could hit even Double-A or Triple-A pitching.

He hit .248/.297/.360 in 231 games at Double-A and .277/.315/.434 in 322 games at Triple-A, including an abysmal .265/.295/.382 with an 85-to-19 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 121 games at Rochester last year. Pridie logged over 2,300 plate appearances between the two levels, and per 150 games struck out 122 times compared to just 31 non-intentional walks. Toss in modest power and he just wasn't going to be a valuable big leaguer despite having good speed and a strong glove.

Pridie had been atop the Twins' list of possible fifth outfielders, but that was almost by default and guys with his basic skill set and utility will be available on waivers or minor-league contracts from now until Opening Day (and perhaps from now until the end of time). In fact, as soon as Pridie was claimed off waivers by the Mets yesterday the Twins announced that they'd signed another potential fifth outfielder to a minor-league deal: Jacque Jones. Yes, that Jacque Jones.

Two months ago Jones personally attended the winter meetings in the hopes of talking someone into giving him a comeback opportunity at age 35, but he predictably found that to be a tough sell. Jones left the Twins as a free agent after the 2005 season and was last a reasonably productive player in 2007, batting .285/.335/.400 for the Cubs. He fell off a cliff in 2008, hitting .147 in 42 games for the Tigers and Marlins, and spent last season playing for the independent league Newark Bears.

While the Twins could certainly use a fifth outfielder capable of backing up Denard Span in center field, the odds of a 35-year-old Jones fitting that bill seem slim given that he's three seasons removed from playing the position regularly or holding his own versus big-league pitching. Toss in the fact that Jones was nearly useless against left-handed pitching even in his prime and it's tough to see him fitting into an outfield/designated hitter mix that already includes lefty bats Span, Jason Kubel, and Jim Thome.

Jones' contract includes an invitation to spring training, but the Twins have indicated that he's unlikely to make the team and has already agreed to report to Triple-A if not on the Opening Day roster. There's no real harm in letting him come to camp and giving Jones one last chance to salvage his career with a stint at Rochester may not even be such a bad idea depending on how the minor-league depth chart shakes out, but they can do better in even the most rudimentary search for a fifth outfielder.

In terms of best fitting the roster ideally the job calls for a right-handed bat (or switch-hitter) with a good glove and plus speed, experience in all three outfield spots, and some semblance of either power or on-base skills. Pridie and Jones fail that description on multiple levels, but there's no urgency to find a better fit and in fact waiting until the end of spring training could yield the best results once teams start trying to slip guys through waivers. Or they could just trust Nick Punto to handle center field in a pinch.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-02-08T00:05:00.003-06:00

Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010: 25, 24, 23, 22, 21

Other entries in Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010 series: 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, 26-30, 31-35, 36-40.

25. Deolis Guerra | Starter | DOB: 4/89 | Throws: Right | Trade: Mets
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2007     A+     21     20     4.01      89.2      80      9      66     25
2008     A+     26     25     5.47     130.0     138     12      71     71
2009     A+     16     15     4.69      86.1      95      6      57     25
         AA     12     11     5.17      62.2      62      4      49     17

When the Twins got Deolis Guerra from the Mets two offseasons ago he was considered arguably the highest-upside prospect in the four-player package for Johan Santana. At the time he was 18 years old with a 3.27 ERA, 135-to-65 strikeout-to-walk ratio, and .228 opponents' batting average in 179 innings at Single-A, which along with his 6-foot-5 frame, plus fastball, fantastic changeup, and high ground-ball rate seemingly gave him a huge ceiling. Unfortunately he's been a mess ever since.

Because the Mets pushed Guerra so aggressively prior to the trade the Twins sent him back to high Single-A as a 19-year-old in 2008 when they normally would have had him in rookie-ball with the other teenagers. He struggled there, posting a 5.47 ERA and 71-to-71 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 130 innings, and was back at high Single-A for a third stint to begin last year. The third time wasn't exactly a charm for Guerra, but the Twins promoted him to Double-A at midseason anyway and he struggled there too.

Guerra is still the third-youngest pitcher on this list at 21 years old, but has a 5.16 ERA and 177-to-113 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 279 innings since the trade while seeing his velocity drop into the 80s and his grounders turn into fly balls. No one seems quite sure how to explain the decline in his stuff, but right now he looks like anything but a high-ceiling prospect and realistically should be spending 2010 at low Single-A rather than Double-A, where he'll be by far the youngest guy and take up a 40-man roster spot.

24. Ben Tootle | Reliever | DOB: 1/88 | Throws: Right | Draft: 2009-3
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2009     RK      6      0     0.00       6.1       4      0       1      2

Ben Tootle had limited success as a college starter against modest competition at Jacksonville State, but his performance last year can perhaps be blamed on a stomach virus that caused him to lose 20 pounds and the Twins liked his raw stuff enough to make him the No. 101 overall pick last June. Tootle started 43 games compared to just one relief outing in college, but his pro debut came in the bullpen at rookie-level Elizabethton and that figures to be his long-term role.

Much like with fellow 2009 draftee Billy Bullock the Twins are hoping to take Tootle's mid-90s fastball and mold him into a late-inning reliever, although various reports suggest that his slider has the ability to be a plus pitch eventually as well. If that happens he has a chance to be pretty overpowering, but for now Tootle just has a half-dozen pro innings under his belt following a three-year college career that included a 4.83 ERA in the Ohio Valley Conference.

Prior to last season's health problems Baseball America ranked Tootle as the fourth-best prospect in the Cape Cod summer league and he went 10-2 with a 3.87 ERA and 79-to-29 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 86 innings during his sophomore year at Jacksonville State, so certainly his radar-gun readings aren't the sole reason to like Tootle's upside. Rarely have the Twins targeted power arms with questionable command, so it'll be interesting to see if they were right to adjust that strategy for Bullock and Tootle.

23. Luke Hughes | Third Base | DOB: 8/84 | Bats: Right | Sign: Australia
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2007     AA     362     .283     .356     .438      9     29     34     68
2008     AA     319     .319     .385     .551     15     33     28     70
        AAA     117     .283     .325     .453      3     11      7     30
2009     AA     229     .250     .320     .445      6     24     19     38
        AAA     157     .259     .344     .481      6     16     18     38

Luke Hughes struggled in the low minors after being signed out of Australia as an 18-year-old in 2002, but has hit well enough since advancing to Double-A in 2007 that his bat looks like a possible asset in the majors. Unfortunately his glove is another issue, with Hughes bouncing from second base to third base while also seeing time as a corner outfielder. At the plate he's been close to Danny Valencia, but whereas Valencia projects as a decent third baseman Hughes seems destined to wind up in left field.

Even setting aside his uncertain future defensively he's far from a finished product offensively. Hughes has shown very good power at Double-A and Triple-A, but has drawn a grand total of just 106 walks in 1,184 plate appearances between the two levels while striking out 20 percent of the time. He hit just .250 at New Britain and .257 at Rochester last year, dropping his career mark to .270. Hughes' power is good enough to get him to the majors, but weak secondary skills may limit him to part-time work.

Even if the Twins were willing to live with Hughes' glove at third base Valencia is clearly ahead of him on the position's long-term depth chart, so he'll almost certainly head back to Triple-A and may need an injury to Justin Morneau, Jason Kubel, Michael Cuddyer, Delmon Young, or Jim Thome to get a shot for a call-up as a bat to plug into the lineup at a spot where his defense won't be an issue. Hughes has a chance to be a useful player, but his many flaws make him look like a poor man's Ty Wigginton.

22. Robert Delaney | Reliever | DOB: 9/84 | Throws: Right | Sign: America
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2007     A-     36      0     0.77      46.2      25      1      56      6
         A+     17      0     1.54      23.1      19      1      27     10
2008     A+     23      0     1.42      31.2      24      1      34      4
         AA     23      0     1.05      34.1      20      2      38      7
2009     AA     26      0     2.00      36.0      32      1      40      6
         AAA    36      0     4.53      47.2      43      5      38     15

Robert Delaney went into last year with a 1.91 ERA and 185-to-28 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 174 innings as a pro, including a 1.05 ERA in 23 appearances at Double-A to finish 2008, yet the Twins had such little trust in the former undrafted free agent that they sent him back to New Britain to begin last season. Delaney logged another 36 innings there with a 2.00 ERA and 40-to-6 strikeout-to-walk ratio, at which point they finally promoted him to Triple-A just months before his 25th birthday.

For the first time in his career Delaney was something less than spectacular with a 4.53 ERA over 47.2 innings at Rochester, including several really ugly outings, but a .240 opponents' batting average and 38-to-15 strikeout-to-walk ratio suggest that it was more rough patch than proof of being overmatched. Of course, in either case the Twins were already skeptical enough of Delaney's upside that he'll likely need to post a sub-2.00 ERA just to be an option for a call-up in the second half.

Delaney is a fly-ball pitcher without overpowering raw stuff, so keeping the ball in the ballpark figures to be an issue, but his combination of a low-90s fastball and sharp slider has racked up 263 strikeouts in 257.2 career innings. He's not going to be a dominant reliever and is even less likely than fellow slowly promoted prospect Anthony Slama to emerge as a viable late-inning option, but Delaney's track record suggests that he can be a solid middle reliever at worst and he deserves a chance to prove it soon.

21. Alex Burnett | Reliever | DOB: 7/87 | Throws: Right | Draft: 2005-12
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2007     A-     27     27     3.02     155.0     140      9     117     38
2008     A+     28     25     3.76     143.2     151     12      84     36
2009     A+     18      0     1.99      22.2      14      0      26      7
         AA     40      0     1.79      55.1      36      2      52     19

A full-time starter for the first four seasons of his pro career, Alex Burnett ranked No. 22 on this list last year despite declining strikeout rates because of consistent success while being young for each level. He was shaping up to be a potential middle-of-the-rotation starter down the road, but instead the Twins moved him to the bullpen last season and watched as he dominated in 58 appearances between high Single-A and Double-A as a 21-year-old.

He whiffed 78 batters in 78 innings after totaling just 84 strikeouts in 143.2 innings as a starter in 2008, holding opponents to a .183 batting average while issuing 2.5 non-intentional walks per nine innings. History is filled with mediocre starters who became dominant relievers, but making the move at age 21 is relatively uncommon, especially since Burnett seemed on the path to the majors anyway with a 3.54 ERA as a starter.

Rather than looking like a fourth or fifth starter Burnett now has the potential to be a late-inning reliever, and moving to the bullpen has also pushed up his timetable considerably. Not only did he have a 1.79 ERA and .187 opponents' batting average at Double-A, of the 110 pitchers logging at least 50 innings in the Eastern League last season only three were younger than Burnett. His control has always been outstanding, so if relief work adds some velocity to his fastball-slider combo Burnett can move quickly.

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2010-02-05T00:02:00.003-06:00

Twins Sign Orlando Hudson To One-Year Deal

I'm sometimes accused of being overly critical of the Twins' front office, but my response is usually that it can't help but look that way when my "job" here is to analyze and give opinions about their moves and the "bad" have simply outnumbered the "good" since Terry Ryan stepped down as general manager in September of 2007. In other words, Bill Smith's first 18 months on the job just didn't feature a whole lot of moves to praise.

He dealt Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett for Delmon Young and Brendan Harris, got a mediocre return for Johan Santana, and gave out millions to Craig Monroe, Livan Hernandez, Nick Punto, Mike Lamb, Adam Everett, Juan Rincon, and Luis Ayala. Was every move a bad one? Of course not, but the entire body of work was pretty damn ugly and I said so as the moves rolled in, without the benefit of hindsight, which understandably comes across as "overly critical" at times. But thankfully, times have changed.

Smith's second season on the job was sort of a mixed bag, but certainly included several moves worth praising, and this offseason the front office has basically been flawless from trading for J.J. Hardy and signing Jim Thome to retaining Carl Pavano and letting Orlando Cabrera leave. And now the icing on the offseason cake is inking Orlando Hudson to a one-year, $5 million deal, which in addition to simply being a very good move is also something that I've long been campaigning for in this space.

Operating under the assumption that Ron Gardenhire will do everything he can to play Punto regularly somewhere, the Twins' early moves left them with essentially one lineup opening at either second or third base. Gardenhire's tendency to use a speedy infielder as his No. 2 hitter also made it likely that one of the two guys playing those positions would slide into the lineup between Denard Span and Joe Mauer. Hudson capably checks both boxes as a good all-around second baseman and nice No. 2 bat.

Last year Twins second basemen ranked dead last in all of baseball with a combined .209/.302/.267 line, so Hudson's career .281/.348/.431 mark represents a massive upgrade and his adjusted OPS+ has actually improved in four straight seasons despite the fact that he turned 32 years old this winter. He doesn't really stand out in any one area offensively, but per 150 games Hudson usually bats around .285 with 10 homers, 50 total extra-base hits, 60 walks, and 5-10 steals. He's just a good, solid player.

Among guys who played at least 100 games at second base Hudson's adjusted OPS+ ranked 9th, 7th, 13th, and 7th during the past four seasons, so even accounting for some potential age-related decline he's likely to be among the position's top 10 hitters in 2010. He's posted an on-base percentage above .350 in each of those four seasons and is a switch-hitter with similar production from either side of the plate, both of which make him a particularly good fit in the No. 2 spot.

Hudson teams with Span to put two strong on-base threats directly in front of the lineup's big boppers and also provides a potential right-handed bat in the midst of lefties Span, Mauer, Justin Morneau, and Jason Kubel. He also gives the Twins a pretty decent chance to have above-average hitting from eight of the nine spots in the lineup, with only third base looking like a clear weak spot (assuming that Hardy bounces back). Of course, while a very good fit for the Twins at $5 million Hudson still has some flaws.

Defensively he has an excellent reputation built by winning four Gold Gloves in the past five years, but a look at some advanced metrics suggests that his range began slipping around age 28. Ultimate Zone Rating pegged Hudson as right about average defensively in both 2006 and 2007 before falling to five runs below average per 150 games between 2008-2009. In other words we'll constantly hear praise for Hudson's glove this season, but given his age and UZR numbers he's likely to be average at best.

Another potential problem area is Hudson's high ground-ball rate. He had the fourth-most grounders in baseball last year at 56 percent and is at 50 percent for his career, which along with good but not great speed and Span constantly being on first base could equal a ton of double plays. He's hit into a DP in 16.5 percent of his DP chances over the past three years. To put that in context Mauer is often criticized for frequent double plays, yet has done so in only 12.4 percent of his DP chances during that time.

So he's fairly old, not as good as his reputation defensively, and likely to hit into a bunch of DPs batting second, but let's be very clear: Hudson is an excellent acquisition in an offseason full of sound moves and represents a massive all-around upgrade over the various options the Twins could have trotted out at second base. Smith, Rob Antony, and the rest of the front office deserved any criticism they received for their 18 months on the job and now they deserve credit for what has been a fantastic offseason.

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2010-02-04T13:03:00.004-06:00

Twins Close to Signing Orlando Hudson?

I'll have a full breakdown of the deal if/when things become official, but in the meantime click here.

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2010-02-03T00:05:00.004-06:00

Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010: 30, 29, 28, 27, 26

Other entries in Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010 series: 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, 31-35, 36-40.

30. Estarlin De Los Santos | Shortstop | DOB: 1/87 | Bats: Switch | Sign: D.R.
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2007     RK     322     .264     .341     .363      1     20     26     66
2008     A-     269     .242     .304     .309      2      9     19     55
2009     A+     284     .290     .330     .397      1     19     13     49

Signed by the Twins out of the Dominican Republic as an 18-year-old in 2005, Estarlin De Los Santos was a surprise addition to the 40-man roster before the Rule 5 draft in December. He played last year at high Single-A and managed just a .727 OPS there, making it unlikely that any team would have been willing to keep him in the majors for all of 2010, but clearly the Twins like De Los Santos enough to not take the minimal chance of losing him.

De Los Santos' glove is definitely the big draw, because he had a career-year offensively in 2009 and still hit just .290/.330/.397 with one homer and a 49-to-13 strikeout-to-walk ratio while being limited to 68 games with multiple injuries. For his career he's batted .259/.322/.347 in 227 games, but Twins vice president of player personnel Mike Radcliff recently described him as "the only true shortstop we have in our system" with "a plus arm and plus hands."

His defensive reputation alone was nearly enough for De Los Santos to crack this list in both 2008 and 2009, so now that he's shown some semblance of offensive potential it's an easy call. Great glove or not he'll obviously need to improve at the plate to be an asset in the majors and the Twins sending him to Double-A as a 23-year-old is a sign that they think his switch-hitting gap power and excellent speed will eventually equal more production.

29. Reggie Williams | Second Base | DOB: 10/88 | Bats: Left | Draft: 2007-4
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2008     RK-     96     .286     .358     .440      0     10      9     10
2009     RK     173     .250     .316     .462      7     17     13     30

Picked out of a California high school in the fourth round of the 2007 draft, Reggie Williams signed too late to debut that year and then played only briefly in the rookie-level Gulf Coast League in 2008. Still on the conservative path last season, Williams played 43 games at rookie-level Elizabethton before going 6-for-10 with two doubles and two walks in three games following an end-of-the-year promotion to low Single-A Beloit.

Williams has logged a grand total of just 281 plate appearances in three years since being drafted, but his performance has been very encouraging for a player who was supposed to be all about raw tools and athleticism at the time. He's batted .276 with 29 extra-base hits and a .468 slugging percentage in 69 games spent in pitcher-friendly environments while showing decent plate discipline and strike-zone control with a 42-to-24 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

Along with that offensive promise Williams has played all three infield spots defensively after originally being drafted as a shortstop, suggesting that his glove could also have considerable value down the road. Williams should see his first full-season action in 2010 as a 21-year-old and a solid campaign at Single-A would make the Twins spending $153,000 to lure him away from Cal-State Fullerton look like a great decision. In a system that's perpetually short on quality infielders, he's very intriguing.

28. Michael McCardell | Starter | DOB: 4/85 | Throws: Right | Draft: 2007-6
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2007     RK-     4      2     2.50      18.0      11      2      25      3
         RK      8      8     2.00      45.0      29      3      70      5
2008     A-     22     21     2.86     135.1     110     10     139     25
2009     A+     17     17     3.93      94.0      98     10      78     16
         AA      9      9     4.10      48.1      45      4      40     16

Michael McCardell dominated at rookie-ball and low Single-A after being drafted in the sixth round out of Kutztown University in 2007, but my worry last year at this time was that modest raw stuff made him "no sure thing to clear the high-minors hurdles." Sure enough his performance deteriorated splitting last season between high Single-A and Double-A, with a 3.98 ERA as an older-than-average pitcher in offense-suppressing environments that included just 118 strikeouts versus 143 hits in 142 innings.

McCardell's control remained excellent with 32 walks in 596 plate appearances, but the mostly younger opponents batted .264 against him and he had a difficult time keeping the ball on the ground. Throwing strikes should keep McCardell on the prospect radar, but as a fly-ball pitcher with a high-80s fastball who doesn't miss many bats his long-term upside is limited and he'll turn 25 years old in April despite making a total of just nine starts above Single-A.

Because of his small-school pedigree and pinpoint control McCardell has sometimes been compared to Kevin Slowey, but Slowey's numbers in the minors were mind-boggling good at every level and he's already logged over 300 innings in the majors despite being less than a year older than McCardell. In reality McCardell's upside is likely closer to someone like Josh Towers, which is to say a serviceable but very hittable fifth starter or long reliever. Hopefully he'll get his first crack at Triple-A this year.

27. Trevor Plouffe | Shortstop | DOB: 6/86 | Bats: Right | Draft: 2004-1
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2007     AA     555     .274     .326     .410      9     48     38     89
2008     AA     249     .269     .325     .410      3     23     16     43
        AAA     272     .256     .292     .420      6     26     14     47
2009    AAA     477     .260     .313     .407     10     38     34     68

Trevor Plouffe had been promoted very aggressively since the Twins took him out of high school in the first round of the 2004 draft, but pushing him through the system despite the lack of any major offensive development now leaves him as a 24-year-old about to spend a third straight season at Rochester. He has six seasons under his belt, including 1,553 plate appearances between Double-A and Triple-A, yet has never posted even a .750 OPS at any level and owns a .256/.318/.385 career line.

His production has been remarkably consistent in its mediocrity, with zero real strides made in any key areas, and Plouffe's lack of progress at the plate is especially damaging because he's no sure thing to be an asset defensively at shortstop. His glove gets mixed reviews and while Plouffe played exclusively shortstop last year the Twins used him at third base extensively in 2008. If he's not at least an average defensive shortstop in the majors it's tough to see Plouffe having much value.

Plouffe is certainly still young enough for something to click offensively, but as the Twins saw with Luis Rivas and could be seeing with Delmon Young at some point actual production takes precedence over youth. He's about to enter his seventh professional season and fourth straight year in the high minors, but aside from his age and status as a former first-round pick Plouffe has shown almost no reason for optimism. My guess is that by this time next year he'll either be in the majors or off the 40-man roster.

26. Shooter Hunt | Starter | DOB: 8/86 | Throws: Right | Draft: 2008-1
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2008     RK      4      4     0.47      19.0       4      0      34      6
         A-      7      7     5.46      31.1      26      2      34     27
2009     RK-     7      5     9.60      15.0      10      0       8     25
         A-      7      5    10.70      17.2      15      1      18     33

Sadly, those numbers aren't a misprint. Normally the Twins don't target pitchers with poor control, but they couldn't pass up the chance to draft Shooter Hunt when he fell to them with the No. 31 overall pick in 2008. Baseball America ranked Hunt as the draft's No. 4 pitcher after a dominant season at Tulane University and he blew away rookie-ball hitters upon signing, but he had a tough time throwing strikes following a promotion to low Single-A and then completely fell apart last year.

Hunt's control wasn't great in college and in ranking him as the Twins' fifth-best prospect heading into last year I wrote that "learning to harness his raw stuff will be the biggest challenge," but no one could have predicted a potentially career-wrecking descent into Rick Ankiel, Mark Wohlers, and Steve Blass territory. Hunt simply couldn't throw the ball over the plate, issuing 58 walks, uncorking 15 wild pitches, and plunking seven batters in 32.2 innings between rookie-ball and low Single-A.

When he's right Hunt has top-of-the-rotation stuff and the Twins were very fortunate that he fell into their laps on draft day, but history suggests that he'd have been better off blowing out his elbow or shoulder and missing a couple years rather than trying to come back from a debilitating case of the yips. Right now his 2010 season should be considered a success if Hunt can simply show some semblance of command, regardless of whether he gets knocked around in the process.

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2010-02-02T00:02:00.007-06:00

Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010: 35, 34, 33, 32, 31

Other entries in Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010 series: 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, 26-30, 36-40.

35. Danny Rams | Catcher | DOB: 12/88 | Bats: Right | Draft: 2007-2
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2007     RK-    106     .258     .311     .361      0      9      5     22
2008     RK     166     .228     .301     .428      5     16     15     71
2009     RK      72     .355     .444     .790      6     14      8     22
         A-     195     .229     .308     .429      7     21     18     77

After struggling through his first two pro seasons Danny Rams got off to a monster start at rookie-level Elizabethton last year, batting .355 with six homers and a 1.235 OPS in 16 games. That earned him a promotion to low Single-A, but Rams resumed struggling in his first taste of full-season action and hit just .229 with 77 strikeouts in 48 games. The good news is that he gunned down 37 percent of stolen base attempts, suggesting that Rams may have a shot to stick behind the plate long term.

His strong arm was merely an afterthought when the Twins made Rams a second-round pick in 2007, as Baseball America ranked him as the draft's top power bat among high schoolers. Rams' power has actually translated just fine to the pros with 18 homers and 62 total extra-base hits in 137 games for an outstanding .208 Isolated Power. Unfortunately that pop is masked by the inability to make consistent contact, with 195 strikeouts in 496 at-bats leading to a lowly .252 batting average.

Toss in just 41 non-intentional walks in 553 trips to the plate and Rams has basically been swinging hard in case he hits something so far, but he remains on this list for at least one more year due to his impressive power potential and the fact that he may still end up being able to play a passable catcher. When he doesn't strike out Rams has hit .415 with a .757 slugging percentage as a pro, but whiffing 35 percent of the time in the low minors is usually a very bad sign for a guy whose bat will carry him.

34. Bobby Lanigan | Starter | DOB: 5/87 | Throws: Right | Draft: 2008-3
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2008     RK     13     13     2.78      74.1      74      5      65      9
2009     A-     22     22     4.52     123.1     130     10     102     29
         A+      7      2     4.70      15.1      21      1      14      4

As a Division II program Adelphi University isn't exactly a baseball hotbed, but the school that produced Gary Dell'Abate and Public Enemy also provided the Twins with their 2008 third-round pick. A big righty who ranks as the school's all-time leader in strikeouts, Bobby Lanigan had a 1.94 ERA as a junior and then signed very quickly for $417,000, debuting at rookie-level Elizabethton with a 2.78 ERA and 65-to-9 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 13 starts.

He moved up to low Single-A to begin last year and then got a late-season promotion to high Single-A, where he worked mostly out of the bullpen. Lanigan pitched quite a bit better than a 4.54 ERA in 138.2 innings overall would suggest, posting a 116-to-33 strikeout-to-walk ratio while allowing 11 homers for a much nicer 3.25 FIP. However, his rate of 7.5 strikeouts per nine innings was nothing special against low-level competition and he was fairly easy to hit, with opponents batting .272.

All of which suggests that his upside is limited, but Lanigan combines a low-90s fastball with a strong slider and good control, so he definitely has major-league potential. If the Twins focus on his ERA they may make him a full-time reliever this season, but Lanigan certainly warrants more of a chance to stick as a starter after just one year of full-season experience. Either way he throws enough strikes and gets enough ground balls to be worth watching and won't be 23 years old until May.

33. Chris Herrmann | Left Field | DOB: 11/87 | Bats: Left | Draft: 2009-6
  
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2009     RK     277     .297     .391     .453      7     22     33     40

Chris Herrmann was picked by the Orioles in the 10th round of the 2008 draft after being named to the junior college All-American team as a catcher at Alvin Community College in Texas, but decided not to sign and instead transferred to the University of Miami. That move worked out well for Herrmann, as he started in left field for the Hurricanes and hit .341/.455/.528 in 60 games before receiving a $135,000 signing bonus as the Twins' sixth-round pick last June.

Herrmann is the fifth University of Miami player selected by the Twins since 2006, and that list includes fellow top-40 prospects Danny Valencia and Carlos Gutierrez. And for whatever it's worth, Herrmann's college numbers were slightly better than Valencia's production at Miami, including a team-best .448 on-base percentage with 41 walks in 265 trips to the plate. He continued to show good plate discipline in his pro debut, batting .297/.391/.453 with 33 walks in 59 games at rookie-level Elizabethton.

Herrmann has previous experience at catcher and third base, but played mostly left field at both Miami and Elizabethton, so that's likely his long-term home and will make his offensive development key. The numbers from his pro debut don't mean a whole lot because hitters from major college programs are supposed to knock around rookie-ball pitchers, but he displayed more power than expected and clearly has a good eye at the plate.

32. Jose Morales | Catcher | DOB: 2/83 | Bats: Switch | Draft: 2001-3
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2007     AAA    411     .311     .366     .399      2     28     30     44
2008     AAA    208     .315     .348     .426      4     13      8     28
2009     AAA    242     .336     .413     .436      2     16     28     27
         MLB    134     .311     .381     .361      0      6     14     22

Drafted by the Twins in the third round out of Puerto Rico in 2001, Jose Morales started his pro career as an infielder before moving behind the plate full time in 2003. Six seasons later his defense remains somewhere between atrocious and passable, and he narrowly maintains "prospect" status at age 27, but as a switch-hitter with a line-drive swing who rarely strikes out and has consistently posted strong batting averages Morales looks capable of being a solid backup to Joe Mauer.

Last year Morales shared catching duties with Mike Redmond while Mauer spent April on the disabled list, spent a second stint with the Twins in May, and then returned to Minnesota for good when rosters expanded in September. Morales has hit .317 in 222 games at Triple-A and .328 through 55 games in the majors, which along with Ron Gardenhire turning to him at designated hitter down the stretch has the fans who don't know any better wrongly assuming that he's destined to be an impact hitter.

In reality Morales failed to homer in 134 plate appearances for the Twins after going deep a grand total of eight times in 868 trips to the plate at Triple-A and also doesn't walk much, so he's not destined for stardom. However, strong contact skills should keep his batting average above .275 and he deserves an extended opportunity after spending three years at Rochester, where he batted .317/.373/.413 while striking out just 11.4 percent of the time. Don't expect greatness, but he should be plenty useful.

31. Derek McCallum | Second Base | DOB: 3/88 | Bats: Left | Draft: 2009-4
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2009     RK     260     .241     .310     .382      5     19     23     55

A native Minnesotan who played both baseball and hockey at Hill-Murray, Derek McCallum was picked out of high school by the Twins in the 50th round of the 2006 draft. He opted to attend the University of Minnesota instead of signing for minimal cash and parlayed a huge junior season for the Gophers into a $210,000 bonus as the Twins' fourth rounder last June. Named a first-team All-American at second base, McCallum led the Big Ten in hits, homers, slugging percentage, and RBIs.

He also broke Robb Quinlan's school record by knocking in 86 runs in 59 games and became the first Gopher to bat .400 since 1994. McCallum struggled in his pro debut at rookie-level Elizabethton, hitting just .241 while striking out 55 times in 57 games after whiffing a total of 72 times in three years with the Gophers. He did show some solid pop with five homers and 19 total extra-base hits in 228 at-bats and drew a fair number of walks while receiving positive reviews for his glove at second base.

In theory at least McCallum should've thrived against less experienced competition in the Appalachian League, so the fact that he hit just .241 and had a tough time making consistent contact is worrisome. Given his rough pro debut it's also worth noting that prior to his monstrous junior campaign McCallum slugged just .417 through his first two college seasons. He'll move up the ladder to full-season ball in 2010 and look to show that he's capable of doing damage with a wood bat.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-02-01T00:06:00.013-06:00

Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010: 40, 39, 38, 37, 36

Other entries in Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010 series: 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, 26-30, 31-35.

40. Joe Testa | Reliever | DOB: 12/85 | Throws: Left | Sign: America
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2008     RK-     8      0     1.32      13.2       9      0      17      1
         A+      4      2     4.91      14.2      14      1      13      7
2009     A-     25      1     2.56      45.2      26      1      63     23
         A+     21      0     1.22      37.0      29      2      53     18

Joe Testa set school records for career starts, innings, strikeouts, and wins during his four seasons at Wagner College, but the diminutive left-hander went undrafted in 2008, signed with the Twins as a free agent, and shifted to the bullpen as a pro. Two years later he cracks this list because his numbers are simply too good to ignore. Testa has racked up 146 strikeouts in 111 pro innings, posting a 2.26 ERA while holding opponents to a .195 batting average.

Undrafted free agents who put up great numbers as relievers in the low minors generally don't warrant getting all that excited, but certainly Testa is at least worth keeping tabs on as he moves up the ladder. Poor control makes him an even worse bet, as Testa walked 41 in 82.2 innings between low Single-A and high Single-A last year, but a 1.96 ERA, 116 strikeouts, and just three homers allowed still made him the most effective pitcher in the entire Twins system based on Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP).

Testa's raw stuff definitely doesn't match those amazing numbers, but he's not a total junk-baller either. He gets plenty of movement on a wide assortment of off-speed pitches, but his fastball also tops out in the low-90s. Obviously moving beyond the low minors and facing more experienced hitters will show if Testa is the real deal or not, but if Wagner College can produce the reigning AL Rookie of the Year in Andrew Bailey why can't that same small-college pitching staff have been home to another solid arm?

39. Loek Van Mil | Reliever | DOB: 9/84 | Throws: Right | Sign: Netherlands
 
YEAR     LV      G     GS      ERA        IP       H     HR      SO     BB
2007     RK     13      0     2.62      24.0      14      0      23     17
2008     A-     28      0     3.22      44.2      36      5      42     25
2009     A+     25      0     2.86      34.2      29      3      23     17
         AA      8      0     2.45       7.1       7      0       5      6

Loek Van Mil has logged a grand total of just 154 innings in four pro seasons since the Twins signed him out of the Netherlands, but as a 7-foot-1 pitcher whose given name is "Ludovicus" his intrigue as a prospect goes well beyond the raw numbers. If he reaches the big leagues Van Mil would be the tallest player in MLB history and the Twins significantly increased the odds of that happening by adding him to the 40-man roster this offseason.

Van Mil's raw stuff certainly doesn't match his gargantuan presence on the mound, mostly because he doesn't throw 110 miles per hour, but he's added velocity since transitioning to the bullpen full time and is far from a novelty act. His command is spotty and Van Mil hasn't missed a ton of bats, yet opponents have hit just .233, .221, and .169 off him in the past three years. It remains to be seen if he can stay that tough to hit without more strikeouts, but it's possible normal ball-in-play rules won't apply to a giant.

Despite his limited workload as a pro Van Mil is already 25 years old, but the Twins have promoted him somewhat aggressively. He reached Double-A in his fourth pro campaign and figures to start this year back at New Britain, with a second-half promotion to Rochester and perhaps even a September call-up to Minnesota in the cards if he fares well. His prospect status has always been based more on intrigue than performance, but the scale is starting to tip in the other direction and he has a 3.03 career ERA.

38. Anderson Hidalgo | Third Base | DOB: 9/88 | Bats: Right | Sign: Venezuela
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2008     RK-    107     .364     .453     .466      1      7     15     13
2009     RK     205     .291     .379     .469      6     19     25     38

Signed out of Venezuela as a 17-year-old in 2006, Anderson Hidalgo batted over .300 in back-to-back seasons in the Venezuelan Summer League before making his American minor-league debut in 2008 with a .364 batting average in the rookie-level Gulf Coast League. He rose to rookie-level Elizabethton last season and batted below .300 for the first time as a pro, but .291/.379/.469 from a 20-year-old in a pitcher-friendly environment was still plenty impressive.

In fact, his .848 OPS was 20 percent above the Appalachian League average and Hidalgo has now hit .316/.405/.468 in 76 rookie-ball games after batting .308/.384/.417 over 121 games in Venezuela. He's a very long way from the majors and the flameout rate for guys who knock around rookie-level pitching is incredibly high, but Hidalgo has shown some definite upside offensively while hitting .311 with gap power and a 101-to-90 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

He's played second base and some outfield previously, but Hidalgo has spent the past two seasons strictly as a third baseman despite being very small for the position at just 5-foot-9. Deibinson Romero cracked this list in both 2008 and 2009 thanks to his Hidalgo-like production in rookie-ball only to see his prospect stock plummet after being exposed to full-season competition, so hopefully this story is a bit different. The early numbers suggest plenty of upside, but we'll find out a lot more this season.

37. Steven Tolleson | Second Base | DOB: 11/83 | Bats: Right | Draft: 2005-5
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2007     A+     571     .285     .388     .382      5     33     79     97
2008     AA     397     .300     .382     .466      9     38     44     74
2009     AA     173     .258     .343     .391      2     14     16     20
        AAA     394     .270     .338     .375      6     24     36     52

The son of former major leaguer Wayne Tolleson, Steven Tolleson was picked by the Twins in the fifth round of the 2005 draft after a three-year career at the University of South Carolina. Despite being a fifth rounder with college experience Tolleson moved slowly through the Twins' system, reaching Double-A for the first time as a 24-year-old in his fourth pro campaign. He had a breakout year there, displaying his usual strong on-base skills while adding power to the mix, but took a step backward last season.

Despite being a 25-year-old who spent all of 2008 at Double-A while hitting .300/.382/.466 he was sent back to New Britain to repeat the level and batted just .258/.343/.391 in 38 games before a promotion to Rochester. He didn't fare any better at Triple-A, batting .270/.338/.375 in 92 games, but did maintain good strike-zone control while seeing action everywhere except first base and catcher. Versatility is key for Tolleson, because he doesn't have the glove to be a regular shortstop and his bat is backup caliber.

Tolleson makes solid contact, draws a fair number of walks, and has some gap power, but he's hit just .276 with a .400 slugging percentage in 500 games as a minor leaguer despite a very deliberate climb up the organizational ladder. Toss in modest speed with a good but not great glove and Tolleson now looks destined to be a utility man at best, so at 26 years old this is a make-or-break time for his odds of reaching the majors. UPDATE: Just hours after posting this, Tolleson was lost to Oakland on waivers.

36. Josmil Pinto | Catcher | DOB: 3/89 | Bats: Right | Sign: Venezuela
 
YEAR     LV      PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     HR    XBH     BB     SO
2008     RK-     94     .329     .394     .541      1     13      9     14
2009     RK     230     .332     .387     .610     13     29     19     39

Signed out of Venezuela as a 16-year-old, Josmil Pinto's best position defensively is likely designated hitter and he's yet to advance past rookie-ball. But he's here because batting .330/.390/.590 through 77 pro games is just really impressive. Pinto topped the Appalachian League in home runs and slugging percentage last year, hitting .332/.387/.610 while knocking in 55 runs in 53 games. Those numbers are obviously fantastic in any context, but consider that the league as a whole hit just .257/.328/.384.

Pinto's overall production was 34 percent above par, including an Isolated Power that was 118 percent better than the league as a whole. He fails to rank any higher because smashing rookie-ball pitching hardly guarantees future success and regardless of competition we're talking about just a few hundred plate appearances. Plus, if reports of Pinto's lacking defensive ability prove accurate he'll have to keep hitting like that to have any chance at big-time value.

In fairness Pinto split time between designated hitter and catcher at Elizabethton and actually threw out 46 percent of steal attempts without making a ton of errors. The only thing less predictive than offensive numbers at rookie-ball are defensive numbers at rookie-ball, but there's at least reason to believe that Pinto isn't a complete disaster behind the plate. Assuming that the Twins promote him to full-season competition at low Single-A this year we should get a much clearer picture of Pinto's bat and glove.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-01-29T00:03:00.012-06:00

Twins Notes: Liriano, Neshek, Winfree, and McLemore

Earlier this month Ron Gardenhire passed along a report he received from the Dominican Republic saying that Francisco Liriano was "throwing the living fire out of the ball" with his fastball around 92-94 miles per hour and a "filthy" slider. Two winters ago Gardenhire passed along similar reports of Liriano "letting it fly" at 93-96 miles per hour "free and easy" while coming back from Tommy John surgery, yet he arrived at spring training throwing in the high-80s and was basically a mess.

So there were good reasons to be skeptical about third-hand reports of Liriano's velocity in winter ball this time around, particularly after he went 5-13 with a 5.80 ERA in 136.2 innings last season. However, my skepticism has faded because his numbers in the Dominican Republic are insanely good and last night he dominated while starting the final game of the league's World Series. And as an added bonus the game was broadcast online by ESPN, so those third-hand reports are no longer really needed.

First let's talk about the stats, which prior to last night included a 0.82 ERA and 54-to-7 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 43.2 innings. Whether his fastball was 85 or 95 those numbers are impossible to ignore. And it turns out last night showed that reports about his velocity were pretty accurate (assuming the radar gun used was based somewhat in reality). He tossed five innings of one-hit, shutout ball while racking up 10 strikeouts, was regularly clocked at 93-95 mph, and unleashed some wicked high-80s sliders.

To say that Liriano looked like the pre-surgery phenom who was baseball's best pitcher in 2006 would be hyperbole, but for one night at least he certainly looked closer to that guy than the one who averaged under 91 mph with his fastball for the past two seasons and constantly struggled just to throw strikes. Ultimately the real test will come when he faces MLB lineups, but he faced plenty of major leaguers in the DWL and his video game-like stats match the glowing reports. Skepticism is turning into optimism.

MLB.com's Kelly Thesier reports that Pat Neshek is "a little anxious" but "on track to be ready for the start of spring training" 14 months after Tommy John surgery. "I just want to face hitters to see where I'm at and get that in my head," Neshek said. "I want to face hitters to give me that total confidence back. Right now it feels like I'm killing time waiting for that to happen." Prior to going down in May of 2008 he had a 2.91 ERA with 143 strikeouts and a .188 opponents' batting average in 121 innings.

After signing Clay Condrey the Twins have six relievers as locks for the Opening Day roster, so even if they go with a 12-man pitching staff that leaves just a single spot for Neshek or one of the losers of the fifth-starter competition. And that assumes they won't sign Jarrod Washburn. In other words, healthy or not I'd say there's a decent chance Neshek will begin the season on the disabled list if only to give the Twins some extra time to sort out the pitching staff.

David Winfree was the Twins' minor league player of the year in 2005, but in the four seasons since then he failed to improve his plate discipline while sliding down the defensive spectrum, and now after seven years in the organization the former 13th-round pick has signed with the Yankees. I'm not sure if the Twins were even interested in keeping him around, but certainly Winfree's odds of reaching the big leagues with the Yankees have decreased. He'll probably be a part-time player for them at Triple-A.

Winfree once ranked as high as 13th on my annual list of the Twins' top prospects, but dropped to 27th in 2008 and 28th last season. He may have squeaked onto the list again this year, but it's tough to fault the Twins for letting him go. While a .275 hitter with good power and bad plate discipline is intriguing in a teenage third baseman, the exact same skill set in a 24-year-old corner outfielder who failed to show an ounce of improvement for five years is a much different story.

He has excellent power that's been masked somewhat by pitcher-friendly environments throughout the Twins' system, but that plus his age are about the only positives left on his resume at this point and it's tough to see Winfree developing into more than a platoon guy in the majors. His on-base percentages, by year: .329, .323, .308, .319, .317. His slugging percentages, by year: .452, .478, .426, .450, .460. And for his career Winfree has averaged 35 walks and 113 strikeouts per 600 plate appearances. Oh well.

Winfree becomes minor-league filler for the Yankees and the Twins added some Triple-A depth of their own by signing Mark McLemore to a minor-league deal. Not to be confused with the switch-hitter who played 19 seasons in the majors, this Mark McLemore is a 29-year-old left-hander who missed all of 2008 following Tommy John elbow surgery and struggled at Triple-A for the Astros in his return. Even before the injury his numbers were mediocre, so he'll likely compete for a rotation spot at Rochester.

Yahoo! Sports put together a directory of Twins blogs as part of Big League Stew's ongoing series, showing again why my blogging career would be much different had my parents named me something that didn't begin with back-to-back A's. It got me first in line for french toast sticks in elementary school and now it gets me first in line for links.

Lastly, my annual series ranking and profiling the Twins' top 40 prospects starts Monday with 36-40, unless of course they make a big move over the weekend or something. Oh, and Link-O-Rama returns next week too, because my hard drive can only store so many bookmarked Mila Kunis photo shoots.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-01-27T00:05:00.000-06:00

Twins Sign Jim Thome To One-Year Deal

As the legendary Ron Burgundy once said: "Boy, that escalated quickly."

Just days after rumors started swirling about the Twins' interest in Jim Thome, the two sides agreed to a one-year deal worth $1.5 million in guaranteed money and another $750,000 in potential incentives. At that price the signing is an absolute no-brainer move for the Twins and should end any debate about whether he's a worthwhile addition. Now the biggest question revolves around Thome's role, which the Twins insisted yesterday will be fairly minimal.

Bill Smith, Ron Gardenhire, and company really like the notion of having Thome available off the bench as pinch-hitter in the late innings. And they ought to, because the guy topped an .840 OPS last year for the 16th time in 17 seasons. Of course, as long as they're shifting players into unnecessarily limited roles Joe Mauer would probably be an even better pinch-hitter, Denard Span would likely be a fantastic pinch-runner, and Scott Baker would surely fare well as a long reliever.

All of which is a long way of saying that Thome is still far too dangerous offensively to limit him strictly to pinch-hitting duties. Against right-handed pitching he hit .262/.383/.498 last season and .274/.402/.551 over the past three years, which is basically the same as Justin Morneau's production versus righties during that span. Seriously. Morneau hit .272/.379/.526 against righties last season and .293/.385/.529 from 2007-2009, which is at most marginally better than Thome's numbers.

Now, he's 39 years old and has certainly declined from his MVP-caliber peak as a 1.000-OPS monster, so some further slippage can be expected from Thome in 2010, but the notion that he's just another in the line of washed-up veterans to join the Twins via free agency is silly. He's only an emergency option at first base and has always struggled with lefties, but remains a legit middle-of-the-order bat versus righties. So why are the Twins indicating that he'll be used merely as a bench bat? Delmon Young.

By trading Carlos Gomez to the Brewers for J.J. Hardy the Twins committed to Young as their starting left fielder. Certainly giving a 24-year-old everyday playing time is a good idea for his development, but the problem is that Young has done nothing to warrant that many at-bats and has been vastly inferior to Thome against right-handed pitching. In fact, Thome's mediocre-for-him 2009 numbers beat Young's career line versus righties by 66 points of on-base percentage and 102 points of slugging percentage.

That's an awful lot of production to forfeit in the name of aiding the development of a guy who's been an absolutely terrible all-around player through 1,851 plate appearances in the majors, so my hope is that Gardenhire eventually sees the benefit of getting Thome into the lineup regularly against righties, using him at DH while Jason Kubel shifts to left field and Young goes to the bench. That would significantly upgrade the lineup and Young is a horrible defensive left fielder anyway, so there's no big dropoff there.

One of the criticisms that I've seen lobbed at the Thome signing is that he does nothing to address the infield, where right now Nick Punto and Brendan Harris are the projected starters at second and third base. While true, those are separate issues and paying Thome about $1 million beyond the minimum salary can't possibly change their plans that much. If they were going to make a run at Orlando Hudson or Felipe Lopez they still can and if they weren't then at least adding Thome improves them elsewhere.

Another criticism is that Thome adds to what was already an overly left-handed offense. There's some truth to that, yet for all their lefty bats last season the Twins had a higher OPS against lefties (.785) than righties (.768) and even I'm not advising Thome take starts away from Young versus southpaws. Plus, with as few as four lefty starters and zero lefty closers on the AL Central's other four teams the division is a place where a lineup stacked with Denard Span, Mauer, Morneau, Kubel, and Thome can thrive.

Even if they stick to the stated plan of using Thome off the bench he's worth the modest investment, in part because he can still do plenty of damage in a couple hundred at-bats and in part because should Morneau, Kubel, or Michael Cuddyer get hurt the Twins now have a viable replacement. However, the potential is there for Thome to make a much bigger impact if the Twins are willing to give him a sizable chunk of Young's starts versus righties. Give him 350 plate appearances and this can be a great move.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-01-26T17:12:00.004-06:00

Report: Twins Sign Jim Thome

Kelsie Smith of the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports that the Twins have agreed to terms with Jim Thome on an incentive-laden one-year contract. As noted yesterday when the whole thing was merely in rumor stage I'm in favor of bringing in Thome, but I'll have a full breakdown of the move here tomorrow. And if you can't wait until then, I'll be talking Twins (and Thome) at around 7:30 tonight with Joe Anderson on KSTP-1500 radio. Click here to listen online.

2010-01-25T00:05:00.001-06:00

Twins "Have Real Interest" In Signing Jim Thome

Friday morning a rumor was circulating out of Chicago that the Twins were close to signing Jim Thome and when Joe Christensen of the Minneapolis Star Tribune did a bit of digging he surprisingly found that there was actually some fire behind the smoke:

I called a Twins official, expecting to hear that this is totally far-fetched, and turns out they do have real interest in Thome and haven't ruled out their chances of signing him. Probably not today, mind you, but it's getting late in the offseason and the prices for free agents are falling fast. The Twins are bargain hunting, and if Thome were to accept a bench role at a severely reduced price--he made $13 million last year--there could be a match.

Obviously that's a long way from "close to signing," but it's intriguing nonetheless. At first glance you'd think that the 39-year-old Thome would be just another name on the long list of over-the-hill veterans the Twins have brought in via free agency, but there's a big difference: Thome is still a very dangerous hitter. He batted .249/.366/.481 with 23 homers in 434 plate appearances last season, topping an .800 OPS for the 16th time in 17 seasons, and hit .265/.391/.542 during his four years with the White Sox.

Thome hasn't played first base regularly since 2005 and didn't see a single inning defensively in either of the past two seasons, but the fact that he's strictly a designated hitter at this point matters little with Justin Morneau around. His other big flaw is a career-long weakness against left-handed pitching, but while the Twins' lineup is certainly very heavy on lefty bats their OPS against righties (.768) was actually slightly worse than their OPS against lefties (.785) last season. They aren't that unbalanced.

Thome isn't going to help much versus lefties, but he crushed righties to the tune of .274/.402/.551 over the past three seasons, including .262/.383/.498 last year. To put that into some context, consider that Morneau hit .272/.379/.526 against righties last season and .293/.385/.529 from 2007-2009. So yes, he can't play defense or hit lefties, but when facing righties Thome has essentially been as productive as Morneau. If platooned at DH versus righties Thome would be a huge upgrade to the Twins' lineup.

However, that would mean shifting Jason Kubel from DH to left field while benching Delmon Young. Both moves would be just fine with me, because Kubel is no worse than Young defensively and Young platooning against lefties is about as much playing time as his performance has warranted so far, but my guess is that the Twins think differently. In fact, Christensen suggests that if signed Thome would serve merely in "a bench role."

He'd certainly beef up the bench and provide Ron Gardenhire with an interesting late-inning option, but then again so would Joe Mauer if for some odd reason the Twins ceased starting him. In other words, Thome hits right-handed pitching too well not to start against them, particularly when the alternative is Young with his career .317 on-base percentage and .396 slugging percentage versus righties. Thome is a decent bet to top those marks by at least 50 points of OBP and 100 points of SLG.

Right now the Twins will have Young in left field and Kubel at DH against righties, but having Thome at DH, Kubel in left field, and Young on the bench would make them a superior team for those 100 or so games. Whether or not Thome is willing to take a one-year contract for modest money and whether or not the Twins are able to recognize that he shouldn't be limited to a bench role are big questions, but if the answer to both is yes then there's no doubt that Thome would significantly improve the offense.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-01-22T00:05:00.000-06:00

Twins Avoid Arbitration With All Eight Eligible Players

Despite having an MLB-high eight players eligible for salary arbitration this year the Twins will avoid the process altogether after agreeing to pre-hearing contracts with Carl Pavano, J.J. Hardy, Matt Guerrier, Delmon Young, Francisco Liriano, Jesse Crain, Brendan Harris, and Pat Neshek. The vast majority of arbitration-eligible players never get to a hearing because submitted figures are typically close enough for a compromise near the midpoint and neither side wants to engage in what can be an ugly process.

Pavano is a special case in that he's actually a free agent who accepted the Twins' arbitration offer last month, guaranteeing a return to Minnesota via a one-year deal at a price to be determined later. At the time my prediction was that he'd get "at least $6 million" and he ended up accepting $7 million, so the only surprising aspect is the contract including zero incentives for the oft-injured starter. Essentially the Twins signed him to a one-year, $7 million deal and can offer Pavano arbitration again next winter.

Hardy gets the second-highest salary at $5 million, which was exactly my guess at the time of the trade with Milwaukee. He'll be arbitration eligible again next season and then becomes a free agent. Guerrier gets $3.15 million in his final year before free agency, which is perhaps $500,000 more than expected. Young gets $2.6 million, which is a ton for a player's first crack at arbitration and suggests that he'll be very expensive in 2011 and 2012 whether his production improves or not.

Liriano getting $1.6 million for his first year of arbitration is also steep, whereas Neshek signed for just $625,000 in his first round of eligibility. Crain made $1.75 million in 2009 as part of a three-year, $3.25 million deal signed before he was even arbitration eligible, and he'll earn $2 million in his final season before free agency. And last but not least is Harris, who unlike the other seven arbitration-eligible guys avoided the process by agreeing to a two-year contract worth $3.2 million plus incentives.

Because this is Harris' first season of arbitration eligibility I'm unclear why the Twins would bother with a two-year deal. He was already under team control through 2012 anyway, so like Crain now that his three-year contract has expired Harris will still be arbitration eligible when the two-year pact is finished. Signing him for two years gives the Twins cost certainty, but Harris is hardly a threat to earn a big raise following a breakout and there's room to question whether they should even want him around in 2011.

He's been disappointing offensively and defensively since being included in the Young-for-Matt Garza swap two offseasons ago, hitting .263/.319/.379 in 943 plate appearances while proving to be a liability at shortstop and second base. He's been productive against left-handed pitching with a .303/.360/.425 line over the past three seasons and has a solid glove at third base, but with awful range up the middle and a .257/.313/.387 mark against righties I'm not sure why they needed to lock Harris in for 2011.

In all the Twins committed about $25 million to their eight arbitration-eligible players, raising the overall payroll commitment for 2010 to approximately $90 million. That represents a huge increase over their $65 million payroll last year, but a) with the new ballpark opening in April that was expected, and b) the payroll was already as high as $72 million in 2007. My hope is that there's still enough room to add an infielder for about $5 million since they're apparently willing to waste that much on Jarrod Washburn.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-01-20T00:02:00.000-06:00

Twins Bullpen Nearly Set After Condrey Signing

They haven't done much so far this offseason, but last week the Twins made a pair of corresponding bullpen moves by releasing Bobby Keppel and signing Clay Condrey to a one-year contract. Condrey made $650,000 in 2009 and was arbitration eligible for the first time, but the Phillies non-tendered the 34-year-old right-hander last month rather than risk paying him about $1 million. He got $900,000 from the Twins and Keppel, who never deserved a call-up in the first place, signed with a team in Japan.

Condrey's path to the majors was a unique one. Undrafted after playing college ball at McNeese State, Condrey was 22 years old and working as an electrician in Texas when his father suggested he attend a tryout advertised in the local newspaper. He was impressive enough to earn a call-back and received offers from 11 teams following his second throwing session, opting to sign with San Diego for a $500 bonus being offered by former Padres scout and current Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein.

Condrey made his big-league debut as a 26-year-old in 2002 and spent parts of two seasons with the Padres, posting a 5.49 ERA in 61 innings split between the rotation and bullpen. Traded to the Phillies in the spring of 2004, he spent the next two seasons at Triple-A before making it back to the majors in early 2006. In both 2006 and 2007 he frequently went back and forth from Triple-A to Philadelphia while being dropped from the 40-man roster and going unclaimed on waivers several times.

His first full season in the majors came in 2008, at age 32, and he also stuck with the Phillies for all of last year, although Condrey spent most of the second half on the disabled list with a strained oblique. Strictly a reliever in parts of four seasons in Philadelphia, he appeared in 161 games with a 3.45 ERA, .290 opponents' batting average, and 102-to-58 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 190 innings. While the ERA is nice, a .290 opponents' batting average and just 102 strikeouts in 190 innings are hardly stellar.

With that said, Condrey's walk rate is misleadingly high because 16 of 58 free passes were intentional, and he's a sinker-slider pitcher who allowed just 17 homers in 827 plate appearances and induced a ground ball on 51.3 percent of his balls in play. Not only would that have been the highest ground-ball rate on the Twins last year, Keppel was the only pitcher on the staff above even 47 percent. And unlike Keppel, Condrey throws strikes and has a history of big-league success.

Condrey has a 4.43 career xFIP, including marks of 4.02, 4.81, 4.37, and 4.01 in the past four seasons, which would make him a serviceable middle reliever. Given that modest upside and the fact that he's 34 years old I'm not sure the Twins really needed to sign Condrey, because if Pat Neshek comes back healthy the bullpen was already going to be plenty crowded and they also have prospects like Anthony Slama and Robert Delaney waiting in the wings for an opportunity.

On the other hand the price is right, Condrey is definitely a capable middle reliever, and going to spring training with too many useful bullpen arms is usually a nice problem to have. Assuming a 12-man staff the bullpen locks are Condrey, Joe Nathan, Jon Rauch, Matt Guerrier, Jose Mijares, and Jesse Crain, seemingly leaving one spot for a healthy Neshek or the loser of a fifth-starter competition. That's a very solid group, particularly if Neshek comes back with anything resembling his previous effectiveness.

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2010-01-18T00:05:00.000-06:00

Twins Notes: Catching Up

Between the holidays and magazine-making hibernation I've been a bad blogger lately, so while things get back to normal in this space here's my attempt to catch up on some Twins stuff I've neglected ...

Mike Redmond made it clear that he planned to keep playing at age 39 despite the Twins making no effort to re-sign their longtime backup catcher and sure enough he found a new home with the Indians. After trading Victor Martinez and Kelly Shoppach the Indians are slated to go with Lou Marson as their starting catcher, so Redmond will mentor the 24-year-old rookie while likely seeing a bit more playing time than he got with the Twins when Joe Mauer was healthy.

Jose Morales' presence was behind the Twins' willingness to let Redmond leave as a free agent and that was a sound decision, but now Morales will be sidelined for 6-8 weeks following surgery to repair a strained tendon in his right wrist. Opening Day is still about three months away, so barring setbacks Morales should have enough time to enter the season as Mauer's new backup, but any recovery delays may lead to Drew Butera spending some time on the roster and he's hit .214/.296/.316 in the minors.

Speaking of 39-year-old former Twins, Eddie Guardado will try for an 18th season in the majors after signing a minor-league deal with the Nationals. Guardado barely managed more strikeouts than walks for the Rangers last season and hasn't had an xFIP below 5.00 since 2006, but he certainly picked the right bullpen to eek out one more year. As always, MLB.com provided an amusing, team-approved spin on the signing:

The Nationals continue to be busy this offseason, and they are set to sign left-hander Eddie Guardado, according to a baseball source. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. The Nationals have been interested in Guardado, 39, since the Winter Meetings. According to the source, team scouts told general manager Mike Rizzo that Guardado would be a big help to the club. Rizzo was unavailable for comment.

If they ever make a sequel to All the President's Men about a 39-year-old reliever inking a minor-league deal with a 100-loss team, the MLB.com story can serve as the source material and Bill Ladson can be this generation's Woodward and Bernstein. Just to recap: An unnamed "baseball source" revealed that "team scouts" informed a general manager a player "would be a big help to the club" and then the GM "was unavailable for comment." Guardadogate, perhaps? "Get out your notebook. There's more."

Like every year since 1998 the Baseball Writers Association of America failed to elect Bert Blyleven to the Hall of Fame, but the big difference this time is that with 74.2 percent of the vote he's a near-lock to crack the 75-percent barrier for induction on the next ballot. In the past I've been a strong supporter of his candidacy and continue to believe he's a clear Hall of Famer, but you won't see me stumping on his behalf because a) the BBWAA has turned me off to anything they vote on, and b) Blyleven is a hypocrite.

When it comes to evaluating his own performance Blyleven is quick to turn the attention away from his win-loss record, choosing instead to quote strikeout-to-walk ratio, WHIP, or even adjusted ERA+ while noting that his teams often failed to provide decent run support. And he's absolutely correct to do so. Unfortunately in his role as Twins television announcer when it comes to evaluating any other pitcher's performance he's just as quick to focus on wins and losses while ignoring all that other stuff.

Asked last week how Francisco Liriano has looked pitching winter ball in the Dominican Republic, Ron Gardenhire said:

I just got a report that he's throwing the living fire out of the ball down in the Dominican. He threw eight innings the other day, and his fastball was 92 to 94 [miles per hour] and his slider was filthy.

Liriano has indeed been impressive in the Dominican Republic, starting seven times with a minuscule ERA and 41-to-4 strikeout-to-walk ratio. However, when it comes to passing along third-hand reports about Liriano's velocity Gardenhire isn't exactly a trustworthy source. Two winters ago, as Liriano was making his way back from Tommy John elbow surgery, Gardenhire shared the following report on his throwing sessions at the Twins' academy in the Dominican Republic:

He's letting it fly. He threw two innings at the academy and they said he was averaging 93 [miles per hour] and throwing it up to 96. Free and easy.

If you replace "letting it fly" and "free and easy" with "throwing the living fire out of the ball" and "filthy" it's basically the same quote. In reality Liriano arrived at spring training throwing in the high-80s and was the furthest thing from "letting it fly" or "free and easy," at which point third-hand reports relayed to the media by Gardenhire ceased having any credibility. This time the glowing reports are paired with some data, so perhaps the 2010 version will prove more accurate than the 2008 version, but I'm skeptical.

BizOfBaseball.com's Maury Brown compiled payroll data from 2000-2009 and found that the Twins ranked 25th in spending for the decade. Given that fact a .533 winning percentage and five playoff trips during that time is plenty impressive, although less so when you consider that the other four teams in the AL Central ranked 14th, 17th, 19th, and 26th in 2000-2009 payroll. For the decade the Twins' payroll was 33 percent below average and about $1.3 billion (yes, billion) lower than the top-ranked Yankees.

At the winter meetings last month the Twins reportedly offered Glen Perkins to the Padres for Kevin Kouzmanoff, who was traded to the A's over the weekend for Scott Hairston and Aaron Cunningham. I'm far from a huge Kouzmanoff fan, but he's certainly worth more than just Perkins at this point and the Padres ended up getting a better return from the A's. In writing about the Kouzmanoff trade and Perkins' future with the Twins, LaVelle E. Neal III of the Minneapolis Star Tribune opined:

To the Twins' credit, they didn't add more. Perkins and Kouzmanoff are similar players in that they are still looking for their breakthrough season. Suggestions that the Twins should have added Alexi Casilla to the deal are crazy.

Neal's paragraph consists of 38 words and I disagree with all of them. Kouzmanoff is a more valuable player than Perkins and the Twins have more use for a third baseman than a fifth starter, so why they deserve "credit" for not adding more to the offer is beyond me. In particular, the notion that it would be "crazy" to package Alexi Casilla with Perkins is ... well, crazy. Casilla will turn 26 years old this season and has hit .244/.301/.314 through 243 games in the majors after batting .278/.352/.350 at Triple-A.

He's not a great defender or base-stealer, and aside from a 50-game stretch in 2008 there's nothing to suggest that his bat will be starting caliber. If the Twins thought dealing Perkins for Kouzmanoff made sense they should almost certainly have been willing to toss in Casilla, who has no clear role for 2010 and dwindling upside. Of course, Neal apparently doesn't think much of Kouzmanoff if he equates him to Perkins as "similar players in that they are still looking for their breakthrough season."

In reality Perkins has a 4.73 ERA and arm problems have limited him to just 281.2 career innings while Kouzmanoff has already been a solidly above-average starting third baseman for three full seasons in the majors and has hit .285/.327/.474 away from pitcher-friendly Petco Park. Not only is he better than and in no way similar to Perkins, there's a reasonable shot that Kouzmanoff has already accumulated more value than Perkins and Casilla will combine for in their entire careers. But hey, maybe I'm crazy.

Whether or not the Twins end up trading Perkins, my hope is that they trust the in-house candidates for the final rotation spot rather than wasting money on Jarrod Washburn, who reportedly turned down their $5 million offer recently. Washburn is an overrated 35-year-old coming off knee surgery and they'd be far better off investing in an infielder while letting their various younger, cheaper fifth-starter options battle for the job. Shouldn't they have learned something from Livan Hernandez and Ramon Ortiz?

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2010-01-13T00:05:00.004-06:00

Guest Blogger: Chris Jaffe on Tom Kelly

I'm at the Beckett Media offices in Dallas putting the finishing touches on Rotoworld's annual baseball magazine, so in my absence here's a special treat. The following is an excerpt about Tom Kelly from friend of AG.com Chris Jaffe's new book, "Evaluating Baseball's Managers, 1876-2008." Not only is he a really nice guy, Jaffe has done a tremendous amount of work analyzing managers throughout history and if you enjoy his take on the Twins' former skipper the whole book is a must-read. Enjoy ...

Tom Kelly

W/L Record: 1,140-1,244 (.478)

Managed:

Full Seasons: Minnesota 1987-2001

Majority in: (none)

Minority of: Minnesota 1986

Birnbaum Database: +75 runs

Individual Hitters: -107 runs

Individual Pitchers: -249 runs

Pythagenpat Difference: +96 runs

Team Offense: +80 runs

Team Defense: +255 runs

Team Characteristics: By most metrics, his teams had outstanding defenses. (Defensive Efficiency Ratio finds them average, but that could be a park effect). His offenses centered on contact hitters who slapped out singles. He had little use for power hitters, and even less for bunts or the hit and run. His pitching staffs based their game on control.

Several years ago, ESPN.com columnist Rob Neyer invented the Beane Count in honor of Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane’s teams, which excelled at walks and home runs on both sides of the game. Tom Kelly’s Twins took a different approach to baseball, eschewing the things that brought success to Oakland’s early twenty-first century clubs. When the Tendencies Database gets a hold of the Beane Count’s four categories (all adjusted per plate appearances or innings pitched), these are baseball’s most anti-Beane Count managers:

Least Interest in Beane Count

Tom Kelly 4.907

Burt Shotton 4.533

Jimmy Dykes 4.529

Fred Hutchinson 4.516

Jimmy McAleer 4.505

Kelly wins in a rout. Actually, that understates his tendencies because Kelly’s pitching staffs were terrific at avoiding walks. With the remaining three components, Kelly scores nearly well enough (4.320) to crack the above list.

He was content to punt homers with Minnesota. After 1987, no Twin ever hit 30 homers in a season for Kelly, while baseball’s other teams had 342 different 30-home run performances from 1988-2001. In only two of his fifteen seasons in Minnesota did the Twins hit more home runs than they allowed, both times by the narrowest of margins (151 to 146 in 1988, and 140 to 139 in 1991). From 1987-2001, Tom Kelly’s Twins allowed 2,612 homers while blasting 1,902, which amounts to a home run differential of nearly -47 per season.

For context, fewer than 130 teams (out of 2,500+) in baseball history have been -47 or worse in a season. Kelly’s -710 homer differential is the worst in baseball history. Only one other manager (Jimmy Dykes) is below -400. Here are the worst single season homer differentials in baseball history:

Year Team HR Dif. Manager

1996 MIN -115 HR Tom Kelly

1999 MIN -103 HR Tom Kelly

2000 MIN -96 HR Tom Kelly

1995 MIN -90 HR Tom Kelly

2006 KCR -89 HR Buddy Bell

2000 KCR -89 HR Tony Muser

A clear pattern exists. Please note 1995 was not a full season due to a labor stoppage.

Those homer differentials reflect not only the available talent, but also Kelly’s coaching tendencies. Former Twins’ prospect David Ortiz once gave an interview explaining why his power erupted when he came to the Red Sox. He noted that in the minors his plate approach focused on hitting for power but when he came to Minnesota, they wanted him to shorten up his swing and approach the game the way everyone else on the team did. Thus a man with a pair of 30 home run seasons in the minors hit only one every nine games with the Twins. Upon arrival in Boston they let him go back to his old ways, and his homers, walks, and strikeouts all rose.

That story reveals the downside to Tom Kelly’s managing, as he could be too inflexible for his (or the team’s) own good. While Kelly was the worst manager for the David Ortizes of the world, he was not a net negative on the job. Kelly had a losing record in his career, but that was due to Minnesota’s rosters. In the Birnbaum Database his score of +78 runs seems merely decent, but when circumstances are accounted for, he rises up.

To compare: Kelly had +78 runs in 2,384 games with a .478 winning percentage while John McNamara scored at –174 runs in 2,415 games and a .484 winning percentage. The cigar-smoking Kelly had won four minor league manager of the year titles before getting his shot at the big league level.

Kelly punted Beane Count stats because his frame of reference centered on balls in play. The Twins were a difficult team to fan under Kelly. For example, from 1990-93 the squad struck out 795 times per year. Other AL teams averaged over 900 whiffs per season during this span. Several players had their strikeout rates drop under Kelly. These improvements were consistent, though rarely dramatic. Gary Gaetti, Greg Gagne, and Corey Koskie were free swingers in their careers, yet none fanned quite as regularly under Kelly as they did away from him. The tendency was especially noteworthy with Kent Hrbek. The burly first baseman routinely had 80-90 whiffs a year, but once Kelly arrived he never had more than 60.

A man who fanned more than once every seven at bats spent the rest of his career going down that way only one in nine times. Even Paul Molitor, who ended his 21-year career under Kelly, had his best single season strikeout rate under Kelly. From 1987-2001, no Twin struck out more than 130 times for him. The other AL teams had it happen to them on 112 occasions. Kelly’s Twins made contact and legged out hits. In the Tendencies Database, Kelly had a higher score with batting average than Joe McCarthy (0.730 to 0.737).

With his kind of player, Kelly could be quite effective. Brian Harper was Kelly’s kind of player. A back up journeyman catcher, Harper underwhelmed baseball by combining substandard defense with an inability to slug or work the count. Kelly focused on what Harper could do – put the ball in play – and made him Minnesota’s starting catcher. From 1988-93, in what should have been Harper’s declining years, he developed into one of the game’s best-hitting catchers, posting a .306 batting average while fanning once every twenty at bats.

However, it would be wrong to consider Tom Kelly a smallball manager. He had no interest in the hit and run, for example. While a manager like Casey Stengel instinctively monitored the game to avoid possible double play situations, Kelly stoically resigned himself to double plays as a cost of doing business. In the 1990s, only thirteen teams hit into 150 double plays. Kelly managed five of them, and his 1999 Twins had 149. In 1996, the Twins grounded into 172, the second highest total in baseball history. As a result, double plays hurt Kelly more than any other manager in history. If you take team DP and GIDP, and give them the Mauch adjustments, here are the worst career double play differentials:

Worst Double Play Differentials

Tom Kelly -278 double plays

Mayo Smith -222 double plays

Joe Torre -210 double plays

Mel Ott -189 double plays

Bruce Bochy -184 double plays

Kelly possesses a sizable lead.

When it came to run prevention, Kelly was a practitioner of the classic Comiskey philosophy of throwing strikes and playing sound defense. At the end of his career, he had one of the greatest defensive outfields of all-time with the “Soul Patrol” of Torii Hunter, Jacque Jones, and Matt Lawton. The same squad had Gold Glover Doug Mientkiewicz at first. Ten of Kelly’s teams were in the top four in fielding percentage. Twice they led the league in Fielding Win Shares, and were runner up two other times.

A manager can get away with minimizing the Beane Count approach by maximizing his team’s quality on balls in play. Even more than defense, though, control pitching typified Kelly’s squads. Ten times they were in the top four in the AL in fewest walks per nine innings. The league averaged 3.5BB/9IP, but Kelly’s Twins stayed under that every year except 1995. In the two dozen times someone threw at least 200 innings for him, nine times the hurler allowed less than two walks every nine innings.

This combination of solid defense with splendid control pitching allowed Kelly to minimize the importance of hurlers who blew opponents away. None of Kelly’s starting pitchers ever struck out 200 batters in a season; rather unusual for a late twentieth-century manager. Only one-third of the pitchers who qualified for an ERA title under his watch struck out batters at a superior rate to the league as a whole. This fits into the philosophy pioneered by Comiskey and perfected by McKechnie: defense plus control equals less need for power pitching. Brad Radke was the ultimate Tom Kelly pitcher. He never struck fear in anyone’s heart but he was durable and had great control. In 2001 he walked 1.04BB/9IP, the second lowest total by an American League pitcher since Walter Johnson.

With his lack of interest in the long ball and offensive walks, Kelly appeared to be a man from another era as the game’s power numbers surged in the 1990s. Apparently Kelly thought so, because he voluntarily retired after 2001, despite only being 51 years old. In all baseball history, only one other person with at least 2,000 games managed who never served as a player-manager left at such a young age – Frank Selee, a century earlier. And that was not voluntary, Selee was dying.

Click here for more information on Chris Jaffe's new book, "Evaluating Baseball's Managers, 1876-2008."

2010-01-11T00:05:00.000-06:00

Top 40 Minnesota Twins: #33 Greg Gagne

GREGORY CHRISTOPHER GAGNE | SS | 1983-1992 | CAREER STATS
 
   G       PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     OPS+    WARP     WS
1140     3695     .249     .292     .385      83     21.1     88

About a week into the 1982 season the cost-cutting Twins traded starting shortstop Roy Smalley to the Yankees for All-Star setup man Ron Davis, Paul Boris, and a 20-year-old prospect named Greg Gagne. Davis was considered the big name coming back to Minnesota, but he flopped in the closer role while Gagne ended up being the real find as Smalley's eventual replacement. He spent 1982 hitting poorly at Double-A, but the former fifth-round pick from Massachusetts bounced back at Triple-A in 1983.

Gagne batted .255/.323/.462 with 17 homers in 119 games there as a 21-year-old and also got his first tastes of the big leagues with a brief stint in June as an injury replacement and a September call-up. He went just 3-for-27 (.111) and found himself at Triple-A again in 1984. Gagne put together another strong season there, hitting .280/.374/.441 with nine homers in 70 games, but didn't make it back to Minnesota until rosters expanded in September and merely sat on the bench once he got there.

Tired of trotting out guys like Ron Washington, Houston Jimenez, and Lenny Faedo, the Twins turned to the 23-year-old Gagne as their starting shortstop in 1985. He hit just .225/.279/.317 with two homers in 114 games as a rookie and missed time with injuries in May and August. In his absence the Twins turned to Smalley, who had come back in a trade that offseason. Back problems forced Smalley to be a designated hitter in 1986 and the Twins went with Gagne on a full-time basis at shortstop.

He came up with a solid sophomore campaign, hitting .250/.301/.398 with 12 homers in 156 games to rank 11th among all major-league shortstops in Value Over Replacement Player. In the second-to-last game of the season, Gagne hit inside-the-park homers in each of his first two at-bats against Chicago starter Floyd Bannister, and then smacked a triple off reliever Gene Nelson in his third at-bat to come 90 feet short of an all-time record.

After committing an AL-worst 26 errors in 1986, Gagne had a team record 47-game errorless streak in 1987. He also hit .265/.310/.430 with 10 homers in 137 games as the Twins defeated the Tigers in the ALCS and beat the Cardinals in the World Series. Gagne hit just .229 in 12 postseason games, but had three homers and four doubles, drove in six runs, scored 10 times, and delivered a sixth-inning single that drove Tom Brunansky in as the go-ahead run in Game 7 of the World Series.

Gagne had three fairly mediocre years from 1988-1990, and then hit .265/.310/.395 as the Twins once again won the World Series in 1991. This time Gagne hit just .195 in 12 postseason games and had just one homer, but it was a big one. With the Twins clinging to a 1-0 lead in the fifth inning of Game 1 against Atlanta, Gagne launched a three-run homer off Charlie Leibrandt that provided all the breathing room Jack Morris needed in a 5-2 win.

Gagne became a free agent after batting .246/.280/.346 in 1992 and signed a three-year contract with Kansas City. He gave the Royals three solid years and then finished up his 15-year career with two seasons in the NL playing for the Dodgers. Gagne retired at 35 years old and was a starting shortstop in the major leagues from the moment the Twins handed him the job in 1985 to the moment he hung up the spikes in 1997, logging nearly 15,000 innings at the position.

Researching these rankings has changed my opinion of Gagne's career more than any other Twins player. My only real memories of him in a Twins uniform were from 1991 and 1992, and my primary experience seeing him play came after he departed as a free agent. By that point Gagne was on the downside of his career and shortstops were starting to put up numbers that made his .249/.292/.385 line with the Twins look pathetic.

However, take a closer look back at Gagne's decade in Minnesota and you'll discover a player who was more valuable than his paltry .677 OPS suggests. Perhaps the biggest key to seeing Gagne's value is in understanding the difference between baseball today and baseball in the 1980s. Not only is offense in general up significantly since then, players like Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Miguel Tejada, and Nomar Garciaparra revolutionized the way we look at shortstops.

Meanwhile, during Gagne's time with the Twins the average shortstop hit a measly .252/.309/.346. For comparison, since 2000 the average MLB shortstop has hit .270/.325/.400. That may not seem like a huge difference, but it is. For overall offensive production, that's a gap of about 10 percent. If you take Gagne's career numbers with the Twins and add 10 percent to them, and you get something along the lines of .275/.320/.425. Jimmy Rollins is a career .274/.330/.439 hitter.

He still doesn't exactly light up a stat sheet, but those adjusted numbers are a lot more palatable. And then you have his defense, which was excellent regardless of era. He never won a Gold Glove, as Alan Trammell and Tony Fernandez dominated the award in the 1980s, but Gagne is generally considered the best defensive shortstop in Twins history and Baseball Prospectus rates him as eight runs above average per 150 games in Minnesota (more advanced metrics aren't really available that far back).

Despite the speed and athleticism that gave him range defensively Gagne was a horrible base-stealer. Historically bad, in fact. He was 79-for-134 (59 percent) for the Twins and no one else in team history with 50 steals is under 60 percent. And he was even worse after leaving, stealing 29 bags while being thrown out 41 times, including going 10-for-27 in 1994. Seriously. Overall he was 108-for-204, which at 53 percent is the second-worst rate ever among players who attempted 200 steals, behind Lou Gehrig.

TOP 25 ALL-TIME MINNESOTA TWINS RANKS:
 
Triples             35      9th
Games             1140     11th
Steals              79     12th
Doubles            183     14th
Hits               844     16th
Runs               452     16th
Total Bases       1304     16th
Extra-Base Hits    287     17th
Times On Base     1060     24th

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2010-01-08T10:40:00.002-06:00

Top 40 Minnesota Twins: #34 Matt Lawton

MATTHEW LAWTON III | LF/CF/RF | 1995-2001 | CAREER STATS
 
   G       PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     OPS+    WARP     WS
 771     3150     .277     .379     .428     107     23.3     87

Drafted in the 13th round out of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College just four months before the Twins' run to the World Series in 1991, Matt Lawton advanced slowly but surely up the minor-league ladder. After posting .400 on-base percentages in back-to-back seasons at Single-A and then batting .269/.361/.434 in 114 games at Double-A in 1995, Lawton made his major-league debut pinch-hitting for Pat Meares in a loss to the Tigers on September 5, 1995.

He struck out against Mike Christopher, but picked up his first hit against submarining southpaw Mike Myers the next day and ended up starting quite a bit down the stretch. Lawton hit .317/.414/.467 in 21 games as a 23-year-old and smacked his first homer against 245-game winner Dennis Martinez and the Indians on September 28, 1995, which turned out to be a key date in team history because Martinez hit Kirby Puckett with a pitch in the first inning and the Hall of Famer never played again.

Lawton began 1996 as the everyday right fielder, but was sent down to Triple-A after hitting just .205 in April. He returned in late June, but was sent back to Salt Lake with a .231 batting average in mid-July. After batting .297/.377/.481 in 53 total games at Triple-A, Lawton was called up again in early August and this time stayed for the rest of the year. He finished with a .258/.339/.365 hitting line in 79 games, batting .294 over the final two months of the season to earn the team's confidence heading into 1997.

With his days in the minors behind him for good, Lawton split time between all three outfield spots in 1997 and hit .248/.366/.415 in 142 games. It was a modest season even for a 25-year-old, but along with Paul Molitor and Chuck Knoblauch he was one of only three Twins regulars with an adjusted OPS+ above league average. As you might expect from a team with that little offense and a 5.02 ERA, the Twins finished 68-94 for their most losses since 1982.

The team continued to struggle in 1998, going 70-92, but Lawton had his first big year. Playing mostly right field and also filling in as the center fielder when Otis Nixon had his jaw broken by Felix Martinez, he batted .278/.387/.478 with 21 homers, 36 doubles, 86 walks, and 16 steals in 152 games. Lawton won team MVP honors and led the Twins in nearly every offensive category, including homers, RBIs, runs, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, walks, and total bases.

Lawton got off to a slow start in 1999 and was batting just .262/.345/.406 when he was hit in the face by a Dennys Reyes pitch on June 8. A fractured eye socket sent him to the disabled list for over a month. He returned in mid-July and continued to get on base at a good clip through the end of the year, but his power disappeared. Lawton hit five homers with a .406 slugging percentage prior to the injury, but had just two homers and a pitiful .299 slugging percentage after returning.

Lawton came back strong in 2000, bouncing back from what could have been a very serious injury to put together arguably his best season. He hit .305/.405/.460 with 13 homers, 44 doubles, 91 walks, and 23 steals in 156 games, making his first All-Star team and winning his second team MVP. The team continued to stink, winning just 69 games, but unlike several of the Twins' token "All-Stars" from that period of losing Lawton was actually somewhat deserving with a .330 first-half batting average.

That season showed Lawton at his absolute best--taking a ridiculous number of pitches, working long counts, drawing walks in bunches, lacing singles and doubles all over the Metrodome from that goofy batting stance, and stealing bases at an efficient rate. He did just about everything that a hitter could possibly do besides provide big-time power, and even batted .294 against left-handers and .326 with runners on base.

After eight straight losing seasons the Twins got off to a 14-3 start in 2001, and carried a 55-32 record and five-game division lead over the Indians into the All-Star break. After winning the first game of the second half the Twins promptly went in the tank, losing 13 of the next 17 to fall into a tie with Cleveland atop the AL Central. On July 30, with the division slipping away, the Twins traded Lawton to the Mets for veteran right-handed starter Rick Reed.

It was a controversial move at the time, in part because Reed was a 36-year-old former replacement player making $7 million and in part because Lawton was the best hitter on a team that was fairly short on offense to begin with. Lawton was hitting .293/.396/.439 at the time of the trade, while Reed was 8-6 with a 3.48 ERA in New York. After the deal Brian Buchanan and Dustan Mohr replaced Lawton in right field, Reed went 4-6 with a 5.19 ERA in 12 starts, and the Twins went 25-32 to fall out of contention.

It wasn't so much that picking up a good starting pitcher was a bad move (although certainly you could argue about Reed being the right guy), but rather that in order to get Reed the Twins had to take from an area that was far from a strength. That's typically not how contending teams bolster themselves for a stretch run and there was speculation that general manager Terry Ryan intended to swing a second deal for a hitter like Dmitri Young or Shannon Stewart to replace Lawton, but that fell through.

Reed went 15-7 with a 3.78 ERA in 2002 as the Twins made the playoffs for the first time since 1991, and then was a mess in 2003 thanks to back problems. Meanwhile, Lawton hit just .246/.352/.366 for the Mets in 2001 and was dealt to Cleveland for Roberto Alomar that winter. He spent three mediocre years there while struggling through shoulder injuries and then bounced around with four teams over his final two seasons while hitting .253/.353/.389 and being suspended 10 games for steroid use.

Lawton's strengths were drawing walks, hitting doubles, getting on base, and running efficiently, which are all skills that tend to be overlooked and have seemingly caused his Twins career to be underrated. He was very productive in Minnesota, putting together three very good years and another solid season before his 30th birthday, and his name is plastered all over the team leaderboards. Here's something that I wrote about Lawton back in 2003 that seems appropriate to quote now:

I always had a soft spot for "Matty Law" and I'm not sure why. I guess he was just a very solid all-around player who had a lot of nice moments as a Twin. Lawton and Brad Radke were sort of like the bridge from the Kirby Puckett/Chuck Knoblauch Twins to the current group.

And as any Twins fan who grew up in the 1990s can tell you, it was an awfully long bridge.

TOP 25 ALL-TIME MINNESOTA TWINS RANKS:
 
On-Base %         .379      5th
Steals              96      8th
Walks              408      9th
OPS               .807     17th
Times On Base     1195     17th
Doubles            163     18th
Runs               423     19th
RBIs               384     20th
Extra-Base Hits    248     20th
Total Bases       1144     23rd
Homers              72     24th
Adjusted OPS+      107     24th
Hits               739     25th

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2010-01-04T00:05:00.000-06:00

Old Man, Birthday Boy

My apologies for the lack of content here over the past two weeks, but I'm still very busy putting together the annual Rotoworld baseball magazine, which is due at the printer next week. Plus, the Twins haven't done a whole lot worth writing about recently, so you haven't really missed much. I mostly just wanted to check in so that everyone knows I'm still alive. In fact, yesterday was my 27th birthday. I celebrated by waking up early for absolutely no reason and then covering meaningless NFL games for Rotoworld.

Life in the fast lane, no doubt. Oh, and here's a fun fact: I was 19 years old when this blog launched in August of 2002. I'm not sure whether doing this for eight years is more commendable or mockable, but either way it's been a lot of fun and I'll get back to pumping out new stuff once the Twins do something notable or we put the magazine to bed, whichever comes first. In the meantime, here's a picture of two of my birthday gifts that perfectly sums up how people think of me when shopping:

Not sure why I picked a light switch for the background, but surely there's some artistic explanation that scholars will debate when studying my photography centuries from now.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-12-23T00:05:00.001-06:00

Happy Festivus

In honor of Festivus (and the rapidly approaching deadline for Rotoworld's annual baseball magazine) my blogging will be lighter than usual for a little while unless the Twins make a significant move. In the meantime, please take a moment to learn more about my favorite holiday ...

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-12-21T00:02:00.000-06:00

Twins Notes: Atkins, Feliz, Humber, Blyleven, and Game 163

Not much going on worth writing about in Twins land right now, but here are a few tidbits ...

When it comes to free agents sometimes being a Twins fan means rooting for other teams to save them from themselves, which is why Garrett Atkins and Pedro Feliz signing last week qualifies as very good news. Atkins and Feliz have been linked to the Twins at various points this offseason, but neither would've been a particularly positive addition or a sound investment. Atkins has a horrible glove with an overrated bat and Feliz has a good glove with a horrible bat, yet they'll each make $5 million in 2010.

Maybe the Rockies will save the Twins from themselves with Robb Quinlan.

Philip Humber twice cleared waivers after the Twins dropped him from the 40-man roster during the season and now he's left the organization, inking a minor-league contract with the Royals. He was the third overall pick in the 2004 draft and came to the Twins in the four-player package for Johan Santana, but hasn't been the same since undergoing Tommy John elbow surgery in 2005 and showed nothing since the trade to suggest that he can be a useful major leaguer.

Humber coughed up 14 runs in 21 innings for the Twins, allowing opponents to bat .329/.430/.518, and posted a 4.96 ERA in 254 innings at Rochester. It wouldn't be surprising to see Humber pitch in the big leagues again and maybe he can even find a niche as a long reliever, but as a 27-year-old who cleared waivers twice in the past six months and could manage only a minor-league deal from one of MLB's worst teams as a free agent it's safe to say that any pretense of upside has vanished. Oh well.

Rich Lederer of Baseball Analysts has put together his annual plea to Hall of Fame voters regarding Bert Blyleven deserving induction. I'm in total agreement with Lederer and have written similar pleas in the past, but eventually stopped doing so because a) the Hall of Fame and other honors chosen by the Baseball Writers Association of America ceased meaning much to me, and b) Blyleven doesn't actually buy into the rationale for his enshrinement, constantly relying on wins to evaluate every pitcher but him.

I'll marry and dump Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com Keeley Hazell before the Twins out-bid 29 teams for a 21-year-old Cuban defector who throws in the mid-90s, but at least it gives Joe Christensen of the Minneapolis Star Tribune something to write about.

Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated selected the one-game playoff between the Twins and Tigers as the best regular-season game of the decade:

The beautiful thing about baseball is a great game doesn't necessarily have to be a well-played game. The Twins-Tigers tiebreaker to decide the AL Central had blunders, errors, pickoffs and all sorts of confusion. But it was loaded with drama. The Tigers had a lead going into the bottom of the 10th inning. The Twins tied it up and had a chance to win, but Alexi Casilla was thrown out at the plate by Ryan Raburn. The Tigers had the bases loaded in the 12th but could not score. The Twins scored in the bottom of the 12th to win 6-5. Sometimes sloppy, sometimes brilliant, always exciting--that's baseball at its best.

Naturally it's hard for me to disagree, although if you don't mind overlooking who actually won the game the previous year's tiebreaker between the Twins and White Sox wasn't too shabby either.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-12-18T00:04:00.000-06:00

Link-O-Rama

Tony Oliva never played in the Metrodome, but still managed to provide the last Twins memory there.

Last week the Washington Post ran the greatest newspaper correction of all time.

For the past couple weeks Poker After Dark has featured a high-stakes, six-handed cash game with Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, Patrick Antonius, and Gus Hansen. Naturally the action and banter have been highly entertaining, but my favorite part is that every few rounds four or five of them agree to put $100,000 in blind and run the hand as basically a multi-way coin flip for half a million dollars. All of which produced this amazing quote from Ivey after he lost several in a row:

I like it when I lose so much money I can barely breathe. That's the feeling I go for. I'm addicted to that feeling.

They ought to frame that quote and hang it outside the main of entrance every casino in Las Vegas.

And speaking of poker, gambling legend Billy Baxter shared a ton of great stories while appearing on "The Scoop" with Diego Cordovez and Adam Schoenfeld. During the multi-part interview they noted that Baxter was profiled by Sports Illustrated back in 1984 and thanks to the power of the interwebs you can read the lengthy and well-done piece by writer John Underwood. Tigers star and should-be Hall of Fame shortstop Alan Trammell was on the cover.

Unlike these poor guys, I'd have a far better shot of being fired for not playing fantasy football.

David Letterman uses Twitter for the first (and perhaps last) time:

My initial reaction to Twitter wasn't all that different, but after coming late to the party I'm now obsessed.

If any AG.com readers are looking for gift ideas, I'd like these for Hanukkah.

Rangers reliever C.J. Wilson apparently isn't a huge fan of Diamondbacks catcher Chris Snyder.

For whatever reason recently I've used Mila Kunis when needing to reference an attractive woman in various articles, so this reminder of Marisa Miller's utility in such situations is very useful.

My viewership of Everybody Loves Raymond was sporadic at best, but Ray Romano's new show on TNT has definitely held my interest through two episodes and Men of a Certain Age is totally different than the long-running sitcom. Plus, any show with Andre Braugher is worth checking out.

Sadly, after two seasons on HBO and 22 glorious episodes Flight of the Conchords is no more.

After attending his first winter meetings my Circling the Bases blogmate Craig Calcaterra described the scene as "Amalie Benjamin and a thousand dudes." What he didn't say is how sexy those dudes were. Not pictured, of course, is my fatass, which is why I'm in any sort of position to do the goofing.

Dan LeBatard was a tremendous guest on Bill Simmons' podcast and they touched on tons of good topics under the pretense of discussing ESPN's latest documentary about University of Miami football.

After watching Michael K. Williams do mostly nothing in Gone Baby Gone, this video of 100 quotes from The Wire restored my faith in humanity:

Not only does the video include my favorite quote ("money ain't got no owners, only spenders"), there's a beautiful little Clay Davis run near the end.

The man behind the world's best baseball website is now a member of the BBWAA.

Peter Gammons' touching farewell column after 20 years at ESPN was a reminder of why he's such an amazing figure in baseball history, but I'll forever be most grateful to him for turning me on to Susan Tedeschi. Earlier this year Gammons e-mailed me out of the blue to say that he enjoyed my Rotoworld columns, and the list of writers to whom he's reached out like that seems never-ending. Hall of Fame baseball writer and maybe an even better person.

Speaking of farewells Matt Thomas is leaving KSTP radio for a similar job in his native Houston. Not only was Thomas good on the air leading up to nightly Twins games, he was nice enough to look past my constant bashing of radio-mates Jim Souhan and Patrick Reusse to invite me to his poker game.

There are a lot to choose from, but this is one of my favorite end-of-the-decade lists: "40 Things That Were Popular at the Beginning of the 2000s." We've come a long way from boybands and trucker hats.

Some of the highlights from my NBCSports.com blogging this week:

- Who's better: Halladay or Lee?
- White Sox look just about set after Pierre trade
- Hawkins schmoozes his way to $7.5 million
- McCann is the last "Baby Brave" standing
- Are the Red Sox gearing up for Gonzalez?
- Forget the veterans: Pittsburgh should hand first base to Clement
- Tigers may give Coke chance to join rotation
- Do Yankees really think Miranda can be the DH?
- Arizona looking for closer, but reunion with Valverde too costly
- Mets close to signing Japanese reliever Igarashi

Finally, because YouTube unfortunately doesn't have much in actual Van Morrison stuff this week's AG.com-approved music video is a cappella group Clef Hangers doing a live version of "Crazy Love":

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-12-17T00:05:00.004-06:00

New System For Comments

I've used "Haloscan" to host the comments section here for years, but this week I got an e-mail saying that they were shutting the service down at the end of the month. They offered to transfer my account to another service called "Echo," so I'm giving that a try. I realize this is incredibly boring and you'd much rather read something about the Twins, but I'd appreciate the help from anyone willing to check out the new comments setup and give me their thoughts on how it looks, performs, and works. Thanks.

Oh, and I'll be back tomorrow with a nice, long Link-O-Rama.

UPDATE: Early reviews are mostly favorable, but it looks like newer comments are appearing and then disappearing at random. Suffice it to say that's a problem, so please keep testing it out and giving me feedback, good or bad.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-12-16T02:31:00.003-06:00

Now That BBWAA is Enlightened, Can We Get a Redo On 2005?

Since a large portion of the Baseball Writers Association of America seems to be beyond their previous over-reliance on win-loss records to evaluate the performances of starting pitchers, can we get a good old-fashioned mulligan on the American League Cy Young vote from 2005?

Bartolo Colon, who won the award that season, had a 3.48 ERA, 157-to-43 strikeout-to-walk ratio, and .244 opponents' batting average in 223 innings.

Johan Santana, who did not win the award that season, had a 2.87 ERA, 238-to-45 strikeout-to-walk ratio, and .210 opponents' batting average in 232 innings.

Santana was clearly superior in just about every possible way, throwing more innings than Colon with an ERA that was 20 percent lower, racking up 50 percent more strikeouts with the same number of walks, and being 15 percent harder to hit. And if you want to delve into some deeper stats, Santana had a 2.80 FIP compared to Colon at 3.75. So how did Colon not only win the award, but win the award with 15 more first-place votes than Santana in a pool of 28 voters?

Colon was 21-8.
Santana was 16-7.

They may not care so much about that now, but the BBWAA were sure obsessed with win-loss records four years ago. The voters saw those 21 wins and ignored everything else, including the fact that Colon pitched for a 95-win team that provided him with 5.6 runs of support per nine innings. Santana pitched for an 83-win team that gave him 4.4 runs of support per nine innings. Colon received 30 percent more run support than Santana overall, including an amazing 10 or more runs eight times in 33 starts.

So yes, the BBWAA deserves credit for recently changing their stance and correctly rewarding the best pitcher in each league with the award that's supposed to go to the best pitcher in each league even if they didn't have the best win-loss record. With that said, Zack Greinke and Tim Lincecum are lucky that they weren't trying to win the award in 2005 and it remains to be seen if the voters would have been willing to look beyond an otherwise inferior 20-game winner like Colon had there been one this year.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
We just completed the third season of Gleeman World 2 in WhatIfSports.com's great Hardball Dynasty game and there's one franchise opening. Hardball Dynasty is not a fantasy baseball game, but rather a simulation of running a fictional MLB organization from rookie-ball to the majors. It's incredibly detailed and time-consuming with a steep learning curve, so first and foremost we're looking for an owner who has played Hardball Dynasty in the past, although anyone is free to express interest in the open spot.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-12-14T00:06:00.000-06:00

Picking Through The Non-Tenders

Each offseason the deadline to tender arbitration offers to eligible players leads to a secondary wave of talent hitting the open market, as teams choose to cut bait on dozens of pre-free agency players rather than commit to giving them raises for the next season. In the Twins' case they opted not to tender Boof Bonser a contract, but instead of simply releasing him into free agency they traded him to the Red Sox for low-level pitching prospect Chris Province and then Boston signed him to a one-year deal.

Jesse Crain was the Twins' other non-tender candidate after pitching his way back to Triple-A by giving up 17 runs in 17.2 innings through mid-June. Crain had a 2.91 ERA in 30 innings after returning from Rochester, but seemed to be on the chopping block because he's due for a raise from his $1.7 million salary. Cutting him loose and handing the job to Anthony Slama or Robert Delaney would've freed up $2 million for the Twins to spend elsewhere, but instead they tendered Crain a contract for 2010.

While the Twins ultimately chose to retain Crain for what will probably be around $2.5 million in 2010, a total of 39 players were shed from rosters prior to Saturday's midnight deadline. Most aren't particularly good fits in Minnesota--or all that valuable, in general--but a handful of names struck me as potentially useful for the Twins in 2010 as alternatives to the initial crop of free agents. You know, assuming that the Twins intend to actually sign someone this offseason.

Kelly Johnson: After back-to-back strong seasons as Atlanta's everyday second baseman Johnson hit just .224/.303/.389, missed time with a wrist injury, and lost the job to Martin Prado. As a 27-year-old who hit .282/.362/.451 in 1,222 plate appearances between 2007 and 2008 he's seemingly a solid bet to bounce back offensively, but Ultimate Zone Rating pegs Johnson as 7.4 runs below average per 150 games defensively. His pre-2009 bat is good enough to look past the glove or move him to third base.

Jonny Gomes: Cincinnati misguidedly cut Gomes loose despite 20 homers and a .267/.338/.541 mark in 314 plate appearances and he's unlikely to find a starting gig because of huge strikeout totals and a tendency to go into prolonged slumps versus right-handed pitching. For all his flaws a .274/.369/.517 career line against left-handed pitching would make Gomes an ideal platoon partner for Jason Kubel and even his .224/.311/.448 line against righties would make him a viable alternative to Delmon Young.

Ryan Garko: Similar to Gomes in that he's mediocre against righties and crushes lefties, except Garko doesn't strike out as much and has little experience in the outfield. He's a career .279/.351/.441 hitter overall, which would be a clear upgrade over Young as an everyday player, and his .313/.392/.495 mark against lefties would look very good in a platoon with Kubel. San Francisco traded a decent prospect to Cleveland to get Garko at midseason only to drop him before a raise to around $2 million was due.

Brian Bass: Just kidding.

Ryan Langerhans: Now that Carlos Gomez is in Milwaukee the Twins need a fourth outfielder capable of playing center field and their primary in-house option is Jason Pridie, so they should be looking for someone like Langerhans. He strikes out a lot and won't hit for good batting averages, but Langerhans draws walks, has 15-homer pop, and plays fantastic defense in either corner spot with decent range in center. Similar non-tendered backup options include Jeremy Reed and Brian Anderson.

Gabe Gross: If the Twins want a fourth outfielder to push Young for starts and hold his own if thrust into the lineup due to injury, Gross is a superior option than guys like Langerhans, Anderson, or Reed. He's helpless against lefties, but has hit .251/.346/.414 against righties and UZR grades him as excellent in the corners and above average in center. Not really the Twins' type of player because his defensive reputation doesn't match the stats and lots of his value comes from walks, but Gross is a nice backup.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-12-11T00:15:00.002-06:00

Top 40 Minnesota Twins: #35 Steve Braun

STEPHEN RUSSELL BRAUN | 1B/2B/SS/3B/LF | 1971-1976 | CAREER STATS
 
   G       PA      AVG      OBP      SLG     OPS+    WARP     WS
 751     2830     .284     .376     .381     116     15.6     86

Taken in the 10th round of the 1966 draft out of a New Jersey high school, Steve Braun came up with the 1971 team that went 74-86 after the Twins won back-to-back division titles in 1969 and 1970. The poor record that year wasn't Braun's fault, as he played all over the infield while hitting .254/.350/.344 in 128 games. That may not look like an impressive hitting line, even from a 23-year-old rookie, but the AL as a whole batted a measly .247/.317/.364 in 1971 (compared to .267/.336/.428 this season).

Braun's entire time with the Twins actually came in a very low-scoring era, which is part of the reason why he's one of the more underrated players in team history. His raw numbers show a guy who got on base extremely well (.376 on-base percentage), but had almost no power (.381 slugging percentage). However, if you adjust his performance to account for the pitcher-friendly era that he played in, Braun suddenly looks like an offensive force.

Looking at adjusted OPS+ while in Minnesota, Braun's mark of 116 ranks ahead of Jason Kubel (114) and Michael Cuddyer (110) among current Twins, plus past hitters like Corey Koskie (115), Chuck Knoblauch (114), Brian Harper (110), Tom Brunansky (109), Matt Lawton (107), David Ortiz (107), A.J. Pierzynski (105), Torii Hunter (104), and Roy Smalley (104). Those are some of the best hitters in team history and Braun was arguably more effective offensively with the Twins than all of them.

He certainly wasn't in the elite class of hitters, but Braun was safely in the "very good" group. While with the Twins his .376 OBP was 15 percent above the AL mark of .328 and his .381 slugging percentage was actually slightly above average as well. Throughout the five decades of Twins history, only seven players have more plate appearances and a higher OPS+ than Braun. Interestingly, if you adjust their respective totals with the Twins to today's offensive levels, Braun and Knoblauch are nearly identical:

                AVG      OBP      SLG      OPS     OPS+
Braun          .297     .382     .435     .817     116 
Knoblauch      .304     .378     .423     .801     114

Knoblauch played longer with the Twins and was a more valuable all-around player, but purely in terms of hitting Braun was a slower, left-handed version of Knoblauch. And while he wasn't nearly as good as Knoblauch defensively, Braun's ability to play multiple positions gave him value. During six years with the Twins he saw significant action at second base, third base, shortstop, and left field, and also got a little time at first base and right field.

If you don't buy a comparison to Knoblauch, think of Braun instead as the type of player Denny Hocking could have been if he hit like Lawton instead of like Lawton's sister. Braun was remarkably consistent after his solid rookie season, hitting above .280 while getting on base at least 36 percent of the time in each of the next five years. His best season came in 1975, when Braun batted .302/.389/.428 for the eighth-best OBP in the league and a 130 OPS+

Adjusting those 1975 numbers to today's scoring environment spits out something like .315/.390/.480, which is pretty close to Joe Mauer's career .327/.408/.483 mark. Braun served as the Twins' primary third baseman in 1971, 1972, and 1973, and was their main left fielder in 1974 and 1975. He was the team's regular designated hitter in 1976 and also saw action at third base and left field while batting .288/.384/.353 to once again rank among the league leaders in on-base percentage.

In November of 1976 the upstart Seattle Mariners plucked Braun off the Twins' roster in the expansion draft, ending his time in Minnesota after six very productive seasons. After a disappointing stint with the Mariners he was traded to the Royals for Jim Colborn in June of 1978, after Colborn won 18 games with a 3.62 ERA in 1977. That move signaled the end of Braun's days as an everyday player, and was the beginning of his time as one of Whitey Herzog's bench bats.

Herzog was Kansas City's manager when Braun arrived at midseason, and took a liking to him when he hit .263/.380/.350 in 64 games and tied a Royals record by reaching base 11 straight times. Braun gave Herzog another productive season as a part-time player in 1979, and when Herzog moved on to the Cardinals he brought Braun in as a free agent. Braun served as a super-sub and pinch-hitter for the next five seasons, hitting .258/.382/.348 while rarely starting a game.

He was a key contributor on two pennant winners, including the 1982 World Series champs, but retired two seasons before the Cardinals met up with the Twins in the 1987 World Series. Braun has stayed in baseball after retiring, serving as a minor-league hitting coach with the Cardinals, Yankees, and Red Sox. He currently sells "hitting clinics, summer camps, and baseball trips" through a company called Steve Braun Baseball, which offers to help you "train like a pro with a pro!"

Braun is perhaps the least-known player in this countdown and his inclusion may raise eyebrows, but he absolutely belongs. Six seasons and nearly 3,000 plate appearances of consistently outstanding top-of-the-order hitting, plus versatile defense, made him an impact player even if it wasn't apparent to everyone at the time. Had he played today, rather than 30 years ago, Braun's power would appear a lot more acceptable and his ability to get on base would be more properly appreciated.

TOP 25 ALL-TIME MINNESOTA TWINS RANKS:
 
On-Base %         .376      6th
Walks              356     14th
Adjusted OPS+      116     14th
Batting Average   .284     15th
Times On Base     1059     25th

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-12-10T00:05:00.006-06:00

Twins Notes: DeRosa, Kouzmanoff, Bonser, and Hawkins

LaVelle E. Neal III of the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that the Twins haven't been in contact with Orlando Hudson's agent, which rules out one of my favorite potential targets, and they've also not really been linked to Felipe Lopez or Adrian Beltre. Instead they're mostly said to be pursuing Mark DeRosa or Kevin Kouzmanoff. Last month DeRosa was part of my article on realistic free agent options for third base, but if reports that he's seeking a three-year deal prove accurate the Twins should stay away.

It sounds like the Twins offered Glen Perkins for Kouzmanoff, but the Padres wanted a second player to sweeten the deal. I'm not a big Kouzmanoff fan because he's an extreme free-swinger whose glove is overrated due to a low error total this year, but calling the majors' most pitcher-friendly ballpark home makes him a better hitter than his modest raw numbers suggest. He's batted .285/.327/.474 away from home and does play solid defense, which is probably worth more than just Perkins at this point.

In order to clear a spot on the 40-man roster for Carl Pavano following his arbitration acceptance the Twins designated Boof Bonser for assignment. Bonser pitched his way out of the rotation in 2008 and then missed all of this year following shoulder surgery, but would have been in line for a small raise via arbitration. Rather than risk having to pay Bonser about $1 million after arbitration, the Twins reportedly offered him a one-year deal for close to the minimum salary and then cut him loose when he declined.

There's still a chance that the Twins could work out a trade for Bonser, but if not they'll end up simply releasing him this weekend. Bonser is a 28-year-old with a 5.12 career ERA coming off major surgery, so it's tough to blame the Twins too much for cutting bat. With that said, after moving to the bullpen and prior to the injury he showed some potential as a reliever, posting a 55-to-16 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 52 innings. They could have made room for Pavano and kept Bonser around by cutting Bobby Keppel.

UPDATE: Bonser has been traded to the Red Sox for a player to be named later or cash.

My blogmate Craig Calcaterra broke the news that Rich Harden is signing with Texas, so he can be crossed off the Twins' list now (if he was ever on it). Harden will reportedly get $7.5 million for 2010 and the Rangers will have an $11.5 million option for 2011, which is an excellent deal for Texas if you agree with me that the Twins did well to bring back Pavano for what will likely be about $7 million. Harden has significantly more upside than Pavano with a similar injury history.

On the other hand, I'll happily take Pavano for one year and around $7 million over Randy Wolf for three years and $30 million, which is what he got from the Brewers yesterday. Pavano tossed 199.1 innings with a 4.17 xFIP this season, while Wolf had a 4.28 xFIP in 214.1 innings. Pavano missed most of 2008 while Wolf logged 190 innings with a 4.49 xFIP, but in terms of staying healthy Wolf failed to pitch even 150 innings in any year from 2004-2007 due to assorted arm problems and they're both born in 1976.

BizOfBaseball.com's Maury Brown reports that all but two of the 30 major-league teams use some level of sabermetric, analytical analysis within the front office. Brown didn't name names, but the Twins are almost certainly one of them. Less than a year ago assistant general manager Rob Antony told me that the Twins "do not have a department devoted to statistical analysis" or employ those type of tools.

Brad Thomas was one of the Twins' best pitching prospects about a decade ago, going 10-3 with a 1.96 ERA at Double-A in 2001 while also pitching in the Futures Game and making his MLB debut. He was awful in the majors, allowing 26 runs in 23.2 innings spread over various brief stints in Minnesota, and has spent the past five years pitching in Japan and Korea. All of which is suddenly relevant again because Thomas has signed with the Tigers and will compete for a bullpen job in spring training.

Speaking of former Twins, yesterday LaTroy Hawkins inked a two-year, $7.5 million contract with the Brewers. Since leaving Minnesota six seasons ago Hawkins has a 3.35 ERA in 379 innings, including just one year with an ERA not in the 2.00s or 3.00s. And while he was one of the worst starting pitchers of all time early in his 15-year career, Hawkins has a 3.29 ERA in 655 relief appearances.

This morning's Rule 5 draft more or less marks the end of the winter meetings, but we'll be covering any remaining action over at Circling the Bases and you can also follow along via my Twitter page.

2009-12-08T00:04:00.006-06:00

Pavano Accepts Arbitration, Rejoins Rotation For 2010

After unsuccessfully shopping around for a multi-year deal, Carl Pavano accepted the Twins' arbitration offer before yesterday's midnight deadline. That means he'll stay with the Twins in 2010 via a one-year contract for an as-yet-undetermined salary, which will either be decided by an arbiter or agreed upon by the two sides prior to a hearing. He earned about $4.5 million this season from an incentive-laden deal with the Indians, so Pavano figures to get a raise to at least $6 million for 2010.

On the surface that may seem like too much money for a guy with a 5.10 ERA, but Pavano's raw totals are misleading for several reasons. For one thing, after a brutal April he went 14-9 with a 4.67 ERA and 131-to-34 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 181 innings. Beyond that, his secondary numbers suggest that his performance was more along the lines of a 4.10 ERA than a 5.10 ERA once luck, defense, and bullpen support are removed from the equation.

Pavano had 147 strikeouts versus just 39 walks in 199 innings overall and induced ground balls on 44 percent of his balls in play, which equals an Expected Fielding Independent Pitching (xFIP) of 4.17. His actual ERA was a full run higher because more than any AL pitcher Pavano was hurt by poor defense behind him and an unsustainably low rate of stranding runners. He had the highest batting average on balls in play at .335 and the lowest strand rate at 66.1 percent, both of which can't help but improve.

None of which is to suggest that Pavano is a great pitcher, because he's definitely not. However, simply repeating his 2009 performance would make him a very solid middle-of-the-rotation starter for a team whose rotation had the third-worst ERA in the league. Scott Baker, Kevin Slowey, and Nick Blackburn are cemented in the rotation and the Twins clearly felt uncomfortable handing the remaining two spots to Francisco Liriano, Glen Perkins, Brian Duensing, Anthony Swarzak, or Jeff Manship.

Instead they bring back Pavano for what will hopefully be another 180-200 innings of an xFIP in the low 4.00s and let the unproven arms fight over just one rotation spot while making it easier to trade Perkins or another young starter for help elsewhere. Bypassing young pitchers by signing a veteran starter with an ugly ERA is certainly nothing new for the Twins, but Pavano differs significantly from guys like Livan Hernandez, Ramon Ortiz, and Sidney Ponson in that he actually pitched well in 2009.

Hernandez, Ortiz, and Ponson had xFIPs of 5.62, 5.39, and 5.10 respectively the season before signing with the Twins, so naturally they stunk. Pavano may seem like more of the same based on his ERA, but that's hardly the case. Of course, he has to stay healthy for any of that to matter and prior to logging 199 innings this year Pavano threw a grand total of 145 innings in the previous four years. I'm in no position to speculate on his odds of staying off the disabled list in 2010, but he didn't miss a start in 2009.

Plus, by calling his bluff and refraining from a multi-season commitment the Twins avoided most of the risk that comes with Pavano specifically and pitchers as an oft-injured group. Short of simply signing a terrible player it's fairly tough to screw things up too badly with a one-year deal, because the worst-case scenario involves wasting some money and then wiping things off the books. Pavano is a far better bet than Hernandez or Ortiz were and beats the hell out of multiple years for a guy like Jarrod Washburn.

With that said, there was certainly a compelling argument to be made for not offering Pavano arbitration and simply letting Liriano, Perkins, Duensing, Swarzak, or Manship fill two spots. That would've saved the Twins at least $5 million, which would clearly come in handy, and if all else is equal I'm always in favor of going young. However, if Liriano goes to the bullpen and Perkins is traded that leaves an awful lot riding on Duensing, Manship, and Swarzak, none of whom are better bets than Pavano for 2010.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* Last night I was the guest on Seth Stohs' podcast and we talked about the Twins non-stop for over an hour, covering basically every possible topic while fielding questions from the audience. It was fun and we got into some interesting discussions, so make sure to give it a listen.

* Craig Calcaterra, Matthew Pouliot, and I combined for over 50 entries on NBCSports.com's "Circling the Bases" yesterday, blogging about the rumors coming from the winter meetings and analyzing every move. We'll be going from sunrise to midnight again today, so check it out.

* Lastly, for my immediate thoughts, unedited ramblings, and real-time analysis throughout the day you can subscribe to my Twitter feed.

2009-12-07T00:08:00.000-06:00

Twins Notes: Redmond, Mauer, Infielders, and Indianapolis

I've been assuming that the Twins will let Mike Redmond depart as a free agent while making Jose Morales the backup catcher and general manager Bill Smith confirmed those plans over the weekend. Redmond was a near-perfect fit as Joe Mauer's caddy for the past five years and plans to keep playing, but at 38 years old his skills have declined to the point that Morales is simply a better bet. Hopefully he finds another backup job elsewhere and then returns to the Twins as a coach in a few years.

Dave Allen of Fan Graphs wrote an interesting article about Mauer seeing more fastballs than any of the other top-20 hitters in baseball this year. Allen notes that for most hitters the more power they have the fewer fastballs they get, but because Mauer's power didn't emerge until May of this season pitchers perhaps didn't alter their approach to him quickly. He was MLB's second-best fastball hitter after only Albert Pujols and 25 of his 28 homers came off fastballs, so fewer fastballs in 2010 could hurt Mauer.

Three prominent free-agent infielders have signed already and based on the salaries handed out to Chone Figgins, Marco Scutaro, and Placido Polanco this looks to be a buyer's market (or at least not a seller's market). If the going rate for solid but unspectacular infielders like Polanco or Scutaro is about $6 million per year and a top free agent like Figgins gets $36 million over four years perhaps Orlando Hudson, Felipe Lopez, or even Adrian Beltre will actually be in the Twins' price range.

Dan Uggla has been linked to the Twins in various trade rumors and Marlins beat writer Joe Capozzi of the Palm Beach Post expects him to be dealt during the winter meetings. As noted last week I'm not particularly high on Uggla for the Twins because of his salary, likely cost to acquire, and bad defense at second base, but there's no doubt that his bat would be a big upgrade. Over the past three years Uggla is 34 runs above replacement level per 150 games, but Hudson is at 32 and won't cost any prospects.

Cut from the 40-man roster by the Twins last week, Brian Buscher opted for free agency and signed a minor-league deal with the Indians. He hit .266/.343/.356 in 502 plate appearances in Minnesota and .289/.369/.458 in 450 plate appearances at Triple-A, and will compete for a bench job in Cleveland. His competition will include former Twins utility man Luis Rodriguez, who also signed a minor-league deal with the Indians after spending the past two seasons hitting .244/.322/.305 for the Padres.

Jacque Jones plans to attend the winter meetings in Indianapolis this week in an effort to find some team willing to give him a comeback chance. Jones ranked 30th on my list of the top Twins of all time and put together one good season for the Cubs after leaving as a free agent, but then hit .285/.335/.400 in 2007 and .147/.239/.207 in 2008 before spending this season with the independent league Newark Bears. He turns 35 years old soon and was last productive in 2006, so don't expect much interest.

I won't be joining Jones at the winter meetings after attending two of the previous three years, but my NBCSports.com blogmate Craig Calcaterra will be there providing constant updates. I'm not sure how prominent the Twins will be in terms of rumors or actual signings and trades, but if you're interested in reading about everything going on in Indianapolis check out Circling the Bases. Along with Calcaterra's on-site reporting, I'll provide running analysis throughout each day. We'll have good stuff. Promise.

Last and least, if any Twins-related news does break during the winter meetings I'll obviously cover it in this space, but if you just can't wait for the next day's blog entry to be posted you can always read my Twitter updates for immediate thoughts and various other ramblings in real time.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-12-04T00:05:00.006-06:00

Link-O-Rama

My mom threatens this constantly, but SportsPickle.com says it best in a "man bites dog" sort of way: "Mother Lives in Blogger's Basement."

Lions rookie quarterback Matthew Stafford was mic'd up for one of the most improbably fantastic games of the season and the result is six must-watch minutes.

Placido Polanco can be crossed off the list of potential Twins infield targets, but now that he's willing to play third base perhaps Miguel Tejada is an option.

TBS has mercifully fired Chip Caray after he single-handedly forced millions of baseball fans to wear out their remote's mute button during the playoffs. Richard Sandomir of the New York Times rightfully described his postseason performance as a "high-volume style ... mixed with a penchant for bad play calls, embellishments, and factual errors," but my question is why the person who hired Caray as the channel's lead announcer isn't following him out the door. At the end of the day, who did a worse job?

Not satisfied with simply being an Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com candidate, Mila Kunis is now living out my fantasies with "a nerd's idea of heaven."

After plowing through all 39 episodes of Mad Men in under a month it's tough to pinpoint my favorite character from what is an amazing cast, but Roger Sterling is definitely in the running:

And that's just from Season 3.

Don Draper's many words of wisdom aren't bad either.

One of my fellow NBCSports.com bloggers was profiled recently by the New York Times.

Good from The Onion: "The Office Ends As Documentary Crew Gets All The Footage It Needs":

In retrospect, we really over-shot this thing by an enormous margin. We would have finished much earlier if one employee or another didn't insist on being interviewed every three minutes. And I have no idea why we were invited to Jim and Pam's wedding. All of that stuff is totally unusable.

Most people watching The Office at this point likely don't even know about the initial premise involving a documentary, especially now that multiple shows use that same approach, but that's pretty funny.

My favorite story of the week involves Sammy Sosa, Vin Diesel, and a $203,000 lawsuit. Incidentally, did you know that Diesel's real name is Mark Vincent? Well, now you do.

I'm proud to say that the original idea leading to this good news was hashed out in my hotel room at approximately midnight by a bunch of people drinking booze from foam cups. Seriously. As a wise man once said, "From makeshift bars set up in hotel bathroom sinks come great things."

This exchange from an interview with the bloggers behind River Ave. Blues made my ego feel good:

What compelled you to start a Yankee blog, what was the date of your first-ever blog post and what was it about?

My first blog actually wasn't a Yankee-centric one. In December 2003, after watching Aaron Gleeman turn into a successful Internet writer, three of my friends and I decided to start a group blog called Talking Baseball. For me, a veteran of news reporting throughout high school and college, the new venture gave me a chance to explore sportswriting.

Of course, maybe he meant it like "if Aaron Gleeman could do it ..."

Nice to know that one of my childhood favorites, Lori Loughlin, has avoided The Wall for 45 years.

After watching The Foot Fist Way last week this scene still cracks me up:

Several people suggested the movie to me, but it was good rather than great. Definitely worth watching if you like Eastbound and Down.

I'm putting together the content outline for Rotoworld's annual fantasy baseball draft guide and we're always looking for ideas about article topics, so if there's a fantasy baseball angle that you'd like to see in the magazine e-mail me. For instance, last year we covered topics like keeper leagues, non-closer relievers, the impact of defense on pitchers, how to approach the whole draft process, and the top 25 offseason moves in addition to the usual stuff about sleepers, busts, prospects, and mock drafts.

In case anyone cares about my computer problem from earlier this week: I ended up simply sending my laptop to the NBC offices in Connecticut, where they scrubbed the hard drive clean and got it back to me around 36 hours later with a new keyboard, fresh touch pad, double the memory, and a suped-up battery. Score one for corporate America.

A new blog to check out: UnDomed.

Some of the highlights from my NBCSports.com blogging this week:

- Orioles interested in Japanese lefty Takahashi
- Schneider jumps from Mets to hometown Phillies
- Cardinals offer arbitration to Holliday, Pineiro, and DeRosa
- Teams pursuing Washburn are making a mistake
- Wagner shows Red Sox are smarter than Mets
- White Sox not seeking Jenks deal, but may listen
- Padres first-round pick Tate breaks jaw in ATV accident
- Toronto stuck with Wells, so Wells stuck in center
- MVP voting confirms Utley as most underrated
- Agent says Lincecum not pursuing multi-year deal

Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is Mat Kearney doing a solo, acoustic version of "Closer to Love":

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-12-02T00:05:00.001-06:00

Arbitration Notes: Pavano, Cabrera, Polanco, Hudson

Last night was the deadline for teams to offer their departing free agents arbitration and predictably the Twins extended an offer to Carl Pavano. That means they'll receive a supplemental draft pick between the first and second rounds should he sign elsewhere, but it also means that Pavano has the option of accepting the offer and returning in 2010 for a salary determined by an arbiter. My guess is that he'll be able to land a multi-year contract somewhere, so the odds of him accepting arbitration are minimal.

And if for some reason he does accept, then the Twins will have essentially signed him to a one-year contract at something resembling market value. Letting him walk nets a draft pick and his accepting arbitration allows the Twins to retain Pavano at a reasonable cost, so the only real danger is Bill Smith deciding to hand him a multi-year deal. I'm fine with bringing Pavano back for 2010, but any talk of 2011 and 2012 should scare the Twins away.

Orlando Cabrera is the only other Twins free agent to qualify for draft-pick compensation, but under the terms of his contract he can't be offered arbitration. Cabrera smartly negotiated that into his deal so that potential suitors wouldn't have to forfeit a first-round pick to sign him as a Type A free agent, which may have kept him from finding work. My hope is that the Twins' interest in Cabrera ended when they traded for J.J. Hardy, but Ron Gardenhire has said that he'd still like to re-sign him to play second base.

Elsewhere on the arbitration front, potential Twins targets and Type A free agents Placido Polanco and Orlando Hudson were not offered arbitration. That makes them significantly more appealing, because the Twins can now sign them without giving up a first-round pick. Of course, the appeal has increased for other teams as well and ultimately the Twins aren't going to win many bidding wars. I'd really like to see the Twins make a serious run at Hudson, Polanco, or Felipe Lopez to play second base.

UPDATE: Well, that was quick. Polanco is already off the table.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-12-01T00:40:00.003-06:00

Computer Problems

I'm having all kinds of computer problems right now. First there was a fake anti-virus program popping up and ruining everything (it was called "Anti-Virus System Pro") and after seemingly ridding my laptop of that I've now got Firefox randomly redirecting me to different websites and opening up new tabs with unwanted advertisements. It's a disaster. Based on some Googling it looks like many people suddenly have the same issue, but I've yet to find instructions for how to fix it and am basically helpless.

I've already run Spybot Search & Destroy and Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware in addition to both Windows Defender and Symantec Anti-Virus. Nothing seems to make it stop and I'm unable to even get to "safe mode" because it sends to me to the "blue screen of death." Is anyone familiar with the specific issues that I'm facing and knowledgeable about a solution? If so, please e-mail me.

2009-11-30T00:04:00.000-06:00

Twins Notes: 40 Men, Name Changes, and Lawn Protection

With the Rule 5 draft coming next week the Twins protected Danny Valencia, Robert Delaney, Deolis Guerra, Alex Burnett, Loek Van Mil, and Estarlin De Los Santos by adding them to the 40-man roster. All six prospects would have been Rule 5 eligible for the first time. De Los Santos is the only surprise, because he's on the bubble for my upcoming top-40 prospects list and played this season at Single-A, making it unlikely that any team would be willing to keep him in the majors for all of 2010.

Clearly the Twins love De Los Santos' glove at shortstop, because he had a career-year offensively this season and still batted just .289/.328/.393 with one homer and a 50-to-13 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 292 plate appearances. Steve Singleton, Brian Dinkelman, Ryan Mullins, Dustin Martin, Ramon Santana, Santos Arias, Matt Fox, Juan Portes, and Rene Leveret are probably the biggest names not protected by a 40-man spot, but they'll each likely narrowly miss my top 40.

Deibinson Romero is also eligible for the Rule 5 draft after being taken off the 40-man roster. Romero was added to the roster last year at this time and ranked 24th on my list of prospects heading into the season, but hit just .225/.311/.369 at high Single-A as his stock fell significantly for the second straight year. Along with Romero, the Twins previously cut Brian Buscher, Justin Huber, and Armando Gabino from the 40-man roster and also cleared a spot when Juan Morillo signed with a team in Japan.

Add the Pirates to the list of teams that tried to get J.J. Hardy from the Brewers, reportedly offering up either closer Matt Capps or catcher Ryan Doumit. Capps is more a "setup man allowed to accumulate saves" than a "closer" and had a rough 2009, but he's still 26 years old with a 3.61 ERA and 208-to-50 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 272 innings. Doumit is also coming off a rough year and is iffy defensively, but he's one of baseball's best-hitting catchers and under team control at reasonable rates through 2013.

Combined with some previous reports about what the Brewers turned down for Hardy two things seem clear: Hardy still had plenty of value around MLB despite coming off a career-worst year and Milwaukee general manager Doug Melvin is extremely high on Carlos Gomez. Based on counter-offers that Melvin supposedly made, he sees Gomez as having similar value to players like Clay Buchholz, Daniel Bard, Travis Snider, Adam Lind, Paul Maholm, and Zach Duke.

Miguel Angel Sano has apparently changed his name, which is certain to raise a few eyebrows after the shortstop from the Dominican Republic signed with the Twins in September amid questions about whether he was really 16 years old. Kelly Thesier of MLB.com notes that he'd been using his mother's maiden name as a sign of respect that's common in the Dominican, but will now go by his father's last name as Miguel Jean. Adjust your 2017 replica jerseys accordingly.

Robb Quinlan is rumored to be on the Twins' radar, which isn't shocking for a native Minnesotan who played for the Gophers. Quinlan has spent the past seven seasons as a part-time player for the Angels and once upon a time was a very solid platoon player capable of backing up third base and first base. Unfortunately now he's 33 years old and has gone from passable to terrible at third base while hitting just .252/.305/.333 over the past three seasons. He's a marginal bench bat at this point.

Next time Minneapolis Star Tribune writer and KSTP radio host Patrick Reusse offers his opinion on something baseball related, remember that he wrote this in his "Turkey of the Year" column last week:

Joe Christensen. Gentleman Joe is a Star Tribune baseball writer and also the Twin Cities' leading advocate for OPS, a make-believe number that Bill James acolytes have embraced. How often must we say this, Joe? Runs scored and RBI mean something; OPS doesn't.

You know a columnist has officially fallen into the "get off my lawn!" stage of his career when he's finally getting around to railing against a stat that has been widely used for a decade. At this pace Reusse will mock Joe Christensen's great-grandchildren for using VORP in 2089.

More importantly, only 86 more days until Twins pitchers and catchers report to spring training.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-11-24T00:05:00.002-06:00

MVP! MVP! MVP!

It's a shame that the voting wasn't unanimous, because there should be no doubt that Joe Mauer was the American League's most valuable player this season. After spending all of April on the disabled list Mauer put together a five-month stretch that ranks among the greatest performances by a catcher in the history of baseball, hitting .365 with a .444 on-base percentage, .587 slugging percentage, 28 homers, 59 total extra-base hits, 76 walks, 94 runs, and 96 RBIs in 606 plate appearances.

Prior to 2006 no catcher in the AL's century-plus history had ever won a batting title, but Mauer now has three in the past four seasons. This year he also led the league in on-base percentage and slugging percentage, becoming the first catcher in either league to win the sabermetric triple crown and the first AL hitter from any position to do so since George Brett in 1980. His batting average is the highest of all time for a catcher and his adjusted OPS+ of 177 ranks second behind only Mike Piazza at 185 in 1997.

Among catchers only Piazza and Johnny Bench can even claim to have had a season within the same stratosphere as Mauer. He batted .377 against righties and .345 against lefties; .388 at home and .345 on the road; .373 in the first half and .358 in the second half, .377 in wins and .352 in losses; .350 with the bases empty, .385 with men on, and .367 with runners in scoring position; .354 with none out, .379 with one out, and .360 with two outs; .367 at night and .362 during the day.

Despite sitting out the entire first month Mauer easily led the league in Value Over Replacement Player, producing 91 more runs than a replacement-level catcher. Derek Jeter ranked second, 73 runs better than a replacement-level shortstop, and Mauer bested every other AL hitter by at least 30 runs of VORP. He also won his second straight Glove Glove, logging 939 innings behind the plate in just five months to rank fifth in the league for the whole season, pushing his overall value significantly higher.

All of which is why it's a shame that one of the 28 voters declined to give him a first-place vote, robbing Mauer of the chance to become just the 10th unanimous MVP in league history and the first since Ken Griffey Jr. in 1997. Ultimately the award is the same every year, but through the eyes of history not all MVPs are equal and Mauer warranted that little added distinction for leaving no doubt with anyone save for voter Keizo Konishi of the Kyodo News that he was the league's best player.

Mauer thoroughly dominated the old-school stats, newer mainstream numbers, and advanced metrics alike while adding to his already unmatched offensive value with superior defense at the game's most demanding position. By comparison, when Justin Morneau won the MVP in 2006 he failed to lead the league in any major categories, placed just seventh in batting average and eighth in OPS, and ranked 13th in VORP while playing unspectacular defense at the game's most offense-driven position.

In my opinion Morneau is among the more undeserving MVP winners in recent memory, but whether or not you agree with that admittedly unpopular stance among Twins fans it seems obvious that there's a difference between what he did in 2006 and what Mauer did this year. A unanimous vote would have preserved that difference for all time, but then again Mauer was so amazing that tomorrow or 100 years from now no one should need 28 (or 27) writers to them he was the MVP. Some things are just true.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-11-23T10:43:00.008-06:00

My Ballot: American League MVP

While we wait for Joe Mauer to be named AL MVP, you can check out my entire 10-man ballot and read a lengthy article explaining my choices over at Circling the Bases:

NBCSports.com - My Ballot: American League MVP

UPDATE: Mauer won, with 27 of 28 first-place votes. More tomorrow, obviously.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-11-20T00:05:00.000-06:00

Link-O-Rama

Zack Greinke outed himself as an FIP-loving stathead after winning the AL Cy Young.

Obviously the true test will come when the AL MVP is announced Monday, but so far at least I'm very pleased with how the Baseball Writers Association of America has voted this year. They've matched my choices for AL Cy Young, NL Cy Young, and AL Rookie of the Year while disagreeing only on NL Rookie of the Year. Hopefully the logic continues next week.

As described (and pictured) in the New York Post, Derek Jeter celebrated his fifth World Series title by "frolicking with gorgeous gal pal Minka Kelly in St. Barts." Bastard.

I'm very pleased to note that former Twins beat reporter Phil Miller has landed a new job helping to cover the Timberwolves for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Miller did a fantastic job covering the Twins at the St. Paul Pioneer Press before the newspaper fired him in the middle of the season and has lots of experience on the NBA beat from his time in Utah, so Wolves fans are lucky to have Miller for however long the job lasts. He's also one hell of a nice guy, so hopefully it turns into a full-time gig.

I'm in complete agreement with Newsweek's list of "12 comics who aren't funny."

I'd like to go through life without seeing New Moon, but am thrilled to have watched Three Wolf Moon:

Aubrey Plaza and the world's greatest t-shirt is an amazing combination.

Most impressive accomplishment by a big-name poker player this month: Phil Ivey at the final table of the World Series of Poker main event or Erik Seidel at a restaurant table on Curb Your Enthusiasm? Seidel was also featured in Rounders, so he's quite a thespian.

This week former Deadspin contributor Rick Chandler joined me in the NBCSports.com blog family with Out of Bounds. For anyone keeping track, NBCSports.com's stable of blogs also includes Circling the Bases, Pro Football Talk, College Football Talk, Inside the Irish, and Beyond the Arc. We're going to have an amazing virtual Christmas party.

Speaking of former Deadspin staffers, Will Leitch penned an interesting piece about Bill Simmons forcing his way into the mainstream.

How amazing looking is Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com Keeley Hazell? By posing naked in protest of people wearing fur she's somehow managed to make PETA seem less annoying.

After burning through all 103 episodes of Lost in under two months I've moved on to Mad Men, which is also spectacular. Thanks to everyone who suggested it as a show that I'd like, because now I can't imagine life without Don Draper and Peggy Olson (although at first it freaked me out that Zoey Bartlet was forced to take secretarial work).

Also, based on recent television viewing I've come to the conclusion that someone needs to create a show starring Evangeline Lilly and Christina Hendricks. We'll call it "Lost Men" and, really, the plot and various other details are unimportant.

Speaking of great TV, if J.B. Smoove improv'd this scene with Michael Richards he's a genius:

For future reference, Danny Duberstein is good at two things.

My mom cooked me a whole shitload of meatballs this week, yet despite being a total fatso I came up just short of the world record set earlier this month.

Against all odds, I'm not the author of this 5,000-word guide to mastering all-you-can-eat buffets.

The whole "unborn son" thing is awfully optimistic in my case, but this site has some good "rules."

I'm trying to decide which is the more exciting Twitter brush with greatness: Lynette Carolla sending me an at-reply or Joe Sebok re-tweeting one of my dreams?

New blog to check out: Schlepping Minnesota Sports.

Some of the highlights from my NBCSports.com blogging this week:

- Lincecum narrowly defeats Cardinals duo for Cy Young
- Greinke captures Cy Young with 25 of 28 first-place votes
- Scioscia, Tracy named Managers of the Year
- Greinke in great company with Cy Young at 25
- What are the Red Sox planning at shortstop?
- Holliday reports show how offseason rumors can vary wildly
- Coghlan, Bailey named Rookies of the Year
- Reds re-sign Hernandez to one-year deal with 2011 option
- Brewers decline Looper's $6.5 million option
- Hudson, Braves make three-year deal official

Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is Sia with a live version of "Little Black Sandals":

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-11-18T00:05:00.000-06:00

Twitter Mailbag: Answers

Last week I asked for mailbag questions submitted via Twitter and you guys sent me a whole bunch of them, so here are some answers ...

Where do you expect J.J. Hardy to bat in the lineup?

This is tough to say before knowing who'll be playing second base, because history suggests that Ron Gardenhire will want to use a middle infielder in the second spot. J.J. Hardy wouldn't be a very good fit there because he has a poor .323 on-base percentage and grounds into a lot of double plays, which isn't the skill set that you want hitting directly in front of Joe Mauer. Ideally sixth or seventh would likely be the best spot for Hardy, taking advantage of his 20-homer power while minimizing the lack of OBP.

What are your favorite non-Twins baseball blogs?

Circling the Bases on NBCSports.com, but you knew that already. Some others, in no particular order:

- U.S.S. Mariner (Dave Cameron, Derek Zumsteg)
- Al's Ramblings (Al Bethke)
- MLB Trade Rumors (Tim Dierkes)
- Sweet Spot (Rob Neyer)
- Big League Stew (Kevin Kaduk, David Brown)
- From the Dugout (Sam Miller)
- Major League Bastian (Jordan Bastain)
- The Zo Zone (Todd Zolecki)
- Ball Star (Sam Mellinger)
- Dodger Thoughts (Jon Weisman)
- Extra Bases (Peter Abraham)
- Obviously, You're Not a Golfer (Matthew Leach)

There are over 100 baseball blogs in my RSS feed for news-gathering purposes, so I'm surely leaving out a bunch of good ones, but those are a dozen that I consistently enjoy.

Does Alexi Casilla have a future with the Twins?

My sense is that the Twins aren't ready to give up on Alexi Casilla yet, but there's no real reason to hold out much hope. While it's tempting to remember how good he's been for various stretches, at the end of the day Casilla is a career .244/.301/.314 hitter through 243 games in the majors and also hit just .278/.352/.350 in 169 games at Triple-A. He's still just 25 years old, but that track record offensively and a lack of elite defense makes me very pessimistic about his long-term value.

Could Dan Uggla be a solution at second base or is he too pricey?

I'm not particularly high on Dan Uggla for the Twins, although certainly as a .257/.344/.486 career hitter with 30-homer power who draws lots of walks his bat would be a huge upgrade. However, he's also a bad defensive second baseman who's unwilling to change positions and figures to make at least $7 million via arbitration for 2010. Toss in the prospects to get him from the Marlins and the price is likely too high. Probably a moot point anyway, because the Twins don't target guys with 160 strikeouts a year.

Which of the Twins' championship teams was your favorite?

Definitely the 1991 team, because that was the first season that I remember watching. Helluva year to start being a hardcore baseball fan. At the time it seemed obvious to an 8-year-old me that the Twins would be in the World Series every year and I recall keeping overly detailed stats in a notebook during each game. Shocking, I know.

If Joe Nathan were to be traded, what kind of value could the Twins expect?

That's really difficult to predict. Joe Nathan has been an elite closer for his entire time in Minnesota, but he's also 35 years old and owed $11.25 million in each of the next two seasons, with a $12.5 million option or $2 million buyout for 2012. Even if they wanted to not many teams are in a position to give up significant value and take that kind of payroll hit for a guy who pitches 60-70 innings per season. Plus, there are a handful of other closers available via free agency or trade this winter, flooding the market.

If the Twins did trade Nathan, who in the bullpen could take his place?

For the most part any very good setup man can be a good closer, so the question is basically whether or not the Twins have any very good setup men. Jon Rauch has previous closing experience and prior to his injury Pat Neshek certainly looked capable of doing the job, but right now the Twins certainly lack a dominant setup man. Still, few people pegged guys like Eddie Guardado or even Nathan himself as an obvious closer success story before they were handed ninth-inning duties. It's a role, not a position.

Realistic thoughts on Ben Sheets?

I actually just wrote something about Ben Sheets over at Circling the Bases. He'd be an intriguing flier to take, because the demand doesn't figure to be particularly high coming off a lost season and prior to the injury he was consistently one of the best pitchers in baseball. My interest in Sheets would depend entirely on the price, but I'd certainly rather give him an incentive-laden one-year deal than hand out a multi-year contract to someone like Jarrod Washburn.

What's the story with Glen Perkins? Should he stay or should he go?

Glen Perkins has a 4.73 ERA and mediocre secondary numbers through 281.2 innings in the majors while missing a bunch of time with injuries and butting heads with the Twins over the handling of those injuries, so it wouldn't surprise me to see him traded this offseason. When healthy he's a solid fourth or fifth starter, but at 27 years old his upside is limited. There's certainly no need to trade him, but if the Twins can get decent value despite the injuries they should be willing to make a deal.

Where is a good place to learn about baseball stats in layman's terms?

This is a good question, but I'm not sure that I have a great answer. Fan Graphs, Baseball Prospectus, The Hardball Times, and Baseball-Reference.com all have very useful glossaries that explain various stats, although not always in tremendous detail. I'd start by doing some digging at those links and then Google topics that interest you most, but also try to read the analysis being done at Fan Graphs or THT to see how the stats are being used in context.

What's the probability that Francisco Liriano returns to his 2006 form?

Basically zero. Francisco Liriano was the best pitcher on the planet in 2006, albeit briefly, but has lost a significant amount of raw stuff since elbow surgery. I'm certainly not ready to give up on him being an impact starter long term and in general people are far too quick to criticize Liriano for what is no doubt an incredibly difficult situation for a young pitcher, but the guy from 2006 just doesn't exist at this point.

If Liriano doesn't return to 2006 form, what is his role with the Twins?

If he can't rediscover his control and learn to better command his fastball now that it's low-90s instead of mid-90s then Liriano is destined for a bullpen role. While coming up through the minors many felt that he'd end up as a reliever anyway, and Liriano certainly still has the stuff to be very effective there if things break right. Command and control are less important when you're going all-out for one inning.

With the money equal, would you rather the Twins sign Orlando Hudson or Placido Polanco?

Orlando Hudson, definitely. Similar recent value, but Hudson is two years younger and hasn't started to decline yet. But as noted in my look at realistic free-agent options for second base, I'd be in favor of the Twins pursuing either of them.

Same question, but with Jarrod Washburn or Carl Pavano?

I'd say Carl Pavano, but I'd be against giving either pitcher a multi-year deal unless the annual salaries were very reasonable. Pavano is probably a better bet for 2010 though, so he gets the nod.

What happened to the Fat-O-Meter?

Sadly, it might be a lost cause. I'm fatter than ever and busier than ever, which is a bad combination for any hope of jump-starting a weight-loss program. Losing over 90 pounds and then gaining it all back is probably the most depressing, pathetic, embarrassing thing that I've ever done. And that's really saying something. I might need to go on the Biggest Loser or have someone bet me $100,000 or something, because clearly just not wanting to be a fatso isn't working.

Keeping other potential acquisitions in mind, would you start Nick Punto at second or third base? The bench isn't an option.

All things being equaled I'd rather have Nick Punto playing second base, because his bat is less awful relative to the position and his glove has a shot to make a bigger impact up the middle. With that said, if you assume that Gardenhire is going to start him somewhere regardless of what other infielders the Twins add, then the best spot for Punto suddenly depends on whether the second baseman available to them is better than the third baseman available to them.

What do you think the Twins' plans are for Wilson Ramos?

Wilson Ramos is one of the Twins' best prospects, but after missing most of this season with injuries while at Double-A he's still far enough away from the majors that there's no need to really adjust plans for him quite yet. With that said, he's a 22-year-old catcher with the potential to be an asset offensively and defensively, and obviously the Twins already have someone like that behind the plate. He's likely still a couple years from potentially pushing for a big-league job, and a lot can happen in that time.

Do the Twins have any shot at Chone Figgins or Pedro Feliz? Would either even be a good fit for the team or the payroll?

Chone Figgins would be a nice fit, but he's going to be significantly out of the Twins' price range. Pedro Feliz is a possibility. I actually wrote about him as part of my look at the realistic free-agent options for third base, noting that he's either a poor man's Joe Crede or a healthy man's Crede, but then decided to publish only five options and he was the sixth choice. Very good defense, but not much else.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-11-16T00:05:00.002-06:00

Twins Notes: Washburn, Buscher, Huber, Crede, Neshek

Joe Christensen of the Minneapolis Star Tribune notes that the Twins "are expected to pursue" free agent Jarrod Washburn, which certainly isn't surprising. At various points over the past two years the Twins have been linked to Washburn in trade rumors, and depending on who you believe they were on the verge of acquiring him from the Mariners two seasons ago. However, based on his likely price tag signing Washburn would be a mistake for the Twins.

An extreme fly-ball pitcher who took advantage of the Mariners' power-deflating ballpark and historically great outfield defense to post a 2.64 ERA through 20 starts this year, Washburn allowed 35 runs in 43 innings for the Tigers following a midseason trade. His struggles in Detroit can perhaps be blamed on a knee injury that required post-season surgery, but regardless of that he's a soft-tossing 35-year-old with mediocre control and a horrible strikeout rate who hasn't thrown 200 innings since 2003.

Since that last 200-inning season Washburn has posted the following Expected Fielding Independent Pitching (xFIP) totals: 5.06, 5.01, 5.35, 5.30, 5.11, 4.97. Not surprisingly xFIP doesn't think very much of extreme fly-ball pitchers who lack pinpoint control and don't miss any bats, and once you add in his age and knee surgery Washburn is the epitome of a bad free-agent target. If he ends up with the Twins they better pray that Denard Span's early defensive ratings are fluky and the new ballpark plays very big.

Removed from the 40-man roster last week, Brian Buscher opted for free agency rather than re-sign with the Twins on a minor-league deal. Buscher is a tweener in that he's not strong enough defensively to be a regular third baseman and not strong enough offensively to be a regular first baseman, which makes him merely a decent bench player. He hit .266/.343/.356 with eight homers, 22 total extra-base hits, and a 93-to-53 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 502 plate appearances for the Twins.

Plucked from the Giants organization via the minor-league phase of the Rule 5 draft three winters ago, Buscher hit .309/.385/.493 in 103 games between Double-A and Triple-A in 2007 and .319/.402/.514 in 53 games at Triple-A last year, but showed an extreme lack of power with the Twins and ultimately isn't much of a loss. Buscher's patient, relatively high-contract approach could make him a solid pinch-hitter and backup at both corner infield spots, but at 29 years old there isn't much upside to be had.

Justin Huber initially agreed to a minor-league contract with the Twins after being trimmed from the 40-man roster, but the Hiroshima Carp of the Japanese League are reportedly close to acquiring him. Huber is the type of player who Japanese teams often target, because he has a lengthy track record of minor-league success without a big-league future. In fact, he's accumulated a grand total of 175 plate appearances in the majors despite hitting .283/.375/.484 over 3,533 plate appearances in the minors.

UPDATE: Seth Stohs reports that Juan Morillo has also signed with a team in Japan despite the Twins adding him to the 40-man roster last week.

Bill Smith indicated that the Twins are still open to re-signing Joe Crede, but view him as more of a fallback option than they did at this time last year. He recently underwent a third back surgery, but will be ready for spring training and no longer has any pretense of getting anything but an incentive-laden one-year contract. He's hardly an ideal target at third base, but as noted in last week's "Realistic Free Agent Options" look at the position Crede for $2 million or so wouldn't be an awful last resort.

After missing the entire season following Tommy John elbow surgery, Pat Neshek recently blogged that he's throwing fastballs, changeups, and sliders off a mound at "max effort" and "feels great." What to expect from Neshek in 2010 is anyone's guess, because for every pitcher who bounces back quickly from the surgery there's a Francisco Liriano who leaves his dominant stuff on the operating table, but before going down he had a 2.91 ERA, .188 opponents' average, and 142 strikeouts in 120.2 innings.

Joe Mauer won his second straight Gold Glove, which might be somewhat meaningful if not for the fact that Derek Jeter also won his fourth Gold Glove and Franklin Gutierrez failed to capture his first. Yet another award that, for me at least, has lost all meaning thanks to years and years of bad choices.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.

2009-11-13T00:05:00.006-06:00

Twitter Mailbag: Any Questions?

I'm having some computer problems that rule out putting together a decent Link-O-Rama for this week, but it does give me the opportunity to try something new. I've been on Twitter for a few months now and it recently occurred to me that putting together an AG.com mailbag entry consisting entirely of questions submitted via Twitter could be interesting. Plus, one issue with the traditional mailbag columns that I've done here in the past is overly long questions that are difficult to re-print, and Twitter forces brevity.

Here's how it'll work: If you have a question (or questions) about the Twins or the blog or really anything that someone might find interesting or amusing, go to my Twitter page and send me @ replies. And if you're not on Twitter and have no clue what an @ reply is, this will give you a chance to check it out. Or you can just let everyone else ask questions via Twitter and wait to read the mailbag when it shows up here next week. Pretty simple, right? If there's a decent response we'll make it a regular thing, so try it.

To submit questions for the mailbag, send them to @aarongleeman on Twitter.

2009-11-12T00:05:00.000-06:00

Realistic Free Agent Options: Third Base

Projecting which free agents the Twins will go after is difficult because their pursuit of low-cost options depends upon how the market shakes out and who drops into their price range. In the past five years they've also wasted money on a lengthy list of washed-up veterans like Tony Batista, Livan Hernandez, Ramon Ortiz, Craig Monroe, Juan Castro, Sidney Ponson, and Luis Ayala (among others) with only an occasional worthwhile signing like Joe Crede or Dennys Reyes sprinkled in.

For the most part the Twins have targeted only bargain-basement options while far more often than not choosing badly, which makes it kind of pointless to predict which free agents they'll pursue. So, instead I'll focus on which free agents they should pursue. I'm trying to be realistic with the recommendations, highlighting guys who may actually sign modest one- or two-year deals rather than dreaming about the top-tier free agents. With that in mind, here are five third basemen the Twins should look into ...

Adrian Beltre: It makes sense for the Twins to go after Beltre as a free agent after trying to trade for him in the past, and missing 50 games while hitting .265/.304/.379 has his value lower than ever. Shoulder problems make Beltre a risk and he's seemingly been banged up constantly in recent years, but this season was actually the first time since 2001 that he failed to play at least 140 games. Despite being around forever Beltre won't be 31 years old until April, so if healthy he's capable of a nice bounce back.

He'll never repeat the monster 2004 season that got him a huge contract, but in five years with Seattle he hit .266/.317/.442 despite playing half his games in a ballpark that wreaks havoc on right-handed power hitters. Long one of the game's elite defensive third basemen, Beltre's glove has been as good as ever during the past two seasons. Despite this year's injuries and poor production Beltre may still be out of the Twins' price range, but he'd be an ideal target if the market proves lacking.

Mark DeRosa: After a career-year in 2008 the Cubs traded DeRosa to the Indians for a trio of mid-level prospects. He had a nice first half as Cleveland collapsed, hitting .270/.342/.457, and was then dealt to St. Louis for two nice relief prospects. Unfortunately for the Cardinals he suffered a wrist injury almost immediately and batted just .228/.291/.405 in 68 games while spending time on the disabled list, and DeRosa underwent surgery last week.

Between the wrist problems and turning 35 years old DeRosa is a risk, but he's hit .281/.356/.448 over the past four seasons while playing everywhere but center field and catcher defensively. His glove isn't particularly good anywhere, but if healthy DeRosa is passable at third base and plenty productive from the right side of the plate, offering solid batting averages, 20-homer power, and good plate discipline. If a rough finish to 2009 has dropped him into the Twins' price range, a two-year deal might work.

Troy Glaus: Struggles returning from offseason shoulder surgery followed by back problems left Glaus on the sidelines until September and he played just 14 games overall, basically making it a lost year for the four-time All-Star. His health remains a huge question mark, but Glaus hit .270/.372/.483 with 27 homers in 151 games for the Cardinals last year to top an .800 OPS in a ninth straight season. For the 2000s he leads all MLB third baseman with 274 homers and ranks third in adjusted OPS+.

Glaus' ability to play third base is certainly in doubt, because in addition to the shoulder problems he's 33 years old, stands 6-foot-5, and weighs around 250 pounds. However, he was originally a shortstop and his glove has graded out reasonably well at the hot corner, rating as a positive in 2007 and 2008. In terms of risk versus reward Glaus has the highest upside of any free agent third baseman, because if healthy he's an elite right-handed power hitter with good plate discipline and a decent glove.

Melvin Mora: Baltimore officially made him a free agent last week by declining an $8 million option for 2010 and Mora isn't likely to be very picky coming off a career-worst season. He'll also be 38 years old soon, so there's good reason for teams like the Twins to stay away, but Mora would be a worthwhile pickup on a one-year deal. Despite hitting just .260/.321/.358 this year he remained decent defensively at third base and Mora hit .285/.342/.483 with 23 homers as recently as last season.

In fact, this season was the first time since 2001 that Mora failed to post an above average on-base percentage and he's hit a combined .276/.340/.427 in the five years since his monster 2004 campaign. I'd hang up the phone as soon as his agent mentioned anything more than a one-year deal, but it'd be worth a few million bucks to see if Mora can hit .275 with 15 homers, a solid on-base percentage, and average defense while the Twins wait on prospect Danny Valencia to take a step forward.

Joe Crede: When he signed with the Twins last winter Crede was coming off a year in which he played just 97 games because of injuries and hit .248 with 17 homers and a bad on-base percentage. Now he's coming off a season in which he played just 90 games because of injuries and hit .225 with 15 homers and a bad on-base percentage. In other words Crede performed more or less like the Twins should have expected and was worth the incentive-laden investment with his great defense factored in.

So will the Twins offer him another one-year contract? Probably not, but he makes just about as much sense now as he did last offseason and may even be cheaper this time around. When healthy Crede hits in the low .200s with good power and plays excellent defense at third base, but he's missed 234 of a possible 488 games in the past three years. He clearly can't be counted on, but if the Twins don't feel that Valencia is quite ready and miss out on the aforementioned options Crede for $2 million isn't bad.

Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.