Archive for category: Twins

No true Twins fan could be surprised that they lost to the Yankees in the one-game Wild Card Playoff last night. Their only legitimate hope was that Ervin Santana would regain his early-season form and throw a near-shutout, which was a possibility. When he missed with his first two pitches, however, and proceeded to walk the leadoff batter, after having been given a three-run lead to work with, you sort of knew that wasn’t going to happen. When he then gave up a three-run homer to the Yankees’ fourth batter, the game’s outcome was no longer in doubt.
Still, it was encouraging, and exciting, to see the Twins start the game with a home run by Brian Dozier, a home run by Eddie Rosario and base hits by Eduardo Escobar and Max Kepler off Yankee ace Luis Severino. These guys, you felt, are for real and have a bright future. The fun stopped when we reached the bottom third of the order, which went hitless all night – surprisingly, in the case of Robbie Grossman, discouragingly for Jason Castro, and worryingly for Byron Buxton, who did get an rbi by beating out his double-play grounder. Buxton is still, we hope, a work in progress. He started to strike out less in the season’s second half, but he has to develop into a better contact hitter, or at least continue to improve his bunting.
The Twins also developed a surprisingly efficient bullpen out of very little, and except for a four-pitch walk with the bases loaded by Alan Busenitz they held their own last night. The problem, going forward, is starting pitching, and when you look at the starting rotation of the few good teams in the Majors – the Indians, Red Sox, Astros, Dodgers, Nationals – you can see how far the Twins are from seriously contending for a title. Yes, the Twins made the Playoffs, but they did so by beating up on the Tigers: none of the 10 teams they beat out had even a .500 record!
Santana, you feel, will never again have as good a year, and he trailed off considerably as the season wore on. Berrios has a live arm with the stuff to excel, and maybe he will. This year the Twins patched together a rotation with Kyle Gibson (terrible then good), Bartolo Colon (soon to be 45 years old), Adelberto Mejia (seemingly destined to be a journeyman, at best) and a parade of disappointments from their farm teams. Trevor May could return from his injury, but beyond that it is hard to see where the arms will come from. While it is almost routine now to find relievers who outshine their pedigree, there is little precedent for unknowns becoming dependable starters. Maybe take a big gulp and trade Miguel Sano? He has always been deemed the team’s future, but the Twins hit better once he was injured; his strikeouts are troubling; and he hasn’t kept healthy for long.
We’ll watch with interest as the new front office makes moves over the winter. The Twins, at least, are suddenly worth watching.

Few, if any, predicted that the Twins would end the first half of the 2017 season above .500, albeit by one game and falling fast; so despite my negative thoughts to come I have to rate their performance so far as a wonderful surprise. More days than not this spring I have found myself on a Twins high.
What has caused this success, however partial? Every player has had a hand, whether it’s Buxton’s great defense, Rosario going 5-for-5, Kepler’s three-home-run game, Mauer’s steady climb toward .300, on and on. Ditto for the pitching: Duffey and Rogers have frequently excelled as setup men, Kintzler is near the league lead in saves, Berrios has been a revelation as a starter. The two biggest contributors, however, and here is where the worry starts, have been Ervin Santana on the mound and Miguel Sano at the plate. They have singlehandedly willed the Twins to more victories than anyone else.
Worry, I say, because Santana, after a great April and May, has been pedestrian, at best, the entire month of June. Is his confidence gone, has his arm tired? – whatever the problem, it is hard to see him regaining his dominant form. Sano, too, has begun striking out with such regularity that you wonder if the scouts have figured him out or if he, too, has begun doubting himself. When Sano is not hitting, there is a big hole in the middle of the Twins lineup.
The other Twins hitters – and here I’m talking about Kepler, Polanco, Escobar, Dozier, Castro, Vargas – all seem to blow hot and cold. For every breakout performance, there seem to be two or three games where no one hits and the Twins manage but a run or two. I do like them all, though, and whenever I doubt their future stardoms I say to myself two words: Aaron Hicks. The Twins gave him every chance to succeed as their centerfielder, but he never really caught on. Same with the Yankees last year. This year, however, he is one of the Yankees’ best players, which makes me believe that a player with talent can figure things out and blossom late in his 20s. Rosario, Kepler and Polanco all have the tools to be stars, and with experience they might be. (Polanco’s future, however, is at second base, where I fully expect him to supplant Dozier in a year or two once one of their shortstop prospects – Royce Lewis? – is ready.) Even Buxton, still very much a work in progress, could develop.
Pitching, however, is a different story, and this will doom the Twins to being a .500 team in the near future, despite the maturation of their hitters – all of whom, I should add, are solid defenders. Berrios is already penciled in at the top of the rotation for years to come, as expected. But after him the cupboard looks bare. Santana, as noted, may already be on the down curve. Hector Santiago has been smoke and mirrors for a couple years and appears to have run out of gas. Kyle Gibson just never gets better: four good innings then implosion. The Twins haven’t even had a fifth starter much of this year, dropping down into their farm system whenever a fifth starter is needed, generally without success. This makes one wonder who there is down there being developed for the future. The most promising so far, Felix Jorge, came up directly from AA and has only thrown 5+ innings. Tyler Duffey is solid three out of four outings, and you wonder why the Twins aren’t working him back into the starting rotation instead of using him in the sixth inning. Taylor Rogers has been the lefthanded surprise of the staff, and he has now been anointed as the 8th-inning setup man. Kintzler makes me nervous – I’d prefer a strikeout artist for my closer – but he will do. The rest of the bunch – Belisle and Breslow, for sure, Pressly probably – are just space savers. When the starters can’t go six innings, the bullpen flaws are magnified, and I believe the Twins have the league’s worst relief ERA.
The Twins, thanks to their surprising start and the mediocrity of the Central Divison, won’t lose 100 games again this year; and if they can go 32-49 they won’t lose 90. Whether they can keep their spirits up once they fall far behind the Indians and maybe the Royals may be a test of how far this bunch can go in the next few years. Without pitching, however – and where is that to come from? – the ceiling remains limited.

The Twins blogosphere is critical of owner Jim Pohlad’s announced intention to retain Paul Molitor as next year’s manager, regardless of the wishes of the next general manager, for whom Pohlad is currently searching. Any potential general manager worth his salt, the thinking goes, will want to install his own field manager, as that is the decision that will bear most directly on his own success or failure. The obvious answer, to my mind, is that owners change their “votes of confidence” with regularity and impunity, and there’s little reason to believe Jim Pohlad will provide an exception to this practice. There’s more reason to believe that Pohlad feels he must make this statement in order for Molitor to retain credibility with his players for the rest of this season, until a new GM is hired. Coaches and managers are notorious for resigning when they are not given contract extensions beyond one year for just this reason. Why would a player with today’s pampered ego and a guaranteed five-year contract pay attention to a manager in his lame-duck season?
The bigger question, which so far as I know has gone unanswered, is, why would Molitor want to come back and manage these Twins another year? For three weeks or so, they had one of the better records in the Majors and fielded a starting lineup (when Miguel Sano wasn’t playing) with no one hitting under .255. Max Kepler and Jorge Polanco looked like legitimate Major Leaguers in their first half-seasons, Brian Dozier had regained his All-Star form and Ervin Santana pitched like the number one starter he was signed to be. There appeared to be hope for 2017. Then another collapse came. Kansas City and Detroit swept the Twins, easily, and the Blue Jays won tonight, 15-8. The Twins have matched their low point below .500 for the season.
What does Molitor see when he looks ahead? For too many years, the Twins have projected a rebound year in 2017 based on the potential of Sano and Byron Buxton. Sano, however, is half the player this year that he was as a rookie. Buxton has failed to hit Major League pitching despite being handed the centerfield job three times already and is scuffling in the minors. Both, too, are injury-prone. Very few, anymore, are dreaming that Sano and Buxton will take the Twins anywhere. Mauer can only get worse, Plouffe will never be consistent, Grossman will likely remain a journeyman, catching is a future weak spot and there’s no long-term substitute for Buxton in center. But this shaky defensive unit looks good compared to the Twins pitching, and that’s the ultimate key. The two brightest spots for the future – Jose Berrios and Tyler Duffey – were just exiled to AAA out of management’s frustration that they don’t seem to learn anything. Kyle Gibson, the only proven homegrown talent, has a horrific game for every good one. Twins fans were delighted to get rid of Ricky Nolasco, but Hector Santiago, whom they got in exchange, has so far been worse.
It’s one thing to coach a losing team if they respond to instruction, you see them improving, and the future looks promising. None of these, however, apply to the current roster of Twins. If I were Paul Molitor, I would announce I’m resigning at season’s end, before anyone can fire me.

[fusion_text]Everyone’s a general manager these days, and I’m no exception. Rather than linger on the Twins’ surprisingly successful 2015 season – which, thankfully, finished above .500 but short of the playoffs – I am already in roster-planning mode for 2016. And what a happy prospect it is!

Start with starting pitching, the heart of a successful team. This appears to be a strength, thanks to the totally unforeseen emergence of Tyler Duffey as the team’s ace. Next, Ervin Santana came on strong and will be available for a full season. Kyle Gibson gets a little better each year, especially at home, and should be a dependable third man in the rotation, capable of a 15-win season. Then there is Jose Berrios: I’ve never seen him pitch, but if he is as good as he’s been in the minors, he will earn a spot. That leaves one opening for Phil Hughes, Tommy Milone, Ricky Nolasco or Trevor May – and thankfully closes the door on Mike Pelfrey. That’s an enviable competition to have, and while Hughes and Nolasco will be paid a lot of Minnesota money, whether they pitch or not, I’ll be happy if Milone emerges on top. Of course, with injuries inevitable, it would be nice to be able to stockpile one of these starters.

The relief pitching is almost as important and much more uncertain. Kevin Jepsen earned the closer role, which raises the question of Glen Perkins, who is also on the line for a large salary, awarded when he was deemed the closer for years to come. First, can he be happy as the 8th-inning setup man? More to the point, can he regain the form that totally deserted him from the All-Star Game on? Was his problem physical? Or did he lose confidence? Trevor May was the next most effective reliever, but some thought he had the greatest upside as a starter. The surplus of starters and paucity of relievers argues for keeping him in the latter role, at least for now. The rest are journeymen, and you never know who among them will have a good year. Every season the Twins pick up someone who surprises – a Casey Fien, a Blaine Boyer – so it’s foolish at this distance to predict who that will be in 2016. I do think, however, the string has run out on Brian Duensing; and I expect to see J.R. Graham getting more minor league experience now that his Rule 5 year has passed.

The biggest issue on the offensive side is, what to do with Joe Mauer? He is vastly overpaid, and will be for three years, and has lost almost all his fan support. His lack of power for a first baseman is embarrassing, his unchangingly mild demeanor is frustrating, his play in the field is average, at best, and when he hits .260 instead of .320 you wonder what he is doing smack in the middle of the lineup day after day. If you could get him to catch again, even part-time, it would provide an upgrade over what’s there now. Trevor Plouffe at first would offer better defense, more power, and the chance to play Miguel Sano at third. Kennys Vargas is another possibility at first, but he would have to hit more consistently than he did this year.

Brian Dozier will be the second baseman, although one hopes he can be taught to hit to right and not wear down as the season progresses. It is hard not to think that his early success make him homer-happy, which led to a plethora of strikeouts and groundballs to short. Eduardo Escobar solidified the shortstop position, and Plouffe or Sano will man third. Kurt Suzuki slipped some at catcher and clearly needs better relief than Hermann or Fryer could provide.

The outfield, too, is interesting. Pencil in Eddie Rosario for the next ten years. Beyond that, if Aaron Hicks can take another step forward, as he did this season, he’s the centerfielder. Byron Buxton was brought up prematurely when Hicks was hurt and the team was floundering; he needs, and deserves, a year at AAA (which he’s never had) learning how to hit breaking balls. Should the Twin bring back Torii Hunter? It depends on who else is available. As of now, I’d say yes. I don’t know if Max Kepler, the Twins’ minor league player of the year, is ready to start in the majors. I’d certainly take Hunter over this year’s fourth outfielder, Shane Robinson.

That’s what I’d do with the present roster. Maybe the Twins can trade Plouffe or Hughes for a catcher, reliever or outfielder, and I have no idea what free agents will be on the market. That’s what will make the winter interesting, that – more than the Timberwolves or Wild – will keep me turning to the Strib’s sports pages. And in only four months spring training will begin…

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