A game in Cedar Rapids, Part I: Bryon Buxton

How fast is Bryon Buxton? He was out of the camera
frame before the bat landed in his first at-bat Monday.
(Photos by Linda Vanderwerf)

Last week, in taking note of a dramatic game-ending grand slam by prized Twins prospect Byron Buxton, I said I'd better get a move on if I'm going to see him play for Cedar Rapids this year, because he might be promoted quickly to Fort Myers.

And so it was that I essentially burned two days off — Sunday and Monday — to see one minor league game. Monday afternoon, the Kane County Cougars (Cubs affiliate) at Cedar Rapids.

I have plenty of observations to make from that game, and I'll dole them out over the next few days, but today's post will be about Buxton, because he was the big reason for the trip.

Buxton homered in his second at-bat, a majestic fly ball that flew over everything in left field. That was his only hit in five trips to the plate. He struck out twice, reached on an error and was retired on a grounder to third.

Byron Buxton awaits a pitch.

And he made two magnificent catches in center field. In the first inning, Kane County's Gioskar Amaya drove a ball to deep center. Buxton made the catch with his back to the infield and hit the fence on his next step. The impact knocked him down, but he got up quickly.

In the ninth, Pin-Chieh Chen drove a liner to left-center. Buxton made a diving catch just before the ball found the grass.

(I was sitting right behind the Kernels dugout. Kernels coach Tommy Watkins had been moving left fielder J.D. Williams toward center on Chen, then had him move two steps back toward the foul line. After Buxton's catch, Watkins,who spent the game on the top step of the dugout, turned around  and said with a grin to somebody inside the dugout: I moved him back because he was crowding Buck.)

Tom Kelly has said that Buxton is the fastest player he's ever seen, and I saw some of that in play Monday. He hit a one-hopper in the first inning right at the third baseman, and the throw only got him by a step at first base.

Buxton led off the fifth. He tried a bunt and fouled it off but ran it out as if to show us all how fast he is and how easily that speed comes. He followed with a soft grounder to short; the shortstop charged the ball and juggled it trying to make a rapid exchange from glove to throwing hand, and Buxton was safe. It was ruled an error, and I suppose that, had the shortstop made the play perfectly, he would have been out. I suppose. It certainly would have been a close play. I'm convinced: There is no such thing as a routine groundball out to the left side with Buxton.

Having reached first, he stole second base easily. He then came around on a pair of ground outs.

Roster shakeup coming?

The Twins on Sunday wrapped up a miserable 2-7 homestand with yet another loss in which the starting pitcher left way too many innings (and too big a deficit) to the bullpen and the lineup failed to produce.

Something is going to change pretty soon. And one avenue to a roster shakeup opened Sunday when the Twins announced that outfielder Darin Mastroianni, who went on the 15-day disabled list in mid-April with what was called a "stress reaction" in his left ankle, would have surgery to remove a bone chip from that ankle.

I'm no orthopedic specialist, but as I understand it these are not the same injury, but the stress reaction (and the attempts to test the recovery from it) may have led to the bone chip. Whatever the medical background, Mastroianni will not be back until sometime after the All-Star break in July.

This means:

• If the Twins were waiting for Mastroianni to return to pull the plug on Aaron Hicks as the regular center fielder -- and I don't really think that's the case -- they need to come up with another idea.
• If the Twins want to call up a player who isn't now on the 40-man roster -- the red-hot Chris Colabello, for example -- they can shift Mastroianni to the 60-day disabled list, which would remove him from the 40.

The Twins' new road trip includes their first interleague road games, which means no DH, which means that two of the hitters they want to have in the lineup will be on the bench. One of them will likely be either Ryan Doumit or Joe Mauer, since one will catch and the other won't DH. And the other will come out of the Chris Parmelee-Oswaldo Arcia-Josh Willingham-Justin Morneau foursome.

Given how abused the bullpen has been the past week, I wouldn't be stunned if the Twins finally went to the 13-man staff I expected at the start of the season. With at-bats likely to be squeezed, it might be Arcia who gets bumped if that happens. With Mastroianni out of the picture for probably two months, their options for a call-up are not limited to the players on the 40.

Pic of the Week

Houston second baseman Jake Elmore, left,
and right fielder Jimmy Paredes collide on what should
have been the final out Friday.

Bases loaded, two out, bottom of the ninth, Houston clinging to a one-run lead in Pittsburgh, and the Pirates' Russell Martin pops up to short right field.

Jake Elmore settles under the ball, but right fielder Jimmy Paredes is having none of that. He runs into Elmore, the ball drops, two runs score and the Astros lose.

It was the second time last week that Paredes ran into his second baseman. Jose Altuve — arguably the only Astro who deserves to be a major league regular — suffered a partial dislocation of his right jaw in Monday's collision, which is why Elmore was there to be Paredes' target Friday.

The Astros had the majors' worst record each of the past two seasons, and they entered today 12-31.

This is, astoundingly (astroundingly?), not the worst record in baseball — the Miami Marlins are 11-32 — but the Astros are certainly a bad team. And if Paredes keeps playing right field like this, a dangerous one — for their second basemen.

Injuries, rehab and releases

Rafael Perez pitched
four innings for
Triple A Rochester
before being released.

The Rafael Perez era ended Friday when the Twins released the veteran left-hander.

He had shoulder surgery in 2012, and Cleveland let him go during the offseason. The Twins took a flier on him as spring training camps opened on the strength of a bullpen session, but once he was actually in camp their assessment of his current ability clearly diminished. He never threw a pitch in a spring training game and hadn't even joined a minor league team until this month.

It's hardly worth criticizing the Twins for this episode; it was a minor league deal, a small investment that didn't pan out. This is unlike the Tsuyoshi Nishioka signing, which gave reason to wonder if there's a disconnect between the scouts and the major league staff.

Still, it was a curious sequence of events. When the Twins signed Perez, they talked about stretching him out as a rotation candidate. As it turned out, he couldn't stretch out sufficiently to claim the lefty specialist role he was accustomed to with the Indians. The scouts saw something the coaching staff didn't see. Or maybe they were just throwing something against the wall to see if it stuck.

Perez wound up pitching four innings in Triple A — four innings in which he walked three men, struck out two and allowed one run, on a homer.

He had an out clause in his deal — if not on the major league roster by May 1 he could elect free agency — and he waived that clause at the start of the month, but perhaps he and/or his agent think there's an opportunity elsewhere.

---

A more significant investment gone sour — Alex Wimmers, the Twins' first-round draft pick in 2010 —took a step forward Friday with his first mound work since his ligament replacement surgery last summer.

Wimmers threw all of five innings last season, and it remains to be seen if he sees any action in the minors in 2013.

He was seen at draft time in 2010 as a high-floor, low-ceiling prospect; one of the attractions with him was the sense that he was nearly major-league ready. But nothing as worked out for him so far, and the floor has proven to be far lower than anticipated.

Wimmers has thrown 62 minor league innings since signing. The Twins have enough invested in him to keep trying, but he's not the pitcher they drafted out of Ohio State, and he may never be that pitcher again.

Tim Wood threw
eight innings for
Rochester before
being shut down.

---

Bullpen candidate Tim Wood, who is on the 40-man roster, was shut down a few days before his rehab assignment was to expire early this week. An MRI on his balky shoulder was reportedly clean, but there's still clearly an issue of some sort and he's seeking a second opinion.

Not long ago I was wondering how, or if, the Twins would find room for him in the major league bullpen. He didn't make it that far.

Another example of the truth behind the claim that you never have enough pitchers.

Big hit from Buxton

The big news in Twinsdom on Thursday — an off day for the major league team — came out of Cedar Rapids. The Kernels came into the bottom of the ninth trailing 6-3, but the loaded the bases with one out for Byron Buxton, their 19-year-old uberprospect. Then:

There's a better video embedded in this story from the Gazette of Cedar Rapids.

Buxton has cooled off a bit — in the previous 10 games he had hit just .250, and his long streak of reaching base in every game had ended at 29. Still, nobody seems to believe the kid's going to spend the season in low-A ball. If I'm going to see "Buck" play there, I'd better get a move on.

Dunn in

Adam Dunn comes around third base Wednesday
with his second home run of the game at Target Field.

Adam Dunn hit three home runs against the Twins this week and missed out on a fourth only because Aaron Hicks reached over the center field fence to take one away from him.

This outburst elevated Dunn's slash line on the season to .156/.255/.391.  Combined with all the other flaws in his game, that should logically make him a release candidate. But the White Sox are committed to $15 million to him not only this season but next, so he's sticking around.

Dunn has always been something of a litmus test on talent judgment. He does two things well, or at least did during his 20s, and again last season: draw walks and hit home runs.  He was never a high-average hitter, but in his 20s Dunn hit 40 homers almost every season and salted the power with 100-plus walks. The result were on-base percentages around .380 and slugging percentages around .580.

Those are strong markers. The flip side of it is, those were the only things he did to help. Even in his youth — he's 33 now — he couldn't run and had no defensive position. As for his approach to the game, I suspect his nickname of "Donkey" is at least as much about his stubbornness and unwillingness to adapt as for his strength.

Dunn has often been described by stat-oriented writers as a "great" hitter; I think great hitters are more capable of adjusting than Dunn has been. Dunn has often been described as having great strike-zone judgment; I think he's more aware of his strike zone – the pitches and areas he can hit — than of the real strike zone, which is part of why he has led the majors four times in strikeouts.

J.P. Riccardi, then the general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, took a lot of flack from Dunn's admirers a while back when, in a radio interview, he dismissed the notion of trading for Dunn with a comment along the lines of He doesn't like to play baseball. That may not have been the best choice of words, but they evoke the sense that Dunn wasn't interested in shoring up the weak parts of his game.

How fair that assessment was back then, I can't say. No amount of work was ever going to make Dunn a fast runner. Whether he really made an effort to become a good outfielder or first baseman, I don't know. Whether he ever tried to learn an alternative approach to hitting that was less boom or bust — something to be used when the tying run's on third base with one out — I don't know.

Dunn's game has fallen off since he arrived in the American League; his slash line with the White Sox, in two-plus seasons, is a paltry .181/.309/.385. Yes, he had a big series against the Twins; I believe that was more about the flaws in the Twins pitching than about what Dunn brings to the table these days.

Contemplating Joe Mauer

Joe Mauer bops a first-inning single Tuesday evening.

We're almost one fourth of the way through the regular season, and — surprise — Joe Mauer's hitting .340.

It's been the most uneven season of his career so far. No. 7 was hitting .393 after a 2-for-4 game April 20. The next day he went hitless, and he finished the month 3-for-33, which lowered his season average to .287. He hasn't had a hitless game since, and he goes into today's game with a 13-game hitting streak.

His first inning single Tuesday night (his only hit of the game) came with two strikes and was his 30th hit of the season with two strikes, an astounding figure. For his career, Mauer is a .257 hitter with two strikes (slash line .257/.311/.357); this season, Mauer is .322/.365/.400, even as he heads for a new career high in strikeouts. (Figures, garnered from Baseball Reference, don't include Tuesday's game.)

It's worth knowing, for comparison purposes, that the American League average with two strikes is .183 — .183/.252/.284 —  and this paltry level of performance is normal. Hitting is difficult; hitting with two strikes is almost impossible.

Striking out more often — Mauer has whiffed in about 24 percent of his official at-bats this year, as compared to a career rate of about 12.5 percent — and getting more hits with two strikes is a difficult combination to maintain, and I don't expect him to maintain it.

He has reached two strikes in 47.1 percent of his career plate appearances; this year he's got to two strikes 56.9 percent of the time.

I'm going to hazard the guess that if he's going to hit .340 this year and continue to challenge the single-season doubles record — and it's too early for me to get revved up about that notion — he'll need to have fewer two-strike at-bats.